Okay, fairly simple concept: Japanese torpedoes in Naval are ridiculously OP.
Type 93 Mod1 has an explosive mass of 627 Kg and a range of 20Km. Type 93 Mod 3 has a single shot battleship killing 780Kg at 15Km range and an Indy 500 speed of 91Km/hr.
Compare this to the USN Mk 15 with a pathetic 224Kg and 5.5Km range 83Km/hr or 9.2Km Range that crawls at 62Km/hr. Germany’s G7a is 358Kg 6Km, 81Km/hr, The GB Mk IX is 340Kg at 67Km/hr and 9.6Km range.
There is nothing remotely balanced about this. Every other torpedo requires at least 2-3 to kill a capital ship, and forces a skillful Destroyer Captain to engage at a dangerously close range. And then they can be semi-easily dodged. This is true for all other destroyers in general, except for the no-skill “Shimakaze Shuffle”. These Type 93 armed Japanese DD’s with their beyond stupid spam of 15 torps into the blue-water spawn zone is a completely broken game mechanic. Keeping in mind it takes only a single one to ammo-rack a BB.
Here’s the bottom line:
These torps have been screaming ‘Nerf Me!’ from the very beginning.
It’s long past overdue that they were.
Japanese Torpedos were exceptionally good compared to most nations (iirc) and so long as they are properly modeled, I have no issue with their current performance. But I would like to see an overhaul for Torp warnings. Sometimes you never get markers/warnings when they approach other times you do when they are miles away. Its highly inconsistant.
Also why do your crew spotters never call them out. At a bare minimum you should have a lookout shouting “Torpedo, bearing XXX” to give you some warning.
As a final note, need a quick message that calls out that there is torps and pings your location on the map. Ideally perhaps giving a bearing of the torps form your position, so you can warn your teammates far more effeciently
Japanese trade these great torpedoes for meh main guns and AA. You can avoid them most of the time by paying more attention. Torpedoes got crazy-visible tracers on the surface, they are impossible to miss if you look at the water surface in the direction they are coming from.
Also: That’s the whole point of the Long Lance. To be amazing. 😎
Also, also: Wait till you get submarines and electric torpedoes, which leave no trace of bubbles on the surface. Then you’ll start thinking that Long Lance is extremely well balanced, lol.
I don’t care that LL torps are really good - the DD’s that carry them are mostly rubbish and easy prey for their equivalents, and also usually picked upon as soon as they appear - that is where the balance lies, not in direct comparison of only 1 weapon with the equivalent weapon in other trees.
If you insist on thinking otherwise then I look forward to the thread saying that US 5"/38 and British 4.5" are similarly OP since they are better than their equivalents in other trees…
Thanks for the inspiration, JP -
I’ll get started on posting that thread on how trash the USN 5 inch Caliber 38 DP mounts are, and why they need a MAJOR accuracy and RoF buff ASAP … 😘
Think that depends on their depth that the player who launched chose. 1m is easy to spot and will be spotted regularly. 4m depth stroke is much deeper and you usually wont realize they are there until they are about to hit (makes sense since they are far deeper). 1m is only useful for trying to strike DD’s. 4m will go below DD hulls and will often hit below torpedo protection on BB’s
:) There’s a thing called dodge em. Even then Japanese Long Torpedos have always been Superior to US Torpedos. It took until 1943 Mid to late for the Japanese to even consider them a threat and that was a bit after the first successful torpedo hit. Since before that they just bounced off. Due to a torpedo fault in US torpedos.
To begin with, the wake of an oxygen torpedo should be harder to see than it is now.
I am not convinced that a bug report has been approved on the old forum and it still has not been reflected.
I think it is unfair that IJN destroyers are not set to a BR commensurate with their main guns and anti-aircraft guns due to the high estimate of the value of torpedoes, which have a luck factor, even though oxygen torpedoes are not performing to their full specs.
Wait until you hear about how they performed in actual battles. The Japanese don’t have a lot going for them in destroyers and cruisers other than excellent torpedoes. There is zero reason to “nerf” them.
If anything, they are undeforming, simply because we have such short range battles and they should be virtually invisible given their oxygen propulsion system which didn’t create the typical bubble wake of other torpedoes.
We probably don’t want to go down the road of too much realism though or the American Mk 14 and Mk15 torpedoes would be nearly useless. At least half and as high as 80% of Mk 14s failed to detonate or detonated early due to a design flaw (or testing flaw depending on your point of view) in the magnetic detonators.
Only 25 ships were confirmed sunk by LLs during WW2.The torpedos reputation for lethality was equally based on the fact that a single hit was more than capable of disabling ships of any size and there are plenty of pictures of gaping holes in hulls or even entire bow/stern missing with the unfortunate target having to limp or even be towed back to a repair base.
I think what the game needs more than a direct torpedo nerf is a rethink on damage models. Currently a tap on the extreme bow is enough to cause a magazine explosion despite ships surviving such catastrophic hits eg. USS Selfrige and USS Minneapolis. And if you don’t explode the flooding mechanic will do the job even if the rest of the ship is unaffected.
Also an increase in reload times. The reason so mamy Shimakazi find themselves in 7.0 arcade circle of death maps is because they can spam their LLs easily and frequently at static/unmanouvrable targets, all whilst sat out at ranges that make return fire extremely difficult or wasteful.
Very true, it’s not about realism else Kronshtadt wouldn’t even exist. It’s about balance. (And please don’t even get me started on BR decompression or AI boats shooting down planes with a 12.7mm MG at 5000m when the maximum effective range is 2000m)
I like the idea of changing the damage model though. My point is mostly that they shouldn’t be able to one-shot a BB like the Nevada which had refit torpedo bulges for precisely that.
I agree with the change in the damage model. If torpedoes are weakened any further, all torpedoes will become industrial waste.
There is a phenomenon of too much damage, but we also need to solve the unrealistic phenomenon of no damage at all. Zero damage is too unrealistic when oxygen torpedoes are hitting. Even if they hit where the main armor is, they should cause permanent damage to the hull in no small amount.
The current situation, where torpedoes have been nerfed excessively and all torpedoes with low explosive content, unlike in reality, have become industrial waste, should also be solved by changing the damage model.
The problem is, the necessary changes are too extensive. Air, the most played gamemode, is in desperate need of new damage models, naval, the least played stands no chance.
The Nevada refit was completed before the United States was even aware of the existence of the Type 93. They had ignored early intelligence reports, and didn’t recover an example until the early 1943. There was still no torpedo mitigation system that would have protected against a warhead that large.
Edited my date to early 1943 at the conclusion of the Guadalcanal campaign.
From Naval History Magazine - “U.S. Navy torpedo-protection systems were designed to resist about 800 to 1100 pounds of TNT”
From history.navy.mil - " The culmination of Japanese efforts was the development of the surface-launched Type 93 oxygen torpedo (and the similar, but smaller, Type 95 submarine-launched torpedo). The Type 93 was a 24-inch diameter torpedo with a 1,080-pound warhead"
So, yes a BB with Torpedo blisters could completely survive. It could have a potentially flooded compartments, but a total detonation is just silly. Heavy cruisers without bulges would not. Also the Type 93 itself was prone to self detonation because of it’s propulsion system. It was more of a hazard to the ship carrying it.
From pacificatrocities.org - " as American airstrikes on Japanese ships became more common, Japanese commanders had to decide whether to keep the torpedoes on the ship and risk them blowing up due to shock or to jettison them. In the battle off Samar, the Japanese cruiser Suzuya was sunk due to the detonation of its Type 93 torpedoes after a bomb sent shock waves inside the ship."
So if you want to nitpick, a single 5in/38cal hit to the torpedo tubes should blow the Japanese destroyer to smithereens.
And again, this game has many technical inaccuracies and outright flights of fancy in the name of game balance. We are discussing balance here.
The type of protection systems you are talking about were not around for World War II. These are modern protection systems.
There was no contemporary anti-torpedo protection that could protect against the Type 93 warhead.
Torpedoes in game can already be detonated by hits. That’s why I don’t carry subpar torpedoes as they are just a danger to my own ship.
The Type 93 is already balanced against the fact that the Japanese ships are inferior to their American, German, and Soviet counterparts in most areas except for excellent torpedoes.
So long as they arent in a vacuum, thats fine. Needs to be added alongside ships like Iowa-Class, Bismark and Vanguared-class (or maybe G3 class) battleships/battlecruisers and it would be fine.
Amagi and Scharnhorst are a tad oppresive because most nations lack the answer for them
" During this period, many designers also began to adopt multi-layered protection schemes, some of which were also coupled with anti-torpedo bulges, to improve the survivability of their ships. The historian Roger Branfill-Cook characterizes the American Tennessee-class battleships, designed in 1915, as having the best layout of the period, which featured three armored bulkheads layered between three liquid-filled compartments, and placed between an empty void and unarmored bulkhead on either side.[2] For example, the last US battleship designs during World War II had up to four torpedo bulkheads and a triple-bottom"
And from NavWeaps.com: "Each bulkhead was carefully designed to provide maximum resistance to overpressure before tearing. The bulkheads were spaced so that once torn, a failed bulkhead would not impinge upon the next bulkhead inboard, permitting that structure in turn to provide maximum resistance, undamaged by the preceding structure. Similarly, the last armored bulkhead would not impinge on the holding bulkhead. The collective resistance of the three armored bulkheads and liquid layers stopped fragments before they could reach the unarmored holding bulkhead.
The system performed very well. The outer void space produced an initial sharp listing moment, but this was readily corrected by counterflooding corresponding outboard void spaces on the opposite side of the ship, a technique aptly demonstrated by the USS West Virginia (BB-48) at Pearl Harbor. The armored bulkheads performed as designed and the holding bulkhead remained intact when struck cleanly within the system by Japanese aerial torpedoes. USS California (BB-44) sank at Pearl Harbor due to her unprepared state; neither torpedo penetrated the TDS."