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After just over 250 hours of gameplay under my belt, there's a few QoL suggestions I have for the game that hopefully could find their way into the development cycle: 1. Tooltip enable/disable/delay - This would be very beneficial to player when you are scrolling through ships or submarines and don't necessarily want to see the tooltip for the ship. - In battles, the same would be useful. I find myself more often than not quickly scanning over an enemy ship's weapons to see their physical locations to plan attack courses and don't necessarily need the weapon details while I'm doing that. 2. Submarines automatically refresh crew - Currently if submarines are missing crew, you must go to each sub and manually set the crew level. An option like the "Add Crew" checkbox in the Fleet menu would be a great way to improve this. 3. Ability to select multiple ships/submarines and set crew levels by percentage - This would be very useful if you need more ships active but can't afford to have max crews on each ship. The only option currently is to manually set the crew levels per ship. 4. Button to view a ship on the map - The current "View" button in the Fleet menu is slightly misleading as it takes you to the build screen for that specific ship instead of taking you to the map screen. Something like a "View On Map" button would be great to quickly see the port or location on the map where a ship is. 5. Ability to mass select ships and remove from mothball - Being able to select multiple ships and take them out of mothball status and set crew levels to 100% would be very useful. This suggestion could possibly be done buy suggestion 3. Thanks for making such a fun game, it's really fun to play

Are there any plans to make it so when a major power builds a ship for a minor power the ship names are ones used by the minor power instead of the one building the ships? I think it would nicer to see Danish ships for example using Danish names instead of names from japan, china, etc.

curious to see what everyone else thinks seeing as the prior update brought USA dreadnoughts and cruiser tune-ups as well as some DD touch ups. I myself would like see Germany get some attention as I think them and the UK are lacking the most in variety and flavour of the major nations (sorry spain and china players) with germany in particular lacking across the board for customization and national flavour for their ships late game with BB's being stuck to generally one layout, CA's being more of the same boat with both being unable to mount torps without it looking jank, and the frankly horrible state german CL's and DD's have been in since the games beginnings. I know I mentioned the UK being in a similar need of a touchup and I think most of what I said could mirror them however their BB's feel pretty nice from the last time I played with CA's CL's and DD's needing a desperate tune-up. rant over, curious to see how much traction this'll get

So to start I guess I'll list of my thoughts on the game as of writing (yes I know there's a major patch in the works that'll render several points null) both positive and negative - community feedback is acted upon in a very swift manner, I'm used to getting a hotfix a week later, not after I wake up 7 hours later. Nick you guys doin good over there like it's okay to wait a day to fix things - Game feels better with each patch drastically - Game feels pretty good all things considered, while it's rough around the edges I wouldn't have put 200 hours in the span of a few weeks if I didn't enjoy the game. - The pace of content has drastically increased it feels though I did take a hiatus for a good while before the full map release was launched. - Everything sounds pretty good and particle affects are very nice, nothing hits the same as when you cause a flashfire and watch as a multi ton turret shoots to the moon with a burst of cooking ammo. - Capital ship models are perfect there's plenty of national flavour for BB's hats off to your model maker he has a true appreciation for detail - World map is very well modeled for the scale. Now time for where I feel the game needs to be improved or feels unfinished and or gripes I have. ( note: the good isn't short because there isn't a lot of positives about the game, there are this game is genuinely one of a kind and I wouldn't be surprised I get over 1k hours in a short time) (second addendum a few of these are general issues in the field of game development so it will sound hyperbolic and I am functioning off of caffeine and 2 braincells.) - Light cruiser and destroyers need to be prioritized for new hulls mainly light cruisers as they almost all use the same generic tower except a few examples I know this is being fixed next update for a few classes but it feels weird when the big three (USA, UK and GER) look the same for so long. As for destroyers let's say you're playing the USA and you unlock the 4k limit for DD hulls you go and check and...... nothing, the highest weight hull is the leader and I've only gotten it maybe halfway to the max limit so maybe have it so that leader hulls can go up to 4k if a more advanced hull isn't viable. - Speaking of missing things, turrets, more specifically and immediately turrets that are missing for some nations/classes but are on others. The two most notable examples is the bofors existing for the French but not the USA as 2 and 3 inch guns the 3 inch isn't too big a deal as it's nice to see the 76 mm get some love but it feels weird the other staple of small caliber guns for the USA is only in French ships. The second example that I can pull is the Mk 5 3 inch guns (might have fudged the caliber but I know it's the smaller kind) on UK BB's is either that of the tribal class (forgetting the gun name even though there's one a 20 min walk from me) or is similar to, isn't on DD's but instead is the generic US turret, I know there's more example of mix mashed turrets but these two are the most noteworthy example that came to mind. - Economy/research: this needs a good bit of tweaking, economy seems semi okay AI tweaking is still needed with it going bankrupt every other turn, on the whole research needs to be heavily boosted earlier start dates lag way behind in tech as it goes on in the years. - redundant research: lets say you plan on only using a hand full of calibers it would be nice to target the calibers you want instead of going through every other caliber to get the mk 5's. - Auto design and the AI: this is an aspect I understand more and more the further I get into coding and modding and the more I tip my hat to the fact you guys have reeled it in as much as you have (for those who don't know, AI and sandbox building is a pandoras box and always breaks) this is something that has and will improve over time and again hats off to the game labs team for having it in the state it is. - Copy and paste nations: this will be controversial, Spain, Austria and China don't have enough unique hulls and components to really justify them at the current moment, again I stress at this moment, there are plenty of hulls and components already in game in early turns but as the eras go on they really lack anything that isn't either UK or GER components, now this is guaranteed to change and the state they are in now is likely due to how more of the major nations are being focused on (hot take, if that is the case I'm all for it.) - Politics being bare bones at best and down right frustrating at worst: stated this in the hotfix topic but it feels like the government system and politics is immune to player input, now I'm all for the Idea of being a cog the machine rather than the big man in charge of the country and the tug of war it entails, however when I've been spending 10 plus turns to improve relations with someone only for it to change by 12 points and then the glue eating gremlin of an ally that hitched a ride from a prior war decides to fight the nation I'm trying ally with and flushes it down the drain, it makes me want to do Franz ol' boy in myself. Now my recommendation to change politics while still keeping the idea of being a part of the system rather than the head, is to have naval prestige mean something rather than random event currency that collects dust 80% of the time, have it so that the tiers of prestige act as bonus multipliers to political decision and have it act as an actual prestige system or even more basic just use it as a currency for political decisions (admittedly this can hamper the AI as it tends to tank in prestige hard in wars and can snowball but I personally would prefer this concept over RNjesus snapping my neck anytime I want to speak to parliament but let me know if anyone likes this and if any of the devs by chance see this let me know if it's even possible you guys know far more of the limitations of the systems in game than anyone else does or if this is already in the works). End of the gripes really if I was on my home system I could probably find a few more things that could be retooled but probably by the time I get to it and find the big ones they'll be patched the moment I blink. Now onto the big asks and things I hope to see. - 50's and cold war era hulls and ships: I would love to see the campaign go further, maybe not into cruise missile era but close to it, this leads to my next point. - paper ships/components: can't put a name down to specific asks but to anyone who's played WoW you know the stuff I'm talking about. - decorative pieces/AA mounts and superstructure changes: first two semi self explanatory, camos, AA mounts just stuff to spice up the models, the second is more practical allowing mounts of funnels and turrets without them looking out of place such and amidships. - More freedom with barbette placement: somewhat annoying that only some ships allow side barbettes, it'll get weird but I'd love to make a Frankenstein ship of barbettes everywhere. - Modding support: Self explanatory but a pipe dream and something that I think needs time but I can bet a good few bucks that this game could be like HOI4 in terms of a modding scene. Rant over, would love to hear what people think of my incoherent ramblings and if anyone has any input on my observations and requests to the devs, speaking of if anyone on the dev team sees this would love to hear what you guys think, this is your game after all and I'm curious to see the feasibility of some of these points

So far, I'm enjoying the game a lot - despite the inevitable beta-testing jank, I do feel that it has a huge amount of potential, and the gameplay can be addictive as anything for my hyperfixating self. I do, however, have a couple of suggestions. I'll rank them in order from most pressing to least pressing. Post-1920 Light cruiser and destroyer towers I love the ship design for this game so far. Different nations have distinct style of construction that inform gameplay significantly, and generate unique aesthetics across the fleet. It's one of the best part of the game, in my opinion. Ignore this comment when it comes to light cruisers and destroyers. Barring a handful of nations, none of which are yet implemented in the campaign, every damn light cruiser gets the same set of towers. It's more than an aesthetic difference - the shape, size, and attachment points of a ship's towers are really important for defining what you can feasibly fit onto it. When you have the same sets of towers, you end up making the same light cruisers, spread across every nation. Destroyers run into much the same problem, though it's admittedly a little better because of differences in hull shapes. This, currently, is probably the biggest issue for gameplay that I experience regularly - light cruisers are probably the most interesting variable part of the OOB, and they'd be a lot more fun both in the campaign and in custom battles with more variability at the fingertips of the player. AI designs are still ridiculous A large part of the enjoyment this game offers is through immersion, and it's admirable how well it can pull that off when things go right. However, there is nothing that can crash that immersion quite as efficiently as scrolling over the horizon and seeing the Frankenstein's monsters the AI pulls out of the hat. Performance-wise, they're pretty variable - some AI ships can be pretty lethal, while others, like an Austria-Hungarian BC armed with 9.1" guns I recently ran into, are about as dangerous as a wet piece of cardboard. Taken as overall, though, I think making campaign designs AI-only is a disservice. The solution I'd suggest would be to create a Steam-enabled resource in which players could submit more balanced ship designs, which could then be reviewed a bit and composed into folders from which the AI could draw to put interesting designs on the playing field to challenge the player more thoroughly. It could possibly also be organised into subsets for each kind of ships - ~20" maximum BBs, ~18" super battleships, more balanced ~16" designs for battleships, ~11" supercruisers, ~9" large cruisers, and ~8" heavy cruisers for heavy cruisers, as an example, to provide a bit of structure, and variability for how the AI responds. I wouldn't want to have the AI replaced, mind you - this would just be an option you can choose instead of the AI, which, I imagine, will become progressively better at building balanced ships as development continues. However, I don't know much of the coding for the game, so this might not be possible - just a suggestion, really. Torpedo spam isn't just a problem, it's a nightmare On the topic of AI building, a persistent issue I've run into with the AI is that everything up to 20k tonne super cruisers arrives with half their weight made up of torpedos. While it does make some sense to have specific styles be torpedo-heavy (the IJN particularly was famous for that), having every damn sub-capital flood the battlefield with 20-track torpedo broadsides can be incredibly annoying. It often makes the ships themselves very weak otherwise - a destroyer with a single 4" gun and 20 torpedos can only really do one thing well. Transports get away scot free In a convoy escort battle, sinking the escorts means the battle ends with the transports getting away, meaning you either need to ignore the escorts entirely and send a 40kn monstrosity to go grab the convoy, or string along a half-dead cruiser until you can get the convoy dead. Killing the escorts should mean you automatically kill the transports - either that, or don't end the battle and give me the satisfaction of massacring the poor, defenceless transports. Maybe I'm a bad person. Fore-aft balancing can be a pain Now, this one isn't quite as pressing for gameplay, but it's something that can sometimes irritate me when creating a ship. It's not terribly difficult to balance a ship down to <1% fore or aft offset. However, getting it down to 0 is genuinely painful. I'd propose the option to (heh) offset this by adding ballast on the fore or aft, possibly with a minor weight and/or pitch penalty. This isn't super pressing though - maybe it's just a skill issue on my part. The system of parts clicking onto points on the hull poses an aneurysm risk The number of times I've sat and had my eyes nearly pop out of my head with irritation because a barbette or secondary tower clicks onto the hull a metre or two away from where I want it has probably had serious health repercussions for me by this point. I don't necessarily want to change the system entirely, because it's very useful, but a bit more granularity in where one can place the parts onto the hull would do wonders for my mental and physical health - forgiving systems save lives. The campaign map system is, err, hmmm This one's very low on the priority list because the current campaign system is clearly a beta version intended to allow players to get a small amount of campaigning to spice up gameplay, not to get a final system. However, it's pretty jank as is - there's little ability to duplicate actual strategy beyond putting fleets in a general area and hoping they do the job you want them to. My ideal system would be to get it to something like Rule the Waves 2, where you continuously control the locations and actions of various forces, but that's perhaps not achievable - a more arcadey system would still be great fun, but please, a little more actual campaigning. Also, in the far future, being able to do stuff like bombarding ports would be a welcome addition. On a general note though, this game is incredibly promising, and I'm going to follow it very closely - hopefully by playing it as much as possible. Keep up the good work!

Until better implementation of the convoy system is complete, please display percentages down to two decimal places, so I know if I need more transports to stay at a given percentage. Identified enemy ship classes should be viewable outside of battle, so we can check out their builds in a more calm setting. Implement via mouse-over of enemy fleet strengths for a given nation displaying a drop-down list of identified classes, which clicking will lock open so we can click on individual ship classes and easily tell how many you have seen but not immediately sunk. Repair costs for the final month should scale off actual damage. The AI has a nasty habit of bruising every ship in my force, and even though they're still at 99-100% integrity, they still cost the same full price to scrub the scorch marks off the hull that a ship that got gutted by a torpedo would cost that month The warning for guns having poor sectors of fire is broken, and will display when there's one gun on the ship with near-perfect coverage. All hulls should have a flush-deck option, available somehow. I already hate the oversized towers we're forced to use, I don't want to be forced to use a ship designed solely for frontal main gun layouts (like the new French battleships). I reiterate: I would like to be able to add or remove everything on every hull until it's a flush-deck design, and add or remove those cutouts and additions as I desire. As it stands those new French battleship hulls are my new most hated hulls in this game. Please stop, URGENTLY, making these hulls the only option for a ship of that size for a given nation. The Dunkirks (excuse English spelling; French is hard) were both ugly and not suited to defensive tactics; I don't wanna have to build them because you built the hull so no other option is available. Flush-deck setting, PLEASE. Stealth17's circular battleship video shows that the game can in fact support much more manipulation to hulls than the designer currently allows. Please widen those sliders concerning width and length to the maximum they can support without causing serious issues. The Russians dd actually make circular battleships- I'd like to at least get close to that if I don't mind making hideous monstrousities. Further, whatever is making the game lag out during designing of all heavy ships requires some attention. Draught remaining limited to what ports could reasonably support is however already as far as it needs to go without save file manipulation. Requesting permission to fire: when a ship has an excellent torpedo or gunnery solution on a target but is currently under orders not to fire that weapon, they should have an indicator that essentially represents a commander bitching to the admiral that they have a clean shot and they want to take it. All I need is a flashing icon shaped like either a torpedo, large gun, or small gun (use the extant icons in the fire control options menu) coloured in green to indicate, "I wanna use this weapon on my target, admiral!!" It is difficult to order a ship to cease maneuvers. Attempting to use fine mouse control to order forward rudder is time-consuming and not suited to high-intensity battles. I'd like a "steady as she goes" button and a manual entry ability for rudder controls so we can type in desired rudder settings while paused as the mouse accuracy needed to achieve this currently is not presently a realistically viable option. The Let's Players and I struggle with that interface; I request it receive some attention. Would like a "hull material" button, with steel, aluminium, and wood being my first three options to stock the choices pool. Tiny ships in the world wars periods were often made of wood, as it was well-known that a heavy hit would simply sink them anyway if they were made of steel. Would like torpedo trackers on both friendly torpedoes and observed enemy ones. A green or red coloured line indicating their path would help. It need only be visible if one of the lines intersects with one of your ships' courses, as they could and did calculate that in real ships. Would like an option to increase the investment in torpedo launcher traverse speed, like the extant one for big guns. Again, I would like fine control over this on a turret-by-turret basis. LSM (R) type LSTs carried rockets. Those rockets could conceivably hit ships. Rockets for late-game..? Would like to customise ship designations. DLs and DDs are not the same. Nor are DEs the same as DDs. I can't differentiate that right now; I have to manually select the ship and assess its weapons to determine if I have an intercept destroyer, a destroyer leader, a support destroyer, a fleet destroyer, or an escort destroyer. And that's just some of the stuff currently crammed under "DD." Don't get me started on other ship types... Early tech-tree ships have minimal customisability beyond what size guns to fit and spending your leftover displacement. Implementation of any of several ideas I have already presented would fix this; in the meantime just flush-deck hull options for all in all time periods, please. Yes, your exceptionally limited options *look* slightly better but I don't care- their extreme lack of customisability makes them obnoxious to build- it feels like I've made the exact same ship a dozen times. It also makes early naval academy missions just plain slogs to get through. No, I *don't* want to spend an hour watching three ironclads slowly expend their entire ammunition supply into each other, please; nor do I want to do half of the missions I *did* do in that academy as they were plain boring. They don't get interesting until fairly late in the academy (say, one-third to halfway through) and that is a flaw that will drive new players straight outta the game. Would like working searchlights that mitigate aiming penalties at night. Give me something else to place in those turret slots. Larger searchlights, more mitigation. Would like some basic automatic orders, like having my intercept destroyers start tacking without constant player attention. Some basic evasion patterns can be coded in without too much difficulty; they may even benefit the AI as it develops. Would like more *gameplay-specific* information from just about all tooltips. It's mildly interesting that radio direction finding is a thing that was used to find ships in real life, but what is it's *gameplay function?* That's all we need in those tooltips. Save history lessons for the loading screens. And I *like* the history lessons, and still feel compelled to say that... I want to know how much of a penalty I get to aiming for having mixed batteries and when it applies. Maybe adding those two-inch guns to my destroyers is disrupting their accuracy- it doesn't look like it but I can't tell that anywhere. More ideas as they brew up. Feel free to cite the ones you do and don't like by quote; otherwise the devs can't tell which ones we really want and which are secondary priorities or even plain duds. Brainstorming is like throwing shit at the wall; not all of it will stick...

So one thing we vitally need ASAP is actual night backgrounds and proper conditions. It's jarring and incongruous with the penalties we get. Perhaps I and others could also be less harsh with the spotting system if we saw that it was ACTUALLY "Night - Stormy - Strong Gale - Very Rough." This picture shows none of those things. I'm not asking for super-intense, graphically-perfect conditions, but we need something other than blue skies and mist. Another example: All the same conditions except Day vs. Night and no real difference. It's hard to take battles seriously this way and Steam people will likely eat it alive because they won't see where their debuffs are coming from.

EDIT of 23/06/20: Not going to continue with this specific thread, or any future ones I had in mind. You can read my last post for more detailed explanation. ================================================================ I'm wondering if any of you like the idea of making several of these threads as it seems to me it's potentially a good way of drawing together our very wide experience, knowledge and talents and present them to the devs in formats that are relatively specific and focussed. I do appreciate I'm asking you all to post things you very possibly have done previously, but I hope we'll end up with a comprehensive set of thoughts on each big topic area. I'm happy to run with a few of these and monitor/update as we go. I might ask if I can get this put as a sticky, and possibly even see if I can get some better form of editorial control within this (and other) threads if the idea gains sufficient support to make it worthwhile. ============================================================ Hi all, I thought it might be helpful to take stock of the GUNNERY MODEL as it stands, especially now that we're able to see EXACTLY the ENEMY ships' tech, guns, gunnery statistics through a battle, and all their real time gunnery modifiers. With that in mind, could I ask you use the following HEADINGS format within posts. I realise not everyone will want to/care to follow it, but at least for those who do I'll provide some common format. If you wish to discuss someone else's post, please make sure you continue to caption your own contribution with the "GUNNERY FACTOR" and/or quote the other post to achieve the same thing. GUNNERY FACTOR - post with clear heading/statement of the specific gunnery model question/issue you are raising. Where the issue is a specific factor included on screen, please "USE EXACTLY THAT term" within quotation marks. Doing so will allow me to sort/update relevant contributions as we go. EXAMPLE(S) - provide screen shots to illustrate. Not at all seeking to teach anyone to suck eggs (despite my professional background I am surprisingly lousy with these things, LOL), but I tend to do the following: I pause the game and use the mouse to bring up any relevant info if it's necessary to get a tooltip to display, or I want real-time gunnery factors on screen. I sometimes make a few different images if I can't get all the info in the one (I might need more than one tooltip, for example), or am doing a "before/after" demonstration. I use the built in snip via Left WIN + SHIFT + S as it cuts down on image size and makes me focus on what's important in the image. I also like it because if I select it immediately I can then CNTL + S to save the image and I use those save names to describe what's in it/why I'm saving it. I mention it solely as a tip for anyone interested, but I'm sure most of you are way ahead of me (and I don't like image hosting sites but perhaps I ought to get over that). DISCUSSION - give the meat as to why you've raised the specific GUNNERY FACTOR, such as what you see as an issue with it, whether you think it's a good factor yet less than ideally implemented, or a poor one (obviously explain why) and would be better off being removed (and possibly replaced with another to achieve the intended result in a better fashion). SUGGESTION - make a suggestion as to how to address the issue you're raising. As mentioned in the intro, if enough people think this sort of thread might help bring feedback/experience together I'll make some others, so this is something of a trial run. Cheers

With the advent of Alpha 6 being the crew, destroyers, and some towers update. I had a few suggestions on what I'd like to see in maybe future Alphas - US Battleship interwar turrets and towers (tripod masts and maybe guns that resemble New York or Pennsylvania class ships) - US and britsh interwar treaty cruiser designs (Really enjoy designing ships with the trento towers, but it would be even cooler with new orlands or county class superstructures) - Boston or Cleveland class hulls - Imperial Japanese Navy interwar pagoda towers - WWI britsh superstructures (queen Elizabeth and renown class launch superstructures and Iron Duke) These are the ones that are off the top of my head and would be really cool to have in the ship builder, but there is one more feature that I would really like, but I'm not holding my breath for is spotting float planes for increased accuracy and scouting. If anyone else has suggestions (that arent necessarily combat or campaign related) it would be cool to hear your opinions on what you would add.

hi guys, first post here, before all, this game is already very good and i cannot wait to see it at his full relase but i want to make a suggestion that imho will improve the game just a tiny bit, can we have a camera attached near the bridge that you can zoom like binoculars too see the enemy fleet roaring shells from across the see or enjoying the scenery of your shells landing near the enemy ship, it would be great and also if you want it you can watch the entire battle from that perspective giving you really enjoyable feels of the naval battle from the admiral or ship captain point of view keep up the good work🤗

Absolutely loving the Alpha, that said I'd like to suggest some minor and easily implemented features. 1.) A zoom component for the camera. Something similar to the FoV feature available in Arma 3's splendid camera whereby you can adjust the camera lens to be zoomed in and out. Perhaps using the plus and minus keys on the numpad. 2.) Manual quitting at the conclusion of a battle as opposed to being automatically exited. Maybe I wanna roam around and take some screenshots or watch that last ship slip beneath the sea. I have a few more however, I feel these are the ones I'd love to see implemented the most at present.

Dear Ultimate Admirals: Dreadnoughts Dev Team I recently bit the bullet and spent the money for the early Alpha access to your game. Overall the game play is engaging and has tons of replay value as you give yourself self imposed restrictions or lack thereof. I understand the UA:D is in extremely early alpha so I will be taking all included features and issues objectively and with a grain of salt. P.S. I haven’t read any other reviews or change suggestions so please keep that in mind if someone has already covered something. First off will be the ship designer: User Interface: >Overall it’s not bad though I would change some portions of it. >Problem: The Right hand scroll menu overlaps with the buttons in the top right hand corner of the screen, and as a result can make both hard to use. >Solution: make the scroll menu’s upper bound so that it don’t overlap with the buttons. >Reference Image: Reference Image 1 >Problem: Main gun selection should use the same system as for secondaries rather than the redundant centerline/side system. >Solution: Copy the system used by secondaries it’s a much cleaner and easy to use system that doesn’t introduce extra complexity. >Problem: Data Entry in general. Armor values, speed, tonnage, etc. It’s slow, clunky and makes my pointer finger hurt something fierce after I make several hundred clicks in rapid succession trying to make a ship. >Solution: Make all of the above enter able via text, scroll shell on mouse, and current up/down buttons. >Problem: Ship preview in bottom left with stats is covered by the central component buttons when the left side menu is open. >Solution: Allow it to be scrolled up so it can clear it. Reference Image: Reference Image 3 >Problem: In the ship information car the data is covering the ships top down and side on profiles. >Solution: Make it so the information is displayed below these profiles >Reference Image: See Reference Image 3 >Problem: Component interface is very bland and uninteresting with only text differentiating components. This is a chronic issue with the current version of the game. As seen in Reference Images 4 and 5 below. Reference Images 6 and 7 is something that would be more representative of what you should have. Obviously done up in you games art style. Reference Images: Reference Image 4 Reference Image 5 Reference Image 6 Reference Image 7 >Suggestion: Add in a cinematic mode for those glorious shots. Building: >Problem: Torpedoes, Where’s the Japanese Oxygen Torpedoes? >Solution: Add Oxygen Torpedoes. >Reference Image: Reference Image 2 >Problem: Lack of freedom with creating guns >Solution: Let us have exact control over… Bore size, ex. 16”/406.4 mm Barrel length, ex. 50 Calibers long (50 x bore) Shell weight, ex. 2700 lbs/1225 kg Muzzle velocity, ex 2500 ft/s /762m/s Separate Propellant and Shell fillers Rifling: type and twist rate Breech block mechanism Allow us to pick gun construction, Wire wound vs Built up. Replaceable Liners vs Having to replace the gun. Chromium plated bore vs not. >Problem: Lack of freedom choosing/modifying gun mounts >Solution: Allow us to chose the following… Common cradle or Independent Mounting, ex Twin/Triple/Quad vs. Two/Three/Four gun mounts, also the French “Two Twin Quad turret.” Make the size of the mount correspond with the size/number/length:loading mechanism of guns. Allow us to pick loading systems. Manual, Power assisted, and Automatic. (I would recommend 3-4 degrees of power assisted loaders.) Allow us to place turrets anywhere regardless of blast effects from firing. Fix that changing orientation of guns can limit gun placement in same location Possibly Eventually include some of the more wacky historical gun layouts, planned or otherwise, but for now stick to the bog standard gun mounts. >Problem: Barbettes Nothing much to say here besides placement and sizing. >Solution: Allow is the following. Allow Barbette size to match turret size so we aren’t wasting weight on an 18” Three gun turret’s barbette for a 16” Twin gun. Allow placement of Barbettes anywhere. Allow All sizes of barbettes on all ships for main guns and secondaries Allow us to choose barbette height with turrets giving specifications for how tall a Barbette needs to be to allow super firing. >Reference Image: Reference Image 9 >Problem: Boilers, Engines, and Transmissions are not the same thing, and shouldn’t necessarily be paired together. >Solution: Allow the players to chose the following… Boiler type, large tube/small tube and low/medium/high pressure. Engine type, Piston, Multiple expansion piston, Turbine (I would make 3 to 4 qualities of Turbines.) Transmission, I would call these gear boxes but some lack gears so… Direct Drive, Hydraulic, Electric, Geared, Double Geared. Diesel is in a class of its own and would Be considered an Engine but totally removes the need for boilers. Fuels are Coal and Oil and you should allow us to chose %fuel coal/oil Should also allow us to mix propulsion types. >Problem: Lack of control over armor thickness for… Forward and Aft Transverse Bulkheads Barbettes Turret sides and Back (They often didn’t match the thickness of the face plates or the roof.) Secondaries (Same case as main guns) Torpedo Bulkheads Upper belts found on Dreadnoughts/Pre-Dreadnoughts >Solution: Allow is full control over all these areas. >Problem: Lack of control over Armor length and location of coverage. Many ships used differential thickness over their magazines, machinery and fore/stern belts/decks. >Solution: Allow control over fore and aft belts and decks, separately. Along with independent control over belts and decks over main battery magazines and machinery >Problem: Lack of control over Length, Beam, Draft, and Free board. >Solution: Give us limited control over this, but make it so that every change effects tonnage and vice versa. With us being able to lock any 2 dimensions with in reason. >Note: This will also correct your wildly incorrect draft stats. >Problem: Where do you find how many funnels you need. >Solution: Put this somewhere obvious its important, perhaps on the funnel information card. >Reference Image: Reference Image 8 >Problem: Lack of Save Function in ship builder. >Solution: Add it! >Problem: Rotating guns and the like is annoying and painful because it reverts to default orientation every time you wiggle. >Solution: Make it so rotation doesn’t revert itself. >Suggestion: Separate Radar into Search and Range Finding >Suggestion: Add in targeting aids, like to begin with range tables, but later on mechanical targeting computers and the line. I think this will be exceptionally important for the campaign. Game play and Balancing: >Problem: Torpedoes are too hard to spot even on the best of graphical settings. >Solution: Add in some kind of visual aid for the player to know where they are. >Problem: Twin and Triple mounts suck badly due to their accuracy, and reload debuffs, especially triples. >Solution: Historically weapons of all calibers with few exceptions for cramped or poorly designed mounts usually didn’t have rate of fire issues. That being said some triple and quad mounts had issues due to blast interference affecting neighboring shells as they leave the muzzle. Also give guns their historical fire rates please what you currently have not is worthless. >Suggestion: Add in Technology Interrupter coils. >Suggestion: I am aware you are possibly making UA:D multiplayer I would recommend not balancing the single player game for this. The reason why is because the biggest group of people you are going to be attracting to UA:D are historical enthusiasts that want to play a game with historical ships and weapons or at least historical feeling. For example the 16” Triple Mark I takes Problem: Certain missions crash but you were already aware of this. >Suggestion: Small ships especially torpedo boats and destroyers seem to be a challenge to engage and im finding the best way to counter them is to use my main battery rather than my smaller secondaries. This is because they quite simply do not seem to die under secondary fire. End notes: I’m getting tired and I'm certain there is more that I can find but right now I can’t be bothered and I’ll revisit this later with each patch, or at least try to. Thank you for this wonderful experience and have yourselves a wonderful future. This was a fleet Review by Absolute0CA

Not what I thought it was going to be, at all. Completely mislead by the Steam page. Rating: 2/10 -Missions constantly crash to desktop, the first 5 and last 5 worked fine, everything in between had quite a few problems and no reason stating why. -The ship building is nothing like it was shown on the Steam page. -On the Steam page it stated: [Below] Now the game went from $25 to $35 despite what it stated on the Steam page. Fantastic. -The graphics are mediocre, extracted directly from a 2002 PS2 game. -Buggy, laggy, optimized, completely unplayable for the most part. -Demanded a refund and got no message pack for 19 days now, terrible customer support can't even shoot me an email even though both on the phone and in live chat they said they would. Going to give Paypal a call and demand my money back, this is a complete rip-off for $50. What an absolute scam. -Not to mention the forums are completely censored, everything has to be "approved". Can't even post freely so how am I supposed to give "feedback" when anything not supporting the devs is censored.

Hello all, loving the game so far, i had a few ideas that might be cool for the campaign side of this game. 1. Map: If anyone has played silent hunter or cold waters on travel map i love how you can see ideas of what the enemy is doing etc. without knowing how the campaign is going to look map wise and game play wise i cant say for sure if this would work but i would love to be able to have pings of where the enemy fleets and stuff in a general whereabouts. This is more than likely already going to be a thing anyway considering how in depth the Devs are making this game anyway. 2. Map x2: On the campaign map please make it a bit more RTS not turn based. I love the total war games but it would be absolutely awesome if if i could just zoom out of the current battle that i'm engaged in and look at the world map and see where my second fleet is and then bring them into the fight to help out. I find that such a problem with the total war series in the way that i either have reinforcements from the beginning or not at all. Example: my 2 destroyers are escorting a fleet of freighters and have come across a enemy fleet of 2BB's and 3Cl's. nearby i have my main fleet of 3BB's 3CA's 2CL's etc. I start retreating my small fleet towards my larger fleet and then have them all turn together onto the enemy fleet destroying most in true ambush style and causing an end to the war i'm in because of severely diminishing the enemies numbers in the pacific. 3. Aircraft Carriers: I would love to see (and this is a bit of a stretch) early aircraft carriers. i know this might get some flak but before you chuck it out here me out. Early aircraft carries were slow and pretty weakly armed and armoured. They didn't hold a lot of aircraft and the early aircraft (biplanes such as the swordfish) used in the time period weren't all that flash either. These should not be overpowered in anyway. Mainly scouting and some light bombing etc. This could lead to some awesome scenes on maps where a fleet is defending a aircraft carrier from an enemy ambush or attack with the aircraft defending the hive like bees as a distraction to get the main fleet away. Flak barrages and early machine gun fire around ships would look awesome especially if the game lets us go into WW2. As a balancing portion in the campaign make them relatively expensive or to maintain compared to other ships and the planes not super strong so as to not make them super common on the field and overpowered. Even if the ships were a mid/late technology to research would add balance to the game too. Some early examples of basic aircraft carriers were the HMS Engadine, HMS Ark Royal/Pegasus and the IJN Hosho just to name a few. 4. Auxiliary Ships: Lastly id like to suggest the ability to create our own auxiliary fleets to help with our trade for resources, transporting troops and equipment and to refuel and rearm our ships on the waters. This could add a bit more depth and control to income and the map later instead of it just being a numbers game we can visualise and have something to defend to help an invasion. Example: a fleet of 10 troop transports 3 fuel tankers 4 freighters and a bunch of German escorts invading England that the player has created to go on and attempt the capture of England. This would be a awesome sight to see when in a battle map though as it currently is this could be quite laggy but i am sure by the time the ready for the campaign it will be more optimised. These are just some things that i would love see added to the game and i hope you guys do too. This game has been very fun these last few days and i am dying to get my hands on the campaign and play it properly. As always smooth sailing all, keep up the good work Devs edit: just thought of subs being added too because there were early submarines too just an idea

I really like the passenger missions on testbed. But one crucial part is missing. Mail Packets! Information was/is crucial and with the removal of the trader tool I see huge potential for it. Suggestion: Players can accept mail packets - missions. Those missions have a shorter duration than passenger mission to fullfil them. Reward is ofc reals/dbs and informations of contracts / buy sell prices of items and stock count. So actual informations that the tradertool was offering. How data could look like: Like the ship spotted notes Or additional infos that get added to the player map and get deleted every server reset ( port info window) But why not visite the ports yourself? A mission grants infos for whole region. Data is not real time. Its a picture of the moment as mission gets accepted. But doing a missions saves time (1 sail for whole region)

Hello Captains, Today I deleted my character. I no longer wish to participate in this game or contribute to the direction development is taking. This post is supposed to serve as a reflection of my game time and what I think could improve the game experience as whole. The game is extremely dependent on other players and their actions. From my point of view when comparing this game to other mmos, there are simply not enough alternatives for gaining resources to compete with the actions of people who play this game all day every day. There will always be people on late night for night flips, and there really is no way to compete with that type of playstyle compared to a person with a life outside of this game. Another example and my favorite, you can only acquire a ship you want with specific trims through crafting it. I find this a limiting factor for developing fun, enjoyable game mechanics later on. In a game where the limiting factor is ships and time, having one single way to generate new ships you desire is ridiculous. This game with a few exceptions is the same game it was a year ago with almost no change in game mechanics and has actually been reduced from the game I liked when I bought it. Some may not have had the opportunity to enjoy small battles, but when I bought this game they were all I played. I was not a rear admiral then, but the small battles were fun, and very rewarding. You could queue up, and after about 5 minutes or so, you were thrust into a battle with about 20 basic cutters, 10 - 15 snows, and 5 - 10 other small ships ranging from brig - trincs and they were all other players, not bots. As a noob player, not only did it teach me the fundamentals of combat on the high seas, it was amazingly fun and afforded me a casual gameplay experience. There were ships capsizing as they were rammed, and stray cannon fire demasting sails, and causing instant and savage explosions. As a player just beginning the game it kept my interest to play those small battles and pray for a lucky shot that blew an opponent up. The opportunity to enjoy Naval Action without committing great amounts of time to it were why i played. Then the rewards were nerfed, and the game took a new direction. Very early on, the game was changed, and with the change the first wave of people left. At one time, it was not uncommon to see 5k people online. It was easy to find Naval Action then, and the help channel was alive with questions and other help requests as new players constantly logged on. Then after the changes, everything seemed to die off including the fun bits I enjoyed and the stream of new players. Small battles were vacant because the new nerf had made that entire system unrewarding to participate in. The devs had shifted the game's focus from a queue based system of gameplay to a sandbox one. One which required a significant investment of time to compete in. At first it was ok, it was new and like most new things, you want to try it. But like new things, they just wear out. This game wore itself out because of the time required to play it. The game changed with the community and the community demanded change because it was getting old fighting the same people over and over again. Then the devs went into developing a new combat system which promised to be refreshing in its own new way. When new changes went live almost half a year later, it felt refreshing because of the server wipes and the reset to economy, but it still felt the same it was prior to the changes. Hardcore players still found ways to manipulate the system because they had the time to, and casual players still could not commit 12 hours a day to the game. There was still no accommodation for the casual player to play as they wanted when they to. To me there has been little forward in the way of development of fun and lackadaisical game mechanics. Its almost as if the devs and players want this game to be hard to enjoy. It certainly is not a game you can casually log in and play for an hour and expect to finish a battle in that first hour anymore, and in many cases it takes atleast an hour of sailing before a battle vs. other players is even possible. Then another hour passes during combat, and then another as you hunt for another encounter or sail against the wind back to port. To me the time commitment is too steep. How can you say this game is fun when it is like a job to acquire the resources you need to play the game the way you want? Is it really a fun game when you sail for hours with the game minimized at your workplace? To me no, and that’s part of the reason I deleted my character. Suggestions: Reduce the time commitment required to compete. Reduce map size to accommodate the small player base. Make the game easy to log onto and enjoy. Make resources much easier to acquire by adding alternatives to producing them, including an alternative way to earn ships. Seriously consider a queue up option that is an attractive option. I would like to thank the players who made this game enjoyable, because without them I would have quit long ago. Sincerely, Rear Admiral Crayon

I have a few suggestions for fixing the pirate nations. First off, a little bit about me, the most recent wipe will have been the 3Rd wipe I've been through. My first outing as a player was on the pve server getting my sea legs. Soon after I transferred over to global to start sinking players! I'm not by any stretch an expert at pvp and I rarely participate in rvr as I find it rather boring so take the following observations and suggestions for what they're worth. 1. The Pirates as a "national power" is simply absurd. How this managed to make its way in to a game rooted in so much realism is simply beyond me. This should not and can not be. As it stands, smaller nations act more as pirates (or privateers if you rather) than the Pirates do themselves. They should be based around open world pvp with the occasional sack of a town here and there. - Suggestions: - Pirates should be a faction based solely around pvp where only the most veteran players find success and Profit, thus pirates should receive higher rewards for capturing and or sinking ships. Furthermore pirates should also receive a significantly higher sell price for ships back to the port. To offset this, pirate pve missions should remain open and visible for the duration of the mission, as any ship being attacked would certainly be signaling frantically for help while being attacked. Player engagement timers are fine the way they are. Other national factions should receive a slight buff in income of pve missions, and a significant buff in income from sinking pirate players as they are a scourge on the open seas. (maybe also receive a slight buff to income for sinking war targets if the alliance system were to come back, which I think it should, pirates would not be able to participate in diplomacy) 2. Pirates should neither be able to capture nor lose ports. - Suggestions: pirates should not be holding regional capitals, that's absurd. Instead the Pirates should have a total of 4-6 ports spread across the map from which to base out of, free towns would be a good idea, they would also be the only faction able to teleport between free towns so they may move around and plunder different areas with impunity. Raising hostility would do 2 things. First stolen or contraband good would be produced only in ports that the Pirates have raised hostility in. The goods would be extremely cheap and have very high sell prices in other portions of the map which does 2 things, brings more traders to the are where the hostility is raised and offer more gentle players in the pirate nation a valuable trade good to generate cash. The amount of these goods available should reflect the amount of hostility in the region. Another interesting thing would be to raise pvp rewards for killing pirates where the hostility is above a certain percentage. The weight of said goods should reflect the value. Should the Pirates set a port battle, the port battle should be a "raid". If the Pirates succeed in the raid, they should hold the port for 3 days after which it reverts back to its original nationality prior to the raid. After the port reverts, the port can not gain hostility for a week and the hostility will drop x amount per day back to 0 before the 7 days has elapsed. During the occupation, pirates receive a 25% discount on all resources in the port both npc and player contract items. This could extend to ships on sale as well. Pirates also would have free repairs and crew replacement in the port during the occupation. 3. Pirates in lineships -Suggestions: pirates should be limited to the construction of a level 2 shipyard. With a discount on the amount resources for crafting 5th and 6th rates. I would say that pirates should have no access to lineships at all but I feel that would take out a lot of fun for the faction, perhaps pirates sailing a sol would suffer speed, reload, and maneuverability penalties. National powers should receive a discount on the crafting of 1St, 2ND, and 3Rd rates. These discounts would also vary a slight amount based on the amount of regions held by the nation. 4. Victory marks Suggestions: since pirates would have no way of obtaining victory marks, I think a variant of the conquest mark system should be implemented. Once a region reaches 100% hostility, pirates should get an injection of x amount of combat marks instantly, however only players that get a certain percent of the hostility will receive them. Also, if the port battle is won they should receive x amount of additional combat marks each day the port is in their possession which would again apply to only the players present at the pb. This would hopefully encourage the Pirates to open up multiple fronts against multiple nations. These are a few of my suggestions and ideas. Let me know what you think.

I enjoy this game even better after the patch, i love the one dura, the economy, roe, etc.. Here is my few suggestions i can imagine to increase the player experience at all level. 1-Scout report rewards: When spotting an ennemy player sailing in your national waters, you could have the option when clicking on him (next to send a pm) to "send a report". Such report would be like the ones we had at the beginning of OW: a letter (item) you can send in the chat saying something like "Baptiste Gallouédec have been spoted near Oranjstad in Renomee.." then the time since when the report have been made and when you read it ".. 3 minutes ago." Then the tagged ship would be displayed as such like for the "recently killed" message for some time to prevent spam from multiple players( timer to be adjusted) The spotter will not be able to send another report for some time too, so he can't flood the chat screen. But if the tagged player get engaged and loose a fight while marked, the scout gets some gold & xp (mark ?). => I think this could reward teamplay, encourage small ship & low level players to contribute in pvp & Rvr. This could also help everyone in finding potential pvp. => This is also part of historical missions of small ships to collect intel, scout and act as messenger. => This is already doable by typing in chat windows but gives no reward and don't help players to progress by doing so. This is more clear to read, less confusing with multiple players signaling the same ship with different infos, multiple scouts. ___________________________________________________________________ 2- AI small boats: Now that basic cutter is a free pve trainer ship and even trader lynx can have guns (and share same model as the combat counterpart). I had the idea that a few of the ai sailing in ow should be replaced by smaller sized boats, fishing boats, yacht, luggers, gunboats. No super fast boats or ship. Or even a Hms Bounty kind of ship. I know you told you delivered more ship than promiced, but ship diversity is a big plus in my opinion. I don't ask for a lot but like one or 2 (gunboat already exist, maybe rework it to make a fishingboat variant, same for yacht, a simple different reskin it, no gun or smaller guns.) Basic cutter or lynx are quite decent ship and not that small ships, but right now they are the underdog. New players start in the ow and when next to frigates, lineships etc.. they have the feeling their cutter is like a rowboat. Having smaller boats in ow would create a better scale sense, better that than insane 6x santi+3x belo+3xbuc useless fleets.. They could drop few fishmeat, tobacco, sugar, watever trading ressource (never more than basic cutter hold) when catched in open world. They could also drop bottles or scouting reports (random enemy player ship location, rare ressource for sell in port + date of the report) Make them limited to 1vs1 ow fight only (no pull circle) & maybe sub-coast guard missions (as tutorial). Not more than 1 or 2 gun, no marines, no boarding mods most of the time unarmed. This would be like a kind of tutorial of target practice, (even fighting an ai cutter in basic cutter can be very difficult for newcomers). => Players don't start with the feeling they are useless tiny rowboat and the smallest ship on the ocean. => Kind of coastgards target practice. Push low ranks players in OW (linked with the previous scout reports suggestions) without the risk of being jumped-in by some gankers or => Better immersion in open world (OW should have either war fleets, or lone ships, lone ai ships are too few right now and who would tag a lone ai pickle right now ? They are useless for everyone, and too risky for newcomers in basic cutter, better smaller and slower _____________________________________________________________________ 2bis- Lynx/trader Lynx/Privateer: On a sidenote i advocate for switching the sail profile between Privateer & Lynx, and make the Lynx the same hull size like the priv as it should, this make no sense the privateer run worse upwind while he got more square sails. Also you could remove trader lynx and give the lynx the same hull space. This way, privateer and lynx would be more balanced: privateer get overall better combat capacity and speed, Lynx become a privateer/contraband ship with excellent downwind capacity but worse combat capacity. _____________________________________________________________________ 3- Undergunned ships If doable, i would be pleased to have the possibility to undergun my ships. I think now you can buy guns per units and loot some, this would be a cool feature. Either to save some weight and speed, or to be able to sail a ship even if short money or undercrewed. This could also add variety between ships configs you meet in ow.. more strategy choices. Also , basic cutter players will be able to try other guns with looted 6pd per exemple even if they can't fully fill their ship with. Even a 7th rank ship with just one long per side can be a viable annoying tag/chainshot ship. _____________________________________________________________________ 4- Blocade In mission tab, you can pay a good amount of gold/mark to select a port to blocade. When selected, a large ring appear around the port, and the harbour is marked as such on the ow map for everyone as long as blocade is on (2h, 4h, 24h to be defined). This can re-use the flag system to set the mission on if easier to code. Every pvp battle inside the ring can’t be joined after the start to prevent port hide & jump. Each ship sunk or captured inside the circle count toward the attacking or the defending nation. When mission timer end, the winning nation's participants get rewards, top 10 from both nation gets tresure chests (leaderboard like the previous pvp event can be used). (if the game engine can't support multiple pvp events at the same time, make them with a one week cooldown before same nation can rebuy a blocade mission. => This can be used by a nation who know a pb is scheduled at this port, to give reward to screeners from both side => This can also be used to increase pvp & rewards while you flip a region _____________________________________________________________________ 5- OW pvp reward & inducement : Minor victory & Surrender rework (Maybe just for nationals captains as pirates can already have all the easy pvp they want) -If the last combat ship of a side of a battle escape, the other side should receive some kind of rewards and be considered as a minor victory past a minimum amount of dmg deal (for making the other side rout/flee, and as a compensation for the time and risk taken.) => participation in pvp rewarded -When surrendering, a captain should not be considered as out of combat. Ship raise sails and stop like now, but a window open similar as trade or hold inspection one with 2 options: A-Complete surrender (like now, crew saved, but leave ship & hold behind you) you can leave the battle immediately. Ship is displayed as abandoned. B-Ransom offer : you can offer an amount of gold, if an enemy captain inspect your ship, he can accept, he still can choose to take what is in your hold or not, but can’t use the sink or capture option, if he don't, you become complete surrender, then everything goes like now ) If he accepted your ship stay surrendered until all side leave the instance, from now enemy can't use X on you anymore, but can do anything else like now. When on ransom offer, until someone use X on you, you can switch to complete surrender at any moment. If no one check X when instance close you go back to OW like normal with nothing lost. If no one check x but enemy still sink you, you appear at nearest port like in case of complete surrender with the surviving crew you had when leaving instance. Maybe if a teammate check X on you before an enemy while on ransom offer, you can take part in battle again, and he can give you some of his repairs & crew , or if too gamebreaking, he can just add your ship in fleet or take control of it. => With the one dura, ganking is strong and very hard to endure when independant trader. This can be a chance to keep your ship, instead of privateers not able to loot because of ship hold limitation, and ending in sinking your ship & most of your cargo for very few gain. _____________________________________________________________________ 6- OW winds Meteo should affect ow speed to a certain level, with 2 or 3 wind force status (strong breeze, high wind & strong gale for exemple) then get rid of copper plating & speed bow figure. Winds don’t change ow speed but instead adding malus/boost for some king of ships - The strongest wind would decrease overall max speed from a small % for the smaller ships (5-6) and upwind sailing for square rigged ships + downwind bonus for rated ships (4-3-2-1) - High wind, no bonus nor malus for any ship - Strong breeze, upwind speed boost for small ships + downwind malus for square rigged ships. => No ship sure to outrun everything at a set angle everytime.

I've given this more than a little thought. My thoughts are predicated on two assumptions; that crew kills are determined by shot striking hit boxes designated for crew, and that crew hit boxes are flagged on or off depending on how men are distributed to tasks. If these assumptions are wrong this should still be adaptable. First, we need to add a few crew hit boxes into the rigging at fighting tops and various other bits of rigging, which are enabled when men are either sailing or set to boarding, to mark the location of either crew aloft in the rigging or marines in said fighting tops. Treacherous French sharpshooters will enjoy these cowardly postings, I am sure. Second, points around the ship need to be designated as musketry origins. Spots on the forecastle, quarterdeck, weather deck, possibly gun ports below, and our now-crewed fighting tops aloft. These musketry origins will have an orientation and a maximum angle from center. A musket on the gunwale may be oriented 90 degrees off the beam with a 90 degree maximum angle, creating a half-sphere of possible shots to starboard (90 degrees left plus 90 degrees right equal 180), but excluding firing to anything left of it. Meanwhile a musket in the fighting top may have a 0 orientation and a 180 degree maximum angle, allowing our sharpshooter to fire anywhere he pleases. Not all possible positions for a musket-firing crewman need be simulated, just a dozen or so for small ships, and perhaps as many as fifty or a hundred for a 1st rate. Next, we need to enable or disable the musket points based on if Boarding Prep is flagged as enabled or disabled. If a captain enables Boarding Prep, his crew rushes to their musket points and starts firing. Of course, marines are always in Boarding Prep, but unless boarding prep is enabled, they hold their fire. There is thus a new level of play in that you can tell your enemy has gone into boarding prep, and your enemy may attempt to surprise you by staying out of musket range until he's fully prepared to board. Speaking of which, we will only need to fire when in range. Until an enemy ship has closed to within X meters, the musket simulation idles. Fifty or a hundred meters from an enemy ship, the simulation moves to the next step. Within range and with crew active in boarding prep, the crew opens fire. We need to have points operating randomly to reduce the computational overhead of plotting every musket's reload and possible shots simultaneously. We also need to have musket points firing only when they have a possible target. To accomplish this, musket points are numbered for their ship, selected as a random number, and perform a distance check from their point to a crew hitbox on an enemy ship. Only distance on the X-Y plane is calculated for simplicity and to prevent the fighting tops from being too high aloft to fire. If a musket point is in range of enemy crew hitboxes, it proceeds to the next step. Otherwise the program returns to the random number generator to select another musket point. This process continues until a musket point responds as being within range of enemy crew hitboxes. In range of enemy crew hitboxes, the musket point performs a raycast to determine if the closest hitbox is inside of its field of fire (the orientation and maximum angle from earlier). This raycast ignores the various objects, including friendly ships or obstructions. It simply checks if the musket can point at the target. For fighting tops, this will be almost always true. For more restricted musket points along the sides of the ship, they may determine they are close enough to a ship, but that ship is on the wrong side of their field of fire. If the raycast determines the ​closest ​hitbox is out of its field, it then checks the farthest hitbox (within the range check of X meters). This second raycast will be useful if one enemy ship is closer than an enemy ship on the opposite side, allowing muskets on that opposite side to fire at the more distant enemy, rather than all musketry checks passing or failing on the closest enemy, or firing at the bow of a ship when the closer stern isn't in the field of fire, as might happen when your T is crossed. Should both raycast checks fail, the shot from that musket point is canceled, and moved back to the RNG to pick a new musket point. When a raycast is successful, the shot is fired. This is an individual musket ball able to kill one crewman, originating from musket point, and directed along the raycast to the center of the target crew hitbox. The individual musket ball is simply a raycast with added deviation to account for inaccuracy. Given a shot with say five degrees of inaccuracy, we have a chance of hitting gunwales, masts, crew hitboxes we didn't intend to fire on, or even friendly crew hitboxes. Plotting the actual shot will also give the proper advantage to a taller ship or a shot from the fighting tops, as shot falling down on the enemy deck has a much higher chance of hitting a crew hitbox than attempting to shoot through gun ports. All of these calculations occur server-side. Client side, clients are merely informed that they have lost a crewman and which musket point on the enemy ship should render a puff of smoke and a retort. The result is a robust simulation of musketry occurring where it belongs, the battle server, while server-to-client traffic is only marginally raised. There is no need to inform clients of any details of the shot, unless effects beyond gunsmoke are requested. Hearing musket balls patter against my hull may be nice, and watching little black dots fly is entertaining with grapeshot, but given the volume of fire I expect it would be expensive. Speaking of volume of fire; the rate of fire will be determined as a function of how many muskets your ship has, if you have enough boarding mode crew to fire all of those muskets, and what percentage of your crew is marines. Lets presume you have 100 crew, no marines, and 20 muskets. You open fire with boarding prep active. As crew move into boarding prep, the number of muskets in use increases until 20 crew are in boarding prep, when all muskets are now being used. Each musket fired by a crewman has a base firing rate of once every thirty seconds. Twenty muskets, firing once every thirty seconds, comes to 40 shots a minute, or one shot every 1. 5 seconds. The musket simulation attempts to fire a musket point every 1.5 seconds in this situation, graphically there is a puff of smoke every 1.5 seconds, and depending on the luck of the shot raycast, the enemy crew starts whittling down. Now lets say you have gold marines, and 50% of your crew is marines (IIRC). A marine can reload and fire a musket much faster than an untrained crewman, and gold marines almost certainly reload faster than grey marines. Accordingly the fire rate is increased by the marine crew percentage, 50% for gold, less for less expensive marines, but peaking at one shot every fifteen seconds per musket. This creates a blistering 80 shots a minute from the 20 muskets. But wait! The number of muskets has increased as well! We have to add the additional however many muskets to the rate of fire calculation. The fire bonus from your marine percentage will continue down to the last man as well; the simulation need not track how many marines are manning muskets to how many crew are manning muskets. It is presumed either the marines will be prioritized with the musket distribution, or the crew will have received some drill themselves if the captain had planned to perform boarding enough to invest in marines. However heavy casualties will still reduce the rate of fire as the total number of active muskets falls, or if muskets are lost under the bloodied bodies. So what is the result of all this? Going gunwale to gunwale and exchanging musket fire will now be a useful way to gauge the enemy's ability to repel your boarding, and make point-blank fighting much bloodier. No longer can you exchange broadsides into each other's hulls and coolly calculate who will win by who's losing armor faster. You will now be exposed to his fighting tops and muskets on the gun deck, and will suffer casualties among your weather deck gun crews and sailors. It is now very, very clear when someone has a gold marine boarding setup, if they leave their crew in active boarding prep mode. It may be desirable to not tip your hand by keeping boarding prep disabled while approaching and keep your marines from firing. A ship that hasn't fired its muskets either has no-one on hand to fire muskets because the captain intends to focus on gunnery, or has a marine build he intends to conceal. Once you begin firing muskets, you tip your hand as to your marine and musket levels and your enemy can react. There's a possibility for trickery in this mechanic. It is also possible for a ship disabling a gun side to use all their needless extra crew in Boarding Prep with Extra Muskets and Pistols, giving the appearance of having marines but still maintaining full manpower for gunnery and sailing otherwise. It is also possible to defend your Gros Ventre or other trade ship with your crew in boarding prep and firing muskets, and one of these ships with full musketry builds will be dangerous to pull alongside in a lower-hulled vessel. Barricades can also have a new bonus; a flat 5, 10, 15, 20 or 25 percent chance to cancel a raycast musket ball hitting a crewman, as your crew enjoys extra small-arms cover. With the right build, muskets could be an effective defense for an otherwise unarmed trade ship! The actual boarding minigame will lose some of its importance. A close quarters fight may be determined entirely by hauling alongside and unloading muskets into the enemy. The captain who finds himself running alongside a boarding-modded enemy will no longer simply keep his speed up and negate his adversary. He will also find that if he cannot break away, then he needs to force a boarding and hope for better swordsmanship than musketry. Or pray to the gods of grapeshot. All of this was posted elsewhere in the wrong forum under a related discussion, so do pardon the double post. I don't want to take over someone else's thread.

Seen a few of these posts but thought I might as well have a go The aim of these ideas is to make the pirates a unique 'hardcore' pvp faction with interesting mechanics but also limited economic and military strength compared to the nations. These should also keep a nice balance of power between the industrial and pvp players in the nations. Pirates Economy One economy building per player 25% tax for all trades between pirates and other nations, including player to AI and player to player (bribes, mistrust etc) Production/ships Largest ship produced by pirates will be 5th rates Cannot purchase ships from other nations, any ships larger than a 5th rate will have to be captured (1 dura) Conquest Pirates will be unable to participate in the current conquest mechanics Nations will be unable to launch a port battle/flag against pirate ports New 'control' system describing the difficulties nations had at the time keeping the peace in their colonies Each national port/region will have a base 'control' score (CS) which will naturally decay over time. Local merchants (AI) will create hauling missions for national players to take goods to any ports that need it (similar to the current missions) to increase the CS for that region. If the CS for the region goes too low the nation then has 24 hours to increase the CS above the base score or the region will flip to the pirates. To recover a pirate port (any) nation can send goods near the port to reduce the pirate CS. If the CS goes low enough and stays below the base CS for 24 hours the port will flip to the nation that delivered the most goods. Pirate CS is increased by pirates transporting their own goods to the ports or by capturing/sinking enemy (player) trade ships in the region. These mechanics should create a situation where pirates become strongest on the borders or quiet areas of the national empires. Finding opportunities where nations are fighting each other and playing them off against each other. Small groups of pirates will be able to harass areas and capture a region or two by raiding ports and shipping trying to supply those ports – but find it extremely hard to hold onto those regions when an organised fleet of traders and warships try to take them back. (If technically possible) Pardons could be purchased by a pirate player at any free port which will allow them to join one of the nations for a fixed time (7/14/28 days). The cost of these pardons would depend on the rank and fame of the captain (see Zooloo's fame system for ideas) meaning a famous Curse would find it stupidly expensive. At the end of the time frame the captain would revert back to a pirate (with xp and fame penalties) and lose any of the advantages of being a national captain – 5 dura ships etc. Any comments welcome

I'll just throw these ideas in here for the DEVs and other players to shine their light on: 0% to -10% speed for 'empty' to 'full' hold space (the more space used, the slower your ship is). Open ALL chats of Allied nations by default. (The Dutch just get the British to open automatically) BUG? Put '1' where you have '1' of something instead of 'nothing'. An attack on a port of any nation will always result in a war. Make alliances depend on a points-system with some actions decreasing hostility and other actions increasing hostility. Get rid of the voting system - let players work for an alliance. Space-bar for one-shot-salute in Open World (10 minute timer) Sharing visual location of Missions & Shipwrecks with the group you are in. Every time you trade in a port you have the chance of being offered a profitable trading mnission. Finding 'sealed bottles' can lead to more things than just the map to a shipwreck. Introduce quests that have multiple phases like having to find certain materials and bring them together in a certain way. Ask players for ideas. Every ship has its own officer (that you can name yourself) - no perk-reset possible. More battles per ship means more XP and perks for an officer. Lose ship = lose officer. Every building has its own 'overseer' which can also get perks when buildings are producing longer. Re-introduce wharfs for shipbuilding with a shipwright that earns experience with each ship built and gets perks. Nice stats at the end of each battle and information on performance of both sides. French Wine? Iberian Meat? Iberian Dried Pork? Trader Tool is broken as some items are just missing. Let the amount of goods available in a town influence its 'consumes' level so the price will gradually return to 'neutral'. Always let the price of goods fluctuate based on a percentage deviation from nominal economic value and define an Open-World-Wide price-range for each type of goods. (Current system is static, needs to be dynamic) Commments please!

Hi there, Two separate but related points: It's a bit unrealistic that fleet ships cannot carry cargo. Sizable convoys of merchant ships were a frequent occurrence in the Age of Sail, and defending or attacking them should consequently be a possibility. This is currently impossible, as since a player can only carry cargo on their flagship, the flagship must be the merchantman (not a frigate escort), and the fleet cannot carry cargo, so there is no opportunity for enterprising players to pick off one or two merchantmen and escape before a general engagement. Additionally, trader players are constrained in their ability to carry cargo. As such, the constraint on fleet ships carrying goods hampers effective commerce and limits the number of targets for cruising raiders to attack. It's also a bit unrealistic that prizes cannot retain their cargo and be sent into a friendly port. At present, a raider wishing to keep a merchant prize or the cargo it contains must either load the loot into the modestly-sized hold of the raider and send the prize empty into port, or stop the raiding cruise as a whole, send the raider into port, and sail the prize to safe harbor oneself. This hampers players from undertaking long-range commerce raiding cruises that were so frequent in the 18th century, and as such players tend to stick near the coast and their outposts rather than getting out into the world and exploring. PvE in particular is extremely well-suited to frigate-style players, who, with the more limited player interaction that PvE entails, should be able to sail far and wide taking or sinking everything in their path until they run out of prize crews. Instead, the current parameters keeps players relatively local and able to actually capture just one merchant prize at a time. Though I understand the concern that players will use the post-battle teleport feature to move their ships and cargoes around, there are several possible solutions here. One is to create a new "prize" category of ships actually captured in combat on the post-battle capture screen. Pre-existing fleet ships can only be sent to an outpost empty, while prizes can retain their cargoes and be sent in different directions. This can either be accomplished with teleport or by creating NPC characters in open world of the prizes sailing home, which will require an allocation of crew. Fleet ships should also be allowed to carry cargo, to give players the option of escorting their prizes to port or running their own merchant convoy (after battle, fleet ships should retain the ability to be sent to an outpost, but only empty, so as to prevent players from using combat as a means to teleport ships and cargoes without incurring the fees of towing). These features, I believe, would make for a more satisfying, realistic, and exciting game, particularly for raiders and traders. Cheers--

Gentlemen, First, well done. This is going to be a brilliant game, years of replays lay ahead. I see where you're going and I like it immensely. You asked for feedback, this is it. Playing this for exactly one weekend, knowing a bit about the war and this genre, this is what stands out to me: UI needs to be simplified. Maybe you could color code commands. Right now it's difficult to discern what a unit has been ordered to do.. Example: 'Charge' needs to expire when a unit reaches a state of exhaustion. It doesn't, and It is difficult at this point for a new user to tell if the charge command is engaged or not. Players should be allowed to specify whether a unit marches in line or in column.Additionally, there has to be an easier way to make a division of troops fresh to the battlefield march down a road in a more logical fashion. Players should be able to specify artillery rounds. It is hard to properly site batteries when you cannot fathom to the range of specific munitions. The campaign game's army creation tools, the way you've layered it, is kind of brilliant. It makes perfect sense when you understand it, but it is not easy to figure it out at first glance. Again, Great Job! Please keep it up! For future reference, what is the general policy suggestion for providing feedback?

I was thinking about this game and something to increase the level of action in it. What I have noticed: The Game is Fun! The game is an insane amount of fun. In battles, especially against other players, the excitement, or horror is there. The tension flows with tides of battle, and peaks in both frustration and glorious success. Even before the battle starts, as you spot your enemy, or prey, you feel the action of Naval Action. Even after a hard won battle, another battle may be waiting outside of the battle which just adds to the excitement of the game. The Ship Building Every game, especially ones on grand scales, always feels like its missing something. BUT that is natural. No game will satisfy the infinite amount of wants an individual will have for any game they purchase. The ships in Naval Action are that missing feel for me. The amount of time it takes to craft, for the risk I put on it, just does not justify the means to build a ship I would want to sail. Now I know this is hard to understand so I'll list my suggestions: Ships feel very macro when I build them, and for that reason I do not really use my hours. I rather just buy them. I would gather a bunch of resources, throw it in a port, and spam my hours on a (lets be honest) clunky interface. My time is better spent buying a ship, or placing an order for it. If I wanted to build my own ship, I would want: To personally oversee and direct the construction of it. Where the port holes are. Where the crew quarters are. Where to double reinforce. Manual placement of my modules All of this in an animated scene, dynamic to my above actions. I want to see my hull being laid down over days for example.... slow like. I would also like to hire contracts, but more on this later. *More of an aside, but directly related. The Resource Gathering The AI traders are far too neglected as a resource unit. AI traders to me, are the most underdeveloped part of the game. Large AI fleets have a purpose, albeit niche, but what purpose do AI traders serve to the benefit of the nation in general? There needs to be some function to coordinate that resource as a nation, and I think voting might be the answer. Admiralty of The Navy As Admiralty of The Navy you are eligible to vote for 3 regions in which trader vessels will direct their focuses. As Admiralty of the Navy you and the other admirals will direct the efforts of the navy's resources and harness the full strength of your nation. Must be Rear Admiral. Must be level 25 crafting. Must have all ports unlocked. Must have minimum 1 Ship Yard in any port. A separate panel to directly hire any amount of trader vessels of the available AI fleet to deliver directly to you at the port of purchase. Requires empty delivery slot. Requires available contract slot. Max weight 1000. Max Return Interval 2 days. Minimum fee per day 85,000, and resource fees and insurance if desired. Direct Voting The above without regard to craft level or experience level. Contraction of AI Trader Vessels Only A separate panel to directly hire any amount of trader vessels of the available AI fleet to deliver directly to you at the port of purchase. Requires empty delivery slot. Requires available contract slot. Max weight 1000. Max Return Interval 2 days. Minimum fee per day 85,000, and resource fees and insurance if desired. Trader vessels become available immeidately after they are released from contract. Pay up front, or later but risk compounding penalties. Votes direct the availability and are similar to politics voting. A percentage of the population of AI traders will be supplied to the corresponding ratio of votes any region may have received, to total votes. Will update later tomorrow. Also, when switching from bullet point to numerals there was no support to change the actual number from 1 to a 2, etc.

At this point Marines are confined solely to boarding actions and with the latest patch they have been restrained a little with their abilities to insta-prep. One of the historical uses of Marines was as sharpshooters on the decks and masts of their ships and they would do this whenever the ships entered close combat (see: Nelson being killed by a sharpshooter etc). PROPOSAL Equipping the Marines upgrades enables a passive "crew killing" ability when under 100m range.The mechanics of which would be a "X% chance of a crew kill" dice roll wherein the quality of Marines increases the frequency of the roll (i.e. 1 roll per minute for Common, 2 for Fine, 3 for Mastercraft, 4 for Exceptional) to reflect training improving reload rate. Targeted enemy crew can be randomized between weather deck gun crews (if targeted ship has them) or sail-handling crew numbers. While this is a bonus to combat pre-boarding, the downside will be the visual cue of constant musket shots (puffs of much smaller smoke) when under 150m. This has the potential of obscuring vision of the Marine carrying vessel when trying to make cannon shots, while also signifying to the defender the presence of Marines. Marines in the background sniping at sail handlers in the Battle of Copenhagen 1801 Nelson, mortally wounded falls to the deck of the Victory while in the background Marines line the gunwales trading volleys while sharpshooters pick out specific crew.