Ships ignoring the enemy

[endwerk]

At this point I am not sure whether this is intentional, a glaring bug or anything in between. 
In essence: Whenever I make a Destroyer attack run on an enemy line of battle, they get obliterated within seconds, sometimes in a single turn.

Yet when enemy Destroyers decide to charge my line, my ships refuse to properly open fire on them. 




Here is an example, but it can be replicated at will:
There are 3 Destroyers who have made their attack run on my line, 4 BB and a swarm of Destroyers and Heavy Cruisers somewhere in the background. The BB are bristling with secondary and tertiary guns with a wide variety of anything between 3" and 8" guns. And yet they cannot be arsed to fire upon the approaching enemy. BB Preussen fired their main guns at one Destroyer, no secondary/tertiary guns were used. BB Hessen fired their secondary 8" guns at the Destroyers, the main gun and tertiary guns remain unused. BB Schlesien and BB Schleswig-Holstein have no intention to stop this torpedo run. DD H146 and S138 have fired their guns at the approaching enemies, but the entire rest of the swarm is completely idle. 8 of my DD, 2 of my BB and around 7 CA in the background do not fire any guns at the approaching enemy. 

The distance between the BB line and the Destroyers is 6000 yards, so range clearly is not the problem here. The displayed range is the torpedo range.



And here is the same scene, almost 10 minutes later. The enemy has made their torpedo run and are in the process of escaping almost unharmed. None of the enemy Destroyers have been sunk despite facing a full broadside of multiple capital ships and their escorts. None have been crippled, none of been seriously damaged even. I took more damage from the enemy gunfire than I inflicted upon them. 

And this has been driving me nuts for a long time. I have a serious problem killing enemy Destroyers for this exact reason. As soon as one of my Destroyers comes within range of an enemy CL, it pretty much explodes or sinks within a single turn as all their guns open fire immediately. Yet enemy Destroyers can charge lines of cruisers and nothing happens. 

[williammiller]

Hello endwerk

Thanks for the report. There are so many differing factors that can affect combat that it's difficult to respond to something like this 'out of hand'. A low sun on the horizon, as just one example, can affect one sides accuracy and not the other in the game. The two sides techs (fire control, radar, etc) can also affect the comparative gunnery accuracy. We would really need a save game that shows us some sort of issue in the combat results in order to actually be able to address an issue.

[endwerk]

Well, the year is 1921, both sides have the same tech level and fire control. I think our Destroyers are almost identical (3x5" guns, 1500 tons). The weather is good and it's almost noon, so a low sun is unlikely to be the problems. Crew Quality of 1 and above average officers both commanding the ships as well as the division.
The thing is that the combat log doesn't make entries for attempted shots fired at the enemy, only whenever they straddle the target, get a near miss or hit the target directly, so it hasn't really provided any clues to me.
I know that hitting moving targets at sea is not easy, but when there are hundreds of guns aimed at three Destroyers at almost point blank range, even the Russian baltic fleet should be able to achieve a hit rate of >1%.

The disparity between enemy and my own Destroyers and how much punishment they can take has baffled me ever since rtw2. I've had screenshots in my last playthrough of enemy 1100 ton Destroyers taking 14 medium and heavy HE hits before finally sinking in 1917 or something like that. In any case, I will try to remember to make a savegame of a situation like that. Right after it happens, while it happens or, with some luck, before it happens? I have no clue what you can get out of the logs that players can't.

[williammiller]

Note: I assume you meant to say 1921, not 2021 

But yes, if you have a save game that shows this sort of anomaly then by all means share it with us, if you get a chance.

[sloanjh]

How sure are you that the BBs are not firing their secondaries/tertiaries?

I ask, because my understanding is that the very faint yellow lines are an indication of what the secondaries and/or tertiaries are targeting.  In the first picture, it looks like Pruessan is firing at the DD Foyle-class immediately to its right, while the other two BBs are firing at something off the bottom of the screen.  In the bottom picture, it looks like all three are firing at the DD Foyle-class that's still inside torpedo range.

If that's the case, then IIRC you should be able to open up the status screen on one of the BBs, look at the secondary gun panel, and see "rate of fire" and "hit probability" values.  There should be buttons next to these values that will give you a breakdown on exactly what is contributing to the values.  (I know this stuff is there for the primary guns; I'm only "pretty sure" for the secondaries, and I think it's not there for the tertiaries.)

This doesn't explain why you're not devastating the enemy DD, but at least it might give you some insight.

Best,
John