One of things that I find interesting in Tokugawa itself, and its weaponry placements. Thing that brought my attention at the ship is that, its heavy weapons were "nerfed" sofly said. Thread in which this was explained is here, in one sentence. There are other dreadnoughts/battleships in this game that have the ability to shoot all four heavy weapons infront, with usage of a specific loadout - mention later. I might be wrong, just like everyone can be sometimes, so don't bite me if you want to
I. GALLIA-BRETONIA WAR
I am not here to say anything related to background of the Gallia-Bretonia war, but this has to do something with this. As I said, I will mention this specific loadout. It's all about having x4 HELLBORES/MONS MEG and 4 BS PULSES. That's how valors work, and that's how they can do. Well, certainly not everyone is using such loadout, but let's be honest, most of the players use such loadout. Now, Bretonian caps, Dunkirk, has anti-valor strategy to use x2 HMs x1 CERB and 2/4 BS PULSES 2/4 BRETONIA PRIMARY TURRETS. What's problem of this? Tokugawa is similar to Valor, very similar, in terms of dodging. Valor would attempt to dodge 1 HM, whilst second one would hit 90% of the time, by strafing up and down. Tokugawa would do the same, but with strafing right and left. One of reasons apparently, from which Tokugawa's weaponry placement was nerfed, is because of this "DEADLY" x4 HELLBORES/MONS MEG and 4 BS PULSES loadout. People who play Bretonia, know that if they would get to that range, MONS MEG range, with their Dunkirks, they are pretty much dead. Therefore, they're using this strategy that I previously mentioned. What is point of this? I'm attempting to say that, this loadout is not OP is anyway. If players have two HMs and like 1/2 BS pulses, it's game over for the ships like Tokugawa, Valor that are "well-shaped" and that can use this "OP loadout". True, if you get into hellbore range, you are most likely a dead man, unless you're in a dreadnought having like 4/3 cerberus, like in a turtle and other tanks. So basically, it's not truth this loadout is OP, which is main reason I believe this weapon placement was done, to like make tokugawa shoot 3 max heavy weapons infront, and 3 backwards. There are lots of other battleships/dreadnoughts that can shoot all 4 of heavy weapons forwards, including those that are "WELL-SHAPED" like valor.
II. HEAVY WEAPON SLOTS
Okay. Now let's take a look at Tokugawa itself, and how OP these heavy slots used to be and now are. The heavy weapon that at the bottom of the ship, which used to shoot forward, without having ability to shoot backward, is now only shooting backwards. And how the weapon itself looks, it doesn't have any barrier that can prevent the weapon from shooting forward. But since this is a very OP ship, and you want to prevent players from using "OP" loadouts. I repeat, x4 HELLBORES/MONS MEG and 4 BS PULSES loadout is not OP. All you need to do is to get two Heavy Mortars, Mortars, and destroy the ship without getting in the range. What can ship with hellbore loadout do? Just shoot pulses at you and give you powercore. C'mon. There are lot of other ships, as I said, that are well-shaped, and that are not "WELL-SHAPED" that can shoot all four of heavy turrets forward. If you would watch that bottom heavy slot, it has no barrier that can prevent it from shooting forward.
III. SOLUTION?
Just bring back as it was, 4 heavy slots to fire forward and two to fire backwards. I don't know what else to say, let me know how wrong I am. (dunno)
Nobody complainted about this on forums from what I saw, I might be blind though. At least not like I am atm now.
Comparing the Valor and the Tokugawa isn't much of a fair match. Both are heavies, yes. Both have 4 'regular' heavy slots, yes. Both have relatively the same shape, albeit just flipped 90 degrees, yes. But there's more than just the Valor that you can compare it to. [EDIT: There was a whole rant here about the Tokugawa's battleship opponents, but I edited it out because the final one it really the meat of the post. TL;DR, the Bismarck is a better comparison, since the Tokugawa fights it (or at least did) on a regular occasion.]
Bismarck -
Advantages for Tokugawa: Thin, flat shape fore and aft, More heavies up and down.
Advantages for Bismarck: More HP, more fore and aft firing prims and heavies, more broadside heavies, faster turning rate.
The Bismarck (to my knowledge) was the main reason the Tokugawa got its heavy nerf. There is so much wrong here it's absolutely nonsensical.
Many people like to forget just how made the Bismarck's life is. It's easily the tankiest of the house dreadnoughts (2.8mil HP), it has better firing prims, better firing heavies and it turns as fast or faster than any other ship in its class save for the Legate. It can broadside better than the Tokugawa can, having an extra heavy and more HP, it can chase better, having one more heavy and more HP, and it can actually run better, again having one more heavy and more HP. Most people forget that a turret's actual maximum angle is not its effective maximum firing angle. The Bismarck (tested in conn with cerbs) can fire every single heavy in every horizontal direction except forward, and even then it's a really close call (that back heavy can fire so far forward it's absurd). The Tokugawa can't do that. It never could. It could fire all four forward, or two backwards, and only ever three to a side or up and down. Now, it can fire 3 in all directions. Compared to the Bismarck, the Tokugawa may as well be a medium battleship.
Prims are another issue. The Tokugawa can fire all four forward, two back, all down and two to either side. The Bismarck can fire all fore and aft, two to either side and up and down. Tanking, the Bismarck wins in raw DPS. Chasing, the Bismarck again wins in raw DPS. Running, the Bismarck wins in raw DPS.
In any fight, the Bismarck wins in guns alone. Add in that its HP pool is a full 350k higher than the Tokugawa's, and you're basically flailing a colony of red flags at this point.
It needs to go back. There was nothing wrong with the Tokugawa to begin with. It's been the same for as long as it's been in the mod, and it makes no sense to nerf it because people ran in the worst running ships in the mod and got slapped for it.
TL;DR
I agree. Sorry for making a wall of text alongside your wall of text.
It was actually the Tokugawa's ability to hunt cruisers which made this change happen. Four forward heavies was deemed to be too much with its thin forward profile. It was a very minuscule buff for the Tokugawa in the Bismarck matchup, but that wasn't the intent behind the change. @Black Smoke is definitely more qualified to comment here, so I'll leave the rest to him.
That would be a fair point if it weren't for the fact that cruisers have thrusters, and thus a 40m/s speed advantage over the Tokugawa. That's all cruisers. Add in that Cruisers are smaller and more maneuverable, and it's down to pilot error if they die to a Tokugawa in a cruiser (or a really scummy cruise-up). If we're using this logic on the Tokugawa, then apply it to other ships like it that suffer the same problem (obligatory Valor complaint here). Otherwise, it's entirely a nerf, and an unneeded one at that.
+1
Imagine comparing the best Shaped heavy with the 2nd worst and then finding out the 2nd worst has some Unique things to make up for a Shape that 95% of the players cannot play with at all
Yes, I compared wrong ship, but yes, I was also considering this thing about Bismarck. @Spectre said everything there, and I agree with every point.
Durandal Wrote:It was actually the Tokugawa's ability to hunt cruisers which made this change happen. Four forward heavies was deemed to be too much with its thin forward profile. It was a very minuscule buff for the Tokugawa in the Bismarck matchup, but that wasn't the intent behind the change. @Black Smoke is definitely more qualified to comment here, so I'll leave the rest to him.
Cruisers? You weren't there when I was fighting OC cruisers in Kusari, and they were destroying both Tokugawas, and my friend's tokugawa. Both of us are not "noobs", but rather experienced people in capital ships, to what level, that doesn't matter. It kind of surprises me you were not thinking of Bismarcks before "nerfing" this thing. Tokugawa, from what I saw, is not a hard opponent for cruisers/destroyers. All destroyers/cruisers have that thrust which is already giving lots of advantage in the battles, plus if cruisers are well-shaped just like the Outcast one. Hitting it is hard, even when reversing and trying to trap it. Tokugawa might be well-shaped, but it's not OP against cruisers, that's just wrong, it's weak to cruisers. When you have two tokugawa and two cruisers, that have that ability to trick Tokugawas by one cruisers being at that wide side, other one at other, focus fire upon one Tokugawa. Tokugawa will give its best to show its thin side, but it's too hard when being in such battles. Now when 3 heavies fire forward, doesn't sound promising for the Tokugawa. Nerfing this ship will just get it to point where it will die to everything in the easiest ways. Even if experienced players fly with it, I can include myself as an experienced player in caps, so you can trust me what I'm talking here about. I'm not trying to make it easy for tokugawa to slap cruisers, but cruisers can now with ease get rid of Tokugawas.
When it comes to battlecruisers, I fought same tokugawa, one of my friends, and it was very hard to take down the battlecruiser, even viewing the fact my friend knows a lot about caps. I still managed to kill the Tokugawa, and trust me, it's pretty easy, but not that easy, but to some point, it certainly is.
Okay, so since I was one of the people that -at the time- suggested and supported Tokugawa changes (either me or Thunderer suggested it, I don't remember honestly), I feel like I should give everyone some input on why I personally thought that changing it is a good idea.
Before that though, I think you missinterpret the changes on Tokugawa as a nerf. The idea of the changes was to shift its power slightly - meaning that it was supposed to be weaker when chasing but stronger when kiting.
The reasons why I figured that a powershift was in order were:
The shape. The Tokuawa has an incredibly slim profile from the front. It is one of the hardest - if not even the hardest - heavy battleship to hit when you are kiting away from it.
People may say it is a Valor that was flipped 90 degrees, but that is just a wrong assumption. In reality, while it might have a somewhat similar surface-area on the front, the ship is a lot longer. And even when you roll the Valor 90 degrees, you'll see it's as big if not bigger than Tokugawa.
Don't believe me? Then check this out.
Another ship in the same size-category as the Tokugawa is the Atlantis. And for that reason I proposed changing it as well, but I don't know what ever came from that. But even when you compare Atlantis to Tokugawa it is obvious that the Tokugawa at the time had way better arcs than the Atlantis (especially the Heavy Turrets, which on the Atlantis barely fired backward, and almost didn't fire straight backward at all).
Now that that is out of the way, let us move to the matchups.
The Tokugawa has a few matchups of Battleships that it faces (semi)-frequently.
The first one is the Togo.
As you have seen in the size-comparison, the Tokugawa is not as big as most people think, and is thus an excellent ship at dodging fire. In fact it did so well in tests that I ran in Conn ( with people that I personally trust to be good Battleship pilots), that I found the chasing power especially against the Togo scary with 4 Heavies. In the OP of this thread, 4x Hellbore was mentioned. While that is a setup that is certainly a hard-counter to smaller ships, I do not believe it is a good all-rounder, so basing balance on that setup alone would be foolish. We ran tests with multiple setus, ones that were focused on Hellbores, ones that had normal Mortars and Cerbs, ones with double HM ( all of them had at least 2 Pulses since that was/is meta for Battleships) and it did well in every single fight against a light Battleship. We also tested against different Battleship pilots, both in the Lighter ship and the Tokugawa to make sure it was not entirely because of Player-skill.
This video shows an event in which 2 Tokugawa fought two Togo, both of which are very experienced cap pilots and one of them is our current Balance-Developer, so I would argue that they knew what they were doing.
As you can see, even with an non-optimal loadout for fighting the Togo, they were able to win. (The two teams obviously had influence as well)
A Battleship similar to the Togo is the Sarissa. It is small, it is an enemy that the Tokugawa faces. The same story as with Togo basically. It is forced to kite away from the Tokugawa for obvious reasons ( it simply cannot tank a heavy battleship) and as such had to deal with all 4 Heavy slots of the Tokugawa being able to fire.
An entirely different Battleship would be the Bismarck. Any pilot who flies Battleships knows that running away in a Heavy Battleship is almost always a poor decision. However, it is also widely known that two Heavy-Battleships that fight each other frequently just decide to tank one another (See Valor vs Redemption/Br.Carrier). As Spectre mentioned, the Bismarck boasts 2.8 Million HP compared to the Tokugawas 2.45 Million. Sometimes, Battleships can exploit the (poor) Arcs of it's opposing Battleships Heavy Turrets to make up for a lack of HP ( See Valor vs Redemption). Trying that vs a Bismarck is almost always a bad idea, because , as Spectre mentioned once again, the ship has really good coverage from almost any angle.
All of this results in the Bismarck winning the tanking almost 100% of the time, and I'd argue it would win 100% of the time of both Pilots know what they are doing.
Thus, the smarter players instead tried to kite away from the Bismarck instead ( if the numbers on both sides were even). This worked, however I felt like it should be given a boost to make it easier for the Tokugawa player to win the fight and get away with mistakes.
Take this as an example of a Pre-change Tokugawa vs Bismarck fight.
A tricky matchup is the one vs Ranseur. The Ranseur isn't as tanky as the Bismarck, yet it is tankier than the Tokugawa by a small margin. That margin however can be overcome if the pilot of the Tokugawa knows what they are doing. The Ranseur has really good coverage on Heavy Turrets however, ( it can actually fight all 4 forward and backward, making it a unique Heavy Battleship in terms of arcs) and so one could argue that the Ranseur is also another tricky opponent.
However, I have to admit that I did not test the Tokugawa versus the Ranseur. However I figured I should at least try to explain my througt process regarding that.
Taking a look at the overall Fleet- compositions that the Tokugawa and enemies have, the previously mentioned thoughts have been strengthened.
Facing Rheinland, the Kusarian ships even beside the Tokugawa mostly cannot tank. Yes, the Kusari BC and the Rheinland BC can possibly tank each other, but the Kusari Cruiser can in almost no circumstance out-tank a Rheinland Cruiser and is thus forced to run as well. This results in the entire fleet being forced to kite, as opposed to only the Tokugawa.
Against Outcasts it's dependant on what Battleships are brought to the fight. Against Ranseurs, the experienced Tokugawa players will try to tank and abuse the shape of the ship, while the less-experienced players might try to run away or attempt tanking (which tends to fail because they do not abuse the shape properly) while all players will have to chase against Sarissas, as they will never attempt tanking a Tokugawa ( under normal circumstances). The Cruisers are roughly even in terms of tanking-abilities, but Kusari has the edge of having a Battlecruiser which the Outcasts don't. As such, giving the Tokugawa the ability to kite and run relatively well seemed even better to me, as it is easier to adapt to the situation now while not having an absurd coverage with heavies on any angle.
Against Blood Dragons, it's the exact opposite of Rheinland. The Dragons will never attempt tanking in even numbers, as their Cruiser is lighter than the Kusarian one, and the same goes for their Battleship. They have no option but to run if they do not want to be deleted from the game in a few Minutes.
With all of this in mind I came to the conclusion that the Tokugawa might need some changes. When I brought it up in the Dev-team, we discussed quite a few things. One was to remove the 4th heavy but increase the coverage on all others, and a few Arc changes where also suggested. Keep in mind that I have left the Dev-team before these changes went through so I am not entirely sure on why exactly they decided to change the arcs in the way they are now.
However I think that the powershift of the Tokugawa was taken into the right direction, even if it may not be perfect. But nobody is, and at the time of discussing this the Dev-team just got Black Smoke as an addition and I decided to leave, so there were a few things going over and under probably, which you might want to consider as well.
TL;DR This is all my opinion and 2 other idiots decided to agree with it, and lucky for us we at the time had enough power to push these changes.
That ss of you showing that valor is showing two things. Tokugawa might be shorter in its length, but its height is actually enormous. SS that you showed of comparing it to valor is also saying that Tokugawa when flipped 90 degrees is STILL wider as you can see. It's not even that thin. True story, it is thinner than valor once flipped, but not that much.
You were talking about kiting in tokugawa, Bismarck ships. This is not all about kiting, you must take into consideration that Tokugawa is not played by experienced players only. @Spectre in his post explained stuff about Bismarck, which I don't want to repeat here.
I also explained its weakness with cruisers, considering how small they are and what they can do with tokugawa.
When it comes to matching with ships that are lighter than Tokugawa itself, like Sarissa and Togo, you also need to take some things into consideration. You're talking as all players knows to BF extremely, especially heavy mortars. You will come to situation where two players will fight who don't BF at all. Those specific ships can get a loadout that can maybe get them some range, like 2 pulses and 1 HM/Hellbore/Mortar/Gale/Kinetic and whatnot. Hitting ship is POSSIBLE, not impossible. I was fighting a tokugawa with 4 hellbores at time, and while TSing, tokugawa was missing a lot, and I was somehow managing to hit him with heavy mortars and deal damage. Once I was strafing, I was getting damaged a lot. Same you can relate to double HM loadouts. But this is should not turn into a dodging lesson, but you need to remember that capital ships are not played by EXPERIENCED players only as you were talking about. When you would face experienced played in sarissa, versus opposite of that, tokguawa, experienced player will for sure win. When two experienced players would play around with those, it would totally depend on loadouts, and how they're dodging those hits. If you would not do anything as an osiris, like 3k away from ishtar, you would get crushed. You need to find that pattern of dodging, roll the ship, basically use your braincells. It's not that complicated.
Limiting it to 3 heavy turrets it rather FUNNY and unbelievable. Why would you do that and make the ship only heavy battleship/dreadnought lacking in heavy slots. And no, coverage of those 3 heavy slots but be BROKEN in order to get that coverage that 4 heavy slots have.
You were also talking how light BD ships are compared to KNF ships. I can answer with, how light Order ships are compared to Nomad ships. How light KNF ships are compared to RM ships. Lighter ships also should mean that ships are smaller in some aspect, that they can use that to fight in the right way.
I hope our fellow devs will decide to come talk with us, since talking in special dev chats will mean nothing to people who're not devs until changes are made?
My dude this is going to be a waste of time but if you need it that much? Aight.
A experienced player in a sarissa or Togo against a Tokugawa that doesn't even know how to blindfire will win even if the toku had 4 heavies shooting forward. The change barely affects this since the experienced player would dodge most if not all of those shots from the 4th heavy anyway.
Storta is a hard thing to hit and so is the donau to be honest. Get BCs, they're meant to kill cruisers, battleships actually aren't and so they shouldn't be able to reliably kill cruisers. Or just get a takeda because the thing can be better than both of those cruisers.
Oh and another thing when talking about skill. Just because some people aren't as good as others doesn't mean things won't get balanced so the skilled players don't abuse something. Those people that aren't good can get better, those that are good, well they can't really get worse.
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