roachbeef

I would like to see the ability to not research the passive technologies or just not apply them. Not all technology bonuses are worth it, and currently, you have no choice but to keep having certain technologies level up.

I really hope that we can choose not to research certain technologies. Like that final torpedo protection tech. The weight increases are, while not fatal, extremely annoying in that I am suddenly unable to rebuild ships that I had previously been able to because the increased weight forces downgrades in other areas. Likewise, the cost increases and weight increases for various technologies should be decreased. I am fine with both the pros and cons plateauing out rapidly. Maybe change the research so that you can distribute research slots a la HOI4? Or maybe have research points, with costs increasing the earlier you get them before their "intended" year (a bit like HOI4) and costs decreasing dramatically once everybody else has it.

Can confirm this. The tech tree needs fixing.

Massive lag/freezing can occur when editing values in the shipyard. The lag and freezes will disappear upon creating a new design or copying the design to a new slot. Starts @1:40 of the video (

This is the worst possible choice and the laziest design decision possible, and to be brutally honest, I don't know why anybody with experience playing good video games would even contemplate this idea (looking at you, Bethesda & FO3). What needs to happen is for the developers to actually balance the AI's research progress or to have a technological osmosis happen (both ways) in a gradual manner, not to have copy-paste enemies that all look and fight the same way. One side getting new tech and then it magically appearing in everybody's hands is outright ridiculous, boring to play, and immersion-breaking. Why would the Japanese have bothered with Long Lance torpedoes, the British with radar, or the Americans with high-pressure boilers if they had known it did not provide them an edge? Listening to such a suggestion will harm the game.

Here's the thing: with a design bank, plus the AI adding variation but within set constraints and modular templates, devs can give us a ship designer that does not constain us to oblivion. Actual freedom to experiment with the limits of what is possible. Right now, none of that is possible because of arbitrary limits on flexibility and freedom made to coddle and handhold the AI. You can't, however, mod a fundamentally flawed ship designer. You know, the core of the game. The minimum viable product. As long as the devs keep using the AI's high degree of freedom as an excuse, replayability is hampered by it greatly and so is the player's imagination. The devs seem to care far more about the AI's freedom than the players' freedom. Not sure if they are writing an academic paper or a naval game. Does anyone honestly think the AI can handle differing belt heights, transverse bulkheads, actually modeled torpedo belts, magazind armor, engine subdivision, and the like? Because those and more added variables would reset a lot of the lauded progress in the AI. There is the potential to make something great here, but it seems that the devs are either being misled or are deliberately ignoring this critical functionality of the game.

Hope the turret armor issue gets fixed before the weekend. Spending the whole weekend fighting flash fires and destroyed turrets is not my idea of fun.

It's too late. Go on ... without me ... 💀 Remember me as you play the patch o7

I still maintain that it is better to have the AI build from a bank of user and dev made designs (perhaps track their win rates) and remove their ability to design for themselves. That will solve all of the issues overnight with the unrealistic and limited ship designer, but some people are too enamored by sunk cost.

Could be Poe's Law. It's difficult to detect sarcasm online.

Can confirm the issue with British supercruiser design: Before adding secondary: After adding secondary:

Yeah, but that is not a defense of the game at all. The fix would be to have a button to wait to observe shell splash until firing the next salvo. It's implemented in War on the Sea, so maybe this game should just copy that (minus the bugs).

While the proposed changes are a good idea, I do not think they will happen. The devs have a sunk cost that they are reluctant to throw away because they have already delayed the game's Steam release. They're likely pressured for time and will have to release a product that retains the original core mechanics, for better or for worse.

KGV was held back. Prince of Wales fought Bismarck

They are being used as an excuse to prevent players from having more freedom in creating more historically accurate ships. No direct editing of armor schemes, huge limitation in barbette points (not even talking about placing barbettes at bow or stern—just want more barbette points), no more exotic armor schemes (like some RN cruisers). Leaving aside whether that excuse is believable, I would rather have a more in-depth ship designer and hardcoded AI designs (or which just use player submissions) rather than have to deal with the current system. It is not like the AI designs halfway decent ships in the current system anyways. Quite the opposite—they build ships no sane navy would have chosen at any point in time (although the designers themselves and some of the officers had a loose definition of sanity). Maybe the AI should not be given that freedom in the first place if the devs have no confidence in giving them options?

Devs: It's a race between Alpha 9, CP 2077, and the [current politics are banned]

This update is huge. Hopefully my ships will stop crashing into each other at the first turn order. I think that in the future, allowing us to choose our nation in Naval Academy would be better, as some nations have objectively better hulls in terms of performance (i.e. barbettes on towers) or looks.

You basically repeated my point about the rework, but consider it a trivial addition. I don't think that'll be possible without a complete rework because I have a nagging suspicion that the physical model of the armor is baked in and cannot be changed. Someone more educated in Unity might come by and did through the files, but I doubt that'll happen until after the Steam release. We seem to have different definitions of what a designer is. I think you are assuming that they're just artists, or that changes to game mechanics only require a programmer. The role of a game designer is a really nebulous thing that differs from dev team to dev team, but usually they're the ones dealing with how to design the game on a high-level concept, meaning mechanics, missions, campaign structure, balance, etc. In any case, we will have to agree to disagree. The devs decided to focus on the campaign for now. Once they decide to get around to fixing the ship designer and combat system, we'll figure (or not), we'll find out how difficult it'll be.

I want my hospital ships and ASW trawlers to be able to walk up to a DD and blow it up with their AA .303 Lewis guns. If a ship can't reliably sink the enemy, they obviously don't have any business being built and the game is imbalanced 🤣 Like @Skeksis mentioned, there's no point in bemoaning the lack of role for a DD until we see how they fare on the campaign map.

You're missing the point. It's not about code vs. visual design, it's about pouring water into a bucket full of holes on the bottom. You are also assuming one of the developers is doing nothing but churning out ship hulls. I don't think that's the case given that the dev team is only a few people. I'm fine with the devs prioritizing the campaign—I even support that somewhat—but the last thing we need is more hulls when each hull is fundamentally broken. Whenever they add a hull, they have to create an armor model and weight model for it based on the visual hull model and the player's choice of displacement. The current system is a flawed model that is based on the idea that the player should not have any control over variables such as ballast, belt height, belt length, magazine protection, turret protection schemes, or transverse bulkheads. Compromises and considerations that real-life naval architects had to make, and which are completely beyond player control in the current system. There is no point in giving us more historical hulls because we don't have the basic mechanics in place to replicate them. Look at the County-class, for example: It's impossible to get a ship with a similar performance. The devs need to overhaul the current GUI and hitboxes so that the player can change them dynamically in the shipyard, similar to how we can see a 3D model viewer in WOWS or WT. Until then, any effort in creating new hulls seems like a mismanagement of priorities. My original comment was agreeing with you in that we need changes to the mechanics of the ship designer, not the number of hulls or components. I must have been misunderstood your comment. Are you saying that we should get more content (i.e. hulls and components), and that fixing the current ship designer is just a matter of tweaking numbers?

I wish the devs would stop adding hulls and actually start fixing the game mechanics first. If they need to redesign the hulls after rebalancing, this just means more pointless work they'll have to fix anyways. If they continue at this rate, I worry they'll just give up on fixing the shell/armor/flooding models and release a broken mess.

@Nick Thomadis Does that mean some "technologies" are more like doctrines that come from experience, or are some technologies faulty until they are actually used on board ships? This will put a very interesting spin on research and mean that you can't just barge up the tech tree without testing them on ships first.

They can fight other DDs, do ASW and AA on campaign, etc. No reason to break the game just because one class of ship doesn't have a role yet. The solution is to implement features like ASW, AA, and AI turning away in prediction of your DDs' torpedoes (which is a good bluffing game that could allow you to escape), not to give DDs an artificial and unrealistic number of torpedoes. I don't get this fixation on "balance." This isn't World of Warships.

The people who send bug reports are idiotic. You can still make impossible ships via custom battles or Cheat Engine.

An option that is totally infeasible to implement given the limited resources is to allow us to define what standard displacement is for the purposes of the treaty and create exceptions. Maybe a mod idea. I want Britannia to Waive the Rules