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Post by Adseria on Feb 11, 2019 2:18:29 GMT -6
It's not uncommon for one ship to be attacked by multiple smaller ships, and often, not all main battery turrets will be able to fire on the primary target. Does it not make sense, therefore, for turrets that can't hit the primary target to instead fire at whatever they can hit? For example, if a cruiser with lots of guns mounted in casemates is attacked from both sides simultaneously by a squadron of destroyers, and focuses on a target on the starboard beam, all the guns in the port casemates remain silent, even with torpedo-armed ships in range and in their arc of fire. Shouldn't they be firing to defend the ship, even if that means operating under local control?
I'm not suggesting making it completely automatic, like secondary guns; maybe allow the player to turn it off to conserve ammunition, or maybe even have a "secondary target for primary battery" option in the division command window, like how you can choose the primary target in RTW1. |
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Post by bcoopactual on Feb 11, 2019 7:29:52 GMT -6
It was technically possible for ships to do it. We talked about this on the RTW1 forum and the only historical example we could think of, if I recall correctly, was Graf Spee at River Plate. I think Fredrik responded that it probably wasn't going to be added because of its historical rarity and the time required to implement it.
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Post by goodguy on Feb 11, 2019 13:51:05 GMT -6
Wikipedia says Warspite split her guns between the Italian BBs at Calabria "The Italian commander decided to take on Warspite, and started moving his two battleships into position. At 15:52 Giulio Cesare opened fire at a range of 26,400 metres (28,900 yd). Conte di Cavour held her fire, as Italian strategy was to have only one ship targeted at a time. It had been discovered during the Battle of Jutland that more than one ship firing at a single target made it very difficult for the rangefinding parties to tell which rounds were fired by their ship. Conte di Cavour had been assigned to Malaya and Royal Sovereign, which did not enter the engagement.[17] Warspite, not aware of the Italian firing patterns, split her guns between the two ships. During the exchange one of Giulio Cesare's rounds fell long and caused splinter damage to Warspite's escorting destroyers Hereward and Decoy, which had formed up on the far side of the action.[18] At 15:54 Malaya started firing, well out of range, hoping to cause some confusion on the Italian ships. Meanwhile, the Italian heavy cruisers came into action and started firing on Warspite at 15:55 but had to break off as the Allied cruisers returned.[16]" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Calabria |
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Post by archelaos on Feb 11, 2019 14:02:53 GMT -6
On early ships with local control of the casemate guns, I would expect it quite common to fire on multiple targets and definitely on both port and starboard targets. Later, as others said, it would be super rare to split main battery fire as ranging require quite a lot of guns.
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Post by tbr on Feb 11, 2019 15:07:41 GMT -6
On early ships with local control of the casemate guns, I would expect it quite common to fire on multiple targets and definitely on both port and starboard targets. Later, as others said, it would be super rare to split main battery fire as ranging require quite a lot of guns. Yes, concur. Perhaps a special rule for casemate guns only that puts them into "local" whenever they cannot bear? |
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Post by rob06waves2018 on Feb 11, 2019 15:27:18 GMT -6
On early ships with local control of the casemate guns, I would expect it quite common to fire on multiple targets and definitely on both port and starboard targets. Later, as others said, it would be super rare to split main battery fire as ranging require quite a lot of guns. Yes, concur. Perhaps a special rule for casemate guns only that puts them into "local" whenever they cannot bear? By extension, any unarmoured turrets (DDs) or turrets already fitted for local control normally could theoretically do it. Not sure if this wouldn't just be a waste of ammunition but hey-ho. |
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Post by bcoopactual on Feb 11, 2019 18:16:14 GMT -6
Here is my understanding of how targeting works at the various levels.
The main battery will focus on one target at a time only. Guns that are not able to fire along that bearing are not going to fire at another target.
The secondary battery is split into port and starboard sides. Each side battery can fire at its own target so the port secondaries can target a ship on the port side and same with the starboard side simultaneously. The secondary battery can fire on the same or a different target as the main battery depending on the situation. A quote from Fredrik is included below to help clarify that.
The tertiary battery works like the secondary battery and can target one enemy ship on either side which can be the same or different as the secondary battery.
I have the impression that the ship will target a maximum of two ships on a side at a time depending on how many levels of guns your ship carries.
[Edit - This is all for RTW1, it's possible that even if I'm 100% correct that something will change for RTW2.]
"Secondaries of 6 in or less will tend to prefer DDs as targets, while larger guns will tend to prefer larger targets. This is not absolute however, range is a factor, and there is as mentioned above some fuzziness built in to simulate general confusion, visibility, targeting errors etc.
This is of course because larger guns are comparatively more effective vs larger targets. I guess the lesson for ship designers is, if you go in for heavy secondary batteries, make sure you have a decent tertiary battery to keep enemy destroyers at bay."
"AI targeting is first at division level, then at ship level. The AI will tend to prioritize formations over single ships when targeting. Sometimes, when the enemy has a single BB and a B squadron, that might be suboptimal, but if the BB is closer, they should eventually target that."
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Post by Adseria on Feb 12, 2019 0:18:08 GMT -6
Here is my understanding of how targeting works at the various levels. The main battery will focus on one target at a time only. Guns that are not able to fire along that bearing are not going to fire at another target. The secondary battery is split into port and starboard sides. Each side battery can fire at its own target so the port secondaries can target a ship on the port side and same with the starboard side simultaneously. The secondary battery can fire on the same or a different target as the main battery depending on the situation. A quote from Fredrik is included below to help clarify that. The tertiary battery works like the secondary battery and can target one enemy ship on either side which can be the same or different as the secondary battery. I have the impression that the ship will target a maximum of two ships on a side at a time depending on how many levels of guns your ship carries. [Edit - This is all for RTW1, it's possible that even if I'm 100% correct that something will change for RTW2.] "Secondaries of 6 in or less will tend to prefer DDs as targets, while larger guns will tend to prefer larger targets. This is not absolute however, range is a factor, and there is as mentioned above some fuzziness built in to simulate general confusion, visibility, targeting errors etc. This is of course because larger guns are comparatively more effective vs larger targets. I guess the lesson for ship designers is, if you go in for heavy secondary batteries, make sure you have a decent tertiary battery to keep enemy destroyers at bay." "AI targeting is first at division level, then at ship level. The AI will tend to prioritize formations over single ships when targeting. Sometimes, when the enemy has a single BB and a B squadron, that might be suboptimal, but if the BB is closer, they should eventually target that." Yes, I know how it works now, and this is my point; guns will often refuse to fire simply because they can't see the primary target, even if there is another high-threat target well within range and LOS. |
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Post by Adseria on Feb 12, 2019 0:18:37 GMT -6
On early ships with local control of the casemate guns, I would expect it quite common to fire on multiple targets and definitely on both port and starboard targets. Later, as others said, it would be super rare to split main battery fire as ranging require quite a lot of guns. Yes, concur. Perhaps a special rule for casemate guns only that puts them into "local" whenever they cannot bear? This is exactly what I was suggesting. |
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