For showing the building process, I can personally recommend post-commentary. Talking post-recording over sped up footage of the building tends to work pretty well, and is easier than trying to build a craft and talk at the same time. The current Bulwark is very outdated, over on my channel I had a hell of a time retrofitting her. XD Bloody nice ships, by the way. 😁👍
This ships reminds me a lot of my earlier ships before I got really good a making them look realistic, so I think you're on the right track! This games learning curve is ridiculous and so many people in the community have different standards on what is good and not, so don't stress too much about it. You're making some good progress, great video!
3:36 in regards to strange calibers not working, you can make the shell too long and then decrease propellant amounts in the gunpowder charges and that will make the shell shorter.
In regards to the torpedoes not hitting submarines, missiles (and torpedoes) are naturally buoyant. For torpedoes, adding a ballast tank (in the furthest right section of the missile editor) and manually setting its buoyancy to any number under 0 negates it. You can also set a specific float depth. I like to have a depth of 5 with -0.1 buoyancy for surface torpedoes, and between 10 to 15 depth with the same buoyancy for anti-submarine torpedoes. Great video and its nice to see some more popularity come to FtD!
hi nice to see a new vid time for more tips and advice I think 😛 [ LOGISTICS ] You can make patrol routes. use shift to queue waypoints and if you set the last command close enough to the first waypoint, then the result is a permanent loop. This is ideal for logistics since it allows you to bring the resources of all your resource zones back to a single point, thus concentrate them and build either more or larger craft. You can even make a fleet a waypoint, e.g. to get one craft to patrol between a resource zone and your fleet to keep that fleet supplied automagically. [ TORPEDOES ] Anything smaller than medium torpedoes is useless (except as torpedoe interceptors). I recommend a length of 8-12 blocks for medium torpedoes. I always have at least 2, preferably 4-6, medium torpedoes on all my ships. Bigger torps than medium are effective, but also very expensive. For a ship in the 600k range that isn't specialized in ASW, I'd go with either 8 or so medium torps (likely 10-12 blocks long), or two lare torps (same length). I also recommend firing torpedoes straight down. Basically a VLMS (vertical launch system) but straight down. That has three advantages: - the torps go deep quickly, thus there is little to no chance of them hitting a friendly craft between the launching ship and the target - the torps can, if you give them a One Turn Module, go in any direction immediately, regardless of the launching ship's current orientation - the torps are inside the hull and harder to hit, since the only exposed bit is at the bottom For the configuration of your torpedoes I can recommend the following: - thrust: give them a ramp-up-time of around 2 seconds. slower speeds allow for tighter turning, thus by starting slow (ish) they can orient toward their target before hitting full speed - guidance: I always go with prediction guidance for torps. prediction guidance is good for long-range & long-duration prediction, while APN guidance tends to do better vs small agile targets. - ballast tank. always include a ballast tank in your torps. one is enough, but that one is mandatory. without that they can't dive and are 'stuck' close to the surface. if found that ballast set to max negative buoyancy (aka set to sink) with no target altitude when combined with prediction guidance tends to result in torps hitting enemy ships in the bottom, thus bypassing their toughre side armor. This also tends to mean that the torp is quite likely to be below the -10m altitude where HE gets a massive damage multiplier (I think its either x2 or x3 or some such, been a while). - payload: for torps I tend to go with 1/2 to 1/4th EMP, rest HE. depending on the setup of the torpedoe, this can include 'free space used for: HE/EMP/fuel'. Please not that HE and Frag payloads detonate in their location on the torpedo. Incendiary and EMP payloads on the other hand 'teleport' to the target on impact (to the impact location to be exact). Thus I go with the following order for paylods (front to back): HE, Frag, EMP, Incendiary. - thrust duration: once you are happy with your torp, adjust the thrust amount of your propellers to balance the thrust duration to be about the same or maybe up to 3 seconds less than the lifetime of the torpedo. Having more thrust duration than lifetime basically means that the torp dies with fuel left in its tanks and is thus a waste, while the opposite means that the torp runs out of fuel and sinks before running of out time to live. - one turn: torp sonar has a 120° sensor field, aka 120° left & 120° right, leaving the rear 120° a blind spot. Thus adding a one turn allows the torp to get the initial target location from the mothership on launch (with no further updates once launched), which in turn allows the torp to turn toward the target and then pick it up with its own sonar. I always recommend using a one turn on any torp not launched from a turret or otherwise pre-oriented toward its intended target. - finally, I recommend adding a signal processor to your torps. that one means that any decoys need to be twice as strong as they'd otherwise need to be to be effective, allowing you to ignore most of them. [ SENSORS ] It seems that your shots are not the most accurate. I think this might be, in part at least, due to your sensor setup. I mentioned that in my last post on the first vid of this series, but its worth repeating. I personally classify the sensors in FtD into two categories. - sensors to notice "oh, there's an enemy. somewhere." I all these 'spotting sensors'. - sensors to provide accurate target data. I call these 'targeting sensors'. roughly speaking, all passive and 360° sensors are spotting sensors. you need a couple of these, but not an excessive amount. 90° and, ESPECIALLY, gimbal sensors are targeting sensors. ideally you'll want each target you are currently engaging to be tracked by one targeting sensor that provides the best possible range data (aka a laser range finder, or, not qutie as good, a coincidence range finder) and one sensor to provide the best possible angular data (aka a camera gimbal sensor). the laser range finder can be connected to the AI at the bottom and allow a camera gimble on top to also connect. thus I love to combine one laser range finder and one camera gimble into one 'set' of targeting sensors. Then you need to take into account wher eyour own ship results in sensor blind spots, battle damage, and that each AI wants its own targeting sensors (not counting 90° ones since those can't be independently aimed at a target). Thus I tend to end up with two sets of targeting sensors per side of the ship, one set on the centerline toward the bow, an done set on the centerline toward the rear. The centerline ones tend to go to the AA Gunnery AI, while the side ones tend to go toward the Main Gunner AI. [ AI SETUP & MULTI-TARGET ENGAGEMENTS ] If you want to reliably and accurately engage multiple different targets you need two things. 1) you need the appropriate firing restrictions on your turrets to ensure they know which fields of fire they can cover. This will already allow the turrets on the left side of the ship to engage targets independently of the turrets on the right side of the ship. (or front vs back - you get the idea). 2) you need one AI (with a target priority card set up accordingly) per target TYPE that you want to engage. e.g. one set to big, slow, heavily armed targets for the main guns aka the Main Gunnery AI, and one for close, high, fast targets for the AA Gunnery AI. Then make sure that each AI is set to a different wireless channel and that the guns for each AI, or rather the local weapon controllers, are also set to the correct AI's wirelss channel. That way you can have your main guns, torps, and missiles engage the enemy capital ships. While your secondaries deal with their suiciders (damn white flayers) and ramming craft. While your AA takes care of the enemy fliers. All of this in all directions around the craft, as the guns can come to bear - with each AI trying to prioritze its optimal target (as dictated by its Target Priority Card settings) where possible. Other than that? You seem to be doing just fine. Maybe look into setting up smoke deployers and laser sensors to help deal with enemy lasers, but ... yeah. you are doing really well so far!
Took a look at the Eriwick's Torpedoes and Sonar systems: Your Sonar on the bottom is only the 360 models(i'd also space them out a bit more), i recommend you add some 90 sonars as they give significantly better resolution compared to the 360 Sonars, and since you are using remote guidance on those large torpedoes they are reliant on your ability to see the target. Tune the thrust of those torpedoes to take advantage of the surplus of fuel they have on board, you can also get rid of the fuel tank and replace it with another warhead as the bonus fuel your getting from the small systems gives you plenty of gas to reach the max range. Additionally, since your using APN with a Ballast tank tune the gain on the APN up to make them more aggressively course correct as those large torpedoes are slow and have a very low turn rate, i might also recommend setting their ballast to 10 meters as some types of CIWS and LAMS could potentially engage with a depth of under 5 meters (and they'll still nose up for impact), plus that will let them better engage submarines.
37:18 Noooooo! Why single block slopes! Use beams of them! Also put at least a layer of metal after the hull skin layer so it'll have actual armor. Armor stacking is your best friend.
At 26:28 , you said that you had an APN guidance on your torpedos. This is actually part of the problem why the torpedos missed. APN guidance points at the target, while prediction guidance leads the target. APN guidance is better at hitting bouncy targets that change direction rapidly, while prediction guidance is better at hitting targets that are moving in a straight line, especially if the target's speed is close to the speed of the missile/torpedo.
You spent 76,000 mats on octouple 40mm turrets in comparison to only 87,000 mats on the entire main battery. Simple weapons in general are less cost efficient compared to any other weapon type, so i recommend swapping some of the octuple 40mm out or just removing them to cut the cost down.
So happy to see From the Depths getting more popular just after i bought it, hopefully that means more people will be making tutorials lol. I am dangerously incapable of making airships or submarines lol, and all my ships are VASTLY oversized and too expensive for campaigns :P
Nice video! That hull is very nice, the deco smoothing is nice. I can recommend starting using a few decos to first do smaller things like making a smmoth angled mast and adding rigging and bridge windows. (I can recommend using hatch door frames scaled down in height as window frames.) You can actually optimise the shell lenght by adjusting the propellent ammount of gunpowder, to get the maximum out of an autoloader. I can recommend trying out colour coding your armour, makes it easy to assess damage and also using the replace tool only on single layers. Also yes, balast tanks on the torps, beyt is a slight negative or neutral bouyancy, id recommend ignoring float depth. With missiles if you know that they cant hit your hull and its unlikely that your launching close to friendlys you can just not have a failsafe. Best thing against the LH is either outlasering them or PAC/Plasma but railguns/rail assited and fast gunpowder aps can work too, just remember a lot of smoke dispencers and shields are great.
Nice! I do love the FTD content, and there really aren't enough creators for this game. Honestly, it's not too bad at all, either. I've seen much worse out of players with 300+ hours of experience (and have made some pretty questionable designs myself). Most of what I'd criticize, is the armor. It could use spall liners (wood or stone backed by an airgap), a bit more kinetic protection all-round (at least 2m wedges or 1m beam slopes, but ideally 3 - 4m wedges), and while I'm not sure exactly what you're using for the deck armor, it is a bit lacking if it's just wood or reinforced decking. Personally, I mostly build airships so it's sort of irrelevant for most of my designs, but I personally go with alloy backed by metal poles if I do make a ship so I get both an airgap and decently high armor value against HE/frag, which is what tends to target that area. Though, I wouldn't recommend poles in many other cases, as it's only a good way to get an airgap and kinetic protection without compromising HP or armor too much if you don't have the space for proper sloped armor in my opinion. You can experiment to find what works for you, as preferences vary widely on deck armor, but I'd say the main threat is mostly HE and Frag. I'd also say it's a good idea to generally make more liberal use of heavy armor, especially on surface vessels that can bear that weight easily, but only in certain spots. Specifically, on turrets and any vital internals. It's very much a space efficiency tool more than anything. I wouldn't be shy about using it on anything important as on turrets (both the internals, turret cap, and especially the neck as you did), engine, AI, etc. It's especially good for HE and frag protection, as it's hard to get the armor value to counter that with just stacked metal without problems against kinetic shells or with space. It is also completely viable to just take the Borderwise approach and make enormously big, thickly-armored turrets though, if weight or above-deck space aren't concerns. As for the amount of armor, it's somewhat up to preference and what you're trying to achieve. Honestly, I wouldn't say you necessarily need a huge amount for something still somewhat early-game. Though, fighting the Lightning Hoods doesn't make things easier in that regard. There's a lot of room for improvement, but it's not that bad in my opinion. It all takes a long time to learn though. But all things considered, it's a fairly competent design, and it's nice to see you've learned a lot.
@tuluppampam I don't know, honestly. Have they? I mean, if you know, let me know. It's been a couple weeks since I've worked on anything in FTD, so it's probably something I missed.
@foxxowoxxowillow7855 I've stopped playing ftd for a while, and even when I did it was fairly limited. Anyway, I'm somewhat keeping up with new things, although I haven't read or watched anything regarding testing, but I remember reading videos stating how spall liners are essentially useless and have been for some time. I cannot say for sure, and they aren't even something that I've ever used (who even uses those shells anyway [completely forgot the name. Is it Heap or something?])
@tuluppampam I have heard some things about concerns around weapons just stripping spall liners away. It's sometimes true, but rarely is this the case against a build that uses the weapons that spall liners are supposed to counter anyway. It's kind of like saying sloped armor is bad because it does very little against HE. It's just not it's job to do that. That said, as for that matter, I simply and have always used stone spall liners because I'd thought about that with my builds. Honestly, maybe there's another factor I'm missing. But a lot of people used to, and some still do use wood. Switching to stone mostly makes this a non-issue though. also, it's HESH. I can't recall exactly how it interacts with HEAT though, which might be what you're thinking of. It can also help against plasma, too, since that also works off of the armor of blocks it hits. Still, I do remember testing a new turret design a bit over a month ago where it still did the job. It had a thin layer of heavy armor slopes on the outside for HE/Frag protection, with metal underneath, backed by backwards stone slopes for spall liner. Pretty good design for what I wanted it to do, and stopped HESH well as I recall.
Hey, regarding swapping the alloy and metal on the hull- there's an easy way you can go about this: Do a three way swap. Choose a material you haven't used on the ship, like perhaps stone. Use the v menu material swap to change the metal into stone. Then turn the alloy into metal. Then turn the stone into alloy. Viola; hours saved! :)
Maybe the next build could be an Anti-submarine ship? you could re-use the destroyer hull, keep the defensive weapons but replace the main guns and missiles with more (and better) torpedoes.
This is ironically why aircraft carriers became the meta irl, its way more cost effective to have a small fast strike craft with a short range and something they can land on. RIP Montana class and the last 2 Iowa class battleships. Its also the reason the Iowa class ships were 108ft wide, they were 2 ft narrower than the panama canal so they could travel from Pacific to Atlantic ocean with out having to navigate around South America.
Great video! You stumbled onto something great with those incendiary missiles, fire was added to the game specifically to nerf fast units and speed increases fire damage. I think they're the best damage type for AA missiles now. Alloy is also flammable.
You can paint the stuff you want to replace some unused color, and then replace all the blocks with that color. It's a lot faster than replacing block by block
I’m pretty sure you can mass replace one type of armor on your ship with another, so if you wanted to swap the metal and alloy you could do it that way
So for your two immediate enemies: LH is mostly fast but light stuff, even when it's quite large, so they ironically can't take what they give and hitscan weapons (lasers/PACs, high velocity railguns as a poor man's hitfastenough) are great counters. Also, smoke is your fr. For OW it's the opposite - you want big guns. Investing in a high-punch gun (ideally rail, for easy and low-loss variable pen APpayload and hollowpoint) and possibly a platform for it will help for at least some of most faction's stuff and for OW help in cracking everything.
Regarding the comments people have made about using spall liners, what I do is use multiple layers of poles and/or beam slopes. Adding a dedicated wood or stone liner with airgap takes up an absurd amount of space compared with the health it has, and the internals get blown away by any kind of firepower near instantly. In terms of space efficiency it's better to go with metal beams, then beam slopes, then metal beams again (i would only do 1 or 2 layers of beam slopes to optimize armor health). If you're concerned about weight, you can replace the rear metal beams with alloy, which helps a ton with ships that have buoyancy problems. When done with 5-6 layers combined with internal bulkheads, this results in an amazingly sturdy armor setup that will survive long after your turrets, unless you're fighting end-game vehicles.
How is this Vid the first i'm ever hearing of this game!? Now i've gotten it, but ETA on beginning play on it TBD, let alone if i'll ever get anywhere at it. I'm still batting 0 on Trailmakers Creations i've ever made i'm any satisfied with, and this looks like it has even deeper Mechanics... 😮
For swapping out the armour pick a material you don't much use, say glass, turn the alloy to glass the metal to alloy and the glass to metal then you'll only need to swap out the metal for glass wherever you want windows.
Btw: you should prepare a missile launched torpedo setup for your missiles, save the missile setup and then switch to it as needed. You can avoid over investing in anti sub.
I miss Robbaz's From the Depths videos lol, they were all I watched for once he stopped playing My Summer Car and he's been gone for ages. Beautiful ship pbits.
There's a menu I think in the v menu to replace all blocks of a specific type or color with another. For example you could replace all alloy with metal, in 2 clicks. Also, looks like you don't have the ballast tank on the torpedoes correct, you can see them struggling to go down in the sub fight.
Given how your territory looks so far and where the resource zones are you could build a few strong fortifications on land to defend the region. They're cheap and can become quite op if made right.... edit: there is a REFIT function that lets you replace one material with another.
For the torps, set the ballast tanks on 0 flotability NOT a set depth, that way they will be able go deeper or shallower ir needed, and give them more fins, they can barely turn
You don't actually have to have the manlets on your guns on the front. You can put your firing pieces further back in the turret, and the barrel will just move through the blocks. At higher firing angles, it will look goofy, but, within normal firing circumstances, it will look normal. Many campaign and player vehicles take advantage of this. I recommend putting 4m heavy armor wedges (the ones that slope back on both sides) if you have space in the front of the turret as they take very little kinetic damage and naturally gobble up HE as they are heavy armor.
I saw you hade 2m slopes making it 1 m and ading a block behind gives it a lot more helth and i nomraly make the slopes heavy armor so thay just becume unstapable
@@chillbuilder101 well... I have tried, several times, to come up with a comprehensive classification system for FtD. I got close. the best attempt used ship sizes (in volume), the second best one used ship sizes (in length). Ultimately though I failed. I could not come up with a clear definition of where each class starts or ends. A ship that works perfectly fine as 'Battlecruiser' in the early game might cost around 500k, but would do badly as a Battlecruiser against the end game factions (where a price closer to 1 mil might be appropriate for a battlecruiser). Simply the fact that early one one can forgoe shields, lams, missiles, anti-missiles, and stick to cheaper weapons such as CRAMs and (some limited) APS (maybe with a few sparing torps or small missiles thrown in for simplicity and full target profile coverate). But ... once one is in the late game one needs railguns (expensive), lasers (expensive), PACs (very expensive) and not just a couple missiles but missile spam and preferably of missiles above medium at that. That means that even at the same size and with the same relative role in the fleet, the ship will have a vastly different price tag. In my attempts at creating a classification system I tried to account for that by using "T1 = Early Game (hours 0-10)", "T2 = Mid Game (hours 5-15)", "T3 = Late Game (hours 10+)" and, optionally, a select few optional "T4 (boss / faction HQ)" units. The system I used was to use Size as the determining factor for the classification and cost as the determining factor for Tier (doubling the cost limit with each tier up). but ... ultimately? ultimately that also failed to work well enough now I just classify FtD designs roughly as T1-3 aka Early/Mid/Late Game based on their capabilities & the tech they use and assign them their classifications based on their role relative to the rest of the fleet of the same tier. Thus, your statement of "thats X" (Heavy Cruiser in this case) is ... probably correct when compared to the designs you are used to but might be vastly off for someone used to a different scale. to me 600k for a T1 (early game) ship is closer to a battlecruiser or even a battleship than a heavy cruiser.
You should try to build a Ww2 battleship of ur choice and modernized it like the Uss Fletcher (my favorite ship to exist) and modernize it with better guns and better anti defense capabilities…love the content ❤
You got me into from the depths and now i have 600 hours and i am looking at your ship in horror i'm sure it's a fine ship for you so if it works for you it's fine but it- yeah.
She looks like a York class crossed with a Cleveland class. With German ideology. Aka, excessive amounts of armour and displacement for what it is. The only thing I'd say is those bow torpedoes. I saw them and had a clue of what will happen next. They do need looking at.
For showing the building process, I can personally recommend post-commentary. Talking post-recording over sped up footage of the building tends to work pretty well, and is easier than trying to build a craft and talk at the same time.
The current Bulwark is very outdated, over on my channel I had a hell of a time retrofitting her. XD
Bloody nice ships, by the way. 😁👍
This ships reminds me a lot of my earlier ships before I got really good a making them look realistic, so I think you're on the right track! This games learning curve is ridiculous and so many people in the community have different standards on what is good and not, so don't stress too much about it. You're making some good progress, great video!
nice to see you here man! loved the wrenche'sways videos.
Looking nice mate!
3:36 in regards to strange calibers not working, you can make the shell too long and then decrease propellant amounts in the gunpowder charges and that will make the shell shorter.
26:00 I think your torps are missing ballast which is making them float on the surface
always great to see from the depths such an underrated game
I'm amazed that a rad lookin game like this came out in 2020ish, and this Vid is the first i'm ever finding out about it... :O
You don't have to play optimally, you'll be fine. Just have fun with it and you'll probably win eventually.
In regards to the torpedoes not hitting submarines, missiles (and torpedoes) are naturally buoyant. For torpedoes, adding a ballast tank (in the furthest right section of the missile editor) and manually setting its buoyancy to any number under 0 negates it. You can also set a specific float depth. I like to have a depth of 5 with -0.1 buoyancy for surface torpedoes, and between 10 to 15 depth with the same buoyancy for anti-submarine torpedoes.
Great video and its nice to see some more popularity come to FtD!
I really like the commentary going with different stages, it just feels very natural and like we get a lot of your insight
hi
nice to see a new vid
time for more tips and advice I think 😛
[ LOGISTICS ]
You can make patrol routes. use shift to queue waypoints and if you set the last command close enough to the first waypoint, then the result is a permanent loop.
This is ideal for logistics since it allows you to bring the resources of all your resource zones back to a single point, thus concentrate them and build either more or larger craft.
You can even make a fleet a waypoint, e.g. to get one craft to patrol between a resource zone and your fleet to keep that fleet supplied automagically.
[ TORPEDOES ]
Anything smaller than medium torpedoes is useless (except as torpedoe interceptors).
I recommend a length of 8-12 blocks for medium torpedoes.
I always have at least 2, preferably 4-6, medium torpedoes on all my ships.
Bigger torps than medium are effective, but also very expensive.
For a ship in the 600k range that isn't specialized in ASW, I'd go with either 8 or so medium torps (likely 10-12 blocks long), or two lare torps (same length).
I also recommend firing torpedoes straight down. Basically a VLMS (vertical launch system) but straight down.
That has three advantages:
- the torps go deep quickly, thus there is little to no chance of them hitting a friendly craft between the launching ship and the target
- the torps can, if you give them a One Turn Module, go in any direction immediately, regardless of the launching ship's current orientation
- the torps are inside the hull and harder to hit, since the only exposed bit is at the bottom
For the configuration of your torpedoes I can recommend the following:
- thrust: give them a ramp-up-time of around 2 seconds. slower speeds allow for tighter turning, thus by starting slow (ish) they can orient toward their target before hitting full speed
- guidance: I always go with prediction guidance for torps. prediction guidance is good for long-range & long-duration prediction, while APN guidance tends to do better vs small agile targets.
- ballast tank. always include a ballast tank in your torps. one is enough, but that one is mandatory. without that they can't dive and are 'stuck' close to the surface. if found that ballast set to max negative buoyancy (aka set to sink) with no target altitude when combined with prediction guidance tends to result in torps hitting enemy ships in the bottom, thus bypassing their toughre side armor. This also tends to mean that the torp is quite likely to be below the -10m altitude where HE gets a massive damage multiplier (I think its either x2 or x3 or some such, been a while).
- payload: for torps I tend to go with 1/2 to 1/4th EMP, rest HE. depending on the setup of the torpedoe, this can include 'free space used for: HE/EMP/fuel'. Please not that HE and Frag payloads detonate in their location on the torpedo. Incendiary and EMP payloads on the other hand 'teleport' to the target on impact (to the impact location to be exact). Thus I go with the following order for paylods (front to back): HE, Frag, EMP, Incendiary.
- thrust duration: once you are happy with your torp, adjust the thrust amount of your propellers to balance the thrust duration to be about the same or maybe up to 3 seconds less than the lifetime of the torpedo. Having more thrust duration than lifetime basically means that the torp dies with fuel left in its tanks and is thus a waste, while the opposite means that the torp runs out of fuel and sinks before running of out time to live.
- one turn: torp sonar has a 120° sensor field, aka 120° left & 120° right, leaving the rear 120° a blind spot. Thus adding a one turn allows the torp to get the initial target location from the mothership on launch (with no further updates once launched), which in turn allows the torp to turn toward the target and then pick it up with its own sonar. I always recommend using a one turn on any torp not launched from a turret or otherwise pre-oriented toward its intended target.
- finally, I recommend adding a signal processor to your torps. that one means that any decoys need to be twice as strong as they'd otherwise need to be to be effective, allowing you to ignore most of them.
[ SENSORS ]
It seems that your shots are not the most accurate. I think this might be, in part at least, due to your sensor setup.
I mentioned that in my last post on the first vid of this series, but its worth repeating.
I personally classify the sensors in FtD into two categories.
- sensors to notice "oh, there's an enemy. somewhere." I all these 'spotting sensors'.
- sensors to provide accurate target data. I call these 'targeting sensors'.
roughly speaking, all passive and 360° sensors are spotting sensors. you need a couple of these, but not an excessive amount.
90° and, ESPECIALLY, gimbal sensors are targeting sensors. ideally you'll want each target you are currently engaging to be tracked by one targeting sensor that provides the best possible range data (aka a laser range finder, or, not qutie as good, a coincidence range finder) and one sensor to provide the best possible angular data (aka a camera gimbal sensor). the laser range finder can be connected to the AI at the bottom and allow a camera gimble on top to also connect. thus I love to combine one laser range finder and one camera gimble into one 'set' of targeting sensors.
Then you need to take into account wher eyour own ship results in sensor blind spots, battle damage, and that each AI wants its own targeting sensors (not counting 90° ones since those can't be independently aimed at a target).
Thus I tend to end up with two sets of targeting sensors per side of the ship, one set on the centerline toward the bow, an done set on the centerline toward the rear. The centerline ones tend to go to the AA Gunnery AI, while the side ones tend to go toward the Main Gunner AI.
[ AI SETUP & MULTI-TARGET ENGAGEMENTS ]
If you want to reliably and accurately engage multiple different targets you need two things.
1) you need the appropriate firing restrictions on your turrets to ensure they know which fields of fire they can cover. This will already allow the turrets on the left side of the ship to engage targets independently of the turrets on the right side of the ship. (or front vs back - you get the idea).
2) you need one AI (with a target priority card set up accordingly) per target TYPE that you want to engage. e.g. one set to big, slow, heavily armed targets for the main guns aka the Main Gunnery AI, and one for close, high, fast targets for the AA Gunnery AI. Then make sure that each AI is set to a different wireless channel and that the guns for each AI, or rather the local weapon controllers, are also set to the correct AI's wirelss channel.
That way you can have your main guns, torps, and missiles engage the enemy capital ships.
While your secondaries deal with their suiciders (damn white flayers) and ramming craft.
While your AA takes care of the enemy fliers.
All of this in all directions around the craft, as the guns can come to bear - with each AI trying to prioritze its optimal target (as dictated by its Target Priority Card settings) where possible.
Other than that?
You seem to be doing just fine.
Maybe look into setting up smoke deployers and laser sensors to help deal with enemy lasers, but ... yeah. you are doing really well so far!
Took a look at the Eriwick's Torpedoes and Sonar systems:
Your Sonar on the bottom is only the 360 models(i'd also space them out a bit more), i recommend you add some 90 sonars as they give significantly better resolution compared to the 360 Sonars, and since you are using remote guidance on those large torpedoes they are reliant on your ability to see the target.
Tune the thrust of those torpedoes to take advantage of the surplus of fuel they have on board, you can also get rid of the fuel tank and replace it with another warhead as the bonus fuel your getting from the small systems gives you plenty of gas to reach the max range.
Additionally, since your using APN with a Ballast tank tune the gain on the APN up to make them more aggressively course correct as those large torpedoes are slow and have a very low turn rate, i might also recommend setting their ballast to 10 meters as some types of CIWS and LAMS could potentially engage with a depth of under 5 meters (and they'll still nose up for impact), plus that will let them better engage submarines.
37:18 Noooooo! Why single block slopes! Use beams of them! Also put at least a layer of metal after the hull skin layer so it'll have actual armor. Armor stacking is your best friend.
Put some rubber on your boats, specifically on the bottom front and rear so that ramming and beaching the ships does significantly less damage to them
At 26:28 , you said that you had an APN guidance on your torpedos. This is actually part of the problem why the torpedos missed. APN guidance points at the target, while prediction guidance leads the target. APN guidance is better at hitting bouncy targets that change direction rapidly, while prediction guidance is better at hitting targets that are moving in a straight line, especially if the target's speed is close to the speed of the missile/torpedo.
give it floatplane rails
Real
Hello
You can fix the shell problem by decreasing the propellant slider until it’s just under 2m shell length
Oh. Oh!
You spent 76,000 mats on octouple 40mm turrets in comparison to only 87,000 mats on the entire main battery. Simple weapons in general are less cost efficient compared to any other weapon type, so i recommend swapping some of the octuple 40mm out or just removing them to cut the cost down.
So happy to see From the Depths getting more popular just after i bought it, hopefully that means more people will be making tutorials lol.
I am dangerously incapable of making airships or submarines lol, and all my ships are VASTLY oversized and too expensive for campaigns :P
Nice video!
That hull is very nice, the deco smoothing is nice.
I can recommend starting using a few decos to first do smaller things like making a smmoth angled mast and adding rigging and bridge windows.
(I can recommend using hatch door frames scaled down in height as window frames.)
You can actually optimise the shell lenght by adjusting the propellent ammount of gunpowder, to get the maximum out of an autoloader.
I can recommend trying out colour coding your armour, makes it easy to assess damage and also using the replace tool only on single layers.
Also yes, balast tanks on the torps, beyt is a slight negative or neutral bouyancy, id recommend ignoring float depth.
With missiles if you know that they cant hit your hull and its unlikely that your launching close to friendlys you can just not have a failsafe.
Best thing against the LH is either outlasering them or PAC/Plasma but railguns/rail assited and fast gunpowder aps can work too, just remember a lot of smoke dispencers and shields are great.
I dont know how on earth I read the title as “Gravy Cruiser”. I didnt even question it Patch 😂
Water ship, Land ship, me like ship :D
Nice! I do love the FTD content, and there really aren't enough creators for this game. Honestly, it's not too bad at all, either. I've seen much worse out of players with 300+ hours of experience (and have made some pretty questionable designs myself).
Most of what I'd criticize, is the armor. It could use spall liners (wood or stone backed by an airgap), a bit more kinetic protection all-round (at least 2m wedges or 1m beam slopes, but ideally 3 - 4m wedges), and while I'm not sure exactly what you're using for the deck armor, it is a bit lacking if it's just wood or reinforced decking. Personally, I mostly build airships so it's sort of irrelevant for most of my designs, but I personally go with alloy backed by metal poles if I do make a ship so I get both an airgap and decently high armor value against HE/frag, which is what tends to target that area. Though, I wouldn't recommend poles in many other cases, as it's only a good way to get an airgap and kinetic protection without compromising HP or armor too much if you don't have the space for proper sloped armor in my opinion. You can experiment to find what works for you, as preferences vary widely on deck armor, but I'd say the main threat is mostly HE and Frag.
I'd also say it's a good idea to generally make more liberal use of heavy armor, especially on surface vessels that can bear that weight easily, but only in certain spots. Specifically, on turrets and any vital internals. It's very much a space efficiency tool more than anything. I wouldn't be shy about using it on anything important as on turrets (both the internals, turret cap, and especially the neck as you did), engine, AI, etc. It's especially good for HE and frag protection, as it's hard to get the armor value to counter that with just stacked metal without problems against kinetic shells or with space. It is also completely viable to just take the Borderwise approach and make enormously big, thickly-armored turrets though, if weight or above-deck space aren't concerns.
As for the amount of armor, it's somewhat up to preference and what you're trying to achieve. Honestly, I wouldn't say you necessarily need a huge amount for something still somewhat early-game. Though, fighting the Lightning Hoods doesn't make things easier in that regard. There's a lot of room for improvement, but it's not that bad in my opinion.
It all takes a long time to learn though. But all things considered, it's a fairly competent design, and it's nice to see you've learned a lot.
Haven't spall liners become essentially useless with the past updates?
@tuluppampam I don't know, honestly. Have they?
I mean, if you know, let me know. It's been a couple weeks since I've worked on anything in FTD, so it's probably something I missed.
@foxxowoxxowillow7855 I've stopped playing ftd for a while, and even when I did it was fairly limited. Anyway, I'm somewhat keeping up with new things, although I haven't read or watched anything regarding testing, but I remember reading videos stating how spall liners are essentially useless and have been for some time.
I cannot say for sure, and they aren't even something that I've ever used (who even uses those shells anyway [completely forgot the name. Is it Heap or something?])
@tuluppampam I have heard some things about concerns around weapons just stripping spall liners away. It's sometimes true, but rarely is this the case against a build that uses the weapons that spall liners are supposed to counter anyway. It's kind of like saying sloped armor is bad because it does very little against HE. It's just not it's job to do that.
That said, as for that matter, I simply and have always used stone spall liners because I'd thought about that with my builds. Honestly, maybe there's another factor I'm missing. But a lot of people used to, and some still do use wood. Switching to stone mostly makes this a non-issue though.
also, it's HESH. I can't recall exactly how it interacts with HEAT though, which might be what you're thinking of. It can also help against plasma, too, since that also works off of the armor of blocks it hits.
Still, I do remember testing a new turret design a bit over a month ago where it still did the job. It had a thin layer of heavy armor slopes on the outside for HE/Frag protection, with metal underneath, backed by backwards stone slopes for spall liner. Pretty good design for what I wanted it to do, and stopped HESH well as I recall.
Iirc their effectivity has been reduced substantially@tuluppampam
Hey, regarding swapping the alloy and metal on the hull- there's an easy way you can go about this: Do a three way swap. Choose a material you haven't used on the ship, like perhaps stone. Use the v menu material swap to change the metal into stone. Then turn the alloy into metal. Then turn the stone into alloy. Viola; hours saved! :)
Maybe the next build could be an Anti-submarine ship? you could re-use the destroyer hull, keep the defensive weapons but replace the main guns and missiles with more (and better) torpedoes.
This is ironically why aircraft carriers became the meta irl, its way more cost effective to have a small fast strike craft with a short range and something they can land on. RIP Montana class and the last 2 Iowa class battleships.
Its also the reason the Iowa class ships were 108ft wide, they were 2 ft narrower than the panama canal so they could travel from Pacific to Atlantic ocean with out having to navigate around South America.
Great video! You stumbled onto something great with those incendiary missiles, fire was added to the game specifically to nerf fast units and speed increases fire damage. I think they're the best damage type for AA missiles now. Alloy is also flammable.
You can paint the stuff you want to replace some unused color, and then replace all the blocks with that color. It's a lot faster than replacing block by block
I’m pretty sure you can mass replace one type of armor on your ship with another, so if you wanted to swap the metal and alloy you could do it that way
The armor refit section on the vehicles V menu, very useful for painting your boats too
So for your two immediate enemies: LH is mostly fast but light stuff, even when it's quite large, so they ironically can't take what they give and hitscan weapons (lasers/PACs, high velocity railguns as a poor man's hitfastenough) are great counters. Also, smoke is your fr. For OW it's the opposite - you want big guns. Investing in a high-punch gun (ideally rail, for easy and low-loss variable pen APpayload and hollowpoint) and possibly a platform for it will help for at least some of most faction's stuff and for OW help in cracking everything.
Regarding the comments people have made about using spall liners, what I do is use multiple layers of poles and/or beam slopes. Adding a dedicated wood or stone liner with airgap takes up an absurd amount of space compared with the health it has, and the internals get blown away by any kind of firepower near instantly. In terms of space efficiency it's better to go with metal beams, then beam slopes, then metal beams again (i would only do 1 or 2 layers of beam slopes to optimize armor health). If you're concerned about weight, you can replace the rear metal beams with alloy, which helps a ton with ships that have buoyancy problems. When done with 5-6 layers combined with internal bulkheads, this results in an amazingly sturdy armor setup that will survive long after your turrets, unless you're fighting end-game vehicles.
How is this Vid the first i'm ever hearing of this game!? Now i've gotten it, but ETA on beginning play on it TBD, let alone if i'll ever get anywhere at it. I'm still batting 0 on Trailmakers Creations i've ever made i'm any satisfied with, and this looks like it has even deeper Mechanics... 😮
Came to the channel for sprocket stayed for ftd
For swapping out the armour pick a material you don't much use, say glass, turn the alloy to glass the metal to alloy and the glass to metal then you'll only need to swap out the metal for glass wherever you want windows.
Btw: you should prepare a missile launched torpedo setup for your missiles, save the missile setup and then switch to it as needed. You can avoid over investing in anti sub.
I miss Robbaz's From the Depths videos lol, they were all I watched for once he stopped playing My Summer Car and he's been gone for ages. Beautiful ship pbits.
He still stream on twitch
One fine looking cruiser!
Your accent and voice kind of remind me of nerd cubed, gave me some nostalgia feeling lol, thanks for makin your vids! A nice watch!
i’m loving the FTD gameplay!
Btw, just for looks, load the missile showcase from the workshop and put cosmetics on your boomrods
There's a menu I think in the v menu to replace all blocks of a specific type or color with another.
For example you could replace all alloy with metal, in 2 clicks.
Also, looks like you don't have the ballast tank on the torpedoes correct, you can see them struggling to go down in the sub fight.
"You suck, do it again" the tale of FTD gameplay.
there is a battleship in world of warships called vermont, i think someting of that size firepower and armour would be good for tougher targets
Given how your territory looks so far and where the resource zones are you could build a few strong fortifications on land to defend the region.
They're cheap and can become quite op if made right....
edit: there is a REFIT function that lets you replace one material with another.
this looks like a mix of the York class with Des Moines, very nice design.
For the torps, set the ballast tanks on 0 flotability NOT a set depth, that way they will be able go deeper or shallower ir needed, and give them more fins, they can barely turn
You should really try Naval Art, I think you might love the game (especially now that it has aircraft carrier mechanics)
You don't actually have to have the manlets on your guns on the front. You can put your firing pieces further back in the turret, and the barrel will just move through the blocks. At higher firing angles, it will look goofy, but, within normal firing circumstances, it will look normal. Many campaign and player vehicles take advantage of this. I recommend putting 4m heavy armor wedges (the ones that slope back on both sides) if you have space in the front of the turret as they take very little kinetic damage and naturally gobble up HE as they are heavy armor.
T90A/Cromwell hybrid when?
Give it a Catapult based F22 Raptor with Nuke missiles like the ones the F89 were made to carry.
I saw you hade 2m slopes making it 1 m and ading a block behind gives it a lot more helth and i nomraly make the slopes heavy armor so thay just becume unstapable
for the chunko at 13:13 they seem to have clipped into each other loll.
Ohhhhhh
i love how he says how much space he got but its really not much and not all that heavy cruiser
It's designed to be roughly 1-1 with the USS Wichita in dimensions, hence this exact scale.
@@PatchBits i still cant figure out how much materials the heavy cruiser has
@@ДмитрийБуц-ы7и around 600k, a bit over.
@@Raszul That's a heavy cruiser by FtD standards alright, a bit more and it'd be a battlecruiser.
@@chillbuilder101 well... I have tried, several times, to come up with a comprehensive classification system for FtD.
I got close.
the best attempt used ship sizes (in volume), the second best one used ship sizes (in length).
Ultimately though I failed.
I could not come up with a clear definition of where each class starts or ends.
A ship that works perfectly fine as 'Battlecruiser' in the early game might cost around 500k, but would do badly as a Battlecruiser against the end game factions (where a price closer to 1 mil might be appropriate for a battlecruiser).
Simply the fact that early one one can forgoe shields, lams, missiles, anti-missiles, and stick to cheaper weapons such as CRAMs and (some limited) APS (maybe with a few sparing torps or small missiles thrown in for simplicity and full target profile coverate).
But ... once one is in the late game one needs railguns (expensive), lasers (expensive), PACs (very expensive) and not just a couple missiles but missile spam and preferably of missiles above medium at that. That means that even at the same size and with the same relative role in the fleet, the ship will have a vastly different price tag.
In my attempts at creating a classification system I tried to account for that by using "T1 = Early Game (hours 0-10)", "T2 = Mid Game (hours 5-15)", "T3 = Late Game (hours 10+)" and, optionally, a select few optional "T4 (boss / faction HQ)" units.
The system I used was to use Size as the determining factor for the classification and cost as the determining factor for Tier (doubling the cost limit with each tier up).
but ... ultimately? ultimately that also failed to work well enough
now I just classify FtD designs roughly as T1-3 aka Early/Mid/Late Game based on their capabilities & the tech they use and assign them their classifications based on their role relative to the rest of the fleet of the same tier.
Thus, your statement of "thats X" (Heavy Cruiser in this case) is ... probably correct when compared to the designs you are used to but might be vastly off for someone used to a different scale. to me 600k for a T1 (early game) ship is closer to a battlecruiser or even a battleship than a heavy cruiser.
You should try to build a Ww2 battleship of ur choice and modernized it like the Uss Fletcher (my favorite ship to exist) and modernize it with better guns and better anti defense capabilities…love the content ❤
I like the idea of the stages because that's how my noggin approaches it
yay yay yay yay yay yay!!!!!!!!!!! it must be christmas again!!! Snow and a Patchbits video!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You got me into from the depths and now i have 600 hours and i am looking at your ship in horror
i'm sure it's a fine ship for you so if it works for you it's fine but
it- yeah.
This ship is awesome ! I try something on my own in adventure but i m far away from your work
It looks like a modernized Russian cruiser, like built during ww2 and modernized in the 50’s or 60’s
You need larrger spaced armour aswell and your torpedoes need to be more heavy or faster
When we get a campaign?
This has a campaign in it
She looks like a York class crossed with a Cleveland class. With German ideology. Aka, excessive amounts of armour and displacement for what it is.
The only thing I'd say is those bow torpedoes. I saw them and had a clue of what will happen next. They do need looking at.
I too have started work on an 'eavy cruiser
I went for a neaf future sleek design because that way its easier to cheese xd
ultrakill p2 on brutal difficulty if you want a good challange
I think theres a ballast tank in your torpedo thats messed up its aim on the submarine
heh I doubt you can beat the Eyrie with that, the Eyrie is pretty strong, not super strong but it packs a punch and can take quite a few hits
Now build the bismark
now we need a battle ship
Build the Yamato next.
i think it would be fun to add a patchbits flag for your forces :D
Can you build small defense stations? Like sams?
Should definitely do so - then we have at least a chance to survive if our fortresses are attacked.
@PatchBits yeah i can completly understand that
Now put it up against the ragnorok
That's roughly the same size as the battleship I'm making lol
this USS Portland?
Wichita!
@PatchBits us cruisers do be lookin same'ish
that thing is sexy
Sits a bit low in the water doesn’t it 😅
Honestly pretty average for player made stuff
poggers
Are we sure this is a cruiser?
YOOOOO
YOOOOO
Ship's
8 mins ago???
Pathetic torps my guy way too slow