My biggest issue with ships not sinking, is how accurate the German side is. I made a scenario that pitted 20 older Brit battleships/pre-dreadnoughts, versus 4 Westfalens and 4 Helgolands. I had to turn it off. The brits were mauled, badly. I think I sank a (read 1) Helgoland class ship, and 2 others had heavy damage. The British fire was not systematic or scientific (Percy Scott and Fiske are rolling in there grave right now...) as the salvos were all over the place. 1st salvo near (100yrds short approx), next way over, and then followed with a way short. When they did hit, it was with 1 shell only, not a group of shells. I like the shell camera by the way, its neat. Deflections were good, just range finding was really bad. Germans were much more consistant, when they found the range, you get hammered. Historically, German range finding was more accurate, using longer base sterioscopic rangefinders (Zeiss), while the British relied on the shorter base coinidence type from Barr and Stroud, which caused an overestimation of range. It was more the length of the rangefinger than the type that made the difference (size does matter...
). I don't know if this factor was taken into account in this game, but it still can't justify the odd rangefinding, unless all the British spotters had too many pints of stout/lager right before the battle and were seeing all kinds of splashes. From what I have read, the German long range fire was accurate at the beginning of a battle, but tended to go off as they did not use as detailed a battle tracer/plotter like a Dreyer table that the British used. The British were much more consistant and deliberate. Please understand that I am only a history buff/enthusist, and throwing in my unqualified observations.
In the aforementioned senerio, I had Human control of both fleets, slightly closing paths, fire open at about 20000yds. I got frustrated and turned the german fleet so that the British Battleships were crossing the 'T', and the fire didn't improve. It was the same scattered shooting.
I really like this game, just think the balance needs to be tweaked a bit. Mind you, it could be that I am just a bad commander.....
BTW, I was down to 6 ships remaining when I turned it off. Had lots of magazine explosions.
Regards,
Glenn