The unofficial Distant Guns 'wish list'

saddletank

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Seems a little redundant seeing that in battle, all other things being equal, both sides crews would tire at broadly similar rates, so any degeneration of efficiency would probably be reflected on both sides with the net result of cancelling each other out.

Or... in some ways, isn't the steadily degrading damage control % factoring in crew exhaustion?
 

rgreat

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I think battle fatigue must not be a constant value, but must be dependant on ship speed, gun fire, and damage parties load, flooding, fires, shell hits and crew loss (partially from stress).

For example crew on a ship after 4 hours of intense combat must be totally exausted, while on a ship sailing slowly nearby crew must be close to fresh.

Well, Total War series comes to mind...
 
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zorrrro

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I think battle fatigue must not be a constant value, but must be dependant on ship speed, gun fire, and damage parties load, flooding, fires, shell hits and crew loss (partially from stress).

For example crew on a ship after 4 hours of intense combat must be totally exausted, while on a ship sailing slowly nearby crew must be close to fresh.

Well, Total War series comes to mind...
rgreat, привет. Хочу лицензию на DG1.5 Я еще не опоздал ?
zorrrro(гав)yandex.ru
 

Von der Tann

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Sounds good to me. And the degrading damage control efficiency is caused by crew losses, I expect.

I wonder about one thing, though: what impact would the fatigue have on crews of different sizes? The Royal Navy generally makes do with smaller crews, which gives the individual seaman more space, but also more to do - while the big German crews are crammed in their ships, but have more hands to handle their jobs. Also, the entire crew suffers from being in battle for a long time, no matter where they actually serve on the ship.
 

Coypus

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Seems a little redundant seeing that in battle, all other things being equal, both sides crews would tire at broadly similar rates, so any degeneration of efficiency would probably be reflected on both sides with the net result of cancelling each other out.

Or... in some ways, isn't the steadily degrading damage control % factoring in crew exhaustion?
In some scenarios and battles for instance Jutland or Yellow Sea units arrived fresh to the battle whilst others had been in battle all Day. Performance viv a vis these units was noticable.

In game you can just bang away without regard to this. It would mean you would have to conserve your "energy" instead of wasting on meaningless targets at hopeless ranges.

Ships therefore could be used to harass the battleline and screens would be useful
 

Coypus

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Another feature I would love is the ability to track with directors without opening fire. Actions Stations an old naval simulator had this feature.
 

saddletank

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I would assume this is happening anyway 'under the hood'. And once again, that's a ship-command level feature too.
 

SMS Biene

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As to this I see no reasons for thinking in alternatives - either fleet or ship command. Remember good old GNBNA with all those various dimensions from the admirality campaign level down to damage or gunnery controls of single ships and the simpel option to switch between levels and stations - manually or automatically controlled, it all was completely up to you. I loved that kind of flexibility and I'm proud to admitt that I still play GNBNA from time to time after all these years. If a game developer says "Can't to that" for cost or manpower aspects -ok, got to accept that, that's another aspect. But apart from that I would love to see a new GNBNA stylish game appear on the market.

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SMS Biene
 

Coypus

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I would assume this is happening anyway 'under the hood'. And once again, that's a ship-command level feature too.

Well you can select ship to fire at individual targets, tracking would not complicate things two much. Actions stations gave a bonus for tracked targets and a penalty for newly aquired targets. The feature played pretty well.

Salvo chasing was also a good feature in that game.
 

Von der Tann

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In our last few multiplayer games we found that the recon system could perhaps be modified. Right now, every player of each fleet sees what the other players of his side see, both on the minimap and on the playing field. This is pretty convenient, but perhaps it might be more realistic to restrict vision to the ships the player in question commands, like in HPS Naval Campaigns? Would put an emphasis on good recon reports.

It might also be convenient to be able to see unit names on the flag ships at least, because we had some confusion over what units went to which player - the unit names can only be identified by looking at a ships report, way too complicated.
 

Trygvasson

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As to this I see no reasons for thinking in alternatives - either fleet or ship command. Remember good old GNBNA with all those various dimensions from the admirality campaign level down to damage or gunnery controls of single ships and the simpel option to switch between levels and stations - manually or automatically controlled, it all was completely up to you. I loved that kind of flexibility and I'm proud to admitt that I still play GNBNA from time to time after all these years. If a game developer says "Can't to that" for cost or manpower aspects -ok, got to accept that, that's another aspect. But apart from that I would love to see a new GNBNA stylish game appear on the market.

Regards
SMS Biene
Amen to that! The GNB series actually managed to cram in a whole lot of realism and fun into a game that could probably run on a 386 computer. Spotting rounds, director targeting, turret controls, the works. I now have a motherboard capable of 24g of RAM, but the best naval game(and I really love this game) out there doesn't model AP/HE shells. Y'know, fire a 305mm AP shell at a destroyer, and you'll create a 305mm hole going straight through it an out the other side. They've done a really nice job on fleet maneuvers though.

My wishlist?
1. Sinking ships should sink faster if they still get shot at
2. Set target speed for division regardless of individual ship slowdown - if you can't keep your station, break formation. Micromanaging division speeds is a hassle.
3. Some kind of volume adjustment for distance and gun size!? I close-up on my target, range 8000m+, and I hear the distant guns(sic) as clearly as if they were just behind the camera. Fighting steel did a great job on the audio side, IIRC.
 

avl90

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I wish the DRM would change. I have wanted to buy this game for a while but have holding back because of this. Please consider changing your policies on this. If it is at all possible... I think if you look at something like eLicense you will see that such restrictions on installations and internet requirements aren't so necessary to prevent piracy. Please consider...:upset:
 
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Ready - Train - Fire Torpedoes

I'd like an option to tell your guys to start training the torpedo tubes, before the target comes into the arc.

It seems kind of stupid, especially for the popular 90 degree beam tubes, that they have to train from dead astern to fire at say 80 degrees to from the current heading. If they could be told, hey, we're going to make a run, get ready to launch to starboard in the next five minutes, that they could at least train it to 90 degrees off the heading, and then just make the last 10 degree change right before launch.

As it is, they have to turn it 110 degrees to make that shot. By then, the target has moved, or if they are maintaining a constant heading relative to the enemy, either the tube or the whole ship has been shot to pieces.

As it is now, I much prefer the bow tube launch as at least you can arrange for it to only need a 10-20 degree change from neutral.

For the beam tubes, I guess it works best to launch when you are heading mostly away from the enemy.

They would need to be told which beam to turn it to, or better yet which angle.

It would also be handy sometimes, just to say, for the whole division, just fire the tubes in a spread at a particular bearing. After all, most of time, it seems best just to fire a bunch of torpedoes at a line of ships, sort of like Napoleonic musketry, rather than a sniper with a rifle trying to lead a moving target.

I certainly need more practice at setting up torpedo runs, but the biggest issue I seem to have is that the tubes take so long to bear, and if they haven't been told to fire, or the target slips out of the arc, they quickly set it back to the useless dead astern position.
 

Von der Tann

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While we're at it: it might be nice to have your people aim the guns, but fire only when you order them to open fire.
 

ExMachina

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While we're at it: it might be nice to have your people aim the guns, but fire only when you order them to open fire.
agree. might save ammo. there's already a "cease fire" button so why not a "fire: button? then the "target" buttons would do just (and only) that.

but then again, i don't know that the AI gunners actually accumulate a targeting solution over time, at least in the absence of shell splashes.
 

Von der Tann

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It might save some time if you train your guns before you give the firing order, so there are no precious seconds lost once the fun starts. This is actually happening if you train your guns on a target beyond your range, but it might be nice to be able to do it at any given time.

Admittedly, it would bring a few extra buttons that are not exactly essential and clog the interface, so maybe it is not such a great idea.
 

rgreat

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1. I want severe speed loss on turns.
2. I want slow acceleration to maximum speed compared to faster acceleration at medium/low speeds.
3. I want flank speed being unsustainable for a long time.
 

Luminary Crush

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* Damage Control a la "Great Naval Battles"
GNB had the best damage control simulation of any naval warfare sim I've seen - really great detail where you can assign your DC to repairing different components of the ship. This also requires a more involved damage screen showing things such as flooding compartments, engine/boiler damage, etc. You could even intentionally counterflood compartments in a ship to reduce listing. Very well done.

* More granular fire control
Another GNB-ism, the fire control directors were modeled accurately per ship class - primary, secondary, and tertiary as equipped. You could then assign guns to fire control directors, or let guns operate under 'local control'. Each director could have a different target; with local control each weapon mount would have it's own target. A single ship could engage many targets this way, and the pros/cons of multiple targets versus using director control would apply.

* Ship models for France, Italy, Austria-Hungary and Russia (and maybe Turkey?)
No one has done a sim modeling this yet to any degree for WWI - after the "Distant Guns" publication I knew you guys had a taste for 'forgotten' history.

* Civil War era
The engine you have created would be great to produce the first "Ironclads" realtime sim.

Right then. Carry on.
 

SMS Biene

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According to Treusch v. Buttlar, zeppelin commander during WWI, the HSF zeps had the order to shadow spotted enemy units and to look behind the horizon during battles. It would be nice to have such options i.e. to get some more influence on the zeps during campaigns and campaign battles. Also the AI should frequently try to attack the zep bases with AV ship based planes. BTW there was a bug with the short victory report (+++) during campaigns, has this been corrected?

Biene
 
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