Maty83

This all looks awesome. But I have one concern with research: We should be able to have higher variety in our gun propellants. Right now it is actually likely, not just possible to get soft-locked into Cordite III since it tends to show up before Tube Powder II and obsoletes any other previous propellant tech. It's minor, but fixing it for the campaign where it essentially soft-locks your ability to refit ships with lower flash fire protection would be great.

Yes, you can. You can also have multiple "campaigns" if you dare touch the correct files (C:/Users/Username/Appdata/LocalLow/GameLabs/Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts/) The active save is save_0.json #2 and #3? No. Tech is partially random, so it could happen your engines are not unlocked in the campaign. There probably is a way by messing with the save files, but I'm not gonna try that since a lot of the save-edit stuff bricks the save (Shipyard size, hello)

From what I had in the campaign at least in the betas (And using my campaigns as a base) it did tell me I got the transports at the end of the battle. Though I may be wrong about it, but after killing all escorts for me the battle just ends, crediting me with the kills.

As mentioned above. Beware that I've modified some of the enemy reputation values (Yes, at my own risk, I know) and the campaign still launched. The modification was done to Germany and A-H reputation and unrest to force a longer campaign Link for the save below. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OWRVRKqV2VL7dnl2wtKbqW8rov_A2Tci/view?usp=sharing

They count as killed as long as you either sink them, or destroy all escorts.

The game chugs hard simulating the first 16 months or so since the AI lays down all the designs during this time simultaneously, along with actually building the ships (And the building process for each WILL take between 1 and 2 minutes average). On a laptop this will take even longer I expect, so go and make a coffee and don't minimize the game during this time. Before it wasn't this bad as you had only two factions fighting.

I let the AI run rampant on some designs for the French, here are the.... "interesting" ideas it came up with. Exhibit 1: Terrible firing angles due to secondaries being added in bad spots. Also, despite the stats this ship only has 12.4" belt.... WITH 20-inch guns! You should really be able to fire at least over the 4" quads.... Exhibit 2: It needed some time to happen here, but I've seen it before. Looking at the armament section, the AI doesn't weigh specific turret types it used before as more valuable. Oh and the first turret needlessly uses a barbette, wasting a neat total of 300t. Some of the large cruisers also had better belt than the super-battleship above. Exhibit 3: Fore weight offset and 2" gun spam. I'm deliberately using shorter hulls because it makes the AI make more mistakes in its build. It should also be noted the design only needed one funnel out of the three seen here. Armour is definitely also lacking as seen on the picture. Exhibit 4 Aft weight offset, 2-inch guns heavily blocking firing angles on torpedoes: For the CL I had a design where the AI decided a 58% funnel efficiency was enough, but otherwise it seems apart from its enthusiasm at putting 2" secondaries everywhere the AI can do a reasonably good job with those.

This is really bad when you're using your DDs to finish off wounded enemies in close quarters. I've lost several DDs to this.

Great job with the update! I've been playing the Beta extensively and I really like the campaign At this stage, I find Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts to be actually almost where it should be. However, there are still a couple items I'd like to mention, mostly as general feedback on ship classes. and the campaign. Prepare for a wall of text. Gun calibres on DDs and CLs: There are instances of larger guns than we have in-game on ship classes represented. Such as the 1936A-class destroyers of the Kriegsmarine. I'd recommend upping the maximum calibres of DD through CAs by a single inch (Especially with the Panzerschiffe hulls, this would mean you have a more reasonable evolution of design going through Destroyers (Even larger leader-types like Tashkent, or Mogador) with guns which can reliably kill CL/treaty CAs (These fit on the current CL hulls if given different superstructures) at close ranges, up to CL-like types which can hurt the large CAs thanks to the availability of 8-inch guns (Fitted on pre-dreadnought era protected cruisers sometimes, plus Mogamis even if those are meant to be on CA hulls currently) and then CAs, which can at close range on the upper end of the scale hurt battlecruisers thanks to the access to the 12-inch guns. Honourable mentions here go to some of the interwar British large cruiser designs, which were contemplated with 12-inch guns despite the displacement staying below 20 000t. If it becomes a problem early with 1890s CAs being better than battleships, the hull technologies for more modern hulls could unlock the use of these greater calibres on CAs. Speaking of the 12-inch: BRING ITS ACCURACY IN-LINE. Right now there is practically no reason to use 11 and 13-inch guns on capital ships as the 12-inch gun has much greater accuracy than either of the other options. In fact, I consider it pretty much the best calibre in-game against non-capital units thanks to this frankly ridiculous number. Better yet, if streamlined a little the current system could be much more friendly by using a stat curve so we can set calibres in 0.1 inch increments and let the curve determine the statistics (With gun techs being tresholds where new marks of guns are available, such as the 16" gun tech providing 15.6-16.5 inch guns.) Stop limiting the amount of armour we can put on guns so much. This is a serious issue for small-calibre guns which remain useful on all ship types, especially within the 4-6 inch range (Though the issue persists up to the 12" gun). The 4" guns can only have basically structural plating and even the 6" being limited to 2/3 the armour you can put on the main belt of CLs (Or which was historically found on some CL turrets). Yes, I agree we shouldn't be able to cover the guns with 20" plates because reasons, but a more reasonable upper limit would be great. Same goes for CLs: Let us have slightly more belt armour. If CAs can go crazy, CL armour should be at least partially able to keep them out at extreme ranges if invested into. Quad-barrel guns. Why not let every calibre use them? I understand this is asset-heavy, but even with the placeholder quad turrets for everyone but the French there are ships which currently cannot be replicated, such as the Dunquerques (neither a 5, or a 6-inch quad exists), some of the designs of the Edinburgh-subclass with quad 6", or the designs for, again, British large cruisers with quad 9.2-inch. Barrels should not block lines of fire. Simple. Right now a person can massively upgrade some designs by just rotating the turrets they place on a ship. Best example of this being cross-deck firing main guns. Try placing two wing turrets firing aft and check the firing angles! Why can't you fire over the barrel of the other turret? Reasons! Seriously, this would also massively reduce the complexity of hitboxes for determining firing angles. Now you just need to draw a circle with the radius of the furthest point the body of the turret from the centre! Some ability to squeeze turrets together since they can rotate by elevating the berrels over other objects would also be nice, but that's a big ask. And last, but not least: Campaign. Creating our own fleet is great, but right now the simulation of the past 4 years before the campaign takes on average 15 minutes and if I try to let it run in the background, UA:D helpfully goes dormant until it is the currently selected window again. So much for watching videos while loading up a new campaign. Letting us spend some technology points instead of getting a random roll would also be neat, since for example in the 1920s campaign I've had some occasions where the best Mk.III gun I had was the 14-inch and I had Dreadnought III as my biggest hull, but on other occassions with similar naval budgets I've not only had 15" Mk.III guns (Even though you unlock the 15" Mk.I only after the Mk.III 14"), but I've also had Dreadnought V hulls available. Let the player have agency in this as well. Speaking of the campaign start: The amount of money to build your own fleet is only 10 months' worth of income as far as I can see. Having another slider here would be useful so we can start with much bigger fleets if we want. Heavy towers and radio tech: Now here's an interesting problem. I almost never put improved radios on anything larger than a CL in the campaign as despite the usefulness of RDF, the percentage cost and weight increase of the towers is almost never worth it. It should be the other way around, with your capital ships taking the hundred or so tons of equipment easily while your DDs almost never take it because it doesn't magically become 100x lighter like the main tower on those compared to a BB. In addition to this, the AI should NOT build battleships and battlecruisers significantly weaker than the player. I've had a campaign where playing as the Germans my capital ships had guns of calibres no lower than 16", but the British somehow decided that a 3x2 12"-armed battleship was the way to go. I shouldn't even mention how the 20000t CA I designed won a torpedo-free fight against one... We DESPERATELY need a proper save system for the campaign. Being able to start up multiple campaigns at once, just to explore some features while not overwriting other ones you've been playing for a week (Without going into the AppData folder to manually back up saves) Despite all of these gripes with the game, it has become a rather addictive addition to my gaming library. I have to congratulate the dev team on the job they've done with it. As an early backer I have to say: I am quite impressed already.

Santa Maria: A cross-deck firing dreadnought on the Small Battleship hull, 1908. Forward superstructure is the best one available, back is Rear Tower 5, Medium funnel. I have gotten the perfect offset only once and since it works diagonally through the CoM seemingly, you can't deal with it fully on these ships usually (Having cross-deck mounting points would be really good, since you can only throw on 4 centerline turrets at this stage)

Excellent news with the new hulls! This will make the game even more interesting! Although I'd like to ask for one thing we're desperately missing: A potential mousewheel stepping of tonnage, since 1t steps on 90kt-120kt will be extremely tedious otherwise

In regards to the echelon turrets: You have to fiddle with it a lot to get those proper placements. Maybe I'm asking too much, but some attachment points that are balanced on each side would really help that

Very saddenned by the current update. Note how it says "Design invalid" It does this on every new hull once you mount a smoke stack. I tried everything else-removing thm, moving them down, etc. I see no other reason for this than just the smokestacks doing something wrong. Mind you, I am using the attachment points. These messages have never appeared before, including weird errors which seemingly don't have the proper text strings coded in. I should add that this happens in any designer

Simple question I'd like answered: Under certain conditions with different ships you can't properly see enemy ships firing at you, with the difference in seeing shellfire and being spotted being several kilometers. Is this intentional to give smaller ships a degree of opportunity to hurt enemies at extreme range, or not? Personally, I feel like an enemy firing at your ship with main guns should be visible unless the weather is exceedingly terrible. Even during the Battle of the North Cape, Scharnhorst could see the flashes as the lighter forces engaged her early on (Norfolk and the light cruisers at the start of the engagement). This may be hard to implement, but would be a major QoL improvement for battles around the early 1910s where on occassion one side may not see the other side until several damaging hits had been scored by the opposing ships, reducing the chances of victory quite a bit, even while using top-of-the-line towers

I have to echo the concerns of other players here too. You're dodging torpedoes with your battle line, forget about the DD you sent to catch enemies unaware with a salvo and.... Suddenly the ship is 50km away from any enemy ship. Being able to go with greater zoom levels, slightly longer render ranges and the pseudo-minimap view (showing individual squadrons) would be a great benefit.