Ok....you have a point, but the they would have to make the ships even stronger, since they were a lot stronger then they are now.....and only occasional lucky hit sank a ship with 1 shot, and they were with special 1000kg bombs, with special detonators.
It took many sorties by the Royal Airforce and the USSR to take out the Turpitz which damaged it but never sunk it, in the end It took 1 direct hit from a 12,000Lbs 'cookies' dropped by a Lancaster whereas the HMS PoW was sunk by a sustained attack by several Japanese squadrons when it was moving and the PoW, while not as well armoured as the Turpitz was no weakling when it came to battleships. Whereas it would take 1 single torpedo to take out a Cruiser (I know, my Grandfathers ship, HMS Manchester took 1 from a Italian Torpedo boat and it sank).
The difference there in sinking the ships was in where the ship took damage. Aerial bombing hits the top of the ship; which has pretty good armor and such. More importantly, lossing top decks and turrets and the like does not sink a ship. On the other hand a shape charge hitting below the water line and blowing a hole in the hull means BAD THINGS for a ship. Especially if that blast is near the engines, fuel, or ammo holds. Not to mention the physics of explosions under water (much worse for the ship than explosions in air). Carriers though were more vulnerable to aerial attacks that regular surface warfare ships. Firstly they are designed to all aircraft to take off and land from the top deck not shrug off bombs and shells. Second they hold a LOT more fuel and munitions than a regular surface ship for those planes. Meaning better chance at a fire starting below decks. And ask any sailor; fire = bad.
But that is real life; onto FH. Simple fact is no matter how much effort anyone puts into any game; at the end of the day it is still a game and not real life. Which means that there has to be compromises to make it playable. And in places, you wiggle certain things like spawn times and the like, to better simulate reality.
A good example of this is something we have done for some of the maps in WAW. On some maps, we have high spawn times for the big tanks like Tigers and shorter spawn times for, say, the Shermans. This help simulates that, in RL, the Allies had numbers over the superior overall performance of their heavy tanks. Why not just add in more Shermans you say? Well, simple. In RL, niether army had to worry about player limits on the server. In BF though, the server only holds so many players. In WAW, that is 50; 25 vs 25. So if you give the Allies, say 3 Shermans for every Tiger that eats up their man power quickly. So while the Allies have to have 3 troopers to man their armor, the axis are committing one. And the other two are free to support infantry attacks, man AA, fly planes, whatever. (note: I'm using 1 trooper per tank as the minimum to use the vehicle in combat) And on our big tanks maps, where we can have upwards of 24 or more tanks on a map, that man power limit is huge. So, the spawn times come in. And frankly, it's worked fairly well and we expect to use it more in next campaign.
As for ships. Spawn times for the ships depends heavilly on the map. For instance, if there is a B25 on the map, any axis destroyers are toast in one, maybe 2 passes. And there are other factors as well. How much air cover does both sides have, torpeado boats, is that destroyer their only starting spawn, AA capabilities of the ships and so on. Take Wake for example. On that map during our last campaign (where we increased the destroyer spawn time (can't remember to exactly what, but it was over a minute at least), their destroyers were pounded to the death by combined defgun fire and bombings. But I agree, they should not be instantaneous. The secret is to look at the map and find the right spawn time that works for that map.
Which is kind of my total theory of balancing maps. You can have a system that rates/compares various equipment to give you a good idea of balance. But you also have to take into account all of the various factors of the map as well. Terrain, number and location of choke points, sight distance (fog), and so on. And for most of that, you just have to go by experience and your gut as there is no real way to quantify those elements realistically.
Finally, just to include a shameless plug (sorry, can't help myself LOL), if you want to play in battles where you get recognized for playing for the team (ie. sinking ships for no "points", manning AA, following and repairing the tanks, gaurding rear CPs) you can always come over and play at WAW. We don't give a rat's butt about individual scores; the team either wins or loses at the end of the round. My main skills were defending choke points as an engineer, driving the APC around rearming our tanks and repairing them when they called out, and manning the AA guns; and I became a General LOL.
Last edited by Kommisar; February 25th, 2004 at 12:55 PM.
The difference there in sinking the ships was in where the ship took damage. Aerial bombing hits the top of the ship; which has pretty good armor and such. More importantly, lossing top decks and turrets and the like does not sink a ship. On the other hand a shape charge hitting below the water line and blowing a hole in the hull means BAD THINGS for a ship. Especially if that blast is near the engines, fuel, or ammo holds. Not to mention the physics of explosions under water (much worse for the ship than explosions in air). Carriers though were more vulnerable to aerial attacks that regular surface warfare ships. Firstly they are designed to all aircraft to take off and land from the top deck not shrug off bombs and shells.
Sorry to say, but you clearly have no clue what you are talking about. Battleships main armoured deck was the "thinnest" armour in it's armour protection system. Has to do with weight distribution, with the already tremendous weight of the turrets and barbettes above the waterline, and the weight of the superstrucure like an armoured bridge and seconday weapons like (lots) of AA guns bringing the gravity centre at a critical point already, made it impossible to install heavier armour there.....or the ship would roll upside down.
Some battleships and cruisers had remarkable poor rough sea handling for such heavy ships, because of their far from optimal weight distribution.
The armoured belt, wich was the thickest part of the armour system protected the engines wich were often high pressure boilers and turbines, support machinery, and rooms where the ship and turrets were actualy controlled. ( the rudder control was not on the bridge ! ) The armoured belt was often positoned under and above the waterline. This was done, because at typical battleship fighting the grenades will largely come in under an angle hitting the ship in the side.
The armoured belt in most battleships and cruisers included excellent anti torpedo systems, like anti torpedo bulkheads often filled with seawater. That would absorb the shock of the detonation and spare the actual armoured belt from critical damage.
Essentially the armoured belt was designed to keep the ship floating and in operation, even if the entire superstructure ( bridge and other structures above the main deck ) were totally blown off. Ofcourse the complete superstructure shot off would serverly affect the battleships ability to fight, ( no more long range targetting data for the calculation room that guided the turrets fire ) but then it could still try to escape and be repaired to fight another day. Many Brittish battleships and cruisers actually were shot up and escaped to be reapired and used another day, because of their armoured belt. The Bismarck superstructure was near completely shot off too, shutting down her ability to fight back, but the armoured belt was still intact and the ship was otherwise still in operation and far from sinking. The stuck rudder prevented her escape.
Carriers had no battleship grenade armoured belts, they didn't need that since they were not to go up against battleships physically. Later war Carriers had however an armoured flight deck, that could resist up to a certain weight and type of aircraft bombs. Specially designed heavy armour piercing bombs, dropped by divebombers that dove from high altitudes giving the bombs maximum kinetic energy could not be stopped. These bombs with a delayed detonator were designed to slam through the armourd flight deck, fall through several decks deep into the ship were ( that part is correct ) fuel, ammo and high pressure poilers were. Carriers, like battleships did also have anti torpedo bulkheads.
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But that is real life; onto FH. Simple fact is no matter how much effort anyone puts into any game; at the end of the day it is still a game and not real life. Which means that there has to be compromises to make it playable. And in places, you wiggle certain things like spawn times and the like, to better simulate reality.
If DICE had done a better job, you would get victory points too for destroying enemy vehicles dependend of their size and importance. Afterall, they represent vital recources used by an enemy country to produce and maintain them. If they are lost, you economically hurt that country, since it is very costly in recources and time to replace that vehicle. On top of that, an the fighting forces missed the firepower that this unit represented for the time it took to replace it. Dependend on what unit is was, a few weeks or a few months. Heavy battleships like the Yamato and Bismarck were never replaced, they cost so much recources and time to produce, it was impossible to replace them.
Getting victory points for enemy vehicles would improve the game in a way players would be more carefull with their vehicles, and not kamikaze them if ammo or bombload is depleted, or abuse them as taxi rides, and killing them would be more properly rewarding dependend on size and impoertance of destroyed vehicle. Losing a battleship or carrier was a disaster for a country at war. In bf1942/FH it only means a minute or so no respawn, it isn't even felt in maps where most playes are fighting on an island anyway.
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A good example of this is something we have done for some of the maps in WAW. On some maps, we have high spawn times for the big tanks like Tigers and shorter spawn times for, say, the Shermans. This help simulates that, in RL, the Allies had numbers over the superior overall performance of their heavy tanks. Why not just add in more Shermans you say? Well, simple. In RL, niether army had to worry about player limits on the server. In BF though, the server only holds so many players. In WAW, that is 50; 25 vs 25. So if you give the Allies, say 3 Shermans for every Tiger that eats up their man power quickly. So while the Allies have to have 3 troopers to man their armor, the axis are committing one. And the other two are free to support infantry attacks, man AA, fly planes, whatever. (note: I'm using 1 trooper per tank as the minimum to use the vehicle in combat) And on our big tanks maps, where we can have upwards of 24 or more tanks on a map, that man power limit is huge. So, the spawn times come in. And frankly, it's worked fairly well and we expect to use it more in next campaign.
Respawning weaker units faster then heavier units is a good balancing measure, as long as these too do not keep popping up in seconds. Unlimited enemies coming at you is something for cheap Quake III clone games....
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As for ships. Spawn times for the ships depends heavilly on the map. For instance, if there is a B25 on the map, any axis destroyers are toast in one, maybe 2 passes. And there are other factors as well. How much air cover does both sides have, torpeado boats, is that destroyer their only starting spawn, AA capabilities of the ships and so on. Take Wake for example. On that map during our last campaign (where we increased the destroyer spawn time (can't remember to exactly what, but it was over a minute at least), their destroyers were pounded to the death by combined defgun fire and bombings. But I agree, they should not be instantaneous. The secret is to look at the map and find the right spawn time that works for that map.
Agree, respawning should be messured in how much effort it takes for an enemy to be able to destroy that vehicle. But never instantanious.
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Which is kind of my total theory of balancing maps. You can have a system that rates/compares various equipment to give you a good idea of balance. But you also have to take into account all of the various factors of the map as well. Terrain, number and location of choke points, sight distance (fog), and so on. And for most of that, you just have to go by experience and your gut as there is no real way to quantify those elements realistically.
You guys are more focussed on equal balance. Fighting on one side only ( axis or allies ) a whole campaign requires balance to be fair. FH up to now is unbalanced ( i guess for for realism purposes ) For clan matches unbalance is not important, both teams have to play both sides of a map once. It may even be more interesting, as the clan that can handle being the weakest side best, and is able to preserve more tickets then the other clan playing the weakest side at the end of the round, wins the match. You can litterally win while losing a round, if you lost with more tickets remaining then the other clan, when they are playing that side.
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Finally, just to include a shameless plug (sorry, can't help myself LOL), if you want to play in battles where you get recognized for playing for the team (ie. sinking ships for no "points", manning AA, following and repairing the tanks, gaurding rear CPs) you can always come over and play at WAW. We don't give a rat's butt about individual scores; the team either wins or loses at the end of the round. My main skills were defending choke points as an engineer, driving the APC around rearming our tanks and repairing them when they called out, and manning the AA guns; and I became a General LOL.
Repairing, being someones bomber gunner, manning AA and such you can do otherwise too, and you usually will get a thanx or respect for it, providing you do it effective. It is true though in clans - and probably in WAW too - your actions will be noticed by your fellow team more, since everyone works together and depend on you doing your job well.
The one thing i do not like of WAW that there are people telling other people what to do......especially if they are of lower fighting skill then yourself. But i guess that is something personal.
Last edited by Beast of War; February 25th, 2004 at 03:07 PM.
Repairing, being someones bomber gunner, manning AA and such you can do otherwise too, and you usually will get a thanx or respect for it, providing you do it effective. It is true though in clans - and probably in WAW too - your actions will be noticed by your fellow team more, since everyone works together and depend on you doing your job well.
For those that like stats like that we run them at WOLF. So you can see who is the best engineer, the best medic etc.
You also gotta think about the people getting Bombs dropped on there head on the deck. The Bombs leave holes! They go right through and they dont care what they hit.
You also gotta think about the people getting Bombs dropped on there head on the deck. The Bombs leave holes! They go right through and they dont care what they hit.
I don't think there will be many people on the deck during a battle.....exept those that are manning secondary weapons such as smaller caliber surface guns ( 150 - 40 mm ) and flak batteries. And these are often protected by gunshields.
You see, the top structure ( everything above the deck ) of cruisers and even most battleships was only light armoured. Almost all larger grenades would come right through the light armour and explode. Most battleships and cruisers could not be heavy armoured, or else the ship would be so heavy above the waterline it would roll upside down in the water. Do not forget the main turrets and the barbettes they were mounted on weighed 1/3 of the total ship, and most of that weight was above the waterline too !
Some battleships did have armour on the superstructure that protected against battleship grenades. The Yamato was the best protected, it could resist 15 ich battleship grenades on the superstructure ( the PoW only fires 14 inch ! ) and 18 inch on it's armoured belt ( ships hull ) The Yamato could have so heavy superstructure adding to the tremendous weight of it's supersize heavily armoured turrets and barbettes, because it was extremely wide and large.
Because it didn't have to fit through canals like Panama and Suez like the Brittish battleships, there was no limit to it's with. And a wider and larger ship can carry much more weight thus can have bigger guns and heavier armour. On top of that, a wider ship is more stable in the water and less likely to roll upside down when it is heavy above the waterline. A wider ship will also travel less deep into the water, wich means it is not restricted to only very deep water.
Smaller battleships and cruisers allready had so much weight from carrying their main turrets and often quitte numerous flak battery guns and secondary weapons above the waterline, they could only have light armour on the superstructure.....
What good is light armour if it doesn't stop bombs and grenades i hear you ask....well, when the ship is hit by a bomb or grenade, metal shards and debris fly all over the place, damaging machinery, vital pipes and lines, and kill crew. Light armour was applied for splinter-protection, protecting both vital systems and crew for more damage around the direct impact site. That way the amount of damage a grenade or bomb did was reduced as much as possible. Also, when a heavy battleship grenade exploded in the water - a near miss - the pressure could be so severe it still caused casualties among the crew and wreck vital systems aboard the ship that it missed. Light armour also helped to absorb such pressure damage.
When reading all that with the splinters, metal shards, flying debris and lethal pressure of near miss impacts, you understand walking on the deck is not recommendable....
In game you will often be killed aboard a battleship, cruiser or destroyer by running on deck when it is hit......100% realism there....
Last edited by Beast of War; February 25th, 2004 at 06:55 PM.
Well, I understood the concept (that being: you can tear the superstructure apart all you want, but it does not sink a ship) just not all of the technical details. Thanks for clearing some of them up for me.
As for DICE doing a better job and coding the game to give points (or whatever) to reflect destroying vehicles and such. I agree. I have a huge hatred for the constant use of any and all aircraft in the game as prop driven, guided, antitank missiles. Or the naval tactic of ramming the other ship like we are the ancient Greek navy! Unfortunately, DICE didn't include this feature; so we're forced to deal with what we got. Over all though, it seems we pretty much agree that there should be higher respawn times on vehicles to reflect their importance and to get away from the QuackIII mentality.
As for WAW, yes, we are more interested in balanced maps than most people. But that's due to the nature of how we play. The fact is, we can't have everything historically accurate. Otherwise, the guys playing the Axis would have little fun knowing that they were going to lose from day one. Kinda takes the competitive fight out of your players LOL. We play for the competition; not to reenact WWII.
And yea, WAW is not for everyone. Mainly due to the fact that we do have a chain of command for each side. And many players just are not interested in following orders in their gaming. They want to go find the vehicles they want to drive/fly and fight on the parts of the map they want to fight on. And that's fine. WAW is for the guys (and girls ) that are looking for and desiring to be in highly organized campaigns WITH that chain of command. That have captains and colonels ordering their troops to form up at rally points assault a CP or see an air strike called in before the infantry rush in and the like. And yea, not all of our officers are always the best of the best. But most of them are.
I think the difference for many players is their criteria for evaluating the worth of their officers. Many say the qualities of a good officer are how well he shoots or flys or tanks. Basically, if he is leet in game. And they resent being under the command of a guy that they could beat in a knife fight on the carrier deck or in a sniper duel. Where as in WAW, we try to evaluate officers based on their command abilities, maturity (hopefully... we've gotten better here in the last 2 campaigns), and dedication to putting forth the effort needed for the team. And while some of our officers do have mad skillz, many of them are regular guys that have a knack for organizing their troops and commanding them on the battlefield.
Which, in WAW atleast, means a lot more than being the best tanker or pilot (or whatever) on the team. Not saying that is how you judged our officers or such Beast. Just that is how I know many have in the past that have not liked WAW; based on some of the nasty PMs I have recieved. It is like the difference between the Huns and the Roman Army. Some like to fight like the Huns and others like the Roman Army. And since it is all for fun in the end; you got to go where you will have the most fun.
wow its filled full of mass noobs, al you have to do is edit the spawn time on the object spawner, and presto longer spawn time....im suprised noone said anything about that
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Forgotten Hope General Yib-Yab (Off Topic) 
Re: Respawn time 
) that are looking for and desiring to be in highly organized campaigns WITH that chain of command. That have captains and colonels ordering their troops to form up at rally points assault a CP or see an air strike called in before the infantry rush in and the like. And yea, not all of our officers are always the best of the best. But most of them are. 
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