The French Battleship's Thing

[dasCKD]

Well, it's time for me to pretend to be a game designer again. Let's do this.

I would like to preface this article with a note that I had to rewrite about 10 paragraphs worth of this post because the new forum decided, for some moronic reason, to delete about 2 hour’s worth of my work because it was too stupid to keep even a simple cache of a bloody typed out article. I am not happy right now. As this is a thread about battleships, rest assured that I have a bucket and mop to deal with all of the bile that I will be splattering all over this thread before it can cause any lasting damage to my desktop screen.

A retrospective on Battleships
 

Spoiler

 

The largest issue that plagues the game is the lack of class distribution, namely the distribution that strips away the cruiser population and replaces it with a plague of battleships with guns so powerful that they need to cower all the way at the edge of the map because all the armor in the world won't save them from the ridiculous firepower that tier 8 and up battleships possesses. Battleships continue to flood the matchmaker, and much of it is caused by the fundamental game design in which armor layout and maneuverability matters far less than the ability to be blindsided by one of the rail guns all over the 40 kilometer map. My promise about not letting writing this article get to me is quickly fading away along with the long grooves that my fingernails are ripping into my table. I might have to switch from wood to metal soon.

One of the issues with the battleship class is that fundamentally, there is very little that could stop a battleship from becoming homogenized due to their very nature. The cruiser class has a massive threshold for variety and WG has, in one of the quickly dwindling list of their remaining positive characteristics, continued to make varied national traits for cruisers. Even ignoring the incredibly gimmicky cruisers of the British line, the cruiser class is massively varied. The problem with battleships however is that the "big ship with big guns" concept always will lead to the ships converging towards a ship that is effectively identical. Bigger guns, more armor, more secondaries, and more AA. German battleships might be better at brawling and the Americans better at air defense thanks to their secondary defensive characteristics, but ultimately play the same. The same can't be said about, for example, the American and German cruisers, or the Japanese and Russian cruisers despite the two former being 'brawlers' whilst the latter two being 'kiters'. The cruisers might have the same role overall, but have massively divergent ways of approaching the same problem. The same can't be said about battleships. Cruisers of the different nations have extremely different ways of dispatching of a battleship. Basically every battleship can overmatch an equivalent cruiser's bow and stern. They could break a cruiser if they give them a broadside. They would all basically prefer to catch cruisers at around 10 kilometers.

With an exception of slight variations on values that could just as well be achieved by ship upgrades, battleships that have been released have not proven to be particularly interesting in terms of ship variation. This leads to stagnation in the class. Whilst the battleships currently have the possibility of being very different in style of play, map design and game mechanics basically guarantees that all battleships would be played the same. Designing battleships therefore is significantly more difficult than cruisers due to the fact that the common engagement ranges basically forces the same distance of engagement on just about every single ship class. Battleship designs need to keep this in mind, if they are to be anything more than a reskin of previous lines.

 

With the British battleships on the horizon, I chose to ignore them and focus on the upcoming French battleships because even glancing at the datasheet of the Conchqueror is enough to give me a minor aneurysm. Battleships, like destroyers, are primarily there to define the zone of control of each team. The German battleships have hydroacoustic search, but that doesn't mean that they can go chasing down destroyers or even really charge down British cruisers unless they catch them on the back foot. We have the German battleships with a lot of secondaries, powerful AA, and a hydroacoustic search that a destroyer could see coming about 5 minutes away and guns that can overmatch the bows of cruisers. We have the Americans with a lot of secondaries, incredibly powerful AA, and guns that can overmatch the bows of cruisers. We have the Japanese with lots of secondaries, powerful-

The most important thing that any new line needs to do is to appeal to players. The only way I know to make a line appealing without making it universally horrifically overpowered is to make it so that it would find its role in the meta of the game as the game stands. New ships should be there as a tool to fight against an enemy that a large number of current ships need to face, and coming up with something to help battleships deal with battleships without making them overpowered against cruisers or destroyers would go a long way towards addressing the battleship problem.

 

Anti-cruiser

Spoiler

All battleships, bar one, approach killing cruisers in the exact same way. As a battleship, killing cruisers is important. They’re basically the biggest threat on average to your destroyers, they have incredible DPM, and they can rip you to pieces with long ranged HE if given enough time. Battleships are extremely difficult for cruisers to kill quickly and they tend to find it impossible to effectively angle against battleships. Most battleships just use the fact that they can overmatch the important armor plates of a cruiser to kill them despite the cruisers showing a massive variety of tools in their arsenal when it comes to finding ways to effectively kill each other. A battleship line really doesn’t need to excel at this however, all battleship lines in the game right now do.

Anti-battleship

Spoiler

Considering how many battleships are in the game right now, it is remarkable to see how few battleships in the game right now are actually geared towards being able to effectively deal with enemy battleships. The only battleship that could really be seen as anti-battleship as it were is the Yamato. The issue with the Yamato approach however is that the Yamato is just an extremely battleship-esque battleship, doing to battleships what they do to cruisers. This presents issues with the game design as this isn’t creating a battleship with a specialization, but creating a battleship line that would be more effective against battleships than other battleships whilst not having any notable advantages against cruisers or destroyers.

Map control

Spoiler

Perhaps the most important role of battleships is map control. Battleships bristle with secondaries and AA guns whilst having guns that can overmatch cruisers and destroyers all the while being remarkably resilient to murder. Having a battleship sit in an area basically makes an area inaccessible to the enemy team until the battleship has been dealt with.

Support

Spoiler

Despite the general lack of skill and mechanic comprehension that pervades the community at large which makes it nearly impossible for the general user to act in a way that benefits their team beyond what a bot could offer, battleships can actually be used to provide invaluable support to team mates. The strong AA batteries can form a staging area for friendly aircraft. Their large health pool provides a damage sponge that keeps fire off allied ships that are less able to sustain the incoming fire. Their long reaching secondaries also provides significant advantages to friendly destroyers that engages within their general sphere of influence. The problem however is that as it stands, all battleships (bar the Missouri) supports allied ships in the exact same way which leads to homogeneous gameplay experiences despite the large variety of battleships available in the game.

 
 
Natural reload skill

Spoiler

One of the skills almost never taken by any battleship is the reload skill, largely because they are far more important skills for a ship to take. As a national trait however, the reload skill isn’t a bad idea as it provides for a skill that could aid ships in particular circumstances whilst not being entirely broken. This may work best for a battleship with a very high gun velocity but a quite slow shell fuse, necessitating the use against badly armored targets whilst still maintaining circumstantial advantages over faster fusing but lower penetration shells.

Speed Boost

Spoiler

The most obvious and boring option. Provides advantages in battleship engagements by allowing a battleship to hide their broadside far faster whilst also having the straight line speed to get where they need to be when they are needed. It’s just a bit boring, that’s all.

HE focused

Spoiler

 

Despite every single battleship having both shell types, all battleships basically use one because it’s basically the best shell type for any circumstance given its penetration power assuming the user knows how to aim. It therefore might be interesting to look towards HE. HE is an ammunition type that has a large number of advantages. It can induce DoT, it ignores angling, its effectiveness doesn’t drop off at longer ranges. Every single cruiser that is known for being battleship hunters have extremely effective HE shells (the Minotaur doesn’t count because I say so) as it allows for the ship using the ammunition to dictate the range of engagement whilst keeping up a moderately stable damage output. A similar weapon system built upon a battleship rig has potential.

Creating an HE focused line could be split into two large categories of incendiary focused and DPM focused, AP will always still win when it comes to alpha. Incendiary battleships will likely not work too well as the delay between each salvo makes it extremely difficult to maintain withering fire when the enemy is far away just due to how hard it is to hit enemies at extreme ranges. This will not change no matter how high WG cranks the change of fire on British HE. Cruisers faces similar challenges, but they have the rate of fire to correct their salvoes which battleships do not. What a battleship line could offer is something that German cruisers could, with HE shells that would readily eat through battleship armor providing consistent long ranged fire support that will readily wither down battleships in short order. Whilst not as effective as firing AP into the broadside of battleships, battleships with fast firing but low alpha and highly accurate guns (like the Scharnhorst if the fire directors are kept off the beer) could be used to great effect against other battleships when said battleship has the health pool to mostly negate return fire from the other battleship.

 

Communication jammer

Spoiler

 

This will take a bit of explaining. The main issue with radar cruisers is that they are cruisers and therefore are prone to sudden cruiser death syndrome. Radar provides excellent support for the team, but it also boost the effectiveness of the battleships to too high of a level which makes the Missouri and the upcoming Conch-queror too powerful on the offense without any cruiser support. The jammer is also a way to aid the team, but one that approaches the problem from an entirely different side.

At high tiered games, most ships barring destroyers lingers at the back of the map and spams shells at the enemy because they can’t push. If they get too close, the destroyers or spotter planes will spot them and they will get focussed down until they die. WG attempted to address this with the German battleships, something that failed miserably because there was no way that anyone was going to be able to balance a ship that could sustain incoming fire from the entire enemy team. The jammer is a way to allow ships to push, but by addressing the problem in a completely different way.
Up to the range just under the minimum concealment range of this particular hypothetical battleship line, the ship exerts a field that influences every single ship inside of the radius regardless of landmasses like radar and hydroacoustics. A ship within the field of influence will become unable to relay locational location to allied ships. Whilst the ship is plotted on the minimap, the enemy ship can’t see much less track any ship spotted by the ship under the signal jammer and can’t relay any position to ships within the jamming radius. The effect would be much like the cyclone effect, except you can still spot the ship normally assuming that you are close enough. When the enemy ships fire, you’ll see them like you normally would.

This provides a twofold advantage. It firstly allows for the battleship to be extremely aggressive, pushing forwards whilst not being shot at until they get into close ranges. Secondly, it provides temporary support for allied ships by stopping enemy ships from being able to focus them down. A radar ship inside the jamming radius might be able to stop a ship, but the friendly ships won’t be able to shoot them back. A destroyer could spot friendly ships, but the rest of the enemy fleet will not be able to engage them with ship artillery. To be fair, the ability might be too powerful to give a non-cruiser, but it does provide opportunities for many extremely aggressive plays.
Manual secondaries

WG has refused to implement secondary control citing complexity, but a battleship line which allows the user to take direct control of their secondaries would make for a very interesting addition to the game. The implementation would be very simple. Much like how ship torpedo could be selected with the ‘3’ key, secondary control could be taken over by the battleship captain. The manual control could automatically endow the user with extended secondary firing range whilst allowing them to focus down enemy ships with the precision of a player. Whilst gimmicky, the German battleships have proven the effectiveness of battleship lines built around the secondary batteries. A line with direct user control over the secondaries which gives the captain something to do between gun firing intervals could make for a much more dynamic and player dependant playstyle.
Spalling AP

One of the defining traits of a battleship is their armor. Back in early beta, the armor was of less consequence even against AP fire due to spalling. As the AP shell hits the battleship and shatters, the impact caused by the kinetic force and the explosives flakes the metal on the internal part of the hull and launches it into the ship like shrapnel. This concept could best be seen as a combination between HE and AP. The spalling shell would bounce for no damage as usual, but if the shell shatters then instead of causing no damage the shell spalls the inner armor of the ship and continues to cause damage. The damage is much more applicable to ships with very heavy armor as opposed to well sloped ones therefore significantly improving the effectiveness of the spalling shell’s user against heavily armored targets when they lack the direct penetration power to simply punch through.
Rapid autoloading

Battleships at most tiers are really the only ones capable of inflicting significant damages to a broadsiding battleship, but RNG often stops the damage to an extent which causes battleships to live too long even when they make egregious misplays. Autoloading would likely be best balanced as a consumable rather than an unchanging trait of French battleships. A consumable with no premium version but with unlimited uses that temporarily boosts the DPM of a battleship when it gets extremely important to shove out as many shells as they could quickly. Battleships normally have around 30 seconds of reload time. The autoloading could shorten this to 10 seconds for a period of 20 to 40 seconds (depending on ship tier and balance), allowing the battleships to deal catastrophic damage very quickly to their target whilst conserving a more sensible DPM when operating normally.

 

Lunar AP, Railgun HE

Spoiler

Most people loathe the York, but I found the concept of two extremely different shell characteristics on one ship to be an intriguing one that could be very interesting when expanded. Long ranged HE with railgun arcs will allow for extremely effective long ranged fire. The high AP arcs allows for the ship in question to get plunging fire at much closer ranges and the ability to continue to cause significant damage to enemy battleships at middle engagement ranges despite their angling. Ships like this will no doubt be gimmicky, but I'm bored by this point of the article and wanted to write about a ship that I would like to play if my body was actually capable of getting high.

Glass cannon

Spoiler

I thought the Graf Spee was a moderately interesting ship, but I was turned off by her slow firing and inaccurate guns. The concept of a ship with an incredibly nasty sting but very little protection. There are battlecruisers in the game, but let’s be honest. An Amagi or a Kongo is functionally no different from a North Carolina or a New York in terms of survivability. A battleship line built with the fragility of a cruiser (everywhere except the bow) but also with a cruiser’s concealment whilst having the firepower and the health pool of a battleship would provide a fast paced playstyle and a potentially very powerful ship line that would be extremely formidable for any ship to fight. It would also be far more to my tastes, considering how annoying it is to try to drag a battleship like a Yamato anywhere. A proper battlecruiser line with a genuinely different playstyle to the battleships would make for a very appealing and interesting addition to the game that I’d imagine many would very much appreciate.

Well, that’s it for this week. I couldn’t think of anything funny involving the French, and so I put the Willy Wonka-esque image I drew of the Richelieu up in the bar. Hopefully that’ll hold you over until I drag myself out of my slump to do something actually productive. Best regards.
 

 

[fallenkezef]

Well being French, if the BB's team is losing a British BB spawns to assist. No enemy can reduce a French BB to less than 1hp however if the ship ever reaches 1hp a British BB will spawn and destroy it to deny enemies the kill

[GhostRiderMax123]

12 minutes ago, fallenkezef said:

Well being French, if the BB's team is losing a British BB spawns to assist. No enemy can reduce a French BB to less than 1hp however if the ship ever reaches 1hp a British BB will spawn and destroy it to deny enemies the kill

 

I see what you did there.

[Gojuadorai]

if they have a dispersion pattern similar to the dunquerke it will be the first BB line i wont touch.

cause seriously its the biggest RNG fest on all BB's (german line included)

[Holaadian]

French bb get 2 speeds bacwards :D ???

Had Dunkirk long time now but i only use it for operations feels great there but in randoms nahhhh. So yeah they can bring out french BB line we just neede more PVE to use them in. 

[Exocet6951]

I have no "gimmick" expectations for the French BB line.

It's going to be a cluster**** of slow ships with bad guns up until tier5, then it's going to be 3 tiers of unique wild cards (Dunkerque, tier7 to be named, maybe a BC study, and tier8 Richelieu), then a tier9 that copies the 3x3 16" all or nothing Iowa pattern, then a tier10 that can be one of many designs that can either be just similar to existing ships, or outrageous.


No pattern to be found, just a run-of-the-mill branch dotted with interesting and unique ships.
And to be honest, I think that's the best thing it can differenciate itself from other branches with. No gimmicks, just having those 3-4 unique ships.
 

[Gnirf]

It is fun if the perk has some reality background -problem is that the French BBs apart from their design quadturrets outstanding feauture. Early ships were cramped (docking facilities very poor which limited dimensions) and because of massive backlog and failure in recognizing long range  fire they lagged behind in gunrange, armour layout etc.

 

The Normandie/Lyon designs with 12/16-13.4 in 3/4 x4 turrets can at least be rather odd, as they must be WG style modernized in some form, Strasbourg/Richelieu/Alsass can be given good torp protection at least as a sort of perk, rather fast they are also.

The old ships are however slow. I suggest that their combined HE/AP shell could be an interesting feauture - perhaps using a single type shell that has some fire chance as this is somewhat from the real life. (Less likely to give overpens or similar). There is some soft stats you might tamper with here. If you read f.e. John Jordan French battleships 1922-56 these features are described - however I do not have the copy with me when I write this so I can not give sidenumbers. 

[ImperialAdmiral]

Speed might actually be the national flavour of every French line. Cruisers already have speed boost. French destroyers where fastest in the world. Even the Richelieu was the fastest BB in the world when she was launched if I'm correct.

 

Anyway, I'm really waiting for French BBs. Especially Richelieu and Alsace.

[Gnirf]

30 minutes ago, ImperialAdmiral said:

Speed might actually be the national flavour of every French line. Cruisers already have speed boost. French destroyers where fastest in the world. Even the Richelieu was the fastest BB in the world when she was launched if I'm correct.

 

Anyway, I'm really waiting for French BBs. Especially Richelieu and Alsace.

Like I wrote that is Ok for the later tiers but not for the designs drawn up to WW1, to T5/6

[Verdius]

1 hour ago, ImperialAdmiral said:

Speed might actually be the national flavour of every French line. Cruisers already have speed boost. French destroyers where fastest in the world. Even the Richelieu was the fastest BB in the world when she was launched if I'm correct.

I believe Dunkerque was actually faster than Richelieu. Richelieu was also commisioned a month after Littorio which also managed 30 knots. Kongo class after rebuilds that effectively made them full on battleships instead of battlecruisers with their engine upgrades also reached 30.5 knots.

[iJoby]

4 hours ago, Holaadian said:

French bb get 2 speeds bacwards :D ???

Had Dunkirk long time now but i only use it for operations feels great there but in randoms nahhhh. So yeah they can bring out french BB line we just neede more PVE to use them in. 

God dam it, I wet myself laughing. 

[Exocet6951]

And as always, comedy geniuses grace the thread with their presence with 20 year old jokes that were already considered idiotic back then.
 

[Affeks]

2 hours ago, Verdius said:

I believe Dunkerque was actually faster than Richelieu. Richelieu was also commisioned a month after Littorio which also managed 30 knots. Kongo class after rebuilds that effectively made them full on battleships instead of battlecruisers with their engine upgrades also reached 30.5 knots.

Richelieu reached 32 knots during trials despite being at well over standard displacement. Richelieu reached 30 knots when using only 123k hp out of her designed 150k hp. 

 

In this regard WG is quite unpredictable, sometimes they used the designed speed and sometimes they used the speed the ship could actually reach. For example Dunkerque was designed for 29.5 knots, which is the value it has ingame, but it could reach well over 31 knots. Yet on other ships they use the trial speeds. For example Emile was designed (and listed) as reaching only 34knots, but on trials it reached 40 knots and in game Emile currently has 39 knots max speed.

 

Personally I find Dunkerque to be a little weak, so buffing the speed to the actual historically correct value would be fine.

[MeTaLMooSe]

I'm getting a bit tired of War Gamings 'National Flavour'.

I would be happy with battleships that played under the premise of their original design brief and build, and your choice of upgrades defines how they play.

 

[ImperialAdmiral]

8 hours ago, Verdius said:

I believe Dunkerque was actually faster than Richelieu. Richelieu was also commisioned a month after Littorio which also managed 30 knots. Kongo class after rebuilds that effectively made them full on battleships instead of battlecruisers with their engine upgrades also reached 30.5 knots.

Dunkerque was actually a battlecruiser and as Affeks said. WG seems to base speed of the ships on the numbers their reached on sea trials.

 

6 hours ago, Exocet6951 said:

And as always, comedy geniuses grace the thread with their presence with 20 year old jokes that were already considered idiotic back then.
 

First I tried to ignore them, then I was getting mad on every such white flag/pizza comment. Now I just cringe since they are only making fool of themselves. It is like telling the same joke for the hundred time on same party and expecting people to laugh.

[Affeks]

5 minutes ago, ImperialAdmiral said:

Dunkerque was actually a battlecruiser and as Affeks said. WG seems to base speed of the ships on the numbers their reached on sea trials.

 

Well they dont use Dunkerques trial speeds for some reason....

[ImperialAdmiral]

1 minute ago, Affeks said:

Well they dont use Dunkerques trial speeds for some reason....

They have weird apporoach to that. I just hope they won't f things up with French DDs and they give them superior speed in the future.

[Affeks]

Just now, ImperialAdmiral said:

They have weird apporoach to that. I just hope they won't f things up with French DDs and they give them superior speed in the future.

I wouldnt be surprised if they give french large DDs like Le fantastique 39 knots since you know Russian DDs have 42 knots speed so they cant take that away from them right?

 

I'll still get really angry if Le Fantastique gets anything less than 45 knots though.

[fallenkezef]

7 hours ago, Exocet6951 said:

And as always, comedy geniuses grace the thread with their presence with 20 year old jokes that were already considered idiotic back then.
 

20 years? We've been mocking the French since the hundred years war when it took a woman to beat us and the French have returned the mockery.  France and Britain are siblings, will always mock each other.

As to the topic, I'm inclined to agree with you to be honest. Have the ships as accurate as possible in an arcade game and just let them stand on their own merits.

WG have other ideas however.

[ImperialAdmiral]

1 minute ago, Affeks said:

I'll still get really angry if Le Fantastique gets anything less than 45 knots though.

Same, they deserve that being featured in game. So at least some people would check in history books that it was the case. That they were the fastest and not some fantasy russian dds.

[Exocet6951]

2 hours ago, fallenkezef said:

20 years? We've been mocking the French since the hundred years war when it took a woman to beat us and the French have returned the mockery.  France and Britain are siblings, will always mock each other.

As to the topic, I'm inclined to agree with you to be honest. Have the ships as accurate as possible in an arcade game and just let them stand on their own merits.

WG have other ideas however.

 

Oh I don't mind the Brits mocking the French, that's just good old sibling rivalry.
Just like I don't bat an eye when Canada mocks Quebec (they make it so easy as well).
Though to be honest, I don't know what's worse, needing a teenage schizophrenic girl to win a war with a tired and broken army, or losing to a teenage schizophrenic girl with a tired and broken army 

 

I'm mostly just tired of the recent wave of morons who started doing it because the USA got pissy that France didn't follow them into Iraq, because it has since devolved into History bending, and that's just wrong.
The Italians have the same problem, and it rustles my jimmies as well. You can't go on a single topic about Italian ship suggestions without someone going "lololo can they change sides if they start losing?"


As far as the topic goes, just like French CAs having had a historically accurate and just perfect gameplay potential (AP with almost the same bursting charge as HE was a gold mine) completely ignored in favor of a crammed in gimmick that doesn't even make sense, I'm sure the BB branch will ultimately have speed boost as well, and will be the blandest they can possibly make it, filling in all the current gaps with the most boring and sensible options.

"Looking forward to a 4x3 16" all or nothing super Alsace on tier X, and a early design Richelieu on tier7 prior to the ships as they were actually built on tier 8 ! "  -Someone yawning.

 

 

[Mucker]

I really don't care much about any gimmickry but I'd love to see the T10 "Super Alsace" with with a 4x4 15" main battery. 

[Shirakami_Kon]

IMO that search of gimmicks for every single line and premium ship it's what usually destroys the balance of this game every time one of those came out. Why do we even need that? I mean, it's ok when you have no different roles to play but we can't say that they didn't do the effort to adress that. Now we actually have so many of this wonderful "gimmicks" that it's a problem.

 

Honestly, why should the French BB or any new line or ship have to have a new gimmick of it's own? You think people can't just play a new line of ships just because they like those ships and they need to have something telling them "play this"?

 

 

[Ubertron_X]

14 minutes ago, SHDRKN4792 said:

IMO that search of gimmicks for every single line and premium ship it's what usually destroys the balance of this game every time one of those came out. Why do we even need that? I mean, it's ok when you have no different roles to play but we can't say that they didn't do the effort to adress that. Now we actually have so many of this wonderful "gimmicks" that it's a problem.

Honestly, why should the French BB or any new line or ship have to have a new gimmick of it's own? You think people can't just play a new line of ships just because they like those ships and they need to have something telling them "play this"?

QFT. I am also of the opinion that while national flavour is a desireable thing, at the current state of the game it will be very hard to provide each BB line a style/gimmick that a) does not further compromise the position of cruisers (e.g. BBs with speeds >32kt) and/or b) does not make older BB lines obsolete (like the KM line T8+ almost did; or does depending on who you ask).

[invicta2012]

The USP of French BBs should be powerful AP (like the Jurien) and those quad turrets.

 

If you go III - Courbet, IV - Bretagne, V - Normandie, VI - Lyon (with an imaginary WWII refit as a B hull, like Bayern) then that would be reasonably balanced, a bit like the USN BBs - slow but powerful, with a massive broadside on the higher Tiers, if you can bring it to bear - 16 guns on a Lyon.