smoke From the Dev Blog... Smoke!

[__Helmut_Kohl__]

6 minutes ago, Earl_of_Northesk said:

Wat

 

Have not played the Minotaur yet, still grinding towards it. But it seems lackluster at 10+ km. 

[Drunken_Jedi]

This is a pretty heavy nerf, there are already so many counters to smoke, torpedoes, radar, german hydro... is it really necessary to punish cruisers like this? If you want to do it to BB's then fair enough, but I feel this is just going to promote even more camping and passive play. BB's will just refuse to push even with smoke because they know they'll be spotted even inside the smoke. I would bring down the detection range for all cruisers to about 7-8km... it's easy as it is to nuke ships in smoke blind based off of muzzle flashes (even more so when using the spotter plane for the top-down view.

 

I welcome changes to the game, but I have some concerns over this when there are already plentiful counters to smoke already. It also destroys what little teamwork there is already especially divisions who take a DD for offensive smoking to push to different areas while remaining concealed.

 

This will also have some pretty drastic concequences for competitive play too.

[__Helmut_Kohl__]

4 km for cruisers would be far more reasonable. 

 

But I like the idea. 

Smoke does conceal people too well at very short ranges right now. 

[Sub_Octavian]

1 minute ago, Ofenkartoffel said:

4 km for cruisers would be far more reasonable. 

That's WIP. We will see about tuning the numbers, when we actually test them properly.

[__Helmut_Kohl__]

Just now, Sub_Octavian said:

That's WIP. We will see about tuning the numbers, when we actually test them properly.

 

Thx Sub, good to hear. 

[Drunken_Jedi]

@Sub_Octavian given how well concealed the RN BB's are going to be in their current state, I think some careful fine tuning of the detection numbers will be in order. It's already hard enough in cruisers, we rely on smoke a lot of the time to move concealed and use our high RoF to chip damage over time. 

 

There are BB's with lower detection values than cruisers now, let's not make the BB epidemic even more of a problem with this change. 

 

Also, be mindful not to tie it to gun calibre, otherwise cruisers like the Graf Spee will suffer quite significantly. 

[__Helmut_Kohl__]

In real life, the concealment of smoke would also decrease with distance, especially for bigger ships. 

 

Good concept. 

[kfa]

28 minutes ago, Sub_Octavian said:

1. If you are behind a smoke, this does not work (but you can be spotted from air, from sides, etc)...we see there may be some issues here, but for now, we want to check that the whole idea is workable.

Cheers!

 

So if a Benson make U shaped smoke wall the BBs behind will still be able to smoke camp like before.

[BillydSquid]

17 minutes ago, Sub_Octavian said:

Okay, guys. A little update, as I see many similar questions everywhere.

 

5,4 for Minotaur

 

In other news, how to break a line of ships that you designed to revolve around smoke and short range high rate of fire guns, while being complete glass cannons; make them detectable at 5km in smoke and give them a 10/12km effective main gun range. 

 

Well done guys, well done...

 

[Tuccy]

If a battleship gets close enough to detect the Minotaur in smoke, it's asking for a face full of torpedoes. On the other hand it will also limit the favourite Ranked tactics of "(let's all smoke in a blob and spam", as now a daring enemy DD can detect at least the biggest culprits. Or even adventurous cruiser can ;)

 

 

[__Helmut_Kohl__]

5 minutes ago, Tuccy said:

If a battleship gets close enough to detect the Minotaur in smoke, it's asking for a face full of torpedoes. On the other hand it will also limit the favourite Ranked tactics of "(let's all smoke in a blob and spam", as now a daring enemy DD can detect at least the biggest culprits. Or even adventurous cruiser can ;)

 

 

 

If he is bow-on, 5.4 is way too early for reliable torpedo hits.

 

No one would launch at 5.4 right now. 

[BillydSquid]

12 minutes ago, Tuccy said:

If a battleship gets close enough to detect the Minotaur in smoke, it's asking for a face full of torpedoes. On the other hand it will also limit the favourite Ranked tactics of "(let's all smoke in a blob and spam", as now a daring enemy DD can detect at least the biggest culprits. Or even adventurous cruiser can ;)

 

 

 

What world is this in? At 5km the BB will be bow on, and the shells will plow clean through the bow of the Minotaur (because no one sits broadside on in a Minotaur, unless they want to eat multiple citadels from blind fire into the smoke and their torpedoes are not in the right arc angled up) straight into the citadel, deletion. 

 

Have you been on the receiving end of a Kurfust rushing a Minotaur with Hydro on? It's not fun, you're forced to launch torps and run long before they are effective and risk the BB deleting you with the forward guns. It's not as if there exists, blind fire, torpedoes, Hydro, Radar or any other tactics to use vs a Minotaur smoking. 

 

And getting a face full of torpedoes, the BB will take a couple in the bow, damage saturation mechanics kick in and the BB deletes the Minotaur. 

 

A daring DD can detect smoke blobs now? So the tactic of launching massed torpedoes into the smoke, german BBs with hydro, radar CAs, and german DDs with hydro wasn't enough of a counter? 

 

Edit: Or is this to benefit BBs which get spammed by HE and RN CLs from smoke, rather  than ranked?

[Aragathor]

Just now, Ofenkartoffel said:

 

If he is bow-on, 5.4 is way too early for reliable torpedo hits.

In addition this assumes the Minotaur's torps are not reloading, he reacts fast enough to fire them, the BB is within the torpedo firing arc, and doesn't get deleted instantly when spotted.

 

I want to believe this will be a balanced change, however I can't. This is another move toward World of Battleships, as they aren't reliant on smoke.

[rvfharrier]

6 minutes ago, Tuccy said:

If a battleship gets close enough to detect the Minotaur in smoke, it's asking for a face full of torpedoes. On the other hand it will also limit the favourite Ranked tactics of "(let's all smoke in a blob and spam", as now a daring enemy DD can detect at least the biggest culprits. Or even adventurous cruiser can ;)

 

 

 

I still think this is an unnecessary change that will only serve to lower the amount of team play and further promote passive, long range game play. But if it goes ahead, will the spotting work the other way around? A Minotaur is in smoke and is charged by, let's say, another Minotaur. Assuming no other planes or ships are factored into the spotting, is the Minotaur outside of smoke also spotted by the Minotaur inside the smoke at 5.4km if it opens fire?

[Drunken_Jedi]

11 minutes ago, Tuccy said:

If a battleship gets close enough to detect the Minotaur in smoke, it's asking for a face full of torpedoes. On the other hand it will also limit the favourite Ranked tactics of "(let's all smoke in a blob and spam", as now a daring enemy DD can detect at least the biggest culprits. Or even adventurous cruiser can ;)

 

 

 

This is a flawed notion, anyone who's played in Royal Navy CL's against German hydro will know how broken it is, and the massive warning it gives them of incoming torpedoes. BB's are still hyper manoeuvrable and can very easily dodge the vast majority of torpedoes fired at them. Even if they eat one on the bow it's not that big of a deal, just damage con and delete the ship in smoke. That scenario also relies on the Minotaur showing most of it's broadside to the enemy to fire it's torpedoes in the first place, RN CL's are clumsy to turn at slow speeds and drift quite a bit before picking up momentum. 

 

The concept is ok, but detection ranges for cruisers need to be pretty low. Hell the Perth only has a pitifully short range, you'd be spotted most of the time with this concept.

[Aotearas]

~10ish km spotting distance if concealed in smoke for heavy cruisers (I assume ships like Des Moines, Zao, etc. will have similar values) seems a bit too excessive. Some of those ships are meant to be played close to the action and smoke is one of the few ways those ships can actually make full use of their potential if there isn't a convenient island around and high tier map design isn't exactly the best at that.

 

I'd say you can comfortably put that spotting distance to something around 7-8km and see from there. The nerf for BBs using smoke seems fair, they have plenty enough strengths as it is but the cruisers could do with a bit love. Smoke is one of the few things a cruiser can use to actually play the objectives without getting smacked by an errant BB cruising relaxed somewhere on the B line.

[__Helmut_Kohl__]

Since RN Cruisers only have AP, it would be super easy to angle in, push to 5.4, and annihilate them while only risking a torpedo to the bow. 

 

Torpedoes are only scary when you have to get super close. 

[Aotearas]

21 minutes ago, Tuccy said:

If a battleship gets close enough to detect the Minotaur in smoke, it's asking for a face full of torpedoes. On the other hand it will also limit the favourite Ranked tactics of "(let's all smoke in a blob and spam", as now a daring enemy DD can detect at least the biggest culprits. Or even adventurous cruiser can ;)

 

 

 

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Damnit.

[HotshotJimmy]

I wondered when the dreaded nerf to the RN cruisers would come. Didn't think you'd nerf its one defense/offense though. I am certainly not going to like this change considering some dds can citadel top end RN cruisers at 5km. 

 

Oh and for that BB running into a Minotaur in smoke torps yada yada line. Last time I checked Tuccy shells travel faster than torpedoes. Oh and think about this RN lads, that BB will see you BEFORE your hydro picks it up if he's not spotted heading for your smoke.

[piet11111]

My opinion is that smoke for the moment should be left alone until wargaming fixed the BB dominance problem.

That said wargaming will push this forward and i hope i can trust that they will be diligent testing this and not negatively affect cruisers and dd's.

[Aragathor]

6 minutes ago, Aotearas said:

~10ish km spotting distance if concealed in smoke for heavy cruisers (I assume ships like Des Moines, Zao, etc. will have similar values) seems a bit too excessive.

 

Forget T10 cruisers, consider what will happen to "heavy" cruisers like the Pensacola. They will effectively be forced to abandon any attempts to support DDs. Instead they will be hiding behind islands barely doing anything.

[lycea]

This change discourages aggressive gameplay. It will only result in more passive gameplay 

[Grif]

As mentioned above the mechanics need to also work in reverse, or you will end with the ludicrous situation that an identical ship to that in the smoke will be able to remain undetected when firing at a longer range than the ship firing from within

[BillydSquid]

Just now, piet11111 said:

That said wargaming will push this forward and i hope i can trust that they will be diligent testing this and not negatively affect cruisers and dd's.

 

Hehehe good joke, you were being sarcastic right?

 

I fully anticipate this will be rammed through regardless, while ignoring the more egregious problem of BBs having little in the way of counters beyond smoke and He spam, and while smoke blobs can be an issue in ranked i expect it will be the balance approach of using a sledge hammer to crack a nut, where CAs and DDs will be the collateral damage to remove a ranked exploit.

[__Helmut_Kohl__]

8 minutes ago, Ofenkartoffel said:

Since RN Cruisers only have AP, it would be super easy to angle in, push to 5.4, and annihilate them while only risking a torpedo to the bow. 

 

Torpedoes are only scary when you have to get super close. 

 

For HE cruisers it would be totally different of course, since targets are not immune when pushing in.