Shipbucket

I'm currently making plans to make a naval combat video game a few years down the line, in a similar vein to Wargaming's World of Warships. Like WoWS, I'm planning for progression to involve unlocking ships organized in "tiers", where ships of the same tier are roughly "balanced" against each other. I have a rough idea of what ships I would want to have in the game and where to put them tier-wise, but I wanted to get input and bounce ideas off of people who are more familiar with the details of the various ships, and after asking around, I was pointed here as a good place to start.

Part 1: Light Cruisers

The plan is to have 10 factions in the game (some of them are speculative alt-history factions), but the first step is to set up "anchors"; one or two lines that can be used as a reference point for what constitutes a ship of a given tier. For that purpose, I will start by discussing only two factions: Great Britain and the United States. I have 6 possible drafts for the organization of these two lines:

Draft A: The 9-tier plan

Tier 1: Weymouth, Albany (CL-23, in her 1907 configuration with a uniform battery of 5-inch guns)
Tier 2: Caledon, St. Louis (C-20)
Tier 3: Danae, Phoenix (A paper design for a prototype Omaha without turrets, seen in World of Warships)
Tier 4: Emerald, Omaha
Tier 5: Arethusa (or Dido), Austin (A paper design to bridge the gap between Omaha and Atlanta. Can be either a super Omaha with 6"/53 caliber guns, or a proto-Atlanta with 5"/38 caliber guns)
Tier 6: Leander, Atlanta
Tier 7: Fiji, Brooklyn
Tier 8: Gloucester, Cleveland
Tier 9: Neptune, Worcester

A denser design that includes all of the major ships I want to put in these lines, but leaves little room for moving the ships around for better balance. My biggest concern here is Leander vs. Atlanta at tier 6: I'm worried that the Leander may be simply overwhelmed by Johnny 16-guns, despite the displacement and caliber advantage.

Draft B: The Minotaur plan

Tier 1: Weymouth, Albany
Tier 2: Caledon, St. Louis
Tier 3: Danae, Phoenix
Tier 4: Emerald, Omaha
Tier 5: Arethusa (or Dido), Austin
Tier 6: Leander, ??? (or Atlanta)
Tier 7: Fiji, Atlanta (or ???)
Tier 8: Gloucester, Brooklyn
Tier 9: Neptune, Cleveland
Tier 10: Minotaur (paper design Z4A), Worcester

Very clear parallels to the British cruiser line used in WoWS here. The go-to draft if it's decided that Neptune can't match up to Worcester.

Draft C: The Minotaur plan ver.2

Tier 1: Weymouth, Albany
Tier 2: Caledon, ??? (or St. Louis)
Tier 3: Danae, St. Louis (or ???)
Tier 4: Emerald, Phoenix
Tier 5: Arethusa (or Dido), Omaha
Tier 6: Leander, Austin
Tier 7: Fiji, Atlanta
Tier 8: Gloucester, Brooklyn
Tier 9: Neptune, Cleveland
Tier 10: Minotaur (paper design Z4A), Worcester

Variant of the above, with Omaha moved up a tier and the extra US paper ship slotted in tier 2 or 3 instead of 6 or 7.

Draft D: The Swiftsure plan

Tier 1: Weymouth, Albany
Tier 2: Caledon, St. Louis
Tier 3: Danae, Phoenix
Tier 4: Emerald, Omaha
Tier 5: Arethusa (or Dido), Austin
Tier 6: Leander, ???
Tier 7: Swiftsure, Atlanta
Tier 8: Fiji, Brooklyn
Tier 9: Gloucester, Cleveland
Tier 10: Neptune, Worcester

To be used if Neptune and Minotaur are balanced against each other but Atlanta needs to be higher than Leander. Kind of strange to have a post-WWII design at such a relatively low tier...

Draft E: The Swiftsure plan ver.2

Tier 1: Weymouth, Albany
Tier 2: Caledon, ??? (or St. Louis)
Tier 3: Danae, St. Louis (or ???)
Tier 4: Emerald, Phoenix
Tier 5: Arethusa (or Dido), Omaha
Tier 6: Leander, Austin
Tier 7: Swiftsure, Atlanta
Tier 8: Fiji, Brooklyn
Tier 9: Gloucester, Cleveland
Tier 10: Neptune, Worcester

Swiftsure plan with tier 5 Omaha.

Draft F: The Dido plan

Tier 1: Weymouth, Albany
Tier 2: Caledon, ??? (or St. Louis)
Tier 3: Danae, St. Louis (or ???)
Tier 4: Emerald, Phoenix
Tier 5: Arethusa, Omaha
Tier 6: Dido, Austin
Tier 7: Leander, Atlanta
Tier 8: Fiji, Brooklyn
Tier 9: Gloucester, Cleveland
Tier 10: Neptune, Worcester

Places Omaha above Emerald while keeping Leander and Atlanta together. Includes both Arethusa and Dido where other plans would involve choosing one or the other.

The task now is to pick which plan is the most balanced, where each pair of ships represents a fair fight. Once that's done, additional trees can be added in, anchored upon this as the baseline.

HMS Dido Best Ship.

_________________
Worklist
- Brazilian Paraguayan/Triple Alliance War Ironclads
- Jasmine Kingdom
- Rework my First Design
- Await the Winged Hussars Arrive

1st note: technically the USS St.louis (C-20) is a protected cruiser that later got reclassified as a Heavy Cruiser.
a better replacement for light cruisers would be the Chester Class which was a scout cruiser that was later reclassified as a light cruiser or the Denver class cruiser which were originally classified as a Gunboat, but were later reclassified as a Light cruiser.
2nd note: The Worcester can be balanced by the reload, because iirc the Worcester had the same auto-loader that was also placed on Des Moines and if iirc it was theorized at the time that it would give the ship and immense fire rate of ~25 rpm but in practice the ship was only able to produce a similar reload rate to the Cleveland/Fargo class which was ~8-10 rpm so if you add upgrades similar to Wargaming's products you can have the stock reload at ~10 rpm and then have an upgrade bringing the reload up to anywhere between 10-25 rpm depending on need for balance.

my two cents

_________________
What I like to work on/plan to work on:
US ship Proposals and prototypes
Other ships that haven't yet been put up on Ship bucket
Suggestions Welcomed

Currently working on:
Heavy Cruiser Proposal CA-B: ~80% done.
Heavy Cruiser Proposal CA-C: ~5-10% done.
Heavy/Large Cruiser Proposal CA2-D: ~35% done.
FD Scale P-51A Dazzle Camo Livery: ~5-10% done.
Getting better: Always being worked on.

Finished:
FD Scale P-51D's Dazzle Camo Livery (might be redone)
FD Scale P-51D's German Captured Livery

Would it be an weird suggestion to throw overboard the tiers and use what is available in certain years, for balance coupled with a set of standards (heavy cruisers, light cruisers, destroyers etc)?

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Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin

Well first of all welcome to Shipbucket. I'm not sure this is the best place to answer a game related question but glad you were recommended to us I guess.

So you're basically going to be ripping off the ten-tier balanced-ships progressive unlock model of World of Warships to create your own game "a few years down the line"? Sorry if I'm a little dubious.

Before I added any of my comments I'd first like to know a bit more about this concept and how you plan to differentiate it from WOWS.

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)

Chester had a main armament of 2 guns. We could maybe use the planned version of the Chester with 12 3-inch guns, but even that seems underwhelming compared to the Albany of all things. You'd have to up-arm it way past the point of historical accuracy for it to be viable, which seems to be what WoWS did, but at that point you're basically making a paper ship. Denver has the same main armament as the 1907 Albany, but with less armor and 4 knots slower (at least, that's what I'm getting from Wikipedia).

St. Louis feels like a natural evolution from the Albany that precedes it, and it has the 6-inch main battery guns that went on to define light cruisers versus heavy cruisers. They were "semi-armored cruisers" in parallel to the "light armored cruisers" that later went on to be known as "light cruisers". The jump from St. Louis to Phoenix is awkward, but a necessary weasel if we don't want to have the lower tier American CL line be entirely paper.
The Worcester needs to be balanced against the Des Moines, but those two are going to be in the top tier regardless of anything else, so the more important question is if Neptune is balanced vs. Worcester/Des Moines of if Neptune would be underpowered compared to them and Z4A Minotaur is needed.
The tiers roughly correlate with chronology as it is, but chronology doesn't always correlate with effectiveness. Later designs could be diminished to cut costs or hamstrung by treaty restrictions unknown to their elders, and chronologically contemporary designs from different countries could be drastically different in potency. Tiers approximate chronology, but aren't afraid to shuffle ships around so that each ship finds itself in an environment where it can succeed and be fun to play, as opposed to getting stomped by ships that are technically their elders but in actuality much stronger, or on the flip side, blowing the competition out of the water because they were a design that was "ahead of their time".

Listen, if I was someone else hearing what I'm saying I'd be dubious too. That's perfectly understandable.

In preliminary brainstorming for the actual gameplay, I'm envisioning a slightly different control scheme that's more controller-friendly (my actual goal was to make it more clear where you're aiming when you want to deliberately fire short or long of a target, but the controller-friendliness is a nice bonus)

There will be a lot of changes from how WoWS handles progression and customization. Instead of having to play each ship in a line in order to unlock the next, playing as any ship in a given line counts towards unlocking the next "rung". (This solves the "free XP sinks" conspiracy where people think Wargaming makes some ships in a line deliberately bad to encourage people to pay money to skip them. In this system, if you unlock a new ship and don't like it, you can keep playing the ship you already had and work towards the next ship without having to touch the "bad" ship. This in turn better incentivises me, the developer, to make sure every ship is fun.)

Individual ship customization involves plugging in modules you can earn through play, buy, or trade with other players. Each ship has a certain number of module slots, and any compatible module can go in any slot (unlike WoWS, where each slot only has specific modules that can go into it). This replaces the complex interplay of modules, captain skills, camouflage, signal flags, and premium consumables that constitutes ship customization in WoWS (which I feel is a dizzyingly complicated system that produces very few real choices for customization; one of those systems where you only have 2-3 viable builds if that, but have to read a guide to figure out what that those actually useful builds are) and forms the primary monetization model of the game, with shipbuilding taking a lot of cues from CCG deckbuilding. There will also be a good deal of cosmetic customization; players can freely rename their ship, as well as buy paintjobs outlandish enough that we don't even try to call it "camouflage", bow ornaments, glowing wakes and more.

I think I have a good idea of how submarines could work in a game such as this, without disrupting the existing flow of the game all that much. It won't be particularly realistic submarine warfare, but submarines have the potential to be included in the game.

The game will include at least 3 "alt-historical" factions that mostly never existed in our history (more on those later). This will be reflected in the game's plot, which is either going to be an exploration of the alternate history in which these ships did exist, or a high-gonzo Homestuckian plotline about the boundaries between what did and didn't happen beginning to fray and a battle to repair the ruptures in reality.

There will be no automated matchmaking. Instead, you log into a server and see a list of lobbies for games waiting to begin on that server. You can either select a lobby to join or create your own. There will be a chatroom for the "waiting room" of the server, so that people waiting for games can talk with other people waiting for games on the same server. If you've ever played an online Pokemon Battle Simulator, you'll have a fairly good picture of what I'm imagining here.

The game will have a more stylized art-style, with vibrant color and cel-shading. If you're thinking of Wind Waker, you aren't far off. This is partly to make sure the game is immediately distinguishable form WoWS in screenshots, partly because the push for "realistic graphics" is the big thing that inflates budgets and dev teams for games so avoiding that siren song keeps this game something I feasibly could make, and partly because I think realistic graphics are genuinely overrated.

All in all, it's a list of minor things I feel like could have been done better in WoWS that, gathered together in one place, make up a game just different enough that I feel comfortable making it its own game. As for "a few years down the line", this is one of about half a dozen games I plan to make, and there are other games I plan to make first because they're simpler games that I can make on a smaller budget in order to earn the money and credibility I'll need to actually tackle a project of this caliber. For the immediate time being, these plans are just me passing time while I wait for our artist to finish some UI work for the project I'm officially working on, but it's stuff that's been eating at me, and will keep eating at me until I get it out there, and I guess I'm hoping to find people just as bored as I am.

Hm... There's Few Details that Resemble a bit Navyfield that's Awesome for me. Also there's any chance to the game get an Offline Single-player Campaign?

_________________
Worklist
- Brazilian Paraguayan/Triple Alliance War Ironclads
- Jasmine Kingdom
- Rework my First Design
- Await the Winged Hussars Arrive

I would suggest if you want to be different from WoW just make it WWII, its the main draw anyway, instead of making the ships tired by age just rank them by power and play style as they where in WWII? Do you also really want each nation to have a balanced line or could you specialize so AA (weak but great v Air) v 6" (better v DD) v 8"(better v CLs) cruisers each with its own uses and weaknesses?

Do you balance like WoW or more like real life how accurate v balanced forgiving game play do you want?
- Things like what range do you fight at as this basically totally destroys the reason for the USN/RN belt deck layouts v the KM old styles turtle backs....
- Do you let all ships be equal as this makes DDs v BB/CVs very hard to balance without altering reality hard?
- How do you balance that some nations built more smaller ships v few larger ships?
- How much of a rock v p v s and how much do you reward good team play do you want or do you not want to spoil the fun of casual gamers who use the wrong tactics?
- How much randomness are you going to include, such as for long range gun fire historically BB actions are very much determined by single golden BBs say 40% ship technology/30% crew skill/30% random but that might not be fun to play?
- I would question what do you want just one line or a split of ships for different focus?

My comments about your plan,
A) re Leander v Atlanta - this is a 6"x8 ship v a 5"x16 AA ship its only balanced if you let small guns be ridiculously powerful and fight at such close ranges as WoW, IRL we are talking about a 112lb shell v a 55lb the bigger shell should win as its going to work far better.... They are also very different ships built for different roles 8 years apart, Atlanta v Dido might be better?

B) "The go-to draft if it's decided that Neptune can't match up to Worcester." What I don't get is why not use the real Tiger, just make her AA focused and give her a good rate of fire like RL unlike the Worcester guns that read like they failed to work totally?

C) Omaha isn't going to like a Dido or Arethusa as the as I would be very sceptical of the casement mounts making up 1/2 her guns working as well as turrets?

D) Swiftsure should win easily 9 good radar directed 6" v 5" at any range is going to make A look very balanced.
E/F as above...

aww but i love paper ship
tbh I don't know much about British ships, but what I was saying was if Worcester was you balancing issue, you could keep her in line with her reload rate.

also I have a few notes I would like to add but can't think of how to order them:
1. how much do you know about ships, does all of your info come from playing WoWs?

2. what is your opinion on paper ships? how many is too many? what proposed upgraded are you willing to or not willing to put in?

3. Neptune is a paper ship, tiger was the last British all gun light cruiser made by the British, also there are more paper ships out there then what is in WoWS.

4. the idea of balancing depends on how you game plays, and is modeled.
A. do you plan to completely copy WoWs to use as a base and just change things you think are wrong? or do you plan to model armor more accurately than WoWs?
B. how are you planning to do tier spread? +1/-1? +2/-2? +3/-3?
C. how will you game play? will it be slower more realistic, or another more arcade-y game?
D. what will the goal be of each game session? kill all enemies? earn the most points?
E. how will radar and gun targeting systems play a role in this game? how will accuracy work?

5. why 9 tiers? will the tiers be solid? or will it be more like War thunder will 9 solid tiers but a battle tier system to keep things balanced

6.what is the range of years ships can be added?

7. what classes are you planning to add BB, CA/CL, DD, and CV like WoWs? or will there be more classes added/differentiated?

to get the best answers you need to give us more info than just "i'm making a game, how do these ships scale against each other?" not trying to be mean or anything, just need a little more info on what you are trying to achieve here.

p.s. bonus question what factions are going in this game? 10 factions seems like a lot, what are they? kinda curious.

(edited because I was running out the door and didn't want to have to re-write everything)

_________________
What I like to work on/plan to work on:
US ship Proposals and prototypes
Other ships that haven't yet been put up on Ship bucket
Suggestions Welcomed

Currently working on:
Heavy Cruiser Proposal CA-B: ~80% done.
Heavy Cruiser Proposal CA-C: ~5-10% done.
Heavy/Large Cruiser Proposal CA2-D: ~35% done.
FD Scale P-51A Dazzle Camo Livery: ~5-10% done.
Getting better: Always being worked on.

Finished:
FD Scale P-51D's Dazzle Camo Livery (might be redone)
FD Scale P-51D's German Captured Livery