"cruiser / BB dispersion"

[arjensmit79]

I was just watching some 6 month old youtube vids from PQ on the Tsurugi.
He used a term i also heard/read in relation to my favorite ship the Repulse. "Cruiser dispersion"

Is this just meant to indicate "this BB has good dispersion, more like a cruiser". Or is this meant to indicate "there actually are different formulas for dispersion for BBs and Cruiser, and this BB is an exception using the cruiser formula" ?

And, after falling in love with the Repulse, where even when firing just the front guns, i have grown used to that being totally fine because most likely every single shell is epected to hit and if the target is broadside, multiple citadels out of those 4 shells is also rather likely. I have on the other hand also recently tried to grind the yumihari. Also supposed to be an accurate ship. My experience was exactly like PQ's in the Tsurugi. Entire salvos missing the target completely and after a few games i ended up never ever wanting to play that ship again.

Have i been just lucky with my Repulse or Unlucky with the Yumihari ? Is it all emotion ? selective memory combined with good or bad luck streaks ? It doesn't feel like that, cuz with my Repulse run in last ranked season i actually got to the habbit of turning my guns to the next target after firing because i knew my target would go down. And it quite reliably did. Or is there something that indeed makes their dispersion vastly different ? And if so, what other ships truly are like the Repulse ? The pen angles of course are also a great factor as turning ricochets into pens and even citadels will make the guns feel more accurate, but i feel like that isn't the only thing. Looking at the stats pages, the Borodino seems to have a good bunch in common. Does it, or will it just be a let down, just like all those japanese BB's ?

[Ace42]

Different ship lines have different dispersion curves.
So Russian BBs have better dispersion than some BBs at close range, but worse than the same BBs at long range.

A good example of this is AL Sovetskaya Rossiya using the US formula, vs Soyuz using the Russian one.

Go on Shiptool, sort by dispersion, and you'll see that as you increment the range the order the ships are in will change as different formulae reach their crossover points.

"Battlecruisers" tend to use the same dispersion formula, which some BBs also share.

Not sure how obsolete the following chart is, but it might give you a vague idea of trends:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jSwRKeYxGsUz1juEeSWudJmDBtPWEu8WH0BMHPBYaTo/edit#gid=1713912714

[arjensmit79]

Yes, i am aware of the concept that russians are more accurate at close range and less so at long range. Which also leaves me with questions. If they actually calculate the arcs with realistic math, the shells don't just change direction mid-flight right ? So how does this happen, does it actually increase the dispersion at the moment you fire, depending on the range ?

And this is probably going into the area of silly superstition, noobs who blame the game, etc, but is it possible that something is going wrong in these calculations ? The difference in my experience is so insanely large. Repulse always hits while yumihari guns actually felt way worse than Bismarck which is supposed to be inaccurate. And i'm normally quite quick to believe it must be me since im a merely average player, but as i see PQ have the same experience. I just don't know... It feels s like something is off with the whole dispersion thing.

[Ace42]

Originally posted by arjensmit79:

Yes, i am aware of the concept that russians are more accurate at close range and less so at long range. Which also leaves me with questions. If they actually calculate the arcs with realistic math, the shells don't just change direction mid-flight right ? So how does this happen, does it actually increase the dispersion at the moment you fire, depending on the range ?

The curves are made by different formulae, the formulae (with RNG included in it) dictates the shell's behaviour when the gun is fired - range is naturally a component of the formulae, otherwise dispersion wouldn't go up with range. The formulae determine how range interacts with the other elements (such as sigma).

And this is probably going into the area of silly superstition, noobs who blame the game, etc, but is it possible that something is going wrong in these calculations ?

Impossible to know for sure without objective statistical analysis (or breaking down the code and verifying it does what it is supposed to, etc) - but bugs in the artillery system are notorious.

I'm guessing you're too recent to remember the "aim at the sky, guarantee citadels" exploit; or the railgun exploit.
There's currently an issue with superfiring turrets failing to account for the increased height above the deck, and thus failing to properly converge that I made a thread about a few weeks back.
I'm pretty sure that there's very significant bugs when shooting over islands - I used to have zero trouble predicting ships emerging from behind tall islands, and thus dev-striking them without them being able to see there's incoming shells, etc. Now I feel like I have to wait for them to clear the islands so that the salvoes are more consistent. I think this is a hangover from the inept hotfix to address the railgun exploit.
I think that salvoes falling short might be related to how the aim-assist adjusts for subs being below the usual 2D plane onto which dispersion is projected, but shrug.

Just from my personal experience, accuracy's been bust ever since the aim-assist was reworked to negate the "aim at sky" exploit - and it's only gotten less consistent. But that's just subjective on my side. Either way, that "feel" is one major reason why I don't play the game as much as I used to - so many salvoes dunked into the sea.

Really, having the devs go back to scratch and rework the artillery code properly from the ground up to address the various exploits and glitches would be nice.

[The TAM-2C Guy.]

Originally posted by arjensmit79:

Yes, i am aware of the concept that russians are more accurate at close range and less so at long range. Which also leaves me with questions. If they actually calculate the arcs with realistic math, the shells don't just change direction mid-flight right ? So how does this happen, does it actually increase the dispersion at the moment you fire, depending on the range ?

And this is probably going into the area of silly superstition, noobs who blame the game, etc, but is it possible that something is going wrong in these calculations ? The difference in my experience is so insanely large. Repulse always hits while yumihari guns actually felt way worse than Bismarck which is supposed to be inaccurate. And i'm normally quite quick to believe it must be me since im a merely average player, but as i see PQ have the same experience. I just don't know... It feels s like something is off with the whole dispersion thing.

Think of ship artillery shells as REALLY OVERSIZED Gun bullets.. Several things can alter flight paths. Wind, Earths rotation stuff like that.

[R[e]venge®-uk*]

Nah what he means is take for example Gouden Leeuw it is a Cruiser with Battleship dispersion numbers meaning it is as accurate as a battleship now look at slava it is a BB with Cruiser dispersion numbers .... kinda much more accurate all to do with the sigma and ellipses they use and how they originally got classed as BB or CA dispersion numbers!

[Nepgear]

Originally posted by arjensmit79:

Yes, i am aware of the concept that russians are more accurate at close range and less so at long range. Which also leaves me with questions. If they actually calculate the arcs with realistic math, the shells don't just change direction mid-flight right ? So how does this happen, does it actually increase the dispersion at the moment you fire, depending on the range ?

Think of it like one gun being good quality with a free-floating barrel so it's more accurate, but it's firing a bullet with a lower ballistic coefficient so it's blown off course by the wind more as it travels farther distances.

[~T~D~]

Turret angle affect it A LOT, but this is mostly RNG. IRL they rarely hit at all, just watch the Bis vs Hood battle. - And yamato had to shoot one barrel then calculate from that, where to fire the next salvo.

Me and my brother talked about this, he having knowledge about gaming since he working with it. Cause I said the BB trajectory sucks up real close i wondered what system WOWS used. He was unsure. He mentioned shell tracing was popular since the server would have to guess where u hit really quick, compared to a 10 seconds flight salvo it have plenty of time.

[Quazy]

think about dispersion as a oval shape. with a depth of verticle disperion and a width of horizontal dispersion. it defines where shells "could" land around where u aim.
it does change depending on ship and range. in very unintuitive ways aswell.

but dispersion means nothing compared to sigma. a stat they dont show ingame,
sigma is the probabilty of your shell traveling to the point u shoot.

a low sigma can mean 1/8 shells will go where u aimed. the rest will be dispersed (kurfurst)
a high sigma can get as good as 1/2 of the shells going where u aim. (slava)

this is what makes some ships shells feel like they float away after being fired. vs others feeling like they track into 1 point