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>>>Alpha-11 HotFix v84 Feedback<<< (1/4/2020)


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On 3/5/2021 at 10:26 AM, Capilla said:

Trying to build echelon turrets on España class hull is a pain... Any help or tip please? Being able to see or modify the hull's center of mass position would be of great help on a future. There was a lot of ship designs with echelon turrets that would be nice to reproduce.

 

Yeah, I agree. There's always port or starboard weight offsets, no matter where I place the turrets, it keeps going from 2% to 14% to +40-70%, it's basically impossible to do it appropiately.

On 3/5/2021 at 3:32 PM, Draco said:

Okay here's my five cents lately.

I have two main issues with the game right now, and they are deck armour and bulkhead size, yet not for the reasons you might think!

Okay so first off, I recently tested out just how much armour you'd need to create a zone of immunity similar to that of the never built Montana class of the US navy (according to wikipedia this zone was from 18000-31000m against it's own 16"/50 Mk.VII guns firing Mk.VIII "super-heavy" shells) but upping this to the game's highest calibre guns (20") firing super heavy shells, and the results were mind boggling. So first off, I found that you can get away with a relatively pedestrian 14" krupp IV belt on an all-or-nothing scheme if you accept that your armour will lose it's immunity at just under 16000m and below.

The math fore this is straightforward.

with SH shells, a 20" gun penetrates 32.3" of equivalent armour plate at 15000m.

krupp IV + AoN armour gives a 118%+ to effective armour thickness, so 14x218%=30.93" effective thickness.

This is considerably less than the 16.1" belt of the montana, and it resists a much heavier shell at less range according to the game. However, it's not game breaking. It's a bit off, but not by that much. Acceptable so to speak.

Next comes the deck armour, and boy are you in for a mindhello kitty now.

The deck armour of the montana was spaced, with a 2.25" sacrificial top deck to activate fuzes and cause the shell to detonate before reaching the main deck. The main deck itself sat at 7.35". Thus by adding them up we get 9.6" of deck armour, but since they were spaced one must account for about 15% of a decrease in efficiency, since two plates next to each other are not nearly as effective at stopping incoming shellfire as a singular plate of the same thickness, so in effect we end up with 2.25+7.35-15%=8.16" effective deck armour.

According to the leading naval experts at the time, this relatively pedestrian deck protection was more than enough to prevent deck hits from a 16"/50 Mk.VIII super-heavy shell at 30000m.

In contrast, here's how the game handles it...

at 30000m, a 20" super-heavy shell in-game penetrates 48.4" of equivalent armour thickness...
let that sink in...
48 point 4 inches...

Okay so let's do the math... 48.4/218%=22.2" of real armour thickness... 22 point 2 inches!!!

What the hello kitty??? I need a deck armour of 22.2" to protect against 20"ers at 30000m when the montana needed only slightly over 8 to protect against 16"ers at the same distance? surely it should be closer to 12" or 13" to be realistic, and certainly that seems to be a more sensible forecast considering that a 20" mk.III can shoot a whopping 41km, and will likely spot you and begin lobbing shells at you before you enter into your zone of immunity at 30000m anyways.

By that forecast, a peak 1940s battleship needs at least 14" of belt and at least 22.2" of deck armour to be considered safe in battle conditions if you follow conventional IZ design parameters within the game's mechanics.

This obviously makes no sense... shells lose a lot of velocity in flight, and a 16" shell that hits you at 20000m has about the same velocity and penetration capabilities as a 14" or 13" hitting you at point blank range, and right now it feels like this just doesn't happen and the only factor is the acute angle of the armour... which btw is still a bit nerfed right now, since even at 30000m a Mk.VII 16" shell, which was considered by the americans themselves to be a superior plunging fire shell because of it's higher arching trajectory compared to the high powered Mk.VIII super heavy shells, would still only hit the deck at 30000m at an angle of 32 degrees, giving you an over 60% penetration decrease when compared to the absolute vertical, even before you account for the loss in velocity, which then implies that around over 8" or 9" of armour would actually be sufficient to stop such shells at such range.

Is this intentional? is that how the developers want it to be? just accept that deck armour is pointless and you might as well go with 0" there because nothing will work at 1940s combat ranges anyways? What am I missing here fellas? Am I the only one who tries to keep my battleships at combat ranges, is that it? does everyone else just sail to within 10km with 18" of belt and 10" of deck and hope they don't get hit at all in those 20km of travelling time?

Even a 14" deck, which is considerably thicker than even the deck armour of the yamato, does not become effective against a 20" gun until it is below 15000m, and mind you, at 15000m the shell impacts the deck armour at an obligue angle of around 10 degrees or less, literally just glancing it with no realistic chance of penetration what so ever if you use conventional real world math formulas and not those of the game.

I just don't get it. For such an otherwise historically accurate game this single area seems completely off the mark.

Although I did notice one favourable new development.

During testing, I encountered multiple occations where 15" or 14" guns hitting my ship at just about the range where my armour began to become effective (around 20000-22000m) penetrate the armour, but then proceed to do surprisingly little damage, closer in scope to an over-pen than an actual pen.
This makes sense, since a lot of deck armour was historically spaced like in the montana example above, meaning that a smaller upper plate would de-cap and initiate shell fuzes of shells making them explode against the lower main deck armour, and having a penetration which does about a 3rd or 4th the damage of a full pen neatly repressents this dynamic, so if that was intentional, well done! now expand on this!
That's the kind of damage one would realistically expect from all penetrations out to about 33000 or so meters with 14" or 15" guns on a 9" deck with 2" of that being the upper de-capping deck. If this was made into a more common occurence, rather than a "freak" incident that only sporadically appears right around maximal penetration range, then that would immediately fix the deck armour issue.
Of course it should still be possible to entirely overmatch deck armour and cause full, devastating penetrations on the engines and so forth, but this should only happen with severely heavy guns of 15" or above striking next to no armour at mid-to-long ranges, so for example 3" of deck at 20000m or above might go through entirely and cause full damage, whereas a similar shell hitting 6" of deck at the same range should only do the splinter deck damage with about 3/4ths of it being absorbed by the main deck armour.
So yeah, if that was indeed intentional, well done, now make it the default rather than the freak result of long range deck hits!

Second is the bulkheads, and hold on, it' not what you think.

My main issue with bulkheads isn't that they're too heavy or too light, my main issue has to do with simple physics.

I ran some tests, and it appears that a battleship of 109000t displacement has about a 90% chance of receiving over-pens rather than actual pens on unarmoured sections of the hull with max bulkheads, meaning that when a battleship grade gun hits the extended deck (which for test purposes was left on 0" thickness) the shell goes right through and does next to nothing.

If this experiment is then repeated on a ship with low bulkheads (anything from many to minimum) the shell almost always penetrates and does full damage.

I find this confusing.

Logically, the less bulkheads you have in the way, the higher the chance of over-pens, because once a shell strikes a bulkhead, it tends to detonate, since those are heavily armoured, often as heavily as the main belt of the ship in question.

Instead what we get is the lower the bulkhead setting, the higher the chance of shell detonation as opposed to over-pens.

Again, what am I missing here?

Shouldn't a hull saturated with heavy and numerous bulkheads be more rather than less susceptible to in-ship detonations on unarmoured sections of the ship?

I find it especially problematic since with the above mentioned mechanics of bulkheads in relation to pen-over-pen dynamics, maximum bulkheads are essentially a necessity that you cannot in good faith downgrade on and still consider your ship competitive. They are now extremely heavy to field on your ships for sure, but the current mechanics surrounding them still makes them an absolute must, and so I find that all my designs are now exercises in how to still make a semi-competent ship around the key feature that is maximum bulkheads, sacrificing everything from firepower to speed to armour (especially deck armour) to keep this essential feature, often ending up with ships that are twice or thrice as heavy and expensive as the ship I'm trying to replicate, either because I had to give it triple it's historical deck armour to give it a similar long range protection characteristic to what it historically had, or by simply sacrifing the extended armour entirely and hoping for maximum bulkheads to give me those over-pens rather than full-pens.

To give an example, here's my current design for a US super-Iowa.

maximum bulkheads, long range, maximum displacement (109000t or about two yamatos worth) and 30 knots of speed.

This baby costs a whopping 236000000$, or 2.3 regular iowas, has zero rudder or turret rotation upgrades because I couldn't spare the weight, also has only a double bottom and lvl 1 torp protection because that isn't important enough either, meaning that it actually has far worse underwater protection than the Iowa herself (3 torp bulkheads, equivalent to lvl 3 protection in game, and a tripple hull bottom). However I'd rather forego it and just keep them completely out of torp range if it buys me a bit of extra long-range protection with the way the game works right now.
extended belt and deck are both literally left at 0", which is actually quite historical, but logically shouldn't work with maximum bulkheads, yet somehow it does.
She also sports 14.4" of deck armour, which is completely inadequate given the current game mechanics but it was the best I could do, and it will only protect her from her own armament inside of 20000m, giving her an extremely narrow zone of immunity of just 3000m, between roughly 17000 and 20000m once her 14" belt is accounted for.
Notice that the deck is heavier than the belt.
The only part of her armour that is adequate within the current mechanics of the game is her turret top armour, which I was able to bop up to 21.4", giving her immunity from direct turrent hits from 27000m and below, which at least begins to seem sufficient from a designer's point of view, though still not ideal, even if you disregard the fact that historical battleships usually made do with less than 10" of top turret armour. Meanwhile, her turret front could be reduced all the way down to 18", again giving her immunity from her own guns up to around 9500m, which is actually more than necessary and I might consider giving her a 16" or even 14" turret face instead to give her more deck and turret top protection to bring her closer to a historical result in terms of effective IZ.

This example should make it blatantly clear why the current design parameters are not very realistic.
A ship that is theoretically not only capable of but specifically designed for fighting at 20000-30000m currently requires much heavier deck than belt armour to enable it to fight at it's own designated combat ranges, and this is true across all the nations (I find it especially enfuriating to contemplate that german ships of 130000t disp. still cannot hope to equip enough deck armour to give them reasonable zones of immunity even against 18" guns, much less 20"ers).

Thus I sincerely hope that deck armour will be addressed in the next patch, and made much more effective than it currently is, and that some thought be put into making maximum bulkheads have some drawback to incentivize people to avoid them, rather than just making them prohibitively heavy and expensive to equip, which doesn't really balance things but just makes all other aspects of the design process more aggravating. because you absolutely still have to have max bulkheads anyway, until some balance is introduced that is, possibly in relation to the max-min pen-over-pen dynamics I outlined above.

Thanks for reading, and keep up the good work devs, still an amazing product you're developing in spite of it's flaws.

Screenshot_28.png

 

Indeed! Deck armor is definetly too ineffective right now.

 

And also agree: in spite of its flaws, I am loving this game and even more where it's heading to!

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2 hours ago, Bigjku said:

1940’s heavy cruiser the most modern two towers that fit together nearly and have 5 secondary platforms on each side.  Will not show an attachment point for 5 inch guns but will for 4 inch guns.

image.pngYou mean this cruiser? As you see in image, it is going to be improved, as you say, in the upcoming hotfix.

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Oh cool thats nice too see, i think the complaint with deck armour, is that we lack immunity zones. However i've seen some people say that immunity zones were iffy so i don't know.

Regardless, i am liking the direction we are going in. Also i get you guys are focusing on the campaign, crew and captains so i dont mind waiting really.

Cheers!

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4 minutes ago, Cptbarney said:

Oh cool thats nice too see, i think the complaint with deck armour, is that we lack immunity zones. However i've seen some people say that immunity zones were iffy so i don't know.

Regardless, i am liking the direction we are going in. Also i get you guys are focusing on the campaign, crew and captains so i dont mind waiting really.

Cheers!

Iffy meaning they were based on calculations that are subject to inaccuracies, but we have a bigger issue. Shells that can pen the more deck armor than is theoretically possible. 

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3 minutes ago, madham82 said:

Iffy meaning they were based on calculations that are subject to inaccuracies, but we have a bigger issue. Shells that can pen the more deck armor than is theoretically possible. 

How do you mean? I'm too well versed on Naval armour and shells to be fair.

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2 minutes ago, Mutsu said:

G3XjrX7.png

 

I like that you can place the 'AA' guns on top of turrets they are bugged in battle though, they won't turn with the turret and just float there

I also want smoll calibers so we can place up to 3 of them like 20-45mm's. singles to quads.

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In regards to the echelon turrets: You have to fiddle with it a lot to get those proper placements. Maybe I'm asking too much, but some attachment points that are balanced on each side would really help that

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@Nick Thomadis if you're interested in specific turret/mount mismatches, the towers on British Battlecruiser V and N3/G3 (and possibly others) can still not mount the full number of secondary guns. Additionally, the Battlecruiser V can only mount up to 4" in the slots that DO work, preventing us from recreating Hood which originally had 5.5" guns.

IMHO all the turret mounts within this series of towers would be better treated as casemate weapons.

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Won't be much feedback from me tbh, but I've been enjoying myself with this update. My only main gripe is I would like to be able to possibly recreate HMS Incomparable, but am unable to accurately since the super battlecruiser hull still only allows up to 18 inch guns, but other than that, I've found the update

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Overall this build is better on a few fronts.

 

movement

Ship movement logic seems modestly improved.  My wounded battleships fall back to the far side of the line in engagements and just slow their engines to take their place at the rear.  That’s a big improvement.  Something that seemed bugged in two games is it seems like the AI movement uses the same logic and their hurt ships retire down the line but they tend to do it on the engaged rather than disengaged side and just get pounded for it.  Might be worth looking at.

Still feel like we are missing some commands, specifically a command to turn the whole line around and switch the leading ship so you can change direction more quickly.  I am not really a fan of not being able to set my speeds in any formation.  I think you should be able to even in tight formation.  I would actually suggest in campaign that you could tie some of this to training (ie monthly or quarterly expenses on keeping up the fleet and training crews).  Highly trained crews could maintain tight formations at their full speed.  Spend less on training and you can’t maintain that level of speed that close.

The game still doesn’t seem to handle going from line abreast to like ahead right.  Still wants to get flagship to the middle.  I want to be able to turn in with destroyers line abreast and then return to line with the right or left most ship leading the column.

Ship Builder

The builder seems more flexible and has better parts now.  So it’s a slow move in the right direction.  Good to see progress there.  Will limit this to some things I would like to see I haven’t seen mentioned in no particular order.

1.  Turbo Electric Drive is still listed as auxiliary engines when that is really not at all what it is.  It’s much more appropriately a drive system along the lines of geared turbines.  It was really an alternative path to going from turbines to geared turbines.  Was a different way to achieve efficiencies other than the gears.  It should be a different drive system option with better inherent subdivision, slightly heavier weights, more range and significantly better agility at a greater cost.  In a campaign mode it would almost be an either or option.

I also would restate that I think the various drive systems should be horsepower capped at least in campaign mode.  Speeds remain too high in every historical period for the most part.  Geared turbines were a huge deal when they came out and basically enabled the first true monster ships like the Hood.  There is a reason the Queen Elizabeth’s struggled to get to 24 knots despite having the best direct drive turbine system anyone could then build.  You simply couldn’t get more HP out of it.

2.  Guns need some work.  My main suggestions would be as follows.

First auto loading of large caliber guns should simply be impossible.  It was never implemented in this timeframe.  I think the USN managed to do it to a 3 inch gun towards the end of WWII and they were building the 8 inch gunned Des Moines Class when the war ended that were automated.  The options need to be limited here.

Second because lighter guns can be much more automated I think the selection options need to be individualized to the different gun calibers.  For example I would class an Iowa battleship as having enhanced reloading on the 16 inch guns and semi automatic 5 inch guns and automatic 2 inch guns using the games terminology (that’s wrong too but is what it is).

3.  Armor and it’s performance are still strange.  The system doesn’t seem to handle the all or nothing scheme well.  First it doesn’t make a ton of sense that the scheme is heavier than the others.  It could be but it’s more about where the same weight of armor is deployed.

In battle I can accumulate too much structural damage on the ends of the ship.  I will be 100% float but hardly anything left structure wise.  I assume the system can’t accommodate a more complicated damage model but if that is the case we need to cap structural damage to the less or unarmored portions of this scheme.  This needs fixed.

 

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3 hours ago, Bigjku said:

Overall this build is better on a few fronts.

 

movement

Ship movement logic seems modestly improved.  My wounded battleships fall back to the far side of the line in engagements and just slow their engines to take their place at the rear.  That’s a big improvement.  Something that seemed bugged in two games is it seems like the AI movement uses the same logic and their hurt ships retire down the line but they tend to do it on the engaged rather than disengaged side and just get pounded for it.  Might be worth looking at.

Still feel like we are missing some commands, specifically a command to turn the whole line around and switch the leading ship so you can change direction more quickly.  I am not really a fan of not being able to set my speeds in any formation.  I think you should be able to even in tight formation.  I would actually suggest in campaign that you could tie some of this to training (ie monthly or quarterly expenses on keeping up the fleet and training crews).  Highly trained crews could maintain tight formations at their full speed.  Spend less on training and you can’t maintain that level of speed that close.

The game still doesn’t seem to handle going from line abreast to like ahead right.  Still wants to get flagship to the middle.  I want to be able to turn in with destroyers line abreast and then return to line with the right or left most ship leading the column.

Ship Builder

The builder seems more flexible and has better parts now.  So it’s a slow move in the right direction.  Good to see progress there.  Will limit this to some things I would like to see I haven’t seen mentioned in no particular order.

1.  Turbo Electric Drive is still listed as auxiliary engines when that is really not at all what it is.  It’s much more appropriately a drive system along the lines of geared turbines.  It was really an alternative path to going from turbines to geared turbines.  Was a different way to achieve efficiencies other than the gears.  It should be a different drive system option with better inherent subdivision, slightly heavier weights, more range and significantly better agility at a greater cost.  In a campaign mode it would almost be an either or option.

I also would restate that I think the various drive systems should be horsepower capped at least in campaign mode.  Speeds remain too high in every historical period for the most part.  Geared turbines were a huge deal when they came out and basically enabled the first true monster ships like the Hood.  There is a reason the Queen Elizabeth’s struggled to get to 24 knots despite having the best direct drive turbine system anyone could then build.  You simply couldn’t get more HP out of it.

2.  Guns need some work.  My main suggestions would be as follows.

First auto loading of large caliber guns should simply be impossible.  It was never implemented in this timeframe.  I think the USN managed to do it to a 3 inch gun towards the end of WWII and they were building the 8 inch gunned Des Moines Class when the war ended that were automated.  The options need to be limited here.

Second because lighter guns can be much more automated I think the selection options need to be individualized to the different gun calibers.  For example I would class an Iowa battleship as having enhanced reloading on the 16 inch guns and semi automatic 5 inch guns and automatic 2 inch guns using the games terminology (that’s wrong too but is what it is).

3.  Armor and it’s performance are still strange.  The system doesn’t seem to handle the all or nothing scheme well.  First it doesn’t make a ton of sense that the scheme is heavier than the others.  It could be but it’s more about where the same weight of armor is deployed.

In battle I can accumulate too much structural damage on the ends of the ship.  I will be 100% float but hardly anything left structure wise.  I assume the system can’t accommodate a more complicated damage model but if that is the case we need to cap structural damage to the less or unarmored portions of this scheme.  This needs fixed.

 

I agree. Also I think that the modular hulls would help out a lot for design flexibility. That way we could make hulls longer or wider to fit certain parts. 

Regarding the superstructure damage. I agree, we used to have almost indestructible ships that would only sink when they lost their floatability, but now BB often sink due to losing their HP. Maybe we should reintroduce damage to compartments to such an extend a destroyed compartment does not contribute so much to the overall HP reduction when incurring more hits. A bit back to the old system. Furthermore the armor schemes are very batebones right now and need a massive overhaul. 

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Another issue i have found is that when ships collide meshes don't seem to fully hit each other unless something weird goes on which forces the collision boxes to pass through each other.

1615196525-screen-1920x1080-2021-03-04-1

1615196537-screen-1920x1080-2021-03-04-1

So when they were this close, they started making that hull noise thing, i also got a few better images as well. Also those two BB's just spawned really close to each other hence why a pre-battle formation screen is a must.

1615196762-screen-1920x1080-2021-02-25-1

This might also apply to your turrets and other models, which might have bigger than usual mesh colliders. Not entirely sure if thats the problem, but it could be effect turret and weapon placement on ships, not sure if thats actually the case but i hope it helps regardless.

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Additional Suggestions

This again relates to the ship builder but fire control really should be apart from range-finders as far as a technology tree goes and the effects should be compounded.

Someone with more knowledge than me can certainly clarify but I would suggest the following as a general guideline

Local Control:  Each gun is controlled locally.  Low accuracy.

Central Firing Control:  Accuracy improves with the system predicting range and angle.  This is pointer following shooting where guns are manually laid but centrally aimed.  Better accuracy.

Powered Central FC:  Turrets are basically turned and elevated automatically to match fire control inputs.  Accuracy better yet again.  This is early WWII tech and the best some nations did.

Stabilized Multi-Factor Control:  Basically a full on mechanical computer. This is about as good as you can do on pure accuracy.

Blindfire Radar Control:  This is really post 1940 so likely isn’t needed but would be where you have advanced radar and mate that with everything above.  You can fire at extreme ranges with very accurate capability as you can precisely measure angle and range to target as well as your shell splashes.

This would create more combinations of abilities.  Historically Japan had very good optics but somewhat dated fire control.  The USN optics were good but not great and the fire control was outstanding.

In short I would make optics more telling when it comes to effective range restriction on guns and fire control the driver of accuracy.

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On 3/7/2021 at 10:07 PM, Bigjku said:

I also would restate that I think the various drive systems should be horsepower capped at least in campaign mode.  Speeds remain too high in every historical period for the most part.  Geared turbines were a huge deal when they came out and basically enabled the first true monster ships like the Hood.  There is a reason the Queen Elizabeth’s struggled to get to 24 knots despite having the best direct drive turbine system anyone could then build.  You simply couldn’t get more HP out of it.

2.  Guns need some work.  My main suggestions would be as follows.

First auto loading of large caliber guns should simply be impossible.  It was never implemented in this timeframe.  I think the USN managed to do it to a 3 inch gun towards the end of WWII and they were building the 8 inch gunned Des Moines Class when the war ended that were automated.  The options need to be limited here.

Second because lighter guns can be much more automated I think the selection options need to be individualized to the different gun calibers.  For example I would class an Iowa battleship as having enhanced reloading on the 16 inch guns and semi automatic 5 inch guns and automatic 2 inch guns using the games terminology (that’s wrong too but is what it is).

 

To these statements I would like to point out that the German battleships and battlecruisers of the same period were able to achieve and sustain much higher speeds (all of the battlecruisers were capable of 26-28 kts despite only being designed for 24, for example, while the battleships after the Helgolands could typically make 24-25 despite their nominal 21-kt maximum speeds). While the quality of Imperial German turbine construction (with the exception of that one guy who dropped a hammer into Seydlitz's port turbine blades) is definitely part of the phenomenon, it does point to the fact that considerable speeds could be achieved with effort- and it doesn't help Queen Elizabeth that she has the hydrodynamic form of a slightly curved brick.

Additionally, while autoloading of large-calibre guns was never attempted in practice, the British 1944 re-design study for the Lion class featured autoloading 16"/45s with a planned firing cycle of 20 seconds between rounds.

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1 hour ago, Shiki said:

To these statements I would like to point out that the German battleships and battlecruisers of the same period were able to achieve and sustain much higher speeds (all of the battlecruisers were capable of 26-28 kts despite only being designed for 24, for example, while the battleships after the Helgolands could typically make 24-25 despite their nominal 21-kt maximum speeds). While the quality of Imperial German turbine construction (with the exception of that one guy who dropped a hammer into Seydlitz's port turbine blades) is definitely part of the phenomenon, it does point to the fact that considerable speeds could be achieved with effort- and it doesn't help Queen Elizabeth that she has the hydrodynamic form of a slightly curved brick.

Additionally, while autoloading of large-calibre guns was never attempted in practice, the British 1944 re-design study for the Lion class featured autoloading 16"/45s with a planned firing cycle of 20 seconds between rounds.

Yup.  In general the Germans met or exceed SHP and hydrodynamic performance and the RN seems to have met or fallen a bit short at times (though they designed with more speed ambition).  I think the central point is you aren’t building 33 knot battlecruisers with anything like a balanced approach (let alone a German like approach to battlecruisers) in that era and the game currently tends to let you do so.

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Divisions still have major issues in avoiding incoming torpedoes. I have seen multiple times that a destroyer (mind you, should be more than nimble enough to dodge) gets hit by detected torpedoes that are avoidable by just making slight bearing adjustments. Instead the division AI of the ship did nothing and drove right into the torpedoes though they were very timely spotted.

IMO, we shouldn't be required to micromanage individual members of a division up to this level. If placed under direct AI, these ships would dodge the torpedoes much better.

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2 hours ago, Tycondero said:

IMO, we shouldn't be required to micromanage individual members of a division up to this level. If placed under direct AI, these ships would dodge the torpedoes much better.

What is the point of a 3D game with RTS control if one of it's "only" crucial element is removed. What do we gain as players by removing the need of avoiding a weapon that can wype a part of it's fleet?

For now it would only be: sit back and watch two battle line firing at each other.

Pathfinding and torpedo warning could be improved. Overal fleet management need to be changed as to be more intuitive, but we certainly don't need to remove the torpedo avoidance from the player. RTS are not just about army composition. You need map awereness and some sort of reflexes too.

Even freakin Azur Lane let the player avoid torpedoes. Why not UA:D?

Edited by Tousansons
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6 hours ago, Tousansons said:

What is the point of a 3D game with RTS control if one of it's "only" crucial element is removed. What do we gain as players by removing the need of avoiding a weapon that can wype a part of it's fleet?

For now it would only be: sit back and watch two battle line firing at each other.

Pathfinding and torpedo warning could be improved. Overal fleet management need to be changed as to be more intuitive, but we certainly don't need to remove the torpedo avoidance from the player. RTS are not just about army composition. You need map awereness and some sort of reflexes too.

Even freakin Azur Lane let the player avoid torpedoes. Why not UA:D?

On the other hand, this isn't meant to be a torpedo avoidance simulator. And it's not an your average cloned RTS.

Admiral's job is to decide where and what to send, where to search for enemy, what and how to attack, when to chase and when to retreat. Not to babysit every single boat in their force and personally steer them away from torpedoes all the time.

Your main interaction in a game like this happens in docks and when you assemble forces to send out. It's not about mind-blowing, hand-crippling lightspeed mouse clickery during realtime chaos.

In regard of torpedoes, the Torpedo Soup (tm) should not be a thing at all. Here i'm in no reloads gang.

Edited by Cpt.Hissy
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8 hours ago, Tousansons said:

What is the point of a 3D game with RTS control if one of it's "only" crucial element is removed. What do we gain as players by removing the need of avoiding a weapon that can wype a part of it's fleet?

For now it would only be: sit back and watch two battle line firing at each other.

Pathfinding and torpedo warning could be improved. Overal fleet management need to be changed as to be more intuitive, but we certainly don't need to remove the torpedo avoidance from the player. RTS are not just about army composition. You need map awereness and some sort of reflexes too.

Even freakin Azur Lane let the player avoid torpedoes. Why not UA:D?

Sorry, but it is a strategy game playing from the perspective as the admiral. IRL the admiral is not supposed to constantly meddle with individual subordinate captains up to the level of baby-sitting them. You give orders on a division level. Individual ships should have some freedom to operate to avoid obvious dangers to the survival of the ship, such as a incoming torpedo. Furthermore, the devs already claimed this was their intension by having torpedo avoidance on this level (which doesn't work at all) and considering the design choices made in this game they show us that. If we follow your logic, why do they even try to implement collision avoidance. You might as well control all the ships individually. If we need to micromanage this, that would mean we need to remove the individual ship from the division, give it an order and later let it rejoin. Too much unnecessary hassle! Atm you just can't easily interfere to get them to do what you want even if you spot the dangers. You might steer the first ship of the division out of harms way only to find the the second ship in the division just drives into it. 

Edited by Tycondero
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2 hours ago, Cpt.Hissy said:

On the other hand, this isn't meant to be a torpedo avoidance simulator. And it's not an your average cloned RTS.

Admiral's job is to decide where and what to send, where to search for enemy, what and how to attack, when to chase and when to retreat. Not to babysit every single boat in their force and personally steer them away from torpedoes all the time.

Your main interaction in a game like this happens in docks and when you assemble forces to send out. It's not about mind-blowing, hand-crippling lightspeed mouse clickery during realtime chaos.

In regard of torpedoes, the Torpedo Soup (tm) should not be a thing at all. Here i'm in no reloads gang.

Very well said Cpt Hissy. You translated my thoughts very well in how I feel a game like this needs to play. This is a strategy game on the grand scale, not your Company of Heroes micromanage hell where you need to steer your tank to face the enemy all the time. We already have plenty of those awful "click and train your reflexes games". A good modern RTS should be able to avoid requiring micromanagement, or it will quickly die off like the dozens that went before it. I rather do 10 meaningful mouse clicks than dozens of micro ones that are just trying to control the situation. This should be mostly a thinking game, not a reactionary one only.

Edited by Tycondero
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3 hours ago, Cpt.Hissy said:

Not to babysit every single boat in their force and personally steer them away from torpedoes all the time.

Good players will command every single ship, ensuring every ship is going to be in the best position, lazy players will switch on auto-captain.

That is the feedback from RTW2, to which this game is inspire by, essentially in the height of battle you do not use time compression and auto-captain, otherwise you’re going to take losses.

3 hours ago, Cpt.Hissy said:

Your main interaction in a game like this happens in docks and when you assemble forces to send out

This game is not an HOI4 campaign only style game either, the battle instance is a major part of the game, dumbing down the battle instance and leaving players idle for the duration of battles we currently have is destined to fail, it would create a boredom factor beyond belief.

3 hours ago, Cpt.Hissy said:

It's not about mind-blowing, hand-crippling lightspeed mouse clickery during realtime chaos.

Use the pause button.

3 hours ago, Cpt.Hissy said:

In regard of torpedoes, the Torpedo Soup (tm) should not be a thing at all. Here i'm in no reloads gang.

Which then brings the game back to torpedo’s and there role.

With them…

  • Creates torpedo attack runs.
    • Create the need to design fast attack ships i.e. DDs.
    • Create a avenue for cheaper ships that can actually do something.
    • Create a role for DDs/CLs since there’s no sub role.
  • Creates torpedo defence.
    • Create the design need for secondaries on battleships/cruiser etc.
    • Creates the need for cruiser to support capital ships against fast and hidden attackers.
  • Creates battle tactics.
    • Capital ships can’t blindly charge in and must keep on station, else face losses.
    • Create support ships roles such as screening.

I’m sure I could run up a very long list but to suffice to say without torpedo’s it would be detrimental to the game's overall battle interaction. Dev’s would have tested historical reloads i.e. just one load and must of found it doesn’t work for the overall concept, “torpedo soup” is here to stay.

Edited by Skeksis
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16 minutes ago, Skeksis said:

Good players will command every single ship, ensuring every ship is going to be in the best position, lazy players will switch on auto-captain.

That is the feedback from RTW2, to which this game is inspire by, essentially in the height of battle you do not use time compression, otherwise you’re going to take losses.

This game is not an HOI4 campaign only style game either, the battle instance is a major part of the game, dumbing down the battle instance and leaving players idle for the duration of battles we currently have is destined to fail, it would create a boredom factor beyond belief.

Use the pause button.

Which then brings the game back to torpedo’s and there role.

With them…

  • Creates torpedo attack runs.
    • Create the need to design fast attack ships i.e. DDs.
    • Create a avenue for cheaper ships that can actually do something.
    • Create a role for DDs/CLs since there’s no sub role.
  • Creates torpedo defence.
    • Create the design need for secondaries on battleships/cruiser etc.
    • Creates the need for cruiser to support capital ships against fast and hidden attackers.
  • Creates battle tactics.
    • Capital ships can’t blindly charge in and must keep on station, else face losses.
    • Create support ships roles such as screening.

I’m sure I could run up a very long list but to suffice to say without torpedo’s it would be detrimental to the game's overall battle interaction. Dev’s would have tested historical reloads i.e. just one load and must of found it doesn’t work for the overall concept, “torpedo soup” is here to stay.

The proper solution though is really to make torpedo attacks somewhat more effective.  I agree torpedoes must be here and be effective.

My assumption is that when he says Torpedo Soup he is referencing the fact that a cruiser might volley a dozen torpedoes at you 5 or 6 times in an engagement.

What is needed is a proper way to have a division of destroyers or cruisers spread their torpedoes out to make evasion far less effective.  That and an ability to coordinate so they all fire at or near the same time would largely solve the issues.

The issue with the multiple reloads (more than once and even doing it once demands a pretty specialized ship) is it continues on down your well laid out logic path and let’s cruisers and destroyers dominate the battle for a long period of time when they should be a fire and retreat type situation.  Tactically if I don’t have reloads (most western navies) I can either expend them early or late in an engagement to facilitate breaking off.

Right now the torpedo phase of the battle in anything I run dominates all considerations until every torpedo armed ship is sunk.

It will also help when we are in position to design all the ships in the fleet.  In general I don’t have the kind of screening ships I would want most times so that just adds to the annoyance.

I do think the dynamics for the underwater tubes work fairly well.  I was shocked because I never use them when an opposing battle line started putting a couple torpedoes into me ever few minutes.  Was really disruptive and punished me for closing the range when I had not needed to.  It is just the massed deck launchers that are awkward right now.

 

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