A request re: that infernal "Turret Jammed" loop

[imp44791]

I'm testing .39 patch with Japan and to be fair a lot has been going well. Some silly situations like "The Diet cuts funding because of low tensions" when the orange bar is about to hit the black line are still there, but I can suspend disbelief that much as to assume that politicians live in cloud cuckoo land.

A request, though: as the "turret jammed/turret unjammed" loop of death seems to be happening as often as ever, can you please remove it from the total damage report when I look at a squadron. I am not saying "don't count it". I'm just asking to be able to understand whether a ship's 29% damage in a battle of tens of ships and hundreds of shells flying every round is due to actual damage and not to the a temporary 25% charge on a silly jammed turret. That's it. Just mention on the report of each squadron: 4% (actual damage), 25% (fake turret jam damage). Put a column like you do with flooding if you wish.

[imp44791]

This is a battle in the dreadnought era (1921) no planes. State of the art BC, 4 twin 14'' turrets, chasing a couple of CLs.

jamujam.JPG (23.08 KiB) Viewed 1744 times

That's 4 jam-unjam loops in 18 minutes.

But wait! There's more!

jamujam2.JPG (52.63 KiB) Viewed 1744 times

So, we're up to 6 in less than an hour. There were 2 more in the next half hour as I was pasting the two cripples into submission.

Shall we call this a teeeeensy bit OTT? And all this time it's been impossible to judge what is the real damage to the ship, since all this jamming/unjamming fandango adds/subtracts 17% of damage a pop.

[WLRoo]

What level of variable tech are you playing with?

How many guns per turret?

What year?

[imp44791]

Always maximum variability. It shouldn't lead to such absurd results.

The rest of the info is in the OP

[WLRoo]

One of the variability modes is that all multi-gun turrets become unreliable - I'm guessing that the mode it landed on this time as twin turrets rarely have problems. Do you have any issues with single-gun turrets jamming?

There's also a random chance of equipment issues occurring - I can't remember it ever applying to turrets though.

I agree that does look excessive, but sometimes the RNG seems to 'stick'. Does the issue persist if you save then quit and reload?

[imp44791]

It happens and has happened in every single save and I've played loads.

It happens in 1890, and it happens in 1945.

It happens for singles and it happens for twins (more often for those). EDIT: I never use triples until very late in the period, as I am a speed freak who fears torpedoes. And loves HAA, so I never over turret either, because I hate the blast effects reduction in firing rate for DPs later in the game. 4x14'' twins is my go-to "WW1 era" BB/BC configuration, 4x16'' twins with a forest of 5'' twin DPs my WW2 one. And speed to the max, so no triples.

I always play maximum variability to have replayability in my saves. If it leads to such silly displays (and it does in every single game, all the time, every single battle, every single ship, forever and ever and ever as Demis Roussos would put it) then it should be called "wacky bizarre ahistorical mode", Sure, jam a really out there early tech turret like a triple in 1900 or a 20'' gun turret in 1925. And either keep it stuck or tone down the probability.

I suspect it's not really a bug, rather than a wacky result caused by putting in too high a probability. I am not complaining about that, in the end there are only so many hours of playtesting you can do. Well, here's the play testing report. Take down the probability, it's silly.

And it's really only a tedious problem, it never affects battles. All it does is to obscure the damage report, as per OP above... for about 5 minutes before it get unstuck. And then stuck again. And then unstuck. And again and again and again. It's just a pointless diversion that makes the game look silly without reason.

I think I just about made my point so no more on this for me.

[WLRoo]

Just done some calculations, and if the chance was set to 2% per turn it would generate a 70% chance of at least one failure per turret per hour - and thereby similar outcomes to those you indicate here.

Plus, on further consideration, that doesn't seem entirely unreasonable as a turret jam in game covers all issues with the guns in the mount, such as errors in the loading procedure.

As for it affecting the health of the ship, I suspect that's due to destroyed and disabled guns using the same piece of code, just with there being a flag for repair status.

[edit] Also consider, a captain with guns out of action is going to report a massively reduced combat capability, because having, say, 25% of the guns out of action is a serious concern.

I have to say, I do share the frustration to a degree - you notice a big chunk of health missing and you think 'OMG! What did I miss?!' to find...a jammed turret.

[imp44791]

As I said, I made my point. I could bombard the forum with insane jam-unjam loop reports in the double figures, but anyone who's played the game can attest that this is a very silly situation. It's not game breaking like the missing refit designs which are STILL occasionally happening at reload, or infuriating like the slow/crippled ships who twitch like teenagers playing FPS games whenever a torpedo goes on the water so as to evade it. But it's silly and immersion breaking. The probability needs to be scaled WAY down, I'd say at least an order of magnitude. 2% jam probability PER MINUTE PER TURRET (like your example above) is just insane - I know it's just a number you plucked out of thin air, but I daresay even that is probably conservative considering what is happening in the game.

I've proposed before: make the jam event very unlikely, but make it painful. A turret jams, at a LOW probability. But it STAYS jammed with an even tinier small probability of unjamming. We're talking a major malfunction here. Make it as likely as engine breakdowns at high speed perhaps.

[thedoctorking]

I agree with the OP, this kind of breaks immersion. Maybe if you are going to keep the system working as is, you could change the reporting, calling it a weapon malfunction. Could be a turret jam, especially if the turret has been hit but not penetrated, could be something with the loading mechanism, could be the magazine guys are confused and sending up the wrong stuff, and then if it gets fixed in five minutes that makes total sense.

Also, it shouldn't report the ship as 25% disabled when this happens. That disabling should only happen when the turret is destroyed.

[WLRoo]

Just run a battle myself, the only ships showing high levels of turret jams were my two brand new battleships, launched in 1897 and the battle occurred in 1897. One suffered 8 jams and the other 9 across a 4.5 hour battle - bad, but not terrible.

My two older ships (launched 1894), identical in all but mounting single turrets in A and Y positions - suffered 2 jams and 3 jams in the same period.

That is well below 2% per minute for the ship suffering the most jams.

Not only that' but I'm suspecting that there are many things taken into account - for example, my new ships suffered a higher rate of issues with the guns which is typical IRL, new mounts tend to be problematic until properly bedded in and components running freely - sometimes it even requires modifications to the mount.

Nor would I be surprised to find high speed turns increases the chances of a jam, representing the strain put on the hull and crews getting thrown off their feet.

Really though, we need more evidence than just a couple of games. If you think there's a problem, we need more evidence - and probably fairly detailed at that. Ship age, crew quality, possibly CO quality, possibly weather conditions...

[imp44791]

Capture.JPG (44.38 KiB) Viewed 1445 times

Battle just started, 13'' qual 0 guns are old hat (I've got 16'' qual 0 deployed on BBs). Twins in 7 year old ships. Haven't built up speed yet because THE BATTLE JUST STARTED.

4 jams in 4 minutes. The definition of WAD.

I could go on, but I won't. Last post on this, and I do mean last, because I'm beginning to get PO'ed and no game is worth this.

EDIT: In fact I am now angry, No, I don't intend to be your free playtester. I paid for the game. I reported a bug/crap design/whatever the hell you call it, I get denial. I'm out.

[WLRoo]

There is one person looking after all the code etc. for this game, and I'm not certain it is their full time job. I believe there is also a small team of beta testers.

As such, a complaint like this is going to be low priority compared to all the other things that need fixing - unless you can demonstrate that there is indeed an issue.

I see a lot of complaints that 'torpedoes are broken', because players don't understand how the weapons work and don't realise they need to lead their targets significantly in order to score hits.

However, I've also seen a complaint from RtW2 that TPS 4 was leading to a lot of ships being sunk, that no-one could see - until the complainant went as far as digging into the code themselves to find the issue, whereupon the issue was then fixed in patch 1.24

Also, please be aware of the difference between 'I see no evidence from my own game to support your position' and 'you are incorrect and everything is fine' - in fact, my comment about needing more evidence was intended to be neutral and apply to you, me, thedoctorking and anyone else who was interested in contributing.

[WLRoo]

Finally remembered to check after completing another battle. Using ships logs, and considering they only report hits and not opening fire, so it's likely the guns were firing for longer without issues.

Izumo: 7,100t CA, twin 7" A and Y, Crew Quality 2, CO Average - 0 jams in 90 mins
Ozikaze: 300t DD, single 2" A, Crew 2 - 0 jams in 30 mins
Tokiwa: 6,400t CA, single 8" A and Y, Crew 2, CO Average - 1 jam in 90 mins
Iwate: 6,400t CA, single 8" A and Y, Crew 2, CO Average - 0 jams in 90 mins
Akitsushima: 6,000t CL, single 6" A and Y plus all broadside mounts, Crew 2, CO Below Average - 1 hit reported, 0 jams
Kasagi: 6,000t CL, single 6" A and Y plus all broadside mounts, Crew 2, CO Below Average - 0 jams in 5 minutes
Takasago: 6,000t CL, single 6" A and Y plus all broadside mounts, Crew 2, CO Average - 2 hits reported, no jams

Yep, this is getting a bit boring I know, but there's' another 18 ships. Suffice to say there's one jam between the lot of them, leaving me 3 jams between 25 ships in total for the entire scenario (roughly 500 turns, or 8.5 hours)

However, these ships are all armed with medium (8" or smaller) calibre guns and I had nothing bigger than a CA. More testing and evidence is needed.

Edit: In a follow-up battle with a lot more shooting, I suffered 7 turret jams across 19 ships with the combat portion lasting for over 210 minutes. Still no involvement of Bs with big guns though.

Edit 2: And now a battle where my Bs again turn up - and I now have 13 jams, 7 of them on a single B and 9 between the 3 that appeared. 17 ships, 150 mins combat time.

So need to do more testing with the big ships - especially as my current batch mount only 8" guns so shouldn't be suffering as much as they are.

[Squarehead]

Yeah I'm not convinced there's a major issue here.
Historically various mechanical or crew related factors did cause reductions in firepower on a pretty regular basis (the WWII KGV class battleships have been endlessly criticised for it).
Crew quality and tech level both seem to have major impacts on how much it happens in game (as they should).
Playing as I do without health bars I generally don't even notice the minor jams that get cleared in a minute or two until I go to review the logs outside of maybe very small engagements. Which is fine because a short jam like that won't have a meaningful impact in any case.

Don't get me wrong the game has it's issues/cases of weirdness, I'm just not sure the rate of turret jams ranks highly among them. That said I think doctorking's suggestion about more informative feedback in the logs is a good one (even if it's more flavour than gameplay mechanics)