A new mechanics of naval DM is introduced on the dev server:
The hulls of ships have had their strengthmechanicreturned, expanded and redesigned. All other methods of destroying an enemy remain the same, with the addition of a way to destroy its hull to such an extent that unsinkability is lost:
Small and medium boats can be destroyed by the destruction of any of the hull sections. If one section accumulates damage comparable to what is needed to destroy all the sections of the boat, this will cause enough destruction, not allowing it to maintain combat capability and structural integrity.
Large ships, from frigates toheavier ships**, have been given a** morecomplex system. When several sections of the hull are completely destroyed, the ship loses its unsinkability and begins to take on water until it is completely flooded. At the same time, the end (i.e. first and last) sections do not participate in this system. Now you need to destroy two sections to start the fatal processes. The strength of the sections depends on the class and size of the ship. It is selected in such a way that their destruction does not become a quick and easy task and will not be the primary way of destroying the ship in other ways familiar to players.
Due to the addition of loss of unsinkability, the non-repairable holes mechanic has been disabled.
The finalnumber of destroyed sections r**equired to lose unsinkability and their durability is to bedetermined*, including during the dev server.*
It shouldalso be noted that on the dev server there will be no indication of the integrity ofthe sections of your shipas the interface isin development. But players will be able to assess the damage inflicted on the enemy: under the hit camera you can see a new e**lement reflecting each section of the enemy ship and its condition.
How this mechanics works TLDR:
Unrepairable breach mechanics has been disabled. Instead, the new mechanics work in a way that it requires at least two hull sections (excluding the tip of the bow and stern) to be destroyed to start the lethal process, where breaches will appear under waterline involuntarily even if the ship does not receive any hits under waterline, or getting penetrated.
It is much easier to sink Scharnhorst with this mechanics, flooding will be automatically created once more than 2 hull sections are destroyed (and after which any breach of the hull becomes unrepairable). On the other hand, it also makes it much easier for Scharnhorst to sink other ships as well because of the very same reason. In general, I think the new mechanics will greatly favour fast firing ships that can quickly destroy enemy ship’s hull via shooting at unarmoured area.
Unrepairable breach (live server):
If you destroy one hull section,
You must penetrate the hull to make a breach
The breach has to be under/touching waterline to take water
Only breaches located at the destroyed sections are unrepairable
Loss of unsinkability (dev server):
If you destroy more than two hull sections,
Flooding appears automatically even if no penetration of armour occurs
Enemy ship will start to take water even if you never hit their waterline
Any breach is unrepairable
Here’s an example, I shoot the Alaska’s upper deck with a number of 150mm HE shells, after destroying two hull sections, the ship automatically created breaches by herself and sunk:
Appreciate the run down, very informative. By the sounds of things this will make the secondary battery on battleships even more important than it already is. I understand it is a heavy work in progress, but is there any information you can give on how it will be determined how many sections must be destroyed to guarantee sinking and the health of each section? In the sense that I’m wondering if internal subdivision would factor heavily into this, like making Tennessee more resilient to it than an Arizona for example.
For now you need to destroy two hull sections to cause unstoppable sinking. It took me about 6 salvos of 15cm shells to destroy each section in the test above.
Of note, as I currently understand it there’s a major issue with this, in that the game doesn’t take into account waves/etc, so it’s way harder to flood ships than it should be (because a huge hole one inch above the technical waterline won’t let in water).
So anything else aside, the new system does nicely sidestep this problem. However…
Should make light cruisers playable in uptiers at least. I get the feeling this will probably cause some controversy if the health values remain the same though. Cleveland and similar ships being able to flood out a 7.0 in about a minute accounting for secondaries historically hasn’t been popular. Once that’s adjusted I see this being a good change, I’ve felt bad for anyone trying to grind top tier with a 6.0 since La Royale. Would be good for top tier player numbers if more new blood can grind up.
It’s another example of Gaijin “soft-killing” your ship, rewarding HE spammers and punishing you for staying alive.
Currently, i can avoid taking too much crew damage from HE by not exposing my hull too much and not repairing AA/secondaries. A smart enemy would then switch to SAP/AP and cause damage to internal modules
With this change, i can do whatever smart play i want, people can just turn off the brain, spam HE in every situation and be rewarded. Said problem is amplified by the (good) change of allowing HE to slightly penetrate the hull before exploding
I genuinely do not see the point of this mechanic except at the very top tier where it could finally get Sharnhorst players to die at least once during the duration of a game.
For every other br bracket (as in, anything that isn’t a full 7.0 vs 7.0 game), it will either be completely useless (coastal blows up very easily when hit by 5" SAP) or make things even worse for the underdog (cruiser vs battleships)
Also, i sincerly hope that pummeling the hull way above the waterline causing damage to the “floatability” of those sections is just a bug and will be fixed
I was intrigued by this system as a means of better balancing top tier ships, but definetly seems like we’ve returned to RoF matters more than calibre and the ships that use to dominate with HE Spam will return to dominating. Kinda a shame
Additional feedback: Hull durability is overall nerfed quite extensively compared to the live server. In test sail it took me about 3 salvos in Rodney to destroy Scharnhorst’s each hull section, which means it takes just 6 salvos to guarantee sink it. I think this is too extreme. I am normally with new mechanics but this time I strongly prefer the old system, unless some major adjustment to be made to the new system, either of this for example:
Increase hull section HP
Increase the number of sections required to cause “loss of unsinkability”
Clip the destructible hull down to main deck level, so only shells penetrate armour can inflict damage to the hull
For some reason, we tend to go from one extreme to the other every time; from unsinkable ships to comically weak ships… hopefully we will achieve the middle ground sweet spot before it goes live.
I think the key would be a mix of both systems; keeping unrepairable breaches for those that are too large to fix, and implement the current dev system, except toned down by implementing your suggestions.
This both concerns me and on the other hand I also welcome. It is one of the most retarded mechanics in coastal that you can slap a G5 with 40mm’s and strip them down to 20% hull but then have to hit the final section of the boat (which always manages to be just on the waterline) to kill them. Same with some US PT boats. hit them with 4 or 5 76mm deck guns from a Coastal boat and if it hits the already dead section, nothing, then die to auto-pew. The notion of having to break every hull section here has always been dumb imo and if the enemy just turn towards you, they basically have an invincibility shield. So on that front I welcome the change to smaller boats.
On the other hand, I am concerned that some boats will be just plain unplayable without some sort of protection.
I mean currently things like a PR206 simply make a fart noise and your dead in any small boat (they need to really nerf that gun), so with this new mechanic, perhaps they just need to look at you and its game over.
Just kick out of this mechanism, plus the hull degeneration system we currently have.
This will help killing Scharnhorst easier? No, this will make other ships die more easier, and especially who will benefit from Scharnhorst. Seeing how Rodney suffered from last three month with flooding and saying ‘this mechanism will be future for battleships to counter Scharnhorst’ is lie/fraud/insult to players.
Until currently, every mechanism about nerfing ship’s survivability leads to Scharnhorst’s relative buff to the others capital ships. Scharnhorst is not strong because of no mechanism about it, but just it’s main armor is strong, and citadel is immune by historical layout of her armor. The only answer will be the implementation of proper battleship to counter, and proper BR decompression,
They say this won’t be the primary way of killing ships but then 20 seconds of firing and then the Moffet has prepared a CL for the ocean floor by hitting the deck
This is a massive buff to anything with RoF, IE US DD, US cruisers and most importantly Scharnhorst.
The things that already dominate and choke out other nations.
It also is killer to any bow tankers like the Rodney and Dunk as there’s multiple compartments behind the bow compartment which will usually get hit a lot.
This will be a nerf to anything with a low RoF which can’t just slam things over and over until two compartments are gone and bam, down they go.
It already could be done to a certain degree but stacked with the HE buff this lets people just rain down HE onto unarmored decks and then uncontrollably flood them because thats logical.
And it completely ignores how much compartmentalization these ships have.
This completely chucks any sort of logic or realism out the window, rewards just spamming things until dead rather than aiming for weak points while it effects every ship is most beneficial too the things that are already meta.
If given an option players will always shift torwards whatever is meta and cheese the crap out of it, thats what will happen with this mechanic.
We cannot get something like this without more complex compartmentalization that will prevent flooding from players shooting the hull above the waterline.
To entertain the idea of devil’s advocate, six salvos with a fully maxed/Aced crew (40 second reload) means the absolutely minimum TTK here is four full minutes. Actually longer, as shell flight time has to be added as well, so over five minutes.
Five whole minutes to get one single kill, assuming maxed crew, no misses, perfect aim, and not doing anything else at all, in a twenty-minute match… is a rather long time.
Four minutes for the ship with possibly the worst combined primary/secondary shell output at top tier. Based off the numbers for a 150mm HK gave earlier it wouldn’t take a Cleveland much more than a minute. It needs significant adjustment, they said as much in the changelog, no need for a devil’s advocate here.
I think the current situation is stupid. The judging area should be strictly limited to the waterline and below the water line. It would be foolish to sink a ship by shooting at the deck.
