Concerned about the game's scope and context

[DocHawkeye]

So i'm really looking forward to the game's full release, and have already been pleasantly surprised by a lot of the game's features. The ship designer especially, normally a major weak-point in these games, was clearly planned out by someone who's done some major homework on the subject. Just about every major soft and hard factor impacting warship design from a statistical standpoint has been accounted for and that's great. When this game is released it's already in shape to be a good alternative to its competitors in the Naval-Wargaming world (which there are admittedly few of.) 

 However, some ships and vessels make no sense in the context of the game. Ironclads and Fast Battleships particularly were vessels that sat at endpoints of the trends in warship design of their respective age, and were heavily influenced by the context of factors that are, -presently- outside the scope of the game.

Ironclad warship design was predicted on an era in which few actual Ironclads existed, and most ships in most navies were still sail driven or maybe steam/sail hybrid. Some Navies even planned on using towed Ironclad-batteries just parking them in front of enemy coastal forts and bombarding them to death. But so far the only plan I see for Ironclads in based on the tired Hampton Roads cliche of a battle which was A. highly abnormal and B. wasn't planned for. 

On the other end of the spectrum we have Fast Battleships...but many elements of Fast Battleship design were predicated on concession to the airplane which had been accepted as a new point of pivot in warship design prior to the end of the First World War. I'm a bit less miffed on this one because Carriers are planned for the game...but why do airplanes need to necessarily co-exist with the aircraft carrier? Many Navies explicitly perceived coastal aviation as the particular threat in mind, especially the Mediterranean powers. It is little known even today that the 1st generation of anti-aircraft defenses that appeared on ships were designed for defeating the Zeppelins, airship, and spotting balloon of which a great variety existed. Thus the emergence of anti-aircraft defense on ships emerged at a much earlier date than is often thought of (conventionally believed to be the 1920s), and in some ways reflected no clear break from weaponry designed to fend off the much-feared Torpedo Boat. 

 The mid-point of the Dreadnought era roughly between the Battles of Tsushima and Jutland will be the game's strong suit but the eras of ship designing representing its "end points" ie: the first Ironclads to the last Battleships will be weak points. tl:dr the game's scope is currently toooooo wide and mechanical abstractions sitting at the endpoints of its broadness risk unraveling others. 

Without necessary abstractions for a kind of given threat (ie: sails, airplanes, to a lesser extent coastal fortifications, mines, merchant raiders etc) much of the game's content will be reduced to short-lived gimmick at best (representing wasted time and development resources), exploitable loopholes for mechanics cheese at worst (representing total structural collapse of the game's premise). Some of us have already seen the comical "mount 500 secondaries on Yamato" joke builds that could easily lead to exploitable loopholes in the game's mechanics.

This is a fairly typical problem with these games, many tabletop games make the same mistake, which is to view the growth of a technology purely as a matter of the avoidance of obsolescence and not at-all of a matter of trends and social relations.* But this is grossly inadequate for describing and characterizing the manner in which technology changes or configures to meet the demand of a given challenge or set of challenges. Had the First World War broken out in 1908, the history of the war at sea might well include the platitude that the British had been totally wrong to configure their gun design around large caliber/low velocity while the German and French navies had been right to chase guns of light caliber/high velocity because the British had failed to appreciate the value of the armor-piercing cap and its ability to overmatch a given depth of armour with a relatively small caliber of shot. (1)

I'm prepared to see that these are just the growing pains of a game in a pre-alpha stage of development...but it's apparent that continuous widening of the game's scope with no concern for the consequences of that is becoming both sloppy and dangerous. I really want this game to be good, but the current forecast and trends for this game's development still basically leave it inferior to table-top based alternatives like Great War at Sea and DVG games...

 

*The so called, much-cliched, and totally inappropriate "tech tree", a popular (and absolutely incorrect) abstraction for representing the evolution of a technology that is nonetheless a favorite of video game designers. The reality is that warship design was a mixed product of trends some of which were evolutionary, and some of which were more appropriately described as configuration or compromise rather than stacked bonus. 

(1) In fact, the war's breakout in 1914 was just after the widespread adoption of Director-controlled fire by the world's naval forces, and this led to the rapid, hyperbolic increase in normal battle ranges that became normal during the war. By the time the Battle of Dogger Bank happened, normal battle ranges were in the realm of 18,000-19,000 meters. The usefulness of the ballistic cap fell off rapidly at such ranges, and size of shot began to matter far more especially for plunging fire onto decks. Voices in the Admiralty and informed criticism from other Navies seemed to imply for some time that the British had made a big mistake (in fact the real mistake had been the use of lyddite over TNT as a burster for British AP rounds) but circumstance led to the vindication of their configuration. Which American and Japanese observers took important note of in their own future designs. (The Germans stuck stubbornly to the idea of close brawling after the war which was why Bismarck had a heap-o-belt armor.) 

Edited November 17, 2020 by DocHawkeye

[madham82]

4 hours ago, DocHawkeye said:

On the other end of the spectrum we have Fast Battleships...but many elements of Fast Battleship design were predicated on concession to the airplane which had been accepted as a new point of pivot in warship design prior to the end of the First World War. I'm a bit less miffed on this one because Carriers are planned for the game...but why do airplanes need to necessarily co-exist with the aircraft carrier? Many Navies explicitly perceived coastal aviation as the particular threat in mind, especially the Mediterranean powers. It is little known even today that the 1st generation of anti-aircraft defenses that appeared on ships were designed for defeating the Zeppelins, airship, and spotting balloon of which a great variety existed. Thus the emergence of anti-aircraft defense on ships emerged at a much earlier date than is often thought of (conventionally believed to be the 1920s), and in some ways reflected no clear break from weaponry designed to fend off the much-feared Torpedo Boat. 

I see what you are driving at by mentioning Fast Battleships, but in reality they were developed completely outside of carrier aviation. Their development was not spurred by the need to escort "fast" carriers. Rather that is more specific to the US Navy's needs in the Pacific, and only the Iowa's technically could keep pace with the Essex fast carriers. The NC's and SD's could not break 30kts, but are considered fast battleships. 

Hood for example is probably considered the first true fast battleship. She was not armored like a battlecruiser like Renown/Repulse but had their speed. The development of fast battleships really is what ended BC development, since you no longer had to choose between large compromises in armor and speed. Think also of the German designs like Bismarck. They could do 30kts, which isn't that much slower than the Iowa's 33kts. Even Yamato was no slouch at 27kts, and but it was too slow to serve as escort for their CVs. 

Forgot to mention, where did you see carriers being implemented in this game. Official word from the Devs is no, at least until the game launches. 

Edited November 17, 2020 by madham82
forgot

[DocHawkeye]

 

3 hours ago, madham82 said:

Hood for example is probably considered the first true fast battleship. She was not armored like a battlecruiser like Renown/Repulse but had their speed. The development of fast battleships really is what ended BC development, since you no longer had to choose between large compromises in armor and speed. Think also of the German designs like Bismarck. They could do 30kts, which isn't that much slower than the Iowa's 33kts. Even Yamato was no slouch at 27kts, and but it was too slow to serve as escort for their CVs. 

Hood is an interesting example here because she was extensively modified during her career to accommodate an anti-aircraft configuration that was not originally planned for. One might call that a major design concession especially considering the consequences that change had on what was otherwise a perfectly sound protection scheme for the ship. Whether designed keel up or not the airplane was having an influence on design, the Americans also felt compelled to conduct expensive rebuilds of the Standard Type Battleships part of which was influenced by the need to improve their minimal anti-aircraft defenses. (Admittedly much of this was done to accommodate newer propulsion plants, but those weight savings were then spent on...torpedo blisters and anti aircraft guns.) 

I heard that carriers are planned, but that work won't commence on them until after release. This is totally understandable. Aircraft carriers are a huge scope shift for a game focused on Dreadnoughts. They introduce a meta-layer to that game that could be majorly disruptive without proper abstraction, and I wouldn't mind seeing them put off entirely into another game although I don't necessarily think that's required. 

[Bluishdoor76]

Richelieu-class and Dunkerque-class are other examples of fast battleships that had nothing to do with airplanes, France had 1 carrier during this time period, its main concerns were the growing number of large and powerful fast battleships being built by the Germans with the Scharnhorst-class and Bismarck-class, and Italians with the Littorio-class, which is other examples of fast battleships not influenced by aircraft but by the need of faster more powerful vessels.

Aircraft did not began to dictate naval doctrine until well into WW2 with the carrier air raids in the Mediterranean sea and the Pacific theater, and the sinking of Bismarck. Prior to WW2 and even early parts of WW2, aircraft were still not really seen as big game changers, wasnt until the appearance of the Blitzkrieg that air power was really shown to be a game changer.

[madham82]

15 hours ago, DocHawkeye said:

 

Hood is an interesting example here because she was extensively modified during her career to accommodate an anti-aircraft configuration that was not originally planned for. One might call that a major design concession especially considering the consequences that change had on what was otherwise a perfectly sound protection scheme for the ship. Whether designed keel up or not the airplane was having an influence on design, the Americans also felt compelled to conduct expensive rebuilds of the Standard Type Battleships part of which was influenced by the need to improve their minimal anti-aircraft defenses. (Admittedly much of this was done to accommodate newer propulsion plants, but those weight savings were then spent on...torpedo blisters and anti aircraft guns.) 

I heard that carriers are planned, but that work won't commence on them until after release. This is totally understandable. Aircraft carriers are a huge scope shift for a game focused on Dreadnoughts. They introduce a meta-layer to that game that could be majorly disruptive without proper abstraction, and I wouldn't mind seeing them put off entirely into another game although I don't necessarily think that's required. 

Hood was completed with a 12" belt and other armor enhancments after the experience at Jutland (they added 5K tons of extra armor during construction). That's what made her the first true fast battleship. That had nothing to do with aircraft, but of course like every other nation in the period from WW1 to WW2, ships AA were continually increased.

Also I don't recall any of the US Standard BBs getting serious AA firepower until after Pearl Harbor. For example, Arizona had only 8 5" AA guns at the time of the attack. Most of what you are referring to was done after the attack because the Navy realized how vulnerable these ships were in particular to air attack and torpedoes. 

[Wowzery]

The fast battleship wasn't brought about by aircraft carriers, or planes.  It was a natural evolution of the dreadnought merging the protection of a battleship of WW1 with the speed of a battlecruiser making the latter obsolete.

[HistoricalAccuracyMan]

Fast Battleships were just the culmination of the Naval Arms Race and Sea Superiority. Ever since the first warships were invented, nations looked for ways to make them bigger, faster, tougher and deadlier. Yes, we understand that the name of the game is Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts but the thing is, when can you really say the dreadnought era was over? Yes WWII (and to some extent the late 20s/early 30s) saw the introduction of more modern ships, but if you look at the Japanese and US Navies in particular, look at how many "dreadnought" type designs served right up until the end of the war and were modernized as much as possible to help them keep up with the changing times. For the US Navy, you had: The New York, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Colorado and Tennessee classes of battleships (all standard type, dreadnought like designs) and for the Japanese you had the Fuso, Nagato, Ise and Kongo class battleships (the Ise's were converted to Battleship Carrier Hybrids and while the Kongo's started life as battlecruisers, they were re-designated to battleships) that all had that "classic" dreadnought style. Hell, even if you look at the USS Texas during WWII, a New York Class battleship that was commissioned in 1914, it had an amazing career, being one of the only ships to take part in all major theaters of WWII. So if the scope and context of the game as it pertains to "dreadnoughts" is what you are concerned about, I'd take another look at when exactly the dreadnought really became extinct and/or obsolete.

[DocHawkeye]

2 hours ago, HistoricalAccuracyMan said:

Fast Battleships were just the culmination of the Naval Arms Race and Sea Superiority. Ever since the first warships were invented, nations looked for ways to make them bigger, faster, tougher and deadlier. Yes, we understand that the name of the game is Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts but the thing is, when can you really say the dreadnought era was over? Yes WWII (and to some extent the late 20s/early 30s) saw the introduction of more modern ships, but if you look at the Japanese and US Navies in particular, look at how many "dreadnought" type designs served right up until the end of the war and were modernized as much as possible to help them keep up with the changing times. For the US Navy, you had: The New York, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Colorado and Tennessee classes of battleships (all standard type, dreadnought like designs) and for the Japanese you had the Fuso, Nagato, Ise and Kongo class battleships (the Ise's were converted to Battleship Carrier Hybrids and while the Kongo's started life as battlecruisers, they were re-designated to battleships) that all had that "classic" dreadnought style. Hell, even if you look at the USS Texas during WWII, a New York Class battleship that was commissioned in 1914, it had an amazing career, being one of the only ships to take part in all major theaters of WWII. So if the scope and context of the game as it pertains to "dreadnoughts" is what you are concerned about, I'd take another look at when exactly the dreadnought really became extinct and/or obsolete.

Bingo. There's a lot of design features appearing in the game, like the DP gun...that have only half their context so far. I have no problem with the Fast Battleship being in the game, but i'm concerned that without the need to consider the threat environments they were planned to exist in they'll become a balancing nightmare. 

Think about all of the tonnage, form drag, and complexity involved with new Torpedo Defense Systems that became standard on the Fast Battleship. This system in fact became so necessary that it became compulsive to retrofit onto old Battleships. I've left out an important angle here in the need to consider the tangible impact the submarine was having on future warship design. If you have  nothing to fear from these threats (because they don't exist in the game) would you ever waste tonnage on such a system? That will be sub-optimal play. 

Will it be possible to put 500 Director-Controlled DP mounts on Iowa and trololololol DDs and Light Cruisers to death? Will you be able to burn a  KGV to death in two salvos by exploiting RNG rolls? Better yet. Will you be able to put seven 4-gun 20in turrets on Yamato because you don't need to use secondary mounts? Do we want to see things in this game like "Legging"? How about "Munchkins" and "LRM Camping?" The ship-builder potentially lends itself to the creation of endlessly self-perpetuating balance problems and it's my own suspicion that the likely point of emergence of these issues will be at the endpoints of the game's narrative focus because there won't be enough context to justify certain kinds of "sub-optimal" play styles. 

If anyone can reassure me that this will not happen i'd like them to try. 

Edited November 19, 2020 by DocHawkeye

[Skeksis]

2 hours ago, DocHawkeye said:

The ship-builder potentially lends itself to the creation of endlessly self-perpetuating balance problems and it's my own suspicion that the likely point of emergence of these issues will be at the endpoints of the game's narrative focus because there won't be enough context to justify certain kinds of "sub-optimal" play styles. 

If anyone can reassure me that this will not happen i'd like them to try.

The battle generator (i.e. procedural generation).

It’s my guess that when you look at the nations data and see that a nation has 6 battleships, it will be exactly that, a number, then when a battle is called those battleships would be designed/generated there and then.

That enemy design will be built to the nation tech, player criteria and maybe some randomizing to counter too.

This setup should solve the ‘endlessly self-perpetuating balance problems”, simply because they won’t be progressive.  

Edited November 19, 2020 by Skeksis

[madham82]

36 minutes ago, DocHawkeye said:

Bingo. There's a lot of design features appearing in the game, like the DP gun...that have only half their context so far. I have no problem with the Fast Battleship being in the game, but i'm concerned that without the need to consider the threat environments they were planned to exist in they'll become a balancing nightmare. 

Think about all of the tonnage, form drag, and complexity involved with new Torpedo Defense Systems that became standard on the Fast Battleship. This system in fact became so necessary that it became compulsive to retrofit onto old Battleships. I've left out an important angle here in the need to consider the tangible impact the submarine was having on future warship design. If you have  nothing to fear from these threats (because they don't exist in the game) would you ever waste tonnage on such a system? That will be sub-optimal play. 

Will it be possible to put 500 Director-Controlled DP mounts on Iowa and trololololol DDs and Light Cruisers to death? Will you be able to burn a  KGV to death in two salvos by exploiting RNG rolls? Better yet. Will you be able to put seven 4-gun 20in turrets on Yamato because you don't need to use secondary mounts? Do we want to see things in this game like "Legging"? How about "Munchkins" and "LRM Camping?" The ship-builder potentially lends itself to the creation of endlessly self-perpetuating balance problems and it's my own suspicion that the likely point of emergence of these issues will be at the endpoints of the game's narrative focus because there won't be enough context to justify certain kinds of "sub-optimal" play styles. 

If anyone can reassure me that this will not happen i'd like them to try. 

Again, where exactly is the concept of Fast Battleship an issue? We've examined the fact they were not influenced by aircraft advancements. So what threat environment are you referring to that needs balancing against?

You hit on it at the end of your next paragraph, TDS had more to do with submarine and ship launched torpedoes showing how much a threat they were following WWI experience. If you believe that you will be able to forgo TDS in the campaign, you haven't played enough battles yet. Just try building a capital ship without any protection and watch lucky torpedo sink it in one hit to a magazine. It happened with one of my BC designs. The AI loves torpedoes and currently the game sports unrealistic abilities to reload in combat and number of reloads. The latest patch was supposed to prevent arsenal torpedo ship designs by increasing the weight of torpedo mounts, but I haven't tested to see if it made my previous designs unusable. So yes, you will need TDS if you plan on a ship surviving. Submarines are also included in the campaign, just not rendered or controlled in a battle. They will operate during the movement phases on the map from what was shared. 

On a related note, we have big balance issues in terms of torpedoes and high levels of TDS. To the point ships can tank 100+ hits from torpedoes if maxed out. This is b/c the damage model does not account for multiple hits to the same side weakening the protection. 

I don't follow all the terms used in the next paragraph, suffice to say there has been continual work for example on balancing gun accuracy vs small ships. Previously a DD moving at 40kts was untouchable by any gun even at ranges less than 4kms. 

I'll sum all this up by saying, there are lots of balance issues, but Fast BBs and Ironclads aren't the reason. Most can't be really settled until the campaign arrives. 

[Bluishdoor76]

4 minutes ago, madham82 said:

Again, where exactly is the concept of Fast Battleship an issue? We've examined the fact they were not influenced by aircraft advancements. So what threat environment are you referring to that needs balancing against?

You hit on it at the end of your next paragraph, TDS had more to do with submarine and ship launched torpedoes showing how much a threat they were following WWI experience. If you believe that you will be able to forgo TDS in the campaign, you haven't played enough battles yet. Just try building a capital ship without any protection and watch lucky torpedo sink it in one hit to a magazine. It happened with one of my BC designs. The AI loves torpedoes and currently the game sports unrealistic abilities to reload in combat and number of reloads. The latest patch was supposed to prevent arsenal torpedo ship designs by increasing the weight of torpedo mounts, but I haven't tested to see if it made my previous designs unusable. So yes, you will need TDS if you plan on a ship surviving. Submarines are also included in the campaign, just not rendered or controlled in a battle. They will operate during the movement phases on the map from what was shared. 

On a related note, we have big balance issues in terms of torpedoes and high levels of TDS. To the point ships can tank 100+ hits from torpedoes if maxed out. This is b/c the damage model does not account for multiple hits to the same side weakening the protection. 

I don't follow all the terms used in the next paragraph, suffice to say there has been continual work for example on balancing gun accuracy vs small ships. Previously a DD moving at 40kts was untouchable by any gun even at ranges less than 4kms. 

I'll sum all this up by saying, there are lots of balance issues, but Fast BBs and Ironclads aren't the reason. Most can't be really settled until the campaign arrives. 

Even with tier 3 and 4 torpedo and anti flood protection and high citadel protection, I've seen my best battleships get detonated by one or 2 torpedoes. Only battleships that are truly immune to basically anything are 1940s BBs with maximum protection on everything. And to achieve that you have to sacrifice so much in the firepower department that in a campaign it might not be worth it.

Edited November 19, 2020 by Bluishdoor76

[madham82]

1 minute ago, Bluishdoor76 said:

Even with tier 3 and 4 torpedo and anti flood protection and high citadel protection, I've seen my best battleships get detonated by one or 2 torpedoes. Only battleships that are truly immune to basically anything are 1940s BBs with maximum protection on everything. And to achieve that you have to sacrifice so much in the firepower department that in a campaign it might not be worth it.

I've got screens of a 100K monster AI tanking 100+ torpedoes. It might be the bulkheads or propellant choice playing a factor too. Bottom line your example should be reported as a bug. There is 0 evidence of torpedoes causing magazine detonations on capital ships with TDS IRL. There was some reports early on after they introduced the mechanic, but it was supposedly fixed. 

[Bluishdoor76]

I've had, why when people said torpedoes were weak I was like, um are you sure about that lol

 

Dont know if they are still strong or if they really got weaker, have gotten pretty good at dodging torpedoes and the AI at least in my games doesnt add torpedoes to its CLs so havent seen many

Edited November 19, 2020 by Bluishdoor76

[Jatzi]

2 hours ago, Skeksis said:

The battle generator (i.e. procedural generation).

It’s my guess that when you look at the nations data and see that a nation has 6 battleships, it will be exactly that, a number, then when a battle is called those battleships would be designed/generated there and then.

That enemy design will be built to the nation tech, player criteria and maybe some randomizing to counter too.

This setup should solve the ‘endlessly self-perpetuating balance problems”, simply because they won’t be progressive.  

Better not be like that. The game should generate designs and have them be built with the full cost and time required that the player would have to pay to build that same design. It shouldn't be some random design only made when a battle happens. Cuz then also if they win that battle or they retreat and the ships aren't sunk then what happens? A brand new totally different design is made when the next battle happens? That's terrible game design and I wouldn't play it if it was like that. I'd just play RTW which doesn't have such a stupid system.

 

EDIT: This would also play into intelligence and espionage. Seeing what you can of foreign designs and trying to get intel on hidden aspects like the speed, amount of armor, various techs used in the design. And then using that knowledge when designing your own ships. In RTW for example this is a thing and the AI totally reacts to your designs and vice versa. I remember I made a semi-battlecruiser during a rough war with France as Italy. It was a large heavy cruiser with good speed, 11in main guns and a heavy secondary battery of 8 in casemates. Was very effective actually and within a year I saw Britain, France, and Germany all making ships with heavy secondaries as well. A point of contention with this game is actually that I can't put heavy secondaries on any cruisers should I want to. And it's very hard on battleships. We need a width slider. We also need to stop being able to see literally everything about enemy designs during a battle. Very much not a fan of that

Edited November 19, 2020 by Jatzi

[DocHawkeye]

On 11/17/2020 at 12:59 PM, DocHawkeye said:

many elements of Fast Battleship design were predicated on concession to the airplane which had been accepted as a new point of pivot in warship design prior to the end of the First World War.

17 hours ago, madham82 said:

We've examined the fact they were not influenced by aircraft advancements

I think you're having an issue processing what I mean by point of pivot which is an irresponsible jargon on my part. Airplanes were a new consideration for Battleship design heading into the post-Great War decades is what I mean by this. The TDS could be a concession of precious weight allowance to the airplane as it was to the submarine in this time. It could be a consideration of plunging shell fire. It could be here for lots of reasons, not just gunfire. The threat posed by the torpedo-carrying Destroyer and Torpedo-Boat were easy enough to solve by just increasing battle ranges outside the effective range of torpedo craft, so unless you're charging into the effective range of escorts...you shouldn't be losing any ships to torpedo attacks. 

If the game is spawning you inside that range then I get how that keeps happening, and why the impression it leaves would be misleading. 

The issue with the airplane was that it could place its torpedo just about right into the side of an enemy ship. The issue with the submarine was that it could avoid detection. Can I trace the emergence of Torpedo Belts directly to these causes? Nope. Sorry. No one can. It is just rather conspicuous that such a system emerged in the 1920s when the airplane and submarine had both achieved hitherto unheard of prominence in the thinking as evidenced by the salient topics of the subsequent Washington Naval Conference...

Quote

 

I'll sum all this up by saying, there are lots of balance issues, but Fast BBs and Ironclads aren't the reason. Most can't be really settled until the campaign arrives. 

They aren't yet. They lack the necessary kind of variety opposition to justify much of their design criteria however, and as I've been saying; this lends them, potentially, to problems. 

17 hours ago, madham82 said:

You hit on it at the end of your next paragraph, TDS had more to do with submarine and ship launched torpedoes showing how much a threat they were following WWI experience.

Incidentally this is not what I said. 

18 hours ago, DocHawkeye said:

I've left out an important angle here in the need to consider the tangible impact the submarine was having on future warship design.

I did not say that the TDS had *more* to do with the submarine. I said it was an angle. I'm engaging a bit deliberately here in abstraction because the fact is there was no single weight navies were using to justify the thinking behind a TDS in their ships. It was all highly generalized.  The general lesson was the need to set aside a certain weight of tonnage and subdivision for defense from the new kinds of torpedo craft which the variety had increased to a frightening degree and their performance was rapidly improving. 

17 hours ago, Skeksis said:

The battle generator (i.e. procedural generation).

It’s my guess that when you look at the nations data and see that a nation has 6 battleships, it will be exactly that, a number, then when a battle is called those battleships would be designed/generated there and then.

That enemy design will be built to the nation tech, player criteria and maybe some randomizing to counter too.

This setup should solve the ‘endlessly self-perpetuating balance problems”, simply because they won’t be progressive.  

This is not reassuring skekSil...

Edited November 20, 2020 by DocHawkeye

[DocHawkeye]

1 hour ago, Jatzi said:

EDIT: This would also play into intelligence and espionage. Seeing what you can of foreign designs and trying to get intel on hidden aspects like the speed, amount of armor, various techs used in the design. And then using that knowledge when designing your own ships. In RTW for example this is a thing and the AI totally reacts to your designs and vice versa. I remember I made a semi-battlecruiser during a rough war with France as Italy. It was a large heavy cruiser with good speed, 11in main guns and a heavy secondary battery of 8 in casemates. Was very effective actually and within a year I saw Britain, France, and Germany all making ships with heavy secondaries as well. A point of contention with this game is actually that I can't put heavy secondaries on any cruisers should I want to. And it's very hard on battleships. We need a width slider. We also need to stop being able to see literally everything about enemy designs during a battle. Very much not a fan of that

I like RTW but it's a good example to highlight how problematic the ship-designer stuff can become. You generally don't see really outrageous or exploitive stuff in RTW but that's because the ship-designer is so nerfed. Wanna design a Panzerschiffe? Good luck because the game is going to classify it as a BC and then hit you with artificial penalties left and right for turret configurations and protection...

RTW chose to heavily penalize out-of-class-parameter conditions in order to prevent the normalization of really egregiously weird designs. I think that was a necessary solution but then it sort of asks why they bothered with a ship designer at all.

Edited November 19, 2020 by DocHawkeye

[Skeksis]

1 hour ago, Jatzi said:

Cuz then also if they win that battle or they retreat and the ships aren't sunk then what happens? A brand new totally different design is made when the next battle happens?

Theoretically if there’s no tech upgrades, advancement or regional movement, then procedural generation would produce the exact same ship, so no you wouldn’t face different ships in the immediate foregoing battles.  

[Cpt.Hissy]

Don't give them ill ideas please, they already have enough stupid "simplifications".
Fleets should be properly modelled and kept track of, at the very least.

[Jatzi]

7 hours ago, Skeksis said:

Theoretically if there’s no tech upgrades, advancement or regional movement, then procedural generation would produce the exact same ship, so no you wouldn’t face different ships in the immediate foregoing battles.  

If you think the AI will ever get good enough to generate the same exact ship twice in a row than I think you're very optimistic. Also tech will totally increase during a war. Also also, without knowing what the AI has built, what their fleet is made of you can't build your own fleet to match. Building a fleet in a vacuum is boring and probably bad. Also also also, you're probably gonna be using ships that are kinda old in some wars. In many cases ships were outdated by the time they were finished and entered service. If the AI just generates designs on command when a battle starts you're ignoring that reality for the AI giving them a massive advantage over the player. No thanks, it'd take all the fun out of the game. 

 

@DocHawkeye Even if the game classifies your ship as a BC or whatever you can still build your design. Classifications alter what battles the ship may show up in but that's really an indictment on the battle generator, it sucks and that's probably the biggest area I'm hoping this game improves on. Beyond that classifications don't really matter? They kinda didn't irl honestly. Just look at the Alaska's "large cruiser" designation. You can call your ship whatever, doesn't change what it is. You create a pocket battleship, game calls it a heavy cruiser or battlecruiser? Whatever, still a pocket battleship. Not sure what you mean about the turret configurations and protection. Afaik the only major limitations on armament and configurations and protection are on light cruisers and destroyers. Heavy cruisers for a time can't use heavy secondaries too.

Not saying it's the best thing in the world but I don't think it's too limiting. The main issue I think is how the battle generator utilizes those designs you've made that perhaps don't fit perfectly with heavy cruiser or battleship or whatever. If the player had more control over what participated in a battle you could utilize edge designs better regardless of their official classification.

Also, imo right now anyways this designer is more limiting. It's hard to make unique designs in this game until late game era cuz of the hull system. They really block you in. Heavy cruisers for most countries right now as you progress through the 1890s and into the 1900s and 1910s is just the exact same hull upsized. Which means you can really only make the same design but with more armor and better engines/turrets. Same goes for light cruisers and torpedo boats/destroyers. In order for there to be real variety they need to add lots of more hulls. Or just bring back the modular system that they still have ads running for. That's of course not gonna happen so more hulls. And perhaps a width slider

Edited November 20, 2020 by Jatzi

[Bluishdoor76]

23 minutes ago, Jatzi said:

@DocHawkeye Even if the game classifies your ship as a BC or whatever you can still build your design. Classifications alter what battles the ship may show up in but that's really an indictment on the battle generator, it sucks and that's probably the biggest area I'm hoping this game improves on. Beyond that classifications don't really matter? They kinda didn't irl honestly. Just look at the Alaska's "large cruiser" designation. You can call your ship whatever, doesn't change what it is. You create a pocket battleship, game calls it a heavy cruiser or battlecruiser? Whatever, still a pocket battleship. Not sure what you mean about the turret configurations and protection. Afaik the only major limitations on armament and configurations and protection are on light cruisers and destroyers. Heavy cruisers for a time can't use heavy secondaries too.

Pocket Battleship is not a classification, that was just a name given to the Deutschland class by the British, the Germans reclassified them from Large Cruiser to just a Heavy Cruiser as their total tonnage wasn't that much compared to other heavy cruiser, hell the Hipper class was heavier then the Deutschland. The Alaska Class was definitely a large cruiser/ battlecruiser which ever you prefer as it straddled the line between the two due to its weapons and weight coming at just shy of 30k tones and well above 30k tones fully loaded, where as the Deutchland barely made it above 14k tones fully loaded.

[Cptbarney]

5 hours ago, Bluishdoor76 said:

Pocket Battleship is not a classification, that was just a name given to the Deutschland class by the British, the Germans reclassified them from Large Cruiser to just a Heavy Cruiser as their total tonnage wasn't that much compared to other heavy cruiser, hell the Hipper class was heavier then the Deutschland. The Alaska Class was definitely a large cruiser/ battlecruiser which ever you prefer as it straddled the line between the two due to its weapons and weight coming at just shy of 30k tones and well above 30k tones fully loaded, where as the Deutchland barely made it above 14k tones fully loaded.

Prefer supercruiser for those shipfus. Especially since largecruiser makes no sense as cruisers are bloody large to begin with.

[HistoricalAccuracyMan]

22 hours ago, DocHawkeye said:

Bingo. There's a lot of design features appearing in the game, like the DP gun...that have only half their context so far. I have no problem with the Fast Battleship being in the game, but i'm concerned that without the need to consider the threat environments they were planned to exist in they'll become a balancing nightmare. 

Think about all of the tonnage, form drag, and complexity involved with new Torpedo Defense Systems that became standard on the Fast Battleship. This system in fact became so necessary that it became compulsive to retrofit onto old Battleships. I've left out an important angle here in the need to consider the tangible impact the submarine was having on future warship design. If you have  nothing to fear from these threats (because they don't exist in the game) would you ever waste tonnage on such a system? That will be sub-optimal play. 

Will it be possible to put 500 Director-Controlled DP mounts on Iowa and trololololol DDs and Light Cruisers to death? Will you be able to burn a  KGV to death in two salvos by exploiting RNG rolls? Better yet. Will you be able to put seven 4-gun 20in turrets on Yamato because you don't need to use secondary mounts? Do we want to see things in this game like "Legging"? How about "Munchkins" and "LRM Camping?" The ship-builder potentially lends itself to the creation of endlessly self-perpetuating balance problems and it's my own suspicion that the likely point of emergence of these issues will be at the endpoints of the game's narrative focus because there won't be enough context to justify certain kinds of "sub-optimal" play styles. 

If anyone can reassure me that this will not happen i'd like them to try. 

Technically, Dual Purpose guns don't exist in the game yet. Why? Because the other half of their purpose (i.e. aircraft) aren't in the game yet and likely won't be for some time. Yes, they're modeled after after the 5" 38-caliber dual mounts found on US Battleships, destroyers and cruisers (I assume that's the specific gun you are referencing), but without aircraft existing, they are nothing but secondary gun mounts on large ships or primary turrets on smaller ships.

Now, when it comes to the rest of your points, that all comes down to personal preference or learning game mechanics. Do you want to put 500 secondary gun mounts on your Iowa-Type ship and just obliterate DDs and CLs? It's possible if you get creative enough, and the trend is called a "Memeship" or "Memebuild." Do you want to burn down a battleship with two HE salvos? Good luck, because in my experience fire's don't break out very often, and even when they do, they don't last very long unless you set multiple fires. You can't put 7 quad-barrel 20" guns on ANY ship purely down to the size and weight of the guns, and the fact that there is no option for "infinite displacement."

Torpedo defense systems were basically the standard on newer, more advanced capital ships and some older ships were indeed refitted with torpedo bulges...I'll give you that one. But think for a minute...WHY? Part of it could have been down to the submarine and airborne torpedo threat, but if you have a large capital ship (BB, CV, CA, BC) that is very expensive and state of the art, wouldn't you want to protect it from everything you could, regardless of whether a specific threat was big or small? The game gives YOU the OPTION of adding additional torpedo protection, or forgoing it to save weight, or spend that displacement somewhere else.

As far as the "balance problems" with these topics are concerned, they're pretty much taken care of. If you build a memeship that can blow destroyers out of the water all day long because it has nothing but tons of small guns, that's fine and dandy, but you usually won't win against a battleship with that. The 7 quad-turret issue is solved by having maximum displacement values and the fact that the guns take up so much room, you can realistically only fit 3, maybe 4 on the biggest possible ships.

The "context" for most stuff in-game is already there. There are no DP guns because the only threats right now are other ships. And most of these problems or issues you are thinking about have some counter/balancing feature.

And if you only want to build Dreadnoughts because "that's what the game is about", you still can still do that even in the 1930s and 1940s eras using the Modernized Dreadnought Hulls. They still have casemate slots on the hull and superstructures, they still have the dreadnought look and gun layout options, and they don't have that high of a speed capability. This game gives you the option to virtually build whatever you want as far as a battleship goes: anything from 1890's style behemoths to 1940 fast-battleship models, just build what you want, the way you want it.

Edited November 20, 2020 by HistoricalAccuracyMan

[madham82]

19 hours ago, DocHawkeye said:

I think you're having an issue processing what I mean by point of pivot which is an irresponsible jargon on my part. Airplanes were a new consideration for Battleship design heading into the post-Great War decades is what I mean by this. The TDS could be a concession of precious weight allowance to the airplane as it was to the submarine in this time. It could be a consideration of plunging shell fire. It could be here for lots of reasons, not just gunfire. The threat posed by the torpedo-carrying Destroyer and Torpedo-Boat were easy enough to solve by just increasing battle ranges outside the effective range of torpedo craft, so unless you're charging into the effective range of escorts...you shouldn't be losing any ships to torpedo attacks. 

If the game is spawning you inside that range then I get how that keeps happening, and why the impression it leaves would be misleading. 

The issue with the airplane was that it could place its torpedo just about right into the side of an enemy ship. The issue with the submarine was that it could avoid detection. Can I trace the emergence of Torpedo Belts directly to these causes? Nope. Sorry. No one can. It is just rather conspicuous that such a system emerged in the 1920s when the airplane and submarine had both achieved hitherto unheard of prominence in the thinking as evidenced by the salient topics of the subsequent Washington Naval Conference...

They aren't yet. They lack the necessary kind of variety opposition to justify much of their design criteria however, and as I've been saying; this lends them, potentially, to problems. 

Let me put it to you this way. No BB was lost to air attack until WW2. No BB was lost to aircraft dropped torpedoes until WW2. The Fast Battleship was born at the end of WW1 and ultimately replaced BCs which came about before WW1. BBs were lost to torpedo boats in WW1. The development/need for TDS is a result of this. These are the facts.

You are speculating that somehow factors about protection (from aircraft/subs/plunging fire) somehow created the fast BB, but that does not fit the facts. For one, aircraft were not a real factor in the design of any BBs following WW1. This evidenced by the AA armament present on ships at the time. For example, the Colorado class built after the war had 4 3" AA guns when completed (eventually it had 8 5" guns for AA design at the outbreak of WW2), that's more in line with shooting down a zeppelin or spotting aircraft than an actual attack. It shows the general lack of concern of aircraft in the interwar period, and that was prevalent in just about all the major navies. Remember Billy Mitchell had made bold claims about bombers making BBs obsolete. His test was full of issues, including taking multiple raids to sink a stationary ship with no crew for damage control. The navies of the world wrote off the whole event stating, "no capital ship maneuvering at sea will be sunk by aircraft". This would hold true until the Japanese sank the PoW and Repluse in WW2. Then suddenly everyone realized how vulnerable they really were. I will say by the late 30's most were starting to significantly increase AA armament. The NC class which was the first modern BB built for the US being a good example. But it's AA would be tremendously increased after PoW and Repluse were lost, as did the British with their ships. 

As for TDS, the answer is obvious as to what spurred development, SMS Szent István. Having a 1st rate dreadnaught sunk by a tiny inexpensive torpedo boat sent shockwaves. The threat of the torpedo had been made evident and future warship design had to take this into account. 

You mentioned you can just solve the TB/DD issue by increasing the battle ranges, how many BBs in WW2 were hit by ship launched torpedoes? Quite a few, so obviously that didn't solve the issue.  Again back to the Szent István, it was quite well armed and had the range against a TB, but still was sunk by one. The whole reason for the development of the DD was to fight off TBs. Eventually they would replace TB when they started carrying their own torpedoes. So the reality is most navies considered a layered defense approach to all their capital ships following WW1 (i.e. TDS, better secondary guns, escort ships, and increasing the range of primary guns). 

As for the game, with spotting the way it is now TBs/DDs can sneak in undetected to well within torpedo range. So the chance your big gun BB has to fight off waves of DDs (particularly in some of the ridiculous naval academy missions) without any escorts to screen is real. Also another issue is winning right now is defined only by sinking all the enemy ships in custom battles and campaign unless something changes (which I have decried multiple times for being completely unrealistic). So you could be in a situation where you are having to chase down eternally fleeing ships and sacrifice range for positioning. If you are having to dodge torpedoes constantly (due to aforementioned unrealistic reloads), you will likely lose sight or run out of time before sinking them.  

Ironclads are something I personally think are a waste of time for the game. I know some people want them historical fleet makeup reasons. Some want to start back in 1870, again not helpful IMO. But I am also not going to complain either way. As for the fast BB, there is nothing it is design that is inherently different that BB development post WW1. Just one favors speed more than armor in terms of investment. Navies constantly sought to balance these two which is why many consider fast BBs to be more accurately referred to as modern BBs, as they represented the end of the development of this type of ship.  The reality is few BBs built after the 20's went down the super dreadnaught route. Yamato being the best example, but she was quicker than any WW1 dreadnaught or super. So really is she a fast BB, a super dreadnaught, or just a modern BB. 

Edited November 20, 2020 by madham82

[DocHawkeye]

1 hour ago, madham82 said:

You are speculating that somehow factors about protection (from aircraft/subs/plunging fire) somehow created the fast BB, but that does not fit the facts.

No. You are saying that. I have made an attempt to correct your misunderstanding and will go no further than that since it is difficult to discern if you are in fact confused or just engaging in bad faith argumentation. You have failed to engage with one single point i've made other than the TDS issue which you are either unable or unwilling get past. I no longer care which. 

I would like it very much if you would leave the topic please. You are being disruptive. 

[Jatzi]

12 hours ago, Bluishdoor76 said:

Pocket Battleship is not a classification, that was just a name given to the Deutschland class by the British, the Germans reclassified them from Large Cruiser to just a Heavy Cruiser as their total tonnage wasn't that much compared to other heavy cruiser, hell the Hipper class was heavier then the Deutschland. The Alaska Class was definitely a large cruiser/ battlecruiser which ever you prefer as it straddled the line between the two due to its weapons and weight coming at just shy of 30k tones and well above 30k tones fully loaded, where as the Deutchland barely made it above 14k tones fully loaded.

I know pocket battleship, semi-dreadnought, semi-battlecruiser are all not actual classifications. But they do represent in-between ships. I mentioned a specific cruiser I made early on in a RTW game as Italy. I was fighting France in like 1905 and couldn't beat their CA's So I made a kind of semi-battlecruiser or pocket battlecruiser. 16k tons, 11 inch main guns, heavy secondary battery of 8 in casemates and 4 in tertiaries. 24 knots with CA armor. It was really just a CA albeit a large and well-armed one especially in this game. In RTW it's less common to have CA's with such  heavy armaments though. But all this and what you said just goes to show that classifications and labels are flexible and not everything is equal. RTW treats all CA's and BB's the same but they aren't. Hopefully this game lets you have more control over the disposition of forces leading up to battles. I'd rather not have a RTW-style battle generator. I know they initially used one, I really hope they've changed it