>>>"Alpha-4 v67+" General Feedback<<<

[roachbeef]

Massive lag seems to happen in menu after a battle. Performance has become highly unstable in this patch. Meanwhile, secondary barbettes cannot be placed on the sides due to going outside of the model. Tall III funnels can be placed on towers in a way that makes them partially float off the towers (on the BC III hull for Hurry Up mission). Hurry up mission has enemy spawning too close to the convoy, making it difficult to reach the enemy before they sink 4~5 ships. Needs rebalancing.

[Teckelmaster]

Wow, long range duels BBs can take a beating. The big steel monsters are a lot tougher and i love it. But the Achilles heel, fast torpedo throwing destroyers are a menace.

Angeling seems to be much more usefull now and HE ammo on BBs is no longer the faster way to kill. As far as i have tried.

Love the patch so far.

And the sips are pretty! Thanks a lot

 

[Skeksis]

Are there going to be key blinding options? 

I think I would prefer CTRL key for main gun targeting, for me that's the most used weapon and I would like to change it, and set the two key option, SHIFT-ALT, for torpedo's, least used input for two keys. 

But other than that, manual targeting is pretty darn good, working well.

I guess the next step is to be able to turn secondaries off and on... 

Edited February 5, 2020 by Skeksis

[Reaper Jack]

Denmark Strait Mission is completely borked. The Hood design does FORTYFIVE knots (always did after multiple reloads) and the speed modifier to accuracy means it basically can't be hit. Best Fire Control, best Radar, best possible guns, 6% accuracy at 3.7km. The Cruiser representing the Eugen that you get is also usually trash, barely having 13km range and with guns at 203mm that reload slower than your BB's do. It feels like you have every disadvantage when you should have the more modern ship(s) at your disposal. 

The German designs look nice, though the hull is not quite rounded enough. The German ships look like elongated teardrops from a bird's eye view (with tips at both ends of course.) Rather than the straight lines of the Iowas and Yamatos. 

Also experiencing a bug where one of my ships simply refuses to fire. And again, I have more modern ships equipped far better, and older enemy Battlecruisers have quadruple my accuracy with older guns and worse fire control, both sides are traveling at 33 knots. Something feels really wrong. 

Edited February 5, 2020 by Reaper Jack

[Shaftoe]

YES! YES!

[Molotnikov'sk]

This update is looking good so far for a person that mostly plays the game for the custom battles.

Although I must say, I feel like DDs, CLs, and possibly even TBs feel a bit overlooked. I was wondering if there was a chance that those types of ship can get their own modern spin. Like a modern DD hull based on the Fubuki or Fletcher class, or possibly a Cleveland-inspired CL...or a possible revenge of the TBs with the Elbing-class.


Anyways have this Nelson I made

[Ignominius]

Having serious issues with penetration damage on large caliber guns. Just played 'Prove your Might' and sailed my battlecruiser within about 2.5km of the enemy ship, landing several broadside penetrations with 15" Mk. 3 guns, and barely chipped away at the enemy vessel. If I had done the same thing in alpha 3 the first shot I landed would have disabled the engines or detonated the ammo.

 

 

Edit: Just tried again with 18" guns and did 26 dmg with a hit after ramming the enemy BB. Something is up.

 

Edit no. 2: I think this may just be up to the propellant, tried switching to High TNT and got a detonation.

Edited February 6, 2020 by Ignominius

[arkhangelsk]

3 hours ago, roachbeef said:

Massive lag seems to happen in menu after a battle. Performance has become highly unstable in this patch. Meanwhile, secondary barbettes cannot be placed on the sides due to going outside of the model. Tall III funnels can be placed on towers in a way that makes them partially float off the towers (on the BC III hull for Hurry Up mission). Hurry up mission has enemy spawning too close to the convoy, making it difficult to reach the enemy before they sink 4~5 ships. Needs rebalancing.

I confirm the lags. As for the enemy spawning too close to the convoy - OK, who was it who wanted player skill to have a bigger part? It's not you but I definitely remember someone saying this, two of them in fact. Anyway, this is it. You have to try and buy time with those two crap cruisers you are tossed. I did manage to reach them with two transports left. Just buy a faster battlecruiser - 35 knots or over should do it from last night.

[Reaper Jack]

1 minute ago, arkhangelsk said:

Just buy a faster battlecruiser - 35 knots or over should do it from last night.

Which is a feature I thoroughly dislike, no capital ship ever reached 35 knots. The Iowas are the fastest BB/BC in history at 33 knots and they had an engine setup in the 210,000 SHP region and excellent hydrodynamics. The fact I am seeing the AI design BC's from the 1920's that can do 45 knots is frankly absurd, such a ship would have zero armor unless it weighed in at upwards of 80,000 tons (where it would need more engine power to get to such speeds so therefore even more weight...you see the circle repeat...) and buckle under the weight of itself at that sort of speed. 

[Ignominius]

This is probably the most infuriating patch yet. Playing the 'The US Super Battleship' Mission and I have been in a very one sided shooting match for hours. The last Japenese Battleship is running away from me, and I am hitting it over and over again with my fore 18" guns, but it will not die. This enemy battleship has sustained greater than 250 direct hits from 18" guns, and yet the fires are not causing structural damage, and the shells themselves are hitting already damage saturated areas of the ship. By contrast, the one hit I landed on the same ship that cause an ammo detonation lowered it's health from 100% to 26%. I have (over the course of the last 3 in game hours) managed to lower that all the way down to 14%.

[Reaper Jack]

As we're posting pics though, here, have a Bismarck, almost entirely accurate I believe, right down to the weight. Again though I wish the hull was double ended teardrop shaped as it should be. 

Sadly from what I can see she'll be horrendously overpriced for the campaign. I designed a German BC with the new BC hull in custom battles afterwards and got 6x356mm guns and the same armor and more speed with the same components for 14k less tonnage and a quarter to a third of the price. (And under a quarter maintenance price.) Only reason I couldn't go 6x381mm was because the tower barbette can't hold them for some reason. Which, speaking of, neither the German CA or BC hulls can mount historical secondaries in their correct snap points, only the BB hull can. 

The picture below is to prove my point about the accuracy issues I was having with full modern fire control and gunnery. 40% at ramming distance, the AI BC had 100% accuracy on me for some time at that point, and somehow ammo racked me at an angle with the same guns as I had (seeing the German 381's on the Hood hull was also depressing) through a 360mm Krupp IV belt, meanwhile my guns when they did hit shattered on him almost every time despite his hull having a top armor score of 280mm at Krupp IV. My point here is, the German hulls look pretty, but so far playtesting them, they have all felt very underpowered and that's mostly down to awful accuracy. The exception is the CA hull, in which I took out 2 historical Hippers (slightly uparmored but the same weight) against 4 CL's and a CA with 1940 tech and wiped the floor with them with both torps and gunnery. 

Edited February 6, 2020 by Reaper Jack

[SmoCro]

I now literally have to hammer ships to death.

My last battle (one 1940 BB against 3 1930 BBs with 5 CLs) ended with me sinking the BBs at less than 10 kilometers with my 16" still doing neglible damage (I am also disappointed that even 24" torpedoes hardly do more than scratch the point, even if I manage to pump 8 into one BB and 4 into another).

The CLs died to the last grenades I could scrounge up from the depth of my magazines.

That is all definitely a change.

I think I like the fact that the BBs can take a hammering but I would like to see more damage from torpedoes.

[AML]

Seems to be an issue with how guns are assigned to be secondary vs primary, I've noticed that wing turrets will fire at whatever has been assigned as the secondary target despite being the same caliber as the centerline guns which will fire at the designated main gun target.

[CenturionsofRome]

Is anyone else getting a "Too many threads" error crash since the latest patch? I can't narrow down what's causing it but it doesn't seem to happen in custom battles.

[Ignominius]

Another mission, another unkillable battleship running away from my 6 forward 18" guns and getting absolutely hammered until I run out of ammo. Please, whatever you do, revert the damage back to the way it was in Alpha-3

[Dontshoot]

Great update! keep up the good work! The pace you guys are releasing updates at is fantastic! much faster, and with more content than I could have hoped for. That being said I agree the Hood vs Bismarck mission is borked right now.  AI makes Hood way to fast. I couldn't land a shot at sub 5km. Just watched a YouTube video showing the new update and he had the same issue. Prince Eugene was sunk before he could even get any solid shoots on the British BC. That being said I am in love with the new models especially for the turrets. I also really appreciate the refitted dreadnought hulls that can mount the Pagoda mast. Could you possibly make the funnel tech a little less restrictive? I want to use the older straight funnels to really get that refitted dreadnought look down. IJN Fuso and Kongo here I come!

Edited February 6, 2020 by Dontshoot

[Tankaxe]

 

Major issue with the Hood hull and towers. It doesn't allow you to fit any secondary below the towers and the max you can place is only 4x3 5" guns. Also I am seconding on the survivability issues pointed in this thread. I am seeing BBs in the 1930s tanking multiple 18" broadsides at close range with negligible damage.

 

[RAMJB]

1 hour ago, Reaper Jack said:

Sadly from what I can see she'll be horrendously overpriced for the campaign

Well, the original class was an absolute disaster from the cost efficiency point of view too. No big surprise there.



Haven't tried the patch yet, couple busy days on this end. Unlike others I'm truly pumped up by the news that now BBs take a huge beating before going down. Which is exactly what I'd expect from the structural point of view. Ships that size sank because flooding (especially flooding-induced capsizing), or because truly catastrophic events like a main magazine going off, not because anyone rearranged their avobe water structures with gunfire. Bismarck's last engagement is the perfect instance of that but not the only one - jutland also taught that lesson. 

I get that people are used to see nuclear explosions the second an artificial hp counter runs down to 0%, but that doesn't mean ships specifically designed for dealing and taking damage should go up just because. 

Not going to say much more than that until I have some time to try the new patch and get a proper idea on how the damage model works right now. There might be a problem, can't say because I've not tried it. But people should EXPECT battleships not sinking just because you look wrong at their general direction.

Edited February 6, 2020 by RAMJB

[arkhangelsk]

12 minutes ago, RAMJB said:

Unlike others I'm truly pumped up by the news that now BBs take a huge beating before going down. Which is exactly what I'd expect from the structural point of view.

Only got in one game since it became available only late last night for me. First impression is that it's not so much the BBs getting tougher, as the AP shells getting weaker. I'm shooting 14 inch guns at a German battlecruiser that maxes out at 9 inch armor with 14 inch guns. I notice all the damage point values are only in the double digits which is what you used to get for partial pens. If used to be they are AP-HE, now they are APDS.

But then, I remember how loudly I screamed at the squishiness of ships in Alpha 3 post hotfix (which is all of what almost everyone remembers of Alpha 3), so realism aside in gameplay terms my jury is still out.

[Steeltrap]

11 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Damage/Penetration of guns is balanced according to feedback of players.

First of all, thanks to you and your colleagues for the continuing work and excellent communications.

Just booted up my PC and am about to go try it to see what's changed. Am very much looking forward to the experience.

Otherwise? As weird as it may seem, I'm not necessarily a fan of the bit I quoted UNLESS we have a more specific idea of exactly what feedback you follow.

Are you, for example, trying to match players' expectations even when those are demonstrably and significantly at odds with an accurate portrayal?

Or are you looking at the feedback containing lots of real world reports and detailed summaries of different weapon systems and their effectiveness as they improved over the period covered?

I will also confess I am a little worried so much is being done on later tech (1929+) when by far the majority of dreadnoughts were built from 1906 to early 1920s. Are you satisfied there's enough covering 1890 - 1929? That's going to take up much of the campaign, after all.

Cheers

[Steeltrap]

34 minutes ago, arkhangelsk said:

Only got in one game since it became available only late last night for me. First impression is that it's not so much the BBs getting tougher, as the AP shells getting weaker. I'm shooting 14 inch guns at a German battlecruiser that maxes out at 9 inch armor with 14 inch guns. I notice all the damage point values are only in the double digits which is what you used to get for partial pens. If used to be they are AP-HE, now they are APDS.

But then, I remember how loudly I screamed at the squishiness of ships in Alpha 3 post hotfix (which is all of what almost everyone remembers of Alpha 3), so realism aside in gameplay terms my jury is still out.

Which is why I worry about exactly how the devs are working on these things.

The squishiness was due to a number of things, but by far THE most important was the terribly crude damage model.

2 penetrating hits that caused flooding, one through the bow extended armour and one in the stern extended, was enough to sink a pre-dread BB with 'minimum' bulkheads. Meanwhile a Transport with maximum bulkheads could take more than 30 combined 8" and 9" hits, be reduced to 10% floatation yet recover if you didn't kill it.

If they're tinkering with damage done by shells, especially AP shells on armoured targets, while retaining that crude damage model then I suggest they're making a significant error, doubly so if HE remains as unreasonably effective as it has been against armoured targets with low bulkhead status.

Having said that, if you can't cause flooding you can't sink the ship. THAT ought to be one of the base rules of the damage model.

Oh well, will test and see. I have a couple of missions I play again and again with different ship builds to test things. Will be interesting to see how much, if at all, they've changed.

[RAMJB]

Ok did a quick first try just to check out things. Did a fast 1v1 with Bismarck (of course I had to) vs a brit BB (Turned out to be a 52k 33knot thing with 12x13'' guns, standard bulkheads). 20km engagement. Turned out to be an encounter with both ships in opposing courses. Kept range at 15k or so and then began moving keeping a roughly 45º angle to cut distance. Engagement came down to 8km for a while, then cut it down again down to 3km.

Enemy ship went down due to ammo explosion when it was down to 4% structure, 31% flotation. My own ship 100% flotation, 78% structure.


 Gonna need quite a lot more than this to form an overall opinion. But by preliminary thoughts:
1-penetrating hits do indeed a lot less damage than they used to. Structural damage to battleships takes a lot to build up.

2- Taking a BB compartment from green to yellow takes repeated hits. On to red, again, quite a lot of hits.

3- Component damage seems much harder to achieve now. During the whole engagement we pounded the living cr*p out of each other. I didn't suffer any permanent loss of components other than the commanding post (which is a quite important thing, but still). Enemy only permanently lost a couple secondaries and a torpedo launcher.

4- Flooding is EXCEEDINGLY rare, at least at anything like normal ranges. In the engagement until I came down to 4km or so I didn't get a single flooding. Enemy got only one on me (almost instantly repaired). There were underwater hits at all ranges, they just didn't seem to cause flooding until a certain damage treshold was surpassed. Which is...not really what one would expect XD. Again, this is just first impressions, but still.


My thoughts:

1-I love the overall result on structural damage and compartment damage. You're not going to blow 15% of an enemy structure with 3-4 hits no matter what. Reducing an enemy ship to 0% structure can perfectly take your whole ammo load (my battle ended when I was down to 60 projectiles for the main guns, standard load). Which I find is perfectly fine - those ships were tremendously strong and could take a beating.

2- while I think overall in this sense the damage model has given a quantum leap in the proper direction (in what regards to battleships - I'll have to check out how this affects to heavy hits on smaller ships like cruisers though), I *DO* think compartments are too hard to destroy now, particularily so within the main armored belt. There should be some kind of modifier, hits out of the main armored area (citadel) are fine as they are right now - but I think those that go into it should probably cause a lot more damage, while currently it doesn't matter wether your pen happens at the extreme bow or right down the middle of the belt and into the vitals of the ship.

3- what I don't like is the prominent lack of component damage and, specially, the noticeable lack of flooding because of underwater hits. Seems that flooding is related to overall compartment damage, and it shouldn't be. Scale of the flooding can be tied to how damaged a compartment is, but a hole is a hole - until you plug in, it's going to cause flooding. Currently that's not the case, and as a result sinking the ship due to flooding (The obvious way to sink a floating thing) seems inordinately difficult - specially because we still lack listing&capsizing mechanics (and we **DO** need those in a game like this).

4-Damage to engines seems really hard to achieve aswell and one would expect that citadel pens would have a rather reasonable chance at dealing some kind of engine damage. Doesn't seem the case right now.

5- in general while the ability of BBs to take serious structural punishment is a massive step in the correct direction, I think the game's show of a proper lack of "soft kill" effects is emphasized. Right now things like accuracy, top speed, etc, degrade with structural damage but given that now ships stand a lot more of punishment (as they should) "softening them", reducing their actual battleworthiness is much harder - both things (structural damage and speed and accuracy) should be related up to a point, but a ship could perfectly be an effective mission kill while being at very high structure - currently in the game that's not possible, and it shows.

6- the lack of a degradation of fire-fighting and flood-fighting efforts due to cumulative damage makes itself particularily evident now. Specially so given how few floodings actually happen. I'm guessing this will change when crew effects are introduced, but it's becoming a noticeable lack at the moment.



All in all I like it - but as it usually happens, getting something right usually exposes shortcomings in other areas, that will need work in return. Overall I have to agree that overall, BBs are now on the other end of the spectrum - before they were FAR too easy to kill, now they're pretty hard to kill (particularily so because of how limited flooding damage seems to be, and how difficult is to achieve "component kills" that reduce their ability to fight back and/or keep top speed).


A lot more work is needed because its far from perfect, but on a first impression, and even with the named issues (which matter and should be adressed), I like the overall feeling of it.

 

Edited February 6, 2020 by RAMJB

[Reaper Jack]

2 minutes ago, RAMJB said:

- Snip -

Quick question, what fire control were you using and what were the stability/pitch and smoke interference stats?

I'd like to confirm if I did something wonky with my Bismarck I posted earlier or whether firing at a BC going 45 knots just makes accuracy Hellish because speed affects it too much still. 

[RAMJB]

Stereoscopic V and Radar II. 20.5 pitch, 10.9 roll, -29 smoke interference.

I think your problem is indeed that the enemy was moving at 45 knots. Which I have to agree with others who have stated it too - it's a completely ridiculous top speed that no ship that size should come even close to touch. Heck, not even destroyers should.

[Ignominius]

10 minutes ago, RAMJB said:

My thoughts:

1-I love the overall result on structural damage and compartment damage. You're not going to blow 15% of an enemy structure with 3-4 hits no matter what. Reducing an enemy ship to 0% structure can perfectly take your whole ammo load (my battle ended when I was down to 60 projectiles for the main guns, standard load). Which I find is perfectly fine - those ships were tremendously strong and could take a beating.

Just as a curio, how many 13" shells from inside 2km do you reckon would be enough to kill one of the 1940s Battleships, given a full broadside? Historically or otherwise speaking.