Sonar

1. The ability to put abbreviations or designations as a ship type would be nice. While the game treats a dedicated minelayer as the hull it's based on, I'd like to group my designes together on the list. DDML for instance for a destroyer minelayer. Just so it's easier to pick through the list looking for a certain type of design you just don't remember the exact name of after 25 years of in game time. 2. (after a continuous scrolling map) being able to highlight countries based on ownership would be great, as well as supply lines, resources, etc... I still haven't found a territory I've owned for 6 years...

I responded to a comment from Stealth about asking for a predeployment screen. It's copied below. I don't think we need a deployment screen. The game should be setting up realistic formations for you. What we need are better AI, better formation AI, better individual AI, and AI that can take into account the entire fleet around it when it's moving ships around or firing torpedos. Heck, use how they would have actually done it in real life as a template. I don't know if people understand how difficult it actually is to change formations, particularly when the enemy is being engaged. How about the player can set predefined formations that the game would use when able? Then you get your spacing and all that, but you don't get the ability to put your ships exactly where they would be most effective because in real life that would almost never happen. I mean... We already get all the information on our and enemy ships down to the last shell and exactly how fast they are moving. We can always find the enemy fleet even with just "smoke spotted". Who needs a radar? Right now the game is a puzzle to be solved, not an exciting naval battle. Let's have some factors still be random please? *** Expanding on that puzzle comment: Why do we need all the exact time information in game? Doesn't it take away from the feel of an actual fight I'd all the blanks are filled in? Why does my side know the exact specifications for the enemy shop down to the last bolt and 2 inch shell? Why do I know the exact speed that ship 10k away is moving in 1895? This takes away from the game, I already know how any given battle will play out because I have perfect information. Do most historical fights always have one side wiped by the other? Or does one side withdraw because they aren't sure how they are doing? I fear in the interest of "accuracy" this game is missing what actually makes it fun. Can we reduce the feedback please?

Just an FYI here, don't think too hard on the economy money. The map should be expanding to the entire world right? It doesn't matter what the economy balance is like now, it'll have to be rebalanced later. EDIT: Also: Ottomans when?

I have an issue were I will click on a ship card the card will drag with the mouse. Say I'm checking my ships by cards going down the line, and I'll accidently drag a ship card into a new division or worse drag one division into another. I'd like to ask that a confirmation box pop up when combining divisions or ships to contain those accidental clicks. In order to contain click inflation, I'd also like to suggest that only clicking on the YES confirmation button (and/or the enter key) will work. Clicks in any other place on the the screen, on the confirmation box or not, automatically count as hitting the NO button, causing the box to go away. This way if you accidently combine a division, you can completely ignore the box and keep working. Pop up decisions need to take into account the number of ships in a players fleet for available options if possible. (See Stealths current play through of him getting options to send ships he doesn't actually have) Thank you! Sonar

Is there actually going to be an open campaign? I just want to check something as my hopes easily outpace my expectations. Is this game going to go the route of RTW (but not as in depth as already stated by the devs) or UA:AOS? ala linked scenarios? Just want clarification... I know what the game page says on the campaign but it doesn't specifically say "open campgain" or the like. I just don't want expectations to be crushed.

Is there a possibility of unused weapon points being removed from the model when in game? Lots of empty casemates and secondary spots. It would look good if the game could "fill in" those areas to make them look more natural.

People who want carriers so much may want to look at "Task Force Admiral". Game by the man who made "Cold Waters". I hope this game focuses on it's namesake. Right now I rarely see requests or play throughs of anything pre WW2 in tech. Makes me ache to get my hands on a hull designer and start pumping out late 1800's designs.

Skip the paragraph below for the suggestions if you don't want to read the whinge. I can't help myself from wondering and speculating about the campaign. I had no idea how it is currently planned, having missed out on the exploit that enabled the campaign. The only campaign system I'm familiar with related are either board games, like "World in Flames", "Seventh Fleet", etc. and computer games like the nostalgic "Great Naval Battles" series. The campaign that I envision most is of course the "Rule the Waves" series, which has already been stated as not something the dev's are trying to copy. That all being said, I'd like to put forth a few suggestions that would push the game to a more historical reality. Lots of people post about balance and accuracy and so on an so forth. In reality, nothing was ever balanced. Balance was something that you did not want in a war, and it never, every happened in real life. Name one perfectly balanced real life naval engagement. If you can, tell me if that was what the commanders wanted. Want to balance the scenarios? OK. Don't "balance" the game campaign though, because if you want boring, predictable game play that is how you get it. So how do you add variety and imbalance then while keeping the historical mouth feel? I suggest adding systems that occurred in real life. It takes a committee to design a ship. It maybe shouldn't but it does. Politics play a big part too, the bigger the project, the bigger the politics too be it 3 battleships or 30 destroyers. Maybe Franze has a hand in the steel industry and really wants to sell the nickel steel so a few strings are pulled and the Krupp armor is suddenly delayed and unavailable for the ship design in question despite being unlocked in the tech tree. The system could work like so: When a player designs a ship in campaign it has a few components that get "committeefied". Player hits submit design and one or more components get the below treatment: Popup: "Component "12 inch Mark 4 barrels" have been diverted to another project by Admiral Poopface. "12 Inch Mark 2 barrels" have been assigned to this design instead. This reduces the design cost by "$$$" amount. Now the player gets the option to deal with this. We can handle it a few ways. The most basic way to handle it is to just end it there. The players design isn't as top notch perfectly designed as they want it to be, such was the real life. OR The player gets a choice. Maybe they get an option to pay more money (and so get fewer ships) for the design they want originally. Maybe they have a simple political system where they can spend political capital to get what they want. Maybe another option. There should also be chance to get a better part rarely as well... How many vehicles in history would have been great if they only could have gotten the planned parts and not been forced to make do? When a game like this is perfectly balanced it's easy to win. You crunch numbers and do the math and apply the formula. With my current income and tech I can make X amount of Z type ships with Y type components and that will get me the win. It then becomes a yes or no option. Force players to deal with bad hands, push them to think of more than numbers. That's where you will get longevity in the game, that's where the great stories will come from, and that is where the game will shine where other similar games won't.

Feedback: Sinking ships could have variable sink rates. A sinking ship is a navigational hazard, and it can take hours for a ship to sink. Along those lines, dead ships don't usually immediatly stop dead in the water. I'd like to see more focus on prewar and interwar hulls personally.

That's more a WWII thing... the torpedo boats pretty much are patrol boats.

Recently it was posted how the team simplified the designer as the version with ship hull cross sections was very confusing, even to the devs for *reasons*. I buy that. I would like to ask the devs to consider putting in the designer as much as they can. Even if it means either an "advanced" mode or maybe a separate advanced program. Why? The more freedom, the better the player made ships. No matter how complex you allow it to be people WILL figure it out and produce absolute master pieces. Maybe making these ships shareable via workshop would help allow players not interested in deep ship building complexity the ability to use the better made ships. I am a fan of pre-dreadnoughts and if you know the game "From the Depths" you know that it has an impressive early BB and pre-dreadnought making crew. I've made a few myself and my favorite ship I've made is the SMS Seigfried . However you'll never see that in RTW or currently in this game because this ship is a coastal defense ship and it doesn't fall into any category that this game or RTW's uses. The designer as it stands makes pretty ships, but it also sets a common look. Snap points for casement guns make sense sure, but for large turrets? For towers? For smokestacks? What if we could place down a tower slightly merged with a rear tower with stacks in front and in back? Realistic? No of course not. Able to make great looking ships and help give the game more legs to stand on? Absolutely. I see ship pictures in game that I can't make that that is a bit frustrating (Coastal Dreadnought). Maybe it's a bad design, but can I play with it? Please?*** ***NOTE I understand the fidelity of one game in no way relates to the other. The point stands, the more freedom we can get in the maker, the better for the game and the community. If nothing else would the design team consider opening up the hulls for modders to easily make them outside of the game and import them in? There are lots of awesome ships that will never see the light of day if we can't open up the ship designer as much as possible. TLDR: Give us as advanced a ship maker as you can please, the community will use it. Another ship I recreated in From the Depths that wouldn't see the light of day: Jean d Arc 1899 and other awesome ships, real and fantasy, from talented makers (much more than me): Pearl Class 1890 Sankt Jacobus Class Armoured Cruiser USS Cheyenne BM10