World of Warships: just had a dev team that did everything wrong

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Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

There will be an explosion of reviews, screenshots and videos when the NDA ends tomorrow. Here are a few videos you might want to watch if you haven't seen them yet:

General overview by Jingles. Battleship and Cruiser games
Battleship and Carrier games
Destroyer and Cruiser games
IJN Yamato game

Might be worth adding to the OP even with the beta coming, they're good videos.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2015 18:40

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# ¿ Apr 23, 2024 23:25

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

To be fair, that was kinda the IJN's strategy too. Dump long lances in the general direction of a fleet group and haul rear end.

Here's a video of an Essex-class carrier game. It looks fun to play but not particularly thrilling to watch. These nerds need to switch to plane view when they drop bombs or torps if they want things to be interesting :argh:

# ¿ Mar 11, 2015 19:26

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

James Garfield posted:

Also half the alpha testers end every sentence with "poi" for some loving reason. An option to block those testers would be nice because they talk way too much.

Like many annoying things, it's a Kancolle thing.

BadLlama posted:

Would torpedoes even travel 2KM in real life? I know absolutely nothing about naval warfare that just seems like a far distance for a tube to plow through the water.

The Long Lance could travel 40km max. And it didn't leave behind a wake, so they were hard to see coming.

Do Long Lances not have a wake in-game? Because that would broken as gently caress.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2015 22:08

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

Lord Koth posted:

While all torpedoes cause some wake due to simply moving through the water, a significant chunk of their wake comes from the bubble trail left by their propulsion. The Long Lance, which used compressed oxygen, left virtually no bubbles behind, which almost eliminated that part and made them extremely difficult to spot.

Of course, the tradeoff is that compressed oxygen is also highly explosive, and it's highly debatable if the IJN should have been sticking Long Lances on their heavy cruisers to begin with, because there were multiple lost due to their torpedoes getting hit in their launchers by an errant shell. Destroyers by their very nature are eminently disposable, and rely on the principle of "don't get hit" to survive in the first place. Heavy cruisers are supposed to be able to actually take a hit, so putting a component that volatile on their ships may not have been the best idea.

Of course, from the videos it doesn't really seem that they've modeled that "extreme danger to the ship they're on" aspect, so removing them being almost impossible to spot is probably fair too.

At least one heavy cruiser (Suzuya) was sunk because a near-miss set off the Long Lances in their tubes. Another heavy cruiser (Chikuma) was sunk by an escort carriers' 5-inch gun when they managed to hit a torpedo tube.

Samar was really not the IJN's finest hour.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2015 22:55

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

What was the gift alpha ship anyway?

# ¿ Mar 11, 2015 23:59

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

I, too, am sad that the World of Tanks thread is gone for good.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2015 00:14

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

Cubey posted:

How is combat in this? I've played a lot of World of Tanks on 360 (yeah, I know) and liked it a lot, and I've always been a giant naval warfare geek so this is intriguing, but I'm having trouble conceptualizing how they'd make a game that's actually fun out of this. It seems like it'd be a 3D version of Scorched Earth without any terrain.

Watch one of the videos in the OP. It looks pretty fun.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2015 03:42

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

NA signups start at 11:00 PST, 2:00 EST according to the website.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2015 15:58

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

BadLlama posted:

So are the only nations that are in America and Japan?

Has Russia even ever had a strong Navy?

They were once considered a top naval power. Then Tsushima Straits happened and they've been mostly terrible ever since.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2015 17:37

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

There's probably enough paper designs to fill out quite a few nations with only a relative handful of ships, like the Netherlands and Germany. There's the Vichy French fleet too.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2015 17:48

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

There will probably be paper planes for some of the carriers too.

It'd suck to be playing your tier x Japanese carrier and sending Zeros against Hellcats and Corsairs. No one wants to play Turkey Shoot Simulator 2015, at least not if you're playing the turkey.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2015 18:28

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

Adventure Pigeon posted:

They could probably either make it so non-carrier planes like the Frank suddenly become carrier planes or carrier-capable planes that were just beginning to be introduced at the end of the war like the Shinden suddenly appear earlier. Japan developed an ungodly number of planes, mostly because the navy and army had separate design programs that were often somewhat redundant, it's just that most of them were never produced in significant numbers.

I guess the Reppuu actually was prototyped and a production model was finished, but they honest-to-god lost the blueprints and factory workups in a fire caused by a bombing raid.

Now I know why all highly-advanced prototype weapon designs only have a single copy. It's a Japanese tradition!

# ¿ Mar 12, 2015 19:01

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

It's open!

# ¿ Mar 12, 2015 19:03

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

http://worldofwarships.com/entry_form

The website is linking to /entry_form/closed because they are dumb.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2015 19:04

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

Gonna sink your battleships with my anime waifus, uguu

# ¿ Mar 12, 2015 21:28

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

Hammerstein posted:

It's early Navy Field all over again.

If you have a somewhat decent feeling for speed and direction then you will do enormous damage with manual torp bombers. Pubbies ofc use auto all the time.

Don't expect any help or escort from the pubs though, the trick with carriers is to see where the bulk of the shitlords goes and then to trailing them, so that you are protected from the inevitable bum rush for the cap zones. But while carriers are nice they don't give you the same rewarding feeling that BBs do, also you are constantly in that rts top-down view and you miss all the pretty explosions.

I think there's a button that lets you zoom to your planes.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2015 01:09

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

BadLlama posted:

Is projectile spread simply RNG heavy? I have my crosshair lined up dead on a ships citadel that is just floating and not moving and my entire volley flies over top of him.

I discovered that you can kind of control the height of shots with the crosshair. Put it slightly below the ship and your shots won't overshoot the mark. Some might fall short, but that's less likely the closer you get. For longer shots that you want to arc in, put it slightly above.

My accuracy went up like crazy after I figured this out.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2015 18:22

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

I think that's why there are islands. So every clan match doesn't turn into 10 ships per team sailing line ahead.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2015 21:17

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

Hammerstein posted:

About torping:

Check where I put the waypoint marker, it's on the far side of the Kongo. In an ideal attack run you set the waypoint marker outside of the round circle and calculate the range and speed. As soon as you click your attack vector in manual mode the planes will head there. BUT - you have to be outside of the circle, if you click attack inside the circle your planes will fly back to the edge of the circle and then start their run from there.

The ideal run is a fluid movement towards the waypoint.

1. See what you can attack, preferably with no cruisers and fighters in the area.
2. pick a waypoint so that you move towards the broadside of the target.
3. Hit manual and select a release point, while still outside of the targeting circle.
4. :pubbie tears:

Is there a way to tell when your torpedoes will be active? I've had a few games where I dropped torpedoes too close and they just go :doink:

off the hull. Very anticlimactic.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2015 21:22

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

There's an exploit on the map Fault Line you can make use of if you're in a carrier and starting in the north. At E1, there's a little bit of water between the edge of the map and the mainland that you can wedge your carrier in. It makes you drat near impossible to torpedo, since they can't target your broadside and have to sneak a torpedo ("a" torpedo) through the tiny opening to even hit you at all.

Meanwhile of course, you can light them up at will.

There's also an easier spot to beach yourself at E-2 which is closer to the action, but it's less protected.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2015 22:08

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

SaltLick posted:

What's the key to get into manual mode for planes? I cant seem to have an independent bombing run unless i click on the target

Alt.

You can also use shift to select two+ bombing groups at once, in case you want to drop all your torps from one direction. (for instance, some idiot beached himself).

Crazyeyes24 posted:

Might be speaking out my rear end, but my hunch is that they are armed at the start of the green spread indicator or at least shortly thereafter (assuming they get dropped at the attack circle? Since I think that's the automatic drop point? I'm not sure how manual bombing controls work). This is based off of my experience using the tubes on a pheonix, I've not unlocked any carriers yet to try torp bombers.

No, even if the enemy ship is in the green area your torps might not detonate. Same with destroyers and cruisers, if you drop torps at point-blank they'll just PLONK off the hull. It's seems to be like halfway through the green firing indicator or just a bit before.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2015 23:37

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

wehraboos are on the whole more annoying I think, but the poi is terrible right now.

Show ends soon, so hopefully it'll pass.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2015 07:01

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

Divebombers are dogshit. I just had a full squad miss all their bombs on a beached, immobile phoenix with 200hp. Coming in from the bow.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2015 20:32

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

xthetenth posted:

It's pretty easy to hit a bad bb with a bunch of torpedoes with even a mediocre pattern. It's pretty hard to hit a good bb with more than one or two with a carrier load of torp bombers.

Fuso and Kongo can juke real well, its loving annoying. Kongo has better dodging, but Fuso has massively superior AA to make up for it.

Kawachi and Miyogi can get dunked though. I've also had some success faking my bombers towards a BB and then swerving and dropping a wide spread at a cruiser or DD. As long as they're headed in a straight line and not paying attention, even the fastest DD is easy to torpedo.

I don't even try to kill enemy carriers anymore. Alpha striking a Langley was a fun and valid tactic that added some depth to carrier play, but the Independence and Saipan are both hella fast, maneuverable, and can take a decent amount of damage before checking out. You need most of two full spreads to hit in order to take one out, and good luck with that.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2015 22:04

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

Fart Car '97 posted:

Shoot the middle of the ship. That's it. Citadel hits and crits are pure RNG beyond that.

The best way to get citadel penetrations is to hit the hull directly beneath the turrets. I almost never get them when I aim for the center (probably because that's where the armor is thickest), but if you aim for the turrets you'll get those sweet, sweet 15k damage shots.

The Kongo is amazing at this. Not only can you one-shot DDs and cruisers easily, but you can fire sequentially instead of a salvo and get four chances per reload instead of one. Other BBs are tricky because even if you hit the right spot with AP, their armor usually means you only get a partial penetration. Which still does massive damage, just not the free lunch hitting a DD or CA is.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2015 23:12

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

Fart Car '97 posted:

Man by the time you get up Tier 5 in things destroyers just become kind of pointless. A decent BB/CA/CL Group has basically no excuse to die to a destroyer ever. They're fun, but that's about it.

The higher-tier IJN DDs have 10km-plus range torpedoes. That plus smokescreens give them a lot of utility in large-scale encounters. Don't try to close the range except against distracted targets, or you will explode.

US DDs, I don't even know how you're supposed to play.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2015 01:59

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

demonR6 posted:

Also you can enable replays by editing the preferences.xml file and adding this line just before </scriptsPreferences> which is at the end of the file almost.

Replays are not working yet in this build but they will enable it again in the future according to Gunlion. They were working last build, at least you can save them now and use them at a later time.

<isReplayEnabled> true </isReplayEnabled>
<ReplayCameraUpdate> 30 </ReplayCameraUpdate>

fuuuuuck, I wish I had seen this literally ten minute ago. I just had the greatest game yet in my Kongo and wanted to brag to the world.

Took on two St. Louis and two Miyogis at once and won. While being attacked like crazy by torpedo bombers :shepface:

Kongo is easily the best ship I've played so far, just phenomenal when played right. Good accuracy, good speed, acceptable maneuverability, great damage, decent AA. Well-aimed AP shots just vaporize any cruiser or DD dumb enough to come into range. Her only weakness is the armor, cruisers with high reload speeds can chew you up good if you're not careful. Even a St. Louis is a credible threat despite being two tiers below it.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2015 05:07

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

The problem with the torpedo lead indicator is that it assumes consistent speed and heading. Which hey, sometimes guys are just cruising along unsuspecting and its great. You'll hit them with all your torps and sink them. But if they're taking evasive action, the indicator won't help you.

And you should always be taking some kind of evasive action. Even something as simple as constantly switching between full speed and 3/4ths makes a huge difference. On ships with lots of giddyup, you can go from full to 1/2 to 3/4ths to 1/2 to full and just gently caress with everyones' shot timing. Plus, rather than going directly parallel to the target you should angle your ship a bit so you're either headed towards or away from them--that added dimension makes it even harder to hit.

Unless I need to get somewhere NOW at top speed, I'm always loving with my speeds and directions. It increases survivability by an impressive amount.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2015 06:16

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

Fart Car '97 posted:

Obviously it's not perfect but I just don't see why it's necessary at all. Why should players not have to learn how to properly lead torpedoes in the first place?

Because unless you can do split-second trig calculations, hitting a target with a torpedo at anything other than point-blank range would just become a matter of luck.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2015 06:25

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

Q_res posted:

That password is usually posted in the not-publically-viewable subforum for a reason...

It's not a state secret, really. I see pubbies in the tanks channel all the time.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2015 07:04

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

hopterque posted:

Knowing Wargaming we're gonna get a ton of insane paper projects and stuff that only ever existed as a tall tale told around a campfire.

I can't wait.

Unlike the paper tanks, paper ships typically received a lot more effort and were way more fleshed-out before being discarded. The Montana-class was all ready to go until the US decided it didn't need a giant anti-Yamato BB when aircraft carriers were working just fine; similarly, the Super Yamato-class designed to counter the Montana was completely planned out, but was never built because they had to divert production to other ships. Even ships that were never really expected to be built got lots of attention as theoretical exercises.

Nordick posted:

20-inch guns. Also, I first read the name as HMS Inoperable, which probably would've been quite fitting, really.

The Super Yamato was going to have 6 20-inch guns. To replace those lame 18-inch popguns on the Yamato.

Japan really went in hard on the "Bigger is better" school of thought. The Shinano at 65,000 tons was, I believe, the biggest non-nuclear carrier ever built.

Vengarr fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Mar 18, 2015

# ¿ Mar 18, 2015 19:36

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

Hammerstein posted:

I hate to break it to you but having the -10% service time, +10% gun damage and +1 fighter/bomber perk on a CV captain makes quite a difference.

Carriers are the worst-balanced part of the game in general though.

Whatever they do to buff their power, they absolutely gotta do something to make them less boring to play.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2015 05:49

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

Hammerstein posted:

One of the balance problems is that they want to stick to at least somewhat historical ship specs while having that huge rng on board. And this is just bound to screw over certain nations like the Brits, because ultimately it seems that it's more important to lob a lot of shells over the horizon than especially powerful ones.

Bismarck - supposedly tier 8, with 4x2 15" against the Amagi's 10 and the North Carolina's 9 barrels.
Yamato - tier 10, 3x3 18", vs the Montana's 4x3 16".

The more shells you can fire the bigger the chance that you will score a crit or damage something important. So far I don't see how other equalizers like a good armor penetration value, high muzzle velocity or a larger caliber could make up for sheer quantity.

They'll just give Bismarck torpedoes to make up for it.

Seriously.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2015 05:57

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

Slim Jim Pickens posted:

BB tricks, shoot cruisers first. You're not going to one-shot a Fuso no matter how hard you try, but you can definitely blow up Clevelands and Omahas and clear up the lanes for DDs to make suicide runs. If you have competent DDs, they'll even survive!

I've one-shotted a Fuso :smugbert:

In my Kongo, down to my last 5k HP, landed a salvo to the forward magazine from close range (3~km). It was awesome.

That was after taking on a Miyogi and a Kongo simultaneously. Battleships are loving OP if you know how to shoot and can keep your armor angled. Also vaporized a DD and a cruiser with single-salvos, for a total of four kills since some DD ended up torpedoing the Miyogi.

It's probably pound-for-pound superior to the Fuso, although I gotta say, the big guns on the Fuso are amazing at long range. I've gotten two one-shot kills at max range on cruisers. That'll teach em not to zig-zag.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2015 21:12

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

Poil posted:

Is it worth upgrading my torp bombers from Doublas TBD Devastator to Consolidated TBY Sea Wolf on my Ranger? They're faster and more durable but it severely cuts their damage.
code:
Speed:   106 -> 136
Damage: 8500 -> 5900
HP:     1160 -> 1530

The TBDs get chewed up bad by T6 AA fire, I'd hate to see what would happen if you got thrown into a T8 game with them. Anything that improves speed and HP is probably worth it.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2015 21:36

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

PirateBob posted:

Oh for fucks sake. That's not what I needed.

Does the Gun Fire Control System give any meaningful increase to accuracy though?

Sure seems that way. It felt very noticeable in the Kongo.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2015 00:52

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

MoraleHazard posted:

I think they nerfed xp and credits:

Also, the Kongo is pretty awesome. It's not even fully upgraded.

Yeah, that's co-op mate.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2015 03:19

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

Poil posted:

I've played some matches in a Kongo, and dealt almost no damage in all of them combined. Turns out I can't aim for poo poo with it.
Need more practice!

By the way, is there a way to reliably switch which ship the game auto locks to? And a way to forcibly keep the lock instead of suddenly switching to a closer ship so the range gets hosed up just as you fire?

X key.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2015 00:11

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

hopterque posted:

That's because of AP rounds overpenetrating the armor and the internals of a turret and completely destroying it, which is ironic given the first part of your post is talking about how armor doesn't matter.

Also, an Amagi literally has less armor than a Fuso or a Nagato (and only like 50 mm more than a Kongo) , so of course the Kongo's guns are going to be able to penetrate. The armor on any battleship isn't really going to be able to soak well aimed hits from any other battleship because BB guns are just way too big and powerful, it's more about preventing lighter ships from being able to penetrate/crit.

Exactly. Which is why All or Nothing armor became a thing in the first place. You just couldn't armor an entire ship to block large-caliber shells; you had to choose just a few important places and give those spots all the armor you had. Even that wasn't always enough to stop shells from the ships' own guns, so gradually the focus shifted away from armor entirely towards speed and range.

That parity in design is why tier differences in WoWS aren't as dominant as they are in WoT. If I lost a duel to a Sherman in my T32, I'd consider seppuku the only way to ease my shame: losing to a St. Louis in an Omaha? Much more understandable. The guns only get so big, the armor so much thicker, the ships so much faster between designs. You don't have revolutionary leaps like the Sherman, Tiger or T-34 that just outclassed everything before it

The revolutionary leaps in ship design during WW2 came in carrier design. Which is why tier differences there ARE incredibly painful.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2015 18:28

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# ¿ Apr 23, 2024 23:25

Vengarr: Jun 17, 2010; Smashed before noon

sparkmaster posted:

So while I'm desperately waiting for a beta test invite, I'll pose a question.

With all the action items, good and bad, with WoS, how would you all describe the fun factor? Is this a fun game and one worth playing?

I'm seriously enjoying myself. Even the underpowered carriers have their moments. The plane view is loving cool, following your planes as they drop dive bombs and torps and dogfight is pretty rad.

There's definitely some fiddling needed with the balance, but the core gameplay is very fun.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2015 22:41

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > World of Warships: just had a dev team that did everything wrong

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