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Development Diary #10 - 17th of December 2008

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kaspar42 said:
I dont get that. How would they discern that a fleet is in the sea zone without actually spotting it, and thus pinpointing its location?
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Well, I guess intel and radio listening would be the only one. Also if it's spotted by aircraft from a capital ship, it might mean the fleets aren't close enough yet. It would be nice if cruisers were the best patrol boats now, as they were the smallest type of ship to have planes, and search radar wasn't very long ranged.


The new management system sounds cool though, can't wait!

BTW, I wonder if we can finally get properly priced destroyers? Since they are in flotillas, shouldn't they be generally more expensive than cruisers?
 
Interestingly we still know nothing about naval combat, duration at sea and how naval forces fit into the command structure. Cleverly done on Johan's part - distract us with pretty pictures :p
 
Good update! As usual. :D
 
The thing that makes me the most exited by this diary is actually something as booring as scouting.

I think two levels of detection is a great way to allow for detection from:

# Neutral merchants
# Radio interception
# Air recon
# Submarine recon

The best part of it is that all of these could tell only roughly whats in what zone (due to time delay and the speed of reports mostly). A fleet at flank speed could be 100km away in any direction only 2hours later. Other historic effects that can be modeled are for example Cruiser and Battleship seaplanes detecting fleets in adjacent seazones.

I hope to see options in diplomacy or intellegence to "Forward naval detection reports". This could be used to share all detections automatically with a specific country even if you not officially allied. A valuable diplomatic trading card for some nations.

Let everyone talk about x inch guns all they want. Real Historians know that detection and knowledge was what won the wars at sea.
 
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Radu said:
Glad I'm not the only one who noticed. This is the first Dev Diary that was really 'thin' in content.
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I wouldn't say it's thin on content, it's just thin on the content I expected - the naval combat was kept under wraps.

The features he described has a lot of relevance to my playstyle. I never get rid of old ships (so refits will be a tactic for me to use), and I rely on small patrol fleets for spotting already, so having it automated will be a welcome addition. I'm also excited to see that Asia looks much nicer than Europe :p
 
Excellent good news about the new naval system. I just can't wait till the next diary!:)
 
Kvlt 45 said:
*What could be the reason for the design decision that ships cant upgrade guns? If its expensive and time consuming, why not? Many Italian and Japanese capital ships changed their main guns in the games time frame.
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There was also a plan to upgrade the Scharnhorsts from 9x11" to 6x15" guns.
 
Johan said:
well, we have 1 developer diary to talk about carriers :)
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The best to keep us in as much eager anticipation as humanly conceivable. Johan you are a cruel, cruel man :rofl: I'm loving the new naval system. Now finally I might be able to make head or tails of naval ops in the PAC as Jap and effectively strangle the UK as GER. *Rubs hands together and grins*. I hope the carrier diary is next. I'm not sure how much more of this I can take :rofl:
 
jdrou said:
There was also a plan to upgrade the Scharnhorsts from 9x11" to 6x15" guns.
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Didn't he mention that what is upgradable or not can be modded?




"We have also scraped the naval attachment system all together and instead we have defined each individual technology to be upgradeable or not (surprisingly this is also fully modable)."
 
I wonder if Gary Grigsby is crying himself to sleep every night by now. Because he has every reason to.
 
Kvlt 45 said:
What could be the reason for the design decision that ships cant upgrade guns? If its expensive and time consuming, why not? Many Italian and Japanese capital ships changed their main guns in the games time frame.
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I'll agree with this; in some work I have been doing on the Royal Navy there are several instances of (a) ships having their guns simply replaced because of barrel wear - no reason some limited upgrading could not be done then, (b) having gun mountings changed, especially of secondary armament, to allow high elevation shooting, and (c) having main armament turrets removed to allow other things to be fitted (anti-sub hedgehogs, more AA armament, 'HQ' type facilities such as air direction centres, etc.).

Having said this, Johan said it would be moddable...
 
Hey I saw this at school (and I supposed to be doing research for making a zoo website) and this girl leaned over and asked, "What is that"

I said, "[baby], you know what this is. Don't be monkeyin around with me girl, for real! Don't be actin all platypussy on me now, dat's heaven right there. You see dat right there, dat's the skimpy brits about to get their tail blown off and dat, dat right there is nazis and their ships that will blow your fence down"

Oh course, she is british and I received a nice little red mark on my cheek.
 
Väinö I said:
Well, I guess intel and radio listening would be the only one. Also if it's spotted by aircraft from a capital ship, it might mean the fleets aren't close enough yet.
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Add in radar traces, reports from "neutral" merchantmen, Huff Duff (HF/DF high frequency direction finders getting range and direction on transmitting radios) and reports from agents in ports. Raiders, in particular, invariably had supply ships (oilers) around, often calling into neutral ports (as 'merchantmen'); trace these and you get an idea where the big boy is - plus you might get one or two of their crew into a garrulous mood with a few beers or a nice warm body... ;)
 
Dutch said:
Didn't he mention that what is upgradable or not can be modded?




"We have also scraped the naval attachment system all together and instead we have defined each individual technology to be upgradeable or not (surprisingly this is also fully modable)."
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people choose to ignore these things so they can rant.
 
Balesir said:
I'll agree with this; in some work I have been doing on the Royal Navy there are several instances of (a) ships having their guns simply replaced because of barrel wear - no reason some limited upgrading could not be done then, (b) having gun mountings changed, especially of secondary armament, to allow high elevation shooting, and (c) having main armament turrets removed to allow other things to be fitted (anti-sub hedgehogs, more AA armament, 'HQ' type facilities such as air direction centres, etc.).

Having said this, Johan said it would be moddable...
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Removing turrets was a massive job and rarely done unless part of a major refit. Not sure I can think of whole turret removal for capital ships except for Ise and Hyuga. Even the stuff hauled up from Pearl Harbour did not have new turrets fitted.

Cruisers: yes. Some ships had aft turrets removed and the D class cruisers were being refitted as AA Cruisers durung the 30's for example. But to take the Queen Elizabeth class as an example, of the five ships in class Valiant and Q.E were at the apex of refits, Warspite in the middle with Barham and Malaya unchanged since their major refits in the early 30's. The 'R's were pretty much left alone with only the addition of some AA. Renown was heavily modernised, Repulse was barely touched. Famously, Hood was due for a major refit that was cancelled on the outbreak of war.

In other words, although ships were of the same class, their capabilities were wildly different in many cases. Equally, as they had not ben refitted, the 'R's 15" guns had range limited to that of a modern 8" gun.

Another factor is pretty key: gunnery technology. Its no point having a big gun that cannot hit anything, as the Italians found out early on in WW1. The myriad of Admiralty Tables or Pollen Clocks or whatever plus the later additions of both detection and gunnery radar later in the war. I personally found it very odd in HoI2 that you put lots of research into Radar but this had no effect at all on the abilities of your Naval units, either in ASW or Surface Gunnery.

As an aside, post war the USN tested a wide array on capital ship guns. The study found that the RN 15" Mk1 was the best, despite its age. They factored in maintenance, accuracy, rate of fire and barrel wear as well as hitting power.

K
 
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