List of Naval Designers by country...what are your thoughts on how to improve naval designers?

[billcorr]

The purpose of this post is to:

1. Document the different naval designers by country
2. Provide a venue for customers to discuss ways to improve naval designers


Current version is: Collie v1.10.3 (aa89)
Build Timestamp: Nov 24 2020 11:27:54

 

[walt526]

I always choose the Raiding Fleet when available because the visibility and speed bonuses are so powerful in terms of improving survivability. For the sake of balance, it could be scaled back a bit and still be quite useful.

 

[el nora]

Cost reduction is such a broken modifier. Countries that have a coastal fleet designer do not take any other in more competitive games because of how much stronger it is to have 33% more ships than any other modifier that naval designers provide. Sure, raiding fleet is stronger than all the rest, but coastal defense's +33% to all attacks and hp simply blows it out of the water.

 

[Paul.Ketcham]

The big problems for me, aside from the balance of the actual designers:
1.) You can't retroactively apply a designer to a new ship class or even hull (meaning starting with 1936 tech penalizes your ships...which is really dumb).
2.) Certain designers do nothing for certain ship types, resulting in them having no effect at all (Atlantic, Escort fleet designers are a bit dumb here).
3.) Several major navies don't have any designers at all (namely ITALY, as well as Russia, both being historically large navies are outperformed by minor powers who in some cases have very little history of naval design or shipbuilding).

My preferred fix would be to first change designers to be a modular bonus that could be added or taken away from new designs, as well as added to starting ship designs (which would particularly fix certain carriers having terribly-inaccurate aircraft counts, like the Yorktown or Kaga classes). Then I'd set something up where nations might have a bonus available (without the research bonus associated with an actual designer), which would be the national preferred flavor for ship design (i.e. Germany gets bonus HP and speed but increased cost, Britain gets reduced cost but reduced firepower on its ships, US gets the Pacific designer, Japan gets the Battlefleet designer, France and Italy get the Mediterranean designer).

 

[walt526]

Cost reduction is such a broken modifier. Countries that have a coastal fleet designer do not take any other in more competitive games because of how much stronger it is to have 33% more ships than any other modifier that naval designers provide. Sure, raiding fleet is stronger than all the rest, but coastal defense's +33% to all attacks and hp simply blows it out of the water.

I'm pretty sure it's a 25% cost reduction, not 33%. But either way, it comes with a substantial nerf to range (-50%) for all ships as well as capitals' armor and attack (-20% each). Also, I believe that the 25% cost reduction only applies to the base cost of the hull; the individual components will still cost the same (e.g., I don't believe that it reduces the cost of a Radar module--although not 100% sure about that since I don't think that I've ever used that designer). So you can produce more ships, but they're substantially inferior compared to base versions or those designed with a different designer.

 

[Paul.Ketcham]

I'm pretty sure it's a 25% cost reduction, not 33%.

-25% cost is equivalent to 33% faster production (divide 1 by 0.75), just to explain that bit.

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

My preferred fix would be to first change designers to be a modular bonus that could be added or taken away from new designs, as well as added to starting ship designs.

That would make much more sense than the current designer implementation. I wouldn't even mind paying 150pp for every new variant (tanks and planes included) in order to commission it to a certain design bureau.

So you can produce more ships, but they're substantially inferior compared to base versions or those designed with a different designer.

I believe, in competitive games the naval side of things is mostly dominated by subs and bombers anyway (less research and production required that way), and building capitals isn't really a thing. Thing is: capitals take a while, so only the navy you have by 1940 is the one that will win or lose you the naval war; and with every major naval power practically starving for screens (ASW and minelaying ones especially), there's little reason to even bother with anything else.
Except for Pacific theatre (no one usually bothers with), screens aren't really penalized by coastal designer; and even then it's way cheaper to improve naval base coverage than expand your dockyard capacity by some 30% (especially since those slots can be used for aviation or other stuff).

 

[el nora]

My preferred fix would be to first change designers to be a modular bonus that could be added or taken away from new designs, as well as added to starting ship designs

Ah yes, -25% cost DD1. This is the missing piece. My roach DD swarm will finally be complete!

I'm pretty sure it's a 25% cost reduction, not 33%. But either way, it comes with a substantial nerf to range (-50%) for all ships as well as capitals' armor and attack (-20% each). Also, I believe that the 25% cost reduction only applies to the base cost of the hull; the individual components will still cost the same (e.g., I don't believe that it reduces the cost of a Radar module--although not 100% sure about that since I don't think that I've ever used that designer). So you can produce more ships, but they're substantially inferior compared to base versions or those designed with a different designer.

As others have said, -25% cost is +33% more ships. Oh how I wish it were -33% cost. That's +50% more ships! ;p

Range nerf is irrelevant. You always fight naval battles within range of friendly air anyway. If you don't, enemy carriers or land based bombers that they have in range will have a field day. Air kills navy and it's not ever a fair trade for the navy, even with high AA values. Fighting in red air is a turkey shoot for the enemy bombers. And since range is an averaged stat, the actual range of your deathstack is not significantly reduced. That is to say, it is reduced, but by much less than the purported 50%.

The capital ship modifiers don't affect heavy cruisers which are the only capitals you should be building anyway, as they are the most cost efficient source of both light and heavy attacks. They are bugged and get the screen variant modifiers, not capital variant. Anyway, you should be outfitting them with max light attack and no armor. So even if they were inflicted with those modifiers, it doesn't even matter.

The cost reduction applies to the final variant build including all its comprising modules. The final cost is reduced by 25%, not just the base hull cost.

I believe, in competitive games the naval side of things is mostly dominated by subs and bombers anyway (less research and production required that way), and building capitals isn't really a thing. Thing is: capitals take a while, so only the navy you have by 1940 is the one that will win or lose you the naval war; and with every major naval power practically starving for screens (ASW and minelaying ones especially), there's little reason to even bother with anything else.
Except for Pacific theatre (no one usually bothers with), screens aren't really penalized by coastal designer; and even then it's way cheaper to improve naval base coverage than expand your dockyard capacity by some 30% (especially since those slots can be used for aviation or other stuff).

The subs that would normally dominate such games usually get banned because they are capable of completely killing a game in 1939 if UK is braindead and didn't prepare ahead of time to counter them. But air, most definitely. And mines are outright banned in such games as well for reasons of lag. But UK especially always needs m0ar DD for convoy escort.

And right on the money with regards to building a single lvl 1 naval base for the extra range and more mils for more air with cheaper ships is worth much more than building more docks for (still fewer) better ships.

 

[DicRoNero]

One can do some number tweaking and introduce some new ones utilizing non-used stats like what @Paul.Ketcham mentions, i.e. I've added this one

but you can't really improve designers without improving the naval war first, and it leaves a whole lot to be desired.

One of particular bits MtG degraded is the XP allocation in ship construction. It's now totally binary, i.e. you either have some set XP (around 40-50) to make your desired setup, or you don't and wait till you get them. No variations are now possible, where you'd put your accumulated naval experience into better stats, so now Belgium ends up having the same ships as the UK across the channel (bar designer/spirits).

Now for my own mod I can sorta circumvent it by introducing extra modules, which take a flatout prohibitive time to research if unboosted by XP, but that's still very clumsy and inflates the research tab for no reason.

Designing is astonighingly poor in general, i.e. there are no options to consider 2, 3 or 4-barrel turrets, turret placement is irrelevant, armor is a single stat as if a ship is a solid ingot, engines are poor and even molded with hulls for research purposes, battleships are ahistorically prohibited from carrying torpedoes, fuel aboard isn't simulated and subsequently range is a dead-weight stat... and on the list goes.

Basically, all that MtG introduced with designing is some nice GFX, but even that one is spoilt by dubious ideas like one turret magically representing one and a half (or is it two?).

As others have said, -25% cost is +33% more ships. Oh how I wish it were -33% cost. That's +50% more ships! ;p

I recall us two having an opinion trade on this matter, but have you tried a simulation for two sides producing X IC of ships using two different designers and then putting them against each other? Even if Coastal Designer beats Raider/Atlantic ones [in vanilla], I doubt it's really 'blowing out of the water' type of an outcome - and tests surely depend a lot on initial inputs, i.e. if armor/piercing values are close, that +10% armor is something to cherish, and if piercing is way ahead boosting armor is of no use whatsoever (and neither losing -20% from Coastal one is a real penalty).

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

The subs that would normally dominate such games usually get banned because they are capable of completely killing a game in 1939 if UK is braindead and didn't prepare ahead of time to counter them. But air, most definitely. And mines are outright banned in such games as well for reasons of lag. But UK especially always needs m0ar DD for convoy escort.

Right, tend to forget that half of the stuff is banned in MP.

 

[Mr_Dimento]

All Atlantic and Pacific designers need to be buffed to be viable against Coastal and Raiding designers.

 

[el nora]

I recall us two having an opinion trade on this matter, but have you tried a simulation for two sides producing X IC of ships using two different designers and then putting them against each other? Even if Coastal Designer beats Raider/Atlantic ones [in vanilla], I doubt it's really 'blowing out of the water' type of an outcome - and tests surely depend a lot on initial inputs, i.e. if armor/piercing values are close, that +10% armor is something to cherish, and if piercing is way ahead boosting armor is of no use whatsoever (and neither losing -20% from Coastal one is a real penalty).

Coastal defense 60 DD + 12 CA vs raiding 45 DD + 9 CA. CA are all 1940 hulls with full 1940 batteries, engine, fcs, and radar. DD are almost all 1940 hulls with a single gun and 1940 engine. 20% of the DD also had a single torp. I imagine that vs any other designer, this would be even more of a blowout, as raiding is the clear number 2 designer.

 

[Emren]

That would make much more sense than the current designer implementation. I wouldn't even mind paying 150pp for every new variant (tanks and planes included) in order to commission it to a certain design bureau.

Isn’t that what we currently have, though? Or, do you mean eg. one 1940 LC variant for one design bureau, and another 1940 LC variant for a different bureau?

 

[vermicious knid]

The big problems for me, aside from the balance of the actual designers:
1.) You can't retroactively apply a designer to a new ship class or even hull (meaning starting with 1936 tech penalizes your ships...which is really dumb).
2.) Certain designers do nothing for certain ship types, resulting in them having no effect at all (Atlantic, Escort fleet designers are a bit dumb here).
3.) Several major navies don't have any designers at all (namely ITALY, as well as Russia, both being historically large navies are outperformed by minor powers who in some cases have very little history of naval design or shipbuilding).

My preferred fix would be to first change designers to be a modular bonus that could be added or taken away from new designs, as well as added to starting ship designs (which would particularly fix certain carriers having terribly-inaccurate aircraft counts, like the Yorktown or Kaga classes). Then I'd set something up where nations might have a bonus available (without the research bonus associated with an actual designer), which would be the national preferred flavor for ship design (i.e. Germany gets bonus HP and speed but increased cost, Britain gets reduced cost but reduced firepower on its ships, US gets the Pacific designer, Japan gets the Battlefleet designer, France and Italy get the Mediterranean designer).

This, please. Swapping designers back and forth to optimize new ships is a huge tedious waste of PP.

I'd kill for a toggle that lets me select from my country's designers when I create a new variant. Applies to tanks and planes as well.

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Isn’t that what we currently have, though? Or, do you mean eg. one 1940 LC variant for one design bureau, and another 1940 LC variant for a different bureau?

That what I meant, yeah; constantly swapping designer is inconvenient, at the very least. Not to mention already researched stuff.

 

[vermicious knid]

You know, they could fix this by adding a "manufacturer" slot in the ship designer. Let the player unlock the manufacturers by research/focus/decision, then slot them in like any other module.

 

[DicRoNero]

Coastal defense 60 DD + 12 CA vs raiding 45 DD + 9 CA. CA are all 1940 hulls with full 1940 batteries, engine, fcs, and radar. DD are almost all 1940 hulls with a single gun and 1940 engine. 20% of the DD also had a single torp. I imagine that vs any other designer, this would be even more of a blowout, as raiding is the clear number 2 designer.

Right. With all my modding, I've forgotten you're prohibited to build capital ships in competitive vanilla

You know, they could fix this by adding a "manufacturer" slot in the ship designer. Let the player unlock the manufacturers by research/focus/decision, then slot them in like any other module.

The more I think of it, the more I like it. And it's also moddable even now, which is great. The only problem I can imagine is that ships are getting ridicuously 'refittable' this way, but then again it's possible to limit this by picking a proper dismantling cost for this magic module.

Just awesome, mate.

 

[el nora]

Right. With all my modding, I've forgotten you're prohibited to build capital ships in competitive vanilla

I wouldn't precisely say prohibited. Its just that there are reasons to make nothing but DD + CA navies.

And you will be kicked in some servers if you main a naval major and try doing funny stuff with your navy. So maybe prohibited is the right word.

 

[Corpse Fool]

Coastal defense 60 DD + 12 CA vs raiding 45 DD + 9 CA. CA are all 1940 hulls with full 1940 batteries, engine, fcs, and radar. DD are almost all 1940 hulls with a single gun and 1940 engine. 20% of the DD also had a single torp. I imagine that vs any other designer, this would be even more of a blowout, as raiding is the clear number 2 designer.

View attachment 667601

Is 60-12, or 5:1 screen what you usually use? Ive been using 3.5:1 seemed to work best in my limited testing.

 

[el nora]

It was supposed to be 4:1, but then I decided to add the torp DD which would normally be there from the starting navy which I had deleted.