TimberwolfD

Unfortunately, it seems that the AI control of ships has regressed lately.

This is a major annoyance. Particularly in the ironclad scenario where you have to practically be muzzle to hull to hit anything. You get everything lined up for a pass and then your ship just derps and refuses to actually engage.

One additional addendum for gameplay: In the longer range battles, I get the alert for smoke sighted [direction], but there is little to see and very little clue where the enemy actually is. Perhaps an icon for smoke with some kind of scale could be added. This could be based on the ship's funnels and engines, giving another impact to funnel and engine choices. So you get a smoke sighted icon at, say the 10km ring, with a number representing the amount of smoke.

As a bit of a latecomer to Alpha 2, this will include a lot of previously identified issues voiced by others upthread. I am including previously identified issues more as votes in support of the issues. I have attempted all but 2 of the missions and completed all but 6 as of posting. I see promise for this game and the campaign mode should be awesome, but there are issues from minor to major to address to get there. Ship building (minor to moderate issues with future improvements): Hardpoint/mounting is awkward, especially for later battleship/dreadnoughts. Could we get a size limit indication for points to show the maximum size of mountable turrets? There is an unnecessary number of actions needed to figure out what size turret will fit. This extends to the included barbets with the upper level fore and aft towers. My biggest issue is with adding secondary turrets, which requires a lot of searching for viable spots. I would recommend adding a middle superstructure component to bridge the space between the fore and aft towers which would include hardpoints for secondary armaments. I am thinking about the US BB five twin 5 inch turret mounts on each side or Yamato's fore and aft triple turrets with three twin turrets on each side. This would also work at the cruiser level with structures like a Cleveland cruiser's fore and aft twin 5 inch mount and side pairs of twin 5 inch mounts. These could include tower bases with casemate hardpoints or integral barbets. Funnels seem to be a mechanic that isn't implemented yet (?). Should there be a tie into engine performance and damage control? Fire control seems to be more handwaved than it should be in a designer/simulator. Going forward it would be nice to see placement of FCS as a ship building option/requirement. This could tie into the control of secondary weapons and (effective) engagement ranges of weapons. There is a natural and historical progression from local gunners aiming by eye to basic optics, to turret rangefinders, to battery rangefinders to radar control. Additional shipboard equipment such as mechanical computers and plotting rooms/CIC could improve acquisition rates. Implementation of different per turret/gun target acquisition would increase realism and show the massive changes in technology and doctrine from pre-dreadnoughts to WWII BBS. AI/Formations (Major issues): Major issues: Formation flagship changes automatically and disorders divisions. I had excessive issues running TB and DD attacks because the lead boat would get blasted and the flag would shift to the next ship and then the division would swirl in place while being under fire with the next flagship usually getting blasted in the process. Wash, rinse, repeat until all of the ships are disabled or dead. As a quick fix to this behavior, instead of keeping ship number 1 in the division and trying to reform the formation, just drop the damaged ship out of the division and have it pull away on a heading that won't interfere with the division (and preferably other friendly divisions). Longer term it would be nice to have the damaged ship fall astern of the formation and try to rejoin or retire as directed by the player. If the ship pulls out of the division, open the division list automatically and show the ship with buttons above the ship icon letting the player choose an action. The point at which a ship retreats could/should be a function of morale, assuming morale is implemented. Ships/divisions will change targets despite being directed to fire at a target. So I tell a division to target a BB and they take it down to 30% structure and then start going after a cruiser while still under fire by the BB. Given the mission objective nature of the current game, this is particularly infuriating. The mission goal is to kill the BB and my ships get 2/3rds of the way to completing the mission and then they start engaging another ship, resetting to hit chances as they restart the engagement. So now they need several salvos to reacquire the target ship. At least three times, this behavior cost me games because the wounded target blasted my ships while not being engaged or my ships abandoned PB shots to chase after shiny DDs or CAs. Other issues: Changing formation and spacing is inefficient as implemented. Because all ships of a division run at the same speed (if possible), ships will effectively never achieve formation changes. Allowing ships to change speeds independently would improve this process. I would make formation changes occur at the center of a formation, so going from line astern to line abreast would require less adjustment. Also, put the slowest ship at the center of the line abreast formation so that faster ships can go the longer distances. For line abreast to line astern, have the formation execute a ~90 degree port or starboard turn to line the ships up and then have the lead ship execute course change back to the original heading. Alternatively, give the player an option to have ships execute one of three options (Port turn, starboard turn, or shuffle with faster ships taking up lead slots and slower ones falling astern). Engagements (Minor to Moderate): Secondary Targets: Definitely covered in previous comments. At a minimum guns on opposite sides of the ship should be able to engage separate targets. I would tie increasing control and effectiveness to improvements to FCS on the ship. I would apply the following logic tree to secondary engagements based on increasing FCS: Closest target - Basic gunner Best to hit/most likely to damage (ie don't bother shooting the BB with 3 inch guns when a DD is in range) - Individual optics Coordinated battery fire (target acquisition by battery instead of by gun/turret - faster acquisition) - plotting room Rangefinders and radars improve first shot accuracy and reduce the number of salvos needed to find the range with radars working at night and in bad weather. Rangefinders on turrets only serve that turret. Separate superstructure mounted rangefinders are larger/better/higher and improve all guns' accuracy. Battle damage reduces FCS down the scale as components are destroyed. So when the plotting room is destroyed, coordinated battery fire is no longer in effect and when the the/a stereoscopic rangefinder is destroyed, main turrets with integrated rangefinders devolve to those rangefinders for their bonus and secondaries lose the benefits of a rangefinder. Torpedoes: As others have noted, the AI seems to be unwilling to fire torpedoes. I approve of not wasting ammo, but... The AI is far too conservative. The bigger issue I have though is the lack of information I have as the player. Why isn't it firing? Under what conditions will it fire? In several of the DD/TB missions, I wanted to set up crossing torpedo patterns to guarantee hits by one group or the other. But there is no way to do this with the current AI system. As a solution I would propose pre-plotted attack patterns. So a division of four line astern DDs could be given a "crossing torpedo attack" order that would have boats 1 and 3 go starboard X degrees and boats 2 and 4 go port X degrees forming a V and launching torpedoes across the center while the boats peel back around. Similarly, a division could be given a "torpedo run" order that would have boats in line astern simultaneously launch on a selected target. A "bearings launch" order would have every boat in the division launch its torpedoes on a selected bearing. Attack patterns could be part of a training progression tree. Each class of vessel could get selected tactics. For example, DDs and TBs get advanced torpedo tactics. CLs and CAs get simple torpedo tactics like broadside and retreating cover fire (think IJN cruisers with rear angle torpedo launchers) and gun tactics like saturation fire on a target area. BBs and DNs get zigzag course changes and saturation fire. Advanced tactics between groups would let CLs/CAs (automatically) take up screening positions for BBs/DNs and likewise for DDs with CLs/CAs or BBs/DNs. Not that you couldn't screen manually, but the advanced tactic would automate it.