With today’s patch, the developers have increased the spread of fires through turrets and barbettes, while also increasing the susceptibility of shell rooms and magazines to fire damage. While I think the change was well intentioned and has some historical basis, I also believe the current implementation is excessive and hurts the experience of the game. Specifically the lowest end detonation speed I find to be far too quick, I have had a couple players die to magazine detonation within seconds of lighting a fire in their barbette, before they could even reasonable began fire extinguishing. While it is a general nerf to ship survivability across the board, it harms some far more than others. I have only played Rodney today, but from shooting at a wide selection of targets American and Japanese battleships seem to be most impacted. Oddly many bots, mainly British and German 1st generation dreadnaughts, seem to survive long enough for barbette fires to burn out on their own much more often than I’ve seen player ships to. Rodney and other ships with deep magazines are now certainly less survivable than yesterday, but also have a much larger gap in their survivability vs ships with shells or power near the waterline. Personally, I think the damage taken by shells and powder to fire should be toned down somewhat, and players should be afforded more time to begin fire extinguishing before they are in danger of detonation.
I have mixed feeling about the fire change. On one hand I think it is a good move to make ammo elevators more susceptible to catching fire - in the past they were too inert and often behave like a damage absorber especially when someone leave it broken without repairing. On the other hand I agree that the speed of fire spreading is a bit too quick, or rather saying, inconsistent. Sometimes the fire just stay in the elevator for well over 10 seconds without anything happen, other times the ship goes boom just a fraction of second after the elevator gets hit.
About shell room detonation changes, again I have failed to find a consistent behaviour. I feel like this change was mainly a gameplay imposed adjustments, as it seems to intend to make ships less survival by a certain degree. Reading the patch note it feels like US battleships with shells stored in the barbette is supposed to gets less damage from shell room detonation as they are relatively distant from other modules and is surrounded by several hundreds of millimetres armour. But in reality they seem to take just as much damage as others from what I can tell from today’s experience.
I’m of a similar mind, to me it seems like a change that has the potential to be very good with some adjustments. But at the same time I’ve gotten a fair number of kills today that I really feel I didn’t earn, basically getting a single barbette penetration and having my opponent die to fire within three seconds after just isn’t satisfying for anyone. With some adjustments though I could see it being both historically accurate and a good mechanic that makes you rightly prioritize fire suppression.
A potential very positive change I could see from this though is if the devs could be persuaded to change the behavior of shell rooms to only or at least primarily detonate due to fire cooking them off rather than impact shock. That would both be more historical, fix a large balance issue, and I think fit better with what seems to be the stated intent of the change.
I’ve not had time to play a match yet but I’ve read the patchnotes, I’m gonna guess this will be problematic for vessel with exposed magazines or those with short elevators from the shell room to the cannons.
I do also wonder what will happen with ships that can basically run empty magazines (like full on no ammunition there except in the ready racks next to/ under/ on the turrets), as there’s a few vessels that can do this even with a large amount of shells that can last a battle.
I have the impression that the naval devs make or and more changes which are all but not well designed. maybe some (russian?) players complained about making no kills in battleship matches and now they try to make them less sustainable. The aim maybe to get faster matches like we have after the aimbot patch in arcade where even small boats have now ridicoulos precise fire.
The destructive power of shell room detonations now seem to be directly associated to the total amount of explosives in the storage. I.e. if you take 600 HE shells onboard, the detonation will be more powerful than when you take 600 AP shells.
For US standard battleship players, take as few HE shells as possible. I would recommend not to take them at all since you are not going to use them in 99% of cases. Also there’s no need to take full ammo as your slow reload will grant you not running out of ammo in any scenario except EC. If you take 500 AP shells onboard, when you get an unlucky shell room detonation it won’t be more painful than before the update (actually even less). If you take 600 HE shells onboard, good luck, sit and watch a single shell room detonation instantly removes 65% of your crew and renders half of your ship’s modules completely destroyed.
This sounds like it will make stock grinds significantly more painful than they were for all ships, given that you have only HE and fire extinguishing takes longer giving a larger detonation chance. I think these new changes could make for a good mechanic with a few important adjustments made, but as it stands I can’t exactly say things are better than they were two days ago.