Niomedes

You can actually see the factors which are being considered for this calculation during battle on the left side of your screenif you hover over the target while having one of your ships selected.

The campaign will offer the sandbox mode you desire. Campaign will be available as soon as possible, when we finish some needed features that are essential for making the campaign interesting. That's old news. We're going to get a Custom Battle editor/skirmish mode within the next couple of updates now:

As someone else already said, The Total war AI wasn't good to begin with. Aside of that, quite a few games like Stellaris, Crusader kings and Hearts of Iron both have very deep and interesting Gameplay, comperatively strong AI and Multiplayer at the same time, so I don't see why Gamelabs should be incapable of delivering a good AI and a good Multiplayer. The people which play Ultimate Admiral have no problem with playing slow paced battles in the first place, else they wouldn't be here. What's so wrong about giving us the opportunity to play those battles with or against our friends ? And while a vocal, casual, audience can sometimes corrupt devs into doing away with the more hardcore features of their games, this is far from inevitable. It's a choice. and I'm confident that Gamelabs knows its audience better than to destroy what makes their games good, no matter the amount of multiplayer they're going to offer.

Well, actually:

Hit chance is how likely the shells are to land in the area the target is SUPPOSED to be when they come down. You can maneuver out of the area you're predicted to be in after the shells are fired of course.

Ships already do that, unless you order them to drive into each other. Spend more attention to your fleet if you want to avoid that, you can disable torpedo fire for a ship by clicking on the torpedo Icon. You can give the AI control over a division by clicking on the small captain's cap on the left side of the orders bar. AI controlled ships automatically avoid torpedos, if they discover them that is. That wouldn't be usefull, it would be pointless. Your screen is automatically going to move against the closest hostile fleet no matter its position, and will automatically elect the enemy closest to your main fleet as its target. This usually already amounts to your screen attacking the enemy escorts, but you can obviously set targets for them manually if you don't like what they do. Well, I'd rather see what the enemy is shooting at and what my ships are shooting at then being "fully immersed", if you will. It's kinda crucial for a strategy game to have the information concerning what's actually happening. As a setting perhaps for high end Machines. But this is jus going to kill the framerate of most people. Concerning your suggestions in general, most of them sound as if you'd like the game to basically play itself. Removing the need to watch out for and evade torpedos, automating the Screen option more than it already is, automating torpedo target selection etc. is just taking away the impact of player skill in favor of just having a pretty battle to look at over which one doesn't really have control anymore. If you'd like to play such a game, you should consider picking up Endless Space. I however, prefer this game just like it is, with all the micromanagement it requires. And it doesn't even require a lot of micromanagement in the first place.

The german Battlecruiser concept was something entirely different. Their Battlecruisers weren't really battle cruisers, but rather a development of the heavy cruiser which emphasized survivability even more, and allowed them to partake in the line of battle. if you want to simulate them, you should pick one of the Heavy cruiser/Armored cruiser hulls. Their resistance is higher than that of the battlecruiser hulls, they can only fit lighter weapons and their speed is obviously still cruiser-like. They are far better suited to simulating german battlecruisers than the Battlecruiser hulls.

I'm experiencing similiar issues. My destroyers feel more vulnerable than those damn boats too actually.

In addition to what Nick said: Histocially speaking, Battle cruisers were meant to be a cheap and fast in-between version of the battleship and the cruiser which would bring battleship guns into the fight, but be much faster than battleships. This would allow the battlecruiser to venture onto the seas as soon as war was decleared and immediatly hunt down any enemy cruisers, which wouldn't stand a chance against battleship guns. Thereafter, the battlecruiser would either raid hostile trade lanes or be able to fullfill a multitude of missions for the battlefleet, including scouting, skirmishing with the hostile battle line, attacking the hostile screen or even joining the allied main battle line during battle, even though that would be more of a last resort due to the Battlecruiser's lack of armor. As such, Battlecruisers aren't supposed to have the same armor as a battleship, so it makes perfect sense that their hull types would be less resilient.

The game regularily clashes during the Mission "Super Dreadnought or Battlecruiser", no matter at what speed I play said mission.

By that Token, Bulgaria and Greece should be great powers too, due to the actions they fought against the Ottomans.

Press R. It rotates objects you place

This penalty already exists.

I placed the secondaries indipendantly of hard points, this is just one of the standard dreadbought hulls, the IV I think. The mission is designed in such a way that you're always going to be spotted before you spot them if you go with battleships. As such, you best option is to drive straight at the origin of the shots and hope that you're not getting killed before you get there. A speed of 25 knots minimum is required to get into range fast enough to achieve that. That's why I used two large funnels, oil and induced boilers. You should always go with 100% funnel capacity if you can, but it's especially crucial here to prevent your ships from becoming sitting ducks.

Well, if anything, there are too many major naions. China and Spain weren't really all that important in a maritime sense between 1890 and 1930, with both having lost their world power status quite some time ago.

Can't confirm this. In my experience, light craft explode sufficiently when hit with a huge HE round.

I tried the same battle a few times again, and turns out you can actually even win it with only three Battleships. The hostiles never spawn with anything above of 379mm (at least they have never done that in my playtroughs), which means that getting even just 300mm Belt and 100mm Dekc with Harvey steel will suffice to make your ships nigh invulnerable in long range fighting. Furthermore, you should get 406mm's at least, with Heavy Shells. Those will shred anything. Also, you need to use HE instead of AP. And the ship in the picture is the type I used when I did my run with only 3 ships.

Yes to the funnel thing. This explains why my Battlecruiser never went up to the 32 knots I made his engine for ! Aside of that, I agree with everything you said. Let's hope that that more people do and that the Devs reconsider the more complicated designer.

That is odd. I didn't loose a single ship doing what I just described. You really need to keep your distance during that, yes. Never get closer to their battle line than 9 km. Also, you only really need one hit to destroy a destroyer if your Battleships are any good. The chance to hit at 10 kilometers is only about 3-5 % or so, but eventually, one of the shells is gonna land. Usually within the first 2 salvos.

1. There is. Focus fire on the ships which are closest to you and work your way up to those further away. I got this one in two tries, and there are probably a lot of people who only needed one. You just need to choose your targets better. Aside of that, reaslistically speaking, focussing fire decreases accuracy, and the devs actually said that they're going to implement that further down the line. So what you did by distributing fire instead of concentrating it is at some point going to be the default and most efficient way to do battle.

TW as in Total War ?

Yes there is. Adding several nuclear submarine powerplants until there is almost nothing else aboard would do the trick. You can achieve absolutely anything if you have enough energy at your disposal.

I mean, it would already be pretty cool to just have some historical battles akin to what the total war franchise does in the game.

Exactly. I'm also opposed to artificially limiting speed of certain classes. If someone decided to add a modern powerplant to an old dreadnought hull, it just would go faster. And I'd really like to have the option to equip a Pre dreadnought with a diesel engine and have it go around at 30 knots+ just for the memes alone. USS Constitution also isn't limited to like 12 knots anymore due to a modern powerplant.