What bothers me the most about the captain rework is its failure to address how the game has changed over the years or be fundamentally different from the old system in a meaningful way

[Ralph090]

You know, the thing that bothers me the most about the captain rework is that WG had an opportunity to use creative skills that addressed a lot of the changes and additions to the game that have appeared since launch, like the proliferation of radar and hydroacoustic search, and give ships that have been power crept by these systems more counterplay against them.

For example, they could have included a skill called "aluminized smoke screen" that reduced the duration of your smoke but made it block or reduce the range of radar going through it, both enemy and friendly. The idea is based on Britain's "Window" project, which dropped aluminum strips from airplanes to block German radar, which couldn't see through the cloud as the radar beams were broken up and reflected by the strips (as well as the chaff systems used by modern ships).

Or they could have done a "noise maker" skill, where if the ship is moving at greater than 75% speed it makes you're ship undetectable by hydroacoustic search and reduces the detection range of torpedoes that are between you and a ship running hydro. The downsides are that you're surface detection range increases at high speed, it affects your own hydro as well, and you get located by anyone on the map with active hydro in a manner similar to RPF since you're making a TON of noise. This is inspired by real life noise makers that were used to decoy away German acoustic homing torpedoes (they were effectively blindfire weapons. the U-boat would submerge and wait until the convoy was above them and then just kind of shotgun a couple into the water in the convoy's general direction and hope they hit something. The seekers were a ring of hydrophones around the nose of the torpedo that were "tuned" to look for the sound of the propellers of either escort ships or merchantmen, which was possible because different types of ships sound different on hydrophones, and they would passively follow the loudest noise. The noise maker was way, WAY louder than the ship, so the torpedo would follow it instead). It would also be handy for disrupting submarine attacks once they inevitably kill the game come out.

Stuff like that could have really shaken up the game and helped to rebalance ships that have suffered from power creep or changes in the game design, like the Shimakaze for instance.

[Lose_dudes]

I don't have the heart to tell you how dumb this sounds.

Subs are no different from dds, both stealth torp, can be shot, but subs are slower and dds have lead indicator.

[1nv4d3rZ1m]

There definitely needs to be more counter play in this game. As much as the pro cv crowd hates any surface ship having a chance to fight back its necessary for a dynamic pvp experience. However having a consumable that cancels out something is the lowest rung of the counter play ladder. Its poor design (and I say that about radar as well) and requires no skill to push a button. This crowd for the most part seems to not want more intensive counter play and WG knows this so if they do add something its super simple and either is not effective or creates a new set of problems. 

[Ensign_Cthulhu]

14 minutes ago, Ralph090 said:

like the proliferation of radar and hydroacoustic search, and give ships that have been power crept by these systems more counterplay against them.

Radar and hydro were brought in because a skilfully-driven DD without radar and hydro counters is an unholy, unstoppable monster. They don't need counterplay; they ARE the counterplay.

I suspect a Shimakaze driver who would rather that these inconvenient obstacles be removed from his path. Sorry, not going to happen. 

[Ralph090]

24 minutes ago, Lose_dudes said:

I don't have the heart to tell you how dumb this sounds.

Subs are no different from dds, both stealth torp, can be shot, but subs are slower and dds have lead indicator.

Please, by all means tell me why I'm stupid. If I didn't want people doing it I wouldn't have said anything. I'd just sit there thinking I'm the smartest guy in the universe and wondering why no one else can see the "obvious" truth.

[mushmouthmorton]

The initial failure of the programmers to make the spotting rules more in line with the "real world" has spawned an entire sieries of patches, gimmicks and workarounds to try and correct the initial error.

The basic design, which was that when any red ship that was spotted, by any means, by any green ship, became instantly visible to every other green ship, regardless of distance and regardless of line of sight, set up situations in the game that should not exist. All the gimmicks added later have only added more issues to the poorly designed base. Instead of messing around with "Captain Skills Rework" changes, WG needs to look at the entire system and fix the basic issues. Not add another bandaid.

[SoothingWhaleSongEU]

Whilst I don't necessarily agree with the specifics of your suggested skills, I very much agree with the broad strokes.

Most of the cookie cutter, "required skills builds" honestly look very similar, it's just that Priority Target, Adrenaline rush both now cost more, but are arguably no less desirable.

Likewise the *standard* DD build of Preventative Maintenance, Last Stand, Survivability Expert remains and Concealment Expert as relevant as ever to pretty much all DDs except the loudest and proudest gunboats. Despite baking in a minor Last Stand effect into all ships.

I also dislike that now high point captains can both do more direct damage per salvo and be more accurate, which is something they generally *weren't* at least when it came to the main battery (if if BFT and AR could increase the fire rate and DPS)

The major changes have gone into bizarro land with deadeye max concealment battleships sniping whilst being fire spammed by Minimum concealment lighthouse top grade gunner cruisers.

My own pipedream take is here: 

In summary:
A clearer line between the % bonus buffs that upgrades and signals & camo provide vs skills that provide perhaps more information.

Instead were all built around cool tricks or extra information like Situational Awareness, Incoming Fire Alert , Priority Target, Expert Loader, Radio Location etc. Perhaps though each comes with a disadvantage.

A key example is Concealment Expert should just go, and leave it at camo & the concealment module upgrade, or perhaps even better yet, get rid of that and rework the slot 5 upgrades, so new players with less skilled captains/the tier 7 vs 8 boundary is less absurd.

Make the skills perhaps chunkier, so *fewer* skill points but also doing so can make it far easier for the developers to balance them.

 

 

[Sabot_100]

59 minutes ago, SoothingWhaleSongEU said:

 Despite baking in a minor Last Stand effect into all ships.

Missed the original announcement. What is the baked-in version for all ships vs Last Stand?

[GRIMLOCK__]

..

 

 

 

[Morpheous]

1 hour ago, mushmouthmorton said:

The initial failure of the programmers to make the spotting rules more in line with the "real world" has spawned an entire sieries of patches, gimmicks and workarounds to try and correct the initial error.

The basic design, which was that when any red ship that was spotted, by any means, by any green ship, became instantly visible to every other green ship, regardless of distance and regardless of line of sight, set up situations in the game that should not exist. All the gimmicks added later have only added more issues to the poorly designed base. Instead of messing around with "Captain Skills Rework" changes, WG needs to look at the entire system and fix the basic issues. Not add another bandaid.

You do know that WG invented bandaids right?  The basic meta to the game is wrong... broadside armor is the STRONGEST armor... getting shot via the bow or stern is called a RAKE and was to be avoided.  But WG in their infinite tank wisdom decided that ship armor was like tank armor, slanted or oblique is better...but that is NOT the way real ships were designed.  Armor for most ships was designed to defeat the guns that the ship was mounting (generally speaking). This basic flaw lead directly to the camping meta.  Spotting of course compounds this especially with radar and hydro, your analysis is correct.  DDs should have been stealthy but overtly so, and smoke should have been designed to be laid out behind the DD and allow other ships to use it, while the DD spots. (give a lot more XP to a DD for spotting)  DDs making torp runs still should be part of the game, but a more secondary roll, and their guns would be for killing other DDs and maybe giving a CA a rough day if the CA is not focusing on them.  To be able to wreck a BB with guns?  Laughable.

[Glamorboy]

1 hour ago, Ralph090 said:

Please, by all means tell me why I'm stupid. If I didn't want people doing it I wouldn't have said anything. I'd just sit there thinking I'm the smartest guy in the universe and wondering why no one else can see the "obvious" truth.

I'm not going to comment on each skill you propose, but I like the general idea that the new skills could have introduced new and exciting methods in which to engage in naval combat.

I would have enjoyed the skills being more teamwork centric.  An increase in co-operation tends to lead to better gameplay (imo). 

I also think they introduced skills that again made the skills you take for each boat very cookie cutter.  Most boats that are the same will have the same skills with minor variance.  Here are a couple examples for cruisers.

Support Tree

- Spotting Aircraft increases the range of your main battery, and the main batteries of your allies within 5km by 10%.

- Co-ordinated Fireplan, -8% dispersion for you and allies within 5km,

- Sonar ping, reveals all ships within 15km for 1 second on the minimap only.  Cooldown 60s.

AA Tree

- Fleet Protector, designate one target within 5km and it gains continuous damage equal to your medium range.

- Walls of lead, any enemy plane within your medium/short range AA suffers +35% dispersion to their ordinance drops.

 

WG went the other, other way.  It's still cookie cutter builds.  And its very solo oriented.  (example dead eye which promotes the opposite of teamwork)

[SoothingWhaleSongEU]

33 minutes ago, Sabot_100 said:

Missed the original announcement. What is the baked-in version for all ships vs Last Stand?

 

With update 0.10.0

https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Update_0.10.0#Engine_damage

 

Quote

Engine damage

When a ship's engine is critically damaged, it now continues to function at 20% efficiency instead of stopping entirely.

 

 

[Crucis]

@Ralph090    What gets me about this thread is the subject line that's 3 lines long.  I mean, really?  Thread subject lines should be CONSIDERABLY shorter.  The point of the subject line isn't to contain the entire post, but just a mere taste of the post to come.

[1nv4d3rZ1m]

18 minutes ago, Morpheous said:

You do know that WG invented bandaids right?  The basic meta to the game is wrong... broadside armor is the STRONGEST armor... getting shot via the bow or stern is called a RAKE and was to be avoided.  But WG in their infinite tank wisdom decided that ship armor was like tank armor, slanted or oblique is better...but that is NOT the way real ships were designed.  Armor for most ships was designed to defeat the guns that the ship was mounting (generally speaking). This basic flaw lead directly to the camping meta.  Spotting of course compounds this especially with radar and hydro, your analysis is correct.  DDs should have been stealthy but overtly so, and smoke should have been designed to be laid out behind the DD and allow other ships to use it, while the DD spots. (give a lot more XP to a DD for spotting)  DDs making torp runs still should be part of the game, but a more secondary roll, and their guns would be for killing other DDs and maybe giving a CA a rough day if the CA is not focusing on them.  To be able to wreck a BB with guns?  Laughable.

Armor on ships is still more effective angled than flat. Its basic trig. The South Dakotas were even built with the understanding that they had to avoid straight bow in because the forward bulkhead wasnt thick enough without some angle to give a suitable immunity zone. Its not armor angling that messes up raking fire, its the overmatch. 27 mm of armor and no 15 inch gun in the game can pen you bow on, dont even have to worry about that belt.

 

If Wg set up the game more realistically the camping would be even worse, what are the immunity zones on WW2 BBs? At least for the USN numbers off the top of my head something on the order of 23k-27k yards for the 2700 lb super heavy AP. 

[Sabot_100]

48 minutes ago, SoothingWhaleSongEU said:

With update 0.10.0

https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Update_0.10.0#Engine_damage

 

Quote

Engine damage

When a ship's engine is critically damaged, it now continues to function at 20% efficiency instead of stopping entirely.

 

Thats what I thought the skill gave you (in game the skill table doesn't say %, just that they continue to function). Is the skill another 20%? 

[ArIskandir]

2 hours ago, SoothingWhaleSongEU said:

 

The major changes have gone into bizarro land with deadeye max concealment battleships sniping whilst being fire spammed by Minimum concealment lighthouse top grade gunner cruisers.

 

Indeed, chaos has overtaken reality

2 hours ago, SoothingWhaleSongEU said:

My own pipedream take is here: 

In summary:
A clearer line between the % bonus buffs that upgrades and signals & camo provide vs skills that provide perhaps more information.

Instead were all built around cool tricks or extra information like Situational Awareness, Incoming Fire Alert , Priority Target, Expert Loader, Radio Location etc. Perhaps though each comes with a disadvantage.

A key example is Concealment Expert should just go, and leave it at camo & the concealment module upgrade, or perhaps even better yet, get rid of that and rework the slot 5 upgrades, so new players with less skilled captains/the tier 7 vs 8 boundary is less absurd.

Make the skills perhaps chunkier, so *fewer* skill points but also doing so can make it far easier for the developers to balance them.

 

 

I'm not understanding your idea,  I think I'll read your extended thread. 

On first sight looks like you want to get rid of % buffs in exchange of info/improved functionality/tricks, which is nice imo, but you say (or at least I'm understanding) it would make the skill point difference between low and full spec captains not as punishing. Imo, skills about extended functionality are much more powerful and advantageous/disadvantageous than the simple % buffs.  

[vak_]

3 hours ago, Ralph090 said:

For example, they could have included a skill called "aluminized smoke screen" that reduced the duration of your smoke but made it block or reduce the range of radar going through it, both enemy and friendly.

This is a very bad idea. Ships sitting undetected in smoke is exactly what led to radar in the first place.

[AdmiralFox08]

[Estimated_Prophet]

2 hours ago, mushmouthmorton said:

The initial failure of the programmers to make the spotting rules more in line with the "real world" has spawned an entire sieries of patches, gimmicks and workarounds to try and correct the initial error.

The basic design, which was that when any red ship that was spotted, by any means, by any green ship, became instantly visible to every other green ship, regardless of distance and regardless of line of sight, set up situations in the game that should not exist. All the gimmicks added later have only added more issues to the poorly designed base. Instead of messing around with "Captain Skills Rework" changes, WG needs to look at the entire system and fix the basic issues. Not add another bandaid.

Part of what irritates me about spotting is that WG makes such a big deal about how line of sight affects spotting, then goes with the lazy solution, (radar/hydro active equals 100% assured spotting within its range,) instead of including a los check, first, before the programming deciding if radar/hydro detects something.

I can understand that would require some kind of sweep function los check within the duration of the radar/hydro, but it would solve the detect through terrain issue.

[mushmouthmorton]

1 hour ago, Morpheous said:

You do know that WG invented bandaids right?  The basic meta to the game is wrong... broadside armor is the STRONGEST armor... getting shot via the bow or stern is called a RAKE and was to be avoided.  But WG in their infinite tank wisdom decided that ship armor was like tank armor, slanted or oblique is better...but that is NOT the way real ships were designed.  Armor for most ships was designed to defeat the guns that the ship was mounting (generally speaking). This basic flaw lead directly to the camping meta.  Spotting of course compounds this especially with radar and hydro, your analysis is correct.  DDs should have been stealthy but overtly so, and smoke should have been designed to be laid out behind the DD and allow other ships to use it, while the DD spots. (give a lot more XP to a DD for spotting)  DDs making torp runs still should be part of the game, but a more secondary roll, and their guns would be for killing other DDs and maybe giving a CA a rough day if the CA is not focusing on them.  To be able to wreck a BB with guns?  Laughable.

As the op's post centered on spotting, I did not delve into the lazy programming of armor. 

As you point out, ships are not tanks, and to pretend that tank armor works the same as ship armor is, ridiculous. IMHO, the argument about slanted or oblique is not nearly as important as understanding that the GUNS used are totally different and have completely different ballistics. In WWII typical engagement range for tanks was between point blank and 1500 meters. Anti-Tank gun of all types typically had muzzle velocities over 1000 m/s. At the stated ranges, the trajectory is basically flat. In ships, muzzle velocities are much lower, and "point blank" is like 5-7K. Typical engagement ranges were more like 10 -15K. Shell trajectory makes a huge difference, and is why a broadside armor designs work, when ships are at range. At "point blank" ranges (Washington/Kirishima), most main battery BB rounds can penetrate any BB armor scheme ever designed.

Check out some of the camera pictures and films of the Battle of Suirgao Strait. That was at fairly "close" range (~12000 - 18000 yards) and the shell arcs look like a slow pitch softball.

[Asym_KS]

5 hours ago, Ensign_Cthulhu said:

Radar and hydro were brought in because a skilfully-driven DD without radar and hydro counters is an unholy, unstoppable monster. They don't need counterplay; they ARE the counterplay.

I suspect a Shimakaze driver who would rather that these inconvenient obstacles be removed from his path. Sorry, not going to happen. 

And, that illustrates the extreme in the other direction....  Stealth has to mean something and Stealth can't be invincible....  But, Radar can't be fool proof and not have a 1x1 counter.....  Otherwise, it is no better than Stealth without Radar/Hydro..

A balance has Radar having a 1x1 counter.........just like smoke and stealth do.

The issue is that, at the same time, Secondary Weapons on Cruisers and Battleships need a large Buff to counter DD's that think they can sail right up and torp other ships and sail away.......  10 to 18 Five inch Secondaries the second a DD runs out of smoke close should cease to exist......  Heck, the AA 40's and 20mm's would eat a DD alive within 2K.....   Balance isn't working because Balance doesn't sell ships....... 

I just wish our host would at least "try" a little bit harder to make game play a little bit more "sharp" and "dynamic" versus this camp and hide silliness......

 

[Pugilistic]

Its fundamentally different for cruisers; their options are fewer and (for most cruisers)  worse than under the old system. 

[SKurj]

enforce firing solutions only on ships you have LOS and within spotting range... get rid of our radar aimed firing solutions

[Rouxi]

11 minutes ago, Pugilistic said:

Its fundamentally different for cruisers; their options are fewer and (for most cruisers)  worse than under the old system. 

Opinions vary on that one.

[Helstrem]

18 minutes ago, Asym_KS said:

And, that illustrates the extreme in the other direction....  Stealth has to mean something and Stealth can't be invincible....  But, Radar can't be fool proof and not have a 1x1 counter.....  Otherwise, it is no better than Stealth without Radar/Hydro..

A balance has Radar having a 1x1 counter.........just like smoke and stealth do.

The issue is that, at the same time, Secondary Weapons on Cruisers and Battleships need a large Buff to counter DD's that think they can sail right up and torp other ships and sail away.......  10 to 18 Five inch Secondaries the second a DD runs out of smoke close should cease to exist......  Heck, the AA 40's and 20mm's would eat a DD alive within 2K.....   Balance isn't working because Balance doesn't sell ships....... 

I just wish our host would at least "try" a little bit harder to make game play a little bit more "sharp" and "dynamic" versus this camp and hide silliness......

 

By that logic the chain never ends.  The counter to radar would then need a counter and then that would need a counter, and that....

No, the counter to radar and hydro is that they can be played around.  Baited out and wasted.  If radar and hydro were things that were permanently on, sure, I could see the need for a counter, but they aren't.