Are reload times too slow?

[SPANISH_AVENGER]

Specially when it comes to Battleship guns.

In real life, modern 381-406mm guns had pretty cool 26-35 second reload speeds. Meanwhile, in UA:D, these seem to be excessively slow, even with enhanced, semi-automatic and automatic mechanisms.

Some real/UA:D comparisons:

Bismarck's twin 381mm guns: 26 seconds/43.6 seconds, using Enhanced Reload as Bismarck was suppossed to use.

Iowa's three rifle 406mm guns: 30 seconds/65.2 seconds, which is twice as much as it is suppossed to be.

The three rifle 406mm guns take 44.3 seconds to reload... with automatic reload! This means, automatically reload guns ingame are slower than their manual real life counterparts...

I think reload times need some significant polishments...?

[Right]

looks a bit far fetched to understand the exact rpm these things had but I guess that the factors wold be craw, number of barrels and what mark the gun is. Don't know where and how to get the info for this to compare it for the ingame mechanic but if you estimate then maybe it is a bit off from reality but there is balance stuff that we need in a game and atm for me it feels more or less fine as it is.

[disc]

It seems to depend heavily on the Mark number of the gun in question.

The rates of fire are not too absurd; in the Battle of the Denmark Strait, Bismarck fired 91 rounds in about 13 minutes, or 0.875 rpm per gun. At Guadalcanal, Washington (with essentially the same reloading arrangements as Iowa) fired about 1.5rpm per gun. 

[Cptbarney]

7 hours ago, disc said:

It seems to depend heavily on the Mark number of the gun in question.

The rates of fire are not too absurd; in the Battle of the Denmark Strait, Bismarck fired 91 rounds in about 13 minutes, or 0.875 rpm per gun. At Guadalcanal, Washington (with essentially the same reloading arrangements as Iowa) fired about 1.5rpm per gun. 

Im assuming a different mark is a more advanced version of the same gun and more efficient, depending on what that actually does i have no clue. Like different iterations or versions with more things added and previous things improved/changed/replaced.

[The Land]

"Real life" rates of fire under battle conditions tended to be slower than the maximums achieved in drills (or specified by designers).

Of course at long ranges the limiting factor was usually the flight time of the shells, which was usually longer than the reload time of the guns. Ships would only have several salvos 'in the air' at once if they were very confident that they had found the range.

[roachbeef]

On 2/15/2021 at 8:10 AM, The Land said:

"Real life" rates of fire under battle conditions tended to be slower than the maximums achieved in drills (or specified by designers).

Of course at long ranges the limiting factor was usually the flight time of the shells, which was usually longer than the reload time of the guns. Ships would only have several salvos 'in the air' at once if they were very confident that they had found the range.

Yeah, but that is not a defense of the game at all. The fix would be to have a button to wait to observe shell splash until firing the next salvo. It's implemented in War on the Sea, so maybe this game should just copy that (minus the bugs).

 

[SPANISH_AVENGER]

54 minutes ago, roachbeef said:

Yeah, but that is not a defense of the game at all. The fix would be to have a button to wait to observe shell splash until firing the next salvo. It's implemented in War on the Sea, so maybe this game should just copy that (minus the bugs).

 

 

Good idea! Maybe "wait to observe shell splash until firing the next salvo" would give an accuracy bonus, simulating the rangefinding corrections, while sacrificing rate of fire, while firing at full rate of fire would sacrifice that accuracy bonus for an optimal sustained reload rate.

[DeadlyWalrus]

1 minute ago, SPANISH_AVENGER said:

Good idea! Maybe "wait to observe shell splash until firing the next salvo" would give an accuracy bonus, simulating the rangefinding corrections, while sacrificing rate of fire, while firing at full rate of fire would sacrifice that accuracy bonus for an optimal sustained reload rate.

The issue is that you still have your targeting solution when you go to rapid fire so your accuracy should still be mostly the same as it was when you finish your observational fire.  What the slower rate of fire mainly does is conserve ammo while you're still building an good firing solution and probably aren't going to hit anything (and makes things a bit easier on your observers).  However, as the gunnery system is currently implemented you almost always have your solution and it's just a matter of throwing enough steel downrange to satisfy the RNG gods so there's not really any reason to just fire as fast as possible.

[Cpt.Hissy]

2 hours ago, DeadlyWalrus said:

The issue is that you still have your targeting solution when you go to rapid fire so your accuracy should still be mostly the same as it was when you finish your observational fire.  What the slower rate of fire mainly does is conserve ammo while you're still building an good firing solution and probably aren't going to hit anything (and makes things a bit easier on your observers).  However, as the gunnery system is currently implemented you almost always have your solution and it's just a matter of throwing enough steel downrange to satisfy the RNG gods so there's not really any reason to just fire as fast as possible.

Hm do i miss something?
At sea, everything moves. Your ship moves, your target moves, wind changes, nothing is really constant. Your perfect solution goes poof as soon as anything decides to change. So is rapid fire so good to be always worth it?

[Jatzi]

6 hours ago, roachbeef said:

Yeah, but that is not a defense of the game at all. The fix would be to have a button to wait to observe shell splash until firing the next salvo. It's implemented in War on the Sea, so maybe this game should just copy that (minus the bugs).

 

Or just make it automatic. They used to have ships fire an initial 2 ranging shots automatically. They got rid of it I think cuz ppl said it was a bug. But yeah just have them auto switch to rapid fire once they've found the range

Edited February 18, 2021 by Jatzi

[DeadlyWalrus]

11 hours ago, Cpt.Hissy said:

Hm do i miss something?
At sea, everything moves. Your ship moves, your target moves, wind changes, nothing is really constant. Your perfect solution goes poof as soon as anything decides to change. So is rapid fire so good to be always worth it?

Yes, everything changes, but it changes in somewhat predictable ways and it changes fairly slowly (at least as far as a shell travelling at several hundred m/s is concerned). So, the basic procedure for the period (pre-central fire control and post-radar gun direction are obviously different), is to get a rough solution through optical observation, fire slow, deliberate salvos and adjust the solution based on observing fall of shot, and then, once you have a decent solution (usually you bracket your target or possibly actually hit it), you fire as many shells as possible before your firing solution degrades too much.

Now, in-game, there's no benefit to observing the fall of shot, so your first salvo has the same chance of hitting as your 10th.  This is actually somewhat similar to gunnery in the pre-dreadnought (and earlier) era where individual gun crews had very little chance of identifying their own shell splashes amongst the hail of fire from the ship.  In this scenario you do want to just fire as fast as possible once you're in effective range as the best way to increase your chances of scoring a hit. In fact, if you look at naval doctrine of that time period, there is a very strong emphasis on rate of fire for this very reason.