DG 1.5 Question for Bullethead: How does smoke affect gunnery (if at all)?
 

Bullethead,

Recently been reading up on the RJW and using your excellent software as a learning aid. I *believe* I've read in one account (which I can no longer find) that gun, coal, and fire smoke still had a big impact on gunlaying in this period. Questions:
1. From your research - is that true?
2. Does DG 1.5 model it?

Thanks in advance and (again) great game!
V/R
feld

I know smoke effects gunnery in Jutland (Unfortunately, from experience as too...), no reason why it shouldn't in DG either.

I think the most important question is "HOW it affects?"...

Smoke affects both spotting and the accuracy of aiming weapons. The thicker the smoke and the closer you are to it, the greater its effect. Thus, if your smoke is blowing between you and the target, it's more of a problem for you than the enemy shooting at you.

Note that the effects of smoke last a lot longer and cover a much larger area than the smoke graphics do. This is because if we made the smoke graphics linger as long as smoke does in real life, it would quickly bring computers to a stop.

Also note that the game builds up a "smoke map" as the battle goes on, keeping track of all the lingering smoke effects. If you have a bunch of ships that spend a fair amount of time in the same general area, and if the wind isn't too strong, you'll end up with a smog effect that limits everybody's visibility. This can get bad enough to cause battles to end due to nobody being able to see the enemy, even if the sun isn't quite down.

Finally, note that this lingering smoke / smog has definite locations on the map, so can cause LOS problems. So say there are 3 enemy ships in line. You might not be able to see the 1 in the middle due to an intervening clot of smog, but then it will reappear and the 3rd enemy ship will disappear briefly. This sort of thing is one of the major causes of ships switching targets unexpectedly.

Bullethead,

GREAT SCOTT! I love you guys!!!

This may be the first ever documented instance of a game designer actually choosing simulation fidelity of graphical excellence! I salute you!

While I very much respect that design choice...it's presents a bit of a problem. The real Togo knew where the smoke was all he had to do was look around from MIKASA's foretop to figure it out. It'd be nice if the player did too...perhaps you could put a graphical representation on the minimap only? Akin to the gun range overlays...I'll put in a suggestion on the server.

BTW, recommend you guys document stuff like that in your appendices, informational brochure, and website feature lists. Reason I say that is that I read the manual cover to cover and gave your website a very thorough going over and still had many questions about the fidelity of your models. The rare sort of bird who would really love this game might not buy it (I almost didn't) because all of the wonderful things under the hood are ...well...under the hood.

Just my $2

V/R
feld

IMHO these effects don't affect situation very much. Well, if wind is going to the direction of enemy - you shells fly by wind which is good, but you see through your own smoke etc. In practice these all become insignificant. Computer still hits better in either situation :) Last night I have a night catch of Russian forces trying to escape to Vladivostok. Never ever I've seen that Russian ships would be so hard to hit or they hit so often - when I played for Russians!!! :) Although even then they have nothing to do with Japanese 8" machineguns...

Yeah, that's a valid point. Please send in a suggestion to that effect via the bug server (which lets you change the message type to "suggestion").

I guess the problem is that we figure that most folks who would be interested in this sort of game at all are naval grogs. Thus, we we say the game's got full and accurate environmental effects, we assume that a naval grog would expect everything on his 10-page mental list of such effects to be in the game, would spend several hours looking for each item, and would complain if he didn't spot one. He wouldn't ask which items are present before looking, because he secretly hopes to find some obscure thing that's not in the model and then crow about it. You know how naval grogs are :rotfl:.

There is another suggestion which may solve the problem: tell the grogs that absolutely EVERY item is considered precisely but cumulative effect suddenly appeared to be at zero :)

BH, are there any small ships that make effective smoke layers, ones that maybe belch thicker smoke than some of the others?
I would love to try running them close to the enemy battle line to try and disrupt their gunnery

This tactic actually works. The intervening funnel smoke does make a smokescreen effect of sorts.

BTW, we know they used true smokescreens in WW1, but not only would adding them choke everybody's computer, but the AI would have to be taught to use them and react to them effectively, which would require major work. Hence, no true smokescreens in the game, but maybe someday.

Anyway, to answer your question, you want to use coal-burners for this job because they make way more smoke than oil-burners (which you can see in the game). In the RJW, no problem because everything burns coal. But in 1916, most of the destroyers on both sides and most RN CLs burn oil.

Thanks, I may use the defense squadrons for this, probably going to lose a few

Wouldn't one instead loose every "smokemaker" close to line of tough ships long before they make enough smoke to affect the battle at all? ;)

The way I have implemented this was to engage the battleline first, drawing the vast majority of their fire and then running the smokemakers close, but not too close, to the enemy line.
With most of their fire directed at my own heavies the smokers don't recieve too much fire.
I lost a couple but most got through with minimal damage plus a few torp launches just to slow the foe down, keeping him within the smoked region.

The reduction in hits on my line was (I think) noticable.

I have only had one opportunity to try this so far so no accurate data yet but it seems to work.

There is a constant confusion about which game we discuss at the moment :) If as in theme's title - DG - there are no torp launchers could help you to "slow foe down". If it's Jutland - maybe it requires another theme? :) As for me I never write in Jutland's themes cause I don't play Jutland and have no opinion about it...

As for "smoke war" I doubt these factors affect situation so much we could even notice - again - in DG ;) From my experience - neither sun, smoke nor wind can't help you much to overrun computer ;) It's advantage is quite more sensible...