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Skoggatt

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  1. I still think it was a mistake going all the way to the 1940s. I think the game should have ended around 1925 to avoid getting distracted by WW2 ships and technology. Such a cut off date would also make the lack of aircraft feel completely natural. As it is we have a preponderance of WW2 ships with their AA mounts modeled for no reason and which usually can only be built a couple different ways because of the way the pieces fit together. Meanwhile, 1890 to 1910 has hardly any variety and many nations share the same hulls. In reality, not only were there more varied designs in this time period, but there were more nations with blue water navies as well.
  2. I'm able to wait six months for the campaign if that's what it takes, particularly if they start releasing more information as they go which seems to be the plan. However, I was hoping that game mechanics like the armor system would get fixed before campaign, and if we don't see any more substantial releases until the campaign comes out that means we have 4-6 months before we can really try anything new, and that some key mechanics aren't getting fixed anytime soon. I realize that the game is in alpha and we can't expect everything to be perfect right away, but my worry is that things like a reworked armor system never get implemented at all.
  3. With the start date being 1890 ironclads have to be included. The first "pre-dreadnought" was launched by the UK in 1889, and other nations were further behind. Every country, UK included, will have fleets consisting primarily of breastwork monitors, turret ships, or even broadside ironclads. I don't think a huge number of hulls need to be added to represent these ships since the focus will be on replacing them with true battleships and later dreadnoughts, but at least one or two models for each type of ironclad. Ships like HMS Devastation and the US costal defence monitors would be easy to add, but many ironclads and cruisers of this era had sails as well as steam power, so that would need to be accounted for. Cruisers especially in the 1870s and 80s relied on sail to give them the necessary range to operate far from home waters, so sails will need to be implemented at least for strategic movement.
  4. Exactly my feelings. I want the designer and the combat in a good place before throwing all of that into the campaign mechanics. If the extra time required means the campaign is more polished when we get our hands on it, all the better. At this point I don't think we could return a lot of valuable feedback on how the campaign actually plays. Sure, there might be features present I like or don't like, but how can we test the balance of different nations if ship designs are so far from the final product? We will end up building fleets of min-maxed vessels that wont work in the final product while the AI builds similarly unbalanced designs or flat out illogical ones. I would love to see some aspects of the campaign of course. It would be nice to know how long turns last, how big the sea zones are and if they include areas such as the Black Sea, what minor nations are included, and how diplomacy/war declaration works. Honestly, just having some answers to questions like those would tide me over for a while until things are ready to go.
  5. I guess I'm in the minority of people that is fine to see the campaign pushed further back. Not that I don't want to see the campaign, in fact that will be the only mode I play when it comes out. But I think the armor system needs to be fixed at a minimum before that time as that will require a whole new round of rebalancing in itself.
  6. Another way to limit the number of gun calibers you choose to use would be to have some sort of system where you have to develop gun models before putting them on ships. So if you want 12" guns on your next BB, you have to spend money and time developing a 12" gun. It would make sense if better versions of a given caliber of gun were developed from earlier ones faster and cheaper, funneling the player towards investing in a few calibers of weapons at a time. Thus most of your guns might have either 12", 6", or 4" guns with a few outliers, just as in real fleets.
  7. I'm not really concerned about the difficulty of the academy missions, they aren't made to be fair after all. If you make a custom battle with equal numbers of ships and tech level it's pretty easy to design ships that perform well, even overwhelmingly so. I also think it's too early to complain about the damage model. It's a placeholder at this point, though I sincerely hope that we get the reworked armor and damage model before campaign and not after. I think we need one more update focusing on an armor rework before we get to try out the campaign, and accordingly I doubt the campaign is releasing in three weeks though I could be wrong.
  8. I think one problem right now is that the best way to make your ship hard to hit is to make it fast. With how things are right now you can make a 40kt battle cruiser as easily as a 40kt destroyer. Combined with the fact that larger guns usually have much better accuracy than smaller ones. This means the larger ships are hard to hit, but have better accuracy against the smaller ones even with the relative penalties to aiming due to the size of the ships. In reality (unlike in WOWS) estimating target speed was actually the easiest part of getting a firing solution. Estimating range was much more difficult in this time period. Target speed should have an effect on accuracy, but it should be relatively minor compared to other factors. Target size/detectability should be much more important in calculating accuracy since a smaller less perceptible ship will be harder to range than a large battleship. Furthermore, maneuverable ships such as destroyers and torpedo boats should be extra difficult to hit; historically these ships were maneuverable enough they could chase the shell splashes of the ships firing at them, making it very difficult to adjust fall of shot. In game this could work by making larger slower firing guns unable to fully lock on to small evasive targets. This would give torpedo armed craft a chance to close the range, and give purpose to smaller faster firing guns as well.
  9. It would be really disappointing if all of the nations were completely balanced with each other. At that point the only difference would be the flag you get on your ships. I do think that some historical balancing mechanics are appropriate. Britain should have strict requirements as far as defending her empire, meaning you need to spend a lot on smaller cruisers to patrol the world, and split your main fleet between the Atlantic and Mediterranean. Austria Hungary will be rather poor, but can concentrate her whole navy in the eastern Mediterranean to challenge Greece, Turkey, or the Russian Black Sea fleet. Ideally a good player would be able to score some early victories with those smaller powers, and grow their navy to take on Italy or France later in the campaign. Just because you can't beat the UK at the beginning of the game doesn't mean the game wont be fun. The US in 1890 would get it's teeth kicked in fighting one of the bigger European powers, but you can certainly build up to win a war with Spain or one of the South American countries if they are included.
  10. I think the effect that Dreadnought had on previous generations of battleship is a bit overstated when historians say things like "it made every previous battleship obsolete overnight." While it's true it obsoleted other ships in a technical sense, it took many years for sufficient numbers of Dreadnoughts to be built to begin replacing the older ships. Better to have obsolete ships active in the fleet than the most advanced ships in the world sitting on the slips when war breaks out.
  11. While bulkheads in theory shouldn't reduce the chances of fires, in the game the bulkhead level represents the overall internal protection and damage control (for better or for worse). More advanced ships had better protection against flash fires, including both fireproof doors and valves to flood magazines should fire break out which should be represented either by the bulkheads or by another option in the ship constructor.
  12. A country like Italy can take on Britain by concentrating all of it's force in one area while Britain has an extensive empire to patrol. Tactics like commerce raiding and torpedo boat fleets will give smaller nations a fighting chance against huge fleets of battleships as well, and smaller nations could always find an ally to help against a bigger foe. You could also start out by beating up smaller nations like Greece or the Ottomans before taking on the larger ones. That's how I would like to see the campaign anyways. It would be good if the campaign is less random than RTW, and the fact there are more nations will help a lot. Ultimately each nation should play out uniquely, and some will be harder than other by their very nature. The US will start out small but grow exponentially, while AH will be a big challenge.
  13. I like the direction the game is going, but I do hope that an armor rework is one of the next changes. I don't think the campaign should be released before an armor rework, since changing armor will so drastically upset the balance of everything else.
  14. It really comes down to the main problem of direct drive turbines: They have terrible efficiency when running below full steam, so such a ship can be fast, but not long legged. In reality, very few actual warships were equipped with just the high speed direct drive turbines. I only know of a few early British destroyers, and those were basically tech demonstrators and not practical warships. There were a number of answers: the most common was to pair the high speed engines with a couple of smaller "cruising turbines" optimized for lower speeds. The French also tried pairing turbines with VTE engines, the Germans paired turbines with diesels, and the US implemented turbo-electric drives which solved the problem by running the turbines at full steam to generate power and throttling the shafts via electric motor. Ultimately, geared turbines solved the problem at a lower weight and cost once gearboxes that didn't explode were developed. By World War 2 everyone was using geared turbines for the most part, but turbo-electric and diesel electric drives were used on some US destroyer escorts as the electric drives allowed them to change course and speed more rapidly while making a depth charge attack. The use of pure diesel diesel propulsion on Deutschland was both for efficiency and because they required fewer men to maintain, both important for long raiding missions. Look at the difference in crew size between Deutschland and Hipper, a lot of that was due to the engineering requirements of the two.It also saved weight when the Germans were somewhat trying (and still failing) to adhere to the Versailles treaty. On the other hand diesel was more expensive per HP, required more expensive fuel, and more prone to battle damage. Honestly, the combination of factors that lead the Germans to use diesel power were so specific that I don't think diesel propulsion would very often be the best choice if it's modeled historically in game.
  15. Royal Sovereign entered RN service in 1892 if I recall. Other navies would have true pre-dreadnoughts enter service a little bit later of course, so in the timeframe of the game ironclads should be the primary warships for a few years at least. By 1890 the primary ironclads in use should be turreted ironclads such as HMS Devastation or monitors such as USS Amphitrite, which are similar enough in mechanics to true pre-dreadnoughts that it shouldn't be too hard to add hulls for those kinds of ships. What will be more difficult to add will be legacy cruisers. Before 1890 almost all cruisers had full rigging for sail in addition to steam power.
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