Thanks for your answers Bullet, appreciate it. On the subject of ship sinking time, I based my statement on in-game testing, so I must admit I'm surprised. I'll take your statement at face value - and do some more testing to convince the more stubborn part of my brain. The US Ship Pack battle is actually an ideal test scenario - one poor minelayer getting hammered by several super-dreds. I'm sure I'll find you're right, eventually.
Visibility: I guess it's an old-timer's habit to think in absolute visibility ranges as far as computer simulations are concerned. Dynamic spotting ranges and chances are much better, of course, as this is much closer to the real thing.
Gunnery: my problem is that I find it hard to visually judge the range on the battlespace. I'd really like a line in the sea telling me how far my ships can fire. But I guess that's OT in this thread. On topic: how much is accuracy affected by number of ships firing at it? I just fought a destroyer battle with about 20 DD's on each side, managing to cross the T of the enemy line
and staying there as he tried to close for about 15 minutes. For the start of the battle I simply let my ships target the nearest ship, i.e. the lead ship of the enemy line, but seeing the spread of shot was so great I started spreading out the fire by micromanaging ship targets. What goes on under this part of the hood? And can you take the hood off, please
?