Option to turn Tracers off?

[Danvanthevacuumman]

I would like to have option on turnign the tracers off for the shells. Better yet have a realistic tracer mechanic than what we have now.

[admin]

2 hours ago, Danvanthevacuumman said:

I would like to have option on turnign the tracers off for the shells. Better yet have a realistic tracer mechanic than what we have now.

yes please ))) less star wars

[SonicB]

5 hours ago, Danvanthevacuumman said:

I would like to have option on turnign the tracers off for the shells. Better yet have a realistic tracer mechanic than what we have now.

This please! I like pew-pew as much as the next sci fi fan but it would be great to get a realism option.

[IronKaputt]

Speaking of realism - dye bags seem to be shell's stock component

Edited December 27, 2020 by IronKaputt

[Shaftoe]

13 minutes ago, IronKaputt said:

Speaking of realism - dye bags seem to be shell's stock component 😍

 

For Japanese, yes. But not for many other navies.

 

Also, I think in reality you can see flying shells on darker backgrounds, and in late hours. So it's not completely unrealistic.

Edited August 22, 2020 by Shaftoe

[disc]

11 hours ago, Shaftoe said:

For Japanese, yes. But not for many other navies.

Well, the US, UK, and France used dyed shells, too. The Soviet Union at least experimented with them, and may have used them in general service. Not sure if Italy or Germany tried them. 

My understanding is that they were a rather late innovation. Difficult to dig up, but it appears they first started showing up about 1928 in the US and some years after that in the other navies -- 1936 in France, 1941 in Japan, and 1942 in the UK. A little unclear when the Soviets first started using them, but I think by about 1931.

 

As for tracers, the US Navy used them on many shells for big guns. I am unsure when tracers were introduced, but I suspect from some time before WWI. Shells from the 20mm up through the 16in on battleships had tracers: all AP and the great majority of HE/HC and target shells were traced, although illuminating shells and some other specialty shells like smoke or Window were not. Some (not all) VT shells were also untraced. Big US guns had orange tracers. Small ones (~3-4in and less?) had red or white tracers. I don't know how visible they would be in daytime, but probably they would be hard to see at longer ranges.

Japanese guns >40mm lacked tracers (at least about the 1930s-1940s), although there were experiments with big-gun tracers in 1937 and later in WWII. Therefore, this seems to have been a conscious decision to not use them. Light AA weapons like the 25mm naturally did have tracers.

Don't know much about tracers in other navies, but they at least were used in 6in guns in the Royal Navy during WWII.

Sources: Naval Firepower, Japanese Cruisers of the Pacific War, French Cruisers 1922-1956, documents from the Naval Technical Mission to Japan, OP 4, and OP 1664

Edited August 23, 2020 by disc

[Cptbarney]

Yes please, also coloured tracers and clouds too. And smoke rounds as well.

[akd]

7 hours ago, disc said:

Well, the US, UK, and France used dyed shells, too. The Soviet Union at least experimented with them, and may have used them in general service. Not sure if Italy or Germany tried them. 

My understanding is that they were a rather late innovation. Difficult to dig up, but it appears they first started showing up about 1928 in the US and some years after that in the other navies -- 1936 in France, 1941 in Japan, and 1942 in the UK. A little unclear when the Soviets first started using them, but I think by about 1931.

 

As for tracers, the US Navy used them on many shells for big guns. I am unsure when tracers were introduced, but I suspect from some time before WWI. Shells from the 20mm up through the 16in on battleships had tracers: all AP and the great majority of HE/HC and target shells were traced, although illuminating shells and some other specialty shells like smoke or Window were not. Some (not all) VT shells were also untraced. Big US guns had orange tracers. Small ones (~3-4in and less?) had red or white tracers. I don't know how visible they would be in daytime, but probably they would be hard to see at longer ranges.

Japanese guns >40mm lacked tracers (at least about the 1930s-1940s), although there were experiments with big-gun tracers in 1937 and later in WWII. Therefore, this seems to have been a conscious decision to not use them. Light AA weapons like the 25mm naturally did have tracers.

Don't know much about tracers in other navies, but they at least were used in 6in guns in the Royal Navy during WWII.

Sources: Naval Firepower, Japanese Cruisers of the Pacific War, French Cruisers 1922-1956, documents from the Naval Technical Mission to Japan, OP 4, and OP 1664

This is actually extremely important, as one of the things the game treats as a “default” behavior is all ships in a division firing on the same target.  In reality this was impossible due to the fire control confusion that would result.  Making the shell splashes of each of the different members of the division a different color (and thus immediately distinguishable) was one of the first practical technological developments allowing effective concentration fire (multiple ships firing on one target).  Nothing else really advanced this significantly until radio comms and fire control computers progressed to a point where firing data could be shared and integrated in real time.

Funny that some would treat that as trivial or silly.  Doesn’t necessarily need to be visualized, but it should certainly be present as a technology, along with not treating concentration fire as a default behavior.

Edited August 23, 2020 by akd

[Skeksis]

Visual ques are very important, especially since the interaction levels is on the low side and therefore the battle instance needs every visual aid it can produce. Watching incoming shells is part of the game, it makes up for the downtime in-between commands. Except those with low end performing rigs I think most people would always have this option switched on.

Edited August 24, 2020 by Skeksis

[Tycondero]

On 8/23/2020 at 2:53 PM, Cptbarney said:

Yes please, also coloured tracers and clouds too. And smoke rounds as well.

We will also need starshells when night combat ever gets introduced. I like the smoke shell option, though it might interfere a bit too much with the smoke screen mechanic.

[Cptbarney]

1 minute ago, Tycondero said:

We will also need starshells when night combat ever gets introduced. I like the smoke shell option, though it might interfere a bit too much with the smoke screen mechanic.

Forgot about illumination rounds too be honest, for smoke rounds we could limit those to certain classes as smoke is too the lighter ships atm (although i think any ship could use smoke, i guess it was just the case of it being on a smaller ship made more sense since it could cover a large area quicker).

Could do with more round types as well, as a nod to shell type evolution and tech advancedment and also as another area of the game you could deal with (they could have an option to turn it off).

[Tycondero]

9 minutes ago, Cptbarney said:

Forgot about illumination rounds too be honest, for smoke rounds we could limit those to certain classes as smoke is too the lighter ships atm (although i think any ship could use smoke, i guess it was just the case of it being on a smaller ship made more sense since it could cover a large area quicker).

Could do with more round types as well, as a nod to shell type evolution and tech advancedment and also as another area of the game you could deal with (they could have an option to turn it off).

I agree, in a way perhaps smoke screens are more to move along with the ship, thereby providing cover (obviously). Smoke shell fired by perhaps capital ships would provide a more static smoke screen. It may be difficult to have the AI effectively use static smoke. Many games seem to struggle with that usually. 

I definitely like more ammo types, but I guess eventually the tech options will start to cover shell advancement. 

[Marshall99]

Ammo evolution would be great. In TW Shogun 2 Fall of the Samurai the starter ammo is solid shot and than the end of the tech tree there is the advanced armour piercing shell. I think the devs could implement something like this, but of course in the 1890's they used more advanced shells then solid shots. We should start with obsolete HE or not effective AP rounds. 

[Cptbarney]

4 minutes ago, Marshall99 said:

Ammo evolution would be great. In TW Shogun 2 Fall of the Samurai the starter ammo is solid shot and than the end of the tech tree there is the advanced armour piercing shell. I think the devs could implement something like this, but of course in the 1890's they used more advanced shells then solid shots. We should start with obsolete HE or not effective AP rounds. 

Well they used regular Armour piercing rounds even older shrapnel, common and Palliser were also used in 1880 by admiral class pre-dreads, then moved to Armour pierecing Capped or APC for most pre-dreads and early dreads then CPC (Not sure what that is) along with APC, then moving onto APCB and maybe APCBC. Also noticed that the americans used shell dyes as well.

I've noticed there is an insane amount of marks for AP shells, some going even as far to mark XV. Im not sure about APCB or APCBC for naval ships so take that with a pinch of salt.

[Marshall99]

20 minutes ago, Cptbarney said:

Well they used regular Armour piercing rounds even older shrapnel, common and Palliser were also used in 1880 by admiral class pre-dreads, then moved to Armour pierecing Capped or APC for most pre-dreads and early dreads then CPC (Not sure what that is) along with APC, then moving onto APCB and maybe APCBC. Also noticed that the americans used shell dyes as well.

I've noticed there is an insane amount of marks for AP shells, some going even as far to mark XV. Im not sure about APCB or APCBC for naval ships so take that with a pinch of salt.

Wow, I didn't know that there were so many shells. But this is cool because the tech tree will be interesting, I mean the more things in the tech tree, it will be more complex which I realy like

[Cptbarney]

3 minutes ago, Marshall99 said:

Wow, I didn't know that there were so many shells. But this is cool because the tech tree will be interesting, I mean the more things in the tech tree, it will be more complex which I realy like

Yeah, theres quite a few shells that were used. Seems like common shells were still used even till 1940 on some ships. Britain had dyes as well and super charges. Dunno how many other nations used dyes, but i guess they could add those in as well, colours were: red, white, yellow, green, orange, blue. Guess that could improve accuracy and co-ordination with ships as well firing on one target.

[Marshall99]

4 minutes ago, Cptbarney said:

Yeah, theres quite a few shells that were used. Seems like common shells were still used even till 1940 on some ships. Britain had dyes as well and super charges. Dunno how many other nations used dyes, but i guess they could add those in as well, colours were: red, white, yellow, green, orange, blue. Guess that could improve accuracy and co-ordination with ships as well firing on one target.

Dyed shells could be useful for target practice too. They could be cheaper then normal ones, and if you have a target ship which you don't want to sink, than you can practice with these shells.

[Cptbarney]

Just now, Marshall99 said:

Dyed shells could be useful for target practice too. They could be cheaper then normal ones, and if you have a target ship which you don't want to sink, than you can practice with these shells.

Actually better yet, they had dummy and practice rounds for that purpose so you could swap out regular rounds for the previous two and fill them with whatever dye you wanted. Not sure if the devs will cover any of this however, but it would be a nice thing to do so however.

[SonicB]

These are all great ideas and I completely agree in the long term. But let me just re-emphasise if the devs are reading, the option to disable the fake lasergun tracers would be a very easy modification and I for one would welcome it.

[akd]

6 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

Forgot about illumination rounds too be honest, for smoke rounds we could limit those to certain classes as smoke is too the lighter ships atm (although i think any ship could use smoke, i guess it was just the case of it being on a smaller ship made more sense since it could cover a large area quicker).

Could do with more round types as well, as a nod to shell type evolution and tech advancedment and also as another area of the game you could deal with (they could have an option to turn it off).

Not sure what you are talking about here.  Smoke rounds were not used in naval combat.  Illumination rounds were essential to nighttime naval combat.

[Cptbarney]

47 minutes ago, akd said:

Not sure what you are talking about here.

Same goes for you too be honest.