The CA Armor Scheme "Bug" fixed in 1.00.37

[krawa]

I was surprised reading in the patch notes for the latest Beta patch that a Bug was fixed that allowed Armored Cruisers to use the Protective Deck armor scheme. This "bug" was present in previous iterations of RTW and I used it all the time without feeling like I was doing something “gamey”.
My reasoning is that in the 1890’s both armor schemes were used in parallel for large cruisers, the RN actively moved away from that scheme to the protective deck for even their largest cruisers of the Blake, Edgar and Powerful classes. Would you call a 14000t Powerful a CL?
Normally I wouldn’t care, however in the game a CA gets 50% more Blockade points than a CL regardless of displacement. Also the AI makes a big difference in how they use the ships, CLs typically shy away from CAs (let alone B) which doesn’t make sense if said CL has, like the above mentioned RN classes, twice the displacement of the Depuy-de-Lome like CA.
I fully understand that for a 1900 or later start it doesn’t make any sense to use the protective deck on a CA. So how about making the “sloped deck behind belt” mandatory for CAs once it is developed and differentiate earlier cruiser only based on displacement?

[wlbjork]

I agree fully.

I've pointed out previously that the Blake- and Edgar-class cruisers that were rated as 'First Class Cruisers' - the same rating that other nations gave to their armoured cruisers - but for RtW3 they have to be built as CLs due to CL tonnage having suddenly been expanded. Though the Edgar-class is technically unbuildable at their tonnage, mainly due to a number of changes being made that are difficult to fit into a generalised system such as RtW.

As you say, this decision now also affects the Powerful-class First Class Cruiser as well, not to mention the 11,000t Diadem-class First Class Cruisers.

21 vessels - equivalent to other nations' Armoured Cruisers, but built with the Protected Cruiser armour scheme - are now either forced to be CLs or are else unbuildable.

[brygun]

I also don't understand why this was a problem.

CA as the game term affects many things in formations, tactical selection and so forth. Having lots of armor is possible with high belt rating and the "protected" style for overhead.

>>>>

There is also a consequence that if you are in the middle of game you will be unable to give ANY upgrade, including fire control, to any CA that was made "protected" style before this update

[krawa]

The matter is even worse than I thought. At the moment it is impossible do recreate any of the historical 1st class Protected cruisers for a 1900 start with manually built legacy fleet. The is a mayor oversight and spoiling the fun in the early game for me.

The following classes cannot be recreated as either CA or CL, because CA may not have protective deck armor scheme and CL are restricted to 3" max for the slope:

British Edgar,Blake,Powerful and Diadem classes
German Victoria Luise class
French cruisers Chateaurenault and Guichen
American Columbia class and Olympia

This is a substantial part of all cruisers built in the 1890s, I hope it is obvious the current system flawed.

[stevethecat]

The change has buggered a lot of existing CLs, they can no longer be refit as they don't match any ship definition.

[brygun]

Mar 2, 2024 9:44:48 GMT -6 stevethecat said:

The change has buggered a lot of existing CLs, they can no longer be refit as they don't match any ship definition.

I now wonder how much the AI fleets are getting wrecked by this on their existing CL and CA.


Honestly... I think this this "fix" needs to be undone. I have no idea why this was a problem in the first place. Cruisers of both schemes were legit in the real world.

[williammiller]

Have reverted this change for the next release, with some additional adjustments to make it work better.

[TheOtherPoster]

Thanks for letting us know. Hope it'll be kind of soonish, at the moment I cannot play 1890 without getting impossible-to-rebuild illegal cruiser designs. Maybe I should try a few more times. I'm sure eventually I may get lucky:)

A pity the ship designs file is now an incomprehensible list of numbers, mainly zeros, because it could have help us to get a temporary fix until the next patch. Before the saves file fundamental changes in v32 I could have open the ilegal cruiser ship design and change her armour scheme and weights as needed. So back in the game we could rebuild it. Is there any plan to get those files back to an understandable easy to use format, as they were before?

[blarglol]

Mar 5, 2024 12:08:28 GMT -6 TheOtherPoster said:

A pity the ship designs file is now an incomprehensible list of numbers, mainly zeros, because it could have help us to get a temporary fix until the next patch. Before the saves file fundamental changes in v32 I could have open the ilegal cruiser ship design and change her armour scheme and weights as needed. So back in the game we could rebuild it. Is there any plan to get those files back to an understandable easy to use format, as they were before?

Probably not - every fix is a tradeoff. To deal with Steam cloud-save people they had to consolidate the saves into a single file to prevent errors. Personally - I think players should just grow up and understand that *not everything* needs to be accessible 24/7 in a cloud across all systems and machines, but I admit I am old school and have been playing PC games since they were still being created for Win95...

I think things would be simpler and easier for the devs if they just had to worry about actual game issues, vs. dealing with things more described by accessibility. At the very least, save those other things not directly related to game performance for much later patching...

[TheOtherPoster]

Yes, I don't mind the new set up for our saved games, I'm sure it's easier for those using the cloud to play RTW3. it's only that didn't think adding some characters to each line, so values are understandable, would break Steam.

Still, I'm sure you're right: Fredrik has liked your post so it looks they are happy as it is.

[williammiller]

Mar 5, 2024 12:08:28 GMT -6 TheOtherPoster said:

Thanks for letting us know. Hope it'll be kind of soonish, at the moment I cannot play 1890 without getting impossible-to-rebuild illegal cruiser designs. Maybe I should try a few more times. I'm sure eventually I may get lucky:)

A pity the ship designs file is now an incomprehensible list of numbers, mainly zeros, because it could have help us to get a temporary fix until the next patch. Before the saves file fundamental changes in v32 I could have open the ilegal cruiser ship design and change her armour scheme and weights as needed. So back in the game we could rebuild it. Is there any plan to get those files back to an understandable easy to use format, as they were before?

Should be a beta with the changes posted within ~ 2 or 3 days so so.

[wlbjork]

Beta 1.00.39 is live

[stevethecat]

Mar 7, 2024 10:05:44 GMT -6 wlbjork said:

Beta 1.00.39 is live

Trying it now, although it seems to fix the issue by reclassifying the bulk of CL's as CA's on rebuild.

Which is better than being stuck with worthless ships, but I'm still waiting to see how the battle generator is going to deal with that. Am I going to be using very thin-skinned ships against enemy heavy CAs and BCs?

[brygun]

• Reversed the "CA cannot have protected cruiser armour configuration" change. Important Note: The earlier change to early CA in 1.00.37 proved to be ill considered. As some players have correctly pointed out, the main difference between pre-1900 in game CA and CL should be size, not armor configuration. Early cruisers have now been refurbished in the game and CA are now cruisers that have an armored belt or have a size over 8000 tons, others are CL. Templates and design logic have been updated accordingly. France and Russia have been given belt and sloping armor deck as bonus techs to reflect their early adoption of armored cruisers. This might cause transient issues in already started games with 1.00.37, in which case we advise continuing to play until this resolves itself or starting new game. The end result is that the treatment of pre-1900 cruisers is now much more historical and consistent.