The Soldier

Judging from the LeMat still using the old, vanilla icon, I'd say he's more than a couple minor revisions back.

As nice as that guide is, a lot of that information really should be presented in-game. It doesn't have to be up-front (too much information is a thing), but somewhere accessible.

This post is about the user interface during Harbor (equivalent to the Camp screen in Ultimate General: Civil War). Some things are good, others could use improvement. The following list is in no particular order of importance, nor is this a complete list, just the things I noticed while playing for the first time. I apologize if some of these explanations are difficult to understand. Some UI issues are enormously complex and require a thorough explanation to pass along what the problem is and how to cause it, but the user experience is important, and I hope to see these improved before release. Selecting Ship Upgrades When you select a ship upgrade, that upgrades gets taken off the list, causing the whole list moves when you select an upgrade, then gets moved again if you select something else. This makes finding the item you want more difficult. Suggestion: keep the upgrade in the list until you close out of the list. Furthermore, all ship upgrades are grouped together in the same list. You can hide any number by deselecting their boxes, but this is a lengthy process with 6 categories available. Suggestion: make it a one-selection list like the Admiralty screen. Select one group of upgrades at a time, no need to view two dozen upgrades all at once in a small viewing box. Selecting Officers (both Crew and Troops) Screenshot Screenshot terms: 1 is the Commanding Officer (officer currently leading the selected unit), 2 is the Officer Reserves, 3 is the Officer Recruits (1 + 2 + 3 makes up the Officer selection screen) , 4 is the unit panel (crew or troops), 5 is the stats page of the select units (crew or troops). When you select an Officer and go to the Officer selection screen, the current Commanding Officer resides at the top of the list in a special box. Clicking on an Officer changes the portrait of the officer on the right in the stats page, but does not change the Commanding Officer at the top of the list. When you select a Reserve Officer, that officer is removed from the list, causing the whole list to shift. When you select a Recruit Officer, that officer not removed. This is inconsistent and hampers with comparing officers. Suggestion: keep all Officers visible in the Officer selection screen until you close out of it. Dismissing an Officer (or right-clicking their portrait on the stats screen) sends them to the Reserve, but does not remove their portrait or stats from the Commanding Officer section. This also makes selecting a Reserve Officers not disappear as explained above, but selecting the just-Dismissed Officer will remove them from the list. If I right-click an Officer to dismiss them without the Officer select screen open, I cannot open the screen afterwards. The Dismiss button is still active on the Commanding Officer after you've dismissed them by right-clicking their portrait with the Officer select screen active. When selecting Officers for Troops, there is no way to go back to the Marine Corps screen without selecting a unit. Troops The Reserves function is excellent! Finally, a place I can put troops I don't need at the moment or if I need to reorganize. Extremely frustrating in UGCW, but that's a non-issue for AoS. I can reduce crew and troop sizes! Also excellent. Wording confusion: Dismissing an Officer puts them into Reserve. Dismissing a Troop deletes that unit. Right-clicking a Troop in the unit panel removes them from the ship, but you cannot right or left click a unit from anywhere else to add a unit to a troop ship. The only method is to select a slot, manually select a unit from Reserves, then click the Assign button - lots of clicks and lots of mouse movement. Suggestion: make Troops draggable in the Marine Corps selection screen. Drag troops from Reserve into any troop ship. Drag troops between ships to swap them. Unit Stats Page Screenshot Screenshot terms: 1 the "teal colored bar", 2 is the "blue colored bar", 3 is the "yellow colored bar", 4 is the Efficiency bar. None of these are explained anywhere in the game. What does the teal colored bar represent? The blue colored bar? And that yellow bar beneath it? I can make some assumptions based on my UGCW experience, but they don't all line up. Efficiency is also poorly explained. There's efficiency for troops, then efficiency for the weapon. How exactly do these work? How do these differ? How does the unit's Officer affect a unit's stats? However, the accuracy chart is an excellent addition. Research Screen Just one click on a tech means you instantly research it. This came as a bit of an alarm as almost nothing else in the UI requires just one click - most things require selecting something, then hitting a confirm button.

@LAVA I believe there's a bit of a misunderstanding going on here. What panda is trying to say is that the rewards are semi-randomized, in both vanilla and the mod (nothing got changed, however). What causes the randomization, panda doesn't know.

I can't see a reason behind it. It hasn't gotten fixed yet, so I can only assume it's either intended or too late to do so.

I should post this here for posterity's sake. Some graphs I made a few months ago on how battery size affects kills. This first one is direct data from my test, using 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, and 24 gun batteries. This one is from data extrapolated from the original test, going from 4 guns to 24 guns every 1 gun. As you can see, 24-gun batteries are quite bad. Worse, in fact, than a battery one-sixth the size.

And so the greatest leaders of the navy and the army are brought together in this glorious game! I daresay these sea slugs are gonna need a few pointers once they figure out ships can't do the job of a proper army.

And so the folks of Naval Action and Ultimate General are brought together. I look forward to it!

Infantry brigades can use the weapon, it's listed there.

The edit button exists, my friend. As for Cavalry Scouts, I'm not entirely sure how that would be very useful. AFAIK any detached unit that gets killed removes the parent unit's ability to detach more for the rest of that battle. Having a one-shot unit like that doesn't exactly feel too useful, especially if artillery decides to take a shot at it and nuke the unit before it gets anything done.

She'll have a hard time beating my discovery of an exploit to control enemy units by selecting one of your own units and shift-clicking an enemy one.

Curious ideas, though not all of it is possible. Stuff like Gallop / Run ability for artillery. Can't just add in new abilities, only modify them. Coehorn Mortars for Skirmishers is a bit interesting. You wouldn't be able to make it look like artillery though, they'd still have the same sprites. Also not sure if you can make it a crew-served weapon like artillery (which would mean you would need 500 Coehorn mortars for a full unit). Would make an interesting weapon for sure.

It's not all about stats. The 20pdr Parrott Rifle, in my own experience, deals around 25 kills with even an unskilled crew at max range per volley. This is enough to completely remove a gun from an enemy artillery battery in one shot, which alone is worth it's weight in gold. But as you get closer, the gun just keeps on dealing more and more damage, and unusually for a rifled gun, it can absolutely murder enemy units in canister range. Even the 3-Inch Ordnance Rifle can't keep up with the amount of kills at varying targets unless the targets are all at the same sweet spot range, let along actually do anything to an enemy unit in canister range (whatever your stats may say). And artillery doesn't always have the leisure of shooting at targets less than 700m away, look at Malvern Hill for example. Range is always a factor you have to take in, otherwise you may find yourself at the wrong end of a cannon, especially if you're Confederate. As to why numbers don't translate well into the game, I couldn't tell you. But I can tell you that experience trumps numbers any day.

Uhh, no? Are you basing your assumptions on the visuals of the charts only or something? You do realize the 3-Inch Ordnance Rifle has a maximum damage degradation of 0.36 or so while the 20pdr Parrott Rifle sits at 0.5? If you directly compare the graphs number-for-number the 20pdr Parrott wins out at every yard, not to mention the 20pdr Parrott also has nearly quadruple the base damage. And as far as I know, shell type does affect damage. Otherwise perks wouldn't exist that modify them.

The 12pdr Howitzer is indeed pretty bad. Worse than the 6pdr Field gun if you ask me. But the 20pdr Parrott Rifle terrible? You need to use those again and fix your perception of them. That, or you're not playing an up-to-date version of the game for one reason or another. That said, the 24pdr Howitzer and 20pdr Parrott Rifles are the best guns in the game. It all comes down to a matter of cost and availability, the latter being the real hindrance to just skipping everything in between.