I just gameplay evaluated the Colorado in 5 separate matches. This ship s/b a Tennessee with 16" 45 cal guns. As the last of the “all-or-nothing” series of USN dreadnoughts, the protected spaces, such as magazines, would be very heavily armored. As such she should be extremely difficult to one tap rack. It was disappointing to say the least how easily she was ammo racked in actual gameplay. Almost as if the devs went nuts with the balancing at the last minute, and as usual over did it. Seriously this ship is supposed to be the new top of the tree USN flagship, and it underperforms my Tennessee in almost every category including general protection.
The problem is less her armor and more of how the game works. One of the ahistorical Achilles heel Gaijin gave to the standards is shell room explosions. Most US BBs store their shells in the barbette, usually above the waterline, IRL this wasnt an issue because shells were incredibly inert and any hit towards it would do nothing at all.
In War Thunder, however, everytime their hit they explode so comically large that they always set off the magazines every time. So while everyone only has to worry about getting hit below the waterline, USN BBs have a chance of easily dying from a barbette hit which is a far easier target than hitting the waterline.
Also, hits that explode inside the barbette has their explosion and splinters magically phase through thick deck armor as well as every single anti-flash measure they have. So high yield shells would also shower the magazines which of couse has a random chance of instantly blowing up the ship.
At least fast battleships don’t gather all shells in one shell room like standard does, so chance of firepower retention would be higher alongside with faster reload.
Your engagement distance is much smaller than the designed engagement distance, and your enemy’s shells are more capable than they have been historically. This is bound to make your ship vulnerable.
In the game, we want the shell to explode after penetration, so the CP standard should be used.
In World War II, the British acceptance standard for 15" shells against 12 "/30° face-hardened armor was 1750fps. This is about 11KM for MKXIIA in the game and 14KM for MKXVIIB. The performance in the game is slightly stronger than historically.
Tests of 16 “shells against 14” /30° face-hardened armor required 1660-1700fps penetration. This is about 15KM in the game. The performance in the game is slightly weaker than historically.
The Japanese Type91 could not pass the test of face-hardened armor with an Angle greater than 25° and a thickness of 0.9, and these shells were likely to fracture at speeds greater than 500mps. The 8-inch Type91 even failed in the 6.3 inch /30° test. Apparently all Japanese armor-piercing shells in the game are now too strong.
Reports of Russian armor-piercing rounds are rare. The 12-inch armor-piercing round required 1,615 FPS to fully penetrate 8 inch /20° face-hardened armor in the UK tests. Although more data could not be found, it is unlikely that these WWI-based shells would have a better effect against 30°. And the tests were conducted in 1918-1919, when armor was vastly different from that used in World War II. For example, the British tested 1923 armor had a difference of more than 300fps in effective penetration speed compared to WWII armor.
There were soviet navy test in 1954~55 that were reported in russian old-forum, and afaik current penetration value is try to resemble those of ‘full-penetration’, which means shell completely went through the armor and explodes after bulkheads, so even lower than usual Krupp-penetration formula. I assume this is why gaijin makes their own penetration formula based on de-Marre, which gives lower penetration than Krupp’s on longer distnaces.
Mostly due to reliability afaik, which doesn’t implement in this game.
It’s not a question of reliability, it’s that these shells are not designed to withstand this kind of impact. It was not until 46cm Type91 that the acceptance criteria were extended to 30°.
Ah shell design. Yeah I forgot.
Yeah that could cause difference, but don’t seem to be implemented in-game unless it is drastically like WWII soviet APHECBC design in ground.
But for overall I don’t think shell is the problem of feeling like Colorado is feeling weak, but more of a problem of Colorado itself and the fact War Thunder is a ‘game’.
We’re not playing simulator or real life battle of battleships took entire hour to sunk one ship so developers have to shorten combat range than what standarad battleships were supposed to design. There might be some ‘balancing’ way of decompress 7.0 capital ships, which are compressed, but overall impression of standard battleships just makes me feel like they are not suited for game. They are designed to be long range sniper(let’s forget about terrible dispersion) of at least 15 km with multiple ships operate at same time(in short word, Kantai-kessen), not the single brawler that ‘game’ needs of.
All USN BBs with 14-inch guns and 16-inch guns suffering the damage from shell room explosion damage, consider the battle range is too close, the shell room will be easily destroyed and then get ammunition explosion, they used to performance pretty good, like Arizona, but IDK why Gaijin just changed this mechanisms over and over again
Not only them suffering shell room explosion, actually it is only British and Scharnhorst that is quite(not entirely) suffering from shell room or magazine explosion.
Overall damage in naval except torpedo is exaggerated to be suited as a ‘game’(And also due to much easier repair than rl) So Gaijin will not touch them extremely in the near future.
I really doubt that, considering our main mechanic is damaging the crew members instead of structures. it is still not enough. I know that it is impossible for a crusier to suffer over 20 hits from BBs and still be alive in the real world(even the BBs couldn’t survive from that if the all of the shell was penetrated), but it actually happened in the game. Back to when BBs were added in the game, the shell’s damage could be considered as one of the methods to replace the structure’s damage, which can’t be fixed.
Floating except paralyzation of important combat module is definitely possible. Even Italian heavy cruisers at Cape Mattapan, except Fiume, at least float more than hours and then needs torpedo to finish off though hammered by 15’'s at close range.
Similar happens to Kirishima at Guadalcanal. Sinking ship with only shell is quite hard to do in real life. That’s my point of ‘exaggerated’ damage.
Developers knows of this, and that’s why they stationed crew compartment above waterline because ‘don’t want hours for battleship vs battleship(what they actually saids when they denied battleship at first)’
Seeking a ship or just letting the ship lose the ability to fight is different; the ship may just suffer a few of shells hit and then had to quit battle, such as Kirishima or Jean Bart, just few of 16inch shells penetrate their armor and got huge damage.
I can understand your point that using the shell to make a ship seek by just losing the floating is quite impossible. What I mean is for damage the crew members and combat model inside, such as engine, oven or turret, we know that could be fixed in 10 sec, so the only way is let the shell damage more, like a few years ago SAP or HE damage
Which definitely would not work, already proven by the game experience back then. Indeed the game offers players the ability to repair everything in less than half a minute, but on the other hand ships are fighting each other at point blank range often from the beginning of the battle, along with much more accurate fire control. Besides that there’s another factor relevant to fire control that you might have overlooked: the much more advanced fire control system in game offers ships faster practical rate of fire than irl. Imagine if you take away the ability of repairing modules in game, most of ships would have lost combat capability in a few minutes, so there’s nothing wrong with the shell damage.
There must be a demand for aiming for vital areas, one should not expect dealing significant damage to the enemy when you just randomly shoot anywhere without caring. Of course the DM is always being looked at and getting tweaked when needed, for example the latest change to fire and ammo detonation damage had reduced the survivability of all ships by a certain degree without touching the shell damage itself.
Considering we only have 25 minutes in battle, making the battle faster is acceptable. At this time, the event battle- Battle of Jutland has already proved that when battle range is extended over 15km, it will make the game experience pretty boring, which even with accurate fire control, most of players will spend like 8-10mins to totally sinking a ship( most of time they don’t even get that because the KS system will make the AI get the kill at last time), which is pretty hard to accept, even in the normal battle, unless the ship has pretty huge issue (like the ammunition position is above the water or the crew members rooms unevenly distributed), the BBs battle are still boring enough, which is even worse than before.
It’s not randomly shooting, as I said, due to the aim system in WT, it is still pretty hard to aim far from 12km, especially for BB, in total 25mins, we only have 50 times chance to shoot each other, and there at least half of shells missing or over pen, comparing to the cruisers or DDs, it is still unfair because even you using the AP or HE shell to shot the cruiser or some BBs without obviously weak point, it will spend you too much time, the DM of SAP and HE back to before is like a balance for BB users so that they don’t need to waste too much time on these small targets, like DDs or CLs won’t spend too much time on boats, the reload time for BBs is too long for dealing with these small target.
That’s the key point. Honestly, the update naval is getting worse most of the time. Like this time, each update will easily destroy a ship or make it OP, such as Scharnhorst. This time, when the turret and the under model get fire, it will explode in 5s without the chance to put off, and it doesn’t work for some ships like IJN’s BBs, but I don’t want to discuss more about them. The naval mechanic update rate is much higher than others. For example, like each major update, we will get a new one, and then we have to get used to it over and over again, and some ships might go back to heaven or heil due to this. The DM is one of the key issues because it seems the developers never find the correct way to make it balanced. If they can accept the shell(even HE) could easily damage the hull and let the ship sinking, why they couldn’t accept the shell could damage the crews?