Looks like Submarine test trials are here through the Battle of the Atlantic Event. I’m too burnt out after crafting event (and doing that TOG 2 grind) so I don’t think I’ll have a chance to play it so I’ll leave it to you guys to have any feedback on how subs mechanic is panning out. It is worth noting that it won’t be the same as the live game since you are solely worrying about subs, though. And it’s fighting destroyers and others that can defend against it.
The event is pretty good. The subs absolutely suck though, they are too slow, lack visibility and the mines just bounce of enemy ships. Dessies work well though.
Most success I have had in a sub is surfacing and firing torps point blank at a dessy trying to kill me.
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I’m curious about the lack of visibility, how does that work? Can you listen to engine sounds to zero in on a target, kind of like how some ground battles devolve into? Any sonar ping mechanics?
Surface ships have sonar ping and you see a flash outline of the subs. Its hard but you can depth charge pretty easy once you get the hang of it. The smaller ships just get eaten by the sub guns however, since the subs can surface and submerge pretty much in seconds. So your crappy coastal is not going to hit them with anything larger than a 40mm.
The subs do have a periscope but its very narrow scoped and you don’t get any decent information on your trajectories. If the dessies get close to you, you’re pretty much done for.
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C’mon, this is Gaijin, there’s an exploit naturally. Periscope depth is 7m and ‘obviously’ at that depth you travel at submerged speed (slow), but you can put the periscope up and look around (that’s not the exploit). Surfaced is 0m (depth is measured from this baseline, not bottom of hull or whatever.). At 4m you are entirely submerged apart from the top-most autocannon (2 x 20mm mounts). Despite being entirely submerged (and having no way to get air to the diesels) you can travel at max surfaced speed and you can spam the 20mm guns… not sure how the gunners get to the guns given all hatches must be closed, nor what happens to them if you go deeper… well, I do know actually, they must teleport back inside as you don’t lose any crew. While at 4m you also get the external view above surface. But the exploit gets better, because at 5m you’re completely invisible with top-most parts of the sub (20mm) being just under the surface, but you retain the above-surface external view AND the surfaced speed = stealth of a submerged sub; speed and awareness of a surfaced sub.
At periscope depth and below the external viewpoint is from under the surface and is quite limited (in this event with poor weather Atlantic conditions). You can see ships passing above you and see their depth charges. Like I say, quite limited and by 60m everything is black and you can’t really see anything. Of course, you see infinitely more than a real submerged sub, but it’s not too much of an unrealistic game breaking advantage (might be different on some crystal clear, fine sunny day Pacific maps?)
On the whole the mechanics are quite well done… aside from the 4-5m exploit which allows precisely the kind of dweebery that made me reluctant to wish subs on the game, even though I like the idea.
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Yea, subs seem able to absorb a few 5” salvoes (???) and when you get to close range the DD is handicapped by the - still-not-fixed - close range random aiming ‘feature,’ whereby even with exact range set and green circle on target (ie the point guns are allegedly pointing at), the shells splash half way to target, go wildly left/right or over the top of the target.
Sounds like it could use a few tweaks to fix the exploit, probably why they ran with the event in the first place. Good to know, though!
I know this thread has been quiet for a bit but I figured I’ll keep all my Naval discussion on the same thread. Anyway, found this in the roadmap:
Gaijin finally admits to having different BR per gamemode! Maybe this will translate to Naval and we can finally decompress!
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So I guess we got FCS UI element now, does anyone want to throw in their opinion of the feature? I will try it out soon enough but the update is taking an eternity with my slow internet.
The shellfall over/under/straddle indications have been very useful for adjusting aim, but for easier readability I think it would be useful to lock the player-direction-being-viewed overlay to 12 o’clock and have the player and enemy ship icons be displayed relative to that, rather than the current setup of the player-view indication freely rotating around the player ship 's icon while both ships involved in the calculation are shown relative to compass north for some reason ?
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Yeah, the lack of Lock-Player-View-To-12 O’Clock was something I had to get used to with the damage indicator (as opposed to tanks) so it’s odd to hear they did this for FCS too…
Absolutely yes. It’s a great addition in concept, but it needs “up” to be relative, not locked to north.
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Going by the other threads, this update was controversial for Naval. It looks like HE damage that have been the primary point of contention have been silently fixed according to the datamine. And according to today’s changelog, the repair bug appears to be fixed.
Does this mean that we are back to pre-update situation? Or are reasonable caliber HE still viable?
I got double strike for killing 2 destroyers with my HE destroyer shells couple of minutes ago, so these are still very potent. Yes, the endless repair looks to be fixed, but the sinking simulator is still going on.
What did you use? Destroyers HE being effective against destroyers does seem a lot more reasonable than when we started out where destroyer can take out battleships in like three volleys, no?
I was with my 5.0 US destroyers. HE shell also does a lot of damage to light cruisers today. I tried a US destroyer with HE against a battleship in a test drive a day or two ago, but nothing major, just fires. Well, it was definitely better than using SAP against them (1/3 of the HE filler).
Ah, US destroyers tend to be fairly strong anyhow. From the sound of it, HE is better than it uselessly splashing on target as it was doing before the update but weaker than how it was at launch. Would you say the HE function is largely resolved?
I am a poor judge of it since my 6.0 lineup facing 7.0 battleships during the initial release and I just die just as quickly as before…
Too often I still get my ship all red and black just when hit by a shell or two. I get hit let’s say in the front, but almost all my ship is suddenly red/black. I still hate the “sinking simulator.” It’s too overwhelming, especially for arcade. You can’t see you are sinking and there is no warning at the center of the screen. It’s especially bad when you are in a gunner view.
US shells were nerfed for a very long time until now. Very often I was making a sieve out of the enemy using SAP, but there was very little damage for some reason. Often I would not even get an assist for it. In replays I would see my shells going through ships, but not exploding (replays are unreliable, so who know how these shells were really hitting there). Before the recent fiasco update I would just use AP shells with my US cruisers and was doing well with that. Didn’t play cruisers (except some Japanese with RP boosters) last couple of days. Didn’t take out Atlanta to make people in especially destroyers suffer. People had plenty of suffering with the botched update already.
Huh, I see. Yeah, I guess there are still ways to go in tweaking this.
Ahhh that’s what you meant. Yeah, there really need to be more cues for when you are taking in water. While being tunnel-visioned is up to the player to overcome, there’s there is a lot to micromanage, especially when you are in the heat of the moment. There was a suggestion somewhere that said that dewatering should be done passively and all the player need to do is to notice and slow down to reduce the water intake during the repair period.
That’s certainly interesting to hear. I know that back in the days of Moffett bots, players in Moffetts were usually quite deadly with their SAP going around sending my turrets into repair cycles and setting fire to things.
My minimum-change suggestion for WTNF, if I’m allowed one, would be to separate the counting of three " vessel " guaranteed spawns into 3 " Coastal " and 3 " Bluewater " guaranteed spawns each, to allow a total of six ( 6 ) vessels spawnable by each player. I believe this would improve the dynamism in matches by allowing players to create deeper lineups to handle a greater number of situations.
Instead of the current implementation which imo is overly punishing to players of specialized vehicles for high-risk plays, which in turn leads to the greater use of generalist vehicles and predictable( non-dynamic ) match outcomes.
If I may propose more significant changes, one might be to introduce objective structures on the open-circle [Conquest] maps which are more similar to their Air mode versions. For example, compare NF Midway to it 's ARB variant:
Here in Naval, the only ticket condition is to have more own-team vessels in the specified area to remove the enemy ticket count over time. But in Air, that same objective is reinforced by several additional ones: AI-controlled vessels of various sizes entering the capture zone, fixed emplacements on land to bombard, periodic attacks by AI aircraft on both sides, and convoys of larger vessels further back whose destruction independently counts towards the win.
It 's many of the improved objectives of NFEC, but played in the same 25 to 30min as regular random battles.
Having these objectives ported into Naval would go a long way into improving these kinds of map, especially by providing a greater range of gameplay available when playing them and by improving the viability of playing more kinds of vessels on them.
The AAB Wake Island is one of my favourite demonstrations of what could be, in microcosm:
While the main objective ( occupy the capture zone ) remains the same as normal, the addition of the AI target ships provides a greater range of gameplay interactions w/in that. And the various sizes of the targets would further elevate that effect - small AI boats are difficult to hit at range, nd larger ones are not trivialized by peashooters.
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