UnleashtheKraken

I also would like to know. Right now i've given up and I just stack up main belt and center deck armor. Armoring turrets doesn't seem to matter. Turret position doesn't matter. Balancing the ship does matter, and increasing speed worsens the stability. This game often feels like a very unrealistic ship builder with somewhat decent combat mechanics. The way turret marks (I'm going a bit off topic) are size by size, rather than an overall mark increase that takes longer to research but applies to all researched sizes, seems really unrealistic. Many of the decisions of this game could use reworking, smoothing, and advancing. I've given up pushing the bug that I and several others found and reported. No reply, no 'we're working on it', not even a sign of developer notice. I'm still playing but no longer enthused about this dev team, to the point that I'm not buying any further games from them without first doing some serious scrutiny.

Reading this thread just reinforced how much I don't like the dev's vision of not having political say in the running of finance, invasions, or other guidance of the nation/empire. It is extremely frustrating to be placed at the hands of an AI that acts as a black box, with terrible decision making (I will NOT invade this country I am at war with, despite surrounding it with 3 nations that cumulatively have six times the army power, and that nation repeatedly launching failed invasions of my countries), and popup messages that you have to remember 10 turns down the line. Mouse hovering gives barely any info. I need 25K tons for a popup conquest. I move a fleet there, the fleet is 175K tons, outmassing 7:1, and I see 65% chance of victory because a decade ago I did sell this territory some obsolete destroyers, which are now easy fodder for the invasion fleet nearby. Can I launch my own mission to destroy that naval power? Oh no, I have no control of that. Despite being an admiral and planning/launching battles being what I should be doing. This game rips so much control away from the player. It's like a sim game with most of the strategy torn away, leaving task force positioning and in-game control of heading/speed. And do not get me started on telling a group of ships to fire at a target I select, only to have that group immediately switch to a different target. So I select and retarget my selection, and again the AI decides to have my battleships shoot their main guns at a destroyer that's further away than the enemy battleship I'm trying to sink. The faith in AI control the devs seem to have is misplaced. If there were a mod that let me take control of political decisions, and see tensions as more than a once-in-a-while popup, I'd grab that in a heartbeat.

Also on earlier techs, center deck armor can really help control pitch and roll, unrealistically heavy center deck can actually help with gunnery so that as the AI tries to close to 'kill' range, my guns are destroying them before they can get in range.

As far as I know, it's not listed as a fix for 1.4 either. There are great things about UA:D, and there are things that make me despair. I want to open a port on the map, and build ships from there, instead of build ship, go to fleet list, assign port from a scrolling, small list. Especially destroyers, I actually have trouble sometimes, finding the right port. That's just one example. I think the game desperately needs QoL passes. I think they'd be well worth it, and this bug with intercessing accuracy actively affects how I handle ship maneuvers. I daren't cross ships close by, or the AI will likely deeply damage, or sink, the one they're not even aiming at.

BUMP.

In my semi--informed opinion, what you're (we're) waiting on is game engine optimization. I've seen games with more factions and a deeper political system wizz by. This is not a beta game, no matter what the devs call it. It is not feature complete, let alone feature-fleshed out and deepened. Right now half the features you could automate and never notice a difference. I look forward to further development and refinement.

Yes, I watched that. 'We will see what we can do about it in the next updates.' I'm not holding my breath, that's too damned weasel-wordy. A popular player request? There's already SOME system for pre-battle deployment being handled by game logic. This doesn't seem like it's a huge ask and with a 'popular player request' one would really think an answer more like, 'We have heard the community and will add it to our plans for upcoming patches'. I'm frankly shocked that the devs didn't already have some plan for this. This seems very out of touch and speaks to the 'player hands off' to a lot of aspects of this game, of which I personally am not a fan. The only thing saving the game is the real time battles, commanding multi-unit fleets. The moment a naval ship design/ship combat game that is more player friendly (I do not mean hand-holdy or casual) comes along, I might be dropping this. The ship designer is very limited and weirdly arbitrary, secondaries seem stupidly effective against large ships. And the complete lack of multiplayer in a game that is BEGGING for multiplayer is frankly a massive disappointment. Co-op modes, and team PvP using some sort of points system, could be amazing. I'm willing to bet they could triple sales or even more if the game had multiplayer. I have several friends who expressed interest until I told them 'single player only, just AI opponents' and they were like 'I was interested but hard nope without multi'. Right now this (definitely not a beta lmao) game has weird design focus and priorities, but sometimes that can come out great. I'm just feeling hope fade.

Well, yes, but the request and idea are valid and, honestly, I'm not sure why pre-battle player set deployment is not ALREADY a part of the game. This would be a serious improvement. There's a lot of 'player hands off' decisions about this game that are frustrating. It's not immersive, it's just '*EYEROLL* here I go having to undo the tangle the computer has put my fleet into for the hundredth time. Why in hell do I have 4 destroyers in one division and then 1 on it's own following, or screening. At the VERY least I want to determine how many ships are in each division, what role they're fulfilling. Setting the position, division composition, and role of my fleet pre-battle would be the ideal.

I checked to see that it worked, but given how many times I've had to restart the campaign (I know it's a work in progress, I'm not complaining about that), I stopped naming unless I deeply dislike the name. When the game is done with adding completely new features and forcing new campaign starts, then yes, I plan to start naming my ships. Favorites of mine, from Total War: Napoleon for example, I played a very long campaign as the UK. My armed merchants were precious stones or birds. 5th rates, which I used extensively in anti-piracy in Empire, were Swift, Chase, Rapid, or Cheetah, or anything suggesting speed. 1st rates were Magnificent, Splendid, (King Name and Number Goes Here), of course I had a Victory. So generally themes. I also share the problem of a poster from above (looks... @HistoricalAccuracyMan ) wherein I don't know enough foreign languages to come up with names. So detailed lists of ship nmes are very helpful. Speaking of, an idea for the game - lists of ship names, both historical and fictional, grouped by class, and selectable by dropdown.

Gamelabs calls this a Beta but this is very early pre-alpha certainly. It's a 'Beta' so that you can play the unfinished version of upcoming additions/changes using the Beta tab in Steam. In reality this is a pre-alpha product. Major features aren't even implemented, all of the factions are not present in campaign. The next major update (1.09 as I type this) is set to actually introduce minelaying and minesweeping functionality, as well as submarine and antisubmarine warfare as an abstract in the campaign. The list of new features, as well as revising and reworking and adding to the tech tree, is fairly large. A game is in Beta when all major features are implemented, and is the time for tuning, tweaking, and optimization of said features. I understand WHY UA:D is stated to be in Beta but let's separate Steam functionality from the actual meaning of the terms in software Dev. I can't wait to see what this thing will look like when it's ACTUALLY a beta.

I was confused because I play at 1440. Glad you figured it out.

Got a whole thread on this. As yet, no dev response. Hopefully you get some attention.

Bravo for this.

I would want to be able to shift-click select ships that are mothballed, and full crew them all at once. Replying to this in support. We can already multiclick ships and set their port while under construction...actually to that end, I want to be able to change home port after they are built. They shouldn't be locked to the shipyard they launched from.

Here's another +1 to everything on this list. This game feels...spongy and unresponsive in a lot of ways. Spongy in that although a player inputs commands, ships in battles may not respond well to them, even though the command and desired outcome is ENTIRELY WITHIN the realm of possibility. Too much of this game feels out of control, and I personally want to MURDER my destroyer captains who fail to launch optimal torpedo strikes with aggressive launch orders, a perfect approach on the bow, the torpedo target manually set before the enemy was even in launch range, and the enemy currently shooting at something else. I am utterly out of patience for this to be fixed. I've also posted several bugs that have yet to see a patch list or get any dev notice. I'm currently feeling that buying in to contribute to testing was a mistake. My oldest report, of guns having uncanny 100% accuracy against ships that intercede on the firing line to a target ship, is getting toward a year old with no dev acknowledgement, despite several players reporting and confirming the issue in that thread. I've currently taken a break from the game, albeit keeping up with forums and patch announcements. I'll wait to the next major patch to see if the devs start listening to us that we DO NOT LIKE a lot of these decisions about tactics and when to launch and turrets not functioning. At the very least if a turret is not firing/launching at a target in range and inside fire arc, I want to know WHY the damn thing is not responding to orders.

I hate the barbette system. First - finding the right size of barbette to match your turret with almost no help. You have to learn it blind. I know now which barbettes go with which turret, but for a newbie? Pick one and hope. Secondly, the limits of position. Historical ships would put a barbette just about anywhere. I'm not going to post pictures, because I've seen them in plenty of pics on this forum. Want to build a French twin 4x forward, with all the secondaries to the rear? Good luck, can't do it, unless they make a dedicated superstructure. The barbette system currently is extremely limiting. My recommendation for a fix is to create procedural barbettes. Want a turret on a barbette? Offer editing tools. The barbette should start by matching the diameter of the turret's ring, but beyond that, an editing tool would allow height (either in steps, or via 'stretching' smoothly to give precisely desired heights. You could additionally offer additions, such as a base that melds to the superstructure (forward or aft or even Q turret style between fore and aft towers. Go even crazier, give us a main gun barbette with fixed secondary positions underneath, offering good arcs of fire without interfering with the primary turret. There is SO MUCH POSSIBILITY by using procedural part generation with deep player editing control, and it is being ignored in favor of precreated content based only on historical hulls. Honestly the editing tools feel like you're in a strait jacket, so limited to what WAS, instead of what COULD BE. I'm absolutely in favor of recreating historical hulls at a high degree of fidelity. But I'm just as in favor of wonky, silly, or even better, possibly viable turret schemes that were not used but why not let us have the freedom to check it out. The amount of fixed features likewise on the hulls is limiting. We should have additional superstructure features - ability to place gundecks. Dedicated torpedo reload structures. Mid-deck structures between the funnels and fore/aft turrets. Again, what's there is very limited. I'm still hoping for more variety in the hull beyond displacement, draught, and beam. Inset torpedo firing positions. below the main deck. If I want to build a ship with three decks of casemate guns. then let me have the freedom to design something that dumb. Thanks for listening to my TED talk.

What others said. To apply new passive modifiers, create a refit design, then go and refit your existing ships of that class. Unfortunately you cannot build a new ship from a refit design currently. One of many quality of life and realism changes that needs to happen.

I've seen the 'mobile smoke cloud' mentioned before but so much else needs work, tuning, tweaking, and to be implemented in the first place...it's probably on a list.

His point about crew training was that, in the financials, you should bump crew train to 100%, always. If a crew is cadets, their overall accuracy will be less than a veteran crew, assuming equal equipment. And I'm sorry to pick on a player here, but I hope to help learn. In this situation, he should be cutting the wedge, turning hard bow in. Hopefully he's armored the prow more than the stern, and by presenting the angled side should suffer reduced or no penetration. To me that looks like it's working as intended. There are lessons to be learned here.

I agree, but I've reported bugs and seen no feedback, dev acknowledgement, nor mention in patch notes as having been fixed. One longstanding bug, of shot accuracy against a non-target ship when that ship intersects the firing line, has additional information from several players, it's still happening as of update 13 (I haven't played 14 and 15 yet, I'm waiting on new RAM to arrive to keep this ancient beast going). A simple 'we have received your feedback and will investigate would do wonders. It really feels like devs just respond to the latest replies in this thread, and whole swathes go unread. I posted a several bug two-part post in this thread. No acknowledgement. It has been feeling futile to try and bug-hunt, test bugs, and report on them.

Yes. I think building/refitting screen should be merged with the fleet screen, and have different tabs. And for example on existing ships, right click, select 'refit' from drop down, then have a window open up with the available refits for that hull.

Well, okay, I'd continue to report bugs with screenshots but the forum will not let me upload further files. So this will be text only, for now. 4: Sometimes ships are spawning very far apart. I've had several battles with a squadron of 4 CLs, where 2 were started in battle line, one was in a solo screen, and the other was in a solo screen. The problem is that one of the solo screens was started 27 km from the other 3 ships. The battle was mostly over before the lone wolf finally caught up to the action, and it played little role in what was left. This doesn't happen frequently, but enough times to be 'more than one, where zero is the acceptable incidence'. 5: Italian armored cruisers have a twin funnel, it can be placed so one funnel to the rear hangs over empty space. 1920. 1.06 Update 13. Also, this is not a 'bug' but I deeply dislike being forced to build these 'multifunnel' components rather than taking two singles and smashing them together. Multifunnels count as one component so if it's destroyed, you lose all the funnel capacity in one hit. This is not good game design, I never use the multifunnel components since learning this. But for this class, there's no other option. Also the space you can place a funnel (multi) on this particular armored cruiser is limited. There's a raised bit of superstructure, akin to older cruisers and predread battleships, and then you can put one far to the back of the raised gun deck. You cannot gain maximum efficiency even with the best funnel, best available tech, unless you set max speed well below what is desireable. Multifunnels as a whole should be reworked, or at least split into separate hit boxes, because currently they're a liability and already not worth it in terms of weight/efficiency. If a balance pass is yet to come, then I hope to see these values adjusted, and regardless, the hitboxes separated. That's what I have for now. Hopefully somebody reads this. And while i'm here, I'll once again bang the drum to TRY and get attention on this: This is still ongoing, I observed it multiple times int he same battle, in a large fleet action, 1890's start, at close action.

I've been collecting bugs for some time, trying to get screenshots. I apologize in advance if these have been posted already, I haven't been keeping up with the thread. 1: 0% accuracy, persistent. 1.06 update 11. 0% accuracy bug. No matter how close, my torpedo boats would not hit their targets. I tried slowing them down with reverse engines, but even at slow speeds they could not hit. Then suddenly they would have accuracy, for one salvo, and then back to 0%. This occurred in multiple battles during an 1890 campaign that I ran into 1905. I have not seen this bug in update 13, but I have not played 1890, either. 2: Torpedoes firing backwards. 1.06 Update 11 I don't know if this also happens to player controlled ships. I did not see it but I wasn't always watching the torpedo attacks. This was happening fairly frequently. This is again the campaign starting in 1890 that lasted until 1905. 3: Ships stop responding to steering and speed commands. All of these are observed under 1.06. This came about in Update 8. I have not since seen it repeat. At the point this shot was taken, the ship has travelled further than its own wake with the turn command issued by right click, without executing said turn. It will not respond to a right click turn command in any direction. By manually using the steering slider, the ship will turn, and then resume forward travel when the slider is centered. At this point, I had forgotten the ship for a while, dealing with the rest of the battle. The desired speed was set to zero. When I returned to try to trouble-shoot, the ship had reached zero speed. After applying max speed in the slider, the ship would not accelerate, nor enter reverse. It would not accept turn commands. I discovered a work-around fix by turning on the AI captain - the ship began to move and steer under AI control. I turned off the AI captain, and from then on during this battle I could control the ship normally. I have not seen this problem before this instance, and have not seen it since. Post continued in part 2 since the server is not letting me upload additional screenshots to this post.

Very excellent write up of the borkness. I personally have seen number 2 - the enemy always has more hulls. I've tried normal, hard, and legendary difficulty, it doesn't seem to make a difference. Number 1 and 3 I have not seen. I pushed crew training to 100, and had crew skills equal to the enemy when war kicked off. This is not to invalidate your experience, just that I have not had the experience. Enemy ships spotting yours - if you have them, try to run a DD or TB screen ahead of the big stuff. They're harder to spot, and might pick out the enemy before the enemy lights you up. You are probably being spotted by enemy small units. I have been able to start firing on the enemy before they on me, by running smallboat screens. Formation flagship changing is a really bad problem. At the very least, the devs should just let the player assign a formation lead. Dud torpedoes, torps running off course, or exploding mid-run is part of the new dud mechanics. Torp accuracy and dud chance affects this. I'm not sure how close to history the current setting is, but currently it's very likely to have duds/mid-course detonations/course changes. I've also seen the torps just fail immediately after launch; there's a splash and no further sign of the torpedo(es). I don't know if this behavior is intended or not. Protected section of TB's, DD's and light cruisers. Yes, this is crazy. It seems like DDs, TBs, and perhaps light cruisers need to be disassociated from the heavy protected section/citadel mechanics. It's VERY hard to get the balance close to centered on a starting TB in an 1890's campaign. I can manage around 20% fore or aft at best. TB's and DD's taking more than one torpedo hit. This has plagued the game for years now. I think there's a problem where the 'splash' of torpedoes (and large gun shells) does not take into account how small DD's are. I think DD's should have fewer damage sectors, or there should be a multiplier for the splash area of larger shells to have proper effect on small ships. And now, I'll add you a really fun one: Torpedoes are sometimes firing backwards out of their launchers. Where'd I leave that screenshot... Observe the torpedo streak moving from the BB King Edward the Number. That torpedo is moving the opposite direction from the BB. It was launched from the bow torpedo launcher, passing under the BB's keel. The wake foam to the left of the BB was caused by a torpedo boat that failed to launch a torpedo, despite having no damage, the weapon ready, and having recited the proper invocations to the machine spirit. (sometimes I think this game determines torpedo behavior on a 2d6 diceroll and it's coming up snake eyes an AWFUL lot.) Anyways, that torpedo boat of mine was the target of KE#'s torpedo. It went 180 degrees the other way. This is not happening all the time, but I've seen it out of the AI's ships (not from mine, so this seems to be an AI only problem, but if a dev sees this, might want to check).

Going to break it down as simply as I can. My intent is not to be rude, I've just woken up. So right now you design a refit. New engines, lighter armor gives you more weight for modules, you unlock a higher mark of the guns you have on, so you swap out for increased gun performance. Then you save that design. Now you have a refit design, in italics, in the ship builder. Exiting to the ship design tab, you can click on the refit design, and apply it to any ship of that class that hasn't had the refit applied, that is in port, and isn't repairing battle damage. So far so good. But what if you could select the refit design, and just start building that class, with the upgrades in place? I'm running a campaign started in 1890. I built a predread battleship, the Hessen class. As the game progressed and tech unlocked, I put the class through 4 major refits - 1891, 1891 - 2, 1894, and 1898. After designing the refit, I must first build an un-refit Hessen to the original design, THEN select one of the refits to apply once first build is complete. Why can i not simply select 'Hessen (1898)' and start building a new ship without first building the obsolete design? I'm glad refits exist, but it's mind boggling to think you would intentionally build a ship with obsolete fitting, only to then, having completed construction, rip out the guts, install the new guts (and guns and armor, whatever). Massively inefficient and wasteful. Nobody would (or did to my knowledge) do this.