Tycondero

This has been requested from day 1 when Alpha 1 started: the ability to fire both at port and starboard hostiles at the same time. At least we have independent fire for the main and secondary guns now, but I fully agree that we should be able to make use of both sides if sandwiched by enemies. I can understand it may be somewhat difficult to implement, especially for guns in the middle/centre.

I am a bit in the middle with airpower in naval games, but I agree with @Skeksis that airpower can make things fresh (gameplay wise) again. I previously always hated carriers in games because carriers never looked as cool as battleships to me. I think most people that are naval enthusiasts share that feeling and that's why battleships are always the main attraction in these kind of games. However, when I watched the movie Midway (please don't beat me for liking this very Hollywood made movie) this feeling for the battleship started to shift with me. I still like battleships, but I also can see the coolness now of the aircraft carrier and the evolution of naval warfare around the carrier task force. Carrier warfare is in many ways much faster paced and more strategical. It does introduce something fresh to the naval combat and strategic gameplay. That is where I can fully understand Skeksis in his RTW2 argument on that carriers/planes provide something new to develop towards after the BBs have evolved to the point that BBs have become a dead end. Also, what is very cool in RTW2 is that you can also specify and develop planes, which adds another layer of design, albeit somewhat abstracted. We have to face the fact that beyond the 1930s, not much BB innovation is happening anymore. Some more broader naval innovations are introduced, such as RADAR and SONAR that apply to potentially all naval vessels, but amour development already reached its peak and perhaps quadruple turrets is the only true innovation that requires a bit more time to mature. All other BB innovations have more to do with bigger is better. However, we must also take note that IRL the Washington and London naval treaties did mess things up a lot for the BBs. It is not hard to imagine that without these treaties (which do not need to happen/followed in the UAD campaign) the BB would have developed differently and could have driven more innovation. Effectively, the interwar period was kind of dull from a naval point of view as the treaties restricted innovations in some areas (like going beyond 16 inch guns). That's why I think the addition of ahistorical, but realistic assets like 19 and 20 inch guns, is important for the game and perhaps we should have more of these exotic assets that may not have happened historically or were developed even a bit later than within the game's timeframe. Every campaign should and will likely playout very different, making some choices for innovation more important that others. Yet, I do think that even without these treaty restrictions the BBs were a destined to become a dead end once airplanes arrived on the scene. Like (nuclear) submarines, carriers can spike an entire new arms race between the world powers in which new areas of innovation are emphasized more than others. Then the big question comes how to implement carriers/planes in game. I personally think that it is very possible, but will require a huge time investment. RTW2 has one advantage in that it is a spreadsheet (2D) game and does not need to render everything. This makes the sheer distances by which carrier task force battles occur much more feasible than in for example UAD. I believe that Skeksis has offered a decent middle of a road solution by simulating the effects airplanes, such as scouts, and later perhaps the effects of naval-air warfare from carriers. Perhaps similar to submarine warfare, carrier warfare should be abstracted to affecting the fleets/ships on the campaign map by damaging and sinking ships, which thereby directly impacts the tactical fleet combat part of the game. Not ideal, but less demanding for the devs to implement as a tier 1 feature. However, that said, I am fine with the devs focusing on getting a proper ship designer model out first and implementing the campaign before adding more stuff like carriers. If the gameplay is stale with fleet battles carriers are not going to save the day either.

Well, it will for sure mean that carriers will need to be developed first before they can even attempt a modern naval game version of UAD. However, in general I wouldn't be very interested in playing a modern version, but perhaps that is also because I believe a modern version will lack variety.

The devs stated that they are very keen on providing mod support in the future. They come from a modding background (I believe Thomadis made the Darth mods in the Total War games), so they understand the importance of it. Please watch the video in this thread as it will provide some more information related to your question.

I hope that crew morale and captain personality will become a factor in the game, though this added amount of complexity may very much "mess things up" for the AI and lead to player frustration as it could be difficult to implement right. A ship's performance and ability to follow player orders should be affected within the game by the captain and the crew . I imagine that daredevil and/or highly respected captains should be able to maintain sufficient morale which allows some ships to go "beyond the call of duty" making these ships perform well even under intense enemy fire. Green crews or less assertive captains could mean that do or die like player/AI orders (e.g. performing a suicide run) are ignored or called off. This would bring another layer of deeper gameplay well known to people that play more land-battle orientated tactical and strategic games.

I think this is a very good suggestion to expand the possibilities we have for firing in the game. Especially a double salvo or fire at will command would be great, however I would imagine that this should only matter if crew morale ever becomes a factor in the game. Double salvo is great to demoralize opponents by offering a more continuous amount of fire. However, sadly even the regular broadside salvo is not fully working in the game due to a bug. I think the devs should first try to correct this before expanding into other types of firing commands.

True, there is some difference between WW1 and interwar BCs and between countries. If we look at the nation that developed most BCs (Britain) they went for high speed (usually 30+ knots) combined with BB batteries (-1 turret) and sacrificing armour to make it work (meaning somewhere between 6-10 inch armour usually). The Germans went the other way. If we can count Scharnhorst and Gneisenau as BCs, these ships were developed with BB like armour, fast battleship speed and comparatively tiny guns (11 inch). BTW, reaching beyond 32 knots for a big (and even small) ship should be really difficult. I will have a look into that whether it now makes more sense, but diminishing returns should really kick in hard here for battleships and cruisers alike. If you look at the Iowa class of fast battleship (57500 tons) these reached 33 knots (WW2) and had engines producing 158 MW, whereas the Bismark (50900 tons) that reached 30 knots could do with engines producing 110 MW. Thus for 3 more knots (~10%) the Iowa required around ~44% more engine power. Tonnage corrected it would be 27% more power for 10% more speed.

I agree, I would like to be able to set a position/area for the screens/defenders to focus on. Either the AI needs to be very good as in that the screens will start to sit in between the hostile and their escort and engage or keep between the two fleets depending on the size and severity of the treat or we should be able to manually assign sectors to screens as such that a division can be patrolling between 315-45 degrees (in front of to be escorted division), 315-225 (left), 225-135 (rear) or 135-45 (right) degrees of the heading of the lead escorted ship/division. Regarding division commands, I think we need much more sophisticated/detailed commands on a divisional/fleet level and indeed a hard turn executed by all ships in the division simultaneously would be great (Sheer's turn at Jutland).

Collision avoidance and torpedo avoidance still doesn't seem to work very well. Still observe ships getting in eachother's way all the time, especially destroyers versus other formations when set to screen duty. Also, when giving these general formation orders I noticed that the division's subordinate ships hardly ever try to avoid incoming torpedoes, even when they are spotted early or under full AI control. IMO, it still requires way too much micromanagement to deal with subordinate ships. Shouldn't these ships set to duties, such as follow, screen or scout not behave similar to AI control, albeit a little more restricted depending on their task? I find that when setting divisions directly under AI control that they seem more capable of avoiding incoming torpedoes.

I noticed in Alpha 10 that the broadsides of a BB do not fire all turrets in every salvo round. Haven't tested whether this applies to all vessels, but I could reproduce it for two different BB designs made. For some reason when having to fire both front and rear gun turrets one side (only front or only rear) does not fire all the time. I have the feeling that this is a sync issue during reloading, it seems that guns of either front or rear need to reload a bit longer than the other set. This generate a sequence that if you fire all turrets in cycle 1, cycle 2 has only one turret side firing (e.g. front or rear) as the other side is still reloading. Thereby you get a pattern of 2/4 turrets firing, followed by 4/4 turrets and again followed by 2/4 firing in a "salvo". Also, if you manually force a stop to the firing of the main guns and then allow it to resume, all turrets do fire every time. See uploaded video (below) for a demonstration of this bug.

Played a couple of custom and academy missions and have some things I noticed due to the changes made in this patch. I have the impression ships really do not sink so fast anymore. Perhaps this is also due to the fact that the AI designed ships come with more bulkheads now, but I also have the impression that flooding is very quickly handled if penetrating hits cause flooding. Also some smaller (e.g. CA, CL and DD) ships can take quite a beating, even by capital ship sized guns. They are not damaged as much. When designing DDs I also noticed that even though flooding was occasionally caused by incoming fire, the flooding was quickly solved and rarely caused permanent flooded compartments. Hits cause more extensive damage to the superstructure. I noticed that my BBs structure rating goes down rather quickly due to incoming fire. This is better than before, as the superstructure hardly ever caused a sinking and ships sunk more due to flooding than anything else. However, for BBs it feels a bit too much. BBs are big targets and already more easy to hit. AI torpedo avoidance works much better. Both for full AI control and division AI controlled ships, the AI responds and reacts much better than before to incoming torpedoes. I saw ships passing right between spread out torpedoes, that would have hit them for sure before this patch. Well done here! Some feedback on the AI division roles (e.g. Screen/Scout etc). It would be great if we could add an aggressiveness initiative control setting to a division. That way we could order DDs to move in and attack for instance or stay close to the ship they should screen for. Also it would be great if we could specify the location of scout and screen divisions relative to the scout or screen target division. I would like to set DDs to screen in front of the division or to the rear. Especially for larger fleets. I think these control settings for fleet formations are a must.

I think the system will be very much simplified. It will likely not be much different compared to RTW. The nation you start with will stay as is, but develop over time partially by your actions. You can probably only take and fight over territory outside your country (Imperialism). Perhaps you can win a war by occupying some home territories, which will reward you with land outside the main territory or some prestige or even interned ships. That said, I know as much as you, but judging from what I could read on this topic I would be very much surprised if this game would come up with a deeper geopolitical layer than RTW.

Good update. I like the new fleet management and of course the quad guns. I also observed that subordinate ships are now much more skillful in avoiding torpedoes! Still hoping for future armor scheme improvements and the campaign of course. Regarding mixing different gun turrets. I do feel that guns of the same caliber should be sharing their ammo, independent on the number of guns per turret. Either all turrets should only use their locally shored ammo or they should share ammo providing they use the same shells. Also, I feel that incoming hits have become very unpredictable in terms of actual damage caused. In a way this is a very good development, however it also opens up a lot of room for chance. Still unsure how to feel about that.

Still no update this week I fear? The lack of any news is disturbing.

I think this GPU is fine for UAD, I personally have a GTX1070 and get similar issues with many ships. Maybe the new 3000 series of Nvidia will do a lot better, but I think that it is mostly the lack of optimization that kills the frames.

It is not available through Steam. The actual Steam EA release will likely occur after we have an early version of the campaign.

Fully agree, pc parts are so cheap nowadays. A Ryzen 5 3600 with mobo, 16 GB of RAM will cost around 300 dollars if selected properly. If you need a better GPU you can upgrade that one also at a later time. You could go for the Rtx 1660. Better spend the money there first, the current PC is a write off imo for gaming.

Perhaps it has to do with the amount of space the individual gun barrels required and the complexity of the mechanism. I am just speculating here, as I do not have an answer why dual barreled guns for the smaller calibers where much more prolific. One could argue that the turrets between 3 and 5 inch had limited effectiveness anyway for naval battle purposes. Perhaps it was merely a design choice to limit cost and ammo expenditure by using less complex turrets.

I sadly feel a huge delay coming for the campaign when reading this.

I agree, or better yet: modular hulls.

True, not even mentioning the non-existent torpedo avoidance for formation ships.

I know Nick already replied to you with a wait and see answer, but from my understanding we will likely get turns. So, I guess it will be similar as in Rule the Waves where one turn is 1 month.

I personally would like a true drydock a bit better from an esthetics point of view, though there is something to say for having it togglable. The thing I like about the drydocks is to see the entire hull (below waterline) and the propellers.

There is something to be said for this. Especially as we will not have carriers to hold back further battleship development.

19" and 20" are likely coming in the next major patch!