Did someone noticed harder difficulty compared to previous versions?

[gigamelon1981]

So, i'm playing China, up until 1930 i was dominating.
Easy difficulty btw.
Then up against German. I noticed if their ships are ridiculously strong.
Like on everything. Can soak bizzare amount of damage surpassing its class.
Also being laser accurate.
With a lot of efforts i defeated the german. Now, the last enemy, the Brits.
The same thing happens again.
It just much worse.

Their DD could withstand a barrage of 4 of my meme atlanta ship with 90 barrels of 5inch.
I'm looking to 55 to 75K total damage until destroyed by structural damage. And it took a long time to get there.

Their CA is laser accurate, like every salvo has a guarantee to hit. And once hit, it always penetrate. It easily mincemeat my CLs at any distance.
And nothing looking ordinary either from the used tech. Krupp IV, Picric acid 3, tube powder 3, Improved Ballistic 1.
I'm using the latest game tech here at 1950. With modern armor II and such.
They also super durable, like two hit from 23inch torpedo didn't flood them...
Has like 5 inch of armor that for some reason is hard to be penetrated by 10.9 inch gun.
One CA could soak like 145K damage, i think it is a bit excessive?

And i don't want to start talking about their BBs.
Everytime they fire, bam, 50k from 25km...

I've tried many combination, like incendiary, it doesn't work. It simply doing 0 damage and causes 0 fire. HiCap, Ballistic 1, SAP, Semi Ballistic....
My BB with 20 inch gun refuses to use the SAP like at 15km because it only causes minimal damage to the enemy BB....
Only one i could find semi useful is the Hi capacity, but it slowly burns or chip the enemy.

[chiyen]

Looks like so, since several updates, gun accuracy has been boosted, and ship survival capability has been increased as well.

Seems like a solution to avoid a long "miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss... and you are out of ammo" boring game.

[xXxatrush1987]

try to use a smaller gun with the highest pen ammo for a higher volume of fire only works to an extend.
also try to learn and use your optimal range, ai is very good at it now. if you get blasted at 25km your deck armor may be simply too thin.
20" inch guns arent the best guns for every situation. i played as germans trough the whole thing just using 15" guns max, no problem. just study the enemy: he is using 20" light ammo? opt for more distance. he is using 16/17" super heavy? get closer with faster ships.
same with armor and secondaries. if 5" cant pen, try 6" cls.
also the nation is important, AH and germans have very high dmg resistance, best to flood them. the brits are usually very stable platforms, quite resilient to flooding but can be outpaced most of the time. french have so bad dmg control you can burn them down fast.
so much things to think of and take into account, constant refits are the best counter lategame to adapt to the enemies strengths and weaknesses.

[hurepoix]

I noticed no change for difficulty, or to be exact absence of difficulty.

Bellow last scrren shot of battles at v1.7.0.0 legendary difficulty setting no mods.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3398586261
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3398586810

I play currently japan, and fought the French, the german, the spanish, the chineses, the english and the italians without it makes any difference.
I use as AP the best penetrating shell available, and as HE soft capped most time.

I dont rely on fire to kill ennemies. Since some releases I notice you need to achieve at least a partial pen to set a fire. Blocked means no chance of fire.

I cant say about 1950 era. My games usually stop before 1935 because map is repainted before this date.

[gigamelon1981]

Originally posted by hurepoix:

I noticed no change for difficulty, or to be exact absence of difficulty.

Bellow last scrren shot of battles at v1.7.0.0 legendary difficulty setting no mods.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3398586261
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3398586810

I play currently japan, and fought the French, the german, the spanish, the chineses, the english and the italians without it makes any difference.
I use as AP the best penetrating shell available, and as HE soft capped most time.

I dont rely on fire to kill ennemies. Since some releases I notice you need to achieve at least a partial pen to set a fire. Blocked means no chance of fire.

I cant say about 1950 era. My games usually stop before 1935 because map is repainted before this date.

Youre playing early year, this problem surfacing exactly at the year i've described.
My guess is when the AI started using modern hulls.
Older hulls are just like the old days.
I don't want to rely on fire to kill, but it is the only solution.
HiCap is usable because it has damage bonus, and a little bit better penetration than Incendiary. I've tried with capped HE, it doesn't work. No pen, no explosion.

Originally posted by xXxatrush1987:

try to use a smaller gun with the highest pen ammo for a higher volume of fire only works to an extend.
also try to learn and use your optimal range, ai is very good at it now. if you get blasted at 25km your deck armor may be simply too thin.
20" inch guns arent the best guns for every situation. i played as germans trough the whole thing just using 15" guns max, no problem. just study the enemy: he is using 20" light ammo? opt for more distance. he is using 16/17" super heavy? get closer with faster ships.
same with armor and secondaries. if 5" cant pen, try 6" cls.
also the nation is important, AH and germans have very high dmg resistance, best to flood them. the brits are usually very stable platforms, quite resilient to flooding but can be outpaced most of the time. french have so bad dmg control you can burn them down fast.
so much things to think of and take into account, constant refits are the best counter lategame to adapt to the enemies strengths and weaknesses.

No, it was the thickest possible ship i could build for CL.
Are you sure have tried the campaign at the year 1930 or further at 1.7.0.0 ?
I've tried every gun calibre possible.
1.1 - 20 inch. They all having difficulty to penetrate what they should penetrate.
So i have 4 classes in operation for CL, 5,6,7 incher. So far the most succesful is the 5 and 7 one. 5 is only when built as a meme Atlanta. 10K ton 90 barrels of 5 incher.
Tho IMHO they all sucks compared to what it used to be. Regularly fails to pen, set on fire, and like doing 100 damage per hit, even with a 6-7 incher. 5 incher doing like 50s. And the enemy has like 50-145k HP. Not to mention since i have less penetration, less internal damage.
No flood, no engine damage etc.

The 20 inch is part of my experiment, to carry the biggest gun. I only using twins for faster reload. It also Mk3 gun. When the HE (stated 20K damage at the ship building) hits enemy BB, it only does 3.3K damage per shell. I don't think it is normal.
I also carry SAP with 11K damage, 50-70 inch penetration at medium to short range. And it is shattered... So i switch back to HE. I literally closing the distance with the enemy BB. 100K ton vs 74K of mine. It was a gamble since one hit from her doing like 11K.

I'm using the latest tech, I control like two third of the world. Refits regularly.
And ofc the tech is at maximum 100%, and very advanced.

Oh, one other note that other people may not understand that China has limited options for cruisers at modern age.
With only Modern CA and Modern CL 1.

[hurepoix]

@gigamelon1981
May be you can use custom battles to make experiences. I dont advice to use any HE round VS heavilly armoured target, whatever could be the supposed pen stat. Exception could be on a badly damaged target (red). Pen stat are for optiomal situation anyway, that never happen in cbt. Angle for exemple change lot of things.

[xXxatrush1987]

modern cl1 is just ♥♥♥♥, the gun ship is much better and has way higher resilience.
a gun boat 7" build was almost untouchable for uk/german ai heavy cruisers, but i would still advise a 2:1 ratio to be safe and compensate for lucky hits.
quad 3" capped he meme on the same ship was even more successful.
i did a couple of meme builds in custom, and 20" capped he light shell builds can work, chinese 15" are just bad compared to the others, at 17" the chinese gain some power.
its allways better to take the lighter and smaller tower options, as they dont gain that much acc anyway.

keep in mind that all or nothing shemes dont work like irl. even with cit V you still need quite some extended armor to be protected against 20" capped he memes and so on.

all tested on 1960 tech.

[dmansail]

A small advice about ammo , Try to use as possible less different caliber guns , to have more ammo. For ex, i use only 1 caliber for main guns and max 2 dif caliber for secs. On DDs only 1 caliber or you get in trouble ....

[Scratch]

1.7.0.0 seems completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥ to me. I'm playing a normal game as the USA. China just kicked my arse out of New York.

EDIT: It's 1910.

[hurepoix]

Originally posted by Scratch:

1.7.0.0 seems completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥ to me. I'm playing a normal game as the USA. China just kicked my arse out of New York.

EDIT: It's 1910.

For gigamelon1981 in 1950 I cant be completly affirmative since I dont practice too much modern era. However for you at 1.7 playing USA and in 1910, I can say for sure that if you have problem, you will be able to solve it by optimizing your games and technics.

I made recently a game as USA at v1.7 and was able to go at war around 1910 against the world and defeat everybody at the same time.

With USA just keep quiet the first 15-20 years. It is a country rather slow to start.

[gigamelon1981]

Originally posted by hurepoix:

@gigamelon1981
May be you can use custom battles to make experiences. I dont advice to use any HE round VS heavilly armoured target, whatever could be the supposed pen stat. Exception could be on a badly damaged target (red). Pen stat are for optiomal situation anyway, that never happen in cbt. Angle for exemple change lot of things.

I don't take that advice, but it is what actually effective.
Didn't i say i brings in Improved ballistic 1, SAP, and also i bother to check the penetration value? I manually selects AP in a battle. They just don't work.

[gigamelon1981]

Originally posted by Scratch:

1.7.0.0 seems completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥ to me. I'm playing a normal game as the USA. China just kicked my arse out of New York.

EDIT: It's 1910.

USA, you have more to worry than China actually. In my game, USA were completely erased by combined Canada, and Mexico. Trump was right in this world. As I'm playing China, Korea was the biggest threat. I parked 150K ton of ships just to prevent them steamrolling the ground warfare.

[hurepoix]

Originally posted by gigamelon1981:

I don't take that advice, but it is what actually effective.
Didn't i say i brings in Improved ballistic 1, SAP, and also i bother to check the penetration value? I manually selects AP in a battle. They just don't work.

I will probably try a battle in 1950 using custom battle in order to see that by myself. Like said I m not very familiar with late eras.

[gigamelon1981]

Originally posted by dmansail:

A small advice about ammo , Try to use as possible less different caliber guns , to have more ammo. For ex, i use only 1 caliber for main guns and max 2 dif caliber for secs. On DDs only 1 caliber or you get in trouble ....

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3399162346
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3399161623
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3399169049
Also this BB for someone asking me not using thick enough armor.
Note that enemy BB still doing like 11K damage per hit to this one.

Examples. I'm not using just one calibre. Also the list of my ship designs being used.

[gigamelon1981]

Originally posted by hurepoix:

Originally posted by gigamelon1981:

I don't take that advice, but it is what actually effective.
Didn't i say i brings in Improved ballistic 1, SAP, and also i bother to check the penetration value? I manually selects AP in a battle. They just don't work.

I will probably try a battle in 1950 using custom battle in order to see that by myself. Like said I m not very familiar with late eras.

I doubt it will reproduce the same design, but you can try. I haven't.
I have a speculation this is due to runaway research bonuses on the AI part.
You know when the research is done giving new modules to you, they do like only improving stats?

[gigamelon1981]

Originally posted by xXxatrush1987:

modern cl1 is just ♥♥♥♥, the gun ship is much better and has way higher resilience.
a gun boat 7" build was almost untouchable for uk/german ai heavy cruisers, but i would still advise a 2:1 ratio to be safe and compensate for lucky hits.
quad 3" capped he meme on the same ship was even more successful.
i did a couple of meme builds in custom, and 20" capped he light shell builds can work, chinese 15" are just bad compared to the others, at 17" the chinese gain some power.
its allways better to take the lighter and smaller tower options, as they dont gain that much acc anyway.

keep in mind that all or nothing shemes dont work like irl. even with cit V you still need quite some extended armor to be protected against 20" capped he memes and so on.

all tested on 1960 tech.

You're tested on 1960 tech, not the campaign?
This what i'm talking happens in the campaign. The random battle doesn't have late years upgrades runaway problem.

And this is the biggest CA I could come up with as China.
I want twice the number of barrels, and bigger ship, like 20K ish tonnage.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3399185236

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3399192863
I have like 108 of these.
Easily making 400K ton of invasion task force blob.
The best ship ? No, i usually kept them away from combat when possible. But at numbers, they're force to be reckoned with.
7K ton and look at that Costco maintenance fee?
She could also bears 3 to 4 of those 8 incher into directions.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3399198988
This also why i think you can't simulate what happens at the current campaign at random battle.