why is any aiming so far off?

[Go_Rongor]

Even within close distances like 2 km, main guns manage to shoot 10 degrees off in azimuth to the target. It's ridiculous. It's unbelievable gunnery folks might have aimed that stupid in those days.

[Augenstreifschuss]

Try aiming at a ship BEHIND your target.. you will get a massive amount of hits (bug, of course)

[SentosKarum]

Originally posted by Augenstreifschuss:

Try aiming at a ship BEHIND your target.. you will get a massive amount of hits (bug, of course)

That is strictly speaking not true.

There two things at play:

1. Shells / torps explode when hitting something solid.
2. Most shots miss by a narrow margin which means they follow a mostly identical arc to "hitting" shots.

But also yes, some misses are beyond bad in how far off they are, couldn't have mmissed hard than if the other side of ship tried to fire at it.

[Augenstreifschuss]

Of course toprs and shells hit other ships in the way.
But what I said still is true in the game: you hit / sink ships much much faster (as of August 20, 22) when you aim at a ship behind the one you actually want to hit. Try it. It can be reproduced easily.

[LordDeed]

Originally posted by Augenstreifschuss:

Of course toprs and shells hit other ships in the way.
But what I said still is true in the game: you hit / sink ships much much faster (as of August 20, 22) when you aim at a ship behind the one you actually want to hit. Try it. It can be reproduced easily.

The same thing works about aiming for the ship in front of the one your aiming for Go_Rongor is still 100% correct though it needs a bit of a rework

[sintri]

All manufacturing was done by machine or by hand, no computers, would assume the quality control on the shells aren't going to produce identical shells all the time.

As for shooting nearby enemies to score hits, I'm suspecting game doesn't actually do a target point and fire a shot and calculate deviation based on that point. Probably more a 20% chance to hit, 20% hits that target, the other 80% lands anywhere not at that target, So anything along those flight path will still be hit, but your target will be biased as a hit or no hit. So while you'll be lobbing shells in that direction, any shells that fail the accuracy check are guaranteed to miss the target. Anyone else standing near the target don't get the benefit of being having shells specifically aimed to miss them hence the high hit rates. Just a theory.

[Hidden Gunman]

I'm not saying the system is realistic, but the early 'modern' tech was pretty poor, plus add in that many of the lighter ships roll and bob about in anything other than a millpond on a windless day and it's probably a pretty good approximation of accuracy.

There is something to be said about weight of fire, where you are better off firing a lot of shells at a target, before you develop your tech to the point where you can confidently focus on less shots, but more accurate ones.

Granted, it's a very subjective thing, but look at the ship stats after a battle. I've generally found the more accurately equipped ships do have a higher hit rate.

[Zuul]

This really isn’t what’s being asked. The question of the OP is almost certainly in regards to targeting things like fast TB’s with very very low hit chances where your gunners, at nearly point blank range, on a straight sailing ship, lob shells at ridiculous 15+ degrees off the target.

It’s less “my shots are missing” and more “my gunners are drunk, blindfolded, wearing heavy gloves, and tripped over the admirals toy poodle right as they fired”.

[oh6cayuse]

Just the other day I hade my take on an Iron Duke that after putting down a couple of BCs at 10-15+ yards ended up fighting a CL (out of torps) at 3k yards and my 13.5" guns where firing about 10-15% in front and aft of the target (in the same salvo); meaning the turrets weren't even aiming as 1 group. It was infuriating :(

[Deusmortis]

Originally posted by SentosKarum:

Originally posted by Augenstreifschuss:

Try aiming at a ship BEHIND your target.. you will get a massive amount of hits (bug, of course)

That is strictly speaking not true.

There two things at play:

1. Shells / torps explode when hitting something solid.
2. Most shots miss by a narrow margin which means they follow a mostly identical arc to "hitting" shots.

But also yes, some misses are beyond bad in how far off they are, couldn't have mmissed hard than if the other side of ship tried to fire at it.

True in life, but not necessarily in game.

There is some error in the code. It is not simply a matter of the closer target intercepting shots on low ballistic paths, or shots that might have fallen short. I have made multiple observations of the fire from my ships deviating directly to a nearer ship that IS NOT in a direct line between my ships and my targets.

As in, target is moving right to left, relative to my ship's position. Target is approaching a sinking ship. Once the target gets somewhat close to the sinking ship, the trajectory of my shots (hits and misses) now goes directly to the closer sinking ship. This can sometimes be a deviation of 10 or more degrees along the horizontal plane.

Long ago, this was patched out of the game, but it returned in more recent versions. When it was patched out, hits and misses were obvious from nearly the point when the shot left the barrel. You misses would be hundreds of meters off target, so shots from the same salvo would have very different flight paths, based on what was going to hit or miss. It was so visually jarring that the old system was reintroduced.

[-=EDF=- Kouta Seto]

*cough* Iowa class trying to hit a lone, not moving IJN CL *cough* nearly 500 shots fired on what? 10km range? Resulted in nearly all of them missing. And we talk Iowa class here so top notch systems. Sooo ships hitting one another is rare (it took bismarck roughly 10x shooting to zero in to hood, wich is by far the best aim ever achived and will most likely be a coincidence(if hood would have started to manouver then bismarcks aim would be off again and useless but well... british stupidness cost over 1000 lifes that day)

[Hyp]

Bismarck hit Hood on the second salvo, that the hit was so good was of course luck.On the first salvo Bismarck knocked out her own radar.Then again Germany was technologically infront of the allies and had very good range finders.Not that this game offer any accuracy what so ever.When gunners are trained by the post office, you get what this game offers.
And the British captain did very well, closed the distance, and turned the ship to get all guns to fire, since Hood's strongest armor was the broadside.So British did nothing wrong, Bismarck got lucky.But see WOW, if BB's got hit percentage as in real life, there would be no players left.And I have argued that this game needs better accuracy, for BB's and BC's, or else players will run away.But I always get laughed of by armchair captains.You know, the ones that know everything better than me, like tRump almost....lol

[Sphere]

Originally posted by Oggmeista:

Yep i experience the same sort of issues, though when i voice these issues on here, i get remarks like you don't know what you are doing, or git good, or the difficulty is fine, the aI doesn't cheat etc...but i continuously find if i use anything else but BS the ai has superiority, his tb's sail with almost inpunity into the centre of my formations and launch salvos of torps , his light cruiser out guns my heavy cruiser, his ships are nowhere to be seen on the map till they suddenly launch a huge assault on single BS, which mysteriously have decided to leave the fleet TF they were in , my TP get anhilited as soon as they come within their range, and hardly ever manage to launch a torpedo despite me desperately trying to fire.. ships to wander around aimlessly becoming cannon fodder for his fleet which doesn't sail around randomnly etc etc...

Yeah, I honestly don't know what game you're playing. The AI in battles seems pretty impotent to me because their fleet tends to get snarled up. Just sail your ships in straight lines at the edge of your effective range and shoot the enemy clump to pieces. You should be sinking their ships at a rate about 10:1. I've had battles with 100:1 loss ratios.

If your trying to win a torpedo battle at knife-fight ranges ... have fun. But I'd just say, you can always turn on AI control for your fleet and it will behave just like the AI. It's the same code.

[Silence Suzuka]

Originally posted by Oggmeista:

Yep i experience the same sort of issues, though when i voice these issues on here, i get remarks like you don't know what you are doing, or git good, or the difficulty is fine, the aI doesn't cheat etc...but i continuously find if i use anything else but BS the ai has superiority, his tb's sail with almost inpunity into the centre of my formations and launch salvos of torps , his light cruiser out guns my heavy cruiser, his ships are nowhere to be seen on the map till they suddenly launch a huge assault on single BS, which mysteriously have decided to leave the fleet TF they were in , my TP get anhilited as soon as they come within their range, and hardly ever manage to launch a torpedo despite me desperately trying to fire.. ships to wander around aimlessly becoming cannon fodder for his fleet which doesn't sail around randomnly etc etc...

I agree with you.
It feels the the player here will defend this game at all cost no matter what you show them.

I made a simple test, with screenshot and repro step, they still refuse to admit the hit chance in this game is broken. Make a 35 knot or more ship, either it is a DD or super BB. balanced rudder. Against another BB in 1940 era. Start the game, turn hard right or left with manual rudder, and they won't hit you at all at even less than 1 km. While you were supposed to shot some fire or torpedo kinda randomly because the weird turret rotation. I posted screenshot, and they say it is supposed to be because I was too close. Hmmmmmm

[Smablood]

Originally posted by Augenstreifschuss:

Try aiming at a ship BEHIND your target.. you will get a massive amount of hits (bug, of course)

I do this all the time and it works great.

[oh6cayuse]

Just quit another battle because my ships are firing in every direction except the target. God I miss 1.05 :(