DD's vs BB Main guns

[Drogon_]

Can someone tell me how it is even close to reality when you can hit a DD with main battleship guns and not blow them out of the water? The can sit behind cover and or out of visual range and burn you down but your guns are basally useless. IMO..makes the game not much fun..

[Destroyer_Zeka]

4 minutes ago, Drogon_ said:

Can someone tell me how it is even close to reality when you can hit a DD with main battleship guns and not blow them out of the water? The can sit behind cover and or out of visual range and burn you down but your guns are basally useless. IMO..makes the game not much fun..

Can someone tell me how it is even close to reality that fires, floods, and destroyed engines can be repaired instantly with a button, CVs that have infinite planes, hydroacoustic search that doesnt detect periscope depth submarines, IJN torpedoes that have the detection of a small moon, radar that can see though islands, and ships that have HP bars

[The_Ruleset_Difference]

Go back enough updates and you’ll see why full BB AP damage was removed.

[DrHolmes52]

Because it is a game.  And DDs would have very little purpose if we added the reality.

Of course, in real life, there were a buttload of DDs and very few BBs.  Maybe we should include that reality.

[Jemention]

1 hour ago, Drogon_ said:

Can someone tell me how it is even close to reality when you can hit a DD with main battleship guns and not blow them out of the water? The can sit behind cover and or out of visual range and burn you down but your guns are basally useless. IMO..makes the game not much fun..

I'm sure Admiral Kurita was also very upset when his BBs and Cruisers kept over penning American DDs off Samar as well.

[HazeGrayUnderway]

1 hour ago, The_Ruleset_Difference said:

Go back enough updates and you’ll see why full BB AP damage was removed.

Man I still remember that.  I remember DD players complaining about those BB AP salvos bagging 33% Penetration damage.  Yamato in particular was a DD Deleter.

 

It's even zanier IIRC, that in very old pre-release versions of WoWS, Destroyers had Citadels

[Arcus_Aesopi]

2 hours ago, Drogon_ said:

Can someone tell me how it is even close to reality when you can hit a DD with main battleship guns and not blow them out of the water? The can sit behind cover and or out of visual range and burn you down but your guns are basally useless. IMO..makes the game not much fun..

At 07:30, three battleship main battery shells passed through the deck of Johnston and into her portside engine room, which cut the destroyer's speed in half to 17 kn (20 mph; 31 km/h) and disrupted electric power to her aft gun mounts. Hagen reports them as 14-inch (356 mm) shells from the battleship Kongō, at a range of 7 nmi (8.1 mi; 13 km), but this is unlikely, as Kongō was on the far side of the Japanese formation and Kongō's action report states that she was not engaging any targets at that time, as she was blinded by a rain squall. Based on the bearing and the angle of fall, it is far more likely that they were 18.1-inch (46 cm) shells fired by Yamato from a range of 10.029 nmi (11.541 mi; 18.574 km), as, moments later, three 6.1-inch (155 mm) shells from Yamato struck Johnston's bridge, causing numerous casualties and severing the fingers of Commander Evans's left hand. The ship was mangled badly, with dead and dying sailors strewn across her bloody decks. Yamato reported sinking a "cruiser" (the Japanese consistently overestimated the size of the US ships engaged) with a main battery salvo at 07:27.^[22] Destroyer Kishinami, which was also firing at Johnston at the time, reported "The Yamato sank one enemy cruiser" at 07:28.^[23]

However, Johnston was not sunk. Already depleted before the battle, her remaining store of oil did not fuel a catastrophic explosion.^[19] The ship found sanctuary in rain squalls, where the crew had time to repair damage, restoring power to two of the three aft gun mounts. Johnston's search radar was destroyed, toppled to the deck in a tangled mess. Also damaged, the fire control radar was quickly returned to service. Only a few minutes were required to bring Johnston's main battery and radar online; from its position in the rain, around 07:35 Johnston fired several dozen rounds at the lead Japanese destroyer 4.9 nmi (5.7 mi; 9.1 km) distant. Firing then shifted to the cruisers approaching from the east, targeting several dozen more rounds at the closest ship 5.4 nmi (6.3 mi; 10 km) away.^[18][19][24] Neither target could be observed visually, and thus were not positively identified; Johnston's presumed "cruiser" was most likely the battleship Haruna.^[25]

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_off_Samar

Overpen is real :)

[Cirran]

@Drogon_ Welcome to the forums :) 

BBs have absolute trash dispersion, accuracy and punishing reload all the way up to at least tier 8.

WG feels that the interaction between DDs and BBs is "balanced"

Don't look for realism in this game. Try to remind yourself this is a game and as such will not be like in real life.

The forum is divided in to camps with agendas. 

Torps are too easy to use and do too much Alpha damage and reload way too fast.

BB's main guns do too much damage and are too accurate.

CVs are unfair they can see me and sometimes hit me.

Fire is unfun, put the fire out and 2 seconds after your Damage Control Party ends you have another fire or two.

Pig Boats are boring to play against and have stealth and can literally hit you with torps and you never spot the Pig Boat.

DDs have way too much damage resistance, and can shelter behind a sliver of coral that they can shoot over but you can them due to accuracy.

 

You can tell which camp you have angered by the replies you get when you post. 

 

Cirran

[Cirran]

2 hours ago, DrHolmes52 said:

Of course, in real life, there were a buttload of DDs and very few BBs.  Maybe we should include that reality.

In Co-Op this is the reality with the Meta being Fast Ship + Torps = I win.

 

Cirran

[Coolkid_198]

3 hours ago, Drogon_ said:

Can someone tell me how it is even close to reality when you can hit a DD with main battleship guns and not blow them out of the water? The can sit behind cover and or out of visual range and burn you down but your guns are basally useless. IMO..makes the game not much fun..

You can tell Hiei that small calibre guns don’t work against bbs. 

[Crokodone]

3 hours ago, The_Ruleset_Difference said:

Go back enough updates and you’ll see why full BB AP damage was removed.

But full Torpedo damage was never tempered with. Hypocrisy and bias.

[Destroyer_Zeka]

2 hours ago, Crokodone said:

But full Torpedo damage was never tempered with. Hypocrisy and bias.

Torpedo belts and torpedo damage reduction is a thing btw

[Snargfargle]

6 hours ago, Drogon_ said:

Can someone tell me how it is even close to reality when you can hit a DD with main battleship guns and not blow them out of the water?

Read the reports from the Battle of Samar. The USS Johnston took this many shell hits from battleships, cruisers, and destroyers before it sank.

Why didn't the first battleship shell blow the "tiny" destroyer completely out of the water? Well for one thing, destroyers aren't exactly tiny -- they are as long as a football field.

 

Another thing was that the IJN captains mistook the destroyers for cruisers and kept AP loaded.

TL:DR -- load HE when you want to shoot at DDs.

[JamesTomb]

Meh, I think it makes sense from a game standpoint that BB shells can't outright delete DDs.

That said, I do think WG was characteristically ham-handed in the implementation. It was an across-the-board nerf to BBs, which hurt some more than others. Scharn used to be damned dangerous to DDs with those puny 283s doing full pen damage more often than real BBs, which was one of its attractions. 

And maybe I'm just a pedant, but the worst part was changing the mechanic from "server runs the math" to "lol AP" but leaving the in-game text. You'll often see penetration ribbons from BB AP salvos, but like the cake they are a lie.

[HazeGrayUnderway]

1 hour ago, Snargfargle said:

Another thing was that the IJN captains mistook the destroyers for cruisers and kept AP loaded.

Wrong identification was a very real thing too in war.  Ships didn't have a convenient red or green icon over them to show they were friendlies or not, as well as the type of ship or class / name.

 

Imagine if WoWS had that element.  No idea if the target in your sights was a hostile or not, no computer screen with GPS showing where all your friendly ships are at.  You have to identify the ship and the details may be hazy from your binoculars.  And you can be wrong.  Destroyers had been mistaken for Cruisers, and Cruisers even for Battleships.  Radar did not tell you if a target was friendly or not.  At 2nd Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, a night engagement, Lee held Battleship Washington's gunfire because they had lost contact with Battleship South Dakota and did not want to do friendly fire.  They knew a Japanese Battleship was out there, too.  They see the various ships on radar but weren't sure.  The only way Lee knew for certain that signal was South Dakota was when the multiple ships of the IJN force opened up with all their guns against SoDak.  Picked out the biggest signal, "That's got to be the Japanese Battleship" and ended up hammering Kirishima.

 

At the 1st Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, an earlier night engagement, triggerhappy CA USS San Francisco opened up her 8" guns against a radar signal believing it to be a Japanese warship.  But that ship was USS Atlanta. 

"Atlanta prepared to return fire on her new assailant, but San Francisco's own gun flashes disclosed a distinctly "non-Japanese hull profile" that resulted in a suspension of those efforts."

San Francisco kept on going until it realized its mistake, but it was too late.  The commanding officer of the American force was RAdm Callaghan on USS San Francisco, and his Heavy Cruiser just killed his executive officer, RAdm Scott when San Fran's 8" shells blasted Atlanta's bridge.  Japanese shells would strike San Francisco's bridge and killing Callaghan and a lot of his staff.  The CO & XO of the American force this battle are both KIA.

When daylight arose and you can see Atlanta's hulk, the green shell dye and fragments from San Francisco's gunfire were all over the superstructure.

 

After the Battle of Tassafaronga, combat veteran RAdm Tanaka overlcaimed:

The high command took a dim view of this decision, even though Tanaka claimed to have sunk a battleship and two cruisers, and to have damaged four other cruisers. The facts were impressive enough, for Tanaka had sunk one and seriously damaged three heavy cruisers, at a cost of only one destroyer. But these statistics were not as persuasive with Tanaka’s superiors as the fact that he had failed to unload the cargo so badly needed on Guadalcanal." (Japanese Destroyer Captain)

 

Before an IJN surface force arrived for the night time Battle of Empress Augusta Bay, VAdm Omori received a report from aerial patrols:

By this time our own scout planes were reporting on the enemy situation to the south: “Three battleships, many cruisers and destroyers at Empress Augusta Bay near Torokina.” This was much greater strength than we had anticipated. The enemy seemed to be ready and waiting for us. Omori consulted with Rabaul headquarters, where at 2130 Admiral Kusaka ordered the transports to turn back. He concluded that a counter-landing in the face of such a strong enemy deployment was impossible. But he told Omori to go ahead with his force and sink enemy ships.  (Japanese Destroyer Captain)

 

VAdm Omori's force constituted

2 CAs

2 CLs

6 DDs

And they were expecting to encounter:

3 BBs

"many cruisers"

"many destroyers"

The reality of the American force under RAdm Merill:

4 CLs

8 DDs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Empress_Augusta_Bay

That's kind of a big thing to incorrectly identify!

 

And also during the Royal Navy effort to sink Bismarck, CA Prinz Eugen was confused for the Battleship the RN was after.

Bismarck

And Prinz Eugen.

 

Another case of wrong identification, resulting in friendly fire.  This is from "Japanese Destroyer Captain" also:

Admiral Abe was not enthusiastic when he received Yamamoto’s orders to lead a 14-ship squadron in a shore bombardment with incendiary shells, as Kurita had done the previous month. Abe did not believe the Americans were so stupid that the very same formula of attack could succeed again against the jealously guarded island.

Abe’s mood was bad—particularly after learning of the October 11 battle off Savo Island, in which his lifelong friend, Rear Admiral Aritomo Goto, was killed. Survivors told Abe that they had been caught off guard by the enemy’s radar-equipped ships led by Rear Admiral Norman Scott. Abe also knew that Goto had died believing he was the victim of friendly gunfire. On the smashed bridge of cruiser Furutaka, he breathed his last murmuring “Bakayaro! Bakayaro!” (“Stupid ba****d!”) The dying admiral uttered this profanity at what he believed to be the Japanese responsible for his death—also, perhaps at himself.

It was an ignoble death scene for a commanding admiral, and Abe, unhappy to hear of it, was determined not to follow Goto’s example. Abe rightly interpreted the unopposed landing of the 38th Division as a deceptive lull, like the one which preceded the Santa Cruz battle. He was prepared for the worst.

[OceanMaester]

DDs have too much influence over the match. Even when I'm not directly dealing with them I'm dealing with the effects of my team's DD's throwing the match as fast as it takes them to sail from the spawn to the cap. DDs control the game and everything is centered around them being able to do their job. I wouldn't call myself a great BB player but I could be the best BB player in the game and it wouldn't matter for the most part because DDs pretty much decide the outcome of most games. That's the frustrating part for me. If you really want to influence the match you need to be in a DD or a ship class that can negate the other teams DDs and BBs generally don't have those tools.

That said nothing in the game brings me more satisfaction the killing DDs while driving a BB. :)

[b101uk]

12 hours ago, Destroyer_Zeka said:

CVs that have infinite planes

CV don't have infinite planes per se, they have a finite number based match length, losses vs the rate of resupply vs. capacity.

 

if you can calculate a number other than infinity, then it is not infinite its finite.

 

now granted its not a fixed hard number like the RTS days, but it is still finite.  

[Reymu]

Honestly one of the most frustrating changes where WG went too far.

IIRC, there was a bug at the time where a BB's AP shell could hit the DD for both overpen and pen damage. Instead of fixing the bug, they just capped damage DDs take from BBs.

Now it's pretty much advisable to hit DDs with HE unless AP loaded and no time to swap.

[HazeGrayUnderway]

9 hours ago, Reymu said:

Honestly one of the most frustrating changes where WG went too far.

IIRC, there was a bug at the time where a BB's AP shell could hit the DD for both overpen and pen damage. Instead of fixing the bug, they just capped damage DDs take from BBs.

Now it's pretty much advisable to hit DDs with HE unless AP loaded and no time to swap.

Yes.  The "Double Dip" with Battleship AP days.

[Destroyer_Zeka]

14 hours ago, b101uk said:

CV don't have infinite planes per se, they have a finite number based match length, losses vs the rate of resupply vs. capacity.

 

if you can calculate a number other than infinity, then it is not infinite its finite.

 

now granted its not a fixed hard number like the RTS days, but it is still finite.  

bring back fixed hard maximum number so Cv players are actually punished for playing like trash and AA will actually mean something again (sort of) 

[DrHolmes52]

1 hour ago, HazeGrayUnderway said:

Yes.  The "Double Dip" with Battleship AP days.

Hilarious when it happened.  For the BB player.

I think they tried a closed test with lower armor on DDs so BBs would always overpen, and then cruisers were insta owning DDs.

[HyperFish]

On 11/12/2022 at 10:17 AM, Crokodone said:

But full Torpedo damage was never tempered with. Hypocrisy and bias.

Sub and CV torps would like a word with you...

Remember when double pinging would result in sub torp citadels? Man those were the days...

[HyperFish]

1 hour ago, Destroyer_Zeka said:

bring back fixed hard maximum number so Cv players are actually punished for playing like trash and AA will actually mean something again (sort of) 

It still has an effect. Just not as much as it used too.

I've been in plenty of games where the red cv has had to send out partial flights because they've been deplaned. It's also happened to me when the red team plays well and overlaps their cruiser aa bubbles. 

WG has balanced making it less easy to deplane a CV to attract new players against making them cause less damage. If WG wants to buff AA they will also need to buff CV damage output accordingly to make the loss of planes justifiable. 

Personally I think they should. It'll make AA speccing ships relevant again. 

[b101uk]

1 hour ago, Destroyer_Zeka said:

bring back fixed hard maximum number so Cv players are actually punished for playing like trash and AA will actually mean something again (sort of) 

it sill means something now, as the maximum number is still finite, given they are STILL punished by the immediate reserves being gone and only getting replacements of each type every 60sec to 120sec (dependent on CV).

 

and if they were to give fixed hard maximum number then AA effectiveness would have to do down and attacks would have to go up in damage, which is an inconvenient truth for the anti CV crowd.

[Destroyer_Zeka]

59 minutes ago, b101uk said:

it sill means something now, as the maximum number is still finite, given they are STILL punished by the immediate reserves being gone and only getting replacements of each type every 60sec to 120sec (dependent on CV).

 

and if they were to give fixed hard maximum number then AA effectiveness would have to do down and attacks would have to go up in damage, which is an inconvenient truth for the anti CV crowd.

Imagine thinking AA in its current form means anything