Alaska's in-game 3rd deck (citadel roof) is too low by about 2.7 ft (0.8 m)

[puxflacet]

Quote

The possibility that Alaska's citadel roof, which is the ship's 3rd deck, is modeled too low was first raised by u/R_radical. I decided to investigate myself, using an amidship cross section that he linked to, and compared it with the in-game model extracted from gamemodels3d.

Alaska's 3rd deck in real life sits at 30 ft 7 in (9.3 m) molded height above the keel plating. The ship's draft at full load displacement is 31 ft 9.25 in (9.7 m), which is only about 1 ft 2 in (0.4 m) higher than the 3rd deck. At normal displacement, the draft is 30 ft 9.25 in (9.3 m), only 2 in (~0.05 m) above the 3rd deck. For all intents and purposes, this should be a waterline citadel, similar to the North Carolina's. However, in-game, it's readily apparent from videos of Alaska when viewing the extracted armor model and looking at the modules and plating that the Alaska's citadel current sits considerably lower than that. In fact, when inspecting the armor model, it appears that WG modeled Alaska's 3rd deck at the height of the armor belt knuckle, where the armor starts tapering from 9 in (229 mm) to 5 in (127 mm). This knuckle is 27 ft 11 in (8.5 m) molded height above the keel; in other words, the in-game model's 3rd deck is too low by 2 ft 8 in (0.8 m).

Here are the amidship cross sections with the waterline marked in blue, and WG's incorrect 3rd deck marked in red.

• 

•  (scan from Garzke & Dulin)

Currently, Alaska is unduly forgiving when showing broadside due to an incorrectly modeled citadel height that's 2 ft 8 in (0.8 m) lower than it should be, and while WG announced some module HP redistribution to remedy this by reducing saturation, I think the better solution is to actually correctly model Alaska's citadel height by putting the 3rd deck where it actually is, and undo the HP redistribution. This would result in a waterline citadel that's much more punishable than it is currently.

original reddit post

 

Worth noticing. Would be Alaska's citadel more vulnerable if it was raised as proposed? It would maybe fix the weird situation some BB will find themselves in near future: Currently BB right next to her is not able to cit her when she is completelly broadside. Funny thing is that doesnt make a brawler from her at all because she still pretty easily citadelled through nose, stern and of course by plunging shell at range.

[Exocet6951]

You're actually surprised?

I mean, you've been demanding the Alaska for a while now, dead-set on it being a cruiser.
Now WG has to find crappy solutions in order to make that viable, which includes turning the citadel in a submarine.

 

It's just like the CV rework: people have been demanding things that go exactly in the way of damage farming with no more scouting, then are surprised when WG turns CV into damage farming machines with no more scouting ability.
You sort of made your own bed there.

[puxflacet]

29 minutes ago, Exocet6951 said:

You're actually surprised?

I mean, you've been demanding the Alaska for a while now, dead-set on it being a cruiser.
Now WG has to find crappy solutions in order to make that viable, which includes turning the citadel in a submarine.

Another "I told you so" post of yours? It was stated million times that she would be strange mid tier BB - no armor and crappy guns (the lower the tier - the worse the dispersion) so let skip this

 

Alaska's existence as high tier cruiser certainly doesnt stand on submerged citadel as you are suggesting. I doubt this was intentional by WG. Theyve managed to do similar errors like this in the past - wrong waterlines. It really doesnt give her much. As I said this feature is weirdly situational because all BBs with 406 mm and above can easily citadel her through the nose or stern, just not through the belt. 

[Yedwy]

Its not meant to be a perfect representation of real life ship same as this engine ballistic mechanics have wery little to do with real life ballistics, its a game and an arcade game at that, and its good that it is couse otherwise hardly anyone would play it

[Ysterpyp]

i see no reason for this topic, since all the new bb's that was intruduced the last 2 years can't be citadeled  ..except premiums ijn ones and a few rare others

[Gleb_Reawer]

If one wants realism one should play a simulator. WoWS is not one.

[puxflacet]

Whos talking about realism? 

 

WG themselves tried lately to address this with redistributing Alaskas HP hit boxes to compensate, but they are most likely not aware that their citadel is a bit lower than it should be.

[tajj7]

Is 0.8m really going to make much difference? 

[puxflacet]

5 hours ago, tajj7 said:

Is 0.8m really going to make much difference? 

Not sure really. She still wont eat many citadels through the belt for sure but at least would be citadelable, i think.  it is worth the test.

[piet11111]

Personally i think its fine if Alaska is hard to citadel considering she will be punished by HE spam a lot anyway.

[aleksi111]

I agree, Alaska should be at-least tested with it's 'correct' citadel height, if the test goes horribly WG can always return to earlier version.

If the raised citadel turns out acceptable, but would require some other minor changes to keep Alaska competitive vs Kron, I would support that.

 

 

Any idea how much more vulnerable to both BB AP, and Cruiser AP Alaska would become with this change?

 

There's several tweaks that could be made, If necessary

just some rough examples:

Spoiler

-Thicken the upper/casemate belt to 30-32-36mm from 28mm. Allowing Alaska to carefully angle it's belt vs BB AP

-Improve the Heal's. better ability to repair Citadel damage, better base heal %, etc.

-Improve base stealth by 500-700 m / 15,0-14,8km base, so that NC can't out spot Alaska _{(the flip side is that Alaska would crap on normal cruisers even harder)}

-Consumable load-out: 1-hydro, 1-def AA, 2-radars, 2'heals _{(US CL loadout, but fewer charges to hydro and AA)}

-Beef up the citadel roof and torp belt around the magazines to 30-36mm, but only around the magazines, keep the engine space to it's current 19mm roof / 26mm belt that All BB's can overmatch

 

[elblancogringo]

9 hours ago, puxflacet said:

but they are most likely not aware that their citadel is a bit lower than it should be.

I have no idea how you can conclude this.

Imo they were perfectly aware, but since changing citadel requires a change on the model of the ship which is what WG wants to avoid at all cost as it's not quick to do, they just decided to keep the low citadel and found another way to decrease survivability.

 

Anyway, they will not change citadel, that's certain.

[puxflacet]

1 hour ago, elblancogringo said:

I have no idea how you can conclude this.

Imo they were perfectly aware, but since changing citadel requires a change on the model of the ship which is what WG wants to avoid at all cost as it's not quick to do, they just decided to keep the low citadel and found another way to decrease survivability.

 

Anyway, they will not change citadel, that's certain.

rasing invisible cuboid just few pixels takes  few minutes. what wg stated was that they dont want to raise citadel to the deck above and thats completelly understandable because the armor deck below would be in vain. they probably just messed overall deck heights. thats only invisible dividing of the ship and has nothing to do with redoing of the model itself.

[puxflacet]

 

[Blixies]

So, the Alaska will now be much easier to citadel.
This seems like a pretty serious "nerf" to survivability.

How will it compare to Kronshtadt after this change?

[fumtu]

12 minutes ago, Blixies said:

So, the Alaska will now be much easier to citadel.
This seems like a pretty serious "nerf" to survivability.

How will it compare to Kronshtadt after this change?

 

Citadel is still really low, from the image it looks like somewhere at water level. Question is could her citadel be hit from close range now as that was impossible before.

[piet11111]

Great now its going to be delayed another month . 

[puxflacet]

1 hour ago, Blixies said:

So, the Alaska will now be much easier to citadel.
This seems like a pretty serious "nerf" to survivability.

How will it compare to Kronshtadt after this change?

i doubt that much will change for her. maybe now she will be just citadelable through the belt, but i wouldnt say "easy to citadel"...other than that nothing is changing

[mariouus]

21 minutes ago, puxflacet said:

i doubt that much will change for her. maybe now she will be just citadelable through the belt, but i wouldnt say "easy to citadel"...other than that nothing is changing

Well, I would say that, planned "BB shells vs DD" change, Will infuence Alaska ( and Kronsthat) mutch more than this armor change.

[Blixies]

4 minutes ago, mariouus said:

Well, I would say that, planned "BB shells vs DD" change, Will infuence Alaska ( and Kronsthat) mutch more than this armor change.

How?

 

[mariouus]

11 minutes ago, Blixies said:

How?

Because, it will substantilly affect its ability to be a cruiser, its effectiveness against DDs will fall below BBs. When currently it is more effective against DDs than BB, but less effective than normal CA/CL

 

 

[Blixies]

3 minutes ago, mariouus said:

Because, it will substantilly affect its ability to be a cruiser, its effectiveness against DDs will fall below BBs. When currently it is more effective against DDs than BB, but less effective than normal CA/CL

I fail to see what you mean by that. You mean it's AP will be weaker against DDs?

[tajj7]

Will have to see whether this change means the ship's effectiveness drops and it'll need tweaks elsewhere. 

[Lootboxer]

2 godziny temu, Blixies napisał:

I fail to see what you mean by that. You mean it's AP will be weaker against DDs?

Yes, it will be only overpen for 10%  or ricochet only unless DD is Kaba or Haragumo (this 2 no changes). Of course, no one stops you from using HE as intended against DDs but we've had this AP bug for so long that most are taking it for a granted.

[Blixies]

3 minutes ago, DariusJacek said:

Yes, it will be only overpen for 10%  or ricochet only unless DD is Kaba or Haragumo (this 2 no changes). Of course, no one stops you from using HE as intended against DDs but we've had this AP bug for so long that most are taking it for a granted.

Right, but if you use improved EL (which I do), you can swap to HE in under 5 seconds. I don't see this as a huge problem.