Yet another moan about destroyers and torpedoes

[imp44791]

First off, the game is amazing and crushingly addictive. I haven't suffered from the "one.more.turn" syndrome so badly since Civ4 or thereabouts. Tremendous work. One of the things that I enjoy the most is how well the transition from guns, to WW2-style carrier exchanges, to Cold War missile ships is done. Yes, there are some kinks that need to be ironed there, as people have pointed out in other threads, but the game is colossal fun already and feels "finished" in a way that we haven't seen since, well, Civ4 or thereabouts. Well done.

I am still infuriated however at the torpedo game during the gun era. The enemy AI behaves well on the whole, screening its heavies, charging towards you with destroyers to force you to turn away, all great stuff. It's still annoying to see crippled ships that are dead on the water and pumped with shells still radiate torpedoes as they go down. Yes, I know about Acasta and Scharnhorst, but that was such an exceptional event it is now legendary. In the game, the last gasp torpedo biteback happens almost every month. Anyway, on the whole the enemy destroyers behave really well. So, and please excuse the exasperated shout, why can't my own AI-controlled destroyers do the same?

Pretty please? I am not asking for any advantage for the player, just destroyers on screen formation who actually screen, and destroyers that when asked to flotilla attack to actually bloody charge at the enemy rather than go gallivanting at some corner of the map. Perhaps give the player a cursor prompt to point the general direction of attack, like we do with air strikes later? More generally, the AI's ships are very lively with firing torpedoes, finding great solutions all the time, whereas my destroyers/cruisers will zoom past the enemy well in range and in good angle and never fire their torpedoes. And here I'm talking about AI-controlled friendly ships.

Torpedoes are by far that #1 frustration with the game, mostly because it's clear that the correct, historical result is very feasible. The enemy AI actually does pretty well with it. Can we also do it for both sides? Please?

On another matter, I feel that holding on to a far-flung empire after 1950 should be made tremendously costly to be worth it. Rebellions should become much more frequent, and the player should be basically faced with the choice of wasting money trying to keep overseas possessions or maintaining a decent fleet. The post-1950 world should have 1-2 true global powers in terms of geographical spread. In most of my games there is a still a 1890s feel on the map with way too many imperial flags around Africa, the West and East Indies etc.

[EwaldvonKleist]

Good post and I agree! Light forces behaviour for screen/support/flotilla attack is suboptimal to dysfunctional for divs on the player's side.
(Posted something similar here https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 6&t=396825 and here https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 6&t=396711 )

It's still annoying to see crippled ships that are dead on the water and pumped with shells still radiate torpedoes as they go down. Yes, I know about Acasta and Scharnhorst, but that was such an exceptional event it is now legendary.

Launching torpedoes precisely under fire or heavily damaged indeed happens too often. Acasta was the weird anomaly and not the baseline, but in the game it is reversed.

Agreed about the one more turn addictiveness of RtW3!

[Searry]

You have to fiddle around with lead formations if you want better screening and flotilla attacks.

[EwaldvonKleist]

You have to fiddle around with lead formations if you want better screening and flotilla attacks.

Could you please elaborate?

Battles with one Bdiv ans one DDdiv should be the most simple, clear cut case, no? And even there it does not work well.

[imp44791]

You have to fiddle around with lead formations if you want better screening and flotilla attacks.

Thank you. I have actually tried - I never leave things on whatever the default is, not least because I want to make sure I know when/if I have direct control over direction/speed before the first sighting.

The problem is that even when I am properly screened by a V-shaped formation of destroyers, the minute the action starts (put on full speed, make the first course adjustment), my destroyers invariably fall behind even though they have greatly superior speeds and could easily stay around me. Flotilla attacks - I am not sure how the lead formation would affect them. At all events, there needs to be a more intuitive UI option there - as I said, the easiest and more obvious way would be to set a bearing for the attack, much like a real semaphore message would be (something like "course 90. Flotilla attack enemy to the E".

My suspicion is that it may be an easy thing to fix. It seems that the screen is not able to deal with the dramatic course corrections that the human will order, whereas if it's AI-screening-AI it knows exactly what it's heavies are about to do.

Anyway, this is a frustrating part of an amazing game, and it would be nice to see sorted - either fixed if it's a bug, or better communicated to the player via the UI.

[EwaldvonKleist]

Indeed the AI often executes the manoeuvres well (kudos to the devs here). I have seen good AI destroyer attacks or battle turn aways covered by a faint destroyer attack.

But light forces in Support/screen of the player's divs throw away all doctrine and orders the moment they get the chance.

[Searry]

I think it was better earlier so I'm mixing it up with what's happening currently. Something must have gone wrong somewhere.

[WilliamMiller]

We can take a look at this, see what might be adjusted/changed/added.

[DPBiddle]

Just a little feedback

Playing as Italy. 1906. At war with France. Doctrines are gunnery and night fighting. I just got a division of 900 ton destroyers that are equipped with 3 double torpedo mounts.

In a night encounter where we all started on top of each other, I set the DDs free on flotilla attack. They fired dozens of torpedoes, with probably a dozen hits. They even chased down the French BC & BB which got 2 and 3 a piece. Unfortunately, they both limped off into the dark before they could be sunk.

Italian gunnery was good but the real hero of the day, in a battle where France had more capital ships, was a bunch of plucky DDs.

Just my experience

[cormallen]

Agree with the comments of cripples somehow firing torpedoes despite being blazing wrecks. I know the TT are often underwater so they maybe surviving but with zero visibility and almost certainly not viable FC comms left it is ridiculous!

[imp44791]

Just a little feedback

Playing as Italy. 1906. At war with France. Doctrines are gunnery and night fighting. I just got a division of 900 ton destroyers that are equipped with 3 double torpedo mounts.

In a night encounter where we all started on top of each other, I set the DDs free on flotilla attack. They fired dozens of torpedoes, with probably a dozen hits. They even chased down the French BC & BB which got 2 and 3 a piece. Unfortunately, they both limped off into the dark before they could be sunk.

Italian gunnery was good but the real hero of the day, in a battle where France had more capital ships, was a bunch of plucky DDs.

Just my experience

I'm curious: were your destroyers much faster than the opposition? I did a few experiments yesterday with an old save:

Speed seems to make a big difference in the willingness of friendly destroyers to fire torpedoes. Absolute speed, not relative. In one test, my 23-knot 300 t first generation destroyers stubbornly refused to fire even when zooming past a crawling old Spanish battleship which must not have been making much more than 10 knots. From all angles, simply no launches. The final insult was when one of them eventually ate one of the "last gasp" torpedoes of the almost crippled B (I was providing gunnery from other ships ofc). The wreck of a battleship almost dead in the water launched, the healthy if primitive Ds did not.

But in a later battle, 30 knot 900 tonners happily launched against enemy heavies making more than 20 (probably the usual 20-21 of pre-dreadnought era cruisers and Battleships). Didn't hit anything but I don't mind that. Actually I like how the enemy AI turns away from torpedoes if it can. Realistic - surface launched torpedoes did not hit all that much in real life battles when surprise, especially at night (like your example), was not a factor. Anyway, the speed difference was not much greater than in the early example, if at all, but the absolute one does seem to have made a difference.

On the last gasp torpedo launches by wrecks, one easy solution is to give a large negative modifier to any ships on fire, or with damage greater than x% (pick a suitably large x). They can launch, but probably won't hit a thing since they won't be able to see anything/work out a solution while burning/sinking/filled with dead and wounded and wrecked compartments.

[DPBiddle]

I had 10 to 15 DDs in the battle. 300, 500 and the new 900 ton DDs between 25 and 30 knots top speed.

Sometimes DDs refuse to engage. Other times, it's the charge of the light brigade.


Generally they are more aggressive when they are more numerous and after a few advancements. Which kind of makes sense.

[EwaldvonKleist]

I find that manual torpedo solution and often also manual leading of DDivs is the only way to get good value out of DDs. Otherwise they either
i) Do nothing
ii) Waste their torps on obviously useless targets
iii) Don't do appropriate hit and run, but something like hit and stay, which simply gets them slowly killed.
iv) Get into one of the problems with support/screen/core role settings that have been discussed a lot in this and other threads.

Especially early game DDs are super reluctant to use their torps. Perhaps the AI logic looks at how "valuable" each torp is depending on the number on board, and therefore becomes reluctant to launch them?

Early game AI torp logic is weird in general. I won several battles in 1890 with my legacy fleet of 6k German Bs against far stronger and faster British B-Fleets simply because I manually launched my torps when in 1890s knife fighting range and the AI, for whatever reason, didn't bother to use the torps at all. And as we all know guns are useless in the 1890s.

[Sappho]

if I member that correctly, during the battle of Jutland the German torpedoboats had to screen the retreating main force of the Hochseeflotte. The majority of all boats attacked and fired their torpedos achieving not a single hit. So, unsuccessful torpedo attacks are realistic, I think.

BTW.:

You can "cklick-off" torpedo-firing for a ship.

[EwaldvonKleist]

if I member that correctly, during the battle of Jutland the German torpedoboats had to screen the retreating main force of the Hochseeflotte. The majority of all boats attacked and fired their torpedos achieving not a single hit. So, unsuccessful torpedo attacks are realistic, I think.

BTW.:

You can "cklick-off" torpedo-firing for a ship.

https://www.jutland1916.com/tactics-and ... 0the%20826.


Some stats for torps at Jutland.

[imp44791]

So, I experimented a bit more, this time under Captain's mode which I don't play normally. The method is that I put the flotilla in manual mode, check its solution options, then flip it back to AI mode (perhaps not the best test, as flipping AI back and forth seems to reset matters and the ships decide on new strategies). Even on full manual mode though and zooming past the enemy, it seems the problem is that ships (early ones at least) don't get any torpedo solutions. Under the manual "fire torpedoes" almost always the options are "no solution" or "friendly ship in firing line". The very weird thing (and perhaps where a bug is) is that sometimes as I scroll down the list of targets I see a "LOW" option, but if I cycle down to see whether other targets are available and then come back to the original option I more often than not get a "no solution" - i.e. the original LOW solution is gone, simply because I scrolled to another item on the target list. In fact, you can try to play this game yourselves. I tried with a Japanese surprise attack on the Russian fleet at 1902, with primitive 300 and 400-ton destroyers with two centreline single tubes each, then came to finish off the wrecks with my cruisers. The enemy is of course stationary (to begin with, and then a lot of cripples), and my destroyers zoomed from all directions. With so many targets present on either side, it is remarkable how many "no solution" options there were (and I'm not talking anything silly like firing to port with my starboard submerged tube) and also the weird result of cycling up and down the (massive) list of targets and seeing LOWs and even HIGHs become "no solution" when you get back to them. Very often a LOW will stay LOW but the bearing will change every time you look at it! In the same turn, and even with the same torpedo screen up. Just cycling through the list of ships and targets. I suspect the program recalculates every time you click rather than once and for all at the beginning of the turn, and with so many possible paths and speeds it just gets stuck. But it's just a hypothesis.

Things seem to get better with improved tech. That's fine of course in terms of increasing the low chances of actually hitting anything, but here we're talking about ships not firing at all. Perhaps put an option for a blind launch even if a feasible solution is not calculated? Of course out of arc tubes should still be disabled!

[imp44791]

I experimented more with Captain's mode in the ironclad-PD (first generation destroyer) period with DDs up to 500 tons, 25-27 kts and 2-3 single tubes (mostly centreline, but some designs had wing tubes). I tried both moving (normal battle) and stationary (Japanese surprise attack) targets. I think the frustration arises from the way the solutions are (not) calculated. I mentioned above the fact that new solutions seem to be recalculated every time you click on a target. The other problem seems to be the frankly bizarre solutions that do get calculated, when they are. We are talking completely off-the-wall bearings, often at almost right angles from where the enemy ship is going. Even at HIGH bearings occasionally seem to be off. I suspect the program is inputting the speed of the enemy is a weird way. This is before the inevitable violent evasive action after I launch, since of course the AI seems to have perfect visibility of torpedoes, whereas the human can't seem them at all. Sure, I get it that the AI has to be given some advantage, so I don't mind this bit. I also appreciate that the chance of hitting something should be very low in this period, but completely offbeat solutions for LOW (that sometimes vanish simply when you click to another target for a moment), especially when the enemy is actually at anchor, imply some sort of glitch in the process.

In general this is a part of the UI which could do with a more general revamp. A simple range circle for torpedoes is insufficient information for strategic decisions, especially when headscratching "out of arc" messages are given for targets that seem to be next to tubes built on the correct side of the ship (so, I'm not talking of silliness like trying to fire to port with a starboard tube). I think the best thing would be to actually see the arcs on the tactical map (toggled of course, so that the map doesn't become unreadable if you are not interested in torpedo info). That's for manual launches in Captain's mode. For rear-admiral's mode (my preferred one) I revert to my suggestion in the OP to suggest a general bearing for a flotilla attack in the way we do for airstrikes.

I want to stress again that I am not asking for a better chance of hitting more enemy ships with my torpedoes. But I want to have a reasonable understanding as an admiral of what my options and chances are with these weapons, and if I still want to suicidally launch my destroyers on a pointless salvo that hits nothing but perhaps causes the enemy to turn away, well, that's a historical outcome in a way.

And, once again, please give a malus for torpedo calculations for ships that are badly damaged/on fire/pumped with shells every turn. The Acasta Syndrome is extremely frustrating and immersion-breaking when it takes place in every single battle.

[EwaldvonKleist]

I agree with you that the target solution thing list seems bugged and sometimes solutions disappear. It is also very annoying that you have to click through every target of every DD to find out if there is a solution instead of having this highlighted.

The Acasta Syndrome is extremely frustrating and immersion-breaking when it takes place in every single battle.

Very important point. Especially since DD torpedo tubes are positioned on the deck and are large installations without armor that require calculations for target solution, angles and speed.

Regarding ingame balance, torpedoes become ever stronger relative to guns, since their range and speed and numbers (hello, 4*4 DD) quickly grow, while long or even mid range gunnery improves far less (RtW3 range-accuracy formula is another thing that needs some checking imho).

So by the 1930s the DDs can flood the water with dozens of precise torpedos while your dozens of secondary gun rarely hits them and doesn't cause any disruption to their torpedo sniper aiming.

[imp44791]

So by the 1930s the DDs can flood the water with dozens of precise torpedos while your dozens of secondary gun rarely hits them and doesn't cause any disruption to their torpedo sniper aiming.

I am semi-ok with this considering the historical lethality of Long Lances, though the balance can indeed be improved. Once radar is available in particular, radar gunnery should also slap charging DDs silly. I think it's a matter of slowing down the tech bonus (and when the tech becomes available) for torps, but starting from a rather better level, so that Port Arthur-style surprise attacks actually hit anything. By the time Long Lance equivalents are around players and AI should have the tech to generally stand off and hit each other with planes - as they historically did. Long Lances scored their greatest victories when planes were not an option i.e. at night and without carriers around. This should be the optimal strategy, with diminishing returns once radar gunnery comes around.

[WLRoo]

Point 1: The ships on the tactical map are oversized relative to the scale of the map. The dots you see before the ship is identified is closer to scale.

Point 2: Commanders of small DDs have to buy the torpedoes themselves. Using gold. Weight for weight. It's the only explanation I've come up with as to why they so reluctant to fire their torpedoes. Later on, the admiralty buys the torpedoes so the commanders happily throw 8 at a single merchantman.

If you're running your DDs in divisions, just double check what traits the officer in charge has as well - I'd guess an Aggressive, Torpedo Expert would be the best type for Flotilla Attacks, whilst a Timid one is very unlikely to venture out from under the protection of the big guns!