[Bullethead]

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Originally Posted by Trygvasson

I sincerely thank the Gods Above

You're welcome.

1. It seems the ships stop accumulating damage after they've reached 'sinking' status

It sometimes seems that way, but it's really not true. You can reduce the sinking time for ships by continuing to fire at them. However, it usually takes something significant to make a real difference. A few more shellholes on the waterline more or less don't really change anything. What you need is either a lot more water coming in (like from a torpedo hole) or rather less going out (like by doing more propulsion damge).

That said, however, ships get lower in the water as they flood, which brings shell holes and ruined watertight integrity that were previously harmless down to where the water is. Thus, as ships settle, they often suddenly start sinking much faster as more holes reach water level.

2. More info! Range circles for primary/secondary guns, visual detection ranges, starshell ranges, torpedo ranges, acceleration rates(aren't they a bit quick?!), armor penetration/distance - and that's only what I can't stop thinking about!

The visibilty range, plus whether it's increasing or decreasing, is shown on the weather report button. However, that's a complicated subject (see my answer to XXzard infra).

The ship information screens give you the ranges, rates of fire, and a buch of other stuff for all the weapons. Just mouse over one of the colored dots and the text at the bottom of the screen changes from being about the ship as a whole to being about that weapon.

but why a division would want to keep sailing at 4kts after the ship that slowed them down has sunk, I don't know.

I agree, this is something we could improve. Send in a bug report on it, but change its message type to SUGGESTION.

Originally Posted by Xxzard

The weather report shows visibility, and visual detection is I suppose automatic at that range.

Actually, the visual range is very dynamic and variable. The range shown on the weather report is the maximum possible for the time of day and weather conditions, but without taking any specific situational modifiers into account.

As mentioned in another thread, there's a "smoke map" keeping track of lingering smoke long after we've had to remove its graphics in the interests of keeping your computer running. Thus, the LOS in different directions can be stopped by clots of smog at different ranges. The same thing applies to rain and fog, which are not uniform over the battlespace but occur in patches of varying density.

The length of the LOS usually is not the same in both directions between 2 given ships, even though the factors above are the same for both. This is because bigger ships are easier to see than small ships. Same for ships on fire, firing, using searchlights, or under a starshell. However, ships that are hugging a coastline at night are rather hard to see from seeward. Then, of course, there are the effects of the sun and moon, which are very directional.

On top of all this, even if everything above is the same for both ships, visibility isn't an all-or-nothing thing, where you can see out to a given range perfectly and then hit a wall. Instead, the chance of spotting something tapers off to zero at max possible range. This means that spotting a ship out near the max visibility range is a matter of chance, and 1 ship might do it before the other.

Anyway, all this is why sometimes you'll see a further ship before you see a closer ship. Also, sometimes you know a ship is there, but can't see it well enough to shoot at it. This is why you'll sometimes see a ship appear on the water but when you try to target it, it says it's not visible to any of your ships.

The presentation of all this is could perhaps be improved, say like how Combat Mission does FOW. Send in a suggestion on it.