Looks positively terrific!
Thank you Kome, thatās kind of you
Hereās a little update - some video stuff for a change. Another sneak peek at our upcoming devblog update. Enjoy the dive and pray for Hiryu! ^^
Iām completely honest!
You guys are making something truly special here!
I had seen a post maybe a year ago reference this project on another sim site. I was in the āIāll believe it when I see it come to fruition.ā Well you guys certainly have appeared to make it happen. I am VERY excited about where this is going. Keep up the good work, excellent community engagement so far (well at least here at MudSpike), and what looks to be an awesome product.
Iām a bit of an gunnery nerd, can you provide any details on how exactly AAA will work? How in depth are you guys getting with things?
Thank you Jerick!
Oh, well one year ago? That must have been Grogheads then - or maybe somebody else, actually. If you have a link I am interested in checking this out
In regard of AAA, as you can see on this video so far we went for full sim. Heavy AAA at the very least (these 5 inchers) actually shoot shells. Not sure just yet which solution we will retain for light AAA, because it is a potential performance killer (especially over US task forces by October 1942 when everybody has equipped Bofors).
Anybody playing Il2 1946 even today knows how heavy a load AAA can be with all these particles everywhere. Imagine a full regiment of Wirbelwind and a flak tower both shooting non-stop in your visual champ for 10mnā¦ Just check this photo taken at Santa Cruz, and imagine the challenge it might represent for your hardware
As such, the game being a wargame first and foremost, the primary goals are to make it visually convincing and historically believable in terms of results, while remaining playable on medium-grade configurations. We will fine tune the simulation aspect afterwards and see how far we can go.
Hope it kinda answers your question - for now.
Thanks for your support and your patience
Brrrrrā¦ December waters are cold up there, I wonder what these people are doing so far away from their own portsā¦ Any idea? Seems fishy to meā¦
Thatās gorgeous admiral, chapeau!
Agree, truly beautiful.
Thank you boys!
Anyway - hereās some newer shots of one big mama, aka Kaga just fresh from the paintshop. She sure had curvesā¦
Sorry, somehow missed your response. I want to say it was SimHq, but Iām not having any luck finding the thread.
How granular are you guys going to get with shell based AAA? Fuzes, payload types, range/height finders, fire control, etc? Again itās a bit in the weeds I know, but the gunnery grognard in me is curious And if thatās all WIP, I totally get it, again just curious!
For light AAA, I really donāt have any good ideas that wouldnāt be frame rater killers. If I come up with anything I will certainly let you know!
Hey there!
Regarding USN AA, we are basing our stuff on US Navy manuals & doctrine updates.
Naturally as a gunnery expert, you will understand that shell fuzes settings for AA are outside the realm of command for the player - well, technically, nobody would decide anything much in that regard except for the BuOr regarding new field practices to implement (modifying them along the lines of combat experience), and technically I suppose the officer in charge of the battery might want to try something if he wanted to, but he is expected to follow the instructions set by the newest doctrine.
From what we read, although fuzes for larger shells (that is 5 inch DP guns) might have been set dynamically so that they would explode when reaching the ceiling of the target as observed by the director, smaller rounds were all set to explode at a given altitude (there was simply no way for fine-tuning this in action) in order to create a barrage effect. Rest assured that AAA will be recreated in order to achieve this visible result. Naturally, our time limit for vol.1 being January 1943, VT-fuzes are simply out of the picture for now, which makes things even more simple.
Besides, although heavy AA will be modeled with 1 shell IRL = 1 shell in game (as any naval gun) medium and light AA - as you say - are frame rate killers, so their simulation might be somewhat abstracted in order not to freeze the game down to 1 FPS every time a US Task Force fights for its life
Regarding range/height finders, fire control, etcā¦ All of this is to be somewhat abstracted too into a process that doesnāt happen on screen. More advanced mechanics will have to wait for a dedicated station-level (that is ship-level) simulator I am afraid. I hope this will not make you too sad
At any rate, we will eventually get to a more granular level of simulation, but the scope of vol.1 is a bit too large to allow for a microscopic, operator-level recreation of everything (it will affect planes too, btw, so donāt worry it is an issue affecting everybody across the board!). Again, the important thing is that itās not made so for the sake of gameplay, but with overall performance and development time in mind. We are not dumbing down the game, just trying to make sure we can actually make a playable game before we retire.
Cheers!
Sorry, I realized I phrased that poorly.
How granular are the underlying calculations? I get that a lot of it can be abstracted successfully, Iām just curious. For example:
Once incoming aircraft are spotted is height and range finding via either radar or optical ranging simulated (or is there a general +/- value for getting range and altitude based on the scenario date, side, etc?)? Is there a delay to pass this info along to the guns, which then must be trained and pointed? Is each gun doing itās own ranging or are they operating under central, division, or battery control (with the attendant loss of accuracy as we go down the line)? Are the guns firing in barrage, predicated (continuously tracking), and is this based on the directors?
Iām mainly curious what is being abstracted and how much (and believe me, I get that often times too much detail works far less well, than just enough detail).
Iāll have to double check my references, but I could have sworn the 3"/50 mount had MT (mechanical time, ie settable fuzes) rather than just a either a fixed time or PD fuzeā¦ If I can find the reference Iāll pass it along.
Ah oops sorry if I wasnāt clear myself, but I want to make sure that itās written there too - I consider HA 3 inchers to be DP guns too of course. I took the example of 5 inchers because the example came to mind faster (and because it was the main attraction) but when I mention simplying medium or light AA representation, I mean rapid-fire guns (aka in the era covered the top limit being the 1.1 incher and the 40mm bofors of course).
Regarding delays in processing data (whether itās for AA or surface action) it sure will be baked in, and made so to realistically acknowledge the technological level and efficiency of the director-to-gun chain of command. It is particularly important on the Japanese side too. According to situation, guns will fire individually or under a central supervision depending on the type and the damage (I hope we can model AA directors as separate systems, like other fire directors, which means that damage to them shall impact the firing sequence and - naturally - the accuracy of the AA mounts they are linked to).
But understand that in the end (if you will please allow me to kill the magic) it amounts to saying that āthese heavy AA guns will fire with X% accuracy and will need Y*sec of set up before cycling from a target to another, with a Z/min rate of fire. On manual fire because of a severed link to their director and until/if this link is restored, these guns will have a (X-x)% accuracy, will need (Y+y)*sec of set up and will have (Z-z)/min rate of fireā. In that regard, director technology & accuracy will be directly baked into the values we will provide for these mounts, not the directors themselves (if you see what I mean).
Hope it makes sense
Cool and clear!
Thanks Kome,
Nice to know I can always count on you
Everybody, have a peaceful, kind and spiritual Pearl Harbor remembrance day.
S! o7
Same to you, to the whole team, and their families!
Will this game include sailors brawling at their Holliday party? ā¦too soon?
I mean, I donāt think there were as many boat boos in WWIIā¦