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


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Spotting of small ships still seems off to me.  Using a mid 1920’s USN battle line with super tall and tall cage mast I still had them popping up within 10,000 yards.

I would  suggest spotting them be very much a function of their speed.  They can stay hidden at very low speeds with little to no wake.  But at higher speeds they should be quite visible.

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2 hours ago, Bigjku said:

Spotting of small ships still seems off to me.  Using a mid 1920’s USN battle line with super tall and tall cage mast I still had them popping up within 10,000 yards.

I would  suggest spotting them be very much a function of their speed.  They can stay hidden at very low speeds with little to no wake.  But at higher speeds they should be quite visible.

Can confirm issue still exist in 1927 (prior was 1925).  I am currently getting pelted with 5 inch rounds and can't see anyone.  I expect to eat a torpedo any second now.

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29 minutes ago, Bigjku said:

Can confirm issue still exist in 1927 (prior was 1925).  I am currently getting pelted with 5 inch rounds and can't see anyone.  I expect to eat a torpedo any second now.

It seems to be a strange compound issue too.  most of the time I do a fight of capital units vs capital units or cruisers vs cruisers ect.

I am doing a battle of battleships vs some BC's, Cruisers and Destroyers.  And it isn't just the small units I can't see.  I hardly pick up anything until its all right on top of me.  I am taking 5 and 6 inch fire routinely before I can shoot at anything.  Even if I can't see the small ships I can't figure out why I can't see the heavy cruisers and battlecruisers.

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31 minutes ago, Bigjku said:

Can confirm issue still exist in 1927 (prior was 1925).  I am currently getting pelted with 5 inch rounds and can't see anyone.  I expect to eat a torpedo any second now.

Guys, what towers are you using? They have vastly different spotting range qualities, some towers are just straight up better than others in terms of spotting (but will of course cost more in terms of weight and $). Remember to check the stats of your towers before deciding which one to use, otherwise this is a likely and logical consequence.

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4 minutes ago, Draco said:

Guys, what towers are you using? They have vastly different spotting range qualities, some towers are just straight up better than others in terms of spotting (but will of course cost more in terms of weight and $). Remember to check the stats of your towers before deciding which one to use, otherwise this is a likely and logical consequence.

Its Modern tower 1 and the only available rear tower in the 1927 version and Super tall and tall cage mast in the 1922 one.  The former is as good as is an option at that point.  Cage mast aren't the best of the best but really were great spotting tops (they only lose their advantage when FC equipment got too heavy for them) as they were incredibly tall compared to other options.  They have the highest spotting scores in the game I can pick during those time frames.  So I am not going cheap.  I also have the best optics I can put on the ship for long range fire in the highest stereo rangefinder in each setup.

The game can put whatever stats it wants out there.  But in fair weather I basically operate blind against opponents when there are small ships on the water.  And it also clearly doesn't impact the other side which is shooting at me for significant lengths of time prior to me being able to engage.

I am not a 100% expert on this subject but I have a battleship with much higher spotting towers being charged down and shot at by destroyers and cruisers with much shorter towers.  I should be able to range on their hull before they can range on anything but my tower.  That is just the curvature of the earth at play really.

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I also find it frustrating that enemies are invisible while shooting beyond a certain range (perhaps excluding radar-equipped ones in bad conditions). I'm not sure what the best system would be, but this one seems terribly awkward.

Ends up with battleships with incredibly tall masts and fairly advanced fire control somehow unable to shoot back at -- or even see -- cruisers beyond ~9km range. Wouldn't be so bad if the cruisers weren't able to shoot with absolute impunity. One would think the constant gunflashes would make a good point of aim.

Maybe an accuracy penalty, instead?

Edited by disc
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9 hours ago, Bigjku said:

Its Modern tower 1 and the only available rear tower in the 1927 version and Super tall and tall cage mast in the 1922 one. 

Okay yeah, never had a problem with those before, sounds like you're on to something.

4 hours ago, disc said:

Maybe an accuracy penalty, instead?

That would make a lot of sense especially considering historical examples. Most of Admiral Scheer's battle line never actually saw the grand fleet because admiral Jellicoe managed to position himself with light conditions in his favour. Consequently, for 90% of the german dreadnoughts, all they could shoot at were the grand fleet's gun flashes.
Might I suggest that ships become auto-visible once they open fire, but with a hefty accuracy penalty somewhere around 50% and zero identification progress until they are "naturally" spotted by the other fleet's ships?
That would also give players a legitimate reason to hold their fire until the right moment so it adds a tactical layer too.

Edited by Draco
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One more thing that's really important. Now it looks like once ONE of fleet's ships spots something, EVERYTHING can shoot at it. Which results on you being pounded by all kinds of guns even from beyond the horison because there's some random lifeboat nearby, which probably can't even reach you with it's pistol. Or you shooting at enemy while they just blindly wander around with their guns silent (that also happens)

Every ship should open fire only on targets it sees by itself. Radio shared detection should only inform other ships that there is something, then AI may decide to steer towards that contact, and player must be informed of rough contact position in  clearly visible way.

Do this, and maybe entire system as it is will work properly.

Then add some visual fluff, like invisible ship's shells fading in only near you, instead of starting right from invisible muzzles of shooter's guns, unidentified ships looking vague and non recognisable, and visibility and identification state of each target being dependent on a ship it's viewed from. And maybe we could call this aspect finished then.

Edited by Cpt.Hissy
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Yeah @Cpt.Hissy I thought about something similar.

The optimal solution would be that all ships who don't have "natural" spotting on the enemy ship should get that 50% or whatever accuracy penalty, if the game engine can handle that of course. However I don't agree that individual ships should only be able to shoot at other ships that they themselves can see.

Look at the battle of north cape. The only ship that had functioning radar by the end of that fight was HMS Belfast (until HMS Duke of York caught up), but by relaying the course and speed of Scharnhorst to her allies, Sheffield and Norfolk were able to continue firing on and hitting the Scharnhorst in spite of having no idea where she was in terms of their own spotting capabilities.
They just shot where HMS Belfast told them to shoot, and it actually worked to some extend.

The same is still possible before radar, but should be further penalized according to whether they are in radio range, the same way the flagship mechanic works rn.

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55 minutes ago, Cpt.Hissy said:

One more thing that's really important. Now it looks like once ONE of fleet's ships spots something, EVERYTHING can shoot at it. Which results on you being pounded by all kinds of guns even from beyond the horison because there's some random lifeboat nearby, which probably can't even reach you with it's pistol. Or you shooting at enemy while they just blindly wander around with their guns silent (that also happens)

Every ship should open fire only on targets it sees by itself. Radio shared detection should only inform other ships that there is something, then AI may decide to steer towards that contact, and player must be informed of rough contact position in  clearly visible way.

Do this, and maybe entire system as it is will work properly.

Then add some visual fluff, like invisible ship's shells fading in only near you, instead of starting right from invisible muzzles of shooter's guns, unidentified ships looking vague and non recognisable, and visibility and identification state of each target being dependent on a ship it's viewed from. And maybe we could call this aspect finished then.

I think this is on the right track.  No one has cooperative engagement capability in 1940 or even 1960 for the most part.  I suspect that some navies did try to use cruisers or destroyers to spot and correct the fall of shot but I strongly suspect this would be limited to ranging corrections on a target the larger ship can actually see and use its fire control on.

My suggestions would be along the following lines and is close to what you suggest.

1.  You can only shoot at what that ship itself can see.  Agree 100% here.

2.  You should increase the spotting chances and range to varying degrees based on the level of radio technology installed.  So if my destroyer screen spots something it helps my big units find the target by focusing their attention on the correct bearing.

Install a high end talk between ships radio fit and your chances to spot at the maximum calculated spotting range go up 100%.  Basic radio it’s 50%.  No radio it’s 25%.  This gives the radio a bigger purpose beyond a command bonus.

3.  Tie visibility fairly strongly to the speed of the ships you are looking for and then negatively vary it with sea state (I think it may already do that for sea state but if not it should).  It would be fairly easy to miss seeing a destroyer at 20,000 yards in heavy seas if it’s just making steerageway.  But it would be almost impossible of calmer seas if the thing is doing 35 knots from a high spot position.  It will throw out a wake many times the length of the ship and it’s a contrast the human eye is drawn to naturally.

4.  The effect of making smoke should vary drastically depending on what you are doing.  It should be almost wholly ineffective for the ship making it when on a direct intercept course.  Unless that destroyer has an equal tail wind it will just fall behind the ship.  Might screen the rest of the column.  On the other hand smoke should be highly effective when sailing directly away.  It’s unclear to me now how it works with regard to other ships.  It seems to work more or less like a cloaking device just for the ship that makes it right now.

5.  Ships shooting should be drastically more likely to be seen.  Like 2-300% more likely to be seen.  It should be almost impossible absent very specific conditions (low sun in your eyes) to not see ships firing at you.  This can change a bit when radar gets highly advanced (doesn’t during game time frame) or if you had say a 1930’s ship fighting a 1890’s ship where it can and will fight beyond the range your spotting equipment was built for but for rough peers if it’s shooting at you you should see it.

6. If you really want to spice things up I would be all for doing things on a quadrant basis of spotting fore, aft, starboard and port.  Divide things up and if you are engaged to starboard your spotting to fore and aft becomes worse and to port it becomes flat bad.  This would actually give you reason to maneuver light units around more and reflect human tendency to focus on the issue at hand and mechanical limits on the number of high powered optical instruments available to each ship.

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1 hour ago, Bigjku said:

1.  You can only shoot at what that ship itself can see.  Agree 100% here.

Well, this is not historically accurate. The battle of the north cape is the most glaring example, but we have many other examples of ships hitting targets using only bearings relayed by other ships.

 

1 hour ago, Bigjku said:

3.  Tie visibility fairly strongly to the speed of the ships you are looking for and then negatively vary it with sea state (I think it may already do that for sea state but if not it should).  It would be fairly easy to miss seeing a destroyer at 20,000 yards in heavy seas if it’s just making steerageway.  But it would be almost impossible of calmer seas if the thing is doing 35 knots from a high spot position.  It will throw out a wake many times the length of the ship and it’s a contrast the human eye is drawn to naturally.

This doesn't make sense either. You don't spot a ships wake, you spot first their smoke and then their masts, and finally the ships themselves. Wakes only become visible well after that. Wakes aren't visible much beyond 10K yards, and then still only from a high position in the ship due to the curvature of the earth.
Here's a picture of HMS Hood and Prince of Whales from 17K yards. As you can see the ships are visible, their wakes are not.
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Of course you could argue that if a ship is going 35 knots vs 10 knots their smoke plume will be larger and therefore more visible, but that's a bit different.
Wakes only become a spotting factor once spotter planes are implemented, which is currently not on the drawing board as far as I know.

Other than that I agree with all your points. Especially the one about radio silence vs free communication, that would be awesome to see implemented in the game!

Edited by Draco
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1 hour ago, Draco said:

Well, this is not historically accurate. The battle of the north cape is the most glaring example, but we have many other examples of ships hitting targets using only bearings relayed by other ships.

North Cape happens in 1943.  The game effectively ends in 1940 and most of the meat of the game is earlier than that.  I agree it “can” be done.  But the circumstances of it being done are generally limited.  It works at North Cape with more advanced radar than the game would have and a single target to deal with.  TBS radios quickly went to crap in more crowded and complex engagements with multiple targets.

So I would say this is quite a complicated issue.  Shooting at a lone battleship that can’t shoot back is the equivalent of practice range work.  It is something that kind of worked in practice and sometimes works in reality.

1 hour ago, Draco said:

This doesn't make sense either. You don't spot a ships wake, you spot first their smoke and then their masts, and finally the ships themselves. Wakes only become visible well after that. Wakes aren't visible much beyond 10K yards, and then still only from a high position in the ship due to the curvature of the earth.
Here's a picture of HMS Hood and Prince of Whales from 17K yards. As you can see the ships are visible, their wakes are not.

This is a view from the deck.  Spotting tops are 100-150 feet in the air and the ocean is quite flat.  It’s a maybe or maybe not depending on the distance in my view.  I am thinking more from an aircrafts perspective to be honest but either way I think the spotting advantage goes to the ship with the higher spotting position as they can physically see further over the horizon than can the lower ship.

If a destroyer is 15 meters tall and my spotting tops 50 meters tall they are able to see the destroyer at 14.45 NM.  We can see each other’s fighting tops at 22.37 NM but the destroyer can only see my hull at 7.91 NM.  Regardless of how they are seen the battleship should have a full picture first by virtue of its fighting tops.  The destroyer could range on the fighting tops but can’t see it’s fall of shell until much closer.

Edited by Bigjku
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New update has just become available. Restart your launchers to receive it. It includes the following:

*HotFix v83* (15/3/2021)

  • Fixed issue that could cause the bug warning "Too many barrels".
  • Fixed issues that could make auto-design to fail at some cases, after many tries.
  • Improved boats and other ship decor so that they are appearing on ships as they should, without disappearing due to interference with other objects.
  • British Super Battlecruiser can now mount up to 20-inch guns (from previously 18-inch guns).
  • A few minor fixes to hull parts.
  • *Bonus Feature:* Unused casemate gun doors will now be auto-sealed with steel plates.

With hotfix v83 the following errors might not appear again:
- Sometimes the auto-design of a fleet in a custom battle or Naval Academy battle may delay too long and hang the game. 
- The "Too many threads" crash error.

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@BigjkuYes it is a complex issue, blindfire is very limited until you get things like the 274 fire control radar which doesn't appear until 41, as you said after the end of the game.

However, situations like the high seas fleet opening fire on jellicoe's grand fleet by spotting their gun flashes alone would be impossible if we limited it entirely to "what your ship sees it what it can shoot at", and it doesn't address the issue that originally spawned the discussion, namely destroyers and cruisers opening fire at 9km with impunity bc of low spotting values.
This is mainly why I support the "they can fire but have severe penalties" stance, as the alternative would rule out re-enacting situations like jutland (at least down to the minute details).
Wakes should obviously be important for spottings ships, but only when aircraft are introduced to the game (and if they are).

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9 minutes ago, Draco said:

@BigjkuYes it is a complex issue, blindfire is very limited until you get things like the 274 fire control radar which doesn't appear until 41, as you said after the end of the game.

However, situations like the high seas fleet opening fire on jellicoe's grand fleet by spotting their gun flashes alone would be impossible if we limited it entirely to "what your ship sees it what it can shoot at", and it doesn't address the issue that originally spawned the discussion, namely destroyers and cruisers opening fire at 9km with impunity bc of low spotting values.
This is mainly why I support the "they can fire but have severe penalties" stance, as the alternative would rule out re-enacting situations like jutland (at least down to the minute details).
Wakes should obviously be important for spottings ships, but only when aircraft are introduced to the game (and if they are).

I am fine with firing with sever penalty in accuracy as well.

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The talk about radar in the game and timeframe raises a question that could use clarification. Radar I we can assume to be a basic search radar. Radar II adds significant accuracy buffs, which seem to be more akin to the high fidelity sets that could detect periscopes and shell splashes. 

Now if it that is what Radar II is implying, then you would have "blind fire" abilities in a game timeframe before they existed. To me this seems similar to the inclusion of 19" and 20" guns. Those advanced Radar sets could have been developed a few years sooner, just like 19" and 20" guns (and 18"s existed before Yamato). 

So the question is, what does Radar II represent and why couldn't it give blind fire ability before real world?

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6 minutes ago, madham82 said:

The talk about radar in the game and timeframe raises a question that could use clarification. Radar I we can assume to be a basic search radar. Radar II adds significant accuracy buffs, which seem to be more akin to the high fidelity sets that could detect periscopes and shell splashes. 

Now if it that is what Radar II is implying, then you would have "blind fire" abilities in a game timeframe before they existed. To me this seems similar to the inclusion of 19" and 20" guns. Those advanced Radar sets could have been developed a few years sooner, just like 19" and 20" guns (and 18"s existed before Yamato). 

So the question is, what does Radar II represent and why couldn't it give blind fire ability before real world?

Most likely just placeholders, and im guessing this game like RTW's will focus on alt-history rather a historic playthrough, unless it gives us the option like Hearts of iron.

So anything goes really, Radar 2 might just be an improved search radar. You had a pulse radar system in 1934 and a metric wavelength system, plus the type 281 as well along with the rus 1 and 2 systems and the seetkat too. All these before 1940 or during 1940.

Too be honest, i dont think it matters a whole lot. As long we dont see early missiles or very advanced radars systems or maybe the computer assisted firing systems it should be fine.

Unless the game goes past 1940 to 1945 or even 1950.

 

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I'm actually just going to casually note, actually, that there were a number of experiments of blind firing throughout the 1920s and 1930s, which were more or less successful depending on the specific case. The best way to make it work in my opinion would be that you need some form of radio communication, along with (assuming that fire control computers become their own thing separated from the rangefinders, which they should), a sufficiently advanced fire control computer, something contemporaneous to, say, the Admiralty table.

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Ship-based spotters could direct the fire of other ships in the division. This is the idea behind range clocks and turret rotation markings. Short-range radio could be used for the same purpose.

This required special coordination and training, and it was only useful if the shooting ships were close to each other. Range clocks did not stay in service for very long, mind.

Artillery computers after the Dreyer tables could generally predict the movement of an obscured target based on previous observations.

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A US range clock.

 

But, again, I think the game has a ton of room for improvement here.

Edited by disc
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58 minutes ago, disc said:

Ship-based spotters could direct the fire of other ships in the division. This is the idea behind range clocks and turret rotation markings. Short-range radio could be used for the same purpose.

This required special coordination and training, and it was only useful if the shooting ships were close to each other. Range clocks did not stay in service for very long, mind.

Artillery computers after the Dreyer tables could generally predict the movement of an obscured target based on previous observations.

A US range clock.

But, again, I think the game has a ton of room for improvement here.

So I would say a simple fix (for now) is to add a penalty to blind firing ships. Then when crews come along, if there are training/specialization, those could reduce it. 

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