Jump to content
Game-Labs Forum

>>>Core Patch 0.5 Feedback Hotfix v90<<<


Nick Thomadis

Recommended Posts

13 minutes ago, killjoy1941 said:

I quite frankly don't understand why there are so many players on this forum who claim AoN is useless

I think there’s a general lack of understanding in some areas of naval architecture and history and it colours a lot of commentary. 
 

Which, to reiterate, is why I emphasize that performance in reality should inform implementation in game. It’s always easier to determine how useful something should be (in game), relative how useful it is (in game), if you know how useful it was (in actuality). 
 

Obviously, there are gradients of abstraction and granularity, but authenticity is still oriented towards an experience grounded in reality. 
 

All of that to say, it is easy to say AoN is useless if you don’t know what it was used for. Destroyers are useless if you expect them to win gunnery duels instead of screen, Protected Cruisers are useless if you want to place them in the battle line etc. 

Edited by DougToss
  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 minutes ago, killjoy1941 said:

Amusingly, that kind of AoN scheme works quite well even now. If I have access to AoN, I build AoN. I do often zero out the fore and aft armor because the near-guaranteed overpens which result mean your ship becomes highly resistant to damage very quickly.

I'll happily take any refinement to design you might come up with, but that kind of armor scheme does actually work quite well between comparable designs. I quite frankly don't understand why there are so many players on this forum who claim AoN is useless.

Many players might do that but place their turrets very much in front or rear so they are virtually unprotected. When we improve the citadel system, it is going to be clearer for all players how it works.

  • Like 11
Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, DougToss said:

I think there’s a general lack of understanding generally and it colours a lot of commentary. 
 

Which, to reiterate, is why I emphasize that performance in reality should inform implementation in game. It’s always easier to determine how useful something should be (in game), relative how useful it is (in game), if you know how useful it was (in actuality). 
 

Obviously, there are gradients of abstraction and granularity, but authenticity is still oriented towards an experience grounded in reality. 

I don't necessarily disagree with you; it's simply a question of game design. What compromises and abstractions are you going to make? What consequent compromises and abstractions do you then also have to make?

Successful devs, as in ones who actually complete games, always have a vision for what the end product is going to be, and they make design choices accordingly. Nick has three successful games under his belt. Since we're still looking at a partial black box, I find it difficult to criticize too harshly right now.

Two good examples we can look at are general strategic goals and technology. Right now, the naval academy missions are the best view we have into both.

Overall, the naval academy missions heavily favor the destruction of fleet elements. It would be easy to assume the campaign will work the same way, but the very existence of transports argue for a more complex system where attaining naval supremacy and doing Very Bad Things to enemy commerce will be as if not more important. We just don't have enough to know for sure right now.

Similarly, we know there are technology elements we just don't have access to. Will that be a very granular, highly player-controlled system, or something with less interaction and more of a policy-centered system? Again, we don't know.

It's design aspects like these which make me hesitant to speculate and criticize until I know a whole lot more. 🙂

Edited by killjoy1941
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Many players might do that but place their turrets very much in front or rear so they are virtually unprotected. When we improve the citadel system, it is going to be clearer for all players how it works.

That makes sense. Thanks for the clarification. 🙂

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just a real quick aside, here's a great example of feedback from sourcesleading to changes in a patchthat "feels" better in gameplay.

 

Quote

 

As of update 4.604, the .50cal has had three fundamental changes in response. First, the bullet weighs a bit bit more. Second, the bullet travels a little bit faster. Third, the dispersion pattern of the bullets has been altered so that they now spread out just a little more at the convergence distance than they did before.

The change seems to have had more of an effect than I would have guessed. Others can tell you the numbers but I’m more interested in how they practically affect my flying and combat effectiveness. The effect is not a dramatic one but rather a subtle one with some practical changes.

 

Ideas_Surprised_Pikachu_HD.jpg

Quote

Prior to this change, I never felt like the .50cal was as under performing as a few in the community suggested. On the other hand, and I’ve written this a few times, I always think it’s good to test, provide good data, and for development teams like 1CGS to be open to checking their work. In this case, a check was a valuable thing because a couple of errors have been corrected and my feeling was wrong.

I also still do not subscribe to the notion that they were previously useless weapons and are now suddenly useful. This update improves historical and simulated accuracy but it’s not magic.

This change is not, however, providing some magical benefit to Allied pilots that was not there before either. Han from the dev team even went to the forums to provide some data on what we should and should not expect of the weapon. Axis pilots are not going to be suddenly shot down in droves and Mustang, Thunderbolt, Lightning, Warhawk and other .50cal armed aircraft will still need to use smart and practiced gunnery techniques as they always have. They are hitting just a little harder than before.

The 1CGS team have consistently delivered on longstanding community wishes. It is sometimes hard to remember the good work that has been done when a new controversy comes up taking its place. It is also hard to remember that sometimes when the resolution is not immediately forthcoming. I would, however, submit to everyone that they absolutely listen to us, they do take action, and this latest update is not the last time that we’ll see the team tackle this legendary weapon and find better ways to simulate it and its contemporaries.

I have been consistently impressed by how @Nick Thomadis handles feedback, and I'm deeply appreciative for it. I'd write much the same about this project as was said about the 1CGS team.

Edited by DougToss
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, DougToss said:

A nation without a strong shipbuilding industry, naval architecture and staff work 25 years out of date, should be able to build better ships? 🤨

lol they ships they did manage to build weren’t that great, why would their paper projects be better?

The German Navy in World War One was the second biggest navy. Its shipbuilding industry no doubt is not as strong as the British, but to say it is "without a strong shipbuilding industry" is a bit much, and since Versailles doesn't happen in UAD, the "25 years out of date" doesn't apply.

As for the "ships they did manage to build". Today, we are mostly looking at Resistance, the abstraction of everything that makes a ship tougher, which may even extend beyond structural points to include crew practices. Let me remind you of the "quality" produce in this regard from a nation that I assume you would call having a "strong shipbuilding industry".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Indefatigable_(1909)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Queen_Mary

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Princess_Royal_(1911)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Hood

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Prince_of_Wales_(53) (this one retreated after a few hits from Bismarck ("not that great" ship). Later the same year, she will basically be wrecked ... by ONE aerial torpedo with a mere 450 pound warhead).

Oh just make your excuses, but these things did happen. 😄

My basic policy when it comes to realism vs balance is to emphasize realism on the known facts. However, go ahead and use the "fuzz zone" to balance the game. Which is to say, Paper ships are ideal places to start

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, killjoy1941 said:

I'll happily take any refinement to design you might come up with, but that kind of armor scheme does actually work quite well between comparable designs. I quite frankly don't understand why there are so many players on this forum who claim AoN is useless.

I don't. I do the exact same, as you can see, if I thought it was useless why would I use it? I'm just confused as to why 12" deck armour can shrug off any deck hit at any range when it's on an H-class, while a 16" deck is required for a smaller ship to do the same, or stuff like how the same 18" guns will survive multiple pens on a 100.000t+ BB but be disabled by a few partial pens on a smaller ship... like, it's the same friggin turret right? The turret itself shouldn't be more survivable because the hull underneath is bigger, or is that just me?

Anyway I hope stuff like the number of super-drydocks that can build & maintain these monster hulls will be limited in number in the campaign. That or some similar limitations...

I'm sure Nick and gang know what they're doing, just highlighting current frustrations.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, Evil4Zerggin said:

Instead of All or Nothing armor, how about just Nothing?

SR9Jb7B.png

CgvNQLF.png

More than 600 18" shells and still not sunk!

Jesus... literally no armour and you still had more ricochets and blocked shells than actual pens...

yeah, seems about right.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On a very different note, I think rangefinders & radars should be directly modelled as modules that can be damaged individually aside from the main turrets and towers.
Have a look at Bismarcks last stand:
http://www.kbismarck.com/bismarck-last-battle.html

The ship lost fighting capability long before she was in any danger of sinking, mainly due to hits scored on the rangefinders (both tower and turret mounted) allowing the british BBs to close in for the actual kill.
If you then look at something like the battle of north cape, the entire fight was pretty much dictated by which ships still had functional radars that hadn't been hit yet.
I wouldn't have any problem with german/Austro-hungarian ships having "unsinkable" characteristics, nor their turrets being virtually undamageable due to resistance buffs, IF these natural weakpoints were also modelled in-game.
The abstraction of "conning towers" being the end-all solution for repressenting such vital instruments are okay for alpha, but it becomes problematic once you realise that all the modules they supposedly abstract were defacto "un-armourable" IRL since they were by necessity mounted at the very top of the ship where adding armour would have made any given ship more unstable than the in-game equivalent of a full suite of 8" casemates. I really hope it can be ellaborated on before final release, since taking out these vital instruments played such a pivotal role in so many real world engagements.

EDIT

Huh, just played a 1933 fight and had my "fire-control" module damaged... I guess I'll eat my words then. @Nick Thomadis when did this get implemented, and any clues as to why it never shows up in 1940s tests?
Also, if this is indeed the final version of the mechanic, don't you think a 25% debuff is a bit lacking since... well... whenever this happened IRL that would usually be the defacto end of any ability to score hits at all for the given vessel?

Edited by Draco
  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@arkhangelsk what I’m trying to discuss here touches on things outside of wikipedia articles on British battlecruisers. Read Rules of the Game or don’t, but what you inadvertently did is show how an amateur understanding of hardware misses the point. Even the articles you linked demonstrate that hardware was not the determining factor.
 

There is a 700 page book that explains what happened to the battlecruisers that day. It is probably the greatest book on naval warfare I have ever read, and I recommend it to anyone. It goes into naval tradition, architecture, Industry, politics, institutions, leadership, and the men involved. You cannot understand battlecruisers without understanding Fisher and Beatty. It’s really something. 
 

 So - you tell me why you think there were explosions on British battlecruisers, and why that was something called “resistance” and not the result of practices in the BCF after Dogger Bank. Please explain why “resistance” better describes the problem than the BCF being based away from Scapa Flow and developing a culture of dash and elan, where safe handling practices were ignored - while out of the sight of The Grand Fleet. Explain how “resistance” created competition for rate of fire within the BCF and increasingly unsafe practices like filling the lifts and handling rooms with bags of propellant, all to achieve that goal. Then, explain how “Resistance” lead to the BCF leaving the 5th BS, the Queen Elizabeth fast battleships with “High Resistance” there to support them, behind.

 

These were not deficiencies of design. The battlecruisers in concept, design and construction were sound. When they were employed as intended - The Falklands in 1914 - they were splendid. The frustrations within the Royal Navy by 1916, the result of Heligoland  Bight, Dogger Bank and the Scarborough Raid, led to more and more risks being taken. BCF - the institution, not the physical hardware of the ships or their designs - inadvertently crept towards disaster because of these human factors. The Run To The South had nothing to do with ships, and everything to do with people. There was no armour in the world, no firepower, no speed, that could make up for a desire to prove BCF, race beyond the safety of the main force or even 5th BS, and place thousands of men in harms way.

 

Listen, you seem like a nice enough guy, but I don’t think we’re speaking the same language here. I don’t want you to take it personally, but I also don’t want to engage with you if you’re  going to be throwing up wikipedia articles to make your primary arguments. 
 

 @Draco has done a much better job trying to meet in the middle than I have, and I understand that I can come across as harsh, and I apologize for hurt feeling that may have caused . @killjoy1941has presented a lot of the game design perspectives I wouldn’t have thought of, and I’m appreciative. I know everybody is here to have a good time, and I want this to be a place where everybody feels that they’re heard and taken seriously. I know a lot of  great contributors - @RAMJB, @Steeltrap and others made a point to be positive in their discussions, and I think it’s been good for the atmosphere of discussion here overall. 
 

What I’ll try to do going forward is trust that @Draco consistently does a great job of explaining what historical discrepancies mean for gameplay, and is better able to connect to people looking at it through that lens. 

Edited by DougToss
  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Many players might do that but place their turrets very much in front or rear so they are virtually unprotected. When we improve the citadel system, it is going to be clearer for all players how it works.

Can't wait!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

42 minutes ago, DougToss said:

What I’ll try to do going forward is trust that @Draco consistently does a great job of explaining what historical discrepancies mean for gameplay, and is better able to connect to people looking at it through that lens. 

Nah dude, I'm no pro like you, Im just an average gamer like the rest who just so happens to have also pathologically watched every single video on drachinifel's youtube channel in sequence, and consequently have both perspectives to work from.
You just gotta remember that a lot of people on here aren't engineers or defense specialists and really don't know a lot about the complexities of warship construction in the 20th century, and so when people who actually know show up and start talking down to them for not knowing things that they have no real life incentive to know, they get defensive, which is only natural.
The middle ground you say I speak to is really just a matter of explaining things simply no matter how obvious they may seem to professionals, and assuming that wikipedia level knowledge is the general rule at this level of engagement.

That said, it doesn't mean your contributions towards keeping the game realistic aren't essential and needed, so please, don't leave me hanging as the only guy on here trying to "keep it real"! 😅
 

  • Like 3
  • Thanks 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Resistance is an absurdly stupid concept.

It shouldn't be a single value but depend on your ship design aka subdivisions, number of bulkheads, redundancy of some systems, damage control technology and crew training.

As for reality the resistance of british and german ships dogger bank and jutland ilustrates it perfectly.

British removed safety measures and germans added them after Dogger bank when Seydlitz barely avoided exploding. Lion took a beating but had only 1 dead and was not in danger of sinking.

Edited by Microscop
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, Draco said:

The middle ground you say I speak to is really just a matter of explaining things simply no matter how obvious they may seem to professionals, and assuming that wikipedia level knowledge is the general rule at this level of engagement.

I appreciate you saying this, because I know that not being mindful of that, and coming across as talking down to people is a big part of the problem on my end, and something I’m going to work to correct. I work in a bubble, and I definitely lose sight on that. I’ll watch that youtube channel, seeing how he presents the information in a positive and relatable way will probably help keep discussion here upbeat and fun.

 

 


 

 

 

780EE706-E641-45C9-A619-4CF5684536AD.jpeg

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/1/2021 at 8:00 AM, RedParadize said:

Speed may not equal armour but it certainly provide protection. Speed advantage give you the ability to chose if you engage or not. In face of a superior force I would rater be faster than heavily armoured... Because I could flee!

SMS Goeben approves of this comment👍

 

Edited by TAKTCOM
WAR FOR IMPROVEMENT
Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 minutes ago, TAKTCOM said:

SMS Goeben approves of this comment👍

Aside from obvious being able to pick your engagements what speed is protection meant to Fischer was that a fast battlecruiser can make small course changes to confuse enemy gunnery, the faster the ship is the bigger the effect will be. This has smaller effect on your own gunnery because you are aware of your own course changes more precisly than the enemy is. Also british at that time had superior fire control so this give them aditional adventage while doing that.

 

Also hhee tough guy Goben "I wil destroy the russian black sea fleet" but in reality i will get spanked and ran away from pre drednoughts.

Edited by Microscop
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, Microscop said:

Resistance is an absurdly stupid concept.

It shouldn't be a single value but depend on your ship design aka subdivisions, number of bulkheads, redundancy of some systems, damage control technology and crew training.

As for reality the resistance of british and german ships dogger bank and jutland ilustrate it perfectly.

British removed safety measures and germans added them after Dogger bank when Seydlitz barely avoided exploding. Lion took a beating but had only 1 dead and was not in danger of sinking.

well... it kinda also is that.

increase bulkheads and you increase resistance, add certain techs and you increase resistance.

In that sense the abstraction actually works pretty well.
The problem is when it's also the ONLY thing that flash fires, engine damage, turrets & fire-control knocked out ect. relies on... especially when certain hulls of certain navies have inherently more resistance than others, allowing them to stack up the bonuses to ludicrous levels.
I think the general idea of resistance is sound enough in theory, but if resistance also determines the likelihood of certain modules that are equally easy to damage on all hulls of all navies regardless of displacement or specific design choices IRL, then we end up with situations where ships that in reality were rendered combat incapable within the first few hits scored of an engagement (bismarck & scharnhorst) are able to keep fighting effectively for far longer than they would realistically in the game... which makes me sad 😥

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

1 hour ago, Microscop said:

Resistance is an absurdly stupid concept.

Depends on the implementation. It could be just one of the balance elements, does not affect anything or be obvious game-breaking bullshit.

At the moment hulls in total mixed bag of collision models problems, errors in weight offset settings and wrong ratios length-width. And of course, the balance of hulls  characteristics, let's be honest, is far from ideal.

I like the implementation of the qarters less. We choose between "small barracks" with a minimum of people, "medium barracks" with a normal number of people, and "large barracks" with a bunch of people. And basically, it's just another HP bar. Ugh.

22 minutes ago, Microscop said:

Aside from obvious being able to pick your engagements what speed is protection meant to Fischer was that a fast battlecruiser can make small course changes to confuse enemy gunnery, the faster the ship is the bigger the effect will be. This has smaller effect on your own gunnery because you are aware of your own course changes more precisly than the enemy is. Also british at that time had superior fire control so this give them aditional adventage while doing that.

Well, it was one of the ideas, which in some ways was justified, in some ways it was not. Battlecruisers of the Furious type, for example, clearly belonged to the second category. Well, at least Britain in WWI built interesting ships. I find the Royal Navy ships in WWII a little boring.

Edited by TAKTCOM
WAR FOR IMPROVEMENT
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

58 minutes ago, TAKTCOM said:

Well, at least Britain in WWI built interesting ships. I find the Royal Navy ships in WWII a little boring

In military affairs, boring is nearly universally good. It means the principles have been discovered, experimented with, tested, proven in battle, and then gradually standardized and incrementally improved. 
 

There is a reason why aeroplanes, AFVs, submarines, artillery pieces and warships had wacky and freewheeling designs when they were new, and generally have similar layouts now. Nobody needs to try a tank with sponsons and track over the hull as opposed  to something that has armament in turret and conventional tracks: From the FT-17 to the Leopard 2, they’ve seen what works.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, DougToss said:

In military affairs, boring is nearly universally good. It means the principles have been discovered, experimented with, tested, proven in battle, and then gradually standardized and incrementally improved. 
 

There is a reason why aeroplanes, AFVs, submarines, artillery pieces and warships had wacky and freewheeling designs when they were new, and generally have similar layouts now. Nobody needs to try a tank with sponsons and track over the hull as opposed  to something that has armament in turret and conventional tracks: From the FT-17 to the Leopard 2, they’ve seen what works.

Treaties limited what and how much could be built and money was a bigger issue so there was not much room to experiment and play around.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, arkhangelsk said:

The German Navy in World War One was the second biggest navy. Its shipbuilding industry no doubt is not as strong as the British, but to say it is "without a strong shipbuilding industry" is a bit much, and since Versailles doesn't happen in UAD, the "25 years out of date" doesn't apply.

As for the "ships they did manage to build". Today, we are mostly looking at Resistance, the abstraction of everything that makes a ship tougher, which may even extend beyond structural points to include crew practices. Let me remind you of the "quality" produce in this regard from a nation that I assume you would call having a "strong shipbuilding industry".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Indefatigable_(1909)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Queen_Mary

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Princess_Royal_(1911)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Hood

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Prince_of_Wales_(53) (this one retreated after a few hits from Bismarck ("not that great" ship). Later the same year, she will basically be wrecked ... by ONE aerial torpedo with a mere 450 pound warhead).

Oh just make your excuses, but these things did happen. 😄

My basic policy when it comes to realism vs balance is to emphasize realism on the known facts. However, go ahead and use the "fuzz zone" to balance the game. Which is to say, Paper ships are ideal places to start

Cherry picking ships that exploded due to poor safety procedures doesn't back up your point. Neither does mentioning Hood which by the evidence was a 1 in a million hit. 

PoW retreated b/c of her malfunctioning turrets had made her useless (she continued to shadow). She would also be sunk by 4 torpedoes the next year, mainly due to one hit being in the worst possible spot. But how about Scharnhorst being put out action by a single mine, then spending a year in dry dock?

But this is besides the point. The Germans did build exceptional ships. Anyone who reads logs of the final engagement of Bismarck can easily see that ship was built extremely well. But as is frequent in history, nations did not consistently build great ships. So the idea one nation's ships should have a magical trait is completely unrealistic to begin with. 

  • Thanks 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...