Can we talk about gun techs please

[w2c]

So firstly I want to say I'm loving the new iteration of the game. Some rough edges to be worked on, but all in all, just awesome stuff. 

The one really big thing that's annoying me atm is gun techs. It doesn't appear to matter what tech variation you select, or what your budget is, or how much of it you funnel into weapons research.... It just progresses too slowly and with much too much variation.


In my current 1890 game as GB, I'm 13 years in and I've only researched 1 gun design. This was with me rushing for improved turrets as fast as possible with it at high and everything else set to low, and then once acquiring it switching guns to high with everything else to low and only occasionally bumping other techs a notch before reducing back to low once I got something important... I've essentially run with weapons research at high for most of my playtime, and every other single tech at low for more than half of my playtime... And I've acquired just 1 gun tech through research. I did steal another... Because somehow Japan managed to research 12" Q0 in 1898, which I managed to immediately steal. But I personally have only researched 1. And it's not from a lack of budget. Those other categories, even with low priority, have managed to outpace everyone else and I remain the world's tech leader in nearly all fields. 

My point here is that research is both slow and unpredictable. There are games where I've seen people research +1 quality 14" guns before 1910, and others where people are still running with -1 12" guns well into the 20's and 30's as their best available weapons. This is in contrast to every other single tech which allows us to reliably and predictably discover them as we'd expect to. Yes, you may fall a bit behind when you have a weaker budget for it, or if your scientists get stuck on something and struggle to work through it. But ultimately you know what's coming next, and that you'll get it eventually. This is not the case at all with gun techs. There's absolutely no predictability or consistency from it. Nothing you can count on from it.

And I understand some people like this unpredictability. I say more power to them and let them play with high tech variation and let them be happy with their random games. lol. But a lot of us enjoy trying to put ourselves in those positions and trying to replicate and exceed... Some of us like unrandom and completely predictable tech progression. So the fact that gun techs have absolutely no progression to them at all is incredibly frustrating.


I'd really like to see guns progress in a more sensible way, at least when variation is set to off or slight. To prioritize the next quality version rather than quickly jumping qualities so often. I'd really like for -1 qualities to be discovered before 0 qualities, at least most of the time. I'd like for guns calibers and qualities to be acquired in a fairly sensible timeline. Something predictable that ensures we have access to the types of guns we're hoping we might have, rather than just blindly crossing our fingers and hoping as we basically have to do now. I'm just frustrated at seeing Q0 12" guns prior to 1900 while discovering or improving on essentially nothing else of note during a period when rapid advancements in gun technology forced ever continuing developments in armor the way it did. 

[sjpc302]

I think there may be a bug being looked in to with gun tech specifically. I for myself am stuck on Q0 guns for almost everything in 1958 right now, RTW2 was not like this so I think it's not intentional.

[cormallen]

Can I add my experience here. I've run through several 1890 starts for between 10-15 years and there's a big problem. Rarely getting Q-1 heavy guns before All Big Gun techs so multiple big dumb BeeBs with terrible main armament that can't pen each other at all?!

The first decade is dominated by fast Torpedo armed CLs that are doing most of the killing in actions as the Q-2 guns can't hit them.

They should be having a lot off damage done to them by the SA but that's not stopping them?

It's made worse in the first few years by the masses of ahistorical 20-22 knot protected Cruisers that every is getting in their legacy forces.

In Max fleet size there's c.100+ of these on the planet which odd frankly ridiculous!

Early days so should get fixed, but this sort of issue should have been picked up in play test IMHO.

[epsilon19]

For my first run through the game, the maximum that anyone ever teched was 14" -1, which led to a really interesting dynamic where BCs never really overshadowed CAs and CAs remained a legitimate threat to BBs due to the largest quality 0 guns being 12" and thus the AI armoring against 12" rather than 14" or higher.

[cormallen]

It's like you're playing with one of the less helpful "Tech Quirks" active!

[stevethecat]

From what I can gather from watching a few playthroughs the 1890 start has some janky research going on. Gun tech barely progressing, and aircraft stuff being researched well out of order.

One guy had 46,000t Battleships coated in Dual-purpose guns and AA, yet no aircraft existed.

[w2c]

So after giving this another shot with 100% tech progression and no tech variation, and I'm convinced there's still an issue and I'm going into the 1900's getting ready to start building semi-dreads that will be stuck with guns that can't be refitted. The only gun tech I researched in the first decade was -2 quality 11", despite rushing for the long barrel prerequisite tech and having gun research on high with everything else limited to low almost the entire time.

I'm not expecting all that much honestly. I'm not looking for 14 inchers or uber quality guns. I just think it's reasonable to expect that I should be able to research at least 1 or 2 usable guns during this timeframe, but I got nothing at all and it's leading into a game where I'm less than thrilled with the types of ships I'm going to be able to build.

I don't know exactly how this works, but my assumption is that it's choosing an illegal caliber as my research target during the early years which means all of the research poured into it is effectively wasted until I unlock the tech that it's gated behind. That likely means that it should improve once you get said tech so the 1900's will likely see better gun tech progression for me, but I continue to believe I should be able to expect a few light caliber advances as not being unreasonable for the period. If this is what's happening then I'd really really like to see illegal calibers as being blocked from target research selection so I can actually gain something from it.

I don't mean for this to be overly critical either of course. I recognize the 1890 scenario is new and you guys were reluctant to go for it in the first place. Not trying to complain. haha. Just sharing thoughts because if it can work better then I'd love to see that happen!

[dman1791]

On a related note, it would be really nice if gun research preferred calibers that are actually being used when deciding what to roll. It's a bit infuriating building getting 7" Q0 while stuck on 6" Q-1 when literally zero ships in the fleet use the 7" and almost everything has 6" guns in some form, for example.

It would also be nice if there were some real reason to use existing calibers when new developments show up. For example, in my current game, I invented 16" Q0 and started using them for my newest BCs. Shortly afterwards, I invented 15" Q1. I stuck with the 16" Q0s out of the (unrepresented) interest of standardization, as well as for the potential for upgrades. Maybe a small cost reduction (say, max 20%) for the most common large (11"+) caliber depending on the its proportion of guns in existing ships. So if you have 4 8x12" BBs and 2 10x11" BBs as your only big-gun ships, you'd get a cost reduction on the most common caliber (12") on the order of 12.3% (32x 12" guns out of 52 total large guns times 20%).

[w2c]

Jun 4, 2023 1:01:31 GMT -6 dman1791 said:

On a related note, it would be really nice if gun research preferred calibers that are actually being used when deciding what to roll. It's a bit infuriating building getting 7" Q0 while stuck on 6" Q-1 when literally zero ships in the fleet use the 7" and almost everything has 6" guns in some form, for example.

It would also be nice if there were some real reason to use existing calibers when new developments show up. For example, in my current game, I invented 16" Q0 and started using them for my newest BCs. Shortly afterwards, I invented 15" Q1. I stuck with the 16" Q0s out of the (unrepresented) interest of standardization, as well as for the potential for upgrades. Maybe a small cost reduction (say, max 20%) for the most common large (11"+) caliber depending on the its proportion of guns in existing ships. So if you have 4 8x12" BBs and 2 10x11" BBs as your only big-gun ships, you'd get a cost reduction on the most common caliber (12") on the order of 12.3% (32x 12" guns out of 52 total large guns times 20%).

Yeah, personally I'd prefer some way to try to direct your research. I wouldn't expect it to guarantee anything, but for it to be weighted towards the specific caliber(s) you select.

Anyway, as to my specific issue, I've decided to just start a 1900 game so I can transfer the unlocks everyone has from that save file to my ongoing earlier one. With that, the barren decade with no gun advancement gets fixed and I can go back to enjoying my game and being able to build actual ships. 

[cormallen]

Jun 4, 2023 1:01:31 GMT -6 dman1791 said:

On a related note, it would be really nice if gun research preferred calibers that are actually being used when deciding what to roll. It's a bit infuriating building getting 7" Q0 while stuck on 6" Q-1 when literally zero ships in the fleet use the 7" and almost everything has 6" guns in some form, for example.

It would also be nice if there were some real reason to use existing calibers when new developments show up. For example, in my current game, I invented 16" Q0 and started using them for my newest BCs. Shortly afterwards, I invented 15" Q1. I stuck with the 16" Q0s out of the (unrepresented) interest of standardization, as well as for the potential for upgrades. Maybe a small cost reduction (say, max 20%) for the most common large (11"+) caliber depending on the its proportion of guns in existing ships. So if you have 4 8x12" BBs and 2 10x11" BBs as your only big-gun ships, you'd get a cost reduction on the most common caliber (12") on the order of 12.3% (32x 12" guns out of 52 total large guns times 20%).

Perhaps if the gunnery research was a bit like the aircraft design commissioning process?

"I'd like to research a new medium calibre gun, with the emphasis on weight and accuracy rather than range and maximum shell effect and with an interest in AA work at some point" ? Could get two or three options to choose between...

[cabalamat]

Jun 4, 2023 2:43:15 GMT -6 cormallen said:

Jun 4, 2023 1:01:31 GMT -6 dman1791 said:

On a related note, it would be really nice if gun research preferred calibers that are actually being used when deciding what to roll. It's a bit infuriating building getting 7" Q0 while stuck on 6" Q-1 when literally zero ships in the fleet use the 7" and almost everything has 6" guns in some form, for example.

It would also be nice if there were some real reason to use existing calibers when new developments show up. For example, in my current game, I invented 16" Q0 and started using them for my newest BCs. Shortly afterwards, I invented 15" Q1. I stuck with the 16" Q0s out of the (unrepresented) interest of standardization, as well as for the potential for upgrades. Maybe a small cost reduction (say, max 20%) for the most common large (11"+) caliber depending on the its proportion of guns in existing ships. So if you have 4 8x12" BBs and 2 10x11" BBs as your only big-gun ships, you'd get a cost reduction on the most common caliber (12") on the order of 12.3% (32x 12" guns out of 52 total large guns times 20%).

Perhaps if the gunnery research was a bit like the aircraft design commissioning process?

"I'd like to research a new medium calibre gun, with the emphasis on weight and accuracy rather than range and maximum shell effect and with an interest in AA work at some point" ? Could get two or three options to choose between...

I'd like to see it done like that too. It was how big guns were usually designed, after all.

I'd also like to be able to have guns with fractional inches, e.g. histyorical British warships used calibres like 4.5, 4.7, 5.25, 7.5, 9.2, 13.5 inches so my designs should be able to do so too.

[arminpfano]

What I find a little disturbing is that you can´t upgrade -3 or -2 guns. I can understand that it isn´t realistic to get a +2 gun in an old ship, originally built with -2, as not only the barrels but the whole system would be outdated. But I think it would be more realistic to allow a max of +1 or +2 of improvement for each guns, added to the original quality.

[cormallen]

Jun 4, 2023 6:34:58 GMT -6 cabalamat said:

Jun 4, 2023 2:43:15 GMT -6 cormallen said:

Perhaps if the gunnery research was a bit like the aircraft design commissioning process?

"I'd like to research a new medium calibre gun, with the emphasis on weight and accuracy rather than range and maximum shell effect and with an interest in AA work at some point" ? Could get two or three options to choose between...

I'd like to see it done like that too. It was how big guns were usually designed, after all.

I'd also like to be able to have guns with fractional inches, e.g. histyorical British warships used calibres like 4.5, 4.7, 5.25, 7.5, 9.2, 13.5 inches so my designs should be able to do so too.

Completely second that! Having to pretend that everything from 4.5 to 5.5 inches is really all just the same is rather poor. A lot of the players are really into the ship design side and want more verisimilitude in their modelling!

[cormallen]

Jun 4, 2023 7:01:38 GMT -6 arminpfano said:

What I find a little disturbing is that you can´t upgrade -3 or -2 guns. I can understand that it isn´t realistic to get a +2 gun in an old ship, originally built with -2, as not only the barrels but the whole system would be outdated. But I think it would be more realistic to allow a max of +1 or +2 of improvement for each guns, added to the original quality.

It does seem a touch odd, until you realise the the -2 and older stuff is generally pre-cordite and largely pre-power loading so it's also differing from terrible rates of firing. It would often be possible so swap the actual guns (the newer stuff is longer but generally only slightly heavier) but replacing the mountings to cope with the increase in recoil energy and completely updating all the ammo feed would be a huge task. I believe the game will still allow you to exchange them for newer guns of a lower calibre? It certainly should, that was fairly frequently done. On of the old Royal Sovereign class had 12" liners put in her old 13.5s so she could do coast bombardment work in WW1 and several ships had more modern 10s fitted in lieu of old 12" RMLs etc.

One point where a bit of save game intervention may be needed is with the very widespread and relatively straightforward upgrade to QF of lots of older 4-6" guns in the early 1890s. Though I think the game largely pretends that has already been done judging by the very modern cruisers it gives everyone at that point?

[w2c]

Jun 4, 2023 16:22:31 GMT -6 cormallen said:

Jun 4, 2023 7:01:38 GMT -6 arminpfano said:

What I find a little disturbing is that you can´t upgrade -3 or -2 guns. I can understand that it isn´t realistic to get a +2 gun in an old ship, originally built with -2, as not only the barrels but the whole system would be outdated. But I think it would be more realistic to allow a max of +1 or +2 of improvement for each guns, added to the original quality.

It does seem a touch odd, until you realise the the -2 and older stuff is generally pre-cordite and largely pre-power loading so it's also differing from terrible rates of firing. It would often be possible so swap the actual guns (the newer stuff is longer but generally only slightly heavier) but replacing the mountings to cope with the increase in recoil energy and completely updating all the ammo feed would be a huge task. I believe the game will still allow you to exchange them for newer guns of a lower calibre? It certainly should, that was fairly frequently done. On of the old Royal Sovereign class had 12" liners put in her old 13.5s so she could do coast bombardment work in WW1 and several ships had more modern 10s fitted in lieu of old 12" RMLs etc.

One point where a bit of save game intervention may be needed is with the very widespread and relatively straightforward upgrade to QF of lots of older 4-6" guns in the early 1890s. Though I think the game largely pretends that has already been done judging by the very modern cruisers it gives everyone at that point?

You can switch to a lower caliber to get a more modern gun, yes.