Naval AAA… What a joy…
I’ve been attacking CA Kako, that got separated from other vessels.
Easy target, I thought… Two 13.2mm for anti air… No one near to help her…
And I got sniped by those MGs from 1 km. Catastrophic damage: wing reaped, engine on fire.
Spawning plane in Naval is a waste of time and SL…
No wonder. 1km is waaaay to close.
It’s honestly a mixed bag. On one hand, strong AA prevents the game from devolving into CAS chaos of Ground RB (doesn’t mean I won’t get greeted by a PE-8 bomb from time to time though), but on the other hand, you do get singled out by the whole team and the automatic J-out timer after a critical hit (if it works? I seem to recall recently where the countdown happens but my pilot never bailing out) makes the whole attempt to do an attack run rather unrewarding.
1km is close???
Yes, thats normal distance of engagements of pretty much every AA. From bombers through tanks to naval.
I’ve also been… dissatisfied with how WoWS handled aircraft carriers. That kind of playstyle would fit better on ships with catapult plane squadrons equipped with bombs.
I heard in various comments, about developers testing the CVs, where it was basically concluded that they were OP. How true that is, I don’t know.
Either way, with catapult-launched planes being player-controlled, it kind of makes the prospect of CVs in warthunder a bit questionable.
Though, on one hand - they are doing their purpose as scout planes, revealing the area and otherwise showing how the things look like from the air. Not to mention the other capabilities of capturing points and otherwise directly assisting to win the battle.
On the other hand, lack of AI component would make Aircraft Carriers out of place at just a puny portion of their possible power - if just a single aircraft can be launched at a time. While allowing teammates to also spawn in with their own naval aviation may alleviate the issue to some extent, it however would also look rather weird to see a Japanese plane on a, say, British Carrier. Unless they’d just have an option to use the allies’ naval aircraft in the carrier’s stock… But then, we have economic questions - who is going to be earning Lions and experience for pilots actions? Who is going to pay for maintenance costs? Or is it going to be some kind of new 50/50 split?
One of the options I see, is to use bots like in dynamic campaigns (or a mission editor with planes, near the test drive option), where the player has a squadron of wingmen, flying with him/her. Though, PvE modes tend to have their own issues when match takes a long time:
However, it is still a possible solution. Copying that, we could get a squadron of vehicles played by a single player. Bombing capability may be questionable, but at least it can give an illusion of squadrons at the very least.
However, bots, at the bare minimum, are at least functional and can perform tasks. If there also going to be an option for player to issue some kind of orders for them, attacking an object, flying to a point, returning to landing, commanding several squadrons becomes a real possibility.
Personally, I think warthunder can indeed attempt to add aircraft carriers into the game. There are ways to do this.
But, is it going to be fun for players as well as the ones playing against them? Well, that’s going to be an important question.
I think they will eventually try to add them, together with submarines.
Don’t forget the naval servers are horrible and constantly boot people out of the match and crew lock them
I mostly agree about the points mentioned, here are some ideas/opinions about the problems you mentioned. I splited the issues general groups:
Although I don´t have the problem with radar overlaping my chat but I agree that it tooks up a lot of space on the screen but that is problem with the need to display a lot of info in the easy to understand way.
But as you mentioned the biggest problem is the sniper view, the overlap is awful and the range display is wierdly inconsistent (i feel like it got worse). On plus side Gaijin might be working on updated version of the sniper view. Although I am not sure if the positions of the range numbers will change.
I feel like this is the main part and main source of the issues with NF. I would say that all these issue stem from the poot map design and objectives. And I would say that the super_cacti proposal wouldn´t change anything.
The compression issues are inherently unsolvable because the BR/TT structure. To fix the compression issues we would need “age” based BR/TT like tanks and planes get. But this structure isn´t possible with current maps and objectives. Speaking about maps.
The size which is from my experience a little to small even for CLs which is caused by the objectives which can´t reasonably allow larger maps. IHMO the objectives are simply not well suited for anything larger then DD (and even that is streatching it a bit) and the maps reflect it.
Domination
The distances between objectives and spawns can´t reasonably be streached much more and the circle sizes can´t be expanded indefinetly. The circles force ships into very small and cramped areas making the balance issues even worse and in the end the map design to incomporate these circles results in very campy gameplay.
Conquest
The one big circle and its capture mechanic results into game basically becoming death match where again the balance issue show themselfs.
Encounter
I would say the most promising objectives/gamemode but extremly hamperde by the implementation and map design. Because the map need to acomodate domination the convoys are placed behind the spawns (!) which makes them basically irrelevant for normal gameplay. And balance issues again surface.
The kea to fixing the issue IMO in designing map and objective that properly allow equal participation of all ship types in one battle. In best case this would make the game submarine compatible and at very least partly fix the boting problem. My idea is this:
Have large map around 45x45 km in size
Spawns should be much more segregated then now for example the boats/corvetes would have one spawn, DDs another, CL/CA would heve different one and lastly BC/BBs would have last one. The spawn distance between the teams would slowly increase with apropriate ship type forming V or U shape.
In each battle there would be several different sub-objectives such as: destroying port infrastructure, intercepting convoy of cargo ships/warships, shoothing down planes ect. each of these would be mainly directed at one of the ship type groups.
The result of the complete battle would then be decided as sum of the results of the sub-objectives
Of coarse this isn´t perfect solution and the rewards for the objectives need to be high to reward players who played the objectives despite their team loss since in my proposal the ability to influence majority of objectives. But I believe these with correct map design would make bots quite ineffective compared to current situation.
- HE Damage Model: Over the years, the effect of HE shells has been all over the place. When I was undergoing my Japanese destroyer grind, I often find it woefully inadequate when the enemy has armor…
I think that HEs could recieve a small buff (or antifrag nerf) but I believe that best kind of fix would be to introduce some kind of comulative hull damage which would allow to deal damage even without killing the crew. This could also helps with torpedo/bomb damage modeling.
In fact they were testing something like this in “Danger zone” update but the mechanic was buged (because the damage modeling differences between torpedoes/bombs and normal shells) so it was scraped.
See the actioned bug report (it was closed and forwarded and can´t be seen)
- Light Bombers Need Wingmen: As a counterpoint to my praise of the AA performance in the Pros section, a single torpedo or bombs isn’t going to do anything to a larger warship. Real life gets around this by sending the torpedo and dive…
I fully agree.
And something like this and the improved scout plane mechanic would make CVs viable. But idealy CVs would be able command planes RTS style.
Thats all
Can’t agree more. HE can’t really do things now especially to US Destroyers with their anti fragmentation armor.
and another problem is bots account yea they just can’t do any. moreover i encounter a Squadron full of bots account and they often play in squad of 4. you will meet them in every match (either enemy or ally)
Yeah, this sort of wingman mechanic is kind of what I have had in mind when it comes to that torpedo bomber wingman idea I threw in. The code for the mechanics is already in the game, so it can theoretically be done simply enough. As for using that for carriers… it’s possible as well, although I still feel like taking direct control of a squadron of planes personally (as is presently done in WoWs) would make Carriers absolutely overpowered (the trade-off, of course, is that they are large sitting ducks with minimal armaments to defend itself against fellow ships; not to mention the problems faced by gameplay restrictions such as small maps and the lack of teamwork dynamic in the team required to emulate a defensive task force. Overall I still would lean heavily with the RTS mechanic since it allows you to play as a command of multiple squadrons simultaneously without the overpowered nature of direct oversight of plane squadrons.
Honestly thought that was just me and my shoddy internet but glad to hear I’m not alone!
Yeah, the poor map design certainly plagues Naval a lot and I’ll discuss the objectives as they occur in your breakdown below! As for super_cacti’s idea, the proposal primarily addresses the potential to futureproof the game mode as well as give the much needed breathing room to transition between Coastal->Destroyer->Cruiser->Battleship
Agreed! I think the maps are fairly adequate for Destroyers since it bridges the gap between the slower, long-range slug fest of the higher tiers and the breakneck knife fight of the PT boats quite well, but for anything larger than that, we arrive at the problem of the map being too small.
Agreed! And also I find the game mode to be uncompetitive when it’s in regards to higher BR warships since the size of the map (even with its current unsuitable size) would usually mean that once something is capped, the chance of it being decapped by the time the match timer ends is pretty much nonexistent, assuming people go for cap at all and not just just turn the round into a deathmatch until the time runs out/kill all enemies. Or it’d just have that one coastal cap contested to turn the tide.
Honestly, I don’t like this game mode at all. Aside from the fact that most of the time it’s just people turning into a brawl with no cover except for allies and hoping the shell rainstorm doesn’t wipe you out, the game doesn’t really make you feel like you are accomplishing anything. One moment you are bleeding ticket and the cap is nearly in the enemy’s favor, another it’s a sliver and you are still bleeding, then next you are actually winning. How you go about this doesn’t feel rewarding at all. Compare this to WoWs’ version of the game mode, you have concentric rings that you can cap as you get closer to the center and you can actually cap those areas, making you feel like what you do is actually making a difference.
This is certainly one of the more fun game mode since it doesn’t restrict you to caps and you have the optional cover you can use to sneak your way over to the convoy, but yeah as you said, destroying the convoys ended up being a secondary objective since they tend to just hang out behind the spawn and wouldn’t be effectively defeated until the other team is thoroughly losing anyway.
Agreed on this. Currently, the tech tree is set in an order of firepower escalation but if it was made in a more parallel process like WoWs, it could work, if objectives are given for each ship class. Otherwise, it’d be back down to bigger firepower smacking the weaker thing out of the water in a single volley. So coastal stuff navigates the shallow waters doing their objectives, while destroyers, cruisers, and battleships do their own thing. While not related to the concept, it did remind me of that combined arms game mode raised by WeBe two years ago (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFbrsAj5IdA remember this?)
I vaguely remember something about this. At some point, when an armor was destroyed, all lighter calibers can go through the entire armor belt but I believe Gaijin changed it to where now lighter calibers have a chance to go through a ruined armor it otherwise cannot penetrate? But I don’t know that it also applies to HE, but yeah I hope they bring it back in some fixed form.
Thanks for the feedback and discussion!
Never happened to me in normal naval battles. Naval EC had problems but not normal battles.
Adding a bit of concern regarding aircraft carriers,
they effectively are mobile airfields.
We do have the mobility part, and we do have a miniscule of airfield part - planes, or at least a single plane.
However, we don’t have the airfield commander mode, component or a ‘unit’.
There isn’t an RTS component to build upon.
Naturally, they could implement RTS in reverse (as in, develop the mobility and planes and just put the RTS on the top), but for proper balancing and testing of this, they should already be beginning testing via using the regular ground-based airfield controls. That is, we need the airfield commander component. Ordering squadrons from the airfield control tower, rather than ship first.
There are also several other issues - there are various kinds of planes.
We have heavy bombers, heavy fighters, torpedo bombers and various multi-role aircraft.
Granted, most of carrier-based aircraft (interwar and early war, for the most part) have fairly limited load-out options, which makes them incapable to seriously threaten anything larger than a coastal vessel, the question of balance arises:
What about land-based heavy bombers? Supposedly capable to carry several torpedoes, or 1 gigantic bomb? With squadrons on the opposing side, they’d be outmatched (manually controlling gunners, trying to fend off 4 fighters on my 6). If they also could be a squadron, then it’s a worst nightmare coming true for some folks (4 Pe-8s, nuking everything).
So, it’s yet another balance issue we need to consider.
Yeah, the RTS component being discussed is going to be a wholly new mechanic as opposed to building it on top of something. The idea being discussed has its inspiration drawn from World of Warships’ original CV concept (see it in action here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdIteppCI84 although obviously, WT will have less arcadey UI, possibly something more akin to a war table with moving pieces.)
I was mentioning that the basis of this mechanic would have been something that might have a foundation in how players dispatch catapult planes off cruisers and the like, but we see it ended up being player-controlled now so that’s simply out of the question.
As for types of planes, I think we can make up for the lack of individual effectiveness in favor of larger numbers and limit the types of planes to carrier-bound aircraft (so you won’t be getting that squad of 4 Pe-8 saturating spawn with their nukes). Yes, this will need to be extensively balanced, which brings up the question if CVs is worth having in the first place.
I think an interesting work around for bots would be to make all guns centrally controlled, as in: you do not aim and fire guns directly for anything bigger than a costal ship, you simply mark a target and input range corrections manually. This would have to be coupled with an “inaccuracy” calculation based on target speed, your speed and a dispersion of the guns to counter target size. This way, bots could mark a target and set range perfectly, but they’ll still be limited to a reasonably percentage of accuracy based on historical values, even with radar controlled guns. I also think it would have a secondary effect of allowing you to juggle steering the ship and shooting a bit more effectively.
edit: and oh yeah I feel a “central gun” controller is more historic as well, since this is how ships usually did range finding.
Modern Missle Frigate and Destroyers should be placed after the green water ships, and seperate them from blue water matchmaker, and should limit the aircrafts that can join in the naval battle, as simulator battles
Personally i hate how you can shoot eachother at spawn right at fhe start, i hate how small the islands are, it feels like theres no elements of surprise, and that you can just spam x and target any ships trying to use islands to be sneaky.
If the islands were bigger, and targeting required actual line of sight id enjoy it alot more.
The last issue regarding aircraft carriers is…
Not all the nations actually had carriers.
US, UK and Japan have no issues here. I think France had some too.
But, Germany, Italy and USSR (at least, not before the end of WW2), not counting the less famous factions like Sweden, had no aircraft carriers. Plans and blueprints, at best.
The Graf Zeppelin, an incomplete carrier for Germany, is likely going to be a premium as well…
On the other hand, I heard that Kronshtadt is considered a fake vehicle by some…
yes, if you do not want to be hit by AA you have to go over 4 km height , e.g in a bomber. And that’s nearly impossible because the game ends before you can reach your target.
