fnord_disc

The fracturing of the Dota community was one of the reasons I stopped playing. Yes, public games were cancerous, but having wildly different players with their own leagues and areas in the game for all practical purposes produces different games. Games need variation, and that includes bad players and good players having to play together. The question should be how the game is designed to not make this frustrating.

The FuMO 23 had an 81cm wavelength, an azimuth accuracy of 500 meters at 15,000 meters and a range accuracy of 70 meters - this in addition obviously to the guns inaccuracy. The radar was not slaved directly to the fire control computers anyway, so it could only help optical fire control arrive at a firing solution. It was more or less a pure search and warning radar, not a fire control radar. As far as I know it didn't even have adequate displays or plotters to allow the crew to manually overrule optimal firing solutions using radar data, even if they wanted to. It gave reasonably accurate distance information, but the azimuth was more or less useless. It has to be mentioned that official accuracy test results were destroyed or lost in the war, so it may have been somewhat more or less accurate than the numbers above. The FuMO 25 is listed with 0.3° accuracy and the FuMO 21 at 3°, so I've estimated it at 2°. For the time it was a reasonably good radar, though. We're talking about early '41 here, and radar technology progressed very swiftly during the war. The German flak radars show that Germany was capable of both manufacturing long-range accurate radar and the accompanying fire control computers for blindfire gun laying even in '41, but the navy was a late adopter of such innovative concepts and never really warmed up to things the Luftwaffe had been using for months or years to evident success. To my knowledge, efforts were made to equip Prinz Eugen and Tirpitz with blindfire radar FC, but there is no operational data that gives us an indication of how these performed. The sets used look very capable to me, chiefly the FuMO 81 and 26, but I cannot say how well they were integrated and ultimately how experimental the whole thing was. A chief problem here is the attitude of the Kriegsmarine. Developing a fully integrated and automated fire control system did not feature very highly on their list of priorities, and while the various aspects of German fire control and radar compare well to American and British systems, they were not as well integrated even though the theoretical capability was there.

You can argue the same underlying data in a different way. A skill and gameplay gradient is necessary because it means the game contains new players which enlarge the player base. Nobody starts off by being good, and not having bad players in a game implies the game does not have newer players. This is more or less the problem with games like Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. It's a fantastic game and one of the greatest and most complex RTS ever made, but the high difficulty of playing to even very modest standards is also its biggest problem - the playerbase is very small, and not growing. It takes weeks to be anything but utterly terrible. I think the problems you describe are not entirely applicable to WoWs because the game penalizes a lack of skill quite harshly. There is no derping around in a heavy tank and somehow still contributing positively - battleships are not heavy tanks. Anyone who refuses to improve will quickly be ejected by the first two waves of torpedo bombers or destroyer strikes. What you describe as "tomatoes" are not the players that are bad - they're the players that refuse to improve. I don't think WoWs will have very many of these if the current design direction is kept.

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People get hit by air-dropped torpedoes in a Cleveland? Now I've heard everything. Nothing will shock me now.

That's the biggest pile of nonsense I've read all week, and this forum usually provides a never-ending stream of unqualified commentary. EVADE THE PLANES Also, if I remember correctly, you're the guy who said he can't aim worth jack and uses the deflection mod. Basically, your opinion on, like, anything pertaining to how this game is actually played is quite useless ¯_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)ง-]—- ᴇɴ ɢᴀʀᴅᴇ

You want realism? How about we get a historically accurate turning radius and ship responsiveness then. It took most battleships about 30 minutes for a 180° turn. If from now on it takes your ships 10 minutes to execute basic evasive maneuvers then I don't mind having to drop my torpedoes 700 away from you.

If you have a brain you will not get hit and sunk by torpedoes. If you have a brain you will still get hit and sunk by gunfire. That is the end of the discussion.

Taihou, Shoukaku, sunk by 2-4 torpedoes. Shinano sunk by 1 (iirc?) torpedo. Fuso sunk by <2 torpedoes.

Yes, that is precisely what I am saying. It doesn't matter whether torpedoes do 5,000 damage or 50,000. Nobody with a brain gets hit by torpedoes.

Are you saying it is statistically more likely to be sunk by inferior gunfire?

Strange how I never get sunk by torpedoes even when I play slow, lumbering battleships.

You're not supposed to be rewarded for taking part in the beta by roflstomping noobs once the game goes live with your pimped-out ships.

Torpedoes are too weak.

Erm... what? Hiryuu/Souryuu both made 34 knots. The two capital ship conversions were the slowest at just below/above 30. Even Taihou made 33 knots and the two cranes are with the dragons at 34. I'd say you're confusing Hiryuu and Hiyou, but Hiyou only made 25-ish, so I don't know.

In your particular case it's not even about having not played high-level DDs. In your case it's about basically not having played any DDs at all.

[ Sorry, please delete this post ]

Finite resource. Okay. So instead of firing a salvo every two minutes in my DD, I would fire a salvo twice a match. That's definitely going to improve the weakest class in the game.

I don't agree with this entirely. It's true that the Hippers had very average armor thickness, but their underwater protection was strong, they were large and very seaworthy, and they had a good internal layout. The damage they sustained in the war proved that despite their average armor they were very rugged ships. The 20.3/60 on the Hippers had virtually the same range as the 28cm on the Deutschland class. In fact, they also had basically the same range as the 35.6cm on the Kongos.

Are they running into trouble with the magazine that originally invented the Senjo name? Could just pick any other sizable mountain in Japan...

Numerous ships survived Operation Crossroads in more or less seaworthy condition. Their crew would have died like rats, but the ships are sturdier than you would think.

A historically accurate 1941 Bismarck perched at Tier 8 would be a fairly weak ship.

Let's also not forget that H42 and onwards included a very silly armored tunnel around the screws and rudder to protect against torpedo hits to the steering equipment. Chances are the tunnel itself would have rendered the ship almost unmaneuverable.

I would like to see the source for this. All my books say exactly the opposite. Less penetration, less range, less broadside weight. However, I acknowledge that the guns were quite accurate and had attractive descent angles at range. edit: Oh, do you mean the BRITISH 38cm? Then yeah, I agree. But those were ancient guns but the time WW2 came around.

Fair enough, dragging the shells into the discussion wasn't fair. Even then I think the gun sacrificed too much for its performance targets.