halfmanhalfsquidman

I'd love to see a mini-map or some other map function that would give me a overview of the battle, perhaps issue steering commands from there as well. I often find I lose track of ships when trying to manage multiple divisions.

I don't know if this is mentioned in the earlier posts on this thread, but i find the spread of torpedos frustrating. If you have multiple torpedo launchers on your deck they all fire on the exact same bearing creating groups of torpedos very close together and at many ranges a ship can and does slip between these groups of torpedos. If multiple launchers fired on slightly different (1 or 2 degrees different) at longer ranges you would create more effective torpedo spreads. Additionally formations tend to fire torps as individuals. I'd rather all 3 torpedo boats drop torpedos roughly at the same time to create a larger more dangerous spread rather than sequentially down the line. Is this something we might be able to expect in future updates? Additionally I think a button to enable torpedo avoidance would be good so even if you are controlling a formation and not the AI, if they spot torpedos they will maneuver to avoid it. I'm usually so busy managing a fight I'll eat a detected torpedo because that ships captain refuses to adjust course. I know it can create problems in battle managament but that would be more accurate.

I assume that the campaign will include something like the treaty limits of the Washington and London Naval Treaties as that would add a level of compromise in making designs and your support/opposition ofit as a Naval Minister could be an interesting gameplay decision. Think Treay/Fleet factions in Japan in the 20s and 30s where some officers believed Japan could not have the industrial capacity to keep up with the US vs the desire to be recognized as an equal on the world stage. I think there should also be options to "cheat" on the treaties with some sort of raising of tensions or abrogating the treaty if you get caught. In the mean time, I think introducing treaty limits in the custom battle menu would be fun too. Makes for a reason to have 8" cruisers and you could more accurately recreate some historical battles like River Plate or Java Sea. Thoughts?

Has there beeen any word from the devs about what the campaign will look like for this game? Will it look like the Age of Sail/UG: Civil War campaigns with some set battles or will it be closer to Rule the Waves? Personally I'd prefer to see a RTW style campaign. I'd be very disappointed if it was just a copy paste of the Age of Sail campaign to this era.

Image from the above, for somereason it wouldn't let me attach it to first post.

So I was playing the Super-Yamato mission and noticed something a little strange. One of the ships I'd beaten to a pulp was still firing away happily with its single remaining turret even though it was frequenly being swamped as the ship sat lower in the water. Something for the devs to consider. I also had a BB at 1% structure survive a further 4 salvos of 18" super-heavy shells which scored multiple hits keep fighting. I know currently there is no enemy surrender or disengagement in most naval academy missions, but will there be crew morale/abandon ship checks in the future when it is clear that a ship is crippled.

Giving new meaning to turtleback armor.

She wasn't really effective due to a lack of spotting range but I loved the look of the HMS Venerable here with her 4 triple 18"-ers

I feel like that design didn't catch on in the real world for a reason, perhaps the advantages need a tweak downward.

What's up with the AI's strange preference for single barrel turrets for main batteries? I get that some of the fun is the interesting designs you encounter, but large single barrel turrets really break immersion for me and I can't see how the weight of the turrets and armor is justified for the increased accuracy.

Lines becoming chaotic because of damage are a thing though. Rudder damage or a hit to the bridge has caused unintended turns for whole battle lines in the past because the following ship assumes it missed and order or has to manuever to avoid collision (which don't actually do damage right now it seems)

CVs and aircraft may be best left as an off map asset IMO. And then leave the actual strikes to the AI (assuming it can handle it) maybe let you as the admiral select the Target or allocate sorties to attempting to silence enemy CVs. For land based aircraft having strikes against combatants can probably be best abstracted to the campaign map, whatever that ends up looking like, depending on the air superiority and mission assigned to a task group. So something like Force Z in December, 1941 would be more of a pop up then a battle.

Completely agree. If it is a game balance thing for future multiplayer then okay I guess, but adding more cost without affecting accuracy and range is probably better. Honestly though I feel like the primary audience for this game will overlap more with RTW than World of Warships (which I also play, but just because I love big battle boats and not for historical satisfaction)

Is there a crash report mechanism currently? I've found that sometimes when fighting bigger battles like the whole predreadnought fleet action or the time I built like 13 BBs to fight 2 Dreadnoughts (it did not go well for me) the game suddenly crashes out to my desktop. I didn't get an error pop-up with an option to send a crash report. I figured since the game is still in Alpha the dev team would appreciate the data.

Nick, thanks for paying such close attention to all the input from us in the peanut gallery. I know you've got to feel like you've been told the same thing by a ton of people and that you've received far more input than you could possibly prioritize and implement. I just wanted to say thanks and I appreciate all the effort and engagement you've shown to incorporate feedback. As for ship building, barbette placement seems a little unduly constricted. See screenshot. Once I had the funnels placed and stuff I wasn't able to do superfiring without the big silly gap on deck. I'd also find it helpful if we knew how much funnel capacity we needed when selecting funnels. Right now I kinda have to guess and check based on my engine effeciency number. If this info is already available it might not be well displayed. I'd also like to throw my name on the list of individuals requesting an ability to save/name ships. While I'm on the naming point, you obviously have some lists that the ship names come from by class. Maybe it would be good to allow players to slect naming conventions by class (probably in campaign) i.e. when designing a class a US player could select Cities, States, Presidents, Battles, Classics (Enterprise, Bonhomme Richard, Constellation, etc) and then additional ships built in that class are given a name from that list.

Totally agree. There are times HE should be useful, such as against less armored ships where over penetration could be an issue. But plunging fire from AP through the decks should be much more effective than it is. Same goes for close in fire when you can overmatch the belts.

I'm enjoying the combat, but have some suggestions. Many are probably repeated: 1) without a minimap, I too easily find that I lose situational awareness of my heading vs the enemy and mask my own guns, or find myself closing range when it needs to be opened. 2) HE seems to be far too effective, espcially against BBs 3) Damage modeling seems a little obscure at times. I was pounding a BB that had 4% structure with 18 inch guns, seeing damage numbers in the hundreds with each hit, but did not see any change in teh damage state of the ship. Either damage needs to be distrubuted to adjacent cells or subsystems need to begin to degrade. It seems that very badly damaged ships fight far too effectivelly when in truth the casualties (both engineering and personnel) would begin to severly reduce the ability to the crew to fight the ship. Also it seems DC teams are just as good at putting out fires and manning pumps when the ship certainly has lost all its pumps from battle damage. Bascially damage should snowball, not plateau. 4) Secondary batteries need to be either assigned targets or have an AI deal with priorities like MTBs or DDs entering their range instead of just bouncing 3" shells off a dreadnoughts belt or wasting 12" shells trying to plug an MTB. Its the whole purpose of having these batteries. Without this option it seems like a waste.

Hi, bought the game yesterday and have had an evening and morning before work to play around with ship design and some battles. As for the ship designer I have the following concerns right now: 1) Forward Towers too far forward. I often find if I max out the ship size then I end up with a "Reverse Rodney" as I've called it where I have almost all my armament in the rear of the vessel. 2) Mor flex on rear tower placement too. For example in the BC vs BB battle that BC hull design we are given ends up with a big dumb gap in the middle of the towers that is too small to fit a turret in as was done historically and I can't scootch the rear tower forward to fix weight imbalance issues. Give me the freedom to play out my naval architect fantasies! 3) I know it has been suggested we auto-build and then tweak, would it be possible to also have some histroical archetypes we could select and then adjust? IE give me a Yamato or Hood and let me edit those. Cheers!