The current fleet damage system is built on three main pillars: crew (located in modules and crew compartments(aka crew boxes), hull sections (our favorite “traffic light” system, which is currently being actively manipulated—sometimes rapidly destroying sections with HE, other times making them impossible to destroy within a reasonable time), and buoyancy (which is entirely unclear to the average player—players don’t know where and how to shoot to sink a ship based on buoyancy).
Continuing the topic of reworking the damage mechanics and ship destruction based on crew loss (Переработка механики БЗЖ и уничтожения кораблей по экипажу - Передано разработчикам - War Thunder — официальный форум), which we discussed, where we explored how survivability based on crew should behave. We need to work on the very possibility of knocking out this crew, especially for large fleet ships.
Currently, there are several issues:
Crew is distributed across modules, meaning some modules are currently inaccessible for fire — for example, boiler rooms, pumps, and other compartments located below the waterline. This creates a problem of sinking ships when all modules above the waterline are destroyed, but the enemy does not repair them, leaving the ship effectively immortal until the magazines explode or it sinks due to hull compartment damage.
Inside the hull, armor decks and bulkheads are modeled, but in current reality, they absorb shell explosions regardless of explosive charge or shell caliber. Structural elements also ricochet off large-caliber shells hitting thin bulkheads and decks, sending shells further away from modules.
I propose several rational suggestions aimed at changing this situation:
When modules are damaged or destroyed, they subtract crew contained within them from the ship’s total crew. When repairing a module, crew should be taken from these “crew boxes,” reducing their count accordingly.
This will increase survivability when crew boxes are already empty (currently, hits to boxes with many destroyed modules and a lot of repaired ones, cause a sharp decrease in crew, because crew migrates into repaired modules, but crew boxes stay full). It will also reduce survivability when boxes are hidden deep inside the hull—finding the last crew becomes impossible as they gradually leak out during repairs elsewhere.Bulkheads and decks should not absorb explosions and shrapnel inside them so much, as they currently do—that’s why shell hits sometimes cause no damage (Community Bug Reporting System). For example: a large-caliber shell explodes over magazines or machinery spaces. In reality, such an explosion would rupture bulkheads and send decks into the bilge, causing serious damage.
We already have shrapnel-fuzed penetrations for shells, but they seem ineffective now. I suggest that such shell detonations should damage neighboring compartments with shrapnel and blast waves—simulating internal damage more accurately (e.g., a deck with 30mm armor hit by a shell with 70mm HE penetration should damage adjacent compartments containing modules).
This will make damage more dependent on explosive charge quantity: AP shells will be able to target well-protected modules where possible (but won’t always penetrate decks or bulkheads), while SAP shells will cause significant module damage if they manage to breach armor belts or hit vulnerable areas.Another issue worth addressing is the differing behavior of shells in armor analysis versus replay recordings after battles. It’s noticeable that in armor analysis, shells behave very differently—they don’t ricochet or account for decks and bulkheads; instead, you see scenarios that wouldn’t occur in real game combat. For example: a shell explodes over magazines damaging them in analysis but in reality, bulkheads and decks would absorb shrapnel and blast effects.
We need to fix armor analysis so it reflects ingame behavior better—allowing players in hangar mode to reproduce situations they encounter during battles. Also, speeding up projectile flight animations during analysis would be beneficial since large ships mean waiting around 20 seconds for shells to fly is not ideal.Summary:
These changes aim to increase the value of individual hits, improve players’ understanding of vehicle models and countermeasures against them, and encourage using various types of shells (not just maximizing penetration and shell speed). This should positively impact gameplay by making damage from large-caliber shells containing significant explosives more realistic.
Very cool, thx for translating and helping in trying to improve the situation. Sounds good on a first read but needs a bit of more time to think through :-) I’ll definitely give a vote when my brain is able again to function in the current heatwave
I’ve tried to play Yamato, its basically impossible unless you get ignored, and people don’t ignore you because they know you are a punching bag.
Bow on, angled, broadside, there’s no angle you can be at that your magazines are safe with that 270-300mm bulkhead.
Japan peaks at 8.0 which are more than competitive in uptiers, if you are grinding through Japan I’d just stop at the Amagi and enjoy its 10 406mm broadside with a 24 second reload.
Outside that random observations from grinding through to the Yammy with Amagi.
Gneis much like Scharns are easily killed if you go for the barbettes, short elevator combined with the magazines being on top of the shell rooms, they cook easy.
Bismarcks magazines are flush with the waterline and like everything else has the magazines on top of the shell rooms, when they are broadside or slightly angled they pop when you hit them at the waterline by the turrets.
When seeing Soviet Unions you just gotta hope they decide to farm bots rather than player hunting.
Iowa’s seem to be pretty good all rounders which can take as much as they dish out and despite their thin frontal bulkhead they have the advantage of being able to reduce ammo count to empty out the top shell storage, much more compact shell storage and the additional layer of the armored barbette being behind the bulkhead unlike Yamato having every shell in existence scattered across the entire width of the ship behind a single layer.
Only real downside being getting to Iowa requires you to play either the standards with their reload or Alaska with its armor
Thats an idiot balancing issue. BBs with shell rooms on top are almost immune to magazine detonations. Well, they detonate with huge impressing explosions, but its just graphic…there is not much damage. Its a garbage mechanic, dunno how tech mods convinced devs that shell room explosions do basically nothing. Its one thing if they’re harder to detonate than powder charges, but WHEN they explode it should kill the ship. Imagone detonating ammunition does nothing?!?
On the other hand are all these ship with powder storage on top. They detonate, often with just one enemy hit. Add the elevators, which obviously don’t have blast doors in between and you have the current situation: Unplayable, insta detonating ships and a few which enjoy the shell room immunity and can be only sunken by crew of buoyancy mechanics.
If you are talking about realism, yes they should do nothing.
If you are talking about game mechanism, the destructive effects of shell room detonation is determined by the total explosives in the shells in the storage, so for example if the ship takes just half ammo and with AP shells only, the damage effects will be very limited but if they take full ammo with a few hundreds of HE shells, it will deal tremendous damage. Talk about my own experience, when I play in Tennessee I usually take about 400 shells with AP only, if a shell room detonates it will only take away 5~10% of my crew, on the contrary some players taking too many HE shells can instantly lose over 60% of crew from one shell room detonation.
The shell room detonation in game was modelled entirely for gameplay purpose. To stick with realism it should have been nearly impossible to detonate even by direct hits, and when detonation does happen, it will be limited to only a few shells in the storage instead of the whole. Fire damage to shell room is also tremendously exaggerated as in real life it will take considerable time to cook off insensitive explosives (for example, lost British DDGs in Falklands War)
Again it was German navy who designed their ship in this way whereas most of other major navies all realised the huge danger of putting magazines over shell room and dumped this idea. Every US battleships from New York class stored shells in barbettes, every British capital ships built after Hood had shell rooms placed over magazine, and IJN never applied magazine over shell room from their very first super dreadnaught and Kongos.
And even Hood was once discussed to have shell room over magazine, but she already installed magazine so cannot change(while her sister ships on construction changed)
It was German and Italian’s fault yes.
I understand that, but then both ship types can’t play on the same BR level.
BB which are intert to fatal ammo detonations would need much higher BRs.
Insta-exploding BBs have a huge disadvantage. They explode left and right with one or two salvos. So these would need much lower BRs to make it playable.
Shell room BBs last much longer…often until crew runs out. Which might take ages. (WT is the only game with this strange mechanic, which is hell for balancing). All other naval games don’t differentiate between shell room and powder magazine. There is just one magazine and its much better…gameplay-wise they can play vs. each other in a more balanced way.
Btw maybe it’s offtopic, but…
Why do we have such a dumb system, that when you are pumping water / do some repairing / put out a fire, then reload of main artillery is always strongly increasing? Is this system even historical?
I mean, I understand if your barbette or turret got hit and then reload increases
But when someone hit your one AA at the stern of the ship, and you start to repair it, then why reload of main guns go like 10seconds more? That’s kinda hilarious, probably there should be emergency teams on ship, who put out the fire, pump water, repair things, so those things shouldn’t influence on main artillery’s reload at all, isn’t it?
Actually I think exactly this thing make ships with long reload to suffer even more (Hi Roma, American BBs), when reload time becomes completely crazy, when you just put off the fire somewhere in the compartment in the corner of your ship and repair some secondaries
I mean it would be great if the reload always was the same, except situation of damaged barbette/turret and maybe too big angle when you are sinking, but that’s all. What do you comrades think?
This is for gameplay purposes, players need to learn to manage damage control wisely, not to hit the button wherever lights up. You can easily avoid reload increase by only start repairing after the reload starts, because reload penalty only applies to the reloading cycle which begins with an on-going damage control process. This also encourages players to assess the danger of an ongoing fire/flooding to determine whether they should immediately start damage control at a cost of an increased reload cycle, or to start damage control after next salvo so they don’t have to be punished with increased reload.
Well, IMHO this system brings not so much fun and interest, but more like pain and no really interesting gameplay here
And even without this system which influences main artillery reload people still should think how to manage control - example - should they continue repair, or cancel it and to put out the fire in barbettes? Or pump water at first and etc. So actually people still will manage damage control, while doing more active gameplay with shooting, aiming and etc
Cause one of the most boring things in naval - is reloading, but if it’s increasing to 40-60s it’s completely not fun and I think without such system gameplay may become more active and exciting.
So actually it’s not fun to manage damage control, cancelling repair, tapping “put out the fire”, then tap 8 to pump water, while waiting for 50s reload, while Sharn is shooting to you with every 20s, causing more and more damage, fire, sinking, and just making your life awful, and gameplay becomes really not fun and even annoying
Thats right. I#ve seem vids with over 1 minute reload for Roma. How Gajin and game mods think this is playable is beyond me. Its the same with insta-exploding ships. Gajin is the only Naval game company which allows these unfun and unbalanced things. No wounder the game mode is deserted, except bots, prems and elite players in meta ships. Ships which don’t suffer any of these unplayable mechanics.
Its not fun to play a ship which shots once a minute and its not enjoyable to simply explode and lose a 100% healthy ship in an blink of an eye. Also happens alot just after spawn. Spawn … boom… game over, jesus. While other BB last the whole match with very slow crewloss.
Statshark has the stats for the new BBs, sorted by K/D:
8.0
8.3
8.7
Oh would you look at that, it’s everything that (almost) all of us said would happen!
7.21 KD on Soyuz is so obscene it’s just fucking hilarious.
Of course, tobarisch))) If Sovetsky Soyuz was completed, she would have become true naval legend, xaxaxaxaxa! Please ignore the multitude of issues that plagued the Soviet shipbuilding industry with quite extensive evidence recorded in both St Petersburg and the West.
j out as soon as you see him turn his turrets towards you. just j when his first salvo is in the air, before his first shells hit you, it’s all you can do /s. hooray for the next fun cycle of play the main bullies or, idk, just play something else i guess. But all of that was totally unpredictable and unavoidable.
See, that’s the thing…I’ve yet to have an issue in Vanguard
how do you mean? with the soyuz?
It could well be that this harms naval game modes alot.
Was a mistake to make an unfinished project the king of the gamemode. Overshadowing just everything else by +100%. Even the real existing top dogs. For not so powerful BBs its even almost 4-fold.
I totally understand that things are a bit different in a ru game, but the theoretical ingame Soyuzis is just the pinnacle of wishful thinking and totally mindless adaption of ‘planned’ features. Without any logic or reality check.
Gajin, what have you done? Could it be there’s a reason why real Naval Powers of this time didn’t built such a ship? And why do you think the SU would have finished something like this? A real fighting ship would never have been like this. Real ship construction is a matter of compromises between wishes, aims, plans and reality (technical reasons, funding, ressources, deadlines and so on).
You kind of underestimate plan economy, SU enginery and metallurgy.
You have to be an expert of survival to beat Soyuz. Pick a ship that can stay afloat after taking tremendous amount of damage (e.g. Vanguard, Iowa with 30~49% of ammo) and make sure you absolutely make no mistake in angling , manoeuvre, damage control management etc. while return fire effectively. So far I only have found two ways of defeating Soyuz’s armour when it is properly angled:
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Shoot the hull repeatedly to destroy 3 hull sections. Surprisingly Soyuz’s hull durability is quite low compared to its size (Yamato has similar problem btw), so ships with exceptionally durable hull like Iowa can win in a hull durability exchange, as long as you don’t make mistakes to let Soyuz ammorack you. Ideally call for your teammates to focus fire on them, this may speed up the process.
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Shoot the barbette repeatedly to accumulate damage to shell room/magazine. Old method to kill Scharnhorst can be applied to Soyuz as well. Work particularly well at close range (but any ship except Vanguard is likely to get killed by Soyuz first at such range)
Like I have predicted earlier, Soyuz is becoming Scharnhorst II, it’s so effective that even a very bad player can become a big menace in it. You have to be an elite player who know exactly what you are doing to beat this powercreep.
Screenshots from just a couple of minutes ago:
