World of Warships

Nevin73 wrote:

I think that some of this might be a level of realism baked into the code. The Japanese were fairly bad gunners with poor fire control systems. Their torps on the other hand were excellent. The US torps were bad and are pretty bad in the game while their gunnery is much better.

If there was realism baked in then virtually every Mark 14 torpedo fired from less than a Tier IX Fletcher would either run too deep to hit surface targets or fail to explode because of defects in its magnetic exploder mechanism and contact pistol.

Instead all we get is different blessing rates from WoW's RNGesus.

Do we want to try some division play? I'm Aetius2 in-game.

Aetius wrote:

Do we want to try some division play? I'm Aetius2 in-game.

Added. OG_slinger in-game.

WinkandtheGun in game.

I'm Tamren in game. I wouldn't mind grouping but I don't plan to go much further than tier III, maybe tier IV while the game is still so rough and beta.

Aetius wrote:
Tamren wrote:

1. Fire a perfectly aimed salvo of shells and watch them splash all around the target.

I swear some of the Japanese gunners are drunk. The Kawachi can fire an eight gun salvo, and you need them because when you shoot there are just shells just all over the place - hundreds of meters apart, from the same turret.

This is fairly "realistic" given the technological limits of the time. Battleship guns are hard to make, their sheer size makes them start to droop and flex under their own weight. Ammunition is the same way. It's fairly easy to make match grade rifle rounds by hand using a good scale. Not so easy with BB ammunition. You are machining something taller than you are in an era before CnC machines, everything is done by hand and hands are prone to mistakes. Each BB calibre shell is of slightly different shape, different balance, different weight, and combined with the cannon itself those differences are magnified over distance. Achieving a "straddle" where your shells land on both sides of the target is considered a good thing because it means you have the correct range. Actually hitting the target is a matter of luck.

So really, the last 25% of a gun's maximum range was considered "optimism" more than anything else.

I'm pretty sure WoWS is simplifying a lot of things. SoCal guns are limited to a 11km firing distance, the data sheet for it's guns says that they can shoot all the way out to 16km at max elevation.

OG_slinger wrote:
Nevin73 wrote:

I think that some of this might be a level of realism baked into the code. The Japanese were fairly bad gunners with poor fire control systems. Their torps on the other hand were excellent. The US torps were bad and are pretty bad in the game while their gunnery is much better.

If there was realism baked in then virtually every Mark 14 torpedo fired from less than a Tier IX Fletcher would either run too deep to hit surface targets or fail to explode because of defects in its magnetic exploder mechanism and contact pistol.

Instead all we get is different blessing rates from WoW's RNGesus.

No. We are getting better US guns vs. better IJN torpedoes.

The kind of realism you are talking about has really no place in a videogame like this. It's hard enough to hit with torpedoes, if they'd fail to explode on a hit, no one would play the game. I am sure US Navy felt the same way back in the day but they didn't have a choice in the matter.

Also, if we were being realistic, the game would be entirely dominated by aircraft carriers.

Been playing the OBT a lot now after CBT turned over.

I'm up in T-7 Jap DD, T-6 Jap cruiser, and i always love playin the Russian T5 premiums and the T8 premium Atago.

At some point when i play with someone low level i'll start a battleship and then carrier line as well.

I'm open for invites and playin with folks to get divisions going on teamspeak or vent.

My IGN for World of Warships/wargaming.net is: Fuzzballx
http://worldofwarships.com/en/commun...

Also don't feel the game is poorly baked at all. It's come a long ways and despite people constantly crying about stuff, it seems to be that as many people cry about battleships as cry about carriers as cry about cruisers as cry about destroyers to me.

Thus, something may be right:P

I find the game to be of excellent quality these days and worth the time to check out for sure if not stick with. Me? I'm stuck to it pretty good after getting to some T10s in CBT and being well on my way in OBT now.

The only major problem it has at the moment is matchmaking. A 2-tier span is WAY too much for a game like this. Warthunder has 22 levels it uses to gauge relative strength from 1.0 to 8.0 in .3 increments, Wargaming only uses 10. I currently have a full set of USN and IJN tier III ships and I think this is the tier where getting undertiered in a match is the most obnoxious. I'm trying to research the tier IV battleships so I can get started on carrier gameplay, but I keep getting into matches against tier V ships where I get 3 hits and NOTHING else. Everything on the enemy team is faster and outranges me so the only times I can even fire my guns are when I come across idiots or I'm the only one left alive and outnumbered 5-1.

Eh, if you're gonna throw War Thunder out there, MM there is just as broken, just broken in different ways. There's a ton of crap that's ridiculously overpowered for it's BR or tier, or both.

Warships is all about planning. It's not like tanks or planes where you can switch things up relatively quickly. If you get out of position here, you're going to stay that way.

But at least with warthunder no matter how big the tier gap between fighters they still have to get less than half a kilometre of each other before they can attack with any semblance of accuracy. This is consistent trend until the introduction of sidewinder missiles.

In WoWS I get into situations where I can NEVER fire my guns, enemy ships outrange me by 4km and move faster. The first time I tried driving out my Tier III battleship it put me in a game with two Tier V carriers. That is just bullsh*t and way beyond anything Warthunder's matchmaking could do.

This is why I'm working to get to Tier IV asap. Tier III and to a lesser extend IV contain all the crappy ship designs made in a time when the engineers didn't really know what they were doing. Tier V and beyond are created using lessons learned and it shows, the gap between IX and X is way smaller than III and IV.

No, that's you putting yourself into a crappy situation. CVs at nearly all tiers are faster than BBs. Even the early CVs are much faster than early BBs; it's a consequence of design.

Battleships were designed to fight other battleships and errant cruisers. Yea, they're slow. It's pretty damn hard to be fast when you're weighed down with a ton of armor and guns that fire projectiles that share mass characteristics with small cars.

AnimeJ wrote:

No, that's you putting yourself into a crappy situation. CVs at nearly all tiers are faster than BBs

What gave you impression that I'm chasing the carriers? I don't even get to SEE the carriers. All I get to see is the torpedo bombers that come over the mountain and say "haha look at this sh*tty tier III battleship! He can only do 18 knots! Let's kill him!". And then I either die from 10 torpedoes or I dodge half and get knocked down to half my health before I sight my first enemy ship let alone get within firing range of anything.

It doesn't happen all the time but when it does it makes me quit the game and go back to playing Terraria.

Tamren wrote:

This is why I'm working to get to Tier IV asap. Tier III and to a lesser extend IV contain all the crappy ship designs made in a time when the engineers didn't really know what they were doing. Tier V and beyond are created using lessons learned and it shows, the gap between IX and X is way smaller than III and IV.

I really don't see what you are talking about. St. Louis is crappy? We must be playing different games.

St. Louis is awesome. Tenryu is pretty good. Tier 3 destroyers are great as well. None of these ships suffer from 1-2 tier difference. If there is a tier 5 ship in your fight and you are scared of it, just stay away from it and let other ships fight it out. Tier 5 carriers? Who cares, they might as well be tier 10, it doesn't really change much for me when I am in real ships.

Although I haven't played tier 3 battleships in OBT yet, only the Arkansas Beta but that's tier 4. I remember not really liking Kawatchi in CBT but that's a ship to blame, not the matchmaker.

Judging by your last post, it seems it's not really about the MM, you seem to be in the "CVs are OP against BBs" camp and in tier 3, I feel your pain. This tier has very little AA and playing a slow BB against torpedo bombers is tough. Stick to friendly cruisers, especially Yubaris. Turn into torpedo bombers. Hope that the enemy BBs are having equally difficult time with the carrier from your team.

Bad news is that (IIRC from CBT) tier 4 is not going to be much different. Good news is that tiers 5+ are much better as BBs and cruisers get much better AA as well as upgrades and captain skills to improve it even further.

The St Louis is indeed awesome but it still suffers from getting put into tier V games the same way the Kawachi does. A 10km maximum gun range sounds alright until you run into people with 12 or even 14km of range with greater speed who kite you in circles. Once you get to tier V and up the difference in gun range has less impact because everyone can pretty much shoot out to and further than their detection range.

Destroyers and IJN cruisers don't suffer from being undertiered in a match nearly as much because of the simple fact that they have torpedoes. It doesn't matter if that enemy ship is 2 tiers above you, the torpedoes do more than enough damage to sink anything. If you turn a corner and find an enemy BB with it's guns pointed at someone else or you manage to approach to point blank range your target is almost certainly dead.

The St Louis is awesome, but going from that to trying to level up the South Carolina and Wyoming to get to the carriers sucks balls!

Tamren wrote:

The St Louis is indeed awesome but it still suffers from getting put into tier V games the same way the Kawachi does. A 10km maximum gun range sounds alright until you run into people with 12 or even 14km of range with greater speed who kite you in circles.

While this kind of kiting has never happened to me in St. Louis, I'd agree that it's remotely possible. But than Yubari has 12.8 gun range, Kuma has 12.4, Phoenix has 13.7, Myogi has 15.3. These are all tier 4 ships and they all greatly outclass St. Louis in gun range.

For the record, in tier 5, Furutaka has 13 and Omaha has 12.7 (yes, less than Phoenix and Yubari).

So it's not really about tier 3 getting into tier 5 fights - some tier 4 ships have even greater range.

Destroyers and IJN cruisers don't suffer from being undertiered in a match nearly as much because of the simple fact that they have torpedoes. It doesn't matter if that enemy ship is 2 tiers above you, the torpedoes do more than enough damage to sink anything. If you turn a corner and find an enemy BB with it's guns pointed at someone else or you manage to approach to point blank range your target is almost certainly dead.

Err, if St. Louis turns a corner and finds an enemy BB with its guns pointed at someone else, it will be happy too. Situational awareness rules either way. I thought we were talking about 10+ distances, where IJN cruisers' torpedoes are just as useless as St. Louis' guns.

Bottom line is MM is fine, 2 tier difference is fine, St. Louis is fine (more than fine actually), BBs suck at the moment, tier 3 and 4 BBs double suck as they have no AA. The latest swing of the nerfbat affected their accuracy way too much. Or so it seems based on forum discussions, since I have no time to try them out myself.

I think I need to clarify why I said BBs suck. It's just my IMO based on my preferences as a player. BBs are still powerful, have lots of health, are great damage sponges and can dish out some hurt. Just yesterday my St. Louis was almost one shot by a Wyoming (could be the SoCar, can't remember) - I went from 90% to 0 in one salvo thanks to a lucky citadel shot.

But it seems BBs are too RNG dependent currently for my likeness, in which they are similar to WoT arty. WoT arty has an average 35% hit rate and while, clearly, very important and powerful and can turn a fight with a couple of good shots, it still misses most of the time and this kind of gameplay doesn't appeal to me and drives me crazy. I respect arty and arty players but don't really want to play as one.

Hence my opinion on BBs - I respect them and I think they play an important role but, given a choice (and being so limited in time lately), I don't really want to play them.

But the Louis can't instantly destroy a full health BB the same way a boatload of torpedoes can. Anyway my point was that fast ships with torpedoes can dictate the terms of their engagement, regardless of what tier they are. Slow BBs and cruisers with short ranged guns are at the complete mercy of the enemy team. If they just steam right towards the enemy fleet they die, if they stick with the pack all their friends do all the shooting and outpace them. The end result is a ship that always gets to battle last and never gets to shoot and or a ship that becomes the last man standing simply because it was no threat compared to the rest of it's team.

Having played both Tier III BBs extensively I can confirm that the accuracy sucks. The shot dispersion is 180m, which is awful. You can fire a full broadside at a cruiser 5km away and miss with every shot. A single citadel hit from BB AP shells can knock a cruiser down by 75% or another BB by half. But achieving that citadel hit is nearly impossible because you can't target specific modules. You can aim as well as you want but whether or not you hit is pure RNG at the moment. I've run across a lot of smug cruiser drivers who just sit with their ships pointing directly towards me to present the smallest target.

Found some interesting data. In a theoretical scenario where an Iowa went up against the Bismarck in a broadside slugging match, the percent chance of hitting the target was calculated to be thus:

10,000 yards (9,144 m) - 32.7%
20,000 yards (18,288 m) - 10.5%
30,000 yards (27,432 m) - 2.7%

In short, not great odds, but definitely MUCH better odds that we are currently seeing in the game right now. It's interesting to note that the Iowa's guns could fire almost 40km at maximum elevation, but the projectiles would take almost a minute and a half to arrive. Aiming at a moving target smaller than a country is wishful thinking at that distance.

Tamren wrote:

Slow BBs and cruisers with short ranged guns are at the complete mercy of the enemy team. If they just steam right towards the enemy fleet they die, if they stick with the pack all their friends do all the shooting and outpace them. The end result is a ship that always gets to battle last and never gets to shoot and or a ship that becomes the last man standing simply because it was no threat compared to the rest of it's team.

Sorry, I've played hundreds of fights since CBT started, St. Louis was always one of my favorite ships, I've never sold it, played dozens of fights in it and it just hasn't been my experience. I just don't see 2 fleets shooting it out at 11+ km range careful not to get closer than 10 km. Like ever. There is always someone to shoot at.

Hedinn wrote:

So it's not really about tier 3 getting into tier 5 fights - some tier 4 ships have even greater range.

The Myogi fully upgraded can shoot out to 18.4km, and out to like 24km with the spotter plane up. Thing is, you really can't hit anything at that range - you shoot too slowly and the shells take too long to get there, and someone else has to be closer to spot for you. Plus you can't keep that distance, because the maps simply aren't big enough. The Myogi was absolutely painful to level because of that - she only has six guns, and until the final upgrade level has no AA. In fights against other Tier 4/5 BBs, she is often outgunned 2 to 1, and pretty much all the cruisers are faster so they just close the range and then start out-dpsing her while maneuvering to avoid the occasional salvo.

In the Myogi I fear gun-heavy cruisers like the St. Louis, and especially the Murmansk. I spend the entire fight on fire and waiting for my guns to reload while I just take shot after shot and systems are getting blown away left and right. Yeah, occasionally you'll get a citadel hit and take someone out or do huge damage, but it's rare and unreliable.

I have had zero issues with the MM gaps in warships. This game is, imho, far easier to play against people tiered above you in most ship types than the warthunder and world of tanks games. The one exception is lower tier US battleships, but even that is overcomable with tactics taking that into consideration, at least to the extent that you can progress through them...and sometimes you're the top dog vs lower tiers too so it tends to even up over time.

Nevertheless, i've never found myself in this game, going well, sh*t, i'm fubar, and i found that in warthunder constantly. The only scenario where it even comes close to really being a pita for me is tier 7 and 8 if the enemy has a particular t10 or 2. And it's not a common situation...at all.

Most lines also have some ships, or a ship, considered op for their tier, which you can keep as an elite ship as a credit maker and a exp generator if you don't mind spending doubloons to convert exp, but mostly as a credits maker.

I really really don't see the matchmaking range as an issue at all in this game, and i've got 850 games under my belt between CBT and OBT now that i'm coming at that from.

Tamren wrote:

Found some interesting data. In a theoretical scenario where an Iowa went up against the Bismarck in a broadside slugging match, the percent chance of hitting the target was calculated to be thus:

10,000 yards (9,144 m) - 32.7%
20,000 yards (18,288 m) - 10.5%
30,000 yards (27,432 m) - 2.7%

In short, not great odds, but definitely MUCH better odds that we are currently seeing in the game right now. It's interesting to note that the Iowa's guns could fire almost 40km at maximum elevation, but the projectiles would take almost a minute and a half to arrive. Aiming at a moving target smaller than a country is wishful thinking at that distance.

Those are not lower tier ships though....

The Iowa is literally in the game as a Tier 9 battleship...and the Bismark would be a good tier too. And let me tell ya...they shoot a friggin hell of a lot better than the lower tier ships you've played so far.

Fuzzballx wrote:

I have had zero issues with the MM gaps in warships. This game is, imho, far easier to play against people tiered above you in most ship types than the warthunder and world of tanks games. The one exception is lower tier US battleships, but even that is overcomable with tactics taking that into consideration, at least to the extent that you can progress through them...and sometimes you're the top dog vs lower tiers too so it tends to even up over time.

Nevertheless, i've never found myself in this game, going well, sh*t, i'm fubar, and i found that in warthunder constantly. The only scenario where it even comes close to really being a pita for me is tier 7 and 8 if the enemy has a particular t10 or 2. And it's not a common situation...at all.

Yeah. It helps that any ship can deal damage to another ship in WoWS, but in War Thunder Ground Forces I'm sometimes in a tank that literally cannot damage another enemy tank.

What I have noticed is that this game absolutely (and rightly) punishes the sh*t out of you if you lose your situational awareness by staying zoomed in and mindlessly blasting away.

You constantly have to check on where your teammates and enemies are and, more importantly, reading where they're going. The last thing you want to be is out of place, i.e., the only ship that multiple enemy ships can see. And that's made worse due to the fact that once you realize you're out of place you can't easily correct the situation. It takes time to turn and steam away. Time for cruisers to rain a sh*tton of HE shells down on you. Add in enemy planes and enemy DDs that you can't see, but who are still spotting you, and your escape gets even harder.

OG_slinger wrote:
Fuzzballx wrote:

I have had zero issues with the MM gaps in warships. This game is, imho, far easier to play against people tiered above you in most ship types than the warthunder and world of tanks games. The one exception is lower tier US battleships, but even that is overcomable with tactics taking that into consideration, at least to the extent that you can progress through them...and sometimes you're the top dog vs lower tiers too so it tends to even up over time.

Nevertheless, i've never found myself in this game, going well, sh*t, i'm fubar, and i found that in warthunder constantly. The only scenario where it even comes close to really being a pita for me is tier 7 and 8 if the enemy has a particular t10 or 2. And it's not a common situation...at all.

Yeah. It helps that any ship can deal damage to another ship in WoWS, but in War Thunder Ground Forces I'm sometimes in a tank that literally cannot damage another enemy tank.

What I have noticed is that this game absolutely (and rightly) punishes the sh*t out of you if you lose your situational awareness by staying zoomed in and mindlessly blasting away.

You constantly have to check on where your teammates and enemies are and, more importantly, reading where they're going. The last thing you want to be is out of place, i.e., the only ship that multiple enemy ships can see. And that's made worse due to the fact that once you realize you're out of place you can't easily correct the situation. It takes time to turn and steam away. Time for cruisers to rain a sh*tton of HE shells down on you. Add in enemy planes and enemy DDs that you can't see, but who are still spotting you, and your escape gets even harder.

Well put. Planning out how you will be part of the team (even if it is unsaid) really increases your victory (and survivability) chances.

Nevin73 wrote:

Well put. Planning out how you will be part of the team (even if it is unsaid) really increases your victory (and survivability) chances.

Being undertiered I can deal with, being on a crap team I can deal with. It's dealing with both at the same time that grinds my gears. When I'm in a situation where the smartest thing I can do is not get pointlessly killed by superior ships and I have to watch my entire team (who have better ships than me) sail right off a cliff one by one, well the heroic last stand at the end where I earn barely any xp and credits is not much of a consolation.

Not that I'm any stranger to hopeless teams...
IMAGE(http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/534013339675149751/815497D7E65BD6357A33AD46E9E70804F2AA95D8/)

When I die, either valiantly or pointlessly, I usually exit the battle and start fighting in another ship. I'll catch up on the stats later.

So, discovered something new today.

6 torpedoes from a Wickes will NOT kill a full health Wyoming, it will in fact leave the Wyoming with 10% health and make it very angry. If I had known this I would have done a different attack run and gotten my other tubes on target faster.

Tamren wrote:

So, discovered something new today.

6 torpedoes from a Wickes will NOT kill a full health Wyoming, it will in fact leave the Wyoming with 10% health and make it very angry. If I had known this I would have done a different attack run and gotten my other tubes on target faster.

Torpedoes are not guaranteed full damage, it does depend on where they hit.

Hedinn wrote:
Tamren wrote:

So, discovered something new today.

6 torpedoes from a Wickes will NOT kill a full health Wyoming, it will in fact leave the Wyoming with 10% health and make it very angry. If I had known this I would have done a different attack run and gotten my other tubes on target faster.

Torpedoes are not guaranteed full damage, it does depend on where they hit.

True, but even if the Wickes' torps did full damage six of them aren't enough to take down a full strength Wyoming.

The Wyoming A hull has 41,500 HP. The B hull has 43,800 HP.

The max damage of the Wickes' torps is 6,400 meaning that the most damage you can deal in a full broadside from the tubes is 38,400.

Just one more full damage torp hit would have been enough. That or getting RNG lucky and setting a couple of fires with post-torp run cannon fire.