HE shells, fires, and the armour rework

[Rhel]

Hi! A couple of you have probably watched one or more videos from the Battlecruiser tournament currently ongoing on the YouTube channel Stealth17.

I designed one of the ships taking part in the contest, the "Elisabeth Petznek," an Austro-Hungarian ship with a main armament of 4x3 12 inch guns with shortened barrels and everything tuned for maximum rate of fire, HE damage, and fire setting capability.

Over the last few matches it's become very clear that my design and the British one, both focused on causing fires via HE spam, mine even more so, are beating everything else, with AP focused and mixed designs just unable to keep up.

Now I know that this topic has been talked about a lot before. And I know that there are good reasons why HE and fire work the way they do right now, I remember in some early versions it was arguably more realistic but also felt kind of useless. So I think until recently it made sense to have HE do its thing without much regard for armour or penetration.

But I think the recent armour changes, specifically the armour limits are an opportunity to revisit this whole topic. The new inability to put massive amounts of armour on even small light cruisers means that penetrating with HE has become much more viable in a lot of cases. To me this seems like the perfect opportunity to talk about whether HE performance, especially in regards to fires should be tied more to actually penetrating the armour of the enemy ship.

I think if HE ends up in a place where it still eats small ships alive while mostly destroying torpedoes, rudders etc on bigger ships and helping overwhelm damage control as it fights against flooding that would make for more interesting,healthy gameplay. And it would also feel somewhat more true to life.

[mrfox1918]

Yep, HE spam has almost always been the meta... its very silly.

[anonusername]

Why is it even desirable for HE shells to be able to sink battleships? I think that HE shells should have a dramatically lower chance to spread fires below decks without a penetration. This will allow them to continue functioning as a means for weaker ships to destroy superstructures, or for large ships to deal more damage to smaller ones, without allowing the current silliness.

[Anthropoid]

 

16 hours ago, anonusername said:

Why is it even desirable for HE shells to be able to sink battleships? I think that HE shells should have a dramatically lower chance to spread fires below decks without a penetration. This will allow them to continue functioning as a means for weaker ships to destroy superstructures, or for large ships to deal more damage to smaller ones, without allowing the current silliness.

I'm not a naval historian. But my understanding is that a "high-capacity" or "high-explosive" (HE) shell is not a "non-penetrating" shell per se. Penetration can, and will occur even with shells that are not-designed specifically to penetrate armor.

To be honest I'm not familiar with the intricacies of how the app handles "fires" and in particular how fires which are started above decks as a result of non-penetrating hits with HE shells do or do not spread to other parts of the ship.

I will acknowledge that: peltering an enemy with HE in order to set as many fires as possible DOES seem to be a bit "over-powered." But I'm concerned that the quoted question swings the discussion way too far into the other direction, by suggesting that it "should not be possible to sink a battleship" by raining down hell fire on it . . . fires spread; fires cause shit to blow up; big explosions can blow holes in hulls leading to flooding and sinking, etc. . . .

Agree that: the results of the "Battlecruiser tournament currently ongoing" on Stealth's channel do suggest there is a need for rebalancing of some sort. But it may need to be EVERY circcumspect and trivial balancing to achieve the desired effects, and come far short of anything that would make it "impossible" to "sink a battleship" with HE shells by causing fires.

[anonusername]

On 11/1/2023 at 10:08 AM, Anthropoid said:

 

I'm not a naval historian. But my understanding is that a "high-capacity" or "high-explosive" (HE) shell is not a "non-penetrating" shell per se. Penetration can, and will occur even with shells that are not-designed specifically to penetrate armor.

To be honest I'm not familiar with the intricacies of how the app handles "fires" and in particular how fires which are started above decks as a result of non-penetrating hits with HE shells do or do not spread to other parts of the ship.

I will acknowledge that: peltering an enemy with HE in order to set as many fires as possible DOES seem to be a bit "over-powered." But I'm concerned that the quoted question swings the discussion way too far into the other direction, by suggesting that it "should not be possible to sink a battleship" by raining down hell fire on it . . . fires spread; fires cause shit to blow up; big explosions can blow holes in hulls leading to flooding and sinking, etc. . . .

Agree that: the results of the "Battlecruiser tournament currently ongoing" on Stealth's channel do suggest there is a need for rebalancing of some sort. But it may need to be EVERY circcumspect and trivial balancing to achieve the desired effects, and come far short of anything that would make it "impossible" to "sink a battleship" with HE shells by causing fires.

Yes, but the issue here is not HE penetrating, but HE sinking battleships without any penetrations at all. If you are firing 18" HE shells from a 1950 BB at a BC and can penetrate the thinner armor, it is entirely reasonable for the BC to sink much faster than AP could achieve. However, usually penetrations vs. ships with a similar armor effectiveness requires the higher penetration of AP. If you could penetrate BB armor with HE, then you would just use the HE shell as your AP and use an even more explosive shell for HE.

[Hangar18]

Just finished killing of 5 BBs with 4 CAs in a 8" 4x4 spamming HE until they burned to death. Personally i think part of the issue is that you have to really go out and stack AP to get it to penetrate at acceptable levels.

Even if armor is capped, the armor quality boosts it up to such an incredible amount that you have no hope of getting through.

just on some quick math 

152mm of armor on fairly dated krup II = 292mm of armor.

Thats enough to keep some battleship caliber rounds out. It's far more than enough to protect from cruiser guns. Then introduce the angle to that, and you have have more than enough effective armor, plus any ricochets. By going to more penetration friendly shells, you start losing out out damage too.

 

Edited November 4, 2023 by Hangar18

[thu]

I don't think so. Fire ship is funny, but it is not invincible. Try AP ship with oxygen torps.

[Grizli60rus]

Yes, incendiary shells are very effective now, excessively. On YouTube, he also held a tournament among subscribers. My ships (controlled by AI) against the players' ships. I had really good battleships that no one could sink completely. And there were many questions about how to defeat them. Answer: make a ship with a smaller caliber, but a high rate of fire and high-explosive shells. They will destroy everything. Here is an example of a video segment about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Grjhh7jW3Kk&t=6521s

They just don't leave a chance. Similarly, in the campaign: no matter how good a ship a AI makes, a few old rapid-firing destroyers with good HE shells will simply burn it. My suggestion is to make the destruction of the ship from fires more difficult. Or reduce the number of fires from shells.

What is most insulting, ships that have never had their hull pierced are dying, and the crew is even more than enough

Dear Nick, could you comment on this? @Nick Thomadis  Maybe something can be done about it? Let the ship not burn down and not be destroyed until it has, well, for example, large crew losses?

 

 

Edited November 9, 2023 by Grizli60rus