pandakraut

Please see the scaling section of this post: https://forum.game-labs.net/topic/26142-hidden-mechanics-and-weapon-damage-degradation/ There are a few minor additions by the mod to account for the larger possible infantry sizes and increase the AISize minimum as the campaign progresses, but otherwise it works as in the base game.

I did check my old save and I also only had one officer. Have not tried a new campaign to see if that is normal or not. The naval battle is actually rather difficult at the moment even on easy, though I am generally not great at naval combat. Main issue is the transport is so slow that all 5 ships are on top off you before you're halfway there and the transport has no officer so it crew shocks and loses its course very easily. Can still win it with 2 ships, but it's hard not to lose one along with a decent amount of crew

The in game post battle rewards are equal currently, confirmed the other day. However, the land battle gives you the opportunity to capture far more weapons so I think it's by far the optimal choice currently. While it's usually optimal to capture everything, it's definitely not required. You can get through with far less than perfect play.

Based on some of the steam forum comments there seem to be plenty of people trying that exact thing, but I agree. I don't know if anyone is capturing 5th rates with 7th rate sloops but it's probably possible. You can definitely do it with a 7th rate brig, but it isn't easy.

You do eventually get used to it and can make it work on offense, but it would be nice to be able to turn it off. If there were differences in weapon ranges it would probably help. In UGCW if the retreat behavior triggered based on the respective ranges of the skirmisher and its target. So once you equipped skirmishers with long range rifles the skirmish behavior rarely triggered. Arguably, skirmishers armed with long range rifles were incredibly overpowered in UGCW, so having skirmishers limited to scouts that can only provide minor fire support or delaying actions might not be the worst idea.

Ending up in situations where a campaign can not be progressed and needs to be restarted is somewhat common in the UG series. I would recommend getting in the habit of making, and keeping, saves after every battle. That way you can go back a battle or two if you get stuck without having to restart the entire campaign. Those benchmarks seem reasonable. What you need for fireworks will vary greatly depending on if you are destroying the third rate with fire ships or trying to capture it. You've definitely got the right idea though, the more you play the battles the more ways you'll find to optimize your results.

Some details that would probably help to provide. When you were using canister how much armor had been stripped off? When you were using solid shot how much armor had been stripped off? Was manual being used? If manual aim was used, where was the focus point? Screenshots would probably be best.

If you hit space twice when a unit is selected they will hold position. This should be working for skirmishers as well.

You can click on any or all of the officers on the left side of that menu to have the officer and his subordinates move to the ship. If the detachments get too small then transfer minimal will be greyed out and you'll have to send an officer. Not sure if there is a way to tell if you need more men to deal with flooding from the boarding menu. Once you've boarded, you can see where the crew are assigned in the bottom left when you select the newly captured ship. Any crew that are not needed to deal with flooding will be assigned to other roles.

There have been rumors of dlc, but unknown if those will end up become reality. Always the CSA campaign, harder difficulties, and mods available if you're looking for more.

I definitely think a campaign overview tutorial would be helpful. A brief tutorial or a manual explaining the available controls would also be useful. More of a walk through style battle tutorial seems more appropriate for a youtube playthrough.

While they don't cover everything there are currently 5 tutorial videos available in game. Have you already watched those? Specifically asking in terms of are they visible enough to new players.

If save games get corrupted, or the game thinks they are, they will delete themselves when you try to load them.

While not fluff, the affects of these numbers in game are not always as significant as they might appear. The reinforcement reports you see after the battle are somewhat randomized. The AI can receive additional recruits, additional veterans, training, weapons, or some combination of two of these options. The reinforcements affect the army size intelligence value, referred to as AISize going forward. This value translates into a multiplier that is applied when scaling is calculated. There are minimums that apply to the AISize that increase throughout the campaign. These reinforcements are a form of snowballing for the AI. They will gain some amount of men after every battle and if you are not killing a corresponding amount the AI Size will continue to grow and you will face larger enemy units going forward. Reducing this value is the only way to damage the AI from one battle to another. This is accomplished by killing its units. Capturing a unit is the only way to completely remove it's numbers from the AI Size. Men left alive when a unit shatters escape. Lowering the AISize also has an impact on training and technology. However, all three values have a minimum amount based on the current timeline of the campaign. For example, if the AI size is 60k prior to 2nd bull run. You inflict 40k casualties and then post battle the AISize is now 65k. The resulting size is lower than it could have been, but limited by a minimum. On the harder difficulties this means that it is not always worth it to kill everything if you take to many losses to do it as the AI always gets 'free' troops back. You do still want to kill as many as possible to try and keep the AI size near the minimum though. Also note, the AISize is not actually a limit on what you will face in battle. A variety of scaling factors can push that number higher or lower. Hopefully that helps, if anything isn't clear or you have additional questions just let me know.

Want to make sure I'm answering the right question. Is this a message you received during the battle? Or after the battle when you returned to the campaign map?

I'm not certain on this, but I think crew shock means that the crew is performing no actions. They won't fire, reload, sail, bail water, etc. Not sure if it adds to surrender chance, but seems reasonable for it to do so.

In that scenario I would say you probably just had bad luck. Sometimes they'll surrender very quickly in far less unfavorable circumstances. It's a game, it's never going to line up with all historical situations. It's already way to easy to capture the entire enemy fleet in nearly every battle.

Was the ships hud icon flashing white? That means the ships morale is very low, though that doesn't necessarily ensure a surrender. Bringing more ships with more crew into the area to surround the enemy ship will increase the surrender chances, but it will still always be a random chance until all crew are killed. Is there something preventing you from boarding the transport? Normally I'll just hit them with a few broadsides until the morale drops and then board them so I can transfer the minimum crew instead of sending an entire officer on a rowboat.

The ship will effectively be drifting at that point in game. Ships with enough hull damage will sink if left with a very low amount of crew.

It is possible, I have not looked into how the deployments work in that battle in any detail. I am curious why your AO is so low by this stage in the campaign? My corps can usually field more than 18 units by at least Malvern Hill.

The rewards between the naval and land options are equal. The option was provided for players who want to avoid playing land battles as much as possible. Sailing towards the top side of the map keeps the wind in the face of the enemy ships so you should be able to slip out through there. Just make try to keep your screening ships in between the transport and the enemy ships since the transport crew shocks very easily. You can also capture both enemy ships in the first battle so you can bring 3 ships to the 2nd battle.

Researching marines lets you build the new marine unit type on troop ships. They are presumably better than other units at boarding but no one knows the actual numbers. Researching bayonets opens up buying currently unlocked rifles with bayonets in the shop. Though currently this is bugged and it opens up far more weapons than it should.

I would send an f11 report in that case.

This is likely at least partially intended behavior. The devs were asking questions around that functionality in the discord the other day, so if you have feedback on when or how that should work they would likely be glad to hear it.

So in your scenario you have 0 money. You had previously purchased an officer, but when you try to assign the officer for $0 it doesn't let you?