>>> Update v1.05 Feedback<<<

[SodaBit]

Some quick campaign feedback here, pretty self explanatory.
Unless His Majesty has the charisma of a cult leader, I'm not sure he can spin this one as a victory for the British Empire.

[havaduck]

Some more specific feedback:  

(I cant seem to attach screen, so I embeded them from external source. Forgive me for the resolution but I didnt want to do the usual 50 % size reduction since in this case readability is crucial)

 

1. DD resiliance to trops: I noticed that my CL felt overall useless due to their extremely lackluster gun performance whilst also being extremely vulnerable to torps themselves - yes with anti torp, max and reinforced bulkheads and what not. Even 1 would leave them completely crippled and close to sinking with barely any or no speed left.  A DD takes a lot more to be left the same wreck.

So basically an 18 " Torpedo with a warhead of lets say 150 kg of explosives does the same amount of damage of an HE shell of a 5" gun to a ~ 1.000 ton DD. Yeah I call BS on that. If an 18 " Torp hits a BB without Anti Trop 3 or any really I expect at least something like 1500-2000 to pop up - per torp ofc.

 

2. I gotta ask how the "You are blockaded system works" - or rather if I should pay any antention to it yet. I can understand if it is work in progress, then I will just ignore it and be fine. Right now it bothers me because it seems like a feature that you are suppose to interact with but I dont understand it and havent learnt anyhting yet. The numbers to the left and right are still readable: 

How the hell are the british blockading me? Ive got more ships in total, more tonnage/heavy units and unlike some of theirs, mine are actually in the North Sea. I have 3 active task forces there too with their power projection circles, but again if I look at the transports lost ...... yeah I lost 1/3 more and I am the one blockaded.

 

3. The case of the sternchase. Right now the AI loves to run away wich ofc gives them superb armor angling and therfore thickness. I have no problem with that, its smart. The point of pissing of starts when you have (ie damaged) ship and you got speed supperiority and you cant the hello kitty get to a broadside because the AI is content to dive in 5 knts circles indefintely. Now in reality the AI would need to try to flee in a certain direction (the homebase, reinforcements, darkness, whatever) which would give structure to the hole thing. The game reminds me a lot of Fighting Steel and I dont know if you guys played that, but it had a "retreat direction": for example the enemy was in the "west" but your retreat corridor is 180° to 225 °.  This gives struture. If I or the AI has to go somewhere, they can be cut off. Or I can go to a parralel cours and gaining on them. You get the idea.

In the mean time, all I have learnt so far is that I have to put torp tubes on anything so that I can just drive bow in to anything already slowed but running away which I cant just rofl stomp with bigger guns (read: anything of smaller class) just so I may torp it to shit point blanc thus cirumventing spending a whole BBs magazine worth of shells on ricoshets and partial pens and countless minutes realtime on x5 speed ......

 

4. Secondaries are useless against small targets : I am thorn in this one. On one hand I kinda enjoy that pressure to bigger guns but if there is a DD comming and I got 4 x 2 12" and a whole bunch of 6 " its basically the 12 " I am waiting for to take 1k or so out of its HP pool and leave it crippled; and even then the seondaries cant seem to finish anyhting of.  Which leeds to 5.

 

5. The AI is extremely cowardly, which is fine. It loves to have me run into their torps and traps but its so easy to .... just not. If they are the "attacker" on a convoy I will just dash in with watherever light and useless ships I have available. This has 3 benefits: It daws torps, it draws gunfire and since those ships have torps it automatically pushes the heavy (and slower) enemy units away. Then I just I start to run (ignoring their heavy ships and maybe turning on them later) and start shooting the chasing light enemy ships to scrap metal and boom, outstanding victory.

The AI actually focuses anything with torps/light ships in general so much, that you can casually park a group of BBs on its broadside just a few kms away while a ultrascary and torp-empty DD draws fire - and who cares if that DD sinks. It is something I can actually build during a campaign; though most of the time I can actually save them. However if that DD buys me enough time for lets say 3 BBs to each pump a few full salvos into a broadside while unchallanged ........

 

6. I am not a native speaker so I hope it doesnt sound to rough, overall I see huge potential in this game. Like whatever guy did the the flash fires deserves a medal, but gues what my favorite visual is? The shells ricoshetting off a target. I will routinely set my (useless anyway) secondaries to AP just so I can enjoy the pling pling and watch the shells tumble into the water.

The campaign I did had some Jutland style battles, but not the kind that are unavoidable, so ofc I ignored them, which in my book is the perfect solution: Those that want them got them and the other way around too.

 

7. First time I played on hard, may I ask what each difficulty setting actually does?

 

Seems rather wall-ish so I stop here.

Edited April 21, 2022 by havaduck

[admiralsnackbar]

My recommendation for the campaign management of fleets is to more or less steal [with some modifications] the system that exists in HOI4:

Fleets:

> Left hand side bar where the fleets are arranged vertically in 'blocks' (ideally you could name each fleet)
> Divisions within the fleet are simply columns that are nested within the block

> Individual ships are shown as small icons within each division, (optional: with perhaps red/orange/blue vertical bars to show the ships current ammo, hp, flood status)
> You can drag and drop any ship into any division, similarly you can drag any division into any fleet. 
> Optional: icons on individual ships indicating status: (in repair, refit, engaged, in port, at sea, etc. )
> 'Reserve Fleet' is any ship not yet allocated to a division such as a newly built ship or one taken out of a division by the player or AI

Sea Zones:

> Fleets and divisions have three independent mission parameters, the home port, the mission zone, and the mission
> The port is simply where the ship goes for refit and repair by default (unless the player issues a custom order)
> Mission zone is simply the region of sea that the fleet is assigned to, it is independent of the port insofar as you can do any mission from any port but the game does an efficiency check to ensure that the ship with the shortest range in a division can make it to the sea region. If it can't then the division cannot contribute to the sea zone. 
> the AI should be able to make judgements about the best port it can use to improve the efficiency of the mission and allocate the tonnage for different regions. 

Missions

> Missions are divided into the following categories: Convoy Defense, Fleet in being, Patrol-Convoy Raid
> Convoy defense means the fleet or division will always be assigned to a convoy 
> Patrol-Convoy Raid will look either for convoys or other patrolling fleets, if either of these are spotted you have the option to engage immediately or if wait for backup from other divisions/fleets allocated to that sea zone. Depending on the speed of the ships involved the AI might get away if you wait, they might also attack you outright if your patroling ships are too weak and/or too slow compared to what they are spotting.
> Fleet in being ships remain in port and will only sortie if enemy ships attempt to attack the port or to participate in battles where other ships are spotted ('Fleet in being' is still allocated to a sea zone so both the port and the sea zone are defended, but less efficiently then if they were not in port)
> You can also allow for port raids as they do currently if you want high risk / high reward or want to try and destroy an enemy in a single decisive battle. 

Since minelayers and submarines are part of the tech tree I suspect the Devs have their own ideas about refinements to the campaign, what i've described above should be compatible with those systems. 



 

[Steeltrap]

On 4/13/2022 at 11:26 PM, Spitfire109 said:

So you want cruisers to have no real chance against a capital ship? Or are you just salty your crappy BC got wrecked by a ship half it's tonnage? The only loser here seems to be the 'Flora'.

You can't have it both ways.

If Nick is going to insist on the game "priding itself on realism" then a cruiser armed with 7" and 5" guns against a capital ship with 14" belt and 7" deck armour MUST get smashed with next to no damage done in return.

This whole "we need shells to damage things they realistically couldn't because 'fairness' demands it" is the ANTITHESIS of "priding realism".

War ISN'T fair. The idea, if you've a brain, is to make it as UNFAIR FOR YOUR ENEMY as you possibly can. If you're NOT thinking that way, don't start a war and don't be in charge of one.

But apparently it's necessary because reasons.

There are a LOT of mechanics in this game that are simply miles from realism.

Seeing a capital ship trashed by small calibre naval guns, ESPECIALLY by fire, is absurd UNLESS there are some truly remarkable conditions involved. Point blank fire at night, such as happened around Guadalcanal, is a case where it's possible, but that's because the armour on the IJN BCs wasn't all that great and 8" USN guns at a few thousand yards had enough penetration to deal with it. At the same time, however, USN South Dakota (in a different battle) got hit by at least 23 hits from memory, up to and including 14", and suffered NO 'loss of ship threatening' damage. The Captain's battle report pointed out the fires that started in the superstructure were small and rapidly extinguished.

The "lessons" of Tsushima, especially about effectiveness of HE and dangers of fires, were in fact INCORRECT. Proper analysis of the results proved what everybody already knew: ships sink through loss of buoyancy, which means water entering the hull. I don't believe (again, haven't checked) that a single Russian ship sank due to fires. It was all mines, torpedoes or penetrating hits at/below the waterline. Sure, fires can and do impede crew efficiency. The likelihood of fires making a ship impossible to survive, however, is extraordinarily small unless, again, some truly peculiar circumstances are present. The obvious exception was CVs in WW2 of course, but that's an entirely different subject and doesn't belong here (and even it isn't cut and dried).

Interestingly enough, none other than Jellicoe himself understood that last bit, making the point that the HE fire at longer ranges might prove distracting but that the killing of ships wouldn't be possible until their armour might be penetrated at ranges of approximately 10,000yds or less. That's more or less what he stated leading up to Jutland, and his battle plans were made with that general premise central to his thoughts.

Apart from any other issue, a shell that doesn't penetrate the main armour of a hull (or anything else for that matter) ought NOT start a fire. It takes remarkably little armour to defeat an HE shell. Approx 3" of standard WW2 armour would defeat a USN 16" HE round. The idea a 7" or 5" round hitting armour greatly over its capacity to penetrate yet it can STILL start a fire is bollocks. The shell burster WON'T function in pretty much every case of a 'partial' penetration, and it is largely a function of the bursting charge that fires start. An HE shell, as I said, would simply detonate on the surface and leave a shallow dent. It WON'T start a fire INSIDE that armour.

None of this ought to be news to people who have read a lot on the subject. Go to www.navweaps.com and look around in the historical article section and there are all sorts of great material. Nathan Okun is a person with his own section in navweaps because he's such an expert, and has designed programs you can download that will simulate the performance of various guns striking various types of armour with various types of shells. It's astoundingly detailed, and fascinating. Also gives you an idea of how complicated it really is.

Problem the game seems to have had, and I've not bothered with it for a long time now, was the rush to ensure certain things were possible resulted in those things happening SO many times more than anything vaguely close to verified historical realism that it became almost a parody.

Turrets popping off like champagne corks due to flash fires, for example? Happened all the time in game. Even 4" guns on open mounts without direct ammo feeds etc on Transport ships could have "flash fires" (which didn't stop those gun firing afterwards; I don't believe I EVER managed to destroy a TR's guns before the ship itself sank). Now go research how frequently that happened historically. Same goes for flash fires leading to magazine explosions YET the ship not sinking. That's astoundingly rare for the first element, and all but IMPOSSIBLE for the second. Yet again, saw it many times.

We went over all this and a crap ton more for a few years around here. Didn't really make any difference, there wasn't much appetite for something that deserves the right to claim it prides itself on realism.

Maybe it's changed now?

If someone I trust says so, I might check it. I've not seen anything to suggest the battle mechanics have addressed the many obvious problems, however, and until they do the rest of it (campaigns etc) is of no interest to me. Why would I go to all sorts of efforts to design ships and all the other things required in the campaign if the battles themselves remain as silly and predictable as they were?

Cheers

Edited April 24, 2022 by Steeltrap

[Steeltrap]

On 4/22/2022 at 5:29 AM, SodaBit said:

Given that the Big Seven were coming online in the early to mid 20's it seems a bit weird that smaller, more widely used guns would be at the same level of maturity (or lower) as the new highest caliber guns? Also, iirc, the 15" guns used at Jutland weren't hilariously inaccurate in comparison to the 11" and 12" guns, the accuracy was actually considered to be better on the Q.E's, but that might just be down to crew training.

Yeah, at least one of the QE's proved to be one of the most accurate ships in the entire order of battle of Jutland.

[Urst]

1 hour ago, Steeltrap said:

You can't have it both ways.

If Nick is going to insist on the game "priding itself on realism" then a cruiser armed with 7" and 5" guns against a capital ship with 14" belt and 7" deck armour MUST get smashed with next to no damage done in return.

This whole "we need shells to damage things they realistically couldn't because 'fairness' demands it" is the ANTITHESIS of "priding realism".

War ISN'T fair. The idea, if you've a brain, is to make it as UNFAIR FOR YOUR ENEMY as you possibly can. If you're NOT thinking that way, don't start a war and don't be in charge of one.

But apparently it's necessary because reasons.

There are a LOT of mechanics in this game that are simply miles from realism.

Seeing a capital ship trashed by small calibre naval guns, ESPECIALLY by fire, is absurd UNLESS there are some truly remarkable conditions involved. Point blank fire at night, such as happened around Guadalcanal, is a case where it's possible, but that's because the armour on the IJN BCs wasn't all that great and 8" USN guns at a few thousand yards had enough penetration to deal with it. At the same time, however, USN South Dakota (in a different battle) got hit by at least 23 hits from memory, up to and including 14", and suffered NO 'loss of ship threatening' damage. The Captain's battle report pointed out the fires that started in the superstructure were small and rapidly extinguished.

The "lessons" of Tsushima, especially about effectiveness of HE and dangers of fires, were in fact INCORRECT. Proper analysis of the results proved what everybody already knew: ships sink through loss of buoyancy, which means water entering the hull. I don't believe (again, haven't checked) that a single Russian ship sank due to fires. It was all mines, torpedoes or penetrating hits at/below the waterline. Sure, fires can and do impede crew efficiency. The likelihood of fires making a ship impossible to survive, however, is extraordinarily small unless, again, some truly peculiar circumstances are present. The obvious exception was CVs in WW2 of course, but that's an entirely different subject and doesn't belong here (and even it isn't cut and dried).

Interestingly enough, none other than Jellicoe himself understood that last bit, making the point that the HE fire at longer ranges might prove distracting but that the killing of ships wouldn't be possible until their armour might be penetrated at ranges of approximately 10,000yds or less. That's more or less what he stated leading up to Jutland, and his battle plans were made with that general premise central to his thoughts.

Apart from any other issue, a shell that doesn't penetrate the main armour of a hull (or anything else for that matter) ought NOT start a fire. It takes remarkably little armour to defeat an HE shell. Approx 3" of standard WW2 armour would defeat a USN 16" HE round. The idea a 7" or 5" round hitting armour greatly over its capacity to penetrate yet it can STILL start a fire is bollocks. The shell burster WON'T function in pretty much every case of a 'partial' penetration, and it is largely a function of the bursting charge that fires start. An HE shell, as I said, would simply detonate on the surface and leave a shallow dent. It WON'T start a fire INSIDE that armour.

None of this ought to be news to people who have read a lot on the subject. Go to www.navweaps.com and look around in the historical article section and there are all sorts of great material. Nathan Okun is a person with his own section in navweaps because he's such an expert, and has designed programs you can download that will simulate the performance of various guns striking various types of armour with various types of shells. It's astoundingly detailed, and fascinating. Also gives you an idea of how complicated it really is.

Problem the game seems to have had, and I've not bothered with it for a long time now, was the rush to ensure certain things were possible resulted in those things happening SO many times more than anything vaguely close to verified historical realism that it became almost a parody.

Turrets popping off like champagne corks due to flash fires, for example? Happened all the time in game. Even 4" guns on open mounts without direct ammo feeds etc on Transport ships could have "flash fires" (which didn't stop those gun firing afterwards; I don't believe I EVER managed to destroy a TR's guns before the ship itself sank). Now go research how frequently that happened historically. Same goes for flash fires leading to magazine explosions YET the ship not sinking. That's astoundingly rare for the first element, and all but IMPOSSIBLE for the second. Yet again, saw it many times.

We went over all this and a crap ton more for a few years around here. Didn't really make any difference, there wasn't much appetite for something that deserves the right to claim it prides itself on realism.

Maybe it's changed now?

If someone I trust says so, I might check it. I've not seen anything to suggest the battle mechanics have addressed the many obvious problems, however, and until they do the rest of it (campaigns etc) is of no interest to me. Why would I go to all sorts of efforts to design ships and all the other things required in the campaign if the battles themselves remain as silly and predictable as they were?

Cheers

Is just game, why you heff to be mad?

This game can never be realistic, and never will be. Being as accurate as possible is what they're after.
Also: the 5" guns of USS Laffey DD-459 penned the 10" citadel armor of IJN Hiei, nearly killing the Japanese fleets admiral, at around a 60º angle, even though they were only rated for 5" of armor penetration. Maybe it was at 300 yards, but I can't see getting that much more pen between 4000 yards and 300, given that she's only down to 4" at 5400 yards and 3" pen at 7400 yards.

[SpardaSon21]

5 hours ago, Urst said:

Is just game, why you heff to be mad?

This game can never be realistic, and never will be. Being as accurate as possible is what they're after.
Also: the 5" guns of USS Laffey DD-459 penned the 10" citadel armor of IJN Hiei, nearly killing the Japanese fleets admiral, at around a 60º angle, even though they were only rated for 5" of armor penetration. Maybe it was at 300 yards, but I can't see getting that much more pen between 4000 yards and 300, given that she's only down to 4" at 5400 yards and 3" pen at 7400 yards.

That's because A. Japanese Vickers armor was terrible, and B. they're rated for that penetration at range.  Hiei also had only 8 inches of centerline armor, not 10.

 

No, really, their armor was absolutely terrible.  That overall rating of 0.839 is on par with WW1 armors. Trying to use Japanese armor as a basis for pen, especially for small rounds, is laughable considering even the over-hardened American armor performs better than it when hit by anything smaller than a 18" shell.

[Urst]

2 minutes ago, SpardaSon21 said:

That's because A. Japanese Vickers armor was terrible, and B. they're rated for that penetration at range.  Hiei also had only 8 inches of centerline armor, not 10.

 

No, really, their armor was absolutely terrible.  That overall rating of 0.839 is on par with WW1 armors. Trying to use Japanese armor as a basis for pen, especially for small rounds, is laughable considering even the over-hardened American armor performs better than it when hit by anything smaller than a 18" shell.

I didn't say "centerline" armor, I said coning tower armor, and Hiei's coning tower was at 10", but fair enough.
Though I have no hello kittying clue what any of the numbers on the chart mean other than that i can guess that "EFF" is effective, but none of that is explained anywhere.

[SpardaSon21]

6 hours ago, Urst said:

10" citadel armor of IJN Hiei

Citadel/conning tower.

And here you go for definitions.  Its complicated, but yes, quite pennable.  Especially since Hiei at 10" of conning tower armor used homogenous, not face-hardened armor.  Which is only 95% overall effectiveness compared to US Class B homogenous armor.

[Finwenolofinwe]

2 hours ago, SpardaSon21 said:

That's because A. Japanese Vickers armor was terrible, and B. they're rated for that penetration at range.  Hiei also had only 8 inches of centerline armor, not 10.

 

No, really, their armor was absolutely terrible.  That overall rating of 0.839 is on par with WW1 armors. Trying to use Japanese armor as a basis for pen, especially for small rounds, is laughable considering even the over-hardened American armor performs better than it when hit by anything smaller than a 18" shell.

That may well be, a penetration proper of the conning tower still seems very unlikely. Splinters entering through slits or spalling are far more believable causes of casualties. This (in addition to the crampedness and horrendous visibility) was considered enough of an issue that the RN simply dropped the concept and went for more extended splinter protection. And that is even assuming the Admiral was in the conning tower which i have been unable to confirm and would consider unlikely due to space and more importantly visibility issues.

Edit: Also while there were issues with very thick plates (especially the turret face plates) i think you are very much overstating. Also WW1 quality or production armour would not exactly be a rarity in any navy and many did not advance much further.

Edit: Penetration tables are difficult to trust and often contradictory. I personally would not put too much faith into any table considering american armour more effective than british or german plate without further explanation of the samples used.

Edited April 24, 2022 by Finwenolofinwe

[Spitfire109]

On 4/24/2022 at 3:43 AM, Steeltrap said:

You can't have it both ways.

If Nick is going to insist on the game "priding itself on realism" then a cruiser armed with 7" and 5" guns against a capital ship with 14" belt and 7" deck armour MUST get smashed with next to no damage done in return.

This whole "we need shells to damage things they realistically couldn't because 'fairness' demands it" is the ANTITHESIS of "priding realism".

War ISN'T fair. The idea, if you've a brain, is to make it as UNFAIR FOR YOUR ENEMY as you possibly can. If you're NOT thinking that way, don't start a war and don't be in charge of one.

But apparently it's necessary because reasons.

There are a LOT of mechanics in this game that are simply miles from realism.

Seeing a capital ship trashed by small calibre naval guns, ESPECIALLY by fire, is absurd UNLESS there are some truly remarkable conditions involved. Point blank fire at night, such as happened around Guadalcanal, is a case where it's possible, but that's because the armour on the IJN BCs wasn't all that great and 8" USN guns at a few thousand yards had enough penetration to deal with it. At the same time, however, USN South Dakota (in a different battle) got hit by at least 23 hits from memory, up to and including 14", and suffered NO 'loss of ship threatening' damage. The Captain's battle report pointed out the fires that started in the superstructure were small and rapidly extinguished.

The "lessons" of Tsushima, especially about effectiveness of HE and dangers of fires, were in fact INCORRECT. Proper analysis of the results proved what everybody already knew: ships sink through loss of buoyancy, which means water entering the hull. I don't believe (again, haven't checked) that a single Russian ship sank due to fires. It was all mines, torpedoes or penetrating hits at/below the waterline. Sure, fires can and do impede crew efficiency. The likelihood of fires making a ship impossible to survive, however, is extraordinarily small unless, again, some truly peculiar circumstances are present. The obvious exception was CVs in WW2 of course, but that's an entirely different subject and doesn't belong here (and even it isn't cut and dried).

Interestingly enough, none other than Jellicoe himself understood that last bit, making the point that the HE fire at longer ranges might prove distracting but that the killing of ships wouldn't be possible until their armour might be penetrated at ranges of approximately 10,000yds or less. That's more or less what he stated leading up to Jutland, and his battle plans were made with that general premise central to his thoughts.

Apart from any other issue, a shell that doesn't penetrate the main armour of a hull (or anything else for that matter) ought NOT start a fire. It takes remarkably little armour to defeat an HE shell. Approx 3" of standard WW2 armour would defeat a USN 16" HE round. The idea a 7" or 5" round hitting armour greatly over its capacity to penetrate yet it can STILL start a fire is bollocks. The shell burster WON'T function in pretty much every case of a 'partial' penetration, and it is largely a function of the bursting charge that fires start. An HE shell, as I said, would simply detonate on the surface and leave a shallow dent. It WON'T start a fire INSIDE that armour.

None of this ought to be news to people who have read a lot on the subject. Go to www.navweaps.com and look around in the historical article section and there are all sorts of great material. Nathan Okun is a person with his own section in navweaps because he's such an expert, and has designed programs you can download that will simulate the performance of various guns striking various types of armour with various types of shells. It's astoundingly detailed, and fascinating. Also gives you an idea of how complicated it really is.

Problem the game seems to have had, and I've not bothered with it for a long time now, was the rush to ensure certain things were possible resulted in those things happening SO many times more than anything vaguely close to verified historical realism that it became almost a parody.

Turrets popping off like champagne corks due to flash fires, for example? Happened all the time in game. Even 4" guns on open mounts without direct ammo feeds etc on Transport ships could have "flash fires" (which didn't stop those gun firing afterwards; I don't believe I EVER managed to destroy a TR's guns before the ship itself sank). Now go research how frequently that happened historically. Same goes for flash fires leading to magazine explosions YET the ship not sinking. That's astoundingly rare for the first element, and all but IMPOSSIBLE for the second. Yet again, saw it many times.

We went over all this and a crap ton more for a few years around here. Didn't really make any difference, there wasn't much appetite for something that deserves the right to claim it prides itself on realism.

Maybe it's changed now?

If someone I trust says so, I might check it. I've not seen anything to suggest the battle mechanics have addressed the many obvious problems, however, and until they do the rest of it (campaigns etc) is of no interest to me. Why would I go to all sorts of efforts to design ships and all the other things required in the campaign if the battles themselves remain as silly and predictable as they were?

Cheers

You sure do love just quoting numbers. I bet you loved math back in school. If it was all just numbers than this game would always be decided before battle even commences. Oh! The other guy's ship is simply larger than mine. I shall now perish and die. You forget the several times in at least WW2 where squadrons of CLs and CAs managed to hold their own or even gain advantage over capital ships due to superior position, numbers, training, or various other factor. When Belfast and her squadron found Scharnhorst in the north sea they didn't look at it and say "Oh no our puny pathetic 6' guns cannot HOPE to harm the ships 350mm belt!" instead they tightened their belts and said "Come on chaps! Jerry wont sink himself!" And you know what happened? Those cruisers so beat the hell out of the battleship so severely it didn't even see DoY coming to blast it with the 14's. Though had DoY not been there I'm certain either a close range torpedo attack may have been tried. Importantly though the Scharnhorst was essentially taken out of the fight from repeated hits from weapons you'd say couldn't harm it.

Yes, HE is very very strong right now. Too strong but this game IS in Alpha and trying to both make it fun and realistic is hard. Especially since you can really replicate everything in real life in a game. 
But cruisers severely damaging and disabling a BB with gunfire alone is far from impossible.

Edited April 25, 2022 by Spitfire109

[o Barão]

11 minutes ago, Spitfire109 said:

And you know what happened? Those cruisers so beat the hell out of the battleship so severely it didn't even see DoY coming to blast it with the 14's

No need to exaggerate. This is a far cry from what actually happened.

[Spitfire109]

4 minutes ago, o Barão said:

No need to exaggerate. This is a far cry from what actually happened.

Not exactly, Duke of York literally ambushed Scharnhorst due to its Radar and such being nearly completely destroyed by the cruisers. It had also lost speed and couldn't fire back effectively due to severe damage to its RF equipment. And yes, Duke of York obliterated Scharnhorst.

[SpardaSon21]

1 hour ago, Spitfire109 said:

Not exactly, Duke of York literally ambushed Scharnhorst due to its Radar and such being nearly completely destroyed by the cruisers. It had also lost speed and couldn't fire back effectively due to severe damage to its RF equipment. And yes, Duke of York obliterated Scharnhorst.

Let me know when substantial superstructure damage actually has a significant effect on your ship's performance like it did IRL, and then we'll talk about what HE should and should not be able to do.

[SodaBit]

I've got some more Campaign/Auto-Designer feedback here.
Again, I think the AI's priorities for certain classes needs to be addressed. I'm not going to go into great detail about the role of BB's, but suffice to say that when a fleet's heavy hitters can only manage a light shove, you should return to the drawing board.
1920's campaign, Royal Navy BB is armed with 6 twin 9" gun turrets. 12 guns is pretty decent for this era, but 9" in not going to cut it against modern capital ships. There's also the issue of the penetration capabilities of these 9" guns in particular. 313.5mm of main gun pen on a BB. The majority of my CA designs have 305mm of belt armor, with some of the more specialized models having the max value of 381. That's base values however, with the currently available models of Krupp armor, and citadel style, the armor value can be increased by up to 118%, meaning that this BB can't penetrate some Light Cruisers without getting well into torp range. In fact, those same cruisers might have better penetration capabilities than this BB, as seen on the 6" casemates of my BB.

The casemate battery of my BB has better penetration capabilities at 2.5km than the main battery of a RN BB at 1km. Never mind the fact that my BB has 510mm of belt armor, increased by a 118% to an effective value of over 1,100mm. The AI's BB design is going to have a very difficult time actually winning a fight against its opposite number. In my opinion, that design should have never left the drawing board, let alone left harbor.
 

I'll also make passing mention to the fact that this is another "cold shoulder" encounter where the AI tries to run away despite having a lower max speed, I went into some detail about this issue in an earlier post, but it's still pretty frustrating to do this sort of encounter again.

[Kane]

Took a break from this game for awhile because the persistent problems were frustrating and temper-flaring.  Never a good thing.

Many problems remain unresolved.

1)  Stupid weights.  A battleship's radio equipment should not weigh more than an entire battle-ready destroyer.  It still does.  Things like this make realistic designs impossible, and prove a constant frustration in ship design.  To say nothing of the many, many more outrageous weights of various components.

2)  The "Ram Torpedoes" button is still mislabeled as "Dodge Torpedoes", and the tooltip remains inaccurate versus the effect.

3)  The enemy still places stupidly high amounts of torpedo armament on its ships, turning every significant battle into a torpedo-dodging simulator rather than a dreadnought simulator.

4)  The AI remains infuriatingly cowardly.  In one campaign I had
A - A battleship armed with 13" guns and vastly superior armor flee from my Battlecruiser also with 13" guns.
B - Two heavy cruisers flee from a light cruiser and a destroyer.
C - Two heavy cruisers and two destroyers flee from a heavy cruiser and a light cruiser.
D - Two enemy battleships armed with 13" guns and vastly superior armor flee from 1 Battlecruiser with 13" guns.

5)  The AI still has torpedo dodging skills that can only be accounted for by the presence of a Jedi Master at the helm of the ship.

6)  Small ships ordered to screen larger ships, such as destroyers or cruisers ordered to screen battleships consistently hide behind the battleships rather interposing themselves between the enemy and the ships they're supposed to be protecting.

7)  Gunnery crews randomly mutiny, forcing the player to manually click on the target each time they want to attack.  No continuous vollies, no building of accuracy.

8.  Destroyers are still crewed by gods, and can inexplicably eat 24" torpedoes while not only not being blown in half, but remaining afloat and continuing to fight.  Also, destroyers now seem to fixate on staying at 1% float, even when sustaining additional aggression that should finish them off.  Never mind that with the damage inflicted it should be unnecessary.

Is any of this going to be addressed at any point?

Edited April 28, 2022 by Kane

[SodaBit]

Alright, I've got some more campaign/battle AI feedback here.
I know I've been critical of the AI's performance in the past, especially when it comes to how it positions its units, so this might sound awfully familiar. 

~30 minutes into a raid on one of my convoys, and this is the positioning of the raiding forces. As you can see, the lone Battlecruiser assigned to this raid has been sunk, and its screen is now tasked with facing off against 2 BB's, a BC, and a CA. Imo, this is not the way this battle should have gone. The division of labor is all wrong, several cruisers and destroyers were assigned to screen a capital ship against a non-existent destroyer/light cruiser threat, even more cruisers have been assigned to scout the area from which the raiders advanced to contact from, while the remainder loiters somewhere in the middle. I only have 4 ships at my disposal to counter over a dozen enemies. While my battle-line was taking on the enemy's capital ships, the enemy could have dispatched its cruisers to take out my convoy, and destroy my lone cruiser. While the enemy BC might have went down, my convoy would be already on the bottom, and Algerie wouldn't be much longer for this world.
The AI could have achieved a much better result in this battle, if not winning it outright. Instead, it shoved victory into the jaws of defeat by assigning its mobile units to useless tasks.

[Dave P.]

A couple things:

1) Torpedoes keep going well past their range - rounds dodged by my front line can and do travel another 20km past their range to hit my retreating cripples. IRL they run out of fuel or compressed gas or whatever and sink to the bottom.

2) Leave Battle seems to undo everything that happened and just run the "auto resolve" instead. (I can reliably "resurrect" my capital ships when I make an oopsie.)

3) When sorting out my battle line and changing course to the enemy at the beginning of a battle, I'll get a lot of collisions between my ships, even though they all have the "Avoid" button checked by default. Since friendly collisions don't do damage this is mostly just annoying. And loud.

4) It's probably unfair for me to be able to see the flood status of an enemy ship. If I see a sufficient number of sections flooding, I can direct my fire to a different ship sooner than I probably would be able to IRL.

5) Some way to counterflood and correct a list, so that a slightly flooded ship can still fire its weapons in a broadside, would be a nice feature. (Obviously, counterflooding would give you less reserve bouyancy, so it's a risk if you're still in combat.) If implemented, I'd probably just want to be able to toggle the behavior and leave implementation up to the AI (Captain's discretion.)

6) A way to construct/repair a ship faster (obviously at great expense and possibly having a negative effect on other ships under construction) would be handy. Nothing ridiculous - no 1-month BB builds - but maybe the option to chop 30% off construction time for 3x the construction cost or something. Or maybe to complete a ship faster by using older components that are theoretically in storage somewhere. (see also: HMS Vanguard.)

7) IMHO, some equipment/components shouldn't be obsoleted. (WWII ships like the Flower Class Corvette still used triple expansion steam engines, for instance.) Once subs are ingame, being able to build a cheap ASW platform w/ semi-obsolete tech would be appropriate. And, hey, if I want to build a "low cost" 22kt BB in 1952, that's my mistake to make, frankly.

😎 When I get an alert about "smoke spotted such-and-such a bearing" I would like to be able to see it myself. I'd also like to get sighting reports for ships in multiple directions, and not just the closest. I'd also like to be able to get sighting reports even when other ships are in range. As well as the number of smoke plumes.

9) A WoW-style onscreen clock would be nice, since I tend to lose track of time playing. This shit is addictive.

[Dave P.]

Also, being able to stack barbettes to create triple-superfiring ships. I want to do that. Yes, it'll roll over and sink.

Also, being able to put ANY barbettes on the sides of a ship, not just centerline.

And yes, the goal is to have 6x forward firing turrets. 😛

Edited April 30, 2022 by Dave P.

[SodaBit]

Getting pretty late in the patch cycle for this one, but I've got more battle AI feedback here.
First image really speaks for itself, so I'll spare the long-winded explanation this time.

But the other part of this battle is worth mentioning. There were supposed to be 6 German CA's partaking in this battle, but they've got a very good reason to be absent from it.


Of the 6, 5 are horrifically damaged, and will need several months in drydock. The 6th is escorting them from the combat zone, so they aren't completely helpless should they be ambushed on their way back. The main problem is that I'm not responsible for the state of these cruisers. Aside from a stay shell that hit Scharnhorst, the French did all the damage these cruisers carried into battle.
These cruisers showed up to a battle fully maned, with their ships loitering on death's door. They should have been put into long-term repairs immediately after their last battle, not sent out to die in a battle they were never going to survive.
As you would imagine, these guys are basically free victory points. Letters to next of kin and empty caskets might be cheaper then the repairs needed to get these cruisers back in action, but the men aboard them are not so easily replaced. It might take a year and a half to replace a sunken heavy cruiser, but it's going to take at least 18 years to replace the men that went down with it.

Edited April 30, 2022 by SodaBit

[Marcus]

Would it be possible to open up the old Explosvies in Ship design since from the discovery of Dunnite you are limited to solely this explosive for a long time and i would prefer to be able to use older explosives like guncotton or TNT early than use Dunnite due to the insane flash fire modifier. Dunnite pretty much makes every Dreadnought armed with 12inch and up guns a massive explosion Hazard.

[Gangut]

Some notes from my last session as France in 1890

The triple alliance despite having more ships tends to have problems keeping pace with the double alliance (Germany + Austria-Hungary) Despite having more ships. Despite me doing the heavy lifting somehow were about even after over 3 years. Thats even with a few very decisive victories at the start, which no longer happened later on as the ai on the opposing side stopped taking part in large scale battles, and instead focused on smaller ones. Even as I parked a whole battlefleet off their coast.

The ai somehow manages to make heavy cruisers which have less displacement than my light cruisers, and with less capabillity overall. Bear in mind my standard 3k tonne light cruiser has 150mm belt armour, 21 knot top speed, max bulkheads, atleast 8 127mm guns and 2 torpedo tubes, aswell as up to date modules. This became amusing and frustrating when most small scale battles against heavy cruisers turned into chase fests and resulted in either withdrawal or a ctrl-alt-del maneuver. Even more strange is when battleships start running away from me in a light cruiser which has happened during a few convoy raiding missions.

When starting with a 'create from scratch' navy somehow I'm able to afford less than any of the ai pre-built navies even after the start and the campaign really gets going and I need to stay on top in terms of tech.

Most of my play time is during the pre-dreadnought era so far and I will say the ai does a decent job of making a decent/good ship.

[JellyCo.]

I've been playing a fair amount over the last few days and I think the option to form particular squadrons that operate together as a matter of course might be helpful, if only because 7 battleships and one random torpedo boat tagging along seems a bit...counter productive? 

[slightlytreasonous]

12 hours ago, JellyCo. said:

I've been playing a fair amount over the last few days and I think the option to form particular squadrons that operate together as a matter of course might be helpful, if only because 7 battleships and one random torpedo boat tagging along seems a bit...counter productive? 

You already can, just form a fleet at a port and then send them out

 

[Kane]

Doing a little more playing.

1.  99% is not an "average" ricochet chance.  The ricochet mechanics in this game need a serious overhaul, and need to move away from the arcadey BS of World of Warships.  I've been keeping a tab of battles and the ricochet counts of my main guns against targets.
Thus far.
Out of 400 shots counted against opponents stated to have an "average" ricochet chance, 87.6% of the shots that have made contact have ricocheted.  99% may be an exaggeration, but not by much.  87.6% is no where near "average".  Meanwhile I never seem to get such benefits.
I've even had cases of shots ricocheting on areas with no armor at all. 
(Note:  the fractional percentile is a margin of error in a handful of circumstances where I could not be certain if the ricochet was of primary or secondary guns.)

2.   The game is called "Ultimate Admiral - Dreadnoughts".  Not "Ultimate Admiral - Torpedoes".  I swear I dodge fewer torpedoes playing Cold Waters.  I understand the potential for duds is coming in the next patch.  While this will probably help, the problem is that the AI places way too much emphasis on torpedo armament.  (For that matter it also equips way too many secondaries rather than armor.)

3.  On the above point.  There either needs to be a base increase in the accuracy for cadet and green crews, or there needs to be a serious buff given to late era aiming technology.  It is beyond infuriating to have multiple battleships with Rangefinder-V's and Gen-III radar getting annihilated by torpedo cruisers because the cruisers can routinely get close enough that the torpedoes are impossible to dodge all without suffering a hit.  With that level of tech, my crew should be able to score at least a few hits before I'm close enough to ram the enemy.  Its one thing when its a torpedo boat, or a destroyer doing 38kts, its quite another when its a heavy cruiser.

4.  Further.  Small ships remain way too tough.  Off the top of my head, I don't know exactly how many 16" shells a cruiser can survive, but the freaking Bismarck wouldn't survive the number of such shells cruisers in this game seem to.  Meanwhile just before I took a break to write this, I watched an enemy destroyer take not 1, not 2, not 3, but 7(!) 21-inch torpedoes and survive.

5.  And to clarify on my "Ram Torpedoes" note.  This ability is seriously borked.  Toggling "Dodge Torpedoes" is more harm than help, and I've reached the point where I refuse to use it.  Many, many, many, times I have watched my ships set to dodge torpedoes turn into the path of incoming torpedoes.  At which point they try to thread the needle through them, rather than turning away, or just continuing on their way when they would have been fine.  But no, the ships turn into the torpedoes and then end up catching three or four when they didn't have to catch any.  Using Dodge Torpedoes is effectively nothing but a way to sacrifice your ships to the torpedoes that the enemy has way too many of.


6.  I'm also taking severe issue with the number of battleships I've lost to "extensive fire" when the enemy's HE shells couldn't even pen my armor.  Fires in this game are nearly as borked as the ricochet mechanics.  While we're on this note.  The enemy seems to use nothing but HE if he can't pen your deck-armor.  First of all, why does the AI get to know that in far less time than it takes me to identify its ships?  Seconds, all the other parts of the ship can often be penned.


7.  And yes, every time I make a post, I'm going to bring up the fact that battleship radios should not weigh more than entire fully-furnished destroyers.

Edited May 3, 2022 by Kane