FFire31

Thanks that's informative. Yes I was thinking about that precise moment where your BB is swarmed by torpedoes boats but your casemates gun does not try to shoot them even at very short range.

So I came back to the game after a very long pause, hoping for the campaign. It's still not there but I decided to play a custom battle with a full fleet designed by myself. And I'm very disappointed... The AI is still a mess. Pathfinding is very ankward. Escorting ships will guard all around capitals without trying to go close to the ennemy. You need to instruct them yourself in which direction they should go to attack the ennemy. You still can't set formation before the battle. Changing formations, adding a ship to a battle line is something far beyond your captains capabilities without much confusion. So I ended in managing each ships independantly myself. But if you do so, you'll sooner or later ate some very precise torpedoes. Your ships will never try to avoid them automatically, except maybe if you give them in full AI control. Your own destroyers are too dumb to try to shoot simultaneously their own torpedoes. You can't use smoke with a single ship. And many more issues. Your ships can only targets two ennemies (one with the main guns, another with secondary). If there's ennemies on both sides, some of your casemates will never shoot. And don't tell me there's only two fire directors on a BB. Btw casemates or secondary guns are such a joke... But maybe that's historically correct. The worst is the damage model. Sometimes your BB will struggle to sunk a lone cruiser, because it will keep shooting at already destroyed or flooded compartments. Sometimes ships suddenly blow off from a turret explosion (I'm ok with that). Sometimes you can empty your magazines on the ennemy fleet without great effects. Ships never capsize, because there's no difference from taking shots from port or starboard. Armor keep full efficiency even after deflecting hundred of shots. Ai ships seems to be very efficient at pumping flooded compartments. Ennemy ships are ankwards designs (less than before, but still) but seems always much more accurate or lucky than yours. Atm battles are just non enjoyable. You struggle more with your own ships, trying to direct them, than against the ennemy. And when you finally manage to have them do what you want them to do, sometimes, but not always, it seems that you face a cheating AI. Maybe I'm a bad player, but I never ever complained against difficulty. Here I just can't understand why designs with the best guns/tech/directors available needs 30 mins of pounding to simply sunk a small destroyer at torpedo range. I had great expectations from that game, because I was always interested in naval combat and liked Nick Thomadis previous work. But at the moment I'm very worried with the state of the game. Seems that you find more important to add new hulls and modules rather than improving the game experience. I will still kept an eye on the game, but...

The most important imho is how you manage your 2 CLs before you can close in. In order to make them drag as much fire as possible, move them flank, spread out their formation. Use smoke when the ennemy begins to get accuracy bonus, be ready to manually avoid torpedoes and try to stay as far as their big ships as you can while you start damaging the small ones. I designed a 36knots BC with 4 triple 15' guns, she ripped the AI apart while my CLs were slaloming betweens salvos

Adding Custom MP battles would not be such a charge while increasing the potential customers pool having more players give more ressources to keep developing great games. That requires market analysis with data we don't have.

OMG... the guy did pull such a brilliant manoeuver that no one ever tried before under combat stress. Just even try to imagine how scary it is to taxi a light plane ar sea few yards away from a steel monster steaming as fast as it can

Nothing toxic there, I just read a well documented answer and learn new things. The actual game experience makes me feel that long range is op, but I prize realism, and the game balance will change as soon as night, weather, or anything else that limit visibility will be in game.

- Atm I get frustrated a bit with smaller ships, because my secondaries always target my main target if it's in range, even if they can barely scratch it. There's plenty different way to solve that. - The ability to use different kind of shells by caliber (as exemple I want my big guns to target a capital with AP, while my secondaries shoot HE on lighter ships) - Add to the bulkheads models a 3rd dimension so my ships would capsize if there's too much flooding on the same side (that was pointed by RamJB before) - Custom battles : let me custom more ; weather, daytime -Add a minimap -An order transmission system. During the Jutland battle, maybe the most important dreadnought centered battle of history, many events were decided because of the lack of efficient communications between ships. Radios should be much more than a strategic asset, before radio era, order should be sent with signal flags delaying their execution and forcing to operate ships as squadrons rather than individually - Night battles with lights systems on ships - AA on ships, maybe with no effects on tactical combat right now, but mandatory during late campaign. - The warspite managed to score the longest range gunnery hits from a moving ship to a moving target in history, hitting Giulio Cesare at a range of approximately 24 km. in game atm it's imho a bit too easy to score very long range hits when shooting with latest sights and radar. - AI badly design its ships and rely about numbers right now ; I would really like if the game could collect some datas and keep track of the most succesful designs created by humans players, in order to be used by the AI. I know you Darthis were always sensitive about the importance of AI in strategy games, and I personnally keep an eye on your games because of that

Rather than ground combat that seems very complicated to implement, I would be very happy if one day we could have shore bombing, coastal defense, harbor raiding, stuff like that. It should be more than enough to portrait naval missions that affect ground combat, and keep the game naval focused.

Dear devs Congratulation for your game which is already great, and have the potential to become awesome. Of course, there’s plenty of room to improve it. As a new player, I just did half of the academy (great way to learn the game btw) After starting to conduct missions with more than one ship, I quickly realize how bad is the AI about controlling formations. Each time one flagship is damaged enough and fall back, everything become a mess. Going from a line to abreast formation is a mess Ships don’t try to evade individually torpedoes and very often manoeuver in a way they lose half of their firepower, in order to catch up the flagship who never wait them. Finally if one ship is targetted, it will not try to do some evasive manoeuver to lure ennemy’s firecontrol I suggest you to add some options that will help to control formations (some are similar to Battle fleet gothic Armada for those who knows that game) One option to set a prefered combat distance (3k, 7k, 12k, with numbers accorded to the ship weaponry) Another one to set an orientation (try to present stern, broadside, etc) And a last one to set a stance (something like evasive, priorizing avoiding fire, or aggressive, with that one the ship will try to close in or fall back as quick as possible). Another very annoying thing is that you can’t order a ship to focus one target with main weapon and another one with secondaries. Others problem can wait after the campaing is implemented.

I personnally believe that's not possible to create a game that cover the 30s 40s, without implementing carriers. I'm not even talking about floatplanes. One very important thing to consider as game designer, is, that us, humans, know history. And historically during WW2 carriers prevail over BB. But, most of WW2 ships and doctrines were designed during the 20s and 30s. At that moment no one could predict that air power should be able one day to have a major influence on naval warfare and capital ships designs. That's why every nations, even those who believe in CV, keep building BB. So there's imho two way to design that (in term of tech balances, campaign wise) - stick to historical reality : carriers gets their real performance. So, if I'm not role playing, I should stop any research and investment in BB and use everything I got to build carriers and their support ships as soon as planes performances improve enough to carry ordnances. - randomize tech performance, ahistorical : As the chief admiral, I will have to gamble on some tech and try to build as many different ships as possible with experimentals devices until I'm sure one is better than another. The last option is my favorite. Ok the ships will not perform the same way they did historically, but, I'll had to do hard choices. And that the essence of a good gameplay. Both are not exclusive and the player could choose between them before starting the campaign.