>>>Beta v1.6 Feedback<<< (Update RC)

[brothermunro]

I’ve been trying to nerf HE/partial pens for many iterations of DIP, the good news it’s relatively straightforward for the devs to fix HE spam by:

Increasing the ‘extensive fire’ threshold (somewhere in the 90’s works well)

Lowering HE pen

Lowering the partial pen damage modifier 

Increasing the partial pen threshold (I use 80%)

Reducing all of the fuse modifiers (by a factor of about 10)

That’s all text file work, no coding needed.

[Zuikaku]

Yes, ships are definitelly burning like a heystacks. I had cruiser vs. destroyer battles where heavy cruisers burn to the ground after 2 minutes of engagement.

[Suribachi]

Some more detailed feedback regarding the damage control changes, especially fires:

I have no problems with ships that have suffered extreme damage or catastrophic hits going up in flames.  If a CA takes a penetrating hit to the citadel from a 18 inch round, by all means, much of the crew should be dead or wounded and be unable to fight the spreading fires, least of all from shock and panic that do not appear in game.  But a BB taking a secondary battery hit or two, especially from smaller ships, and suffering the same fate is unheard of. 

Warships are, for the most part, built in a way were they can slug it out with others of similar tonnage in their class.  Tech and crew training being equal, a CA vs CA battle should be a brutal slog unless one scores a lucky hit.

Do I think that a runaway fire has a place in this game?  Yes, with conditions.  If the ship is already heavily damaged (<50% hull remaining for example) and has suffered crew losses, fires should be harder to put out unless that ship disengages from the fight and has time to perform damage control.  If the ship is in prime condition with a veteran crew, however, one small fire should be very easy to put out and the ship should be minimally damaged from fires.

Edited August 3 by Suribachi
typos

[Nick Thomadis]

(Update 6 - 4/8/2024)
- Further ship costs/weights balance. Should be the last before the new hulls and parts are added, The new costs should be overall very balanced, reflecting the actual combat value of ships. Saves had to be reset. 
- Campaign economy slight balance, following the new ship costs.
- Campaign AI will build enough ships, not so many to exhaust its economy.
- A few minor fixes for the campaign from reports we received.
- Gun ranges increased and shell ballistics balanced accordingly.
- Ship motion at sea mechanics further improvement, for an even more realistic 3D combat experience.
- Auto-Design optimizations. It should be even faster and produce efficient ships.

Please restart Steam to get the update
*Warning* This is obviously a beta. When we reset a save, we do it so that the game plays without bugs and you have a smoother gameplay experience. Players who play this beta are kindly asked to not complain that the game cannot save their games. There is a stable live version if you do not want to follow the progress of this beta, although the improvements on it are a must to try out.

[solarkraken]

Why have they decided all of a sudden i cannot use all-cap prefixes for ship naming anymore.  I just tryied a new campaign and was not able to use a 3 letter all cap prefix nor was I able to include any number or other character.  I was starting a 1930s Italian campaign.  It seems a bit petty on the devs part not to allow us to name our SINGLE-PLAYER game ships the way we want to.  And like other have mentioned the fore weight offsets are completely broken and everything weighs way too much now.  I always have 100-300 tons left over when building most destroyers.  this time I had to max the tonnage to 3500 (leader type hull) and could barely fit all the SAME gear I always use for that class.  I had to use high tier engines and reduce range/bulkheads way below what they have been.  Same goes with the german modern BC hull.  I could not build a ship with only 6 x 13in guns in 2 turrets like I have always been able to in the past.  Whatever they have done, they have really broken the ship building aspect.  Its almost to the point I feel like uninstalling the game an attempt to get a refund.

[Doomed]

With the latest update (new game no mods) I'm seeing newly built ships go immediately into Repairing state rather than commissioning.

[Zuikaku]

Fire damage is not toned down?

[Nick Thomadis]

(Hotfix Update 7 - 4/8/2024)
- Fine tuned shell ballistics, affects also gun penetration and gun ranges.
- Fixed some issues in fuel consumption in the campaign which created a big expense to the nations’ economy.
- Fine tuned Campaign AI finances management.
- Fixed a temporary problem causing new ships to get to repair mode instead of commissioning mode.
- Fixed a temporary problem which disallowed special characters in ship names.

Please restart Steam to get the update

[StoneofTriumph]

6 hours ago, Zuikaku said:

Fire damage is not toned down?

Nope.

As of now there's really not much point to bringing AP shells, as HE will cause far more overall damage due to fires whether it penetrates or not.

Edited August 4 by StoneofTriumph

[Zuikaku]

2 hours ago, StoneofTriumph said:

Nope.

As of now there's really not much point to bringing AP shells, as HE will cause far more overall damage due to fires whether it penetrates or not.

Fires shoul'd be spreading deadly out of control in the case of:

1. Disabled engines so no power for the pumps

2. Significantly reduced crew

3. Destroyed compartments

4. Torpedo detonations 

[StoneofTriumph]

1 hour ago, Zuikaku said:

Fires shoul'd be spreading deadly out of control in the case of:

1. Disabled engines so no power for the pumps

2. Significantly reduced crew

3. Destroyed compartments

4. Torpedo detonations 

 

They should, but that's not what's happening- any HE can burn down even pristine ships.

Currently, even small-caliber non-penetrating HE can easily do 2 and 3 on their own, causing even a small number of hits to spread out of control and do catastrophic damage to ships with even high-veterancy crews, as was the case recently when a few fires caused by hits from 4/5" guns managed to cause 40% crew casualties on a dreadnought of mine with veteran crew with immense speed.

And HE doesn't care about things like angle and armor thickness.

[DougToss]

I think it's important to zero in on what other have said, which is why fires spread out of control on warships. They are (with the exception of aircraft carriers which have avgas and ordnance packed to the rafters) the result of cumulative damage that kills crew and damages firefighting capabilities through damage to pumps, water mains, hoses etc. Fire is not a risk to an undamaged warship. It is a significant risk to a very badly damaged warship. 

I don't know what this would mean in game terms, I'm not saying simulate water pressure to various parts of the ship or anything like that, but as a ship gets more damaged fires should get more dangerous. 

By way of example, it was standard practice to flood the decks before battle, with an inch or two of water supplied by hoses laid out ahead of time. Obviously shell splinters would cut these hoses as the fighting went on, so small fires starting on the deck would become possible at the same time that the risk of shell splinters meant that nobody could go out on the decks to put them out. Over enough time, you can see how those small fires spreading and joining up could become a dangerous problem, because by then, on top of the danger for firefighters (or anyone else going outside splinter protection), pumps, mains and hoses would likely be damaged too and fighting fires would become much more difficult. 

So something that was a non-existent risk when the battle first started, could eventually become a danger as the fighting went on. 

Edited August 4 by DougToss

[Panzergraf]

Fires caused by small caliber guns (like the aforementioned 4" guns hitting a dreadnought) would mostly be superficial external fires, right? Like deck planks catching fire, or potentially fuel for spotting planes on catapults. Not something 40% of the crew should sacrifice their lives for by using their own bodies to smother the flames.
Even if the ship had already suffered crew loss during the battle, and what remained of the damage control parties were busy plugging leaks, an external fire on deck could potentially just burn itself out, right?

[Zuikaku]

3 hours ago, Panzergraf said:

Fires caused by small caliber guns (like the aforementioned 4" guns hitting a dreadnought) would mostly be superficial external fires, right? Like deck planks catching fire, or potentially fuel for spotting planes on catapults. Not something 40% of the crew should sacrifice their lives for by using their own bodies to smother the flames.
Even if the ship had already suffered crew loss during the battle, and what remained of the damage control parties were busy plugging leaks, an external fire on deck could potentially just burn itself out, right?

If we look at the example of Hiei, yes. She was not sunk by close rapid fire from US destroyers who burned her. There were fires, but were put out. Crew losses due to fire were slso not heavy although she was shot up badly (superstructure).

[brothermunro]

Hiei is an interesting example, she suffered badly from her upperworks being shot up. But it was a night battle, at very very close range. There were also American cruisers with 6 and 8” guns (and the small matter of torpedo hits to her). Now in UAD terms a BB being overwhelmed at night by small ships, losing steering/fire control/conning tower and finally being put down by torps - a reasonable battle.

A BB burning down in seconds in broad daylight at range to a bunch of incendiary shells not so much.

(I know Hiei was a battlecruiser not a BB)

Edited August 5 by brothermunro

[StoneofTriumph]

Hiei suffered badly in terms of her ability to fight, but even after being shot up by various calibers of guns at very close range, torpedoed, and eventually finished off by torpedo and level bombers after the battle was over, she still only lost 188 members of her crew out of something like 12-1300.

The other thing is that even non-penetrating hits from relatively light HE can now cause catastrophic crew casualties at high speed. This has been kinda a problem before, but now it's a lot worse. It's going from "HE is maybe an option to to some damage to ships I can't penetrate" to "This is an outright superior option to AP for dealing with armored warships."

Edited August 5 by StoneofTriumph

[Zuikaku]

Yes, in latest version of UAD , in similar engagement Hiei woul'd be lost in about 2 minutes due to fire damage or surrendered duento crew losses.

[Doomed]

Just to add another example I  had 2 smallish CA's (3500 tons) surrender in 1903 due to fires started by a partially penetrating 3" hit from a transport. Both had trained crews.

Edited August 6 by Doomed

[justMike247]

the loss of an otherwise undamaged BB to a single miniscule partial pen from a CL (58 damage only) got me thinking...

 

Evidently our esteemed devs have decided that the AI weapons fire projectiles filled with thermite rather than any of the HE derivitives. Additionally, our ships aren't protected by armour, but by the crew themselves, trying valiently to form a human shield while bedecked in uniforms saturated in high test peroxide.

 

As rediculous as that sounds, I feel it's matched by changes in ship construction. Evidently anchors and their chains are now forged from an alloy of tungsten and depleted uranium, thereby creating such a bias in weight distribution that utterly rediculous efforts are required to prevent any build irrespective of class from instantly pitch-poling as soon as the props start turning.

 

I'm honestly unsure which is more obscene; the fact that someone in the dev team thought this was a grand idea, or that it was evidently deemed fit for purpose. No doubt the remedy to this will suffer the same lag time as corrections to torpedoes.

[Urst]

22 hours ago, brothermunro said:

Hiei is an interesting example, she suffered badly from her upperworks being shot up. But it was a night battle, at very very close range. There were also American cruisers with 6 and 8” guns (and the small matter of torpedo hits to her). Now in UAD terms a BB being overwhelmed at night by small ships, losing steering/fire control/conning tower and finally being put down by torps - a reasonable battle.

A BB burning down in seconds in broad daylight at range to a bunch of incendiary shells not so much.

(I know Hiei was a battlecruiser not a BB)

Hiei also nearly lost her bridge to a lucky hit from a 5" gun from Laffey that still injured several members of the bridge crew. Had the shell's trajectory been just a *little* bit different her entire bridge crew, and the admiral of the Japanese fleet that was in there at the time, would've died.
I'm personally taking the casualty figures more as general casualties, rather than actual deaths, though the game does call them deaths.

Also: surrendered ships.
If a ship surrenders it shouldn't be completely lost. This is very silly. It's not sunk. A surrendered ship should be captured by the winning side in the same way as demanding ships during peace talks.

[StoneofTriumph]

55 minutes ago, Urst said:

Also: surrendered ships.
If a ship surrenders it shouldn't be completely lost. This is very silly. It's not sunk. A surrendered ship should be captured by the winning side in the same way as demanding ships during peace talks.

 

This is something I'm okay with considering how extremely rare it was to actually capture warships at sea in this period- Even if the crew surrendered, they'd more likely than not scuttle the ship to prevent it from falling into the hands of an enemy nation. Most of the time when an enemy ship was taken it was because the ship had outright sailed into an enemy port, was salvaged after running aground or being sunk in a harbor, or taken as a war prize after the fact. 

The only really notable surrender of ships into the hands of an enemy nation in the middle of wartime in this period was the surrender of the remnants of the 3rd Pacific squadron into the hands of the Japanese the day after Tsushima, and even then it wasn't due to battle damage so much as "We're completely outmatched by the force that's surrounding us, better give up without a fight."

Edited August 6 by StoneofTriumph

[Urst]

1 hour ago, StoneofTriumph said:

 

This is something I'm okay with considering how extremely rare it was to actually capture warships at sea in this period- Even if the crew surrendered, they'd more likely than not scuttle the ship to prevent it from falling into the hands of an enemy nation. Most of the time when an enemy ship was taken it was because the ship had outright sailed into an enemy port, was salvaged after running aground or being sunk in a harbor, or taken as a war prize after the fact. 

The only really notable surrender of ships into the hands of an enemy nation in the middle of wartime in this period was the surrender of the remnants of the 3rd Pacific squadron into the hands of the Japanese the day after Tsushima, and even then it wasn't due to battle damage so much as "We're completely outmatched by the force that's surrounding us, better give up without a fight."

The winning side still shouldn't lose their own ships, which is my main point.

[StoneofTriumph]

5 hours ago, Urst said:

The winning side still shouldn't lose their own ships, which is my main point.

Okay, that part is also fair.

[TK3600]

Why not just revert. 1.5.12 HE was good, no need to buff.

[Zuikaku]

Why were these fires buffed at all?