Worklist for update 1.4

I do think that this one is a bit too fiddly, discarding all 1's will only marginally help the lower DF aircraft and will actually hurt them just as much. It also reduces the total amount of possible combinations.

Can you give both options above a try? I think the natural 6 solution is the cleanest, it also levels the playing field a bit between higher DF aicraft of the same level. Before, 2 DF 4 aircraft both had a 6% chance of downing one or the other, with 78% chance of breaking off and 17% chance on a draw. That has now increased to 25% chance of downing one or the other, with 56% chance of breaking off and 17% chance on a draw.

If you fight with a DF2 plane vs a DF4 plane your chance of downing the enemy has increased from 0% to 8%. Vice versa, the chance of being downed has increased from 25% to 33%.

The solution of the 1 roll vs 6 roll will increase the chance of downing an enemy with an overall 3% for planes that could not do so before, which could prove to minor an improvement.

The AP 13 is only reserved for the really big guns though; 15">, and long lance torpedoes. Either one of those are known to make short work of anything.

- Gulio Cesare took serious damage and broke off the action at Calabria after sustaining 1 15" hit from Warspite.
- Kirishima succumbed within minutes of sustaining 16" hits from Washington.
- One 15" Shell from Bismarck took out Hood (that one was damn lucky though)
- Bismarck was out of action at pretty much the same speed when Rodney started pumping 16" shells into her. One account there struck me: "One 16-inch shell was tracked from the gun to where it hit the face of Bismarck's #2 turret Bruno and exploded, blowing out the back of the turret, with the resulting splinters killing most of the crew on the bridge." Now, Bismarcks turret faces did have the thickest armor on the ship, 360mm. Still they were defeated by the 16" shells. So I figured AP 13 might be appropriate for these sizes of shells. It still leaves a decent BB with a 5+ save, which can be influenced by Command Station orders like Stroke of Luck.

All the instances of battleships firing these big shells resulted either in one party chickening out pretty fast or an unlucky ship that díd get hit got immobilized pretty fast.

Still, there also needs to be balance in the game, so there are 2 variables we can tinker with; the AP rating and the DMG rating. Let's see some more playtests first, but I'll keep an eye out and take action accordingly.

Like I said before I do think yours is way is to go. Mine are too fiddly. I'll definitely test your nat 6 proposal.

Great! Keep me posted on your results, this kind of data is really helpful at finding these balance sweet spots.

Thank you for playing and taking the time for giving me feedback! It really helps the game.

I believe you're right that AP13 is more realistic but I do think it was more fun at AP12. That's just my opinion of course. Perhaps ships having more hull points would be a nice compromise? It would make it easier to differentiate some of the ships. However, that would be more work on your end. The only thing I'm dead set on is keeping bombers at AP10 over AP9. At AP9 bombers couldn't hurt battleships unless it hit softer spots on the ship. That wasn't realistic at all.

Fun factor and balance are also very important, as is your feedback on it. Gamewise, there is no big problem in capping out the AP values at 12, I've done the same with the armor ratings, capping those at 8. The big guns also have higher DMG ratings then their smaller counterparts, so they are already different. As I said, I'll keep an eye on it so please keep the feedback coming.

Changing hullpoints is probably more problematic than capping out the AP ratings, since that also influences the many other factors in the game like aircraft, subs and smaller ships like cruisers and DD's.

Did you also try the AP 13 on the Long lances? How do you feel that affects the game?

I haven't tried the Japanese torpedoes yet. Just looking at it i believe they should stay at 13 AP.

I had over 100 battles between the Hellcat and Zero last night. Here are the stats:
Hellcat kills: 20
Zero kills: 10
Hellcat making Zero break: 50
Zero making Hellcat break: 34

The Hellcat at DG of 4 beat the Zero at DG of 3 quite often. 70-44 to be exact. Btw, I really do enjoy the Natural 6 rule.

Wow, that is about the ratio we were looking for right? Hellcat clearly superior but not such a duckshoot as it would have been before. Thanks for running the tests on that! I'll go work out the numbers some more, but they look promising. Now getting it worded in the rulebook properly is going to be another challenge

I'm thinking the point values for the Zero might need to be adjusted downward or the Hellcat may need to go up. Right now it's 8 and 7 so I don't think that's accurate.