Ahistorical things I'd love to see changed

[killjoy1941]

1. Ships larger than CL class shouldn't have access to hydro-acoustics of any kind. Let's make 'scorts realistic and valuable as a screen beyond 1920.

2. Radar should penetrate smoke screens and weather. Even better, I'd love to see salvo-chasing by radar. If your ships fail to hit the target, an inexperienced crew should fire at the last salvo generated, not the target, thus missing. Gunnery should correct with visual confirmation.

3. Immunity zones. I don't care if you have 20" guns, you can't penetrate 1/10th that if you impact at roughly 15deg or less. It should be a simple yes/no calculation against the deck/belt. Is this a thing now? It doesn't seem to be...

4. Aircraft? Yes, please. Add them in as a part of post-dev 1.0. Make this your first-ever DLC - I don't care how or why, just so it happens one way or another. Spotters, strike waves, lone attackers? I'd looooove this! It'd create a reason to add < 4" guns in post 1910+ designs, and could be simulated with random targets modified by surface spotting value. I realize this is a huge ask, but the payoff could be enormous - just give CVs X-number of AI-commanded strikes modified by CAP and you have an entire decade of naval warfare covered. 

Please, please think about doing it...  Pwetty pwease?

That's it for now, though I'm sure I'll add to it over time. Unlike some here, I'm more than happy with the alpha product on offer. It's quite impressive for a simple fleet simulator, and I'm looking forward to more. 😊

 

[Cptbarney]

1. No that should be an option.

2. Makes sense too be fair.

3. I guess, but immunity zones are questionable as a 20 inch shell hitting a ship at speeds of over 1.5machs is going to deform metal no matter what and will most likely kill that zone if it does, the IZ isn't a ship being invincible towards whatever type of shell at whatever type of range it just meant that the shell lost a lot of its effectiveness to penetrate. But that doesn't mean it can penetrate said armour, just means critical hits are limited or non-existent when hit.

Also the weapons it would face might not be the ones the IZ was calculated for so therefore sometimes making it irrelevant information that can't be relied on all the time. It can appear in game, but having a yes/no option would be too arcadey for me sounds too much like world of warships.

4. No the game is no where near ready for aircraft and frankly i would rather not see them in this game but the next when the devs have nailed everything about surface engagements, my limit for this game are spotters and airships.

 

[Aceituna]

6 hours ago, killjoy1941 said:

4. Aircraft? Yes, please. Add them in as a part of post-dev 1.0. Make this your first-ever DLC - I don't care how or why, just so it happens one way or another. Spotters, strike waves, lone attackers? I'd looooove this! It'd create a reason to add < 4" guns in post 1910+ designs, and could be simulated with random targets modified by surface spotting value. I realize this is a huge ask, but the payoff could be enormous - just give CVs X-number of AI-commanded strikes modified by CAP and you have an entire decade of naval warfare covered. 

 

This is one of the most requested features and I would like to see it somewhen (preferably as an DLC). But with aircraft it's the same situation as with a lot of other ,,popular'' features (such as multiplayer) Devs said about these that they will consider adding them after finishing features that are currently promised. So I certainly don't expect to see aircrafts before 2022.

But I would like to propose something related to aircraft that wouldn't be hard to implement.                     A lot of people asked for spotters. So how about add a catapult to the ship designer? It wouldn't have to move or release an actual plane. It would just give the ship some passive stats. Such as bonus for spotting (in a same way as radar does). It really wouldn't be hard to make and I think that I am definitely not the only one here who would like to design ships with catapult. 

Edited December 27, 2020 by Aceituna

[HusariuS]

2 hours ago, killjoy1941 said:

 

2. Radar should penetrate smoke screens and weather. Even better, I'd love to see salvo-chasing by radar. If your ships fail to hit the target, an inexperienced crew should fire at the last salvo generated, not the target, thus missing. Gunnery should correct with visual confirmation.

 

 

Yes and No.

I don't know if you know but Radars penetrate smoke screens, the very early ones could have problems with that but I'm not sure.

In case of the weather: No.

Even currently modern radars (including military ones) have problems when operating during bad weather, so even best radars in the game shouldn't operate at 100% effectiveness during bad weathers.

EDIT: Did anybody created "anti-radar" smokescreens?

Edited December 27, 2020 by HusariuS

[madham82]

3 hours ago, HusariuS said:

In case of the weather: No.

Even currently modern radars (including military ones) have problems when operating during bad weather, so even best radars in the game shouldn't operate at 100% effectiveness during bad weathers.

EDIT: Did anybody created "anti-radar" smokescreens?

Modern radars certainly can and do work in bad weather. Think about the Panavia Tornado and F-111 Aardvark as case examples. They were designed to fly in all weather conditions at low level using only terrain following radar. Synthetic aperture radar goes even further being able to piece any weather conditions to render a precise image on anything on the ground. But these are all modern computer driven radar sets. 

Radar in the game's timeframe would certainly have limitations due to weather. That said, look at the immediate action after the Battle of the Denmark Straits to see how effective British radar was maintaining contact with Bismarck and PE despite a heavy squall. Bismarck had to turn and fire on them to force a break in contact long enough to permit PE to escape. 

As for "anti-radar" smokescreens, chaff was and believe still is used extensively on surface ships. Mainly for evasion from incoming SSMs. 

[HusariuS]

2 hours ago, madham82 said:

Modern radars certainly can and do work in bad weather. Think about the Panavia Tornado and F-111 Aardvark as case examples. They were designed to fly in all weather conditions at low level using only terrain following radar. Synthetic aperture radar goes even further being able to piece any weather conditions to render a precise image on anything on the ground. But these are all modern computer driven radar sets. 

Radar in the game's timeframe would certainly have limitations due to weather. That said, look at the immediate action after the Battle of the Denmark Straits to see how effective British radar was maintaining contact with Bismarck and PE despite a heavy squall. Bismarck had to turn and fire on them to force a break in contact long enough to permit PE to escape. 

As for "anti-radar" smokescreens, chaff was and believe still is used extensively on surface ships. Mainly for evasion from incoming SSMs. 

Oh yeah I forgot that actually modern radars can work in bad weather condition, sorry.

As for the smokescreen yes I know about those chaffs, but I wonder if somebody before the end of WW2 actually developed smokescreen that could interfere with the radar waves...

Edited December 27, 2020 by HusariuS

[madham82]

58 minutes ago, HusariuS said:

Oh yeah I forgot that actually modern radars can work in bad weather condition, sorry.

As for the smokescreen yes I know about those chaffs, but I wonder if somebody before the end of WW2 actually developed smokescreen that could interfere with the radar waves...

Nothing I have ever heard from. The problem being you need something to scatter the energy, like metal. Chaff works great for this, but not something you can pump out and have linger above the water like smoke.

This is why jamming probably became the go to way to reduce radar effectiveness for long periods of time.

Edited December 27, 2020 by madham82

[killjoy1941]

17 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

1. No that should be an option.

2. Makes sense too be fair.

3. I guess, but immunity zones are questionable as a 20 inch shell hitting a ship at speeds of over 1.5machs is going to deform metal no matter what and will most likely kill that zone if it does, the IZ isn't a ship being invincible towards whatever type of shell at whatever type of range it just meant that the shell lost a lot of its effectiveness to penetrate. But that doesn't mean it can penetrate said armour, just means critical hits are limited or non-existent when hit.

Also the weapons it would face might not be the ones the IZ was calculated for so therefore sometimes making it irrelevant information that can't be relied on all the time. It can appear in game, but having a yes/no option would be too arcadey for me sounds too much like world of warships.

4. No the game is no where near ready for aircraft and frankly i would rather not see them in this game but the next when the devs have nailed everything about surface engagements, my limit for this game are spotters and airships.

 

 

1. It was extremely rare to have any kind of hydro-acoustic or sonar suites on anything larger than a CL. I'm okay with the option so long as the AI rarely picks it and it's expensive for the player. In any case, it should be discouraged for CA/BC/BB classes.

3. You'd be surprised by how little it takes to deflect objects of great mass moving at high speed. A standard ice-breaking plate should be sufficient to "bounce" a large caliber shell at extreme angles. Would it wreck the impacted plate? Probably. Would it be sufficient to destroy the section? Not even close. If you've got 2-5" of extended belt and your bow is pointed directly at the enemy, you should be taking green-yellow-red successive hits, not defaulting to red and flooding, which is what we have right now.

4. That's why I said DLC and post-dev. 😉

I too want the best surface fleet sim first and foremost, but it doesn't hurt to let Nick and the team to know that we have an interest in CVs and aircraft as well, particularly if the game does well and can justify DLC down the road.

 

Thanks to you and the others for chiming in - discussion is good. 🙂

[disc]

23 hours ago, killjoy1941 said:

1. It was extremely rare to have any kind of hydro-acoustic or sonar suites on anything larger than a CL. I'm okay with the option so long as the AI rarely picks it and it's expensive for the player. In any case, it should be discouraged for CA/BC/BB classes.

It depends highly upon the era and nation in question, and the role and threats envisaged.

1. As far as I know, US battleships never had sonar or hydrophones. I am unsure how the Lexington battlecruisers would have been equipped, but I think hydrophones are plausible. The Omaha class of cruisers had passive hydrophones, intended for surface scouting. After this, the Pensacola, Northampton, Portland, and New Orleans classes evidently had both passive and active sets. The US then abandoned sonar and hydrophones for later gun cruisers, excepting the Atlantas, which had at least active sets. After the war, the submarine-killer cruiser Norfolk had sonar sets; I don't know about Northampton, but I suspect not. Many missile cruisers were also sonar equipped, but that's getting beyond the timeframe.

2. I am uncertain about older Japanese battleships, but the Yamatos had hydrophones from at least 1943/1944. There may have been a sonar set as well, according to some diagrams. Japanese cruisers lacked sonar until 1938, when the Tone class was commissioned with a passive and (probably) an active set. The Agano and Oyodo classes were also equipped with active and passive arrays. Many surviving heavy cruisers appear to have been equipped with passive arrays in 1943/1944, and some of the old light cruisers received various sets as well during WWII.

3. Although active sonar was invented in France during WWI, during the interwar period France largely failed to develop operational active or passive sets for its surface ships. I do not believe any French battleships or cruisers were so equipped, at least not until the end of the war.

4. Germany evidently equipped multiple battleships and cruisers with active sonar, namely the Bismarcks, Scharnhorsts, and Admiral Hippers. Not very clear when they were so outfitted, but probably by 1940. Prinz Eugen and the Deutschlands had passive GHG arrays; it's uncertain about the others, but Bluecher may have too.

5. Italy appears to have neglected sonar and hydrophones in the interwar period, so that not many sets were developed and few ships equipped.

6. I don't know enough about Royal Navy policy to say for certain, but I believe at least some cruisers had active or passive sets.

7. The Soviet Union developed passive "Arktur" sets for its battleships and cruisers. Installation details unclear.

Most of these big-ship sets were probably installed in order to detect and avoid submarines. I would not say this was entirely successful.

Passive sets would be useful for search, but they were often limited to very slow speeds because of noise. Active sets were generally too directional for highly effective search, and they were usually limited to 15-20 knots at most, with achieveable ranges dropping with increased speed -- perhaps tracking a submarine at 2000 yards at 5-10 knots and 500 yards at 15-20 knots.

Of all these prewar and wartime sets, it seems that the passive German GHG was the most effective in detecting torpedoes: US testing credited it with successful detection up to 2km at 20 knots. However, I doubt this was particularly reliable.

The current game system strikes me as unrealistic.

[Dannavy85]

I'd like to see land masses added like Suragao, Samar, Juttland, Tsushima or a land mass generator where you can fight in restricted navigations.

[Cpt.Hissy]

Landmasses as (semi?) real-scale representations of corresponding part of the global map, together with ports and forts (well like in RTW)
Not many battles went as just lobbing shells at each other in open sea until one side's completely sank, mostly it was about driving the enemy away, or running out of ammo, or loosing contact.
I'd like to chase them all the way back to port and blockade them there.