HE vs AP Why all or Nothing?

[KurganSPK]

May/probably have been discussed already but... why not let us load HE/AP per turret and give us more control over turrets to say fire at different targets? Too complicated? I mean, real world ships didn't all have to load same ammo and fire at one target, right? Dunno for sure... not a Navy guy.

 

Be helpful in a BB to have the option to have a turret or two loaded with HE for DDs that get close, and/or to mix fire damage with AP pens to panic enemies... 

 

Or as usual, am I all wet?

 

 

[Compassghost]

Game limitations and balance purposes. Most BBs can kill DDs at close range as well with accurate AP.

[Carrier_GrafZeppelin]

Game limitations and balance purposes. Most BBs can kill DDs at close range as well with accurate AP.

Key word here is ACCURATE...

All of my IJN battleships seem to have big issues with said accuracy at close range....

[KurganSPK]

Game limitations and balance purposes. Most BBs can kill DDs at close range as well with accurate AP.

 

I get so many no damage pens in that situation and switching to HE just takes too damn long, as then you have to switch back to deal with bigger threats.

 

[Noth]

Key word here is ACCURATE...

All of my IJN battleships seem to have big issues with said accuracy at close range....

 

It isn't just IJN BBs. All BBs suffer from it.

[DemonsofRazgriz]

Game limitations and balance purposes. Most BBs can kill DDs at close range as well with accurate AP.

 

Had a game today in my Mahan where a single Nagato AP shell did 3k plus killed my engine, He hit me with 7 shells, you do the math (read: I died in 1 salvo)

[Special_Kay]

The main battery is slaved to the mouse for targeting. It would require a controls redesign to allow us to have different main battery turrets engaging different targets, and it would make the game much harder to learn à la NavyField. That's at odds with the continuing march towards simplicity, so I doubt the notion would be entertained.

 

If you're only engaging one target at a time, you don't want different shells loaded together. Realistically, different shell types have different ranges. Practically, it's bad balance to allow players to hedge their bets when the only decision they have to make is whether to load AP or HE for any given salvo—it marginalizes the edge players can gain with skill.

[Compassghost]

 

I get so many no damage pens in that situation and switching to HE just takes too damn long, as then you have to switch back to deal with bigger threats.

 

 

DDs I'm pretty sure can never bounce AP. with 14s, it is 1K per, plus secondary dmg

[OhnoesFroz]

I get where the idea is coming from, but it's better to just bring all of your firepower to bear on one target and focus on wiping that out. If you have half your main battery on one ship and half on the other, you're allowing both of them to fire on you for twice as long, because you aren't killing them as fast.

 

Focus everything you've got on killing one, then focus everything you've got on killing the other.

[Nachoo31]

I laugh at BB shooting AP at me in my DDs.  

[Special_Kay]

DDs I'm pretty sure can never bounce AP. with 14s, it is 1K per, plus secondary dmg

 

I laugh at BB shooting AP at me in my DDs.  

 

Well you certainly can't bounce 12"+ AP with tinfoil, but you'll definitely see over-penetration. If you're shooting destroyer superstructure with AP—and I know lots of you do this, stop doing it to me!—you aren't going to see damage for those overpens, but you are going to destroy any and every gunhouse you overpen, and it's incredibly irritating. At least you get a quick exit to the next ship when you get torpedoed, that destroyer's going to have to finish the match without half its battery now.

 

Prime example:

[Compassghost]

I laugh at BB shooting AP at me in my DDs.  

 

id rather shoot AP than nothing at all, and good AP shots help secondaries a lot.

[Mesrith]

I laugh at BB shooting AP at me in my DDs.  

 

The first salvo at you is almost always going to be AP, because that's what's loaded.  If the second salvo is AP, then yes, proceed to laugh.

[Sakuzhi]

Key word here is ACCURATE...

All of my IJN battleships seem to have big issues with said accuracy at close range....

 

Pretty much this^

 

 

You need to land pretty much all your shots to drop a DD with AP, you only need a 'few' hits with HE to instantly toast them however.

 

Keep in mind that each shell (AP) will do at most 2400 damage. 

[Compassghost]

glorious AP from my BB days in CBT

[KurganSPK]

 

id rather shoot AP than nothing at all, and good AP shots help secondaries a lot.

 

how so?

[Compassghost]

 

how so?

 

Secondaries for most BBs, IJN ones anyways are accIrate enough to contribute to a DD kill. When given the chance of firing AP and loading HE versus just loading HE, 4 overpens is better than 0 hits.

[Special_Kay]

how so?

 

That Youtube video I embedded a few posts up has a great example of how helpful secondaries are, starting at time index 6:26. Secondary battery fire penetrated through the belt and took the boilers offline, which is what let the other battleship land the coup de grâce.

[KurganSPK]

 

Secondaries for most BBs, IJN ones anyways are accIrate enough to contribute to a DD kill. When given the chance of firing AP and loading HE versus just loading HE, 4 overpens is better than 0 hits.

 

okay, I thought you meant AP rounds somehow made secondaries more accurate if you were using them on our main guns and I was like whaaaaaaaat... thx. 

 

[Special_Kay]

Unintentional thread bump, but I really wanted to chime in on this:

DDs I'm pretty sure can never bounce AP. with 14s, it is 1K per, plus secondary dmg

 

I've definitely bounced 8" shells off a Fletcher before (at a healthy range, mind you). It was demoralizing, to say the least.

[vak_]

All of my IJN battleships seem to have big issues with said accuracy at close range....

 

In the current dispersion model all IJN BBs seem to have worse dispersion that USN BBs at sub-10km ranges.

[Yasenpoi]

You can sometimes get normal penetrations when you hit the water just before you hit the underwater portions of the ship

[vak_]

May/probably have been discussed already but... why not let us load HE/AP per turret and give us more control over turrets to say fire at different targets? Too complicated? I mean, real world ships didn't all have to load same ammo and fire at one target, right?

 

Hmm, I would think that real ships did have to load same ammo for the salvo (to keep projectile ballistics same for trajectory computing), and in a lot of them fire was controlled from a single fire director, so tracking and firing at two targets wasn't really a thing.

[vak_]

Game limitations and balance purposes. Most BBs can kill DDs at close range as well with accurate AP.

 

I've read on the RU forum that overpens do 1/10 of max AP damage.

[Special_Kay]

Hmm, I would think that real ships did have to load same ammo for the salvo (to keep projectile ballistics same for trajectory computing), and in a lot of them fire was controlled from a single fire director, so tracking and firing at two targets wasn't really a thing.

 

Generally speaking, yeah, so it would be silly to have different shells loaded simultaneously. Though my understanding is that each gunhouse could operate independently. Notably, the larger IJN turrets all have rangefinders built in, and the story of the sinking of the USS Johnston includes an example of a manually operated gun (out of necessity).

 

I've read on the RU forum that overpens do 1/10 of max AP damage.

 

Yeah, and regular pens do 1/3. Full damage is for citadel hits, same as HE (though you normally only get HE citadel penetrations against CVs and CLs, and non-citadel HE hits have slightly different damage ratios: see Dealing Damage in WoWS for futher reading).