Is variable tech, variable enough?

[orkel]

I've played a few campaigns with variable tech, but haven't noticed much in the way of radical changes in the way tech progresses. By the 1940s I'm always rocking similar 16 inch BBs, 80 plane carriers, etc. Anyone else with similar experience? Should the variable tech be made even more variable?

For example - games ending up with little to no carrier research done by the 1940s, or guns staying at ~14 inches till lategame? Games where fire control is never figured out properly, so nations roll with basic directors in 1945? Or researchers failing to research DDs beyond 900 tons.. and so on. I cannot see such "extremes" in the current variable tech (or maybe they're just super rare).

[mycophobia]

Having done 1-2 playthroughs with varied tech, I have similar experience to you. Some tech maybe significantly delayed and some may come earlier, but eventually you’d end up with a similar position as with reality.( I’ve seen no super imposed turret until 20s or no effective aircraft till the 30s, but nothing that would be extreme like what your described

[rimbecano]

As far as the guns, I think part of it is that the real world was behind on gun progress (due to the naval treaties) so the ship templates max out at 16 in, so the AI only ever builds ships with 16" guns and armored against 16", so the player never has to arm with 18" or 20" to keep up. I like 2x3 AB designs, so I have budget and tonnage to spare for heavier guns and armor, but players that build more traditional designs probably tend to end up never going beyond 16".

Keep in mind that 16" was basically a late WWI technology.

[pcasey]

If you pick the option for "Slow Aircraft Development" that really changes the nature of the game ... carriers don't really take a central role until like 1945 or 1950.

I'd agree that variable tech isn't all that variable over the long time horizon.

I do find that it can add some spice/challenge to the 1905-1915 era if you get weird things like centerline turrets never progressing past 2 or some such; can make for more interesting build decisions early game.

[jishmael]

Aug 11, 2019 17:07:43 GMT -6 rimbecano said:

As far as the guns, I think part of it is that the real world was behind on gun progress (due to the naval treaties) so the ship templates max out at 16 in, so the AI only ever builds ships with 16" guns and armored against 16", so the player never has to arm with 18" or 20" to keep up. I like 2x3 AB designs, so I have budget and tonnage to spare for heavier guns and armor, but players that build more traditional designs probably tend to end up never going beyond 16".

Keep in mind that 16" was basically a late WWI technology.

Aa has been discussed in this forum before its not as simple as bigger guns=better. I did have good results in my last Japan save with 17" guns as fleet standard, but even with AfA it came with a huge price in weight and cost leaving no tonnage for armor on anything with a good speed. 16" cutoff might very well the most effective and balanced approach.

I did have one varied tech run in which torpedoes, ship and air dropped, turned out to be bad, which made for a pretty fascinating run once I figured out the reason Kills stayed so low.

But generally I do agree it could be more extreme

[noshurviverse]

For a very long time I've wanted "varied tech" to really mix things up beyond what it does now. I think one thing that could be looked at is the introduction of systems that in real life did not play out, such as Leonid Kurchevsky's 305mm recoilless rifle mounted on a DD.

[exgavalonnj]

My most interesting variable tech play-through had armor vastly overcome penetration. It made me first build lots of 18-19" BBs to see if heavier shells would make a difference as the 16" guns felt like peashooters. It didn't make life much better. I didn't get to finish that game as an update broke the save.

[rimbecano]

Aug 11, 2019 23:09:23 GMT -6 jishmael said:

Aa has been discussed in this forum before its not as simple as bigger guns=better. I did have good results in my last Japan save with 17" guns as fleet standard, but even with AfA it came with a huge price in weight and cost leaving no tonnage for armor on anything with a good speed. 16" cutoff might very well the most effective and balanced approach.

First of all, keep in mind that my build strategy is not just AfA, but six-gun AfA. The reduction to six guns itself produces a considerable reduction in weight compared to eight or nine gun designs.

Secondly, given that the AI doesn't generally build heavier than 16" guns, I actually only need to armor against 16", not against my own caliber.

Thirdly, I freely admit that, given that the AI does not exceed 16" caliber, it may in fact be better not to exceed 16" oneself; the point of my reply to the OP is that with varied tech the question is not *if* gun calibers will reach 16" by 1940 but whether they will do so in the teens, twenties, or possibly even thirties.

For my part, when playing as the USA (with good economy and resource characteristics), on normal tech I generally have 18" ships in play before 1920. Whether that is an optimal strategy is another question, the point is that gun research could be slowed down by 20 years, and I'd still be building 18" by 1940 (which is basically what happened with Japan IRL), so if 16" is in fact an optimal stopping point for the caliber race, the OP should not expect that even a considerable slowdown in gun research due to varied tech will prevent that stopping point from being reached before 1940.

[JagdFlanker]

variable tech is pretty subtle but it definitely changes things up - you might have a few techs that progress faster or slower than normal, but there's so many techs it's often hard to spot the differences unless you'v played the game a lot. if you play at slower tech speeds (i play at 50%) it's definitely more noticeable

V-tech also adds a few occasional random wrinkles in the game too, but you only occasionally see any one in particular - torps less effective than normal, double and triple turrets less effective than single turrets, etc

[generalvikus]

Aug 12, 2019 17:10:01 GMT -6 JagdFlanker said:

variable tech is pretty subtle but it definitely changes things up - you might have a few techs that progress faster or slower than normal, but there's so many techs it's often hard to spot the differences unless you'v played the game a lot. if you play at slower tech speeds (i play at 50%) it's definitely more noticeable

V-tech also adds a few occasional random wrinkles in the game too, but you only occasionally see any one in particular - torps less effective than normal, double and triple turrets less effective than single turrets, etc

Bring on the badnoughts! 

[cv10]

Aug 12, 2019 4:48:22 GMT -6 exgavalonnj said:

My most interesting variable tech play-through had armor vastly overcome penetration. It made me first build lots of 18-19" BBs to see if heavier shells would make a difference as the 16" guns felt like peashooters. It didn't make life much better. I didn't get to finish that game as an update broke the save.

Way back when RTW I was still being patched, there was a bug in one patch that caused gun development to stop with 12" guns. It made for an interesting few games to se how many guns you could cram on a BB to bury the enemy under a hail of HE shells because nothing could punch through armor.