Nerfing Low Citadels

[ReddNekk]

1 hour ago, AraAragami said:

In the past I've pitched the idea of just removing magazine spaces from the citadel space, for heavy cruisers. This would reduce the size of the citadel in cruisers by around 1/3rd to 1/2, depending on the boat, and make bow/stern citadels a thing of the past purely due to how much ship must be penetrated to reach the engine spaces.

 

It got shot down because it would result in an "undeserved" buff to IJN cruisers.

In other words, CA/CLs wouldn't be so easily killable by BBs.

[VTAdmiral]

Just now, ReddNekk said:

In other words, CA/CLs wouldn't be so easily killable by BBs.

Pretty much.

 

Even though that was the point, improving cruiser survivability (Though the change would have no effect on light cruisers, whose magazines are already omitted from the citadel)

[Midnitewolf]

10 hours ago, FleetAdmiral_Assassin said:

Citadels on BBs are fine the way they are, but citadel hits on cruisers do too much damage and should be reduced (given how easily they are hit). That solution is far easier to implement than moving hitboxes, just decrease the % of damage done upon a citadel hit for cruisers.

Let me ask you a question.  In real life, what do you think would happen to a cruiser hit in the machine spaces by a 16in shell fired for an Iowa or some other ship?   Personally I think it would probably rip the cruiser in half and cripple if not outright kill her.  Hmm kind of like what happens in the game.

Seriously though, I am primarily a cruiser skipper though I am sort of transitioning to BBs at the moment but as a cruiser main, I can honestly say that about 90% of the time I have been deleted by a BB, it was because I was doing something I knew to be risky or just plain old made a mistake.   Also when I am playing a BB a well skippered cruiser is a nightmare to sink simply because they can change directions so quickly, luckily there are a ton of idiots out there that make my job easy.

[Carl]

14 minutes ago, Midnitewolf said:

Let me ask you a question.  In real life, what do you think would happen to a cruiser hit in the machine spaces by a 16in shell fired for an Iowa or some other ship?   Personally I think it would probably rip the cruiser in half and cripple if not outright kill her.  Hmm kind of like what happens in the game.

Seriously though, I am primarily a cruiser skipper though I am sort of transitioning to BBs at the moment but as a cruiser main, I can honestly say that about 90% of the time I have been deleted by a BB, it was because I was doing something I knew to be risky or just plain old made a mistake.   Also when I am playing a BB a well skippered cruiser is a nightmare to sink simply because they can change directions so quickly, luckily there are a ton of idiots out there that make my job easy.

 

Yes but cruisers are the only ships in the entire game that get outright deleted for a mistake or doing somthing risky, (at least where gunfire is involved). To do that in any other ship you have to completely screw up by the numbers, (like charging a smoked Minnie when your hydro spotted in a Lo Yang).

 

No other ship has to put up with that kind of frailty to gunfire.

[RealNewDeal]

1 hour ago, Carl said:

 

Yes but cruisers are the only ships in the entire game that get outright deleted for a mistake or doing somthing risky, (at least where gunfire is involved). To do that in any other ship you have to completely screw up by the numbers, (like charging a smoked Minnie when your hydro spotted in a Lo Yang).

 

No other ship has to put up with that kind of frailty to gunfire.

Unfornate thing is less citadel won't stop and Algerie from sailijg in a stright line at meh angle, and getting deleted from 17.5km from my Arizona as they ignored the massive shotgun of slow moving shells.

[Carl]

Just now, RealNewDeal said:

Unfornate thing is less citadel won't stop and Algerie from sailijg in a stright line at meh angle, and getting deleted from 17.5km from my Arizona as they ignored the massive shotgun of slow moving shells.

 

Yes and no. it wouldn't make it impossible, but an NC with a bit of luck can shave 41k and change off my tirpitz if he gets 9 out of 9 normal pens, it isn't going to happen often, but it can happen. And an Arizona could actually do slightly worse. But getting enough normal pens to wipe a cruiser in one salvo is a hell of a lot harder than doing it with cits, Dev strikes on cruisers via BB's without cits are vanishingly rare. Far more so than full or near full health cit deletions.

[Frederick_The_Great]

the sad thing about cruisers on top of being fragile is the fact their max range tends to be in the comfortable shooting range of most BBs.(around 15km and under)   add on top of that crappy detection ranges on some cruisers, and you can be shot before you can really fire back.   its probably why you see so many cruisers too far ahead at the start of the match, then get deleted.  

[AdmiralThunder]

13 hours ago, DemonGod3 said:

I don’t think BBs got that increased dispersion when they use concealment mod, not on my computer so I would need to look later.

The ones I have where I am using it shows a +5% dispersion to enemy guns. Montana below as an example...

[AdmiralThunder]

13 hours ago, Big_Spud said:

 

lmbo.

 

You aimed a bit short with the first salvo, and fired too soon into the turn when he was still heavily angled. Naturally most of the shells fall short, and the two that do hit either bounce or overpen. Bad shot on your part made worse by RNG.

Second salvo you have full view of his broadside, see the DD at the last second, panic, and shoot too far forwards, which leads to three of your shells striking the unarmored bow section/over the belt and just overpenetrating. Bad shot on your part.

The third salvo you aim and fire at an already questionable angle, getting some normal pens. Bad shot on your part.

The fourth salvo is just hilarious. He's clearly angled heavily enough to bounce the shot, yet you take it anyways. Pointless shot on your part.

 

Conclusion, aim better famalam.

Yeah, not being a jerk or trying to be offensive but I thought the same thing. A lot of the problems I saw in the video were angle and aim related. On the best shot chance most fall short of the ship into the water. Tense close in fight though so not being a jerk like so many would and kudos for the excellent torpedo beat to the player. A better (less hastily) aimed shot on that best chance would have deleted the red Missouri.

[AdmiralThunder]

10 hours ago, Midnitewolf said:

Let me ask you a question.  In real life, what do you think would happen to a cruiser hit in the machine spaces by a 16in shell fired for an Iowa or some other ship?   Personally I think it would probably rip the cruiser in half and cripple if not outright kill her.  Hmm kind of like what happens in the game.

Seriously though, I am primarily a cruiser skipper though I am sort of transitioning to BBs at the moment but as a cruiser main, I can honestly say that about 90% of the time I have been deleted by a BB, it was because I was doing something I knew to be risky or just plain old made a mistake.   Also when I am playing a BB a well skippered cruiser is a nightmare to sink simply because they can change directions so quickly, luckily there are a ton of idiots out there that make my job easy.

Well said.

Hope we aren't going to start seeing a ton of nerf BB AP vs Cruiser threads now like we see from DD players. God that gets so old. 

[FleetAdmiral_Assassin]

11 hours ago, Midnitewolf said:

Let me ask you a question.  In real life, what do you think would happen to a cruiser hit in the machine spaces by a 16in shell fired for an Iowa or some other ship?   Personally I think it would probably rip the cruiser in half and cripple if not outright kill her.  Hmm kind of like what happens in the game.

Seriously though, I am primarily a cruiser skipper though I am sort of transitioning to BBs at the moment but as a cruiser main, I can honestly say that about 90% of the time I have been deleted by a BB, it was because I was doing something I knew to be risky or just plain old made a mistake.   Also when I am playing a BB a well skippered cruiser is a nightmare to sink simply because they can change directions so quickly, luckily there are a ton of idiots out there that make my job easy.

First off this isn't real life, it is a video game where WG needs to weigh the cost of making changes (staff), the affects on game/ship balance, and the affects on the game engine as well.

If this were a simulator, the vast majority of shells fired would simply miss (but that wouldn't be fun for most players, so they allow guns in the game to be FAR more accurate than they were in real life (also in real life you couldn't control the guns as precisely as you can with a mouse and keyboard)).

Remodeling every ship in the game would be expensive.

Modeling every gear compartment, boiler, ammo space, interior walls/portals and storage of supplies (to make penetrations more realistic) would tax the game engine too heavily (too many calculations to perform especially with any change in angle).

Since WG wants citadels in the game, the quickest, cheapest, and most effective solution is to simply reduce one variable in the formula. By simply reducing the damage taken by a CL/CA that gets its citadel hit, you 'solve' the problem of cruisers getting too easily deleted.

No one is saying that in a straight up fight at optimal range a BB shouldn't be able to kill a cruiser. We're just saying that with the current system, it is FAR too easy to do it.

Also, let's keep in mind that WG changed the scale to make the game more playable (ships are larger, all weapon ranges reduced, speeds aren't to scale, etc.). This has  unintended consequences, it makes shell ballistics model differently. That's why in-game the German turtleback armor design is more effective in-game and than it was in real life.

I'm just saying that easiest way to produce the results being asked for, is to just reduce one modifier in one equation (instead of remaking all equations/formulas from scratch, or completely remodeling every ship, or requiring the game engine to handle even more 3D models within models rotating in real time as penetration calculations are being performed...).

[TheCloudraker]

21 hours ago, FleetAdmiral_Assassin said:

Citadels on BBs are fine the way they are, but citadel hits on cruisers do too much damage and should be reduced (given how easily they are hit). That solution is far easier to implement than moving hitboxes, just decrease the % of damage done upon a citadel hit for cruisers.

I don't think the amount of damage done to cruisers is too much. At higher tiers they are harder to play for that reason. If you get citadeled in a cruiser, you did something wrong by showing enough broadside to get hit in your citadel. I don't agree with you on how easy cruisers are to hit. If you get a cruiser player that doesn't know what they are doing then yea, they are easy to hit. If you get a cruiser payer that has some sort of situational awareness and nows how to use the WASD keys then they will avoid citadels pretty regularly unless they push into a cross fire.

[Skpstr]

15 hours ago, AraAragami said:

In the past I've pitched the idea of just removing magazine spaces from the citadel space, for heavy cruisers. This would reduce the size of the citadel in cruisers by around 1/3rd to 1/2, depending on the boat, and make bow/stern citadels a thing of the past purely due to how much ship must be penetrated to reach the engine spaces.

 

It got shot down because it would result in an "undeserved" buff to IJN cruisers.

I'd have no problem with that. BB/CV have full citadels, CA/CL have basically machinery space citadels only, and DDs have none.

[FleetAdmiral_Assassin]

5 minutes ago, Panic512 said:

I don't think the amount of damage done to cruisers is too much. At higher tiers they are harder to play for that reason. If you get citadeled in a cruiser, you did something wrong by showing enough broadside to get hit in your citadel. I don't agree with you on how easy cruisers are to hit. If you get a cruiser player that doesn't know what they are doing then yea, they are easy to hit. If you get a cruiser payer that has some sort of situational awareness and nows how to use the WASD keys then they will avoid citadels pretty regularly unless they push into a cross fire.

As someone who's been playing more DDs lately than not, I say if you really want CAs to be nice and squishy - then go ahead, it makes my life easier... There have been a number of times when both I and a cruiser round a corner together (both broadside), and I've sunk the cruiser with my DD using AP rounds long before my torps even reach the target (and before they are able to sink me). Part of me likes that, and part of me understands that this should not happen and is bad for the game. At 5k a Tier IX broadside cruiser should not lose to a Tier IX broadside DD in an exchange of deck gun fire only. That's bad for game-balance.

One of the biggest problems in the game is the ever increasingly passive playstyle. BBs won't move up because they're afraid of torps and HE. Cruisers won't move up because no matter what angle they present, BBs can quickly delete them. So if there's no island to hide behind, BBs and CAs just hide in back and try to snipe.

Everything is inter-related. I'm not suggesting that changing citadel hits on CAs will suddenly make the game perfect (i'm also asking for changes to other stuff in other threads), but this thread is about citadels. Right now it is too easy to delete cruisers (and I say that as someone who's been playing destroyers for the past several months).

[VTAdmiral]

1 hour ago, Skpstr said:

I'd have no problem with that. BB/CV have full citadels, CA/CL have basically machinery space citadels only, and DDs have none.

That was the step progression I was aiming for, yes.

 

The heavier your armor, the more soft squishy things there are for it to protect.

[biggie1447]

3 hours ago, FleetAdmiral_Assassin said:

First off this isn't real life, it is a video game where WG needs to weigh the cost of making changes (staff), the affects on game/ship balance, and the affects on the game engine as well.

If this were a simulator, the vast majority of shells fired would simply miss (but that wouldn't be fun for most players, so they allow guns in the game to be FAR more accurate than they were in real life (also in real life you couldn't control the guns as precisely as you can with a mouse and keyboard)).

To be fair to the game and to real life, the range at which most battles were fought were much further than what is represented in game, accuracy increases drastically as the range shortens.

IRL Iowa max range was nearly 39 km and the DM could lob shells out to over 27 km, this is much further than the 21 and 18 km ranges those ships have in game. 

[FleetAdmiral_Assassin]

19 minutes ago, biggie1447 said:

To be fair to the game and to real life, the range at which most battles were fought were much further than what is represented in game, accuracy increases drastically as the range shortens.

IRL Iowa max range was nearly 39 km and the DM could lob shells out to over 27 km, this is much further than the 21 and 18 km ranges those ships have in game. 

Which is why 4 paragraphs below where you quoted me, I mentioned scaling.

But keep in mind, in real life you adjusted the aim of guns by turning wheels and knobs marked in degrees or large fractions of degrees (meaning you could be off by a half a degree which at 39km means a huge miss). Not to mention your ship was rising, falling, rocking and rolling over waves (as was your target). Where-as with a mouse and keyboard, you can zoom in your view and place your reticule to within 3 meters of where you want to hit (then modified by RNG). No wave action in the game.

[MaxL_1023]

Citadel height is a balance parameter, with historical ship layout only acting as a guide towards initial placement. 

I would support reducing citadel damage to cruisers, but they would need a nerf to their HE shell (damage and fire chance) or AP DPS (I would prefer a HE nerf as AP rewards aiming better) to keep them balanced - right now tier 9 and 10 cruisers have no trouble engaging enemy targets and dealing more than their weight in damage. Lower tier cruisers are more of a mixed bag, especially as captain skills such as IFHE and CE have such a large effect on performance. 

[Psicopro]

On 1/15/2018 at 12:36 PM, FleetAdmiral_Assassin said:

Citadels on BBs are fine the way they are, but citadel hits on cruisers do too much damage and should be reduced (given how easily they are hit). That solution is far easier to implement than moving hitboxes, just decrease the % of damage done upon a citadel hit for cruisers.

Always thought this was a good suggestion on a limited basis given the fact that some ships were designed with redundancy to their machine spaces in mind.

[VTAdmiral]

On 1/15/2018 at 9:36 AM, FleetAdmiral_Assassin said:

Citadels on BBs are fine the way they are, but citadel hits on cruisers do too much damage and should be reduced (given how easily they are hit). That solution is far easier to implement than moving hitboxes, just decrease the % of damage done upon a citadel hit for cruisers.

Just want to address this real quick: It's not really "moving a hitbox". Magazine spaces and Engine Room spaces are already considered separate locations on the ship. So really it's just a matter of un-flagging the magazine space as a Citadel hitbox.

 

Changing flags is ludicrously easy. You could do this for every cruiser in the game in a space of maybe 10 minutes. And most of that is time spent whipping up the macro to check Cruiser damage models for the Citadel flag on the magazine spaces and turn it off, while ignoring the Engine Space location.

[biggie1447]

28 minutes ago, FleetAdmiral_Assassin said:

Which is why 4 paragraphs below where you quoted me, I mentioned scaling.

But keep in mind, in real life you adjusted the aim of guns by turning wheels and knobs marked in degrees or large fractions of degrees (meaning you could be off by a half a degree which at 39km means a huge miss). Not to mention your ship was rising, falling, rocking and rolling over waves (as was your target). Where-as with a mouse and keyboard, you can zoom in your view and place your reticule to within 3 meters of where you want to hit (then modified by RNG). No wave action in the game.

My bad, must have missed it.

Don't forget the funky hovering 100m above the water view that you get when fully zoomed out and the downward facing view when using spotter plane.

[Carl]

36 minutes ago, FleetAdmiral_Assassin said:

Which is why 4 paragraphs below where you quoted me, I mentioned scaling.

But keep in mind, in real life you adjusted the aim of guns by turning wheels and knobs marked in degrees or large fractions of degrees (meaning you could be off by a half a degree which at 39km means a huge miss). Not to mention your ship was rising, falling, rocking and rolling over waves (as was your target). Where-as with a mouse and keyboard, you can zoom in your view and place your reticule to within 3 meters of where you want to hit (then modified by RNG). No wave action in the game.

 

Many later fire control systems compensate for roll and actually provided a very acurratte pointer for aim, most of the problems came from the fact that the FC couldn't do the math well enough to fully compensate for the positioning of individual gun turrets and the inherent spread of the guns. because everything in game is physically bigger a big dispersion pattern produces a lot more hits than it otherwise would. Also prior to radar introducing range had to be estimated by optical rnage finders which whilst good had an upper limit on how acurratte they could be.

[Raptor_alcor]

On 1/15/2018 at 10:07 PM, Midnitewolf said:

Let me ask you a question.  In real life, what do you think would happen to a cruiser hit in the machine spaces by a 16in shell fired for an Iowa or some other ship?   Personally I think it would probably rip the cruiser in half and cripple if not outright kill her.  Hmm kind of like what happens in the game.

Seriously though, I am primarily a cruiser skipper though I am sort of transitioning to BBs at the moment but as a cruiser main, I can honestly say that about 90% of the time I have been deleted by a BB, it was because I was doing something I knew to be risky or just plain old made a mistake.   Also when I am playing a BB a well skippered cruiser is a nightmare to sink simply because they can change directions so quickly, luckily there are a ton of idiots out there that make my job easy.

Invalid, reality should ALWAYS take a back seat to balance, and ... 'people' like you are exactly why proper balance in this game is so damn hard. 

[13th_Earl_White_Haven]

On 1/15/2018 at 1:07 PM, Midnitewolf said:

Let me ask you a question.  In real life, what do you think would happen to a cruiser hit in the machine spaces by a 16in shell fired for an Iowa or some other ship?   Personally I think it would probably rip the cruiser in half and cripple if not outright kill her.  Hmm kind of like what happens in the game.

Seriously though, I am primarily a cruiser skipper though I am sort of transitioning to BBs at the moment but as a cruiser main, I can honestly say that about 90% of the time I have been deleted by a BB, it was because I was doing something I knew to be risky or just plain old made a mistake.   Also when I am playing a BB a well skippered cruiser is a nightmare to sink simply because they can change directions so quickly, luckily there are a ton of idiots out there that make my job easy.

I real life naval combat in the general era represented accuracy to the level in game would have been unthinkable. If you want accurate damage you must also take the other changes to bring that in line. Most people don't want a WW2 era simulator (I would love it but I'm a little off) that would have ships slinging shells with all the true factors involved.

20 minutes ago, Raptor_alcor said:

Invalid, reality should ALWAYS take a back seat to balance, and ... 'people' like you are exactly why proper balance in this game is so damn hard. 

Reality should only take a back seat to balance in an arcade game (this is one for sure). If they did a simulator or a historicly accurate mode balance goes out the window. I have a table top game set early war in the Pacific and if you play the Allies you ARE outclassed, out gunned, and out numbered but the accuracy and challenges make it an absolute blast. In video games this is a hard sell to most except the history nerds out there like me.

[Raptor_alcor]

Just now, 13th_Earl_White_Haven said:

 

Reality should only take a back seat to balance in an arcade game (this is one for sure). If they did a simulator or a historicly accurate mode balance goes out the window. I have a table top game set early war in the Pacific and if you play the Allies you ARE outclassed, out gunned, and out numbered but the accuracy and challenges make it an absolute blast. In video games this is a hard sell to most except the history nerds out there like me.

Well, to be fair this does go without saying in the context of this forum but you are indeed correct.