Naval Rebalance | Designer Corner

[C0RAX]

These changes look really promising!

One issue that many worry will remain is "deathstacking", or putting all ships into a big blob, will remain the foremost strategy, especially against the dispersed task forces of the AI. Is anything planned to ameliorate this issue?

Reduced positioning penalties for joining battles are nice but won't solve the core issue of massively more total ships and IC = almost guaranteed victory

this has been done but I somehow missed it from the DC (I will edit it in) MAX_POSITIONING_PENALTY_FROM_HIGHER_SHIP_RATIO Has been increase from 50% to 75%. this will make death stacking not quite so good from our tests so far.

 

[C0RAX]

Is the new speed calculation also going to have a significant effect on fast ships, or will the hit chance on them stay more or less the same? (Essentially: Are destroyers easier to hit now, or not?)

Right now it makes destroyers and carriers very slightly easier to hit (like 0.01%-0.05%) but slower cruisers and battleships are getting 2%-5% lower chance to hit so it is simply flattening out those high chance to hit situations to be less extreme.

 

[C0RAX]

As part of this naval "rework" it is planned to make changes on the naval OOB of different countries?

it is something I want to do but no promises on the extent.

 

[C0RAX]

So would your draft hit chance be

( (visibility * 100) / ( (speed/2) + 15) ) + (% given by radar) + (% given by fire control)

or

( (visibility * 100) / ( (speed/2) + 15) ) * (1 + % given by radar) * (1+ % given by fire control)

neither, they effect the final hit chance calculated against the weapon target profile so (10 * (Hitprofile/weaponaccuracy)^2) * (1 + % given by radar) * (1+ % given by fire control)

edited because I misread the equations

 

[C0RAX]

Can fire control modules stop giving reliability reductions? They are quite silly and make 0 sense. Overall quite impressive rework

another thing I missed but they have been removed

 

[C0RAX]

My obvious question is why you keep impying SH BB would remain a ship rather than an immobile artillery platform?

Base hull speed: 22 (vs 30 for even 1918 BB design) - check
Engine: same generic ones, so +55% max (with no flat speed addition any longer) - check
1944 DP: -6% each (lol) - check
SH Battery: -9% each - check
SH Armor: -35% (LOL) - check

that base speed is a typo, SHBB base speed should be 32 there. my bad

 

[C0RAX]

Forgive me, I'm pretty ignorant on the subject, but just to be clear; none of the hit chance multipliers are touching the base weapon hit chance of 10%, just the profile multiplier, so the absolute hit chance cap would still be 10%, correct?

I'm looking forward to the changes because right now playing around speed is really cheesy; choosing trade interdiction doctrine, a raiding fleet designer, optimizing your ships for speed and visibility, and laying 100% mines in whatever region you choose to fight in, allows you to get ~6-20x (depending on weapon type) as many hits as your opponent per attack.

corrected my original answer as I misread the equations being presented, they effect the final hit chance calculated against the weapon target profile so (10 * (Hitprofile/weaponaccuracy)^2) * (1 + % given by radar) * (1+ % given by fire control)

 

[C0RAX]

Thank you.
I'll wait for the next diaries to question your very reasoning (as values are far less important than ideas behind them), but for now another question worth asking would be this:

given the amount of additions and (mostly) substractions to the base speed *and* your stated desire to bring speed values as much close to each other as possible, why don't you tax speed by a quadratic function (of drag), like it works IRL? From the look of it, that new value might solve most of your problems (both real and perceived).

Armor pictures show you're fine with introducting new parameters (torp damage factor) for the sake of expanding game mechanics.

I'll be honest I'm not familiar with the drag equation in detail so couldn't comment on its effect. but given that I don't understand it makes me think it would be hard for other players to grasp. would we choose to go down that direction of functionality I would be inclined to lean toward an arbitrary "hullform value" and augment by that.

 

[C0RAX]

Wait what:
( (visibility * 100) / ( (speed/2) + 15) )

Why not just:
( (visibility * 50) / (speed + 30) )

I'm no programmer but isn't this way easier to understand for everyone, players and programmers alike?

that is not the same. Take a ship with 35 speed & 10 visibility, it has a hit profile of 31 with the new calculation. your calculation would give a hit profile of 8 for that same ship.

 

[C0RAX]

While part of the problem, speed was but a final nail in the coffin of battleships, which were already dead due to horrific cost/performance ratio (resulted from a multitude of reasons), and hardly impacted anything else. Visibility, however, made Trade Interdiction (along with other visibility-reducing measures) an absolute meta for fleet engagements - something that is not being addressed, I see.

Trade Interdiction has it's surface visibility reductions removed, undecided if and what will replace them.

 

[C0RAX]

I was so happy, when I red the headline. But nothing revolutionaly, sadly

If you really want an INTUITIVE ship designing system, forget the old one, don't try to patch it, and make a system where you introduce hull CAPACITY, which is a simplistic idea for weight/space. With this you can "throw" modules of much greater variety into the ship.

This is a rebalance not a rework, and so fixing the largest pain points within the currently implemented features is the limit.