Post by cwemyss on May 17, 2024 7:30:48 GMT -6
I'm finally more than 40 years into a playthrough, and I read all the posts on here. I've kept a running text file as I go with... ideas. This will be the first of a couple excessively long posts.
Please take this as constructive not criticism. I absolutely love the game, and I greatly appreciate the continued time, effort and attention that's being put into it.
Gun development seems like fertile ground for a more in-depth game experience. Some of this has been proposed/discussed before, some may be fresh.
I would like to see more granularity in gun "quality"... maybe separate ratings for ROF, Penetration, and Dispersion/Accuracy for starters. Then when it comes to developing the mounts that go on the ship, anything beyond about a 100mm pedestal mount should require development time, effort, and funding. Larger calibers, Twin/trip/quad, powered training/elevation, powered-assist loading, eventual autoloaders and DP mounts, etc. Today these just show up as tech improvements, but they could be more "directed" at player choice.
I like the idea of requesting a gun system similar to the way we do aircraft: you request a caliber and # of barrels and pick 2-3 focus areas: ROF, Penetration, Accuracy/dispersion, Mount/mechanism weight, Reliability, Safety/anti-flash, etc. Cost and time to develop a gun system would be dependent on caliber and complexity, with a significant discount in time/cost for reusing an existing gun (ROF/Pen/accuracy) in a new mount.... ie we have a great 8" gun in an ok twin mount, let's put it in a triple. You could also get some discount for continuing development of the same caliber with a new mount, or you could pay full price and roll the dice on an entirely new setup. If you get lucky, as sometimes happens with aircraft (I was using using Rev G of a 1915 floatplane in 1932) you could end up with a system that works for a very long time. The British twin-15" mount from 1915 that was still one of the world's best major caliber weapons in the 40s comes to mind. A system like this would also encourage the sort of growth and development that led the US from the 1930s 5"/38, through a bunch of iterations to the 5"/62 that's being installed on Flight III Arleigh Burkes.
I would anticipate that (unlike aircraft) you could have multiple simultaneous gun efforts... at a minimum, one per caliber group (light/mid/major), but really i dont see a need for any limit. The fact that they're not free to develop will naturally force limits and player choices.
What I'm envisioning is that when you design a ship, you can either choose from existing mounts ("I'll just reuse the 12" twin from the previous class), you can do some level of development on an improved gun and/or mount (that 12" twin's ok, but the mount could be a few tons lighter; or I could improve the gun's ROF), or you could design something new ("it's time for 14" guns"). Development time and cost depend on size, complexity, and degree of change from what's already in the inventory. Development can be in parallel with the first stages of ship build, and there's always a risk that what you ask your engineers to develop doesn't fully pan out. That possibly results in delays to your shiny new class of ships, or money spent to rush another mount through development.... something like the mess with the Iowas and their 16"/50 guns.
This would also allow the block obsolescence of a whole category of weapons... when modern propellants replaced black/brown powder, for instance. That could be represented by a dramatic increase in the maximum qualitites guns can obtain, but existing mounts designed for legacy powder can't be converted. I'm struggling this second to think of another epoch-changing shift in naval guns, but I'm sure there's something.
It would also give a bit more depth to intelligence activities, as it opens up a whole new field of blueprint stealing. It could also open up a more visible benefit of tech sharing and alliances.
Please take this as constructive not criticism. I absolutely love the game, and I greatly appreciate the continued time, effort and attention that's being put into it.
Gun development seems like fertile ground for a more in-depth game experience. Some of this has been proposed/discussed before, some may be fresh.
I would like to see more granularity in gun "quality"... maybe separate ratings for ROF, Penetration, and Dispersion/Accuracy for starters. Then when it comes to developing the mounts that go on the ship, anything beyond about a 100mm pedestal mount should require development time, effort, and funding. Larger calibers, Twin/trip/quad, powered training/elevation, powered-assist loading, eventual autoloaders and DP mounts, etc. Today these just show up as tech improvements, but they could be more "directed" at player choice.
I like the idea of requesting a gun system similar to the way we do aircraft: you request a caliber and # of barrels and pick 2-3 focus areas: ROF, Penetration, Accuracy/dispersion, Mount/mechanism weight, Reliability, Safety/anti-flash, etc. Cost and time to develop a gun system would be dependent on caliber and complexity, with a significant discount in time/cost for reusing an existing gun (ROF/Pen/accuracy) in a new mount.... ie we have a great 8" gun in an ok twin mount, let's put it in a triple. You could also get some discount for continuing development of the same caliber with a new mount, or you could pay full price and roll the dice on an entirely new setup. If you get lucky, as sometimes happens with aircraft (I was using using Rev G of a 1915 floatplane in 1932) you could end up with a system that works for a very long time. The British twin-15" mount from 1915 that was still one of the world's best major caliber weapons in the 40s comes to mind. A system like this would also encourage the sort of growth and development that led the US from the 1930s 5"/38, through a bunch of iterations to the 5"/62 that's being installed on Flight III Arleigh Burkes.
I would anticipate that (unlike aircraft) you could have multiple simultaneous gun efforts... at a minimum, one per caliber group (light/mid/major), but really i dont see a need for any limit. The fact that they're not free to develop will naturally force limits and player choices.
What I'm envisioning is that when you design a ship, you can either choose from existing mounts ("I'll just reuse the 12" twin from the previous class), you can do some level of development on an improved gun and/or mount (that 12" twin's ok, but the mount could be a few tons lighter; or I could improve the gun's ROF), or you could design something new ("it's time for 14" guns"). Development time and cost depend on size, complexity, and degree of change from what's already in the inventory. Development can be in parallel with the first stages of ship build, and there's always a risk that what you ask your engineers to develop doesn't fully pan out. That possibly results in delays to your shiny new class of ships, or money spent to rush another mount through development.... something like the mess with the Iowas and their 16"/50 guns.
This would also allow the block obsolescence of a whole category of weapons... when modern propellants replaced black/brown powder, for instance. That could be represented by a dramatic increase in the maximum qualitites guns can obtain, but existing mounts designed for legacy powder can't be converted. I'm struggling this second to think of another epoch-changing shift in naval guns, but I'm sure there's something.
It would also give a bit more depth to intelligence activities, as it opens up a whole new field of blueprint stealing. It could also open up a more visible benefit of tech sharing and alliances.