Surveillance Radar, Interface improvement, Flooding

[Toivia]

It's true that I very rarely hit more than one torpedo on a target at once*, so getting two floods at once is almost unimaginable. In that same vein, flood killing a target in the future is almost impossible, while I got two such kills in the last 10 Kagero battles.

 

*The obvious exception is when I surprise charge a target from close range. But that not only leads to several torp hits, but also to a fast Devastating strike right away, thus no flooding damage anyway.

[RambaRal]

On 1/25/2019 at 3:15 PM, MrConway said:

[***snip snip***]

 

Flooding changes

The new flooding mechanics will be implemented similarly to those of fire mechanics:

- The ship can suffer two floodings: on the stern and on the bow.
- Flooding cannot be inflicted on a part of the ship that is already flooding.

 

The flooding duration without modifiers has been reduced:

- 30 seconds remain for CVs;
- from 90 to 40 seconds for other classes.

 

The rate of hit points loss with one flooding has been reduced:

- from 0.667% to 0.25% per second for CVs;
- from 0.667% to 0.5% per second for battleships and Kronshtadt, Stalingrad, Azuma and Alaska cruisers;
- from 0.667% to 0.25% per second for cruisers and destroyers;
- from 0.667% to 0.375% per second for Admiral Graf Spee and HSF Admiral Graf Spee.

 

Flooding will reduce the power of the engine of any ships, when moving forward by 30% and when moving back by 60%.

 

For example, British Conqueror BB gets flooding in the bow because it's hit by torpedo:

- Pre-rework flooding would cause ~49 800 damage if it is not stopped;

- New flooding would cause much less damage ~ 16600;

- Two simultaneous floodings would still cause less damage ~33 200.

 

As for cruisers and DDs, flooding damage goes down even further for them. Let's see Kagero for example:

- Pre-rework flooding would cause up to ~9 000 damage, probably killing partially damaged ship:

- New flooding takes around ~1500 damage.

 

These changes will make flooding less painful for new players and will allow experienced players more efficient usage of the ship's combat capability. Flooding will cause less damage to cruisers and destroyers. However, it will still be extremely dangerous for them, as the reduced power of the engine will greatly affect the survival of these classes of ships.

 

 

[Mirdwen]

 

On 1/26/2019 at 12:14 AM, wilkatis_LV said:

Except that number of floods is doubled not reduced

 

Here, dmg output comparison:

 

 

13 hours ago, Ubertron_X said:

I do not quite agree with that line of reasoning, not because it is wrong in any way,

 

Oh yeah, this nice graphic is not wrong but rather misleading : according to the new numbers given by WG, you have a massive reduction of total damages, even with 2 floods on your target !
In the old case , an unrepaired flood (0.667% dmg / sec for 90 sec) dealt 60.03% of global healthpool damages.

With the new numbers (0.5% / s for 40 sec to BB, 0.25 % / s for 40 sec to CA & DD, and 0.25 % / s for 30 sec to CV), you will have :

- for BB, a 20% of global healthpool damages with only one flood (so 40% with 2 flood instead of 60%, and IF you manage to cause both flooding simultaneously ... which is unlikely, at least);

- for CA & DD, a 10% of global healthpool ;

- for CV, a 7.5% of global healthpool (lul)

 

So yes, the damage will build faster if you manage to do two simultaneous floods on a BB rather than the old single one (this will not happen so often, because when a DD manage to hit a BB from bow to stern, this BB is usually dead already because of the torpedoes alpha). But if you fail to cause two flood on your target in a 20 sec delay, you will lost some damage in the new system.

So I can't, by any stretch of imagination, consider it's a win/win situation : most of the time, this will result in a decrease of dmg taken by the BB, even the worst of them (whose who insta-repaired their single fire, you know).

[Sub_Octavian]

On 1/25/2019 at 5:30 PM, LemonadeWarrior said:

Why can't we flood the midsection? It is already protected by the torpedo belt? Is this mechanic being removed?

You can. Sorry for bad wording here. What is meant - the ship is basically split into 2 halves - and you can flood each of them, so it's still possible to hit midsection and cause flooding, and the torpedo belt is still offering some extra protection.

On 1/25/2019 at 7:05 PM, DariusJacek said:

Time to sell all DDs, or at least to turn them into port queens. I like interface changes and standardisation of radars - it will help new players. At least CVs will not spot our torps. That is only if somehow we live long enough to launch them

This change, conceptually, is something like BB AP vs DD fix that was released lately. It is NOT a class wide nerf that will render DDs bad, it is instead directed at a very specific issue.

 

BB AP vs DD fix was introduced to remove frustrating scenarios for DD that just felt wrong - when you're blapped while angling, with the shell type which is supposed to be LESS efficient against you.

 

The flooding changes are similar - they are aimed to remove the scenario for anyone (not just BB mind that) when you catch flooding without DCP ready, and you're 99% done. That is something that supports very linear and uninteresting scenario "in most cases, wait for flooding to use DCP or you will die". Now it will be more flexible and manageable by any player.

 

Yes, it will slightly nerf the damage output of DDs, but we think, as with BB AP change, it will not influence class balance heavily.

 

For instance, let's take Shimakaze - I think we can all agree that she is a decent torpedo boat that relies on heavy hitting torps. On average, flooding damage is only 8% of her damage output, with raw torpedo damage is being 75%.

Then, nobody is removing flooding damage - it is being lowered (max theoretical), split between 2 halves of the ship and rebalanced. And I won't be surprised if we see some INCREASE in flooding damage - because a lot of competent players will most likely start activating DCP earlier.

 

If it will, by any chance, hurt the balance, we always can adjust the settings. But the concept itself feels much better for now.

On 1/25/2019 at 8:22 PM, loppantorkel said:

What about Missouri radar? You're basically nerfing it compared to the others

No, we're just not buffing something OP, which will still be fine even in the new "meta" 

On 1/25/2019 at 9:25 PM, Andy_the_Cupid_Stunt said:

What a joke. The removal of flooding as a viable counter to BBs signals the death of the DD. Why not go all the way and have a CV BB only game.

Please try to abandon We Are All Doomed way of thought. I've commented on the change a bit above, please kindly read it, maybe it will make our intentions more clear.

On 1/25/2019 at 9:35 PM, eliastion said:

Are there any plans on compensating the "heavy hitters" DDs that have long CD on torps but high flooding chances? Ships that can spam torps on short cooldown, especially ones with stealthy torps, probably won't feel the changes much but then we have Shimakaze - a ship that lands torps pretty rarely, often just one (or more but still only on bow because there's relatively a lot of time to react to them). The upside was a high flooding chance - but now a single flooding, even if it doesn't get damagecontrolled right away, is much, MUCH less valuable... and Shima torp specifics are such that while the flooding chance is good, the chance for scoring two floodings at once is much smaller than for the competition.

While I don't think any DDs (even Kagero with specifically used torp reload) really depended on floodings as the primary cause of damage, these changes seem like a relative nerf to IJN torpboats - a branch that... let's say: doesn't really need nerfing.

 

Also, I don't know how I feel about the across-the-board buffs to Radar. I don't know how much the grace period of 6 seconds is really going to make up for it - it sounds a lot like "time for people to aim their guns at you" and the long-range Radars actually get more duration to (over)compensate. As we know, the level of danger (especially for long-range Radar that you can't realistically run away from) actually increases with time. Previously it was possible to survive the long-range short-duration Radar, to the point where Russian cruisers weren't as scary for DDs as the USN ones. Now

 - the early damage won't change that much, first seconds were always spent on turning turrets

 - the late damage will be increased due to longer duration

Sounds like another (on top of increased ranges - though on t10 by a relatively insignificant margin) buff to Radars with a trade-off that only really matters if the enemies know where the DD is already and have their guns pre-aimed. Otherwise they wouldn't be doing much shooting in the first 6 seconds anyway.

The compensation (or tweaking the initial flooding change - because it is quite tweakable) is possible, if it is needed. As I said slightly above, there is no intention to change the class balance in any big way, same as BB AP vs DD it is aimed to fix some specific situations.

 

And actually, more or less the same is about Radar. 

I do believe early damage will decrease in many scenarios. For instance, this delay gives a DD time to accelerate - and makes it harder to hit in the first place. Then, I think there are a lot of cases even in Randoms, when you KNOW where DD is approximately, and your guns are already aimed, and you just wait for a teammate's radar to pop up - in this case the change will help DDs as well.

On 1/26/2019 at 12:58 PM, Hugh_Ruka said:

OK, I've been through the thread a couple of times and read different viewpoints.

 

1. Radar change: we complained there is too much radar and that it goes through islands which makes it hard to react to mainly for DDs. What does WG do ? INCREASE RADAR RANGE AND DURATION while keeping LOS unrestricted radar !!! Sounds like a solution to the problem ?

 

2. Flooding change: This is a bit more tricky. While I like that there are now 2 flood points, the damage change is a problem. Landing fires is much much much easier that landing floods, that's why fires are less crippling and easier to deal with (Fire prevention skill just for that). Now I understand that the flood change is not for DDs but mainly for the CV rework to be less impacting but it is a further nerf to DDs as a result. Their most powerfull but hard to land weapon is being devalued. I would suggest to remove flooding chance from aerial torpedoes and leave flooding as it was as an alternate solution.

 

3. UI changes: 1/3 of a step in the right direction ... as was noted several times in this thread and in the past, we need to know all detection our ship is subjected to, not just one icon and a priority list as that priority depends on ship class or even specific ship in a line.

1, LoS radar is not viable, and "we" have to deal with it. Some community ideas work, some don't. It has been prototyped and checked internally, and it just does not work right. The increase in the change discussed is mostly small, but the spotting delay should reduce spike damage at the beginning of detection dramatically for all DDs.

 

2. Please see the detailed reply above.

 

3. For now our stance is that it is too much for combat UI. However, even this 1-3 step gets us closer to considering everything else. We will look at the feedback after the change and see whether such option is widely requested :)

On 1/26/2019 at 8:31 PM, svadilfari said:

why no buf for salem radar? it´s already the worst radar on any VIII-X ship. now you buff the others? smh

Radar is not a particularly strong trait of Salem. I has great Hydro (combinable with DefAA) and heal. For now it's not needed.

 

Also, hello everyone, dear players, I'm happy to come back to EU forum and hope you like the new DevBlog feed here. Have a good week!

[MrConway]

On 1/25/2019 at 7:35 PM, eliastion said:

Are there any plans on compensating the "heavy hitters" DDs that have long CD on torps but high flooding chances? Ships that can spam torps on short cooldown, especially ones with stealthy torps, probably won't feel the changes much but then we have Shimakaze - a ship that lands torps pretty rarely, often just one (or more but still only on bow because there's relatively a lot of time to react to them). The upside was a high flooding chance - but now a single flooding, even if it doesn't get damagecontrolled right away, is much, MUCH less valuable... and Shima torp specifics are such that while the flooding chance is good, the chance for scoring two floodings at once is much smaller than for the competition.

While I don't think any DDs (even Kagero with specifically used torp reload) really depended on floodings as the primary cause of damage, these changes seem like a relative nerf to IJN torpboats - a branch that... let's say: doesn't really need nerfing.

 

Trust me when I say that we have extremely detailed data on what kind of damage is dealt by and to each ship-class. Our aim here is not to nerf DDs, but to make the flooding mechanic less of an all-or-nothing killer that is especially devastating to newer players.

 

The information here is also still very preliminary and we will definitely make adjustments if we can see issues with the proposed values during testing.

 

On 1/25/2019 at 7:39 PM, eliastion said:

They should all just be signals popping up next to the "detected" symbol. No priority - just all relevant symbols should be listed. Any other way just obstructs crucial information you should be getting.

 

I will pass this on as feedback, personally I agree that more information is always better!

 

On 1/26/2019 at 10:49 AM, Gojuadorai said:

A question about the working of the 6s delay.

assuming you have 2x radar ships with a 30s radar do you:

A have to use the 2nd radar 6 s before you loose sporting on the target (total of 48s)

B can use the 2nd radar when it the first runs out to keep the target spotted (total of 54s)

 

Each radar has its own internal delay, so they cannot be chained to increase the total duration.

 

On 1/26/2019 at 3:20 PM, Leo_Apollo11 said:

Hi all,

 

 

Very nice and much needed additions!

 

 

BTW, how will this be actually implemented? Any screens?

 

Will there be possible to show that player is detected at same time from several sources (i.e. for example detected from air, ship, radar and hydro?

 

Also, do you possibly know @MrConway if "Detected" (with all possible means) and "Incoming fire Alert" are still overlapping - it would be great if you guys can fix that as well!

 

 

Leo "Apollo11"

 

Here you go!

 

 

 

[Exocet6951]

... And you decided to do this now.

When there's a major change to CVs and how they interact with stealth and DDs. 

 

Really. 

I mean really. 

 

Did you have an internal meeting where you picked out the most chaotic and unpredictable time and said "yes, let's change one core mechanic, and fundamentally change another at that moment." ? 

[Sub_Octavian]

2 minutes ago, Exocet6951 said:

... And you decided to do this now.

When there's a major change to CVs and how they interact with stealth and DDs. 

 

Really. 

I mean really. 

 

Did you have an internal meeting where you picked out the most chaotic and unpredictable time and said "yes, let's change one core mechanic, and fundamentally change another at that moment." ? 

New CV are 080. Radar + flooding is 081. Surely the meta won't be 100% established in 081, but then, the changes to flooding and Radar should not be that fundamental - see the explanation above please.

[eliastion]

1 hour ago, Sub_Octavian said:

For instance, let's take Shimakaze - I think we can all agree that she is a decent torpedo boat that relies on heavy hitting torps. On average, flooding damage is only 8% of her damage output, with raw torpedo damage is being 75%.

Then, nobody is removing flooding damage - it is being lowered (max theoretical), split between 2 halves of the ship and rebalanced. And I won't be surprised if we see some INCREASE in flooding damage - because a lot of competent players will most likely start activating DCP earlier.

Problem is, said Shima will only occasionally get that "half" of flooding. Floodings are much, MUCH harder to inflict than fires, just as easy to stop and heal AND after the changes:

 - for BBs a single flooding deals more damage per tick than a single fire but less damage than two fires (and lasts less)

 - for cruisers and DDs a single flooding deals less damage than even a single fire (although lasts 10 seconds longer)

Why is flooding so useless against cruisers? Are torpboats too powerful against Radar cruisers, perhaps?

 

Personally I was in favor of making flooding less all-or-nothing. But not by means of removing the "all" part! It should be handled by making flooding more reliable but less crippling - instead it remained just as hard to inflict, just as easy to negate - but just plain weaker. I don't know what exactly should be done. If I were to come up with some lose ideas, it might be something like

 - "repaired" flooding, instead of disappearing, being changed to "minor leak" that deals 1/3 of normal flooding for the rest of duration

 - "repairing" flooding being delayed (unlike with fires) so that when you hit DCP the flooding enters the state of "plugging the leak" while still generating a few extra ticks of flooding damage and rewarding the flood (since, unlike fire spammers, a torp-oriented DD can't really spread the love and inflict new "sticking" flooding right the moment the first one was plugged)

Basically - changes that would actually ensure that flooding - as hard to inflict as it is - always gets rewarded with some extra damage. But the changes introduce nothing of the sort. It's a straight nerf with the one and only exception being "a BB struck on both bow and stern with torps that inflicted flooding in both locations" - and even that only gives more damage per tick, the theoretical maximum is still lower.

 

You say that the point wasn't to nerf torpboats - but that's the effect. Even if overall flooding damage numbers don't drop, this will only be due to floodings being ignored as a non-issue, just like a single fire on BBs and high tier cruisers is often left to run its course. Only it's very easy to start a fire - and pretty damn hard to start a flooding, so them ending up in the same "eh, just one, who cares" category just doesn't seem right at all.

 

1 hour ago, Sub_Octavian said:

3. For now our stance is that it is too much for combat UI. However, even this 1-3 step gets us closer to considering everything else. We will look at the feedback after the change and see whether such option is widely requested :)

If getting to see all means of detection you're subjected to is "too much" then why don't you give us an option in settings to enable/disable this? Just like you can set which minimap circles you want to see. If it's too much information and screen clutter for someone, they could just disable it and go back to the "detection priority queue" display. There's also that thing called "alternative battle interface" - the extra information could end up there to be available at the push of a button rather than all the time. There are just so many ways to do this right with just a modicum of effort to let players access this - in many situations crucial - information.

 

1 hour ago, Sub_Octavian said:

And actually, more or less the same is about Radar. 

I do believe early damage will decrease in many scenarios. For instance, this delay gives a DD time to accelerate - and makes it harder to hit in the first place. Then, I think there are a lot of cases even in Randoms, when you KNOW where DD is approximately, and your guns are already aimed, and you just wait for a teammate's radar to pop up - in this case the change will help DDs as well.

Sure there are scenarios where it may be helpful (especially, although not exclusively, to the special kind of players that sit still in smoke within Radar range of spotted Radar cruisers and with open line of fire to half the enemy fleet). Problem is - certain ships simultaneously get big unnecessary buffs against DDs, covering the only weakness their Radar had. Take Moskva - she has fast shells that are very good at hitting DDs. Dodging is much less viable than against USN cruisers and the Radar range is significantly better. The only reason why Moskva wasn't a complete menace was the relatively short Radar... and now she gets +20% Radar duration (plus a slight range increase) just like that. And it's even worse for lower tier cruisers that used to have 20 seconds of Radar - for them the increase is by 25%. This is a HUGE buff against DDs - and I think we can agree on the fact that DD's life in high tiers isn't exactly easy, right? And it's not like Moskva terribly underperforms and needs buffs either.

 

Since WG likes to make some changes and look how things turn out - why isn't this applied here? Just introduce the spotting delay and see if it actually made the long-range Soviet Radar useless or if DDs now live too long - and only buff these Radars if the situation calls for that. Because the reality is that more often than not the only one to start shooting within the first few seconds is the Radar owner anyway - and Radar owners can still do that. When you exclude the time the allies would spend turning the guns and finishing reloads (if they were shooting other things in the meantime), the 6 seconds actually become maybe 2 or something like that for them as well - or even become completely irrelevant.

[Exocet6951]

2 hours ago, Sub_Octavian said:

New CV are 080. Radar + flooding is 081. Surely the meta won't be 100% established in 081, but then, the changes to flooding and Radar should not be that fundamental - see the explanation above please.

 

Considering that it takes you half a year to usually collect data on a single ship, do you honestly think you can fundamentally alter two core mechanics and balance them both in 2 months? 

 

 

Your explanation of "we don't want it to be an all or nothing killer" doesn't really explain why you chose the most turbulent time for DDs and CVs (the primary users of torpedoes) to change both flooding and radar. 

 

 

You're planning on balancing via live server, introducing two massively turbulent factors which exacerbate each other within two months of each other, including one with is widely regarded as rushed and downright broken, but you're telling us not to worry that all will be fine because you'll be balancing using data from live server as you go along? 

 

Press X to doubt. 

[Toivia]

3 hours ago, eliastion said:

If getting to see all means of detection you're subjected to is "too much" then why don't you give us an option in settings to enable/disable this? Just like you can set which minimap circles you want to see. If it's too much information and screen clutter for someone, they could just disable it and go back to the "detection priority queue" display. There's also that thing called "alternative battle interface" - the extra information could end up there to be available at the push of a button rather than all the time. There are just so many ways to do this right with just a modicum of effort to let players access this - in many situations crucial - information.

I support this.

 

(It is kinda stupid to have to tick so many boxes in order to get all of the important information - so much of it linked to the minimap - but better the need to setup all things than not get the information at all.)

[reaperX4]

Le 25/01/2019 à 15:15, MrConway a dit :

A visual effect of the initiating radar has been added

this is realy nice

[svadilfari]

7 hours ago, Sub_Octavian said:

On 1/26/2019 at 6:31 PM, svadilfari said:

why no buf for salem radar? it´s already the worst radar on any VIII-X ship. now you buff the others? smh

Radar is not a particularly strong trait of Salem. I has great Hydro (combinable with DefAA) and heal. For now it's not needed.

not sure if joking or serious

[Hugh_Ruka]

9 hours ago, MrConway said:

For instance, let's take Shimakaze - I think we can all agree that she is a decent torpedo boat that relies on heavy hitting torps. On average, flooding damage is only 8% of her damage output, with raw torpedo damage is being 75%.

Then, nobody is removing flooding damage - it is being lowered (max theoretical), split between 2 halves of the ship and rebalanced. And I won't be surprised if we see some INCREASE in flooding damage - because a lot of competent players will most likely start activating DCP earlier.

Do you intentionally misuse available statistics ? How many floods from actual torpedo hits ? That's the important statistic. Flooding DAMAGE is just a bonus.

 

The main benefit of scoring a flood is the automatic DCP and perma fires afterwards. Fires are MUCH MORE EASIER to start than floods. Thus fires are the main tools here while floods are just an enabler. And please note that the fire damage is usually scored by a different ships ....

 

 

[Hugh_Ruka]

On 1/28/2019 at 11:03 AM, eliastion said:

If getting to see all means of detection you're subjected to is "too much" then why don't you give us an option in settings to enable/disable this? Just like you can set which minimap circles you want to see. If it's too much information and screen clutter for someone, they could just disable it and go back to the "detection priority queue" display. There's also that thing called "alternative battle interface" - the extra information could end up there to be available at the push of a button rather than all the time. There are just so many ways to do this right with just a modicum of effort to let players access this - in many situations crucial - information.

I thought this was the OBVIOUS solution even to a WG employee, but it looks like we have to spell it out for them.

 

Thank you for the effort.

[puxflacet]

I welcome that flooding will be modelled more deeply. But I think the potentional damage shouldn't be reduced. That will certainly affect torp ships namely IJN DDs

 

Ramming should also receive some treatment, like 1/3 of current damage + flooding...

[AngryDragon70]

Suggestion for your radar ideas / WIP to destroy most of the dd play:

 

0.8.4 remove all dd's as they can not spot (cv) or cap (radar)

0.8.5 remove all cv's as they make no dmg anymore and no one wants to play it anymore

 

These can be removed easily as the game is not historical correct anymore since long time, more and more paper ships rise to fill your pockets etc.

 

0.8.6 remove all radar, and make detectability 20km for every ship. Spawn all behind islands.

 

0.9.0 revert back to the last good version you have made: 0.5.3 -0.5.6. Directly after the stealth shooting dd range fix, and the torp fix (the die after shooting torps but not in the water which you called 'intended' but fixed as a 'feature').

 

You are going downwards lads. Fast.

Lot of new players which will be gone in 3 months or so, but now you are also loosing a lot of long term and 'older' players.

[Hundigo]

I'm not so sure it would be a good idea to buff the radars. 

 

Yes it will help us as DD players to cap at the early game, with the delay for the other teammates of the opponent to fire. (6 seconds) 

But it's countered by the new CV playstyle. Now the CV can immediatelly attack you , what before  they  couldn't because he used his fighterplanes to spot the caps. The fighters could see you but not harm you as DD. Now they can. 

 

In a game you don't have 1 radarship but mostly 3 to 4. Hydro I don't compare because of the shortrange, as DD you can always get away from it; But not from radarships. 

It's not only the time you have to take in concideration but also the speed of the ships. When I get chassed by a radarcruiser who has another cruiser or BB with him, I can't outrun them during the time I get radared. The Moskva has the longest range and the shortest duration. But all his teammates are ready to fire ones he use his radar  and they move also. And it's not at the start of the radartime I get in troubles, its indeed at the end of the duration because then his other teammates fired also already. It's just the shells that has to land and they do even the radartime is passed. 

What you do with the upgrade is indeed given the radarships and the others more time to fire because they can see me longer now. They self can fire more and on plus even they had only 2 teammates available to fire now they can even have 2 more that fire's at me because they can see me longer .  

 

As DD player you count on your stealth and your mainwapons that are of course torpedoes. The Shima has the longest torp range, so I can try to counter them with my torps later on. But not the other DD's. 

 

I have also the pan-asian line up to tier 10. Torp range is 13.5km for the tier 10 yeuyang. With that DD I can also counter a radarship. But not with the tier 8 or tier 9 pan - asian, because of torprange been respectivily 8 km and 10 km. But you end up with your tier 8 and 9 in the same gamepool as tier 10. With the tier 8 and 9 you end up with the same opponents but doesn't has the tools (torpedoes) to counter them. That's why I also never play the tier 8 and 9 pan-asian anymore because they come short in torprange. 

 

I as DD player make of course advantage of the map situation.  So where you gonna find me as DD player and with my Shima or my Yeuyang ? Where there is open water so that my torps can try to hit where there are no obstacles like islands in the way. And I can do that because I have the stealth for it . Now you give the radarships not only a longer range but also a longer duration time .... 

 

So if that's the situation with the recent update we had with the CV's and the ones that follows after this one you are indeed destroying a game play for the DD players on general in the game. We have nothing on our stealth anymore.