Bad visibility and "Bobnov's surprise"

[Mobeer]

I've had a couple of odd experiences in bad visibility, using the standard "Bobnov's surprise" scenario.

(i) The two Japanese cruisers start unalerted, but will go to battle stations during the scenario. This is ok, except the cruisers are instantly effective when they do so. As the Russians, my first 6 destroyers to attack launched torpedos, then turned away without difficulty since the Japanese were not alert. The next two destroyers were hit almost instantly upon becoming visible to the Japanese.

(ii) As the Japanese, Tokiwa fired torpedos at Rastropni, which was not visible:
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31 seconds later, Syerditi appeared in the murky rain. Tokiwa turned on a searchlight, fired and destroyed the Russian destroyer in an instant; no time needed to acquire the newly visible Russian.
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9 seconds later, Storozhevoi appeared from the rain close to Asama. Asama fired instantly, heavily damaging the destroyer.
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This behaviour on the part of the Japanese is spoiling this scenario, because the Russians get no time between spotting the Japanese cruisers and being hit.

Do other people get these effects?

[Bullethead]

Do other people get these effects?

Pretty much.

Guns in DG do not traverse at their historical speeds, but snap around instantly. And guns that haven't fired yet are assumed to be loaded. Thus, when a ship spots a new target, the guns go to it instantly and then fire instantly. IOW, zero delay between spotting a target and firing at it.

You can also see this happen in other situations. For instance, your ship is aiming at a distant enemy that's far out of range. If you switch to a closer target in range, the guns fire at the new target instantly. Another example is that if the current target is to port, then the starboad guns won't fire by themselves unless there's a target to starboard that's pretty close to your ship. But if you switch your designated target to the fairly distant ship to starboard, the starboard battery will fire instantly.

You'd think there'd be a need to track the target a little before firing, to know how to lead it. OTOH, back in these days, there was no centralized fire control to speak of and aiming was done at each gun individually. Thus, I can see there not being much, if any, fire control delay like there'd have to be in a long-range fight in a later era. But it should still take some time to pass the word what the new target is, and get the guns trained onto it. At present, there's no delay for that at all.