Okay, first off, this is again my opinion based on my experiences.
I am sorry about causing confusion. Of course waves will still influence your aim and send volleys overshooting the target by several meters. It is just that your aim indicator, as in the marker that predicts where your shots would land, is now missing.
Pre “Hornets Sting”, if you had a turret with slow vertical traverse rates, it would not just send the shot or volley flying if you hit a wave, but the aim indicator would jump as well. For one this gave you valuable information, as you knew that even if you were pointing at the target, the guns were out of position. On the other hand it sometimes permitted (and required) to adjust your aim to compensate.
Same when you maneuvered and the gun turned into an area where the aiming angles are restricted, i.e. by superstructure on the boat. This gave you an indicator that you need to turn your ship so you could aim at the target again. And permitted certain boats to do strafing runs using small “free gaps” between different parts of the superstructure.
As far as I know, this kind of information is now missing altogether. So even if the old aiming system would not be completely rolled back I would really appreciate some sort of indicator showing me if the barrels of my guns are aiming at the point where my crosshair is.
HE damage change: If this happened, great. One of my biggest beefs in Naval AB was how low to mid caliber HE shells felt incredibly underwhelming.
If this is working as intended, this change alone would have been more than enough for me to have a better chance against corvette or frigate class ships (while using coastal vessels).
That being said, I said in another thread that one of the things I like about naval combat was the change of pace. Instead of everything being paper that died in one shot, you had to consistently take apart your opponent and take out multiple vulnerabilities. If even bluewater ships become one-shot territory for gunboats, it kills part of what made naval game play stand apart.
