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[Norbert Sattler]

7 hours ago, TotalRampage said:

They just charge nose in right? I've noticed not a lot of maneuvering from the AI. 

They do manouver. If I try to avoid a collision course, they will adjust their own course to keep on an intercept course that will lead them either to cut across by bow in front of their targeted ship, which is usually one in the middle of the formation if there are muliples, or go just a bit too slow and either end up crashing into my ship or my ship crashing into their sides, because it couldn't slow down enough to avoid a collision, while the oponent was passing right in front of their nose.

It's less of a problem with the small ones since they can avoid collisions most of the time, but the capital ships are not.

[TotalRampage]

16 hours ago, Norbert Sattler said:

They do manouver. If I try to avoid a collision course, they will adjust their own course to keep on an intercept course that will lead them either to cut across by bow in front of their targeted ship, which is usually one in the middle of the formation if there are muliples, or go just a bit too slow and either end up crashing into my ship or my ship crashing into their sides, because it couldn't slow down enough to avoid a collision, while the oponent was passing right in front of their nose.

It's less of a problem with the small ones since they can avoid collisions most of the time, but the capital ships are not.

That's not really maneuvering. That's taking the shortest path to the target. My problem is the battles always end the same way unless its a scripted mission. The enemy ships will always take the closest path to an enemy. They won't split off a few ships to apply pressure from one side, they won't send the DD's in to do torp runs and pull them back or even smoke themselves at proper times. They just yolo in. Which results in very anticlimactic gameplay which unless you leave yourself at a huge disadvantage the player will win. 

 

But you see what I mean though right? The AI is very limited in what it can do. You stated they will intercept or try to cut across your bow but well that's all the AI will try to do that match which in my eyes seems very limited. 

Edited October 4, 2020 by TotalRampage

[Skeksis]

3 hours ago, TotalRampage said:

The enemy ships will always take the closest path to an enemy. They won't split off a few ships to apply pressure from one side, they won't send the DD's in to do torp runs and pull them back or even smoke themselves at proper times. They just yolo in

AIs can only respond to the information at hand, not what might be information e.g. computing player prediction, computing tactics to entice player actions. Humans can do both, predicting and enticing enemies but AIs can't.

Apart from the initial battle setup, it would be a too bigger ask during battle in real time.

I think the AIs has at least 3 course types, arc from the target, away and to. The target is information at hand and the AI can plot from this based on the ship/group class, current game tactics. It would be very hard to compute anything beyond this such as applying pressure for a reaction.

Edited October 4, 2020 by Skeksis

[TotalRampage]

18 minutes ago, Skeksis said:

Apart from the initial battle setup, it would be a too bigger ask during battle in real time.

 

Not really they have games such as civil war and gettysburg where the AI will take the initiative to attack specific weaknesses in the line. Also games such as total war have priority targeting where an AI will see you are not properly guarding your skirms or arty then send in calvary which would be the opposite to do an attack.  They can code these behaviors it's more of a matter of will we get it before campaign? Or will we have campaigns that are so easy we can win every battle without being out numbered 4 to 1. 

My question is why do we have to settle for such 1D battles? If I know the AI is only going to group similar ships together i.e. bbs and dds and won't utilize them correctly it becomes boring and easy. Why can't the AI see that my support ships are to far away from my bb line then use that as an opportunity to do a torp run? Why does the AI use smoke at 10km out when the ship isn't even being targeted? Then when that ship needs the smoke it doesn't have it? 

You see this behavior in RTW2. The dd's will do runs and will back off when confronted with something they have no hope of beating such as a CA or CL only exposing themselves when the torpedoes are ready. As of the game state now the DD's will just charge in with no semblance of a plan from the AI. It seems the AI is content to use its ship piecemeal and just throw them away. 

18 minutes ago, Skeksis said:

The target is information at hand and the AI can plot from this based on the ship/group class, current game tactics.

 The AI has more information initially than the player would if we were in a campaign correct? Because they might not tell us exactly what we are fighting. Why cant the AI realize that if it sends its dd's on the shortest path to an enemy CL that they will die? Why wouldn't it wait for a ship that can properly counter the CL then allow the DD's to do what they need to which is harass? 

Edited October 4, 2020 by TotalRampage

[Norbert Sattler]

The problem is that the AI didn't go so ram-happy before, but one of the patches caused them to want to hug you all the time.

[Skeksis]

1 hour ago, TotalRampage said:

such as civil war and gettysburg where the AI will take the initiative to attack specific weaknesses in the line

Fixed landscapes have information e.g if tile X-Y unoccupied, our open ocean doesn't. Essentially we have a bunch of dots moving around on a 2D plane, computing there intentions would be almost impossible. It's easy to us but getting the compute to judge situational change isn't, like you could start the AI off but I don't think it's feasible to revaluate. E.g. with helm modes, switching from screening to attack would be easily enough but from attack to screening would require situational judgment.
 
Today we have...
DDs, CLs keeping distances switching from visibility to weapon priority ranges. 
BBs, CAs keeping distances at optimal weapons range, is exactly what is RL.
Retreat after damage and outnumbered is/has/currently been develop. 

So not so much tactics of 'cavalry' (or how good AI can be with cavalry) but tactics of ships.

Edited October 4, 2020 by Skeksis

[TotalRampage]

1 hour ago, Skeksis said:

Fixed landscapes have information e.g if tile X-Y unoccupied, our open ocean doesn't.

Serious question why cant they lay a grid over the naval map? Wouldn't that hypothetically solve the issue. Since you can take a slice of any map then lay it over?

1 hour ago, Skeksis said:

So not so much tactics of 'cavalry' (or how good AI can be with cavalry) but tactics of ships.

In large scale naval engagements wouldn't DD's be used like calvary? To use speed to exploit openings and create more openings in a a battle line? 

[Steeltrap]

I made a comment a LONG time ago that this game would sink or swim in large part on the basis of the AI.

My favourite surface naval combat game was Great Naval Battles of the North Atlantic: 1939-43, released in 1992 (!!).

It allowed you to play as German or RN in the Battle of the Atlantic. It had some really great elements to it, one of which for example was the damage/damage control system.

It included the rather remarkable ability to "follow" a shell that penetrated an enemy. You'd see it go potentially through a compartment or two then explode. That could also go DOWN decks (ships were laid out according to decks), depending on range and hence angle of inclination. Important elements were shown, such as engines, boilers, magazines. The explosion could damage or destroy those elements. It could start fires. If striking at the waterline, a penetrating shell could cause flooding.

Your ship had limited damage control resources with which you could fight fires, pump out flooding, counter-flood plus conduct repairs. The ship had a display of degrees of list, and you very quickly learned (as was historically accurate) that preventing instability that might cause a capsize was REALLY important at the start of flooding. You often had to use pump resources to flood opposite compartments to manage that before worrying about shoring up and pumping out unintended flooding. Similarly you had to fight fires, and if things were going badly you might have to choose which to fight or even to flood compartments (such as magazines).

Some shots from it were posted quite a while ago.

There are plenty of other good things about it I could mention, In fact I have long wished for a modernised version of it, but such a thing had to address the following, game-breaking issue:

The AI was dumb as a post. It had NO concept of relative strengths, If the Graf Spee encountered a convoy with an R class battleship as heavy escort on top of DDs/DEs, it would charge at you.

Similarly, Atlantic Fleet had exactly the same problem, and nowhere near the complexity (pretty sad when you think about it).

TL;DR?

It doesn't matter HOW magnificent all the elements of the game are if the AI has no concept of what's a fight worth fighting and what's one from which it ought to run. Similarly, if within a battle it sends a ship or two YOLO at an enemy against which any damage is all but impossible, then it has failed.

Right now, the AI fails. That does NOT mean, of course, that it can't be worked on.

But if it can't get the basics of when to fight, when to run, and to some degree HOW to fight (including using fleet resources in combat as a fleet instead of individual elements), the rest won't matter.

Cheers

[TotalRampage]

15 hours ago, Steeltrap said:

I made a comment a LONG time ago that this game would sink or swim in large part on the basis of the AI.

My favourite surface naval combat game was Great Naval Battles of the North Atlantic: 1939-43, released in 1992 (!!).

It allowed you to play as German or RN in the Battle of the Atlantic. It had some really great elements to it, one of which for example was the damage/damage control system.

It included the rather remarkable ability to "follow" a shell that penetrated an enemy. You'd see it go potentially through a compartment or two then explode. That could also go DOWN decks (ships were laid out according to decks), depending on range and hence angle of inclination. Important elements were shown, such as engines, boilers, magazines. The explosion could damage or destroy those elements. It could start fires. If striking at the waterline, a penetrating shell could cause flooding.

Your ship had limited damage control resources with which you could fight fires, pump out flooding, counter-flood plus conduct repairs. The ship had a display of degrees of list, and you very quickly learned (as was historically accurate) that preventing instability that might cause a capsize was REALLY important at the start of flooding. You often had to use pump resources to flood opposite compartments to manage that before worrying about shoring up and pumping out unintended flooding. Similarly you had to fight fires, and if things were going badly you might have to choose which to fight or even to flood compartments (such as magazines).

Some shots from it were posted quite a while ago.

There are plenty of other good things about it I could mention, In fact I have long wished for a modernised version of it, but such a thing had to address the following, game-breaking issue:

The AI was dumb as a post. It had NO concept of relative strengths, If the Graf Spee encountered a convoy with an R class battleship as heavy escort on top of DDs/DEs, it would charge at you.

Similarly, Atlantic Fleet had exactly the same problem, and nowhere near the complexity (pretty sad when you think about it).

TL;DR?

It doesn't matter HOW magnificent all the elements of the game are if the AI has no concept of what's a fight worth fighting and what's one from which it ought to run. Similarly, if within a battle it sends a ship or two YOLO at an enemy against which any damage is all but impossible, then it has failed.

Right now, the AI fails. That does NOT mean, of course, that it can't be worked on.

But if it can't get the basics of when to fight, when to run, and to some degree HOW to fight (including using fleet resources in combat as a fleet instead of individual elements), the rest won't matter.

Cheers

agreed

[The_Real_Hawkeye]

Man, I really miss SSI

[Steeltrap]

On 10/7/2020 at 3:53 PM, The_Real_Hawkeye said:

Man, I really miss SSI

Yeah.

[Rob Onze]

Hello all,

my fist post here and I would like to share my experience and ideas about the game. I’ve played like +50 hours, intensive, because I like the concept and I sunk into it.

Ended up to like mission 37 from naval academy (and currently stuck with no ideas how to beat the next 1 or 2 levels) and a decent number of random skirmishes games, from various eras and fleet composition.

The game is interesting and shows potential for an amazing title when fully released.

I would share some issues now.

1) Torpedoes are pretty much useless for the human player.

The player controlled ships have a very poorly programmed or weirdly thought out fire control system. Literally, unless the enemy target is moving straight at constant speed, the torpedoes will not hit. Only if you are very lucky to hit other enemy ships.
This is in fact how I have started to play, targeting some ships, to shoot them, but in fact intending the missiles towards the real target that can be a ship or a cluster of enemies, hopefully one of them will be picked. Has more chance of actually landing a torpedo on an enemy.

 

2) enemies are aware when you target them, instantly. Which is utterly stupid concept. Now this should be immediately solved. Using any torpedo carrier, I keep any gunfire to off, so there is no sign to the computer target it is being attacked. 
I recommend to experiment this to anyone. Keep a fast DD in the background with all weapons off and when the fight is pretty much active and everyone is shooting everyone, simply send this DD into a charge. Because it has no target, just a move, it doesn’t attract any enemy units fire. The torpedoes range is larger than the distance of the active brawl, so you can still shoot your toros from the second lines. 
The instant moment you target an enemy ship, this DD will come under fire from all secondaries that can shoot it. Now that is shite. And the targeted enemy will start evasive actions, so a launch you do make, it will be in vain, as there is no surprise factor anymore.plus your DD will receive a crippling hit.

3) And this takes us to this next aspect. Targeting and hitting.

Computer units are cheated. No matter how and why, their chances to hit and average damage is higher than human ships. Literally with no human intervention to try and be smart, the enemy units is given better stats.

Even if you have the bigger guns, the thickest armor, nope, they will land hard blows and you will miss. It’s like your ships are given basic stats. While that might be an appealing aspect in a story campaign, in skirmish or even in later stages of the naval academy, that should not happen. 
As I have said I am at mission 37 or 38, and the ships even outfitted with best rangefinder, their real life aim is beyond abysmal, they even end up shooting cross eyed. How TF can you even do that, when you are sailing in a steady circle with a steady speed with a steady enemy (crippled down so it moves predictably), and you do that nice dance around each other. The enemy with smaller caliber guns can do some significant damage, while you do very little when do actually manage to hit it. And very rarely managing a heavy hit. No matter if using AP or HE, missing so much, you can’t even tell which is better. Plus at the range of 5km or less, the chart states that all weapons you have onboard should penetrate the belt of that enemy ships. But secondaries of 15cm and above barely do 1 or 2 dmg, with most being 0 and 0.5 dmg.

4) well, 4 ended up being part of 3. Damage and penetration charts. How do they translate because in actual gameplay they are not doing anything close to that.

For example in short distance brawls, with 5km or closer,  virtually any meaningful gun caliber should penetrate any BB side armor, the belt, but in reality, only the enemy guns do that. Your guns will do severely lower damage against a thinner armor, while your thick armor layer is being shredded and you receive constant damage.

These are questions based on playing intensive and finding out weird situations as posted above.

One of my suggestions would be for manual shooting. Quite literally the human player choses a point where to shoot any weapons he wants. Create a tick box, “manual mode” and using the same type of guns not keys to designate which weapons to be shot where. The units targeting system of the human player units is bad and no actual competitive player can accept such silly mechanics ruining his strategies.

also solving the instant computer units targeting the units targeting them as mentioned above, it’s a bad mechanic and makes DDs unusable.

5) smoke screen. Useless, doesn’t help anything. Do it like world of warships. Where the smoke hides the ship completely, and the smoke area is a lot larger, and being able to affect any friendly ships. Like you go, leave a patch of smoke and close behind an enemy capital ship can hide for a couple of minutes.

Again, solving the computer units shooting anyone targeting them, should be a priority of not happening. No enemy unit should know who is shooting it.

6) question about ships slowing down, inertia. Seems kinda very poor implementation. Ships don’t slow down fast and they keep on going on and on and on. Plus, there is no reverse option to maneuver ships into really smart evasive moves, or reposition them

7) islands, when?!...shallow waters and deeper waters.

 

Anyway, solving the torpedo shooting is paramount. The calculations that your units do when firing have no real value, they will shoot so where far ahead, even if the enemy ship is clearly in a hard turning course adjustment and you should in fact launch torpedoes towards it’s back, not far in front.

All the problems above have lead to a meta build as following. Large ass displacement, as many main guns possible of average of lower caliber (not using the top calibers) and many secondaries of largest caliber possible, very thick belt armor.

All of the above because because of very poor hitting percentage in every match. I’d say 10-15% is a very good value you can hope for your capital ships (the other computer generated ships will average under 5%), while most ships will die not even capable of 5% hits landed.

so build many guns, smaller mains, and bigger secondaries. Torpedoes are useless and only in the end game. Computer will avoid most of them mainly because your ships shoot like idiots in the middle of the ocean, not where you see them heading.

Nothing motivates me to play anymore, because of the meta, being what it is. Trying variations won’t be fun because I see how the mechanics work and won’t lead to anything but frustration and the match isn’t up to my capabilities as a player. When you tell a ship to unload all toros, although it is sideways, facing the enemy at prime broadside of it, and it will shoot and wait and wait and wait and f.ing wait until the perfect moment passes, and the enemy ship is already starting to turn and you are already in a bad angle anyway, baaah. 
 

Great game, keep developing it, hopefully future patches will solve issues.

[Bluishdoor76]

21 hours ago, Rob Onze said:

Hello all,

my fist post here and I would like to share my experience and ideas about the game. I’ve played like +50 hours, intensive, because I like the concept and I sunk into it.

Ended up to like mission 37 from naval academy (and currently stuck with no ideas how to beat the next 1 or 2 levels) and a decent number of random skirmishes games, from various eras and fleet composition.

The game is interesting and shows potential for an amazing title when fully released.

I would share some issues now.

1) Torpedoes are pretty much useless for the human player.

The player controlled ships have a very poorly programmed or weirdly thought out fire control system. Literally, unless the enemy target is moving straight at constant speed, the torpedoes will not hit. Only if you are very lucky to hit other enemy ships.
This is in fact how I have started to play, targeting some ships, to shoot them, but in fact intending the missiles towards the real target that can be a ship or a cluster of enemies, hopefully one of them will be picked. Has more chance of actually landing a torpedo on an enemy.

 

2) enemies are aware when you target them, instantly. Which is utterly stupid concept. Now this should be immediately solved. Using any torpedo carrier, I keep any gunfire to off, so there is no sign to the computer target it is being attacked. 
I recommend to experiment this to anyone. Keep a fast DD in the background with all weapons off and when the fight is pretty much active and everyone is shooting everyone, simply send this DD into a charge. Because it has no target, just a move, it doesn’t attract any enemy units fire. The torpedoes range is larger than the distance of the active brawl, so you can still shoot your toros from the second lines. 
The instant moment you target an enemy ship, this DD will come under fire from all secondaries that can shoot it. Now that is shite. And the targeted enemy will start evasive actions, so a launch you do make, it will be in vain, as there is no surprise factor anymore.plus your DD will receive a crippling hit.

4) well, 4 ended up being part of 3. Damage and penetration charts. How do they translate because in actual gameplay they are not doing anything close to that.

For example in short distance brawls, with 5km or closer,  virtually any meaningful gun caliber should penetrate any BB side armor, the belt, but in reality, only the enemy guns do that. Your guns will do severely lower damage against a thinner armor, while your thick armor layer is being shredded and you receive constant damage.

These are questions based on playing intensive and finding out weird situations as posted above.

One of my suggestions would be for manual shooting. Quite literally the human player choses a point where to shoot any weapons he wants. Create a tick box, “manual mode” and using the same type of guns not keys to designate which weapons to be shot where. The units targeting system of the human player units is bad and no actual competitive player can accept such silly mechanics ruining his strategies.

also solving the instant computer units targeting the units targeting them as mentioned above, it’s a bad mechanic and makes DDs unusable.

6) question about ships slowing down, inertia. Seems kinda very poor implementation. Ships don’t slow down fast and they keep on going on and on and on. Plus, there is no reverse option to maneuver ships into really smart evasive moves, or reposition them

7) islands, when?!...shallow waters and deeper waters.

1) Pretty much working as intended, hitting a maneuvering target with torpedoes is very hard. Also check what type of targeting you are using, normal mode will only land hits rarely. So check which one you have it set to, same with main batteries and secondaries.

2) Never really seen that be the case, also the scenario you are describing is literally the way I usually react to the ai sending its destroyer at my fleet. Immediate change of targets to that DD, start to change course cause that DD is on a torpedo run.

4) Really depends on the caliber of guns and tech you are using, but usually anything below 12" guns will not really hurt a battleship, specially if you are referring to a destroyer, Light/Heavy cruiser.

6) Again pretty much working as intended, this are big hunks of metal, they take a very long time turn and slow down. Reversing was not a combat tactic.

7) Islands where never really a factor in a battles, maybe determined where battles would take place but ships always stayed far away from islands as they could mean danger for ships due to shallow water.

A lot of this, specially the last 2, seem like complaints from someone who's knowledge comes from WoWS. I play world of warships but the tactics in that game are far, FAR from what naval combat really was and should not be applied here. I am not a stickler for 100% realism and historical accuracy but you also have to understand and accept the crappy parts of how ships in the early 20th century worked.

[Rob Onze]

3 hours ago, Bluishdoor76 said:

1) Pretty much working as intended, hitting a maneuvering target with torpedoes is very hard. Also check what type of targeting you are using, normal mode will only land hits rarely. So check which one you have it set to, same with main batteries and secondaries.

2) Never really seen that be the case, also the scenario you are describing is literally the way I usually react to the ai sending its destroyer at my fleet. Immediate change of targets to that DD, start to change course cause that DD is on a torpedo run.

4) Really depends on the caliber of guns and tech you are using, but usually anything below 12" guns will not really hurt a battleship, specially if you are referring to a destroyer, Light/Heavy cruiser.

6) Again pretty much working as intended, this are big hunks of metal, they take a very long time turn and slow down. Reversing was not a combat tactic.

7) Islands where never really a factor in a battles, maybe determined where battles would take place but ships always stayed far away from islands as they could mean danger for ships due to shallow water.

A lot of this, specially the last 2, seem like complaints from someone who's knowledge comes from WoWS. I play world of warships but the tactics in that game are far, FAR from what naval combat really was and should not be applied here. I am not a stickler for 100% realism and historical accuracy but you also have to understand and accept the crappy parts of how ships in the early 20th century worked.

Thank you for replaying but i must point out some flaws, lets say.
First of all, no, i don't play wow, but i've seen quite numerous matches.
What I do have is plenty of RTS, TBS experience as well as lets say some knowledge of history regarding warfare and a keen sense of strategic and tactical engagement.
1) It's about anticipation of a maneuver. The targeting system has ZERO concept of that, and will always shoot only thinking the enemy ship will move predictably straight line at same speed.
And this means even if the targeted ship is currently sailing straight or if it is in a circle. It has literally zero calculating and anticipation of route. Well not zero, just one, meaning it does a basic x0y position, where the ship is pointing and speed guesstimate. A position pointing in one direction doesn't mean it's heading in that direction.
If it has a course max rudder, it will sail in circles. The targeting computer has no such concept and won't take into account the current and near past position to extrapolate a correct position.
I can draw schematics if it's too hard for you to comprehend the notion of extrapolation. 
2) Attached image. 
As I said but you didn't pay attention:
The DD is in second line and was left alone until it was put to right click target an enemy unit. No guns, just shooting torps (shift right click)
The moment I clicked to shoot an enemy unit, it itself was itself targeted by that exact same enemy. It never even managed to launch it's torps although it was put on a course facing the side to launch torps. With this showcasing how poor the actual computational system for torps is. Sometimes the ships take a lot of time to launch their torps...they keep the lock and don't do anything.
My BB was engaging 3 enemy ships, including the one that shot down my DD the second the DD was given the target order.
So, it's not like that enemy BB was left alone with nothing to do and suddenly decided, oh look, an enemy ship, why don't i shoot it down. No. It was fully engaged in a hell of a brawl, taking all those big shells from my BB.
Nope, it magically knew the DD was targeting it, although the DD was passive and not charging.
So, to explain. my DD was ~5km from my BB and the enemy unit was almost 5km from my BB, so the enemy unit and the DD were 10km apart, no sudden movement, no signal of aggression from DD, and suddenly the moment it was targeted by the DD, it turned guns on it.
Now this is clearly a poor mechanic.
So, with short range torps, DDs are useless because the smoke mechanic is bad.
with long range torps, DDs are useless because they are still targeted. 
The DDs main function is to deliver strategic, silent sneak attacks, known as torps, and GTFO fast.
The enemy knows when you will shoot them thus making the usage of silent killers, irrelevant, even their maneuvering is irelevant, because the enemy has so better precision it will be sunk fast.
So it's not as seeing a movement of ships, but knowing it is targeted and taking evasive actions.
It's like me playing with you the paper game battleship and i have to tell you where i will shoot, but you get to move your ship after and then tell me if i hit anything. 

4) if you hover over any guns, they will say they will penetrate x thickness of armor (facing straight, not angled)
As i sadi. My thick armor is penetrated by enemy secondaries, while the thinner enemy armor is not penetrated by my large caliber.
So 15-17cm enemy secondaries penetrate 30cm of belt armor while 33 and above cannot penetrate 20cm of belt armor...not to say the 20cm secondaries don't do either.

6) A large BB, yes, huge inertia, but a light DD if taken to zero, it should slow down fast, as it's light (compared to BB)
Working as intended, not really, needs more time tweaking for mass and effect.
Reversing not a combat tactic?!
From this point onward i could consider anything you say gibberish as you clearly are not that well informed or capable of understanding advanced combat control of units.
Let me spell it out for you. You see a torpedo and you could avoid it by letting it pass in front. The normal slowing of ship isn't doing too much, so you put it into full reverse allowing to avoid a hit.

7) Hmm, clearly you have not much knowledge, not even of this game intended route. Based on what they have in the game, clearly there will be coastal engagement of some sort, and islands pose an amazing strategic point for launching surprise attacks or avoiding some hits.

Now, an extra point i never got addressed earlier.
Regarding shooting.
A salvo.
In military naval tactics there's a few ways to use salvos to identify the target distance. This is not the place nor the space, so you can search on youtube, i think there are videos explaining it.
But, in a shootout with another enemy going steady courses, the more your shoot at it, the better the aim is so the longer the fight, your landing hits on it, should increase.
..
I am letting all of these written here for the devs, to understand where things need to be addressed, hopefully they are more knowledgeable of things regarding ships.

Anyway, thank you for your time, everyone, 
Keep up the good work and solve the issues presented, mainly allow human players to  manually fire weapons at a designated location/direction.

[madham82]

On 10/11/2020 at 2:13 PM, Rob Onze said:

Hello all,

my fist post here and I would like to share my experience and ideas about the game. I’ve played like +50 hours, intensive, because I like the concept and I sunk into it.

Ended up to like mission 37 from naval academy (and currently stuck with no ideas how to beat the next 1 or 2 levels) and a decent number of random skirmishes games, from various eras and fleet composition.

The game is interesting and shows potential for an amazing title when fully released.

I would share some issues now.

1) Torpedoes are pretty much useless for the human player.

The player controlled ships have a very poorly programmed or weirdly thought out fire control system. Literally, unless the enemy target is moving straight at constant speed, the torpedoes will not hit. Only if you are very lucky to hit other enemy ships.
This is in fact how I have started to play, targeting some ships, to shoot them, but in fact intending the missiles towards the real target that can be a ship or a cluster of enemies, hopefully one of them will be picked. Has more chance of actually landing a torpedo on an enemy.

 

2) enemies are aware when you target them, instantly. Which is utterly stupid concept. Now this should be immediately solved. Using any torpedo carrier, I keep any gunfire to off, so there is no sign to the computer target it is being attacked. 
I recommend to experiment this to anyone. Keep a fast DD in the background with all weapons off and when the fight is pretty much active and everyone is shooting everyone, simply send this DD into a charge. Because it has no target, just a move, it doesn’t attract any enemy units fire. The torpedoes range is larger than the distance of the active brawl, so you can still shoot your toros from the second lines. 
The instant moment you target an enemy ship, this DD will come under fire from all secondaries that can shoot it. Now that is shite. And the targeted enemy will start evasive actions, so a launch you do make, it will be in vain, as there is no surprise factor anymore.plus your DD will receive a crippling hit.

3) And this takes us to this next aspect. Targeting and hitting.

Computer units are cheated. No matter how and why, their chances to hit and average damage is higher than human ships. Literally with no human intervention to try and be smart, the enemy units is given better stats.

Even if you have the bigger guns, the thickest armor, nope, they will land hard blows and you will miss. It’s like your ships are given basic stats. While that might be an appealing aspect in a story campaign, in skirmish or even in later stages of the naval academy, that should not happen. 
As I have said I am at mission 37 or 38, and the ships even outfitted with best rangefinder, their real life aim is beyond abysmal, they even end up shooting cross eyed. How TF can you even do that, when you are sailing in a steady circle with a steady speed with a steady enemy (crippled down so it moves predictably), and you do that nice dance around each other. The enemy with smaller caliber guns can do some significant damage, while you do very little when do actually manage to hit it. And very rarely managing a heavy hit. No matter if using AP or HE, missing so much, you can’t even tell which is better. Plus at the range of 5km or less, the chart states that all weapons you have onboard should penetrate the belt of that enemy ships. But secondaries of 15cm and above barely do 1 or 2 dmg, with most being 0 and 0.5 dmg.

4) well, 4 ended up being part of 3. Damage and penetration charts. How do they translate because in actual gameplay they are not doing anything close to that.

For example in short distance brawls, with 5km or closer,  virtually any meaningful gun caliber should penetrate any BB side armor, the belt, but in reality, only the enemy guns do that. Your guns will do severely lower damage against a thinner armor, while your thick armor layer is being shredded and you receive constant damage.

These are questions based on playing intensive and finding out weird situations as posted above.

One of my suggestions would be for manual shooting. Quite literally the human player choses a point where to shoot any weapons he wants. Create a tick box, “manual mode” and using the same type of guns not keys to designate which weapons to be shot where. The units targeting system of the human player units is bad and no actual competitive player can accept such silly mechanics ruining his strategies.

also solving the instant computer units targeting the units targeting them as mentioned above, it’s a bad mechanic and makes DDs unusable.

5) smoke screen. Useless, doesn’t help anything. Do it like world of warships. Where the smoke hides the ship completely, and the smoke area is a lot larger, and being able to affect any friendly ships. Like you go, leave a patch of smoke and close behind an enemy capital ship can hide for a couple of minutes.

Again, solving the computer units shooting anyone targeting them, should be a priority of not happening. No enemy unit should know who is shooting it.

6) question about ships slowing down, inertia. Seems kinda very poor implementation. Ships don’t slow down fast and they keep on going on and on and on. Plus, there is no reverse option to maneuver ships into really smart evasive moves, or reposition them

7) islands, when?!...shallow waters and deeper waters.

 

Anyway, solving the torpedo shooting is paramount. The calculations that your units do when firing have no real value, they will shoot so where far ahead, even if the enemy ship is clearly in a hard turning course adjustment and you should in fact launch torpedoes towards it’s back, not far in front.

All the problems above have lead to a meta build as following. Large ass displacement, as many main guns possible of average of lower caliber (not using the top calibers) and many secondaries of largest caliber possible, very thick belt armor.

All of the above because because of very poor hitting percentage in every match. I’d say 10-15% is a very good value you can hope for your capital ships (the other computer generated ships will average under 5%), while most ships will die not even capable of 5% hits landed.

so build many guns, smaller mains, and bigger secondaries. Torpedoes are useless and only in the end game. Computer will avoid most of them mainly because your ships shoot like idiots in the middle of the ocean, not where you see them heading.

Nothing motivates me to play anymore, because of the meta, being what it is. Trying variations won’t be fun because I see how the mechanics work and won’t lead to anything but frustration and the match isn’t up to my capabilities as a player. When you tell a ship to unload all toros, although it is sideways, facing the enemy at prime broadside of it, and it will shoot and wait and wait and wait and f.ing wait until the perfect moment passes, and the enemy ship is already starting to turn and you are already in a bad angle anyway, baaah. 
 

Great game, keep developing it, hopefully future patches will solve issues.

1. The AI is quite accurate from my experience in using torpedoes, but I tend to agree player use seems to be less accurate. My best results come from using large numbers of torpedoes with the Fast setting at close range to saturate an area. Manual control of torpedoes has been mentioned by many, and would probably make them far more effective especially against clusters of ships. 

2. I've never noticed this and will have to test it. Definitely a bug it sounds like if true. 

3. The devs have stated it before, they do not provide "cheats" to the AI in the way of buffs/perks/etc... What you are probably experiencing is the issue with academy missions not being "fair" (i.e. AI has access to better guns/towers/etc...). I would also suggest watch some videos on YT to learn some of the less obvious aspects to ship building. Stability can negatively impact accuracy greatly. Not saying that is the issue, just something to be aware of. 

4. You will need to provide some actual screens of your guns/armor and the enemy's to answer the questions there. Note the armor values in the gun tables is for iron armor. Different types of armor provide a quality bonus to that raw number. For example, a quality of 100% means if you have 10" of belt armor, it is actually equivalent to 20" in the gun table (iron value). 

Your whole manual shooting mechanic is unrealistic for a game simulating fleets of ships. Are you planning on doing the job of fire director for 20+ ships? No. If the game was turn based, it might be workable. As it is, the game is doing the math for you. If you see it has a bug in it's logic, that's another story.

5. WoWS does smoke completely unrealistic. For one, in IRL it doesn't stay in the same area as the wind will move and disperse the cloud. So weather plays a bigger factor in it's use than anything. Two the smoke will not hide the ship making it unless it is heading away from the enemy. That said, what we have in game isn't realistic either. So it definitely needs some fixes (like all ships being able to generate it). 

6. Yea there has been some discussion over the way the game calculates displacement and engine power. I'll leave that for some more familiar with the subject. Reversing short of collision/torpedo avoidance is not historical. I think it could be added to the game for the two reasons I mentioned, but wipe any thoughts of WoWS from your mind. They are not even remotely realistic. I believe up until certain technology was introduced, the ability to switch from forward to reverse on the shaft took quite a bit of time. 

[slayer6]

Heh... World of Warships...  Hell even NavyFIELD is more realistic than that game...

[Marshall99]

3 hours ago, slayer6 said:

Heh... World of Warships...  Hell even NavyFIELD is more realistic than that game...

I think almost every naval game is more realistic then World of Warships. After seeing how a 460 mm shell bounced of from a broadside Mogami..... 

Edited October 14, 2020 by Marshall99

[Cptbarney]

49 minutes ago, Marshall99 said:

I think almost every naval game is more realistic then World of Warships. After seeing how a 460 mm shell bounced of from a broadside Mogami..... 

Or a 510mm not leaving a fat hole and sinking a smolensk on its own due to the shear power, nevermind more than 2+ hitting the thing.

 

[Marshall99]

1 hour ago, Cptbarney said:

Or a 510mm not leaving a fat hole and sinking a smolensk on its own due to the shear power, nevermind more than 2+ hitting the thing.

 

The amount of energy, that a high caliber shell has, not to mention the 510 mm shell, can damage a light cruiser so heavily that the entire ship hull breaks. And if the shell detonates inside. There is no chance that a light cruiser can survive it. Just imagine it. 800 kg TNT blows up inside a light cruiser. This is devastating. And UA:D does this well. When I hit an enemy cruiser with my battleship, hasta la vista baby. 

Wows is an arcade game and nothing more. Back when it was released it was okey, but today that game is everything but not realistic. I know that they want to balance the game, but when you are nose in to bounce 406+mm shell to bounce with 32 mm bow is against irl physics

[Cptbarney]

2 minutes ago, Marshall99 said:

The amount of energy, that a high caliber shell has, not to mention the 510 mm shell, can damage a light cruiser so heavily that the entire ship hull breaks. And if the shell detonates inside. There is no chance that a light cruiser can survive it. Just imagine it. 800 kg TNT blows up inside a light cruiser. This is devastating. And UA:D does this well. When I hit an enemy cruiser with my battleship, hasta la vista baby. 

Wows is an arcade game and nothing more. Back when it was released it was okey, but today that game is everything but not realistic. I know that they want to balance the game, but when you are nose in to bounce 406+mm shell to bounce with 32 mm bow is against irl physics

The game also trys to be competitive which fails since they have to go down the variety route for ships if they want to keep peeps.

Ironically enough it only offers slightly new ways of playing existing content while doing little to enhance it in anyway. It's like world of tanks, warthunder and armoured warfare all of these games are infested with lootboxes, microtransactions and bloody quick time events along with absurd amounts of premium vehicles some-most being better than their 'silver' counterparts as well.

[Marshall99]

8 minutes ago, Cptbarney said:

The game also trys to be competitive which fails since they have to go down the variety route for ships if they want to keep peeps.

Ironically enough it only offers slightly new ways of playing existing content while doing little to enhance it in anyway. It's like world of tanks, warthunder and armoured warfare all of these games are infested with lootboxes, microtransactions and bloody quick time events along with absurd amounts of premium vehicles some-most being better than their 'silver' counterparts as well.

And literaly this is why I stopped investing money into that game. 

[CapnAvont1015]

1 hour ago, Cptbarney said:

The game also trys to be competitive which fails since they have to go down the variety route for ships if they want to keep peeps.

Ironically enough it only offers slightly new ways of playing existing content while doing little to enhance it in anyway. It's like world of tanks, warthunder and armoured warfare all of these games are infested with lootboxes, microtransactions and bloody quick time events along with absurd amounts of premium vehicles some-most being better than their 'silver' counterparts as well.

Shall i mention the mess that is the U.S BB split or the dumpster fire that was the dockyard event. So much grinding and way to expensive for what it is.

[Marshall99]

1 hour ago, CapnAvont1015 said:

Shall i mention the mess that is the U.S BB split or the dumpster fire that was the dockyard event. So much grinding and way to expensive for what it is.

And poor Oklahoma. They murdered her. T5 with 40 sec reload, nerfed penetration (also her armour layout interesting, everywhere 25 mm so she will get regulare penetrations easily [citadel armour is okey tho]). T5 New York and Texas will eat her. I think the WG testers and players are playing two different game. They can't balance things. 

[CapnAvont1015]

8 minutes ago, Marshall99 said:

And poor Oklahoma. They murdered her. T5 with 40 sec reload, nerfed penetration (also her armour layout interesting, everywhere 25 mm so she will get regulare penetrations easily [citadel armour is okey tho]). T5 New York and Texas will eat her. I think the WG testers and players are playing two different game. They can't balance things. 

What's retarded is that a 20inch shell from Shikishima has a high chance to just over-pen and do hardly any damage. I'm pretty sure if a 20inch shell hits anything especially cruisers and destroyers showing broadside it will instant-dead it instantly. But the one thing WOWS is good for in UA:D is they keep giving us ship designs to take and place in the game so don't have deal with the bs WOWS has.  

[Cptbarney]

15 minutes ago, Marshall99 said:

And poor Oklahoma. They murdered her. T5 with 40 sec reload, nerfed penetration (also her armour layout interesting, everywhere 25 mm so she will get regulare penetrations easily [citadel armour is okey tho]). T5 New York and Texas will eat her. I think the WG testers and players are playing two different game. They can't balance things. 

Not to mention hizen and the italian BB's getting the nerf bat. Oklahoma got buffed secondaries, but she will just get nuked or wittled down to nothing.

1 minute ago, CapnAvont1015 said:

What's retarded is that a 20inch shell from Shikishima has a high chance to just over-pen and do hardly any damage. I'm pretty sure if a 20inch shell hits anything especially cruisers and destroyers showing broadside it will instant-dead it instantly. But the one thing WOWS is good for in UA:D is they keep giving us ship designs to take and place in the game so don't have deal with the bs WOWS has.  

True, 20 inch shell ricoheting of a light cruiser like Edinburgh or a bloody DD really kills it, not too mention the lack of balance as well and insane amount of quick rapid-fire events along with no-life events that are impossible to complete as you play.