Steeltrap

My issues with it are: 1. It's largely outside the control of the player, who's supposed to direct all the parts of the naval design process, and thus that doesn't make sense if the premise of the game is to be believed, and 2. It ought not be necessary. Why not? Because the damage done by a shell ought to be the same to ANY ship IF that shell detonates within the ship's hull, for example. A hull with more compartments, not to mention larger ones, and possibly armoured bulkheads and a splinter deck, will contain that damage better, sure. But not WITHIN wherever the initial detonation is. I suspect we have it because we DON'T have a 'proper' hull compartmentalisation model such as appeared in the wonderful "Great Naval Battles of the North Atlantic: 1939-43" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Naval_Battles:_North_Atlantic_1939–43). It had a far more detailed system, including the fun fact you could activate a "shell tracker" so if you hit something it would jump to that ship's damage model (depicted as a bunch of 'cells' where each scheme was a different deck) and you'd watch the shell enter the relevant deck and punch through until it went bang, so to speak. Best bit? Essential equipment was laid out on those schematics, as was flooding and fires. That shell that hit on the waterline? Yes, it started flooding, too. You had damage control teams to assign, you could counter-flood but had limited pumps, etc etc. It really was astonishingly good when you consider in was released in 1992. Back to the point, however. As I said, I don't see why such a mechanism (i.e. "resistance") is necessary. Yes, you WOULD have to have something that had a way of applying damage to a target that also reflected the internal structure, but, as I said, I suspect the reason we don't have that here is because we don't have a genuine internal structure model (or at least how do small calibre HE shells 'overpen' the HULL of a merchant ship, for example, without exploding in the engine spaces or cargo or something if hit from astern? That's never made sense to me, and still doesn't). Without such a model, I suppose 'resistance' is a way of making something more of a bullet sponge. Well, it hardly matters, as clearly it's not going to change. But I find it highly unsatisfactory and don't like it, regardless. Cheers

My view has always been, as far back as 2019 when I joined closed testing, that the whole concept of 'resistance' is a flawed design choice. It's an arbitrary "pulled from nowhere" number to fit a system, and you are demonstrating its issues at the margins. Sure, there has to ba "a damage system", but I don't see any reason for this 'resistance' thing other than covering for simplified design consequences (and I DON'T mean that as a criticism, simply an opinion as to what I think is happening). But, hey, I am the crazy person who suggested a far better design would be to allow players to input various requirements and have the system produce a hull, NOT be limited to however many hulls the devs get around to producing. More work initially, sure, but FAR more flexible in the long term. What's more, it would allow more realistically for players to experience the tug of war between protection, firepower, speed and navigation range that dictates EVERYTHING about warship design, with tech setting the limits on those at any given time. But that would also entail a damage model that places things in their exact positions in the hull and thus relative to each other, which I'm led to believe is NOT what we have. THAT would address some of the weird weight stuff we deal with, too, but it would also be better for more realistic battle effects etc. Not quite sure why I'm repeating all this as it's pretty clear it's never going to happen, LOL. Cheers

Couple of minor things... 1. If an ally asks you to build some ships, the request includes your current shipyard use, your total, and the tonnage of the ship. Issue: it shows the tonnage for ONE ship, regardless of how many are being requested. In other words, you need to do the calculation yourself as to the TRUE tonnage and thus building capacity that will be used if you agree. Suggestion: Add a step that multiplies that tonnage by the number requested so the TRUE tonnage is presented in the request dialogue. 2. On the FLEET SCREEN if you sort by STATUS, it sorts it as a single field despite there being three pieces of info i.e. status, % complete and time remaining. The issue: When you sort by status, it sorts ships that are building BY THE % COMPLETE and not by how long is remaining because the field lists COMPLETE (x %) ahead of the TIME REMAINING (x months) I believe only TWO of those pieces of data are important to players, or at least ought to be used in the sorting priority. The first is the status, obviously, but the second is the TIME REMAINING. Perhaps I'm the odd one out, but I don't care about the % as it's functionally irrelevant (what can I do with it?). I DO want to see the list sorted by TIME REMAINING if I'm going to juggle some things for budget reasons. Suggestion: Change the status field so it presents 'Status', THEN 'Months remaining'. This means sorting by status will group ships first by status, then by the time remaining for the activity (be it building, repairing, commissioning etc). It can keep '% complete' if you think that is relevant, although I'd be perfectly happy for the field only to contain the status first and the remaining time second as I find that % to be entirely useless information. As an aside, the sorting in various screens seems peculiar. In the FLEET screen, for example, sorting by CLASS doesn't appear to sort them by NAME alphabetically within the class, even though one might expect that would be the case (I'm not sure how it DOES sort them by class, frankly). These have been present forever, but I thought I'd toss them out there as I find them minor irritants that I believe could be addressed with next to no effort (at least I'd hope that's true given what they are). Cheers

Starting in 1890 as USA. Yes, campaign start and turn lengths have improved dramatically. So, a big THUMBS UP for that improvement. While it's entirely possible there are no great changes supposed to have happened to the economy, I am finding France in particular is the INSANE economy. It has about 1/3 the oil per capita, an economy that's just over DOUBLE mine (which frankly has never been true from back then until now, of course), and yet ALSO has a GREATER GROWTH RATE. Mine is approx 10.8% p.a., France's is ~12%. How on earth is that possible? This oddly inflated growth rate for France has been that way for the past 6+ months (IRL, not game time) I've been playing. Something's still significantly wonky about the economy in that the oil per capita, supposedly significant in the total growth rate of GDP per annum, doesn't seem to be doing that at all, UNLESS its effects are being overshadowed by some hidden factor(s). I submitted a report about the "arrives in X turns" that I mentioned to you in Steam. Only raising it here for completeness, nothing else. Cheers

Armour being "too effective"?? Don't know who could possibly believe THAT to be an issue. IMO it's demonstrably the OPPOSITE. For example, a 1.8" shell strikes the 12" belt, gets a 'partial penetration' AND starts a fire. Or 3" shell striking a 12" armoured turret from a range where it had next to nothing penetration yet results in a 'partial pen' AND damages the main gun. With all due respect, a mechanic that produces these results regularly, as is the case right now, needs a substantial correction, but NOT in the direction of making armour even LESS effective.

^ We had more or less EXACTLY the same discussion 2 years ago (can't remember when exactly). In other words, I wouldn't hold much hope of that happening if I were you, LOL.

Any plans to do anything about the Borg sighting? It's plain, old fashioned bullshit to say a ship can fire at you from 17km away because a DD can see you from 3km away. That simply WAS NOT THE CASE in any effective measure, or indeed largely AT ALL with the exception of shore bombardment, but that's an entirely different gunnery situation. Not until late into WW2 did ships have effectively fully integrated radar in their fire control suites. Even those continued to train optics on their targets when possible because of issues around radar effectiveness at spotting fall of shot and thus making corrections. Seeing videos of ships in 1900-1912 doing it is just dumb and lazy. It was equally the case 2+ YEARS ago when I and others raised it. I've not bothered with the game since it went to Steam, but I've watched videos of others playing. The same old issues with combat remain as best I can see. MAX Bulkheads = Zombie apocalypse fleet, for example. When things like the specific issue I mentioned get addressed, plus the many other important (with respects to claims of realistic) issues raised, then it might start to look promising again. Cheers p.s. Interesting how few of the names around from those times appear to have stuck at it. Can't remember when I last poked my nose into this forum.

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.

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

We've only been mentioning this very absurdity around here for a bit over 2 YEARS now. It's why I said I couldn't care less about the campaign because if absolutely vital, core battle mechanics remain placeholder or junk then the campaign can't possibly hide such things once its 'newness' wears off. Put differently, how many will play campaigns over and over if every battle they're confronted with ridiculous damage sponges and all the other things we've banged on about for ages to no effect? Not many, I'd imagine. I've not bothered to download it on Steam because I have zero interest in playing it until I see the devs get real about addressing these crucial, core, and currently absurd aspects of the main alleged selling point of this game, namely "realistic" combat depiction. Everything else is window dressing to me until THAT is sorted. If this and other persistent, glaring issues aren't addressed then RTW2 is by far the superior, proven product for anyone interested in 'realism'.

Had several discussions about exactly this issue way back when torpedo spotting reports became a thing. Here's just 1:

I'd suggest it's tied to core mechanics, but I don't believe the AI has any inherent advantage over the player. It must depend on your ability to spot torps and then how responsive your helm is, and the tech for those are open to the AI and player. Granted you might face an opponent who has better tech and thus be more capable, but that's not cheating per se. The manoeuvrability of ships in the game is rather massively ramped up in some respects. I wrote about it a long time ago, and why it mattered, but it made about as much difference as anything else I've ever written, LOL. War on the Sea has the same problem. I see people complaining about being hit by submarine ambushes but I've never understood why because ships are so hilariously agile that they almost NEVER ought to be hit. I think I've played something like 350 hours of that game (in fact I largely stopped playing this and have had many interesting discussions with WotS's dev; even got some things altered pretty quickly or various extra config text items added so I could play around with some additional variables) and I've been struck by a torp from ambush ONCE. Even my BBs have no trouble dancing on the heads of pins. It's ridiculous, but the WoWS crowd in particular now think ships really were able to accelerate crazily, particularly ahead ("0 to 35 knots in a >50,000t warship in less than 60 seconds? Sure, no probs; in fact if you fly the appropriate flag, you can go even faster!!11111!!!"), so if you made the system more realistic perhaps the forum would explode, LOL. Given it is what it is, however, yes, ships are much more able to avoid torps in just about any situation. But then you can build monster torpedo ships, so that somewhat counters it. It's almost worth putting some hard limits on just how many of particular weapons and reloads you ought to be able to carry, or at least allowing for that to be turned on by players who don't want massive "walls of skill" tactics to be a thing. If you put ship manoeuvrability more akin to reality in the game but allowed torp numbers that are just silly to stay, only the AI would use guns, LOL. To be fair, however, I think this game does it better than War on the Sea, which is even more "my BB starts to turn within 3 seconds of ordering some rudder put on" which is just LOLS. Cheers

If the campaign has some setting that has ships plonked 'x' distance from one another instead of a distance that is directly the output of the visibility/spotting mechanics then I would suggest that's the error. It's all but mandating scenarios for the player where they will think "WTF??? How did my entire line of ships NOT see that/those further away??" If the campaign is meant to be with the same visibility system but seems to be producing results that are anything but, then, yes, that would seem to be a pretty easily defined bug. Are you able to confirm which system the campaign uses for positioning forces, and what the possible ranges are IF they aren't directly produced from the same spotting system that functions in battle? I understand the campaign might use a scaled down version where it uses the most visible ship from each as the target for the opposition to spot while also using the best vision available in a force as the one that's used to detect something. In other words, a condensed version of visibility vs 'stealth', just as is done in things like D&D 5th Edition and countless other games. But if it's some arbitrary number set at the campaign level? Even if it's "working as intended" I still think it's poor and would far prefer it be removed and something more along the lines of what I suggested be implemented. Cheers

What does this have to do with the SNAFU vision system and lazy, stupid Borg-sighting? Random, "oh damn" moments (maintenance failures, training accidents, whatever) are a perfectly fine set of variables about which to have a conversation. What those factors have absolutely nothing in common with is DDs materialising at 1km when they would never have spotted said BB from 20km in order to close on it. As for "one must expect losses" , ought I view that as condescending or simply remarkably fatuous? Be a pretty pointless combat simulator if one never took losses. I can never quite decide if your ability to type replies that ignore the central point of posts to which you are allegedly replying is deliberate or innate.

^ This matter of the vision system is a continuation of the issue of Borg sighting, too, as far as I'm concerned. We've been saying for a long time the vision system has some major issues. If you shoot at me, there's no way I don't see you, for example. Maybe all I get is an idea of your bearing and range, but it's immediately a huge "look somewhere over here" sign. Yet that's not what happens because the system runs on a lazy Borg sighting system, something that has no business being in a game in 2021. You'd think you'd have a test system with a whole bunch of scenarios mapped out. You'd run your designed game system through those scenarios to see that it generates the result that's expected. If it doesn't, it's a fail. That's basic User Acceptance Testing in a nutshell, isn't it? Granted, I've only ever done it in situations like banking and insurance companies' systems, so maybe I don't understand it properly. On top of that, as I've said many times, you ALSO ought to have a "must NOT" list, too. 'Must NOT have 6 DDs spawn within 1km of enemy BB' would seem potentially to be one of them. If the visibility is so poor that the BB can't see the DDs, the DDs almost certainly would never have spotted the BB from range to close on it. That leaves both forces happening to be on converging courses at exactly the correct distance and speed to come within 1km of each other. I don't think I need to comment on the statistical likelihood of that happening, especially if it's in open seas. That absence of the "must not" list is one I've seen cause all sorts of mayhem (a bank ended up fined ~$1.6 billion because of what I'm sure was a failure to have that check in place with a change made to their ATM network; considering they were technically liable for something like a fine of $50 billion due to the number of breaches through the network, they got off lightly). It's simple yet so often seems to be neglected, with predictable consequences.