Clown Car Thread

[Cpt.Hissy]

I still have impression that main reason behind stupid AI designs in current version is mostly stupidity of designer itself, AI just does it's best to bypass the problems caused by slap-together-real-ship-parts approach itself and all the unreasonable limitations like "you can't place sanely sized barbette here, only giant one" or "you can't place that turret here just because". And unreasonable possibilities like the big gun on smol thin barbette.
It just does what placement allowances let it to do.

Those "stupid" elevated main guns are there because AI wants some secondaries, but designer doesn't allow to place them where they would realistically go. So it puts mains on barbettes and covers the deck below in secondaries.

Edited April 6, 2021 by Cpt.Hissy

[Stormnet]

7 hours ago, Cpt.Hissy said:

I still have impression that main reason behind stupid AI designs in current version is mostly stupidity of designer itself, AI just does it's best to bypass the problems caused by slap-together-real-ship-parts approach itself and all the unreasonable limitations like "you can't place sanely sized barbette here, only giant one" or "you can't place that turret here just because". And unreasonable possibilities like the big gun on smol thin barbette.
It just does what placement allowances let it to do.

Those "stupid" elevated main guns are there because AI wants some secondaries, but designer doesn't allow to place them where they would realistically go. So it puts mains on barbettes and covers the deck below in secondaries.

So, in other words, the AI seeks these exploits and ridicoulous choices so it can do its own little humble thing the designer won't allow it to?

Wow, this got deep all of a sudden... The AI is, therefore, protesting as best as it can against the designer...

Like, I thought the AI was stupid and just messed up. Now its like its just trying to do it's best it can with the restrictions...

Deep.

 

Btw, it was from this I got the thin barbette thing (outdated, but the AI sometimes feels nostalgic so who knows). A few replies up. 

Edited April 6, 2021 by Stormnet

[Cpt.Hissy]

5 hours ago, Stormnet said:

Btw, it was from this I got the thin barbette thing (outdated, but the AI sometimes feels nostalgic so who knows). A few replies up.

I would do exactly the same when going for efficiency. It's the lightest one that fits the desired turret, and it has no other functional differences, so why would you use anything else?

Edited April 6, 2021 by Cpt.Hissy

[Cpt.Hissy]

At first glance, this is stupid. But look at it closer: these barbettes are integrated into the "towers" aka halves of a certain cruiser's superstructure. If it wasn't the case, this could be perfectly good design, even if very strange one: it has no protection whatsoever.

[Shneemaster]

1 hour ago, Cpt.Hissy said:

At first glance, this is stupid. But look at it closer: these barbettes are integrated into the "towers" aka halves of a certain cruiser's superstructure. If it wasn't the case, this could be perfectly good design, even if very strange one: it has no protection whatsoever.

We really need more cruiser towers that aren't just downscaled battleship ones. Anyway, here's some more clown cars

Another member of the "Aft weight offset" club. Notice the -20.2% tower/stability accuracy modifier. The Battleship in the background had +25%, and my ships had +35%. Also included: Unnecessary barbette, weird funnel placement, and scatterbrained secondary calibers.

One of the most bizarre turret layouts I've ever seen. No secondaries either. I actually checked and yes:

You CAN fit three inline 14" turrets back there without horrible aft weight offset. The 14" inch turrets don't fit into that cutout, by the way.

Not the worst thing ever, but not good. This hull is just a bit weird looking in general.

[Cpt.Hissy]

So to solve all the clown car cases in current system, we need moar of everything
this may become a problem...

[Stormnet]

7 hours ago, Shneemaster said:

We really need more cruiser towers that aren't just downscaled battleship ones. Anyway, here's some more clown cars

Another member of the "Aft weight offset" club. Notice the -20.2% tower/stability accuracy modifier. The Battleship in the background had +25%, and my ships had +35%. Also included: Unnecessary barbette, weird funnel placement, and scatterbrained secondary calibers.

One of the most bizarre turret layouts I've ever seen. No secondaries either. I actually checked and yes:

 

YES!

This is the quality crap designs that makes me laught and I haven't seen in a while.

Especially the first one. Such versatile floating pile of problems, the aft weight, the thin barbette, the thick and unecessary barbette, lotta secs calliber, and only 2 turrets that the back (asking to take them out).

 

Edited April 8, 2021 by Stormnet

[Stormnet]

We need to record the AI trends. Right now it is felling like making stuff inspired by the Matsusima cruiser.

[Cpt.Hissy]

Don't know what youre talking about. Was playing yesterday, and never encountered a Matsushima. Instead, it was more or less evenly split between all-forward designs, classic dreadnought designs (including fore-aft groups and midships turrets) and chaotic gunbarges.

Edited April 8, 2021 by Cpt.Hissy

[SonicB]

3 hours ago, Stormnet said:

 

YES!

This is the quality crap designs that makes me laught and I haven't seen in a while.

Especially the first one. Such versatile floating pile of problems, the aft weight, the thin barbette, the thick and unecessary barbette, lotta secs calliber, and only 2 turrets that the back (asking to take them out).

 

I've noticed this latter issue is clearly something they haven't fixed yet. Most ships are happy with secondary or tertiary batteries, the AI wants quarternary, quinary, senary, septenary, octonary and even nonary batteries (I'll let you guess when I stopped and had to google.) Sometimes they are simply the same calibre with different mounts - which frankly could be fixed whenever devs decide to group batteries by calibre, but that clearly ain't happening.

Anyway those two are bloody classic examples of what happens when you design a warship from the stern forwards and run out of money half way.

[SonicB]

13 hours ago, Cpt.Hissy said:

At first glance, this is stupid. But look at it closer: these barbettes are integrated into the "towers" aka halves of a certain cruiser's superstructure. If it wasn't the case, this could be perfectly good design, even if very strange one: it has no protection whatsoever.

I mean much as I don't want this to turn into yet another designer thread... I entirely agree, we need tower versions with the same stats but without barbettes and so does the poor AI. Putting a couple searchlights or some boats on an unused barbette was a nice gesture last patch but it's still just polishing the turd.

Also I mean they did have interwar 'heavy cruisers' with hardly any protection like the Hawkins class, but really they were just light cruisers with the benefit of a personal trainer and great camera angles. Gorgeous ships though.

[Cpt.Hissy]

4 minutes ago, SonicB said:

Also I mean they did have interwar 'heavy cruisers' with hardly any protection like the Hawkins class, but really they were just light cruisers with the benefit of a personal trainer and great camera angles. Gorgeous ships though.

And i mean most of it's armour was under 1" (that 4" you see was something hardly useful like conning tower), no bulkheads, no bulges, no double bottom, no antiflood, no guys with buckets even i believe.

[SonicB]

21 minutes ago, Cpt.Hissy said:

no double bottom

sounds... half-assed

[Skeksis]

On 4/8/2021 at 10:23 PM, Stormnet said:

We need to record the AI trends.

No need, just repeatedly click the 'Auto-Build' button, works on any class, any time frame, to a point you can make out what the AI is doing.

[Stormnet]

17 hours ago, Skeksis said:

No need, just repeatedly click the 'Auto-Build' button, works on any class, any time frame, to a point you can make out what the AI is doing.

Its not just knowing what the AI is up to, its also about making sorta of an album of AI hello kitty-up memories.

 

EDIT: Wait, how the hell did "hello kitty-up" got into my post? WTF? Goddamn autocorrector misclick.

 

Edited April 10, 2021 by Stormnet

[Shneemaster]

The protected cruiser's representative in the Aft Weight Offset club

Basically just a Nassau-Class Dreadnought, but on a pre-dreadnought hull.

[Stormnet]

13 hours ago, Shneemaster said:

The protected cruiser's representative in the Aft Weight Offset club

Basically just a Nassau-Class Dreadnought, but on a pre-dreadnought hull.

I also find the funnel quantity funny. The CL has 3 big funnels, while the pre-dread has a single tiny one.

[Cpt.Hissy]

1 hour ago, Stormnet said:

I also find the funnel quantity funny. The CL has 3 big funnels, while the pre-dread has a single tiny one.

26 knots vs 17, on probably coal and simple pistons.
That's fine.

Also, Nassau kinda was a predrednought hull. Or even just full predread, wing guns were weaker and with different ballistics due to different length.

[Intrepid_Arty]

1 hour ago, Cpt.Hissy said:

26 knots vs 17, on probably coal and simple pistons.
That's fine.

Also, Nassau kinda was a predrednought hull. Or even just full predread, wing guns were weaker and with different ballistics due to different length.

I'm not finding any information that the Nassau's had different guns in the wing turrets? The Kawachi-class certainly did, but from what I can tell, while the mountings were different, the guns themselves were a uniform 28cm/45 gun. 

[Cpt.Hissy]

1 hour ago, Intrepid_Arty said:

I'm not finding any information that the Nassau's had different guns in the wing turrets? The Kawachi-class certainly did, but from what I can tell, while the mountings were different, the guns themselves were a uniform 28cm/45 gun. 

Yep you're right and i messed up something, namely thought of Kawachi.
But the hull is indeed more like predread there. Good one though.

[Shneemaster]

This one's not terrible. They appear to have inverted the Nelson-class for the turret layout, which isn't good, but they're spaced out enough to have decent firing arcs regardless. The main reason I'm posting this one is that, as you can see in the top left, this is from the "There can only be one" mission, where, as you may know, the enemy is programed to run away when damaged and you have to chase them down. Knowing this, I designed my ship with a Richelieu-style 2x4 "All Forward" layout, so I had 8 16" guns pointed pointed at them during the chase, and they had... 2 8" and 4 6" guns pointed at me. It wasn't much of a contest.

This looks like the AI had a ship it was happy with, but it needed a tad more displacement to work, so it upped the slider, and bam- the ship got longer and now it looks like this. (I'm pretty sure the AI chooses the displacement first and then puts the guns and things on, though) I can't wait for the length slider to be implemented. Many historical ship's lengths and displacement just don't match up in-game.

A destroyer with one 5", one 4", one 3" and one 2" gun. And they're stacked to triple-superfire aft with only the 2" forward.

A single of the smallest funnel available for a 41,600 ton, 25 knot ship. I didn't check it's exact modules, but going into custom battles the most I could do with this approximate tech level on a ship like this was 35.5% engine efficiency, and that's using Geared Turbines II, oil fuel and forced boilers. Also included: skinny barbettes, aft turrets not taking advantage of the stepped deck, and a secondary battery consisting of 1 (one) casemate mounted 4-inch gun per side.

Edited April 15, 2021 by Shneemaster

[Shneemaster]

For bonus fun: try using the "Auto-Design" feature on the Spanish "Small Dreadnought" hull:

(I promise the auto-design is responsible for all of these)

I think it actually using the pre-dreadnought design logic.

It sometimes put the larger turrets on the wings and the smaller ones on the ends.

Similar to the above, notice that the wing turrets are 12" but the centerline turrets are 11". I'd hate to be in charge of fire control on this ship.

I love the lonely 2" turret at the back there

[Stormnet]

Alright, so the AI hasn't forgotten all the classics yet. 

This is the AI memory book, with all it's design choices and the formal caracterizations made by our professional naval designers:

 

1 - Anorexia barbettes.

2 - Thicc barbettes (also known as Caps Lock + Shift).

3 - Secs are feeling lonely here.

4 - Collect all the secondary callibers in UAD!

5 - Aft Weight Offset club. With representatives from the BB, CA, DD, CL, and BC classes.

6 - ITS HMS NELSON TIME!

7 - You get a barbette! And you get a barbette! Everybody gets a barbette!

8 - Pick 'n' mix single, double, and triple turrets.

9 - Mix 'n' match funnels.

10 - WE WANT PLANES, AND WE WANT THEM NOW!

11 - Vision and field of view is for pussies.

12 - With enought funnels, you can smoke screen all the time. Idea by Malboro.

13 - Broadside frigates' club.

14 - Barbettes dont always need a gun on them.

15 - I like to try out modern takes on pre-dreadnoughts.

16 - Big turrets are afraid of piranha secs roaming the decks, so they hide on top of barbettes.

17 - Im not gonna be Yamato'ed or Bismark'ed if I have enought AA secs.

18 - ♫ Going up the waves! Going down the waves! Shaking left and shaking right! Vomit all over the place! ♫

19 - Where armor.

20 - Tug boats are underrated warships. Change my mind.

21 - Ships are good turret farms.

22 - Underwater turrets just work.

23 - Tall barbettes show your dominant position to the enemy.

24 - "Deja vu, I've been in this place before" top speed.

25 - Remember to have your forward turrets huddle together for warmth. 

26 

- Sir, the 3x4 17-inch guns are two heavy! We can't fit them on!
- Remove the superstructure and make the funnel as small as possible, that'll save weight.

27 - Destroyers aren't a thing. Don't need secondary batteries.

28 - Monitors rule the seas.

29 - Don't put guns on warships if the budget doesn't allow for them.

Edited April 15, 2021 by Stormnet

[Stormnet]

I finnaly got a design after a long time. This one is a little out of date, but since I found nothing on the hotfix descriptions that related to fixing these, then I assumed it is still relevant.

 

This Light Cruiser got balls. Literally. 

Because when you are a Light-Cruiser in the 1905s with 7 7 inches, you need to show your fat round turrets to everybody.

Edited April 24, 2021 by Stormnet

[Cpt.Hissy]

It's made out of thin foil, it is a light cruiser. Just with big guns. Because maybe it works, can't know without trying.
That AI  is able to experiment is a good thing, if it also able to understand when experiment has failed and avoid doing stupid in the future.
these missions don't have future tho