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

[feld]

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

[Raptor1]

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

[alexsmith]

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

[Bullethead]

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.

[feld]

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!

Originally Posted by Bullethead

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.

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

[Bullethead]

Originally Posted by feld

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.

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:.

[alexsmith]

Originally Posted by Bullethead

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.

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...