Newbie Troubles

[hanz]

TL/DR: The AI doesn't fire the main guns, my big ships sink, and I get very confused.

Long version; Hello, I'm new to NWS games and been having a great time! Played a campaign as Germany without incident but now: In a game as France, I'm at war with England 1903 and suddenly it seems like my ships main batteries can't get a target assigned by the AI. The enemy can fire without problem, and most of the time my secondaries and tertiaries can fire at them back, but not the mains guns? There are no targets in the target list when I try to assign them manually and this would seem to be the route cause

I'm guessing there are specific conditions to meet for targeting that I haven't learned yet, but my ships and captains ironically have no trouble firing the damned torpedoes successfully?!
What am I doing wrong, and how does the AI select targets? And what factors are relevant for accuracy?

It is very unenjoyable (and expensive) to see my new battleships sink without having even tried to fire a single shot at the enemy.

[baggers]

Look like a bug.

You should zip the data/save folder and attach it to a post here. And maybe post here a screen capture or 2 too. (of you ship, ship design, and actual battle)

Haven't you play with the HE/AP ammo ratio by the way?

[fredsanford]

Basic question: does this happen with the legacy fleet ships, or just the ones you built?

[randomizer]

A save or screenshot might help identify what's going on here. This is a new one to me.

[hanz]

Sorry for late reply, but I tested some things because I wanted to describe in detail and I figured it out. Full disclosure, I edited the game files for my french campaign, because... well, because I was going to attack England. Turns out, the game doesn't know what to do with guns of quality = 2. I had only changed the value for the 7" and 10" and ships with those guns where the only ones to fail like this. The more you know!

In conclusion: the algorithm for firing breaks if the guns quality is not -1, 0, or 1.

I guess you could change it for the English guns instead if you'd want, but that is even more unsportsmanlike than what I did! No rest for the wicked and all that. Anyhow, thanks for all the replies, the game works magnificently and it's fun to see where the limits are

[tmp]

To clarify, did you edit individual ship designs to give them quality 2 guns? If so, did you also adjust the quality of guns known to your nation in the overall research record?

I'd suspect it's less of a case of game not knowing how to fire guns of certain quality, and more of a situation where the mismatch between 'national research' data and the individual ship armament data leaves the game unable to deduce what guns your ships actually have, and winding with (effectively) none at all.

[hanz]

Adjusted the quality of the guns for the nation, then built the ships with the new guns. And they didn't fire on the new ships nor on the legacy ones. Did not affect guns I left unaltered in BNat.dat.