Gunnery and Screening vessels

[admiralsnackbar]

I'm surely not the only one that has noticed that if you have a long range heavy-gun engagement between two capital ships, the hit chance of the guns might be 5%, but if a screening vessel is near [within 2km], especially in front of the vessel being targeted, it seems to take 25-50% of the shots 

This works both ways. It seems *very* common when my own capitals are targeting an enemy capital ship that the first few salvos will 1 shot a destroyer or light cruiser that was too close to the capital ship. 

It seems unlikely to me that if the shells are being randomly scattered around the target (be it a loose or tight bracket) that vessels near but not on the most concentrated spot would have a higher likelihood of getting hit than the focus of the shots. 

[o Barão]

The magnet issue. Happens to all of us.

[Admiral Donuts]

Why I never use Screens.

[neph]

Ships intersecting the fall path of a shell seem to always always be hit by it. It's because "will this shell hit" is precalculated in a non-physical, arbitrary statistical fashion, and then the arc of the shell is drawn. Apparently not so for ships that aren't the intended target?

[admiralsnackbar]

Just now, neph said:

Ships intersecting the fall path of a shell seem to always always be hit by it. It's because "will this shell hit" is precalculated in a non-physical, arbitrary statistical fashion, and then the arc of the shell is drawn. Apparently not so for ships that aren't the intended target?

At fairly flat trajectories where the bias is to shoot in front of the ship, the hit rate makes sense. On the other hand, I've also seen it happen at long range where a screen gets nuked from plunging fire. 

[Sphere]

Well known problem. 

[TiagoStein]

On 12/31/2022 at 12:49 AM, o Barão said:

The magnet issue. Happens to all of us.

Not magnet, just geometry. The projectile goes in an arc and the game tries to aim at waterline. So any other ship in front  will be exactly in the path of the  projectile, but you will hit the superstructure, not the water line.

 

 

That is not a bug, that is geometry . The "problem " I think exist is that if you hit the tip of a tower you get still a full penetration (whent here is nothign to penetrate when  it is only a thin wire)

[madham82]

1 hour ago, TiagoStein said:

Not magnet, just geometry. The projectile goes in an arc and the game tries to aim at waterline. So any other ship in front  will be exactly in the path of the  projectile, but you will hit the superstructure, not the water line.

 

 

That is not a bug, that is geometry . The "problem " I think exist is that if you hit the tip of a tower you get still a full penetration (whent here is nothign to penetrate when  it is only a thin wire)

I have not seen it work like. In fact, I have seen 75% or better of the shells in a salvo hit a ship within about 2km of the target ship. You don't get that kind of dispersion and hit rate if there is no ship around the target. That implies something else is wrong. 

Not sure if it actually related, but seems to be worse when the non-target ship is not visible. 

[admiralsnackbar]

9 hours ago, madham82 said:

I have not seen it work like. In fact, I have seen 75% or better of the shells in a salvo hit a ship within about 2km of the target ship. You don't get that kind of dispersion and hit rate if there is no ship around the target. That implies something else is wrong. 

Not sure if it actually related, but seems to be worse when the non-target ship is not visible. 

 
I am more tolerant of the 'shell magnets' when it's a case of two ships moving in paralell and shells intended for one that fall short or long of the target end up hitting the other at relatively close range. I think that makes sense since there's only so much variance in the range where the shells will hit the water that would end up crossing the path of one of the other ship's hulls.

But for long range gunnery at the start of the map I think it invalidates the UI to have .05% hit chances for plunging salvos achieve a 50% hit rate by 1 shotting a poor destroyer that happened to be in formation near a battleship. Plunging salvos don't really have the excuse of traversing a horizontal plane that would inevitably intersect 

I also have a strong suspicion that there is some kind of quirk  in hit rates that causes unnaturally high hit probabilities with the first two salvos of a gunfight, but i can't prove this except for the fact that back when ships were stuck in ladder aiming mode forever in a past beta version, the first salvo was seeming to fire 'normally', suggesting it doesn't obey the rules set by later salvos. 

[madham82]

9 hours ago, admiralsnackbar said:

 
I am more tolerant of the 'shell magnets' when it's a case of two ships moving in paralell and shells intended for one that fall short or long of the target end up hitting the other at relatively close range. I think that makes sense since there's only so much variance in the range where the shells will hit the water that would end up crossing the path of one of the other ship's hulls.

But for long range gunnery at the start of the map I think it invalidates the UI to have .05% hit chances for plunging salvos achieve a 50% hit rate by 1 shotting a poor destroyer that happened to be in formation near a battleship. Plunging salvos don't really have the excuse of traversing a horizontal plane that would inevitably intersect 

I also have a strong suspicion that there is some kind of quirk  in hit rates that causes unnaturally high hit probabilities with the first two salvos of a gunfight, but i can't prove this except for the fact that back when ships were stuck in ladder aiming mode forever in a past beta version, the first salvo was seeming to fire 'normally', suggesting it doesn't obey the rules set by later salvos. 

Good points. I know I have seen this magnet issue at long and medium ranges. With the low accuracy of initial salvos, the shell dispersion should be short and long. But it ends up being clustered like 50+% accuracy salvos. 

[TiagoStein]

9 hours ago, admiralsnackbar said:

 
I am more tolerant of the 'shell magnets' when it's a case of two ships moving in paralell and shells intended for one that fall short or long of the target end up hitting the other at relatively close range. I think that makes sense since there's only so much variance in the range where the shells will hit the water that would end up crossing the path of one of the other ship's hulls.

But for long range gunnery at the start of the map I think it invalidates the UI to have .05% hit chances for plunging salvos achieve a 50% hit rate by 1 shotting a poor destroyer that happened to be in formation near a battleship. Plunging salvos don't really have the excuse of traversing a horizontal plane that would inevitably intersect 

I also have a strong suspicion that there is some kind of quirk  in hit rates that causes unnaturally high hit probabilities with the first two salvos of a gunfight, but i can't prove this except for the fact that back when ships were stuck in ladder aiming mode forever in a past beta version, the first salvo was seeming to fire 'normally', suggesting it doesn't obey the rules set by later salvos. 

I think that happens because the game tries to be visually interesting. Notice that when you are approaching the enemy, the first shots that arrive around your ships are never  very far away. I think the game calculates if you hit or miss but moves the rounds to land  more or less around the ship for dramatic effect. When you  do that and there are a lot of ships around  that ship you   increase absurdly  the chance of something  being hit.