[Lets talk about Spain:]

So yeah in RTW tensions go up possibly randomly and then events can also change them. You can sometimes take a prestige, and usually budget, loss to decrease tensions or you can increase tensions. However, there are cases where regardless of your efforts the game sorta forces war on you. I had this happen with me as Italy vs GB. I didn't want to go to war with GB(a second time in this case, the 1st time was hard enough) but it happened anyways. My efforts only delayed it rather than stopping it. I'm expecting something like this to happen in UA:D at first. Hopefully eventually the AI will fight itself and you can maybe support one side or the other and have just a more robust system than RTW does. 

But honestly, you guys are saying you won't have the budget to have a lot of ships so use like smaller and weaker ships. But what about just making good ships, like quality over quantity. That doesn't really work in a lot of cases as like everyone else has the ability to make quality and quantity but there's no point in trying to match the numbers of larger nations. So just make the best ships you can. 

The OP talked about which ships to build and I'm thinking maybe going the Jeune Ecolle route. TB's DD's and CL's with as many torpedoes as possible. Upgunned CA's maybe for more punching power, like pocket BC's? And maybe a battleship or two to provide a small backbone. As I said before I hope the AI is good enough to send mostly cruisers out to far flung colonies, as they should, in which case I feel like this would work great. In RTW 2 in the early years I'm very fond of making very powerful and large CA's with 10 or 11 in main guns and 8 in casemated secondaries. It's actually more expensive than my pre-dreads but it is very effective in a cruiser fight and does fairly well in the battle line too. That's not actually possible in the game right now but hopefully, eventually they'll make hulls that  aren't based off of historical designs to make things interesting

[Lets talk about Spain:]

Armies are going to be abstracted afaik similar to how they are in RTW

[On the subject of naval treaties]

Oh eventually a long time from now or in a sequel when carriers become thing conversions to aircraft carriers instead of just scrapping a ship should be an option. And in fact if construction is early enough maybe converting large battlecruisers and battleships into like heavy cruisers should be possible. I'm right in thinking that that's possible if construction is only like a month or two or 3 in right?

[Lets talk about Spain:]

For sure it's more powerful than Spain but players vs AI I'm betting we should be able to beat Austria given some good designs. 

Also I'd take a fight with Italy or Austria in the Med over America in the Caribbean or Japan or France in Southeast Asia any day. 

Something else to consider is alliances. The ally system is fairly simple in RTW and barely better in RTW 2 but I'm hoping it's a bit more robust here. Secure an alliance with basically anyone should probably be a key priority for Spain to secure an advantage anywhere you can.

[Lets talk about Spain:]

The question of what to build and deploy on a limited budget really depends on how the AI reacts to wars in far off places. Historically battles on the other side of the war usually were between cruisers as they were the ones cruising around the world carrying a presence in far off stations. Hopefully the AI deploys cruisers to places like Indonesia rather than heavy capital ships. This is uncommon in RTW, the AI will often deploy at least a few BB's where a war is going on. But if the AI here is better than yeah armored cruisers all the way for Spain.

No one has brought up fighting and expanding in the Mediterranean though. Austria would probably be an easy target that isnt too far away. You could focus your strength there. Maybe even attack Italy who will also be fairly weak and slow to grow. 

[S-Boats]

RTW 2 has motor torpedo boats in the game. They only show up around the ports they're based in and are easy to kill but during night battles can get some hits. You make the MTB squadron on the strategic map and don't design anything. Something like that could work here I think

[Flash fire frequency]

I just thought it was high for testing purposes. Also the armor system isn't done. Barbettes and citadels and whatnot are getting reworked afaik so that'd probably help a lot with it, same with crew mechanics whenever that comes into play. I do agree it looks ridiculous in most situations and should be reworked a little. Also like have fatal magazine detonations just disappeared? I've seen secondary ammo dets still plus torpedo magazine hits but main gun magazine hits just seems to result in flash fires now and the turret blowing off

[The number of days between updates.]

Legit I was thinking about this exact thing a few days ago. I didn't go look and see how many days it was so thanks but yeah I was thinking about doing it

[For Alpha 7]

RTW has different behavior sets. You can set ship divisions to scout or support or screen a parent formation. The AI will change the exact formation for the division to fit that role. You can do it manually as well. Over time you unlock new formations and division roles such as destroyer screens. You can order a flotilla attack which basically makes all your screening elements charge the enemy fleet as they try to conduct torpedo attacks. It's very useful for trying to get pursuing enemies to back off briefly or to overwhelm unscreened capital ships. In RTW 2 as you progress into the air age carriers go from being supporting units for the main battle line to their own separate task forces with the battle line mainly supporting and screening them. That's a bit more in-depth than 3 options so I would like the system to be like that. And honestly I'd be surprised if it wasn't. Misunderstood signals are also a thing in RTW that decrease over time and again I'd be surprised if they weren't in this game as well. 

Also someone Wowzery said that the destroyers followed the battlecruiser during a long range fight as if that's a bad thing? They're escorts they were doing exactly what they should have been doing. 

As for the AI automatically evading torpedoes I disagree entirely unless the formation is set to AI control. I really hate the auto-collision avoidance stuff in the game right now. Messes up maneuvers and I don't want that sort of thing happening even more often. I can evade torpedoes myself just fine. AI divisions avoiding torpedoes yeah sure makes sense that should be a thing. It can't be too good though, on either side friendly or foe. Honestly I don't totally get this preoccupation with setting stuff to the AI. Like just micro it a little if you want to set up a certain attack it's not too hard even with large numbers the game has different speed settings. I understand ppl might want to make things harder for themselves and act as just admirals in charge of just their own division and giving commands, RTW has a difficulty setting which forces that to happen vs the easy difficulty mode where you can take control of any ship at any time. However, in my mind setting something like that up sounds like something to deal with later

[Campaign: Peacetime events suggestion thread]

Aircraft won't be in the game my guy at least not for a very long while if at all. RTW has fleet exercises which basically just spawns a battle and you fight it like you would any other battle to see how your ships stack up against themselves. I'm not sure if they increase tensions but it would be cool if they did

[Campaign: Peacetime events suggestion thread]

12 hours ago, Aceituna said:

I started a topic about submarine design about month ago. But there wasn't any reply from devs. But there were some replies from ,,normal'' admirals And from those I would say that a lot of people want to desing subs.

I agree that cruiser-subs would be really nice to see. But I would like to add one little correction about your post: France wasn't the only one who made cruiser-sub but in fact almost all major nations has at least one.

 

I wasn't aware of that but looking at the different designs it seems only France went really heavy with it. Everyone else just put the same guns with maybe just more of them. France put a freaking 2 8 in guns on their sub and still had it carry more torpedoes than most of the other cruiser-subs.

[Mini Jutland]

I did the same a few days ago but with less ships. The AI severely undergunned their pre-dreads with 9 inch guns so it was no real contest for my AI fleet

[what we know about the campaign according to the "help" section.]

I suspect from what I've seen and read that it'll be very much a RTW clone with some differences. Later a sequel or dlc or just future updates will bring in aircraft and whatnot, like RTW 2 did, as well as add in more depth that RTW lacks. Perhaps by the time that happens RTW will have gotten more depth added to it. RTW 2 is still being worked on, missiles just got added in recently in fact.

Also it's not cards but more just random events. Tensions won't go from totally peaceful to all out war like that so you should have time to react, shift forces around and whatnot. In RTW there are also usually ways to reduce tension at the cost of prestige if you're not ready for war yet. 

Also I don't want total war or Hearts of Iron here, they're naval systems are total crap in most of their games. Total War Empire, Napoleon, and Shogun 2 had good naval combat systems but past that it's trash. I suspect if there are AI wars we'll learn about the wars from "news outlets". Like how in RTW when you have allies in a war it'll occasionally tell you that some ships are reported to have been sunk in a battle between your enemy and your ally. And nations know about the size of other nations navies so you can gauge how a war is going just by comparing their losses to their total numbers. 

I do want the ability to declare war or if AI wars is a thing, then to intervene and join a war if you want. 

[Suggestions on texts, data, historical tidbits, and other non gameplay related issues.]

Loading screens going by too fast? Ppl want slower loading times? lol

[Mini Jutland]

Huge fleet battles will be very interesting. They're very cool in RTW but here they're a little overwhelming

[The Campaign: Will it be balanced]

I was talking about major nations. BTW at least when I say major nations I mean every nation that's playable and minor nations are the ones that aren't playable. I'm guessing what you guys all mean is minor nations are like Austria and Italy. In which case I was talking about the differences between the two not anything to do with balance. Britain will be stronger than Italy at least at the start. But Italy will have a few natural advantages over Britain, they don't have to deploy forces all around the world and so can concentrate their forces much better than Britain. And the whole range thing which I've already stated. And actually in RTW I prefer playing the smaller nations for those exact reasons-less areas to be concerned with and it makes designing ships slightly easier. None of that is for balance, I'm not talking about balancing anything, I don't see a huge need for it. I'm just talking about natural pros and cons for each nation. The lack of balance in RTW makes it so that there are natural easy/hard modes in which country you play as. It seems pretty elegant to me and I hope UA:D takes the same approach. You  should feel some dread going up against Britain in the early years. Don't balance it to make the smaller nations easier to play, that takes the fun out of it.

The player is a big advantage for any nation and even outnumbered in RTW I can still usually win by picking my fights well. Remember that the campaign isn't going to be like these academy missions, if you want to retreat you can totally retreat. 

 

[Campaign: Peacetime events suggestion thread]

BTW when I mention minor nations I mean like small neutral countries that aren't necessarily playable. Like Chile or Brazil.

Also I think the first iteration of the campaign will be coming out in alpha 7 or 8. They've got enough hulls for each class now and combat mechanics are decent enough. Still need an armor/citadel rework plus crew mechanics. Other than that though it seems we're all set to get it fairly soon.

A big thing I want is the ability to design subs. Not necessarily use them, I don't want or need to play silent hunter 3 here but I want more to do with subs. There were lots of different kinds so we can possibly do a lot with them. Personally I'd love to really explore the cruiser-sub thing that France tried out but didn't continue with cuz of the interwar naval treaties.

[For Alpha 7]

The academy missions are meant to entertain us and bring people into the game early so they can get more money while they continue to work on the game. It's also an easy way to test out certain combat mechanics by forcing us to do certain things. That's it. They don't represent the whole game or the campaign and how it'll be and imo there should be minimal effort put into them. Like don't put tons of effort into making them perfect cuz they're just not the point of the game. I'll never touch them again after the campaign comes out. Sure some effort should be made into making them like playable, as few bugs as possible and whatnot but that's it. 

As for dodging torpedoes and juggling huge fleets, there is a pause button and regular speed is really slow so if things are moving too fast just drop to that. And dodging torpedoes shouldn't be last minute thing cuz it's not gonna happen. Actively maneuver to avoid them before you detect them by doing S-Turns and such. Change direction, change speed, whatever. The AI isn't the greatest and needs work sure but you can directly control every ship and it's honestly not that hard. Saying it's impossible to control 20 DD's is just not true. A little hard sure but not impossible so don't get so worked up about it? Just imagine what Jutland style fleet battles are gonna be like, complaining about the AI pathfinding is deserved but also not hard to avoid. Leave some space between your formations and keep them in normal spread. For the most part problem solved. I rarely run into pathfinding issues honestly unless I'm trying to ram someone, the AI really doesn't like that

[Destroyermen Book series]

It's a good series. I kinda feel like it's dragging on too long and there are too many characters. And with the League in Europe I don't see it ending anytime soon

[En Echelon?]

I tried to do it too after seeing this and could not get it to work. Lowest I got was 70% starboard weight offset. I tried it in battle and I won barely but it wrecked my acceleration and turning speed

[Campaign: Peacetime events suggestion thread]

If you've played Rule the Waves the events work like the events in that game from what I've seen. Events give you more money, prestige, and change tensions with other nations. Tensions go too high you go to war. Fleet reviews and gunnery exercises randomly come up which help with the crew experience in RTW. Hopefully that's a thing here too but we don't know how crews will work yet.

I do want more minor nation stuff. So like the ability to build ships for minor nations, and seize them if war breaks out, the ability to go to war with minor nations and therefore take more territory. You mentioned bullying them into becoming protectorates and closing off ports and whatnot which would be very cool. What you've said though requires a little more in-depth  resources and trade than what they're going for though. Rebellions can happen in RTW if foreign stations is low and just randomly I guess too, hopefully that's part of this game too. I like the idea of some of your ships joining the rebellion. The possibility of civil war would be very cool. More in-depth treaty negotiations after wars would be cool, ceding territory or getting ships as reparations. That happens in RTW but only if the government collapses and that takes awhile to do. The treaty system in RTW sucks honestly. 

[>>>Alpha-6 Feedback<<<]

6 hours ago, Maty83 said:

There is two things which bug me more than the formation finding. Flash fire randomness and the AI retreat.

First, flash fires: The results are extremely random, basically turning battles in an instant. I was doing the "Destroy a full fleet" mission. I had a perfectly healthy BB and a heavily damaged one. The perfectly healthy BB had taken only two 14" hits over the course of the battle, while the heavily damaged came under fire from the entire enemy fleet and was holding steady at 35% structure. I was engaged in a stern chase of a BB when a flash fire with 13.8" Krupp IV armour and reinforced bulkheads suddenly disappeared my ship despire not spreading to the B turret right behind. No fanfare, nothing. A 98% structure ship with only a single upper deck section damaged just disappeared. And the enemy BB who I had been throwing shells at for several minutes from 4x as many guns (The BB had 15" turret armour, but at ranges where I was seeing a reliable feed of "Turret damaged" messages pop up). Despite this, no flash fires. On other occasions I quite happily sailed a cruiser squadron with each missing at least one triple 10" turret through an enemy formation.

It sounds like you didn't get a flash fire but a standard magazine hit. I guess they're kinda the same thing but you know magazine explosions can and did destroy ships outright, i.e. Hood. So what's the problem? Turret dmged doesn't mean turret destroyed or magazine penetrated. In point of fact you have to penetrate the hull to get to the magazine so messing up the turrets means nothing. I don't think turret armor extends to the barbette, hence why there's a separate barbette thing. That doesn't make a ton of sense but yeah. 

[The Campaign: Will it be balanced]

The game is basically a 3D version of RTW so I'm just guessing that. But also like Great Britain will have more money and ships than Italy. That's just a given and that's what I meant by advantages. I'm sure different nations will start off with different economies and will have more or less money which translates to larger/better fleets or smaller/worse fleets in general. Also like I said there are different design considerations different countries will have to make like range. Italy has an advantage in designing ships because they just have to operate in the Med so range isn't super important. The US and Britain are not so lucky. Tech bonuses to certain things for certain countries that pioneered certain things makes sense to me, I don't know if it's gonna be in game but it makes sense. 

[The Campaign: Will it be balanced]

You can tell the speed of the enemy by looking at the top of the screen. There should be silhouettes of all the ships you're facing separated by class and by whether or not they're sinking. You expand the groups and it shows you all the ships you can see, i.e. within detection range, of that class. Hover over the ship you want and it'll show you the speed of the ship as well as bring up the whole ship info on the right without you having to find the actual ship on the battlefield. I agree that a big picture kind of mode is needed. Maybe a 2D overview map kidna like RTW just to give context for things during large fleet battles where some divisions might be widely separated. A course would be nice, like a compass telling you which way you're going. 

I'm of the opinion that the game gives you way too much info about the enemy right now but I sadly don't see that going away any time soon. Maybe make it a toggle? For sure give us the class breakdown, countries released that info publicly although they would lie sometimes so maybe in the strategic mode make the game give us bad info sometimes for that. However don't show us the exact speed and heading of the enemy, don't give an exact breakdown of hit chance, dmg, or anything. Or the amount of ammo or anything. Some fog of war would be nice basically. Like RTW, you can tell when a ship has lost turrets and you can tell when a ship is sinking cuz it'll show a speed of 3 knots but I think that's a bug. Other than that you don't know anything about the enemy's condition and it makes for interesting decisions. I've retreated when I shouldn't have retreated cuz the enemy was almost dead but I didn't know that. Ive done the opposite and pursued thinking enemy was almost done and been horribly wrong. In the post battle report we can see the condition of the enemy but that's it.

As for overall campaign balance certain nations will have advantages over others and in RTW who you play as is basically the easy, hard mode choice. The US and Britain are easy mode. Germany, Japan, Italy, France are normal. Austria, Spain, and Russia are kinda hard, especially Austria and Spain cuz they just get nothing at the start. Different countries will have different naval budgets and territorial concerns. As Italy in RTW I almost never design long and medium ranged ships cuz I don't have to. The US will have to exclusively design long and medium ranged ships. 

[Meet the American battleships]

I didn't even notice he had MK 1 14 in guns. Yeah that's a big deal. I also used the firepower option here and used the dual Mk 3 14 inchers and yeah they did really well. I would have had an extremely easy time of things if the enemy hadn't had almost 30 inches of armor and torpedoes making closing hard. I used 8 in casemates and dual 5 inch turrets besides the towers and the single forward barbette I used. I have never payed attention to the casemates affecting roll before that's good to know. I do wish smaller vessels had the option for large casemates though. I like putting 7 or 8 in casemates on armored cruisers in RTW 2 for some extra punch against rival cruisers. But that's not an option here in this game sadly.