WelshZeCorgi

No worries, mate.

There's a Naval Academy mission where you can put torp tubes on a battleship, can't remember which one right now. But didn't those need to be installed as close to the water as possible? I could put them anywhere, including the raised platform in the middle of the hull, where I guess to scale, the torpedoes would have to drop between 50-100 feet before reaching the water. I think this might be a bug, but if that was done in RL, I'll shut up. Edit: I also put X4 torp tubes in centerline mounts on a modern heavy cruiser, in the mission with modern heavy cruisers. I know these things were fired out of the tubes by compressed gasses, but being in the center of the wide deck of a heavy cruiser, it looked like the torpedo had to clear 20 lateral feet of ship (at least) in order to go over the side. Not sure if tubes could provide that much launching power, especially if you were launching 24in torpedoes. Feels like if you tried doing that on a real heavy cruiser, the torpedo would just bury itself into the deck in front of the launcher or just roll around like a loose cylinder.

I mean, there were still ship to ship battles in WW2, just much less often and also very risky, requiring nighttime operations and intelligence deception.

It was the two where you had to sink an entire convoy unescorted merchantmen as well as the version with escorted merchant ships. I guess mainly because that mission was just such absolute carnage with such a powerful ship build. I guess I would make it more interesting by making you face off a ton of escorted and armed merchant ships with a slightly less powerful ship/more limited resources to build a smart, fast, low tonnage merchant raider that needs to avoid the big guns of a slow and lumbering battleship escort that you have no hope of taking out, using speed and firepower punch to zoom in, take out a few merchant ships and zoom out, trying to avoid hits while doing as much damage as possible. Anything involving torpedoes, if only because using them is rather limited, difficult to coordinate and frustrating. Setting up a torpedo run requires a lot of micromanaging and a lot of luck, for me at least. Mileage may vary with different people. I remember once that I had to take out a merchant convoy that had a cruiser escort. Your only option was with destroyers. But what kept happening was that on my way to try and torpedo the cruiser escort, my destroyers would release their torpedo spreads on the merchant ships instead, making me lose because I had no way of attacking for 10 or so minutes while they had to reload, now that my ships had wasted their torpedoes on unarmed merchantmen. I want to see missions that focus on the role armor, number of bulkheads, angling, positioning and survivability techs (double hull, reinforced bulkheads, torpedo belts, aux engine) has. You can argue that all missions are "survival" missions but I just thought of suggesting missions that solely focuses on those concepts. We have the first few missions that focus on firepower, torpedoes and speed, but it was difficult for me to grasp the idea of how to protect your ships (or if you should even try to,) because that was never its own section to learn in. I'd imagine a scenario where your ship is not allowed to fire and you're to build a ship that can survive for X amount of minutes from an enemy or enemies that are armed with formidable guns (plunging or direct fire), another mission with formidable torpedoes, another mission with formidable secondaries and so on.

Suggestion, I think it would further add to UAD's interesting visual appeal if there were animations to the destruction of components such as collapsing funnels, toppling towers, ships being blown in half after a mortal explosion or capsizing and rolling over. Turrets being blown open and their barrels depressing from loss of hydraulic pressure, instead of just being dirtied with coal dust.

I want to say that kind of looks like the bismarck, but I'm no ship expert. Could something be done about the draw distance? At extreme ranges, enemy ships don't appear on screen and you have to scroll in the direction your turrets are facing before they pop up and are clickable.

Any plans to provide sailor models on ships and in the lifeboats? Thought it would be cool to see a few running around on deck to their stations when enemy ships are spotted (though I am guessing IRL they are at their stations long before contact is made.) Making repairs, or seeing them get out on deck with the fire hoses and fighting fires like in cities:skylines or simcity. To add the sense of making these ships feel alive and not just lifeless toy models.

Would be nice. I'm betting they will at some point.

Wondering if these types of actions and others (like fleeing to a neutral port, and the political/military fallout that usually ensues) will be able to play?

You make a very good point.

Oh, you were talking about the base minimum failure rate. I was thinking of something super, super low, nonzero number.

I'm not sure how it could be shown, much less proven, that both systems would come within an acceptable "result area" if one or the other doesn't exist. Perhaps sample builds of both mechanics can shed light on whether or not that is true, but saying outright that it's doable isn't something said with confidence. Integrating failure and dud mechanics into the weapons and ship parts would throw off all the values in a way that makes no sense. So if an early type of radar in the game was reputed to work only half the time, (for sake of argument) do you half the radar range? If the turret jammed 2% of the time, do you add 2% to its original miss rate? I don't think complaints would be any less if they saw (-2% accuracy for reliability) Save scumming is a valid point. Though I'm wondering why that's a point in your favor. People wouldn't save scum with a game like the the current build? And if you mean that save scumming would occur more, what would that matter? The purpose of any game isn't to make players minimize save scumming, otherwise we should remove other annoying hurtles that players of the game must challenge themselves to solve, like bounced shots, partial pens and the yada-yada-yada. Doing that would also decrease save scumming, but neither of us would want that. As we only seem to have famous examples and reports, and that such information may be difficult to determine, it only seems reasonable for all nation's to start on a level playing field and then have those increase or decrease based on play. This is hopefully with the intention that as play continues, the nation's will begin to become unique in their differing qualities of their equipment. Besides, you start the game at the birth of the dreadnought, everything that happens after that is made by your marks. And if the base expected failure rate was unreasonable, I'd agree. But I will wager that there can be a base minimum that could be reached that players wouldn't mind or rarely notice. But would only begin to see the importance of quality when they begin cutting corners and making mistakes. Mistakes that they can learn, recover and reverse from (the US WW2 submarines sank an incredible amount of tonnage despite the shoddy MK 14 torps, making them the top sub program regardless.) And again, the AI would follow the same rules. If transparency is needed to prove the AI isn't cheating (both in this theoretical mechanic and current alpha mechanics) perhaps an option can be provided to see the enemy failures or ship design. (enemy duds would be obviously given to the player regardless) I'm reminded of Hearts of Iron series, where of nearly (tech, unless you consider time constraints a negative) every decisions you made few to no options where there are only green positives across the board. You were forced to work around your situation in order to give yourself the best chance of winning. It made for compelling gameplay and interesting points of play that you don't get in a level of asteroids or call of duty.

I agree on all points. To add on, perhaps a way to cycle through the different calibers, which will show that caliber group's fire arc, range, its current facing in that entire arc and any relevant information. The current full circle overlay on ships takes up a lot of space but gives little information.

@Steeltrap It was just some number I burped out, no real thought included. Of course I would prefer if more realistic ratios, or simply, realistic standards were in place to allow such game designs to not be abused.

An extremely interesting take on the topic. Technically no one is stopping you from doing triple 18s in the 1910's, but no one is going to play their tiniest violin when it loses a battle, its designer having expected his over-engineered design to become the world-conquering, ultimate wunder-weapon that would have never been viable historically.

Why is "It's annoying" a valid counterargument? Because what about other annoyances in the game? I find losing a naval academy mission annoying, but does that mean I should then demand a dreadnought game that never beats me? I find glancing blows, deflected shots and partial penetrations annoying. Should they be removed from the game? I also get annoyed when the opponent outranges me and gets in a lucky hit in before I even fire a shot. Should the AI never fire before it's fired upon? Should the runner at the Olympics go to the officals and say. "Hey running an 60 yard dash is annoying, been doing it for years and I'm sick of it... How about rock paper scissors?" Stuff not working is part of war and sadly, everyday life. Bad components have certainly swayed battles or stunted what should have been a clear victory all throughout history. And the game's makers seems very quick to tell us that this game aims to be as close to realism as it gets. And it's something that can be minimized. Annoyed your radios don't work? Stop buying your radios from that recluse working in that ramshackle hut deep in the hurtgen forest and pen a contract with that famous industrialist that makes all those solid radios for the empire's citizens. Or develop your own, better, purpose-built ones by sending out agents to recruit the best minds in the Empire and set up an electronics laboratory in that unused room in the basement of the Naval Research department. It's one thing if something annoys you AND you can't do anything about it, but a whole different ballpark if you can do something to solve the problem that makes you annoyed. I don't want bounced shot or partial pen to be removed, I want to position my ship better so it's striking the armor flat on. I don't want the AI to not use it's superior range against me, I want to design a ship with bigger, better guns; or design a faster one to close that distance quickly. I don't want a game that cannot beat me, I want to think, scheme, discover, uncover, discuss, argue, debate, plan and figure out a way to beat that SOB the next time I see him. I'd say that's what's so fun about this game.

Every nation has had issues with its war machines, land air or sea, ancient to modern times. So while I agree that careful planning, flexibility and good choices should result in minimizing the number of faults, failures, catastrophes and duds, I don't think it should be possible for anyone to go through an entire campaign, 40 years or so, and NEVER experience a dud shell or a faulty component or a troubled development program. And it only seems fair for the player to know that the AI are suffering from failures and duds as well.

Which means that it won't go to the battle map but do auto-battle on the campaign map.

I think that the devs said that subs will be in the game but will only operate on the campaign map. If it attacks a fleet, it will calculate the sub vs the asw training, equipment, weapons, and then do some space wizard magic in the moving picture box to produce a result.

Maybe there should be several short "survive the -destroyers, torpedo boats and cruisers" 5 minute missions Essentially these missions would allow players to play with, focus on and wrap their head around the other aspect of ship warfare like speed, turning radius, armor, to dodge torpedoes, tank/bounce shells and ultimately learn about what helps ship survive under certain circumstances. Though I can see how you could argue that all missions are sort of survival missions but I'd just put it out there to see if it would make sense to focus on the defenses of ships.

To add to the dud munitions point, in ww2 the US mk 14 torpedo went through a troubled development stage, crippling its performance in the early stages of the war. Maybe poor funding, contracting a disreputable manufacturer to build it, bad leadership (like the generals or politicians in the hearts of iron series, research can be carried out by NPC members with stats in your admiralty board) or neglecting or skipping over techs can cause duds and reliability issues with new weapons and tech.

Why would you do that? Couldn't it just be 50/50 by default? Or when you build your ship, select AP heavy, normal load out, or HE heavy. Or have a slider for individual calibers. I don't see how this is complex.

Not sure, did RL ships carry different torpedo versions (e.g. 4 electric and 4 oxygen enriched) or did they only carry just one type?

Ok, thanks!

Is it weird that the ammo count mixes/shares HE and AP? And that you can fire your entire ammo load in AP or HE shells, like you never had one or the other on board? Shouldn't you run out of AP or HE shells and be forced to used the other type?