HomTanks

I played through all the missions over the last week or so and here are the main problems I ran into. I didn't read anything about any of the known problems with the game before I played it and I didn't read through what other people have reported about the game, so this is as unbiased as I can make it. Overall, it's a pretty good game, but I'd really like to see these particular problems addressed. Sometimes, not all of my guns will fire and there is no clear reason why they wouldn't. For instance, I'd be playing a battleship with 4 centerline turrets, 2 in front and 2 in back. My ship would be almost completely broadside, so there were no issues with the firing arcs of any of the turrets. The ranging shots would've already been done and my guns would be firing as would be expected. Then, for no apparent reason, only 1 or 2 of my turrets would fire at the target even though the others are still locked on and clearly ready to fire. If those specific turrets were reloading because of the turrets being out of sync, that'd be one thing, but that's not the case. Instead, I just have to sit there and wait for the 1 or 2 turrets that did fire to reload before any of the other turrets are allowed to fire. It makes no sense and needs to be fixed. Speaking of the main guns, it would really be helpful if the turrets would fire when they have an angle instead of having to wait for all of them to be reloaded again before being allowed to fire. There's no good reason why the turrets shouldn't be allowed to fire out of sync. If my front guns fire and then I turn to use my rear guns, I shouldn't have to wait for my front guns to be loaded again in order for the rear guns to be allowed to fire. There needs to be a button that allows you to manually force a ship to launch its torpedoes. I have seen many many times where my destroyers absolutely refuse to fire the torpedoes. I'll have them totally broadside to the target so that the firing arcs of the torpedo launchers are not a problem, the target will be well within range (8km target with 14km torpedoes), the torpedoes are loaded, I set the ships torpedoes to "normal", and sometimes they refuse to fire. I'll then set the torpedoes to "aggressive" and they will still refuse to fire. The game seems to be trying to determine for me when the "best" time to fire is and it'll simply override my attempts to fire the torpedoes. I have missed many great opportunities to kill a target because the game simply will not allow me to fire the torpedoes. (Yes, I know that the torpedo settings have to be changed manually for each individual ship because there's no option to change the settings for all the ships in a division at once.) There needs to be an option to manually place the torpedoes that are launched. By that, I mean I want to be able to launch my torpedoes in any random direction I choose, provided the current firing arcs allow it. I already know that if I launch torpedoes at a destroyer, it's just going to turn around and dodge them. I want to be able to preemptively launch torpedoes a little behind the target so that not all of my torpedoes are going to the same predictable spot. It'd also be nice to be able to launch torpedoes a little behind the target for targets at longer ranges because when the target turns just a little for any reason, most or all of the torpedoes are going to miss. As it stands, there's no option for controlling the spread of the torpedoes and it'd be extremely helpful if there was. Another major problem is ships not being able to handle driving in close proximity to other ships. I have had dozens of times where my ships automatically made turns that I didn't want them to simply because the game thought I was getting too close to another ship. It'd be nice if the game would allow me to run my ships into each other as much as I want instead of automatically taking evasive maneuvers at some arbitrary distance. It should be left entirely up to me to keep from running my ships into each other instead of having my ships act like a bunch of giant magnets trying to repel each other. In one instance, the games steering override feature was so completely obtrusive that it literally drove my ship into a torpedo that I could've easily dodged. There was a sinking ship in front of my destroyer and there were torpedoes coming from my right side. I tried to turn right, which put me closer to the sinking ship, so the game stopped my right turn and made me start turning left. I used the rudder slider bar to force my rudder fully to the right. The green turning circle showed I'd easily miss the sinking ship and would clearly dodge all of the torpedoes. The game tried just that much harder to make me turn left, overriding my use of the slider bar and forcing me into a full left turn. The game managed to miss the sinking ship (which I was already going to miss), but it forced me to be completely broadside to the torpedoes I was easily going to miss and my full health ship was instantly turned into a sinking ship. With the game acting in this way, it makes using the "tight" formation for a division very problematic. It'd be nice to know how much armor my high explosive shells can penetrate instead of having to wait until I shoot something and see what happens. You already give us the penetration values for the armor piercing shells, so just do the same thing for the high explosive shells too. Being able to see the penetration values of different guns as I'm building a ship would help a lot in figuring out just how much armor I need to counter a given gun caliber. It'd be very helpful if I could set my secondary guns to target one ship while I use my main guns to target a different ship. What I consider to be the biggest problem I've run into is the game automatically switching targets. I've had dozens of times where I'd be firing at a ship, then suddenly the game thinks I should be shooting at something else instead and starts shooting at the next target. The aiming bonuses I had built up from shooting at the original target are lost, I was forced to lose a volley because I have to wait for my 1 turret that was used to do a ranging shot to reload, I have to lose another volley doing another ranging shot as I re-target the original target, and then I can finally start shooting at the original target again. Meanwhile, the enemy ships were shooting at me the entire time with no problem. This problem really needs to be fixed. There should never be a time that the game switches me to a new target while my original target is still alive. It's kind of hard to be the "ultimate admiral" when your ships randomly ignore your orders.