Naval Aiming Rework

Suggestions Gameplay
42

You know what, I gave naval Arcade a try lately, and you’re right — it’s actually closer to the real thing in some ways than what we currently have in Realistic Battles.

So what about making Realistic Battles work more like Arcade, with the main difference being that the player gets control over the rangefinding equipment?

It could actually be much simpler to implement, because most of the necessary mechanics are already there.

Basically, you would:

  1. Press and hold a key — the rangefinder view appears.
  2. While holding the key, use the mouse wheel to adjust the sights and find the range.
  3. Release the key — the readings are automatically passed to the FCS, the guns turn and elevate accordingly, and you can fire. (Of course, with the existing follow-the-pointer system, the guns would turn as you move the sights, so they would simply adjust their train and elevation according to the FCS solution)

It could work similarly to how we use the Left Alt key.

One advantage would be that you could get accurate readings at the ranges at which a particular ship was actually designed to fight.

It would also leave room for further expansion, such as radar rangefinders and other detection and fire-control systems. Imagine pressing the same key and, in addition to the rangefinder view, getting tabs in the upper-left corner for the different systems available on your ship, each suited to different situations.

And this wouldn’t mean manually operating the entire ship. The crew and FCS would still do their jobs — the player would simply be responsible for providing the measurement.

The most important difference between Arcade and Realistic would then be very simple:
In Arcade, the game takes the readings for you.
In Realistic, you take the readings yourself.

That’s just a rough draft, but I think it could give RB a bit more player input without requiring an entirely new aiming system.

43

I agree that we can’t realistically simulate the whole crew in a game, and I don’t think we should.

Actually, this is a fairly recent change in my thinking. This thread started with a much more complicated idea involving separate spotting, rangefinder and gun director views, manual range corrections, optional ballistic calculations, etc.

But I recently gave Naval Arcade a try, and it made me rethink the whole thing. A lot of the mechanics I was trying to recreate are already there.

So instead of replacing the current aiming system, what if we simply made the player responsible for the rangefinding input?

The crew would still do everything else — calculate the firing solution, train and elevate the guns, etc. The player would just operate the rangefinder and provide the measurement.

And there’s another reason why I think this makes sense from a gameplay perspective.

At the end of the day, this is still a shooter, so the player needs to have some control over the process of engaging a target. If we take away the traditional “sniper” part of gameplay — manually judging lead, range and bullet drop — because that’s not really how naval gunnery worked, then I’d rather give the player some involvement in gathering the information needed to make the shot.

In other words, instead of making the player simulate the gunner, let the player operate the ship’s sensors and fire-control input.

The ship’s crew and FCS can do the calculations. The player decides what information to provide them with and when.

And this doesn’t require simulating hundreds of crew members or creating an entirely new aiming system. Most of the necessary mechanics are already in the game.

The difference between Arcade and Realistic could then be very simple:

Arcade: the game takes the readings for you.

Realistic: you take the readings yourself.

That’s basically the new idea I came up with after trying Arcade. It’s much simpler than what I originally proposed, but I think it might actually fit WT better.

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44

Overall Gaijin will likely need to do a rework of naval aiming or the AI simulation of it. This would need a general overhaul of fire control mechanics especially around Anti-Air but this would be a nerf to Japan by far. Poor 25mm moral booster spam you wont stand a chance against premium P-47 kamikaze…

I think for a time if you lost fire control room your gunnery would stop which people did not like. Pre-dreadnaughts would also have issues with naval aiming as the battle of Tsushima was sort of the first with the whole fire control aiming systems. It was a bit more on the gunners them selves to handle the issue of targeting and aiming before that at times (give or take).

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45

It still works like this also when all of your rangefinders are destroyed.
Also the whole idea of changes in aiming evolved quite a bit sice i’ve first posted it.
Now it would work like this:

  1. Press and hold a key — the rangefinder view appears.
  2. While holding the key, use the mouse wheel to adjust the sights and find the range.
  3. Release the key — the readings are automatically passed to the FCS, the guns turn and elevate accordingly, and you can fire. (Of course, with the existing follow-the-pointer system, the guns would turn as you move the sights, so they would simply adjust their train and elevation according to the FCS solution)
    It could work similarly to how we use the Left Alt key.

It would also leave room for further expansion, such as, anti-air radar rangefinders and other detection and fire-control systems. Imagine pressing the same key and, in addition to the rangefinder view, getting tabs in the upper-left corner for the different systems available on your ship, each suited to different situations.
This could include anti-air rangefinders - AI would shoot like it is doing now, but it’s effectiveness would depend on how good player is with estimating the range

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