Marder

This nails it on the head honestly. The current process pretty much leads to homogenization as far as the hulls are concerned. So not only are placement issues there, the compatibility of parts and the resulting exclusivity depending on hull types compounds on this challenge. There are far too many rules as far as building is concerned, and yes that may as well be for the AI. But players should have just a bit more freedom. I'm personally a little worried about whether or not the game will open up, because as time goes on it's starting to look like this was the intended design direction to begin with. I suspect changes may well be just "hacks" to try and get these limitations out since from the beginning, the way the shipyard was constructed and the design concept of the editor seems to be foundational or worse, hard coded. I think folks should start talking more about how the shipbuilder was designed and how to improve upon it so as to try and get some kind of feedback in. It should definitely help, and as far as games are concerned there's just nothing like Dreadnought out there at the moment. It would be so wonderful to have the true KSP of naval warfare.

On the Shipbuilder: Granularity and Extending Player's Own Design Capability Would extending the scope and granularity of the shipbuilder be possible at this point in the development process? I'm seeing a lot of folks mention stuff like removing limitations for barbettes, turrets and what not. But I see this more as a challenge with how the game allows players to design their ships and I think these limitations are a bit critical. Rather I think they're more symptoms of some other challenge than just simple placement issues. What I mean by this is that the current way of building ships relies too much on complex placement rules that players end up forcing concepts through the shipbuilder like a sieve, with the result being that players in the long run would end up maximizing against these limitations instead of maximizing for the benefit of their own original designs. I understand this is necessary for the AI to self-generate, but as a player I find the freedom to design is actually a rather limited with this in mind. Judging from recent modeling and asset work, it all seems like the overarching goal here is to build around "ship kits" than having a box of Lego bits to play around with. There was a user on the Cancel Barbette Limitation thread that, to sum it up, pretty much captures this challenge: That if you were to build around a Nassau hull, players would simply end up with alternate versions of it instead of having something else that is truly original. The South Carolina hull captures this as well. Once these restrictions are acknowledged I find that the shipbuilder is seemingly more limited in scope than it actually seems, hence why I'm asking if the shipbuilder and the overall design process for players could be expounded upon and be more granular, with simpler placement and compatibility rules than what we have at the moment; and leave the strict rules to the AI instead. Because right now, the game is reliant on it's developers for large, work intensive prefabricated assets that would also comply with these restrictions. To the AI, this is critical, yes. But for the player, their designs would eventually funnel into standard archetypes. A quick look around the forums and one could already see rather similar designs overall. Having superfiring secondaries on the port and starboard of the ship for example requires an entirely new asset to be built, instead of allowing for secondary barbette placement on these areas instead - and with the current way placement rules are, Developers would have to add barbette nodes on the side manually instead of letting the players do it on their own. As a result, we rely on the Developers too much for diversity in the ships that could be built, instead of letting the players add to this diversity on their own with the parts they have on hand. Simple rules lead to complex outcomes. Right now we have rather complex rules for shipbuilding and player's products end up funneling into homogeneous designs as a result. So in effect, at this stage would it even be possible to allow players to break off from these and have the ability to be more granular in their own designs? There's potential here to expand on these, and I think this would really benefit players and give them the opportunity to be as creative as possible and maximize their own concepts instead of having to force them into preexisting molds. Or is it too late to make this possible already?

I agree. This is actually the first time I've seen that trailer, I'm quite confused how this wasn't what we got - perhaps somewhere down the line I hope. As far as freedom is concerned, there are only two things I want to see in the most general sense: More granularity (as seen in the video), and part diversity. Granularity right now is the main weakness of the ship-builder. Key structures such as hulls and primary and secondary towers all come in one piece, hulls have specific placement points with compatibility rules. We're pretty much playing with ship-kits and prebuilt part sets instead of a whole Lego set, bricks and all, and that's very limiting. The weakness in part diversity is pretty much related to granularity as well. Since we depend on large prefab pieces and strict placement rules, we become doubly dependent on part diversity instead of the latter becoming value-adds down the line. Player designs would begin to normalize as time goes on, and the potential for new innovative designs would be directly dependent on what the devs cook up, and since those are prefabs, the modelling work would be complex on their end too, and that either takes a long time or not at all due to resource limitations. That steam trailer is a dream-and-a-half. I seriously hope we get something like that, but it seems like at this point we might not. The longer I play, the more I see that the current way things are done are foundational design decisions and that would be very difficult to change. I keep hearing somehow that this game is the KSP of naval warfare, but as far as process design is concerned I think it's rather far from it. Unknown if it will indeed change, but if it does, I hope it prioritizes granularity over complex rules for players.

Not to mention physical ones, but I get the concept. As far as this game's concerned we could probably do away with crazy builds akin to that PS2-era game folks here talk about. But that's not without some caveats. While I get that there's precedent in avoiding some craziness for the sake of preserving historical authenticity (e.g. no double-hull monstrosities in 1930 - or ever), having a bit more creative freedom on hand would really benefit this game. While there certainly is some freedom in designing ships in this game, at this stage and with the current limitations, that freedom will at some point just be utilized to figure out what designs should work, instead of experimenting on what designs can. KSP retains physical restrictions but is exceptionally free-form in its ability to turn concepts into results - successful or not. The bigger picture here I think is with how Dreadnought's shipyard is designed: Players would simply end up being more keen on figuring out how to force concepts into designs that the game allows, instead of being allowed to see their own ideas through to the end with minimal compromise. Right now that compromise is these limitations, barbette placement notwithstanding. And if internals are a concern, then abstracting it should be an option to consider. Having to sieve through these restrictions to get the results we want is problematic right now. We're either left with having to compromise, or end up maximizing against the shipyard's limitations instead of maximizing our own abilities to conceptualize and make real the best possible fighting ship we could think of. Simple rules lead to complex outcomes, and complex rules lead to simple outcomes. I find these stringent rules are already creating designs too similar to one another (or of a similar archetype) when you observe player's creations here on the forums. Relaxing these limitations would allow for more variety - and more fun.

I assume these limitations are there for the AI to follow, else the auto-gen might not be able to cope or that it would be very difficult to program the AI to utilize fully free-form design possibilities. The question I have is, if that really is the case, wouldn't it be possible to allow the player to get around these limitations and just reserve it for the AI instead? I figure if that happened, we'll have more freedom to place items freely and beyond just that of barbettes.

Folks, I'm curious. Been playing matches on the custom battles editor for quite some time now. I've punched God knows how many really big holes into CAs, CLs, and DDs using designs that have no business punching down. (Wanted to see lighter 1920 ships get brutalized by radar-equipped BBs witth 18" guns is what I mean). But I've noticed in a lot of times, ships that have been absolutely devastated such that you wouldn't expect it's crew to carry fighting, still somehow do. Is this right? I just find it rather odd that in most cases, even when the ship is listing heavily for example after suffering extreme wounds, that various guns, mounts, and turrets which somehow survived are still able to fire (albeit not effectively) and continue engaging. I would have imagined at that point, fighting would be farthest from the mind of the crew, that or the significant battle damage received would have hampered them enough that it won't seem like they're carrying on fighting as if nothing happened to the rest of the ship. Is this kind of granularity not modeled in yet? Would it be? I know at least one title, CMO, directly applies battle damage to unit AI's abilities by simulating its effect on the OODA loop. In my mind, there's always two battles going on in these kinds of things - one outside the ship, and one inside. Being able to capture the former would be useful, I think.

Side note: I've seen some badly damaged ships retreat in pretty cool ways. Not sure if it's specifically programmed to or just lucky, but I've observed enemy AI either have DDs or CLs set up smoke screens to cover retreating vessels, or conversely, have retreating vessels attempt to retreat by putting existing smoke screens between them and my own ships. Whatever it is, it's pretty cool to see this kind of thing happening.

They're probably still in the closed testing phase. Wouldn't mind it if bugs came out and got worked on, that'll benefit us in the long run. That said, folks would probably appreciate some trickling of updates. Maybe on how the bigger features like the custom battle editor would look like? Either way, I think I know how you feel. Been looking forward to custom battles since I got this game. The Academy missions are starting to lose their luster. Haven't picked up the game in like a week now. Hope the update gets released soon, and that the custom battle editor is gonna be as flexible as possible.

Seriously can't wait for the custom battle editor. I'll be so happy when that comes in, an honest to goodness sandbox finally!

I think I recognize you. Il-2 Maybe?

Pretty much what I'm waiting for. The mission requirements, limitations, and the current constraints of the shipbuilder are all starting to come together to really push the game's limits as far as mission content and replayability is concerned. I've always been quite curious how far back the custom battles feature seems to be. Won't it make sense to have it early so we can break as much of the game as possible? We have CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+A (I think that's how it goes) and a couple missions to try everything out, but it's still rather constraining. It might be of significant use to the devs to release even a rudimentary way of generating missions so we could push harder in terms of testing. That'll at the very least allow us to put this game through multiple scenarios of play - intended or otherwise.

I really want this to be the Kerbal Space Program of naval warfrare. Now before you pick me or mine apart, bear with me. A thread has popped up on here once comparing Dreadnaught to a PS2-era naval combat game with it's ship-builder similarities and Dreadnaught came off as having a tad bit been more limited due to part placement constraints. That's not to say Dreadnaught gives you a lot of freedom, it does. It's just that as far as placement and overall design-work a player is allowed, possible designs more or less funnels into certain types of warships over time instead of allowing for maximum experimentation. I just have my doubts that it will ever get to that point however. It appears Dreadnaught is more or less trying to stay within the confines of potential historical designs instead of allowing for some truly crazy things much in the same way KSP does. And if there's any doubt as to the possible want for this kind of freedom, I wouldn't be so keen on dismissing the absolute hysterics of meme-ships and the sort going about right now. Players are likely to abuse the powers of creation for their own entertainment to the point of absolute mental degeneracy and doctrinal irresponsibility. All because it's fun. I hope we get that. Somehow.

I'd love to have a sandbox mode where you could also influence the AI's generation of ships. At least from the top-down, i.e. set limits to displacement, bulkheads, tech, etc. At least in order to set up symmetric/asymmetric scenarios, or at least have more control over the scenario itself. I think out of all the features currently being developed, sandbox is the one I'm looking forward to the most. This game feels kind of like the KSP of warships, I'd love to have the same kind of freedom.

Curious how abstracting CVs would work once you interdict a CVG with your own surface ships. Will it be an auto-battle on the map kind of thing or will there be an actual gameplay interaction for this. And if so, how would that play out? Will CVs be present in combat scenarios and would they be able to launch aircraft or would they behave like armed transports unable to launch aircraft due an immediate danger of being shelled instead? (not even sure that was a thing in real life, tbh) CVs seem like an entirely different battlespace that the developers would have to model. There's no doubt about how much value-add CVs could have in developing both the timeline of the game and the gameplay mechanics, but that's still a lot of work to be had if accuracy and fidelity is a concern. The presence of high-end battleship hulls such as the Yamato hull just makes the whole thing confusing to me. Must be a bit of a headache for the devs as well. Hope something happens in this space though.

Yeah same, I've been playing the game on and off and it reminded me so much about Naval Ops that I bought into it. The restrictions were also the first thing I noticed. Having a Barbette restricted to specific places in the ship, or restrictions overall, can really limit designs functionally. I tried making a rear secondary layout similar to the Richelieu or some other superfiring secondary gun layout and it's quite restrictive in-game at the moment. Naval Ops really had a wonderfully detailed design phase and I would absolutely love to something of the sort in Dreadnaught. I can already see myself spending a lot of time in this game, and I hope at some point we get either something like it, or something remarkably advanced in the design phase.

I'm actually curious about having multiple ships as well. I'm sure I've seen some screenshots here and there of missions with a lot more friendly ships. I'm starting to get pretty irked of frequently fighting by my lonesome.

Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat by Wayne Hughes. Although overall it dealt more on modern naval combat, it still covers historical naval warfare and their evolution. Been coming back to it since my Harpoon/CM days. Always saw it as a must have for naval combat concepts, regardless of where technology sits or the time period.