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TheRealJostapo

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Landsmen

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  1. Formation keeping is nearly completely broken. Ships take forever to get into formation, take inefficient paths trying to get into path. Ships crowd each other in formation. Case in point, chasing down a CL (loaded with an insane number of torpedos), with a card of CA's in Line Ahead(tight). The CL fires an oblique broadside of torpedos, which prior to this patch, would have been avoidable. What happens? The 2nd CA rams the lead CA and PUSHED it and itself into about 10 torpedos. Ships will 'wobble' in line abreast, zig zagging back and forth, for no apparent reason. This results in them constantly breaking their locks. Ships won't reliably fire salvos of torpedos when in line ahead... something that used to be possible. As always, the AI Ship Designer is garbage and needs to be rethought.
  2. Regarding the AI ship designer... almost everything about it is broken and I believe, hurting the game (all aspects). You don't truly know what the AI designer has done until you are well into either battle or a battle within the campaign. Often to find out the AI has taken the 'clown' approach. Requiring a restart. Moreover, none of the designs appear to be setup to compliment each other (escorts too slow to actually escort their clown ship capital). Why aren't we talking about: Libraries of ship designs. Variance in what the AI uses in Custom Battles and the Campaign. Every ship within a class (at least at the start) is the same design. Boring and predictable. Keep the format for ship designs open (ideally json) and shareable here on the forums or as workshop downloads. Reducing your Game-labs work-load and off loading some of it to the community. If the effort had been devoted to serialization and UI code for making the above points real, instead of a barely working AI designer, I've got to think the game would be in way better shape than it is today.
  3. Nick and all, my apologies. The report regarding BB's not engaging may be untrue. Normally I select "Design your own fleet" when setting up a campaign. The first thing I do is build my BB's, set their port _and_ set them to Sea Control. I'm not sure (haven't tested yet), but it's possible when building ships, they start "In Being" and ignore any Sea Control orders when they are built. I'll confirm here. (ie, don't waste any time on my BB's not getting missions report).
  4. Yep. In the 1930's Campaign, I prefer "Fast BBs" over BC's. First thing I always do is put them on Sea Control.
  5. On Steam Beta build: Torpedo Evasion button. Not sure how this is supposed to work, but my impression is "drive in wild circles" If you give a division the Torpedo evasion order, it appears as though all but the leader will no longer respond to any further orders. Units break formation and just wander aimlessly. Campaign Still way too short. Research is pointless Building is nearly pointless Tested both above with stock file, and giving the AI 99 billion in funds, and 1000 reputation. BB's don't appear to get anything but "you've been ambushed" missions. At least from a player perspective. Given you can play an entire campaign in 30 minutes, I've tested this 4 or 5 times. The only missions my BB's got was "ambushed". The vast majority of missions are CL on CL battles. Boring and super easy given the current state of torpedos. Transports no longer seem to be sunk. Except in missions. Many of the available hulls for most of the eras, are very difficult to build anything reasonably balanced (or overpowered for that matter) There are very strange barbette limitations on many of the hulls. You have to place a medium/large barbette before you can place a small barbette for instance. You can only place giant barbettes (which look silly) when there are lower tier models which are better in every way (and ought to work given caliber restrictions) AI To be blunt, the AI is 'chicken-shit'. Even in fair fights (say a BC on a BC), a good hit, and the AI will go into 'hard-run' or 'max-oblique', leading to a boring "blast him in the bum with HE for 20 minutes" A positive note, they will occasionally and suddenly shift out of 'flee' mode and into, 'eat some torpedos!' mode. Keep this. (usually they will then start running again) Early era Campaigns are boring and frustrating. Especially 1900. Ships can't hit each other even when at 1km range. Had one instance where a CA literally ran out of almost a thousand rounds trying to kill a single CL. Debates about realism aside, this is terrible gameplay. Finding your enemy is annoying as hell and a GIANT waste of time. The smoke spotted message events need to give a visual cue and indicate whether you are closing or separating (so you don't have to run the game on 10x speed for 10 minutes only to realize you'll never catch the target).
  6. That's my point exactly... "Can build monster torpedo ships". There's no risk associated with equipping weapons with exposed ordnance in an era when ships were expected to weather dozens to hundreds of hits per engagement. The undeniable meta is, if you aren't allocating at least 30% of your deck space to torpedo's, "your doing it wrong".
  7. Why torpedos need serious work. Many thousands of tons invested in 4x3 18" guns, and enough 7"/6" turrets to take on an entire fleet's escorts... What out performs all of that? a few hundred tons of torpedo's. (well ok, 12x5 24" launchers with max reloads, 6 per side) This is ridiculous. This is even with the questionably cheaty AI torpedo avoidance. I'm not looking for a debate on how torpedos are more lethal (they are, and should be). Just saying that the very real meta for this game will be to load an unkillable CL (or as illustrated, a super BB hull with solid speed) with unrealistic amounts of armor, ridiculous speed, and as many torpedo launchers as you have deck space for. Zig zag your way from torpedo max range dumping alternate sides. The final tally after this salvo hit. That's 12 launchers with an initial magazine of 160 reloads, amassing about > 720,000 pounds (360t) of loose ordnance and fuel laying around the decks (based on ~4000lb weight of a Mk21 torpedo). No risk to ME... but hoo boy; the other guys is another story. There's a reason the Mikumo was desperately shoving her launchers, round and all, out of the ship. Something I have yet to hear anyone mention here on the forums.
  8. Thought I'd throw yet another, impossible to kill CL out there for everyone's enjoyment.
  9. I was interested to hear an initial campaign had been released, until I had learned that content was gated behind unlocking prior content (as with the scenarios). I'd be happy to provide more precise feedback about bugs, but I'm not swimming through reams of half tested content and RNG to play things or eras I'm not interested in. If there is one piece of constructive feedback I can provide; "Please stop gating content behind unlocks". It's an antiquated game design feature. Especially for a single player game. It's also the reason I haven't played more than four scenarios... too much RNG for me to bother unlocking the rest of the half-baked content. Other than that: The load instant battle feature is broken. Hangs on ..pre-warming.. while playing two different songs and a looping explosion/engine sound noise. The designer continues to be janky It's very very very slow for larger ship builds. As many parts which work properly, there are equally as many which are janky/broken. (Hulls, stacks, super structures, etc) Resuming and starting a new Instant Battle remembers your last design. A nice feature. Unfortunately, more often than not most of the design is Red due to poor part placement (forcing you to rebuild the ship anyways). Several hulls used to be very permissive about centerline barbette placement, which allowed for interesting clown ship designs (which I enjoyed for _my_ ships). For many of them, you can no longer do that. A good case being the Japanese Super BB hull. You used to be able to build crazy secondary arrangements due to the flexible barbettes... which you can't really do anymore. I haven't read the detailed release notes, but it seems like the balancing algorithm might have regressed. Primary battery placement does not appear to shift the centerpoint nearly as much as a secondary battery. For instance, placing a quad 20" turret right on the furthest bow snap point (in free placement), won't shift the center of gravity as much as a triple-7". Finally, I can't help but ask the question; Why do you keep releasing new hulls/parts when much of the existing content continues to be buggy? Given the shortfalls of communication and progress, and with a cynical predilection, it smacks of 'adding it so you can show new screenshots of content'. -joel
  10. For the love of Mike... 347 hits, 19 floodings, 2 ammo detonations, 128 partial pens, 79 penetrations. It'd be funny if it weren't for the fact my brain dead AI screen wouldn't ignore this unkillable abortion and focus on the killable torpedo boats which were killing them. Whatever was done in the latest build, it was not an enhancement.
  11. This is _exactly_ the transitive point I am trying to make. If they continue on they're current route, with a broken ai ship designer and unsinkable light ships, who's going to want to play the campaign? Regardless of how good it is. If your foundation is 'dumpster fire' you'll never achieve anything better ... regardless of how good the primary feature is. I'm a software architect by day. Part of this job requires reviewing the work of fellow developers for architectural compliance, best practises (security/style), etc. Most of the times, it involves me complimenting a developer on good work. However, some of the time it requires presenting un-varnished criticism. This was the purpose of my post. I feel taking an 'it's in beta' apologist stance only mis-serves Game Labs. We _know_ they can do better (from their prior products and even before that, their modding efforts). For their success, and our self interested desire for a decent game, we can't mince words. I personally: strongly dislike the current build. am strongly worried about the trajectory of quality. The number of regressions is alarming, and more importantly, the willingness to release such a poorly tested build is doubly alarming. If that message is not heard by Game Labs, then any discussion about fine-tuning specific features quality/design is pointless. -joel
  12. Normally I lurk, as I find these forums to border on toxic with lot's of 'naval-splaining'. However, after taking a couple months from the game and returning, I do have a rather strong opinion on this latest build. Plainly put, "dumpster fire". Notable regressions: The drydock/designer is now laggy and slow. The number of hulls/super structures which are useless is VERY high. Hulls you can't place the superstructure on at all. Hulls where the allowable super structure locations would make for a useless ship design with dire balance issues. Super structures you can't snap ANY of the allowed funnels into. Inconsistent lax'ness in enforcing barbette locations. Crazy stupid Roll penalties for casemate guns, where a similar turreted design with turrets literally on the edge not having the same penalties. Broken firing arcs. Wow... Many cases of snapping the lightest gun fixture where there is _ZERO_ fire arc. Main super structure mounts where a historically sized main gun has a tiny firing arc.... leaving no choice but to slap a large secondary into. We're back to unkillable Light Cruisers. Case in point 69 7" hits at ~8000 yards against 3" of armor (I was so pissed off I didn't bother to check if was just the conning tower or actual belt) Still boggling over design choices: The torpedo meta is real. Want to win? go hard on torpedos. Torpedos don't have duds Torpedos don't have fuses which require contact (no ricochets) Torpedos don't have wild fires (go in circles, run deep, run shallow, etc) Torpedos don't have hang-fires. No controls for spread and ripple firing. 95% of ships which carried deck launchers did not have reloads... yet in this game, deck launchers can be reload in minutes, even if it means moving them from the port placement to starboard. (Seriously... for the love of Mike, remove reloads unless you pay serious tonnage and deck space for reloading facilities/storage) There's NO fear to carrying your torpedos into fire. No 'do I risk another 2 minutes of fire before firing?' questions asked. The AI ship designer is just stupid. Clown ships are one thing... 38,000t monster BB's in 1915... wtf? No controls over how stupid the AI designer is allowed to be when sitting down to do a battle. Why is there AI ship designer to begin with? It's such a broken feature which could EASILY be replaced by picking up a couple history books, designing a few lists of year appropriate/treaty appropriate designs. At least for me... it'd be far more enjoyable as I could play my 'what if' scenarios without having to worry about the AI Designer goes "small stupid" or "big stupid". Give the player the ability to augment the pre-canned designs, either to add missed variants or add their own head-canon. Why isn't it easier to see your own actual speed? (as opposed to where you have the throttle set?) Ditto an enemy ship... If indeed, the plan is to model through 1940, why are there no notions of DP or QF guns? Notably guns like the US 5inch DP... where's the smothering fire and ability to wreck almost any sized ship with HE? (it might still be floating, but it's not fighting) Striking colours. A critical hit on a BC that causes 4 of their 5 turrets to shoot into orbit, but they stay in line and even more maddingly, keep fighting? Unlikely. All tolled, I'm really disappointed. I'd have given almost any amount of money for an expanded Civil War Edition (you guys got it just right), I'm regretting supporting this game with a AAA price buy-in (you are messing up). -joel
  13. Let me open by saying I love I am seeing so far. Custom battles alone, given a non-AAA price would justify my purchase of this game. The one thing that drives me crazy though, is AI ship designer. Playing 'Britain v France 1940'? Sometimes you'll be facing down Modernized Super Dreadnoughts (circa 1920), and other times a fleet of mega-Richelieus. Never mind situations where the same happens with every class of ship (treaty'ish one time, mega variants the next). It makes for a very spotty experience, where you end up with a 'cake-walk' up to a 'I don't nor can I ever, have enough bullets to win' situation. I've noticed that there have been discussions of working a Treaty System into the AI Ship Designer. As a developer, I think that is possible, but would open to the door to more debate...and if implemented too strictly, would do a disservice to historical 'creative interpretation' of the treaties (Japan and the UK in particular). My proposal is this, a Fleet Rolls and Ship Designs feature. SAVED SHIP DESIGN Has a name. Has a class (BB, BC, etc) Has a year Has a nationality (This value should not preclude including one nation's ship in another nations Fleet Rolls (captured ships, lend lease, etc) Has a 'Commonality' value, 1-10. DD Leader's might have a commonality of 3, while a DD might be 10. In the case of freaks such as HMS Furious, it might be set to 1. Has all the serialized data from the ship design The user can use the Ship Designer to create and Save a Ship Design All the designs are saved into the same folder with a naming scheme which makes picking through them easier. Perhaps NATIONALITY-YEAR-CLASS-Name. This will allow the community to build libraries of ship designs, which follow (or don't) treaty limitations... allowing the user to decide on what level of historical'ness/meta they want (for me personally, I like historical) FLEET ROLLS Has a name Has a year Has a nationality There is a UI which allows the user to manually cherry-pick ship designs to include. Including those from other nations. This will allow a user to create opponent fleets which: -reflect the desired level of Historical 'accuracy' -reflect which of the Naval treaties is in effect -reflect interesting violations of the treaties -reflect interesting transitional time-frames in history (surface to AA cutover, modernization states, etc) CHANGES TO CUSTOM BATTLE Allow the user to disable nationality/date choice, and switch to a Fleet Rolls choice. (Noting, it should be possible to select the same Fleet Rolls for both forces) Keep the ship class counts. Disable the AI Designer, and with a weighted selection algorithm (using the Ship Design Commonality field), fill out the desired OOB from the Fleet Rolls for a side. Allow the user to designation their Flag Ship Allow the user to design one class of their Fleet Roll (without saving it, but used for the battle) STRETCH GOALS A way to package all of the above into a single distributable file. A way to electronically share these. This might be a steam workshop thing. In the interim, something zippable and attachable in forum posts. My Two Bits (Not to take away from my points above) I understand you guys are working hard on the campaign and it makes a lot of sense. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the body of work to accomplish the points above ought not be a huge lift; from what I've seen most of the code already exists (except some lightweight UI and serialization code). I've never been, and likely never will, be a fan of Scenarios in games; I feel it leans too heavily into meta gaming, where it's becomes a puzzle on min-maxing until you win. For me, the campaign and custom battles are where it's at. If I want to run a scenario, i'll hop on the web, find an interesting battle, get the OOB and build my own scenario (Empress Augusta Bay anyone?). Moreover, the experience ought to be more consistent, without the wild swings of difficulty. -joel
  14. I'm with you in that, during multi-phased battles, everything is reset despite either urging to hurry in the previous phase, or despite the fact that you just held that impossible point despite the odds; annoying. I personally want to see all the phases they coded in for a battle, and am always cautious about NOT taking that "End it now" point. I want to see that content and I want to drag the battles out. I think simple copy changes or additions would go quite a ways to solving it. In the case of the game railroading you into another phase with your pieces reset, some copy like below would go a long ways; "Despite your efforts, enemy success elsewhere on the field have forced us to fall back. <more copy>" In the case of "Hurry or all is lost" prompting, I wish they'd break narrative and throw in a "This is phase 2 of a 5 phase battle". Or something which would tell me I'm going to have 3 additional hours to take these points. That way I'm not needless shredding divisions to rush an objective. Arguably, the whole timer and phases thing is a game mechanic and not story/history related. That's a great notion, and leads to some awesome ratcheting up of intensity. That said, give it's game mechanic, finding a solution for smoothing out the ambiguity at the risk of "becoming self aware" seems worthwhile.
  15. Hi, I'll confess I haven't poured over the boards extensively, and find posts like this one very often cheesy. That said, of all the games I've played in the last couple years, I am impressed with UGCW and feel as though I got a bargain for the amount of entertainment. So congrats for that. My feedback; DLC now! please. Lengthen the campaign somewhat and stitch a few of the missing battles in. For another 20 minors and 5 majors I'd happily throw 25 bucks your way. The victory conditions dialog is ambiguous and hard to read. Specifically, I want to know which failed conditions lead to an "End of Battle" condition; specifically for the multi-phase battles. For instance, I've played Chickamauga twice as Union now, and have not experienced the final desperate phase. I _want_ to lose just enough to finally 'win' and follow a more historical path, and, experience all the content you put hard work into. Related to above, if you could indicate on the mission briefings screen and victory dialog what the historical outcomes were. This would serve a couple purposes. First, as I'm sure you designed the missions a long historical lines, it might silence some disgruntled players complaining about the missions. You were supposed to lose that battle and pulled out a draw? gg. Secondly, education. Maybe a hyperlink to Wiki's entries for the battles. I'll confess studying the Civil War is a hobby of mine, and I'd love a way to get my son to do so as well (and he can't NOT click a hyperlink). Managing the Army is fun. Repetitively slide to full strength and apply is dull. A row for three buttons (Full with vets, full with rookies, full with a blend) would be very well welcome. (The blend bit could be just a 50/50 split between vets and rookies, or something smarter which tries not to remove perks). Ditto, a 'buy all' in the armory screen. Basically, sliders are necessary, but annoying. An option to disable mission timers. An example, the Mule Shoe. I've stood on that ground and was in the infantry. There is no way in hell I'd start that assault until I'd thoughtfully arrayed my forces. Unfortunately the game meta the timer forces is lining up the army in four rows of brigades and simply issuing a "March Forward in a line until you hit the edge of the map" order. In other words, the timer I think in a lot of cases is hurting strategy and sandbox'ness and results in the game being played more like Starcraft. Loosen up the brigade intolerance for overlap. Select ten line brigades and tell them to mark in a direction. When they come to rest, very often one will think "Hey I'm too close my neighbors so I'm going to find an empty spot". Unfortunately for me, that unit is very often the greenest brigade in my Corps.. and he meanders front and forward of the line, so the opposing line rightly things "That's the closest guy, we better focus our fire". There was a reason green units are placed in the center but this behavior results in green units very often staying green because they keep getting shredded as a result of this behavior. Some way to preview my move orders like in the Total War series. Press a key, and you see what the final moves and disposition will look like (barring enemy action). For mass assault missions like Mule Shoe, this would be exceptionally helpful, where timing and spacing a very important. The firing arc/range indicator for infantry and artillery is way to dim. I understand it was done to make the map less like a game, but on some of the heavily forested maps, this makes knowing when you have to displace your artillery a pain and involves a lot of leaning in and squinting at the monitor to trace the arc out to get the range. Anyhow, this post is already long and obnoxious enough. Fantastic job on the game. Feel free to ignore every point in this list EXCEPT for #1. I'd love to give you more money. (Seriously... cash in! Don't make a single code change, and just add some content. Channel your inner Electronics Arts!) -joel
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