Deadly Merchants

[genhay]

I made a custom battle with the following ships:
USA - 2 Northampton class cruisers
Japan - 3 Merchant ships

I figured this would be a decidedly one sided battle, so I could practice formations, targeting methods, etc. without worrying about damage. However, much to my surprise, at 10k yds the merchants caused severe damage (flooding, fires, damage) to one of my cruisers. Now I'm no expert on naval ordinance, but I wouldn't think merchant ships could be this accurate and cause as much damage with the ordinance they have. The accuracy and damage caused by the merchant ships seemed a little unrealistic to me.

BTW, I have Atlantic Fleet and even though merchant ships are unarmed, small ships like destroyers, corvettes, etc. cause minimal damage to capital ships unless they use their torpedoes.

I really like the game, but this was a little surprising.

[Lanzfeld]

Messaggio originale di Steeltrap:

I think I've made some relevant points about merchants (you may not have read).

If the language is a touch intemperate, it's because these sorts of things drive me nuts, just as does having 80 seconds dive times on submarines that dived in about 50 seconds at worst for the USN at least, and so on.

The materials are available to allow pretty accurate modelling. Why you want to build in things that are, frankly, patently nonsense escapes me.

Then again, CAs with 55% torpedo damage reduction? Really? Did you have to bloat torpedo damage so much that the only way to differentiate between hitting a merchant v a CA was to put in that sort of reduction?

Simple fact is I believe almost every cruiser of any stripe struck by 2 non-aerial torps sank. Torpedo def systems proved rather disappointing on BBs and CVs. Having a CA soak up 3 and sail away, then take another 2 in another battle before finally sinking?

I don't understand on what basis ANY of this is done, unless it's "challenge" or "fair" or other things that frankly I think have no business in a WAR game.
The idea is to make it as UNFAIR as you can, THAT is the skill.
If you're taking equal fights for any reason other than having no choice/desperation, you're a crap commander and shouldn't run any sort of war LOL.

Every time I play the game these things make me stop because I get SO tired of seeing absurdities that my 30+ years of reading extensively on naval warfare history, especially WW1 and WW2, makes me quit in frustration (and sometimes disgust).

Wish it could be different. It's not as though the materials aren't all available (navweaps.com is a baseline for a lot of stuff I'd say).

As I've said many times before, love the idea of the game. That's why I persist.

The execution? That's where the problems start.

Cheers

100% Agree with both your posts.

[Steeltrap]

Messaggio originale di Lanzfeld:

100% Agree with both your posts.

Thanks.

To be fair to the devs, it's not easy balancing the competing "we think a GAME needs some balance to be 'fun' whatever...." and the "come on, it's supposed to be a vital historical campaign, show a little respect to reality, please" crowds.

Plus the limitations of pretty egregious AI.

I do give them credit and appreciate their willingness to engage with us. Makes a BIG difference. It's much easier to accept annoying elements if you believe the devs are acting in good faith vs they don't give a %$^&*#@!!!

At the same time I think we really ought to point out some of the worst stretches of reality, such as ships soaking ungodly numbers of torps.
If the problem is it's too easy to land torps, make it somewhat more difficult through various means.
How about not as advantageous ambush positions on naval TF, for example? It was VERY hard for a WW2 to achieve an ambush on a naval TF due to those travelling typically well above the max speed of the sub when surfaced, and that's not possible in many situations. It could happen, especially in a situation where you know the ships are coming to a specific location via certain courses, but even so it only needs you to be out of position by a few miles to miss a TF travelling at 26 knots.

And so on...

Cheers

[Crazed Possum]

Messaggio originale di jfoytek:

Messaggio originale di Killerfish Games:

Interesting.

So would you agree that merchants are acting as they should, namely dangerous armed merchants? Or are they still too dangerous for being an armed merchant?

And is the real issue actually that most merchants of the era would have not been armed?

Additionally whats the point of having a deck gun on subs in your game lol??? While it wasn't prefered it was certainly possible for most subs to surface and take out prey with their deck guns because again most Merchants either were not armed or were armed with AA guns... (Granted an AA gun is still lethal to a sub) But your game as it is with nothing but Armor Merchants sailing around certainly removes the usefulness of a subs deck gun....

Thank you for posting this I've been thinking about it for a long time and I wanted to mention it over and over but decided not to. Just last night I was thinking that my Japanese sub cannot come to the surface and take out a merchant ship or even damage it or slow it down because of their guns that they have on them.

[Killerfish Games]

Lots of discussion here:

Recommend a new thread about the damage model (on Suggestions forum). Mention your test cases and why they should not be possible and we'll look at it. Oh and turn on friendly fire, drop test ships in Custom Battles and fire torpedoes into them so you can see the exact damage being done.

Right now the survival of ships is probably excessive due to the damage model. It is 100% physics based and does not use hit points for a ship to determine when it sinks. It uses buoyancy across the various compartments instead. It can be tweaked to be more lethal and we have had some reports of shell damage not being lethal enough either (based on Kirishima actual 16" shell hits to sink vs in game). So it is a direction we'll likely move in given enough data to reassess how it should behave.

In the meantime:
config.txt is your friend.
Assuming you are playing on Combat Difficulty Balanced (under Options/Game):
"difficultyPreset2":[1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0]

Numbers at position 3, 4 are shell damage multiplier for player, AI
Numbers at position 5, 6 are torpedo damage multiplier for player, AI
Numbers at position 7, 8 are bomb damage multiplier for player, AI
Torpedoes not lethal enough? Increase 5, 6 and let us know how it goes.

Gunnery Models:
Most of the variables for gunnery are in config.txt as well.
Gunfire too accurate? Decrease "directorMaxSolution":0.95 and "localDirectorMaxSolution":0.7

Here's all the fun stuff you can tweak on gunnery accuracy just by editing numbers in the txt file:

"directorTMARate":0.02,"directorMaxSolution":0.95,"localDirectorTMARate":0.01,"localDirectorMaxSolution":0.75,"tmaDecayRate":0.02,"tmaIlluminationBonus":0.2,"tmaTargetManeuverPenalty":0.05,"tmaObserverManeuverPenalty":0.02,"tmaSpotFireBonus":0.2,"tmaSpotFireDuration":120.0,"tmaSpotFireRateMultiplier":2.0,"tmaRadarBonus":0.2,"tmaShipSmokingPenalty":0.2,"tmaMaxRangeError":0.2,"tmaPercentRangeThreshold":0.1,"tmaPercentRangeMaxPenalty":0.75,"tmaMultipleDirectorsBonus":0.1,"tmaClassBonus":0.04,"tmaSubtypeBonus":0.06

Likewise the Baron is doing an amazing job of modifying campaigns (and variables) to create a much more strategic and in-depth experience. If there's something we think he should be able to tweak, we add it. If he finds something he'd like to tweak, he requests it and we do our best to add it.

So rather than get frustrated and attack, belittle us, we invite everyone to become part of the solution, like many other equally passionate members of this community already have.

Finally, this thread is about merchant surface combat lethality so let's keep it on topic. Recommend someone takes the lead to start new threads on the Suggestions forum for:
Damage Model - Ship Survival
Merchants AAA

[Steeltrap]

Messaggio originale di Killerfish Games:

Recommend someone takes the lead to start new threads on the Suggestions forum for:
Damage Model - Ship Survival
Merchants AAA

Damage Model
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1280780/discussions/2/3035977580523213258/

[Steeltrap]

Messaggio originale di Killerfish Games:

Lots of discussion here:

It can be tweaked to be more lethal and we have had some reports of shell damage not being lethal enough either (based on Kirishima actual 16" shell hits to sink vs in game). So it is a direction we'll likely move in given enough data to reassess how it should behave.

As an aside, I'd suggest you treat calls for shells to be more damaging with some caution.

Here's an interesting short article on the Kirishima's 14" hit on South Dakota:
http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-092.php

I've posted it because it contains some interesting specifics, such as when stating how it MUST have been a 14" AP round and not any of the alternatives:

No "AA" round such as the wooden-nosed and very-thin-cased Type 3 incendiary/shrapnel shell or even a nose-fuzed Type 0 HE shell could do that - the former could not even penetrate a US heavy cruiser barbette, USS SAN FRANCISCO in this case, while the latter would blow up instantly and make no more than a scratch on the surface as it disintegrated sideways and, while its fragments could punch many small holes in the 1.5" deck under it, they definitely could not tear it open.

And this:

HE shells are light-cased shells and, when combined with instantaneous nose fuzes (the only one used in the Type 0 HE shell), will do very little to even thin armor plate: For example, a 16" 1900-lb Mark 13/14 instantaneous-nose-fuzed ("PDF") High Capacity (HC) US Navy WWII shell cannot penetrate 3" of homogeneous armor!!! It makes a big dent, but the shell destroys itself before its nose tip can move more than a few inches forward - against a 17.3" Class "A" plate the effects would hardly be noticeable.

My point is games generally VASTLY OVERSTATE the effectiveness of HE rounds (especially that game I'm not going to mention), even 16" ones, against any decent armour.
I'm not saying War on the Sea does so, simply suggesting some caution might be in order.

I suspect the issue lies more in the overly effective damage control model. I freely admit I could be wrong about that, too, and I know the point was more about AP rounds, but thought I'd raise this stuff as a matter of interest and FYI.

p.s. Nathan Okun (author of the article) is extremely well known to the point he rates his own section in NavWeaps as THE authority on armour, shells and their interactions. Loads of GREAT stuff in there.

[Redmarkus4]

Messaggio originale di Killerfish Games:

Messaggio originale di jfoytek:

And their in lay's the issue I have with the merchants in the game... To Model the most dangerous armed merchants you could find from the time when in reality most merchants were not armed....

Interesting.

So would you agree that merchants are acting as they should, namely dangerous armed merchants? Or are they still too dangerous for being an armed merchant?

And is the real issue actually that most merchants of the era would have not been armed?

Yes, exactly. Most merchants of the era and in this region would not be heavily armed. Even when armed, the fire control and training levels would make the chances of hitting and damaging a cruiser minuscule. This shouldn't be happening in a game of this type.
We are not talking about an armed merchant cruiser in the Atlantic in 1940.

[cswiger]

Note that the merchants in WoTS are able to deploy troops and heavy engineering equipment to unimproved bases, which means the "merchants" are more properly considered "attack transports" and are equipped with landing craft and naval guns suitable for shore bombardment & support. For example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_John_Penn_(APA-23)

These ships weren't crewed by civilians; the captain, Harry Need, was later promoted to Rear Admiral, USN.

[Steeltrap]

Messaggio originale di cswiger:

Note that the merchants in WoTS are able to deploy troops and heavy engineering equipment to unimproved bases, which means the "merchants" are more properly considered "attack transports" and are equipped with landing craft and naval guns suitable for shore bombardment & support. For example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_John_Penn_(APA-23)

These ships weren't crewed by civilians; the captain, Harry Need, was later promoted to Rear Admiral, USN.

Yet that ship had ONE 5" DP gun, 9,360t displacement (in game are around the 5,000-6,000 mark?) and sank as a result of a single air dropped torpedo hit.

If anything I'd say that adds weight to the idea 'transports' in the game are rather significantly inflated in gunnery, effectiveness and durability at present.

Cheers

[Innominatam]

Yes they are but here is the problem, if they make them able to be sunk by a single bomb, how will the AI cope?.

The AI cannot defend it's convoys because human minds are just to complicated for it to deal with.

While I understand finding the aspect annoying, them have bloated stats if a balancing means IMO to keep the game running.

I can understand wanting them reduce somewhat but if you will create an unfix-able balance problem if you want them reduced to 100 percent real life standards.

[jfoytek]

Messaggio originale di E.:

Yes they are but here is the problem, if they make them able to be sunk by a single bomb, how will the AI cope?.

The AI cannot defend it's convoys because human minds are just to complicated for it to deal with.

While I understand finding the aspect annoying, them have bloated stats if a balancing means IMO to keep the game running.

I can understand wanting them reduce somewhat but if you will create an unfix-able balance problem if you want them reduced to 100 percent real life standards.

I don't find the Excuse how would the AI cope.... It doesn't matter if the AI's merchants are gunned or not the human will sink them... The AI already gets unlimited merchant ships... Why can't we have more realistic merchants and some armed merchants occasionally mixed in.... I would be perfectly okay coming across a fleet with say 2 DD's 1 Armed Merchants and 7 Merchants in fact I would say cool that's far more realistic.... Also I am not saying un-armed merchants shouldn't have flak as plenty of merchant captains added flak onto their ships but at the same time trying to depress a flak cannon to shoot down at the water line was certainly an issue for these ships... Often that flak did not have the gun depression to be useful vs a sub contact....

[Steeltrap]

Further to earlier comments, I've had more encounters with IJN merchants, some escorted by CAs, CLs and DDs, others just DDs.

For what it's worth, here are some thoughts.

I hope they are taken in the spirit they are meant, namely with an eye to making things a little more in the direction of a roughly faithful relative representation of things in this theatre of the war in 1942.

Their accuracy is off the scales silly.

In sea state 5 with ~70% visibility (according to the report), they started scoring hits on my DDs at ranges out to 14,000yds.

That's 7 NAUTICAL MILES.

That's on DDs doing 35 knots, mind you.

Another thing that made it astounding? They were DOING CIRCLES. That's right, manoeuvring under heavy rudder.

My DDs meanwhile were struggling to achieve anything other than get the %&$* shot out of them, breaking out in fires etc etc.

I'll skip the comments that I might make that aren't helpful, lol, and move on to some questions and suggestions for KFG (others of course feel free to comment):

1. Gunnery model.

- what is the max achievable accuracy for an open sight mount without any form of gunnery director?

- at what range is that achievable?

- does manoeuvring heavily affect the shooting ship's gunnery....
i. at all?
ii. as much, less or more than it affects anything shooting AT it?
(I put one of my CLs into a tight turn and left it shooting. Suddenly the number of hits I received dropped MASSIVELY but my hit rate didn't seem to suffer at all. If that's the case then it's a MAJOR flaw in the model).

- how does the system allow undirected, open sight weapons to hit a DD travelling at 35 knots on a platform in sea state 5 doing a constant hard turn AT ALL, let alone with ease? That is SO far removed from anything sensible I just don't understand.
What's more, they do so AT FULL RATE OF FIRE, not even needing to spot fall of shot.

For reference, consider the infamous "Battle off Samar" (in case someone hasn't heard of it, here's a link to Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_off_Samar ). In that instance the USN DDs managed to close to about 8-9,000yds against a fleet of 4 x BBs (including Yamato no less), or even a DDE closed to as little as 5,300yds/4.8km with the Chokai (the second Tone class CA) where she survived FOR CLOSE TO 35 MINUTES so difficult did she prove to hit effectively.

Ok, I know it's not meant to be a "completely accurate" (of course I know there's no such thing) modelling of gunnery, but there ought to be limits and the performance of open sight weapons of IJN merchants are WAAAAY beyond where those limits ought reasonably be.

2. Levels of armament.
I went looking for records of various IJN merchant ships used in Guadalcanal. I couldn't find anything with 8 x 127mm guns. One of the ones that beached and was destroyed was equipped as a specific AA version but even it had only 2 x 127, but then a few 100mm and multiple 88mm or similar.
In short, WHY are the merchants so heavily armed?

3. AAA.
I've had land-based IJN Vals (single flight of 4 dive bombers) attack my TF with 2 x Portland CAs, 1 x Cleveland CL, 1 Atlanta CLAA (note it's a specialist AAA CL) and 2xDDs (Bagley I think).
The BEST result I've had was I brought down 2.
I've had a scout fly directly over my fleet at ~3,000ft and suffer no damage at all.

Meanwhile, I've attacked a fleet of 6 x IJN Merchants, 2xDDs and 2x Older style (Kuma or similar) CLs with 12 Dauntless SDBs.
Even coordinating it so all 12 arrive from different directions at the same time it's COMMON for me to lose 2-4 of them.

I lost 3 B-17s at 2,500ft to a similar group of transports, and that's a 4-engined bomber notorious for its ability to soak punishment.

I get that we don't want attacking ships to be risk-free, but much like the gunnery, there ought either be limits to the effectiveness of merchants OR the effectiveness of warships' AAA needs to be scaled up massively so as to be better by a significant margin.

CONSEQUENCES/COMMENTS

1. As far as I'm concerned, certain ships are no longer efficient prospects against merchants.

As mentioned elsewhere, unrealistic hit rates on platforms attempting to model realistic armour values and shell performance makes for some poor results, specifically in ramping up the effectiveness of what ought to be the lowest performing units. The better ones, such as CAs and BBs etc, don't care so much. Yes they'll be hit, too, but they can handle it.

The performance of these merchants is such that I won't go near them with my light ships (DDs OR an Atlanta class CL, both of which ought to tear a merchant to shreds at 10,000yds and be unlucky to be hit at all).

Instead I just stack Cleveland and CAs whose armour can generally defeat those guns out to 10-11kyds range. I still suffer FAR too many hits, but they don't matter as much.

Seems a shame to make ships that ought to be ideal to slaughter merchants simply too risky to use that way.

If the hit rates were more reasonable, however, that might change.

2. AAA on merchants is such I'd rather attack NAVAL TFs than merchants.

Just think about that for a moment.
Meanwhile, my OWN AAA seems so UNDERWHELMING that, coupled with the crazy accuracy of merchants with more gunnery than the IJN CLs (again, really?), I have since dropped Atlanta class CLAA entirely from use. They just aren't worth it. 2 more points gets a Cleveland which is FAR more potent against ANY ship, but the Atlanta's AAA simply doesn't seem to make any real difference vs other CLs/CAs.
While it IS appropriate that you don't want to use an Atlanta in surface actions generally (they proved too fragile if rather bad to be down range of lol), against merchants with no fire control from 10,000yds? THAT ought to be a massacre (of the merchants).
But when that's not the case, and their AAA doesn't seem to matter much, why would you bother? Two Fletcher class can handle the ASW and have radar and torps. The fact the Atlanta's were purpose built for AAA with the best possible directors etc etc doesn't seem to be modelled at all effectively (and I'm aware we're not in the time of the proximity fuse that made the 5"/38 DP gun so deadly).
Seems a shame.

SUGGESTIONS

1. IMMEDIATELY restrict merchant mounted guns to using 'spot' as a condition of gunnery.
This would greatly reduce their withering fire out to longer ranges, yet in fact would make them really deadly closer because the delay for the fall of shot would be next to nothing at closer ranges thus very little rate of fire would be lost.
(as an aside, why does "spot" stop guns reloading while the shells are in the air? Doesn't make any sense to me; you load your shells but don't FIRE them until after the observed fall of shot is used to correct your gunnery solution).

2. Consider reducing the number and types of guns to more realistic levels.
Self-explanatory. Be happy to give some suggested armaments based on known IJN converted merchants.

3. Examine performance of Merchant ship vs Naval Ship for BOTH surface AND AAA.
In short, just how much difference IS there between the two? My questions about the gunnery model had this in mind. They OUGHT to be significant, especially in terms of any sort of ship with centralised gunnery direction vs open sight guns firing on surface targets.

================================
Feedback welcome of course.
Cheers

[jfoytek]

Thank you Steeltrap well thought out post that convey's how I feel too....

[kf.*****]

As a general not, been over this ground before, Merchant ships part from specially adapted ones, raiders, had limited use of what guns they had, even of they were 5 or 6 inch, as they had no gun director, no magazine system feeding reloads, mainly mended by untrained crew, so in practice they generally couldn't hit a barn door at five paces, simply taking pot shots. At night they would have to use search lights to try and locate the enemy..

[Killerfish Games]

Great feedback.