Fore/Aft Weight Offset

[Wowzery]

I do a lot of real ships for my YT channel, and everyone it seems there is a struggle to balance the ship.  Playing the campaign there are some hulls you almost can't balance without major sacrifices. 

Many times in the campaign, especially with TB and DDs early on, I just don't even try to balance them.  And many other designs I just look for it to be under 20%.

How much do others care about this stat?  Is it too sensitive?  Not enough? Don't look at it?

 

[o Barão]

16 minutes ago, Wowzery said:

And many other designs I just look for it to be under 20%.

Same with me.

[Plazma]

Each 4 points of roll/pitch:

-1% Base accuracy # That is a lot, because bonues etc. calculated after this I thing.

-2%--3% of other accuracy penatly 

+1% flooding chance etc.

Some other flaws

 

In other words 10% in pitch is like having ranger finder one tier  lower (example Conic II -> Conic I). 

In other words also each 4% of pitch cost 0.2% weight and 1.1% cost of the ship (AT LEAST). 

If we have a 5 twins turrets (10 guns) and we add 4% of pitch is like -10% of damage output for our ship. with some additional flaws. (I believe) 

 

[Hardlec]

I use armor to balance the ship as much as possible. This can be effective, but for smaller ships, it isn't effective.

For CA an bigger I have 6 inches of main deck armor.  This reduces Pitch and Roll.  So does Main Belt armor.  Fore and aft armor, deck and belt, can counter fore/aft offset.  

But, it would be much appreciated if there were some suggestions on how to balance a ship.

AND

I thing some of the hulls of smaller ships can't be balanced.

[Spitfire_97]

Definitely too sensitive. Historical shipwrights could adjust the position of fuel bunkers and auxiliary equipment within the ship to help balance things separate from the main machinery spaces. Not to mention weight offset could be adjusted quite drastically while at sea just by moving fuel around the ship. "Trimmer" was a job title aboard a coal fired ship, men would move coal from bunker to bunker to keep the correct longitudinal balance. On an oil fired ship this could be accomplished with simple crossfeed pumps.

Here in the game the placement of the funnel(s) is what places all of the machinery, we essentially get none of the balancing options an actual ship builder would have. This combined with how limited funnel placement options are on many hulls means it's no surprise at all that balancing is almost impossible. We don't even get a choice of fuel bunker location, a multi thousand ton piece of equipment that could comprise a double digit percentage of the ships total weight

Quite frankly, using the funnel location to place the engines absolute nonsense. The funnel is literally just a hole in the ship to let the flue gasses out, take a look at some of the wacky early carrier funnel designs and you'll see the funnel can go pretty much wherever so long as it is within trunking distance of the boilers. It would be like designing a car by putting the exhaust on first, then deciding you need to put the engine in the back because that's where you put the exhaust.

Some easy changes that could be made is to have a "dead zone" between 0% and 10% weight offset that has no negative effects, to stand in for auxiliary machinery placement and fuel trimming. Also having the option to place the machinery spaces within the ship manually, perhaps with an engine efficiency and weight penalty for having the funnel too far from the boilers

[Heet]

Agreed on all of the points. I think the funnel placement influencing the machinery location is reasonable as they haven't truly created a below-deck design, so I wouldn't change that aspect.

However, one thing that would really help would be to loosen the restrictions on tower and gun placement on flat-top hulls.  Currently, they locations are so restrictive that you often either have to place the towers too far forward or too far aft.  Just loosening the restrictions on the tower placement would be a major help.

Also, a lot of older ships tend to have very poor balancing, this just needs to be looked at so that the armor can be balanced.

Pitch and roll also seems to be overly sensitive.

[Suribachi]

Would love a button in the ship design UI that quickly allows you to select all or a user-defined subset of all towers, funnels, barbettes, main guns and secondary guns on top of a hull and let you move everything as if it was a single part.  Obviously, casement guns that are a fixed part of the hull are excluded from this unless they are physically attached to the main or secondary tower.  There have been far too many times where I completely built out a superstructure only to have to delete the main guns to move the towers, put the main guns back on and then realize I need to move it more to combat the weight issue in a certain direction.

[SpardaSon21]

On 12/7/2022 at 6:22 AM, Heet said:

Agreed on all of the points. I think the funnel placement influencing the machinery location is reasonable as they haven't truly created a below-deck design, so I wouldn't change that aspect.

 

We absolutely need proper distribution of components.  As it stands there's no proper underwater citadel or even a waterline belt, since the citadel and citadel armor are the light-red-shaded part of the ship in the section viewer.  Ideally citadel upgrades would shrink that part of the ship down closer to the waterline with each upgrade, with an "Upper Belt" armor section to represent non-citadel hull armor. I would also swap the resistance and armor buffs on AoN and turtleback because there's no reason AoN should have your ship more susceptible to internal damage than a turtleback design, especially since turtlebacks were used to maximize armor protection whereas AoN was about minimizing damage after a successful pen or over-pen.

[Candle_86]

Yea we need Ballast tanks

[Suribachi]

7 hours ago, Candle_86 said:

Yea we need Ballast tanks

We need longer range!
USS Texas has entered the chat....

For real though, researching ballast tanks can help combat offset through trim at the cost of some speed or general maneuverability such as acceleration or turning would be amazing.  Nevermind using it combat to counteract a ships list so the guns can fire again, even as a last stand.