Shiki

May 27, 2022

2 hours ago, Littorio said:

Do you have any good sources on IJN floatplane use? I know they used them more frequently than other navies in general, but not specifically for ASW work. This strikes me as odd because USN sub doctrine was to primarily target Japanese merchants, the exact opposite of IJN submarines which focused on warships. USN subs shouldn't have been near large fleet units too often, with notable exceptions like Midway, etc. It just seems odd that ship-launched floatplanes could be expected to have many operational uses as ASW assets. I know they used coastal flying boats like the H6K and H8K far more often as they had very long range and endurance, and could carry a proper ASW loadout, providing cover for the battle fleet.

Both Japanese Cruisers of the Pacific War and the tabular records of movement of the Imperial Japanese Navy's fleet assets mention it, the former with doctrine/usage and the latter with actual deployment. The focus with the floatplanes was on scouting: the carriers didn't carry any scout aircraft or dual-purpose scout/attack units, so the accompanying cruisers were given that role. However, Japanese cruisers consistently ran ASW patrols with their floatplanes when assigned to area fleets and the former book also includes a specific reference to Takao and Maya assisting the airstrikes on the Aleutians during the MI operation (invasion of Midway & a diversionary attack on Kiska) with their floatplanes acting as light bombers, specifically the two-seater Type 95s.

May 25, 2022

8 minutes ago, Danz_Von_Luck said:

Well if its that easy why don't you make your own game and then you have nothing to complain about

It's funny you should mention that, because I and a few others got so fed up with UA:D that we... are...

May 25, 2022

23 minutes ago, Skeksis said:

If you’re so unhappy with 58 new hulls, why do you even bother posting, is it to troll?

But it's not "58 new hulls", nor is it particularly time-intensive. It's changing numbers on a datasheet - or copy-pasting them from another hull - and putting new attachment points on. It's tedium, nothing more. It's 58 copy-pasted hulls of varying sizes that use copy-pasted statistics. I fail to see why I should shill for this team, as you do, when they have done very little worth shilling for.

May 25, 2022

2 hours ago, Skeksis said:

There’s alot more to distributing hulls, each has to have their parameters setup to their nation and class. Every fixing point has to be setup to suit its database components, including weight slider, speed range and its weight increases, bulkhead parameters, beam calc's etc. etc. etc. just go down the list to see how many there are. And all the stuff we don't see, centre of gravity, buoyancy etc.

You may think some look the same/simple but they are all very very different, parameter-wise.

This has just completely missed the point entirely. It's so far off the mark it's landed in the next time zone.

May 25, 2022

Just now, Danz_Von_Luck said:

In fairness, the last update they added like 58 new hulls. I predict they will add a fair few new hulls with this one too - in fact if you read the OP in this thread the last sentence about new hulls is "More hulls will be added"

By "new hulls" you mean "rescaled old hulls". It's not "new" hulls that I would like- it's "unique" hulls, i.e. the ones they specifically name (such as Danton with this new update).

May 25, 2022

I do wish they would focus on adding more unique hulls to the game. It's unfortunate that they seem to believe that just one per update is enough- when updates take 3-4 months to come out and the game rapidly becomes dull when you have to create the same ships over and over again.

May 23, 2022

21 hours ago, Littorio said:

Ship-launched seaplanes were never a significant ASW asset of any note. They usually had little-to-no armament and were primarily used for gunnery spotting or scouting. In fact, the whole concept of CL/CA/BC/BB-launched floatplanes never developed into quite what's it's tactical and operational proponents believed it would be...

...I think players overestimate the historical importance of ship-based aviation, outside of carriers obviously. In reality, land-based, or at least coast-based seaplanes, played a far more important role in ASW and scouting work...

I would like to hold this up with a "but": Japanese cruiser- and battleship-launched floatplanes regularly undertook ASW missions and bombing missions, and were equipped to do so as part of their role. Artillery spotting and scouting are the cream of the job but it's important to note that these things did happen, and happened relatively often- particularly when carriers weren't available or otherwise occupied, and land-based aircraft were out of reach.

May 23, 2022

On 5/22/2022 at 2:17 PM, Skeksis said:

The UAD team have proven that they are an exceptional development company who listen to their community.

I disagree with this statement on all levels, fundamental or otherwise. They have failed to meet community expectations and continually under-delivered.

...And they still haven't changed their trailer to reflect how the game actually is, which can get them slapped for false advertising if they don't do something about it. This is the Age of the Karen. Someone's gonna do it.

December 18, 2021

Alright, I'll bite. Why this thread wasn't created six months ago, when we were in closed testing, I don't know. Your Steam reviews must be more important to you than the initial playerbase... which is, by and large, the body making the Steam reviews. I wonder about the foresight afforded to this game.

On to the suggestions.

1 — As I've mentioned before, we are in need of particularly the following:
- A — Better divisional organization—if we are not allowed to pre-determine the divisions and their heading prior to entry into combat, then precious time is wasted assembling that fleet in a fit-to-fight formation (not precisely optimal for what are mostly randomized missions which have some sort of time limitation added, whether that be the enemy escaping your superior force or theirs running to engage yours while you attempt to sink transports). The ideal solution for the long term would be a 'pre-battle' phase (perhaps a naval chart aesthetic, as mentioned before). Simple slide-and-drop controls would be all that's needed to make sure that each ship is in its proper division and set to screening, line, or escorting roles—fleets always broke up from cruising into battle formations before accepting battle, whenever possible.
  - Addendum: the ability to select more than one ship and/or do block selection in the Fleet tab of the campaign when setting ships to Sea Control or In Being. It is extremely tedious, time-consuming, and irritating to manually select over one hundred and eighty torpedo boats and destroyers individually. A simple checkbox beside each name will do.
- B — Guns of the same calibre should lock to the slowest loading cycle among them once the range has been found on an enemy: if you have two quads and a twin turret for 14"/356 mm artillery, the twin should fire at the same rate as the quads (done historically to improve salvo patterns, though oftentimes they couldn't fire faster anyways due to errors in drill or mechanisms). Compensation might be that loading cycle differences are less noticeable. Ideally, of course, all main battery turrets should be treated as such, rather than continuing to treat wing mounts and/or turrets with different numbers of guns as a secondary battery.
- C — Failure-to-fire: a low-priority event which will cause any number of guns and/or turrets to salvo improperly or fail in some manner. Errors in drill and errors in machinery were the most common cause of failure-to-fire and this happened frighteningly often during real naval battles: note Prince of Wales's (admittedly, not a wholly typical example) abysmal performance at Denmark Strait, where just one gun was in action at times. This will not affect any other guns or turrets, and chances of errors should decrease with each Mark obtained and additionally scaling to the training level of the crew.
- D — Casemate animations. It is exceedingly jarring from the visual perspective to have all turrets and open mounts elevating and depressing to their loading angles with each salvo while casemates remain at a flat 0-degree elevation, no matter the range.
2 — Again, as I've mentioned before, we are in need of specifically more cruiser hulls: they are the most common type of large auxiliary surface combatant that you will build in a campaign, they represent the majority of your fleet's offensive ability against enemy shipping and warships, and it is exceedingly hard to immerse (and enjoy) the game when all of the campaign's cruisers are either pre-1919 German or downscaled pre-dreadnought & Bismarck hulls with Trento's towers. At the very least, the following are needed (prioritized over my more extensive list):
- Britain — 'C' (Caroline, Calliope, Cambrian, etc.) classes, Town class (1930s). The former will give ample ability to branch out into a variety of early period British styles—the 'C's can be variously rebuilt to be earlier types (of which they are a culmination) or some later types depending on how liberal the number of towers can be, while an enlarged hull—and we all know how much the 3D modelers like rescaling their hulls—works for many of the 'Atlantic cruiser' concepts. The latter gives Britain a viable CA/CL hull to work off of for both historical classes and also create things like the 'Admirals' (15,500-ton CA, really a Town trading 12x 6in for 9x 8in) and smaller cruiser studies.
  - As an aside, while I would love to request the County class for British CAs in the 1920s onwards until replacement by an enlarged 'Gloucester' or 'Southampton' (personally I prefer Birmingham and Sheffield), for the sake of brevity I'm not going to include them. Their aesthetically pleasing funnels, on the other hand, are an absolute must.
- United States — Pensacola class, Brooklyn class. While the former will give us a viable early-style hull for various smaller cruisers of both the light and heavy variety, the latter is where the sun really begins to shine: Brooklyn is the basis for every American cruiser after her until the Des Moines class, the last U.S. heavy gun cruisers. With differently modeled towers, one can recreate Brooklyn (CL), St. Louis (CL), Wichita (CA), Cleveland (CL), Baltimore (CA), Fargo (CL) or Oregon City (CA)—without taking into account imagination or any number of historical plans.
- Japan — Takao class, Yūbari. Yūbari—a hull actually modeled after her, not just a short Sendai hull—forms the basis of every single Japanese warship after her. Moreover, her design can be flexible enough to use for any number of small CL hulls if a modern arrangement is wished for. Takao, of course, is the CA that one needs—Mogami aside, an earlier hull which is capable of reproducing more closely a larger variety of designs for a greater number of eras is better for current needs.
- Germany — Emden (1920s), Leipzig (1930s), Type 1936A (1930s). We currently possess a dearth of German light cruisers: adding the post-WWI Emden and the modern light cruiser Leipzig would go a long way towards bridging the gap between the enlarged Emden (WWI) hull we currently possess up until the modified and downscaled Bismarck hull we currently have. One could also enlarge the Leipzig hull and towers in order to simulate things such as Motorkreuzer 1938. Aside from these, we can also include the Type 1936A cruiser-destroyers, which were armed with between four and five 15 cm guns depending upon the year and configuration, and can serve as the 'Small Light Cruiser' hull.
- France — Lamotte-Picquet / Duguay-Trouin, Algérie, La Galissonnière, Le Fantasque. France needs a lot of work in the cruiser and 'large destroyer' departments: fortunately, derivatives to make other (larger and heavier) designs can be done on their hulls, particularly with their modern light cruisers. Lamotte-Picquet (of the pre-WWI design) and Duguay Trouin would certainly serve to fill the roles of the French light cruiser class for WWI, with the latter serving as interwar until being supplanted and replaced by La Gal and derivatives in the 1930s onward. Le Fantasque - or Mogador - can take over the 'Small Light Cruiser' role.
- Italy — Duca d'Aosta, Capitani Romani, Comandanti Medaglie d'Oro. Italy doesn't actually need too much in the way of cruiser hulls: just Duca d'Aosta to simulate post-war and interwar designs up to Abruzzi (which ought to also be added), and Capitani Romani to simulate the most famous class of small cruisers. Comandanti Medaglie d'Oro isn't a cruiser—it actually falls outside of the purview of this discussion, being a destroyer— but deserves addition nonetheless thanks to its easily changeable configurations. It would easily fill the gap for Italian destroyers until further additions can be made.
- Russian Empire / Soviet Russia — Svetlana, Kirov, Sverdlov. Svetlana represents the 'typical' Imperial Russian light cruiser design (technically the only?) and therefore fills the role from pre-WWI onwards into the 1920s with modernizations, soldiering on despite age. Kirov is, of course, the most famous period gun cruiser of the Russian fleet and therefore cannot be omitted: aside from that, it provides an excellent balance between Svetlana's archaic mix of open mounts and casemates and the high-efficiency layout of later ships. Lastly, from the 1930s onward, we have Sverdlov: I am definitely not biased here (but Sverdlov is definitely one of my top three cutest cruisers of all time) when I say that she is an absolute must for post-1930 Russian cruiser hulls, particularly since you could upscale the hull and towers for any of the larger heavy cruiser designs the Soviets considered in the 40s and 50s.
- Spain — I don't actually have anything to include for Spain. All of their post-1890s designs were heavily influenced by British and/or Italian practice—there was even a Spanish 'Littorio' design, pitched by Ansaldo, along with multiple cruisers armed variously with 203 mm and 152 mm guns.
- China — Ning Hai and Ping Hai. China's only new-build cruisers of this era. Not including them is a no.
3 — I will restate the link's purpose: Gun Designer. It would infinitely expand the playability of this game and the possibilities, as well as allow us to more closely recreate historical designs (or even just do our own personal—or French—wacky gun calibres). It is extremely limiting to play with only whole inches when not one nation did so. Examples abound: British 4.5" (114 mm), 4.7" (120 mm—an extremely common calibre), 5.25" (133 mm), 7.5" (190 mm) and 9.4" (234 mm) are a brief overview of these non-rounded calibres for just one nation. It would require slightly more effort to code a gun designer but the tradeoffs would be more than worth the cost.

Aside from these, which I cannot state enough, most of my points have already been made in the above posts. I do hope you will take them into serious consideration—I have made them with your well-being in mind. Replayability is the crux upon which single-player games rest and these have all been calculated with that in mind. By giving the game options to be more in-depth and to actively engage the player more, we can avoid burnout and also help along those more hardcore players who wish to be able to fully customize their ships as has been advertised.

November 15, 2021

24 minutes ago, TAKTCOM said:

Online shooters is a competitor to mix turn-based strategy and real time tactics game. Well...wow 😂 I love internet for things like this🥰

In the sense that they attempt to cater to the same base of "naval history enthusiasts", yes, they are competitors.

November 15, 2021

1 hour ago, Faolind said:

You don't. You constitute the loudest. There's a large variety of comments here, in style and form, and the majority of negative ones are being spammed by a single person (not you). You are loud, yes. Your posts are numerous. But the number of people posting optimistic messages is greater.

-------------------------------------
I for one am happy to see what this campaign looks and feels like, and I wish the developers the best. I concur with the randomization idea on torpedo-tracking mentioned earlier, it will add a guessing element both to gameplay and also visibly the the character of the AI, making it seem less robotic.

I also recommend to the developers that they focus more on campaign mechanics than on battle mechanics, ship design, or playable nation expansion with the next 6 moths of update. The campaign must be alive and playable in a real form before anything else can be built upon it, and now that it is here, this campaign is what people will mentally build their impression of the game from.

Frankly, I don't see any reason to be optimistic in the slightest. The reality of the situation is that barely anything has changed content-wise and nothing has changed communication wise- the latter of which being the sore point with those people you deride as loud. Yes, we are loud. We're loud because of the human tendency to shout when they're not being heard.

I wish the developers the best of health, I really do. COVID has been difficult on everyone. But no amount of COVID can excuse the lack of regard for the concerns being pointed out regarding their radio silence. They're game developers- it's not as if they don't have access to the internet, or this forum. Five minutes a week- hell, five minutes a month of their time is what we're asking for. Five minutes of writing a brief "this is what we've been doing this month, please make sure to support us as we progress through future development" wouldn't be so hard, would it?

To restate: I refuse to shill for people who demand to be patted on the back for a good job that hasn't been done yet. I especially refuse to shill for people who can't even take the time to shill for themselves.

November 15, 2021

16 minutes ago, Tousansons said:

I'm under the impression that Myoko/Takao are much more represented due to their turret setup, the busty waifus of the mobile/browser games and their overall efficiency as you mentionned.

Unfortunately, outside of games like [insert anthropomorphized warship fighting game here, take your pick] - and even in those games - neither of those types receive much, if any recognition. Outside of Azur Lane's Atago, I don't think there are most people who could get beyond the Takao class's one-line description in Wikipedia, for example. Mogami is generally treated with a fair bit of (undeserved) recognition due to her 'breaking' the London Naval Treaty (she didn't, not really, and even if she did, the Americans are just as guilty with the up-gunning of the North Carolinas) as well as her perceived 'superiority' as the last of the 10-gun cruiser types completed for the Imperial Japanese Navy before the outbreak of the Pacific War (she wasn't, Takao and Co. take that prize).

This is even more apparent when we take a look at competing games to UA:D, like World of Warships and War Thunder: Naval Forces, where the former treats Mogami as a god amongst mortals and the latter has consistently only added the Mogami class for modern Japanese cruisers... Incidentally, the parallels also draw a line between development of those games and Ultimate Admiral's choices of ships to be added. stares at specifically California, for one blatantly obvious example

It's an interesting thought line to go down.

The unmitigated pedantry will continue until my criticisms about this game development's total blackout on communications has been addressed. There is no Iron Curtain to hide behind and we're not here to eat you alive. All we want is someone to talk to us occasionally. Not just "here's a new patch that we spent months doing nothing about and then hastily added everything in the last two weeks of crunch time", but some evidence even that you're just alive and well. People will be slightly more understanding of your circumstances if you talk about them.

November 14, 2021

For the moment, I'll choose to leave aside my so-called "toxicity, drama, and aggressiveness" - to use such grand words of wisdom from the mouth of one more than a year behind their own schedule, charitably. Instead, I'll focus on a realistic assessment of this update.

Let's see...

Campaign

Yay!... I guess. Six months is quite a long time to rip apart an old campaign with bare-bones functionality and put together... another one with bare-bones functionality. My only positive to this is that it's stable. Probably.

Hulls

One - probably butchered - Japanese 'large light cruiser'. Mogami seems to be the posterchild of Japanese construction when it comes to portrayals, despite the majority (2/3rds) of Japanese 8in-gun cruiser types having a much different (and, as borne out by wartime service, more successful) arrangement of their topsides. One wonders why you would do this- reusing assets is more y'all's style and both preceding types (Myōkō and Takao) are practically identical in hullform characteristics. Oh well... at least it's not a baby Hood hull, I guess.

One... two... three... eight copy-pasted hulls. Until I see it, I won't choose to doubt my conviction that the so-called "California" (why does everyone choose California and not Idaho?) is simply a rescaled version of the Standard type already present in game with some resized Iowa structures to go with it, not to mention the new French battleship. One wonders why you have a warship photos thread when you seem content to reuse the same assets.

Mechanics, Graphics, and other Misc.

Progress! Actual... progress! Crossdeck firing is now maybe, possibly, just slightly possible. The AI, in its infinite wisdom, can apparently tell when our destroyers have run out of torpedoes, but hopefully they're not quite as wise as Gamelabs or they'd forgive us for being toxic while they blow them out of the water. Everything else is probably needed.

Future Developments

I guess it'll be nice to have a few hotels and maybe Courbet. But then again, Courbet misses that strike zone by being a product of the 1910s, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Analysis

Nothing's really changed. My unmitigated pedantry of your life choices and game decisions will continue, since you evidently have no PR or Community Management personnel to... well, interact with your community. If you do, you should fire them, because they aren't doing their job. Do a monthly devblog. Open a thread where you post a picture of an incomplete model once every few weeks. Do something to hold people's attention in a good way. Because all your silence is breeding is resentment and mistrust.

I refuse to shill for you. If you expect a smile and a pat on the back for a job well done, you may as well look elsewhere, because I - and all those other "toxic, dramatic, and aggressive" players - constitute the majority opinion.

September 20, 2021

As noted in another post, we are sorely lacking in new, unique hull models for the majority of what is possibly the most important and diverse type of ships one can represent in this game: cruisers. Whether heavy or light, armoured or protected, semi-armoured or scout, we have practically nothing for this important type of warship (for the sake of convenience we're ignoring the battle- prefix). They are your fleet screeners, your reconnaissance, your commerce escorts and their raiders, your destroyer leaders and the ones responsible for driving them off.

This following list is what I believe to be the absolute minimum necessary to bring this class some sorely-needed life. Note that most of these would go into the 'CA' category, thanks to the 'CL' category in UA:D being mostly relegated to pre-1929 European-type light cruisers and later-era destroyer leaders. I've prioritized historical ships that can be be rebuilt as class members or derivatives in order to make the most use of the proposed hulls and their respective towers. I will include eras of availability where I feel it's necessary.

Honestly, this post could be seen as a companion for this shameless plug, since it would make it much easier on the developers to leave the gun designing and balance to the player - "balancing" in a single player game? Really? - and moreover would make some of these more possible.

Imperial Russia / USSR

Svetlana — Available from 1910-1920.
Kirov — Available from 1925-1935.
Sverdlov — Available in 1936 onward.
"Super-Sverdlov" — Slightly up-sized variant of the hull and towers which can take 8in / 203 mm artillery mounts. Available in 1936 onward.

USA

One of the best things about the U.S.'s cruisers in regards to UA:D is how most classes are similar to or directly derived from one another- for instance, all of their wartime cruisers derived directly from the Treaty-era Brooklyn type, with Wichita being a direct offshoot of their general design and Baltimore being an 'improved Wichita', and Cleveland being a St. Louis (a subclass of Brooklyn) with one of the turrets deleted in favor of moving the superstructure slightly forward and accommodating two more 5"/38 twins.

Omaha — Available from 1912 onward.
Pensacola — Available from 1920 onward.
Generic Treaty CA (Northampton through New Orleans all look the same) — Available from 1930 onward.
Brooklyn / Wichita — Available from 1936 onward.
Cleveland / Baltimore — Available from 1938 onward.

Japan

Yūbari (the original- not the abomination we have currently) — Available in the CL category from 1920 onward.
Myōkō — Available from 1920-1934.
Takao — Available from 1930 onward.
Takao Kai — Slightly enlarged variant of the hull for the proposed "Takao Kai" variant, cancelled by the 1930 London treaty. Available from 1936 onward.
Mogami (you can make Tone off Mogami's hull, but not Mogami off Tone) — Available from 1936 onward.
Agano — Available from 1936 onward.

France

Lamotte-Picquet — Available from 1910-1920.
Suffren — Available from 1925 onward.
Algérie — Available from 1930 onward.
La Galissonnière — Available from 1936 onward.
'Enlarged La Gal' — Representative of the De Grasse & C5-class cruisers cancelled due to the German invasion, available from 1936 onward.

Germany

Emden (1920s) — Available from 1920-1935.
Königsberg — Available from 1925 onward.
Admiral Hipper — Available from 1936 onward.

Great Britain

E (Emerald) class — Available from 1914-1922.
Hawkins — Available from 1920-1928.
County (Kent through Northampton) — Available from 1925 onward.
Leander / Arethusa — Available from 1930 onward.
Town (Gloucester through Edinburgh) — Available from 1936 onward.
"Admiral class" — Slightly enlarged Town hull to be able to accept heavy cruiser-calibre artillery.

China

Ning Hai & Ping Hai — Available from 1925 onward in the CL category.

While many of these are early-to-late interwar or WWII-era cruisers, unfortunately, I don't have much in the way of documentation and photographs for WWI-era cruisers that hasn't already been shared. If you feel like there are valuable additions to these proposals that I've missed, feel free to comment on them.

August 18, 2021

50 minutes ago, Lucyfire said:

Any ETA on this core patch? like 1day, 1 week, 1 month, few months?

Usually these updates occur between 2 and 3 weeks after they post patch notes.

Usually.

August 1, 2021

Let's dive right in: this game could have been great. It could still be great. It would be even better if the development team actively communicated—or at the very least, hired someone to communicate—as they gave out in the past, but that's neither here nor there. We're not here to beat a thoroughly dead horse. Instead, I'm here to present some (relatively) minor quality-of-life improvements that I've compiled from my experiences playing this game: things I wasn't quite satisfied with, or thought could be done better. This is an alpha, after all, and we're here to test and provide feedback. Here's the feedback.

Battle
- Better divisional organization—if we are not allowed to pre-determine the divisions and their heading prior to entry into combat, the game should stop taking four ships of the same type and then making a division of three and then a screen of one.
- The ideal solution long term would be a 'pre-battle' phase showing a top-down 2-dimensional view of the engaged fleet and any allies: a naval chart aesthetic could be used. Simple slide-and-drop controls could be implemented to quickly separate ships into divisions and organize them efficiently prior to battle, representing the signals that would be naturally given out to separate from cruising groups and order battle formations prior to actually engaging in combat.
- Turrets ought to have a toggle in battle for 'rapid' and 'salvo' fire: in the former, all guns fire together or with a barely noticeable 'ripple', providing a slight rate-of-fire increase at the cost of a minor amount of accuracy—ideally it should only be toggleable once the enemy has been 'ranged.' The latter would be fire-by-turret, as currently implemented, and would provide no bonuses or maluses. The AI for both enemy and friendly ships should be able to toggle this automatically as required, though you would have the ability to manually countermand the order if so desired.
- Guns of the same calibre should lock to the slowest loading cycle among them: if you have two quads and a twin turret for 14"/356 mm artillery, the twin should fire at the same rate as the quads. Compensation might be that loading cycle differences are less noticeable.
Animations
- Casemates ought to also elevate and depress with their loading cycle. It looks very strange on pre-dreadnought and dreadnought-era warships for their main battery and turreted secondaries to move for their loading animation, while the casemates remain at a flat 0 degrees.
- Single-cradle artillery (Italian medium-calibre guns prior to the Luigi Amedeo Giuseppe Maria Ferdinando Francesco di Savoia, primo Duca degli Abruzzi - yes, that is the actual name of the Duca degli Abruzzi - and American 8in guns prior to Wichita) should depress and elevate all together, as they're on the same slide.
Models
- More hulls are, obviously, a must. Since they shouldn't require nearly as much time to implement as a campaign, and the modeling personnel should not be focused on the same work as the programmers associated with that project, smaller bi-monthly or monthly patches might work better- not only will this reduce the pressure on the team in order to deliver on the core patches, since they won't have to cram in as much per update, it would also keep a steady stream of new content in order to keep the existing playerbase interested and to draw in new customers.
  - Potential hulls for consideration include (minimum necessary outlined in bold)
    - Russian Empire / Soviet Russia
      - Rurik.
      - Bogatyr.
      - Svetlana.
      - Pr.26 (Kirov).
      - Pr.26 bis (Maxim Gorky).
      - Pr.68 (Chapaev).
      - Pr. 68 bis (Sverdlov).
      - Izyaslav.
      - Gnevny.
      - Leningrad.
      - Tashkent.
    - Germany / German Empire
      - Moltke / Seydlitz.
      - Derfflinger (can be rescaled to Mackensen & Ersatz Yorck).
      - Emden (1925).
      - Königsberg (K).
      - Nürnberg (N).
      - Type 1934.
      - Type 1936.
      - Type 1936C.
    - Austria-Hungary
      - Much the same as Germany, but including the 'Improved Tegetthoff' (also known as Ersatz Monarch).
    - Italy
      - Conti di Cavour (designed).
      - Conti di Cavour (modernized).
      - Duca d'Aosta.
      - Duca degli Abruzzi.
      - Turbine.
      - Navigatori class.
      - Soldati class.
      - Comandanti Medaglie d'Oro class.
    - France / French Empire
      - Danton.
      - Courbet.
      - Bretagne.
      - Normandie.
      - Duguay-Trouin.
      - Duquesne.
      - Suffren type (all are distinct from one another so different towers are probably necessary).
      - Algérie.
      - La Galissonnière.
      - De Grasse.
      - Mogador.
      - Le Fantasque.
      - Le Hardi.
      - L'Alcyon.
      - Aigle.
    - United Kingdom / British Empire
      - Orion.
      - Iron Duke.
      - Town class subgroups (1900s).
      - Town class subgroups (1930s).
      - County class subgroups (1920s).
      - A class.
      - G class.
      - N class.
      - Tribal class.
      - War Emergency Programme destroyers (Q through Z classes).
    - United States of America
      - USS Texas (1892) - by popular support (and by popular we mean @Cptbarney)
      - Mississippi.
      - Florida.
      - Wyoming.
      - New York.
      - Nevada.
      - "Standard" type (Pennsylvania through Colorado generally only require separate towers).
      - Omaha.
      - Pensacola.
      - "Standard" type (Northampton, Portland, and the Astoria classes all share much in common with one another in regards to the hull- only slight resizing and different superstructures are required).
      - Wichita.
      - Brooklyn.
      - Baltimore.
      - Cleveland.
      - Atlanta.
      - Des Moines.
    - Note: the Brooklyn, Baltimore, Cleveland, and their respective subclasses and refits are all largely based on the Brooklyn type's hull: it would be perfectly easy to only add the base type and then use different towers & tops as required.
    - - Clemson.
      - Farragut.
      - Porter / Somers.
      - Gridley.
      - Benson-Gleaves.
      - Fletcher.
    - Japanese Empire
      - Nagato.
      - Tosa.
      - Amagi.
      - Kii.
      - Furutaka.
      - Aoba.
      - Myōkō.
      - Takao.
        Specific towers:
        
        Takao — 1937, as modernized.
        
        Atago — 1944, as sunk.
        
        Chōkai — 1927-1944, as she never received a refit.
        
        Maya — Post-AA-cruiser conversion.
        
        Takao Kai — Larger version of the hull available 1930-1940, cancelled as a result of the 1930 LNT.
      - Mogami.
      - Agano.
      - Ōyodo.
      - Ibuki.
      - Sakura.
      - Asashio.
      - Otori.
    - China / Chinese Empire
      - Ning Hai & Ping Hai
- A bi-monthly or monthly stream or devblog of sorts to show off models in progress would be an excellent way to garner reputation and support.
Designer (parts)
- Blast bags. These are an absolute must. See right: note Richelieu's black blast bags. Every country used them at one point or another, and they figure prominently in many photographs of modern and older warships. A toggle to use them should be available, and they should, of course, be animated to move with the guns.
- Ideally, turrets of the single, twin, triple, and quadruple variants—with a very few exceptions—should not all be common to a single size. Single-gun turrets should be far slimmer, twin- and triple-gun turrets should provide the best balance of size vs. firepower, and so forth. As it is, many ships can be upgunned without any tradeoffs since 'if you can fit a twin there, you can fit a quadruple there.'
Designer (balance)
- Components ought to have more meaning: ideally, the 'modern' warship should require them as an absolute must, not just as an afterthought that eats up weight without being very helpful. Weapons might do more crippling damage to targets, for example, to offset the better benefits acquired.
- Heavy cruiser armour belt minimum thickness decreased to 20 mm, to allow for the County class's 25 mm as built and the Duquesne's somehow-less-than-that.
Misc.
- When mousing over an armour thickness in the Ship Designer, the section of the ship it protects should highlight or otherwise be made visible. This will allow players to know which parts of their ship are in need of protection and which parts can be left with less weight.
- Ships should pitch and heave far less relative to displacement, particularly in calm seas. Destroyers, of course, will still buck like a wild horse—but 125,000-ton battleships should be a little more stable.
- Shameless Plug.

This post might be added to as time goes on, as either I come across new portions or they are brought to my attention.

May 5, 2021

In summation:

Deutschland (or from the previous teaser, "close enough to Deutschland").
Fusō after her first modernization.
Sixteen (16) new reskinned and resized hulls. My Tone is more than likely going to be another Italian cruiser, or a resized Hood.
New gun models for Deutschland & Scharnhorst artillery, as well as new gun models for Japanese artillery.
You can now build 13,001-ton CAs, as opposed to 13,005-ton CAs.
Torpedo equipment finally doesn't affect ships that don't have any torpedoes.
AI is back to charging to point-blank and still won't be able to design a normal-looking ship.
Fixed game text.
Actually important, requested items:
- Cross-deck firing fixes.
- Torpedo tube visual changes and scaling.

Not terrible, but not exactly the changes I was hoping for.

March 9, 2021

On 3/7/2021 at 10:07 PM, Bigjku said:

I also would restate that I think the various drive systems should be horsepower capped at least in campaign mode. Speeds remain too high in every historical period for the most part. Geared turbines were a huge deal when they came out and basically enabled the first true monster ships like the Hood. There is a reason the Queen Elizabeth’s struggled to get to 24 knots despite having the best direct drive turbine system anyone could then build. You simply couldn’t get more HP out of it.

2. Guns need some work. My main suggestions would be as follows.

First auto loading of large caliber guns should simply be impossible. It was never implemented in this timeframe. I think the USN managed to do it to a 3 inch gun towards the end of WWII and they were building the 8 inch gunned Des Moines Class when the war ended that were automated. The options need to be limited here.

Second because lighter guns can be much more automated I think the selection options need to be individualized to the different gun calibers. For example I would class an Iowa battleship as having enhanced reloading on the 16 inch guns and semi automatic 5 inch guns and automatic 2 inch guns using the games terminology (that’s wrong too but is what it is).

To these statements I would like to point out that the German battleships and battlecruisers of the same period were able to achieve and sustain much higher speeds (all of the battlecruisers were capable of 26-28 kts despite only being designed for 24, for example, while the battleships after the Helgolands could typically make 24-25 despite their nominal 21-kt maximum speeds). While the quality of Imperial German turbine construction (with the exception of that one guy who dropped a hammer into Seydlitz's port turbine blades) is definitely part of the phenomenon, it does point to the fact that considerable speeds could be achieved with effort- and it doesn't help Queen Elizabeth that she has the hydrodynamic form of a slightly curved brick.

Additionally, while autoloading of large-calibre guns was never attempted in practice, the British 1944 re-design study for the Lion class featured autoloading 16"/45s with a planned firing cycle of 20 seconds between rounds.

March 5, 2021

Let's dive right in: the current system of how artillery - arguably the most important factor in the design, construction, and production of the modern battleship from inception to conclusion - works, sucks. As many people have already noted:

- Shell weights are considerably off reasonable spec, let alone historical.

- Gun ranges, a pet peeve, are considerably limited for all but the largest calibres.

While these are just a few examples - albeit well-known - the inability to choose certain real-life influencing factors considerably limits not only our capacity to create historical warships, but also be creative with our designs. The same extends to even the very gun calibre: what if I want to be French in the predreadnought era? I can't make a 138.6 mm gun, or a 164.7 mm gun, or 194 mm, or 240 mm, to say nothing of 274 mm; what if I wanted to make a German light cruiser? German '15 cm' guns aren't 150 mm, they're 149.1 mm. Then you also have things like the Japanese 15.5-cm in the 1930s, which of course doesn't line up to the 152.4 mm calibre we currently see.

The Gun Designer

My proposal is as follows: the current system of artillery will remain in place, as 'quick load' settings and also for people who don't want to spend the extra time with the Gun Designer (details to follow). But just as one can save ships for custom battles (a much-requested and soon to be added feature), one would be able to save custom-designed guns, which will go under a new tab (my current vision is that in the Guns section of the Ship Designer, there would be a checkmark to let you use custom guns; the tables would simply show the guns you've saved that are appropriate for the type, sorted within 5 years of nearest date.) Of course, the gun section in the Ship Designer, if you chose to use a custom gun - with the exception of the shell outfit increase/decrease option - would be 'greyed out' for our purposes.

Sections of the Gun Designer
- Designation
- Design Date
- Artillery (side tab)
  - Barrel Type
  - Gun Bore
  - Gun Length in Calibres
  - Breech Type
- Shells (2+ side tabs)
  - Shell Type
  - Shell Weight
  - Bursting Charge
  - Fuze
- Propellant (side tab)
  - Propellant Type
  - Muzzle Velocity
- Mounting (side & bottom tabs)
  - Mount Model
  - Elevation
  - Elevating Rate
  - Loading Angle
  - Train Rate
  - Hoist Type
  - Rounds per gun (base number, affected by reduced/increased ammo outfit in Ship Designer)

This looks like a lot, and it is, but let's break it down from here.

Designation

This is what we plan on calling our gun: throughout history, we see consistently that guns can be rounded to the nearest metric designation (all Japanese "8 cm" guns after 1907, for example, are 76.2 mm) or are deliberately mislabeled to confuse enemy intelligence (the British 15"/42 and Japanese 46-cm/45 Type 94 are prime examples). This functionally is the same as naming your ship in the Ship Designer: it won't have any bearing on the battle, but it may play into how intelligence gathering might work in the future. Nation of choice might also go here: it wouldn't do to use German 283 mm guns on an Alaska analogue, would it?

Design Date

This one is a little tricky. Why would we add a design date? That doesn't matter, does it? Well, actually it does. A design date limits the options for what we can use in the specific year - just like the Ship Designer - and more importantly, limits the ships we can place the gun on. If we don't have a design date on the gun, we might be able to stick our brand-new 1940s autoloading 203 mm triple turret onto an 1897 armoured cruiser. And that just ain't right. It's a refit some people might consider, and if you press "Unlock" on a custom battle you should be able to do just that, but we'll set some realistic limitations on what we can and can't do.

Artillery Section

Ideally, in this section, our view should be cutting to a different location from the ship designer- perhaps in one of the warehouses alongside? A nice little graphic touch to compensate the lack of direct interaction (placing guns in turrets, etc.).

Barrel Type

Our first section here is somewhat difficult to grasp a hold of without a little prior knowledge, but it plays into everything else. The construction of the barrel is incredibly important in determining the maximum available gun calibre and how powerful your gun can be: too much, and the barrel will burst. A list of options would potentially look something like so:

Wire-wound
Partial wire-wound
All-steel
Autofrettage
Monobloc

This is, of course, not an exhaustive list: merely a few examples. Wire-wound guns are the heaviest type of those mentioned: they also have rather restricted gun lengths (e.g. the 15"/42), thanks to the lack of stiffness close to their centre of gravity. However, wire-wound guns, within their limitations, are extremely strong weapons with higher factors of safety than some other types. Maybe there could be an option here to plate the bore in chromium: it adds a ton or two, but it significantly ups the barrel life.

Gun Bore

This section should pretty much be self-explanatory. The gun bore is the interior diameter of the barrel, i.e. the calibre of the gun. We have a wide selection of models already, so functionally, many of the existing assets can be used without too much change; I highly doubt that people will nitpick over the less-than-one-pixel difference between a 406.4 mm gun and a 410 mm gun. The diameter should be set to the nearest 0.1 mm for metric, and for 0.01" for imperial: specific numbers should be enterable, much the same as how one can currently change armour figures. Commonality is important: we want to make a good transition and keep the theme of the designers consistent.

Gun Length

The gun's length in calibres is our second most important part, and arguably the trickiest: we have to be able to set calibres from as low at /30, to as high as /70. Ideally, there would be a slider, but enterable numbers are good as well: setting them by factors of /1 would be good, though in the interest of saving our poor modelers and the scalers some hassle, visual changes should probably only take place once every 5 calibres, working forwards (e.g. a 52-cal gun would use the same model as a 50-cal gun, but a /55 would have its own model). What's important here to help impose some limits on our wild imagination is gun construction: that will limit our available calibres. If we have a wire-wound gun in 1914, for example, depending on the gun, we might only be able to get it to /45 calibres before we hit our unfortunate red "Error: Gun Too Long For Barrel Type" warning sign. The game doesn't want us to suffer any unfortunate accidents because of barrel droop and insufficiently stiff bores, so we should listen to it. Calibres will gradually increase as barrel quality improves over the years and steels grow stronger: 65-70 calibres should be doable by 1940, for those of you who want to make Stalingrad's 305/62 Pattern 1948, or go one better.

Breech Type

And here we have another important question: the breech type. This directly feeds into the type of ammunition we're using. If the gun has a sliding wedge block, it's going to have to use semi-fixed or fixed 'cased' ammunition: propellant that is stored in a brass case that obturates the wedge when fired, to trap the expanding gasses and force the shell out of the muzzle. This is great for Q.F. guns and practically a necessity for autoloading gun designs, because it cuts down on complexity and loading time: accordingly, the rate of fire increases significantly. On the other hand, breeches of this type are heavy and tend to take up a lot of space: the extra equipment they need to operate is one reason why proposed German triple turret designs (and those that existed, like the 28.3-cm triple used on the Deutschlands and the Scharnhorsts) are so darn wide and heavy for what they are. Welin screws, on the other hand, are for 'bagged guns': they can't easily autoload and they have a lower rate of fire, but they're a lot simpler to construct and use, and they're lighter.

Shells

This section will deal with the shells we're using: weight, type, and so on. For the purposes of keeping it a little simpler, we're going to assume that the breech type you just chose in the last section has already automatically made you use cased or bagged charges for your propellant. Cut to looking at a generic shell and its brass or tin case for powder in our graphic. Note that there will have to be at least two sections, with options to add another: many ships carried more than just straight APC and HE, and many ships - particularly British cruisers - didn't carry either.

Shell Type

The simplest options can be found here: AP, or HE? Except it's not. We have a variety of types here: APC, HE, SAP, CBC... the list goes on. For now, however, we'll limit it to the first three, and roll things like capped common under the third category: semi-armour piercing shells. This will set our basic shell type and automatically adjusts our bursting charge percentage to the necessary value, in case you didn't really want to bother with this section.

Shell Weight

Arguably one of the most important parts of the shell designer proposal, and also one of the trickiest: it's also one of the reasons we gave for proposing it in the first place. After all, currently, shell weights are averages that seem to have no real connection to history (or the laws of physics, for that matter: just try and take that super-heavy 406 mm shell and get it up to 900 m/sec in real life). This number will be automatically averaged to a standard value based on the gun calibre and year: a gun around 380-381 mm, designed in 1914, will have a shell weight that would probably be in the 850-870 kg range, increasing slightly to 880 kg by 1940. Again, physics. You can change this number, but not by much: if you were designing a 406 mm gun, for example, the maximum shell weight would be around 1,400 kg (50 kg above the heaviest 406 mm shell ever considered for usage, the heavyweight Italian 1,350-kg shell for their 406/56) and the minimum somewhere around 900 kg. Similar restraints would exist for all gun calibres, necessarily, but everything's within a modicum of reason.

Until it's not.

Bursting Charge

This category is twofold: percentage, and type. The percentage of the bursting charge will directly impact our damage and penetration performance: the larger the charge, the higher the damage- but also a weaker shell overall, which impacts penetration in a negative way. Of course, the type of bursting charge matters as well: British Lyddite bursters had a habit of igniting upon any impact shocks (re: the Skagerrak battle), while German TNT bursters were somewhat more stable and able to resist impact shocks long enough to do their job: much to the chagrin of many British sailors. The category will include those fillers we already have, plus a few we don't (such as Shimose and TNA, trinitroanisol).

Fuze

The fuze type is important. If we stick a base fuze on an HE shell, congratulations, you now have an HE shell which will penetrate mild steel plates and even some light 'protective' plates before bursting, thus giving yourself a good anti-destroyer weapon. Fuze set time is also important: instantaneous fuzes will act immediately, but set it too long and it might overpenetrate. An automatic value of 0.03 seconds should be the default value for all shell types.

Propellant

A small section which we might group under "shell", but I decided not to, since the shell types are numerous while propellant tends to be - with very few exceptions - uniform in regards to amount and type.

Propellant Type

Self-explanatory. We're selecting what we want to propel our shell, whether that be cordite, SPD, cast TNT, or RPC: many variations of powder exist, sometimes even within the same nation and same time frame. Amount auto-scales with desired muzzle velocity, taking into account barrel length.

Muzzle Velocity

And here is the other half of our equation: how do we combine light shells with good range? Maybe I want to sacrifice my barrel on the altar of the liner gods in order to achieve a heavy shell at high velocity? Perhaps I'd to sacrifice ballistic performance to get consistent, long life out of my weapons in order to make ends meet? All of these questions will help determine your muzzle velocity. But beware of those pesky "Error: MV too high for barrel type" and "Error: MV too high for calibre" flags.

Mounting

Is this where the fun begins? Cut in our graphic theme away from the shells to a completed mount further on in the warehouse.

Mount Model

Are you tired of using Zara's turrets for your German 283 mm guns? Unsatisfied with the fact that it's KGV's turrets on your British CA, not Edinburgh-style? Perhaps you like the look of Agano's gunhouses over Mogami's? Want that snazzy French 38-cm gunhouse model for your new 24-cm guns to recreate a few ahistorical cruiser killers? This category is for you. Since we're doing away with specific gun "Marks", this category belongs at the bottom of the page and will allow you to select - from your nation of choice - the appropriate gun mount style for you. This should include open-backed and enclosed mounting options, with their own pros and cons: open mounts are a lot lighter but tend to be weakly protected and suffer lower fire rates. Since many of the gun turrets appear to be scaled versions of one another, this category should present no problems.

Elevation

The minimum and maximum elevations available to the gun turret. And here's where we have to cut in on a personal peeve: gun ranges are too short. For example, Mark V Super-heavy 8" shells max out at 18.5 km: real-life 8in guns in the 1920s (and the Mk.V mounts are only available in the late 30s onward, remember) were hitting ranges of around 30 km, easily. Now, the 203 mm gun really has no business shooting past 20,000 metres - it's a waste of ammunition, they're not going to hit anything unless said heavy cruiser is named Haguro or Gorizia - but dang it, I want the option to waste my ammunition. A general and radical increase in both maximum range and spotting ranges should start to take place in the years immediately following 1920.

Moving back to the minimum and maximum elevations: a high maximum elevation (~45 degrees) will yield you the maximum ballistic range available to your gun, at the cost of a severe increase in weight. As the depth of the gunwells increases, so does the weight of the turret. However, as the useful limit of naval gunnery is ~35 km, a sufficient muzzle velocity coupled with a good shell can yield you weight savings so that you hit that "golden mark" with your 380/406/457 mm gun. This can also play into gun modernization: allowing old turrets to be refitted in the campaign to have a higher maximum elevation and extend their useful range.

Elevating Rate

This directly impacts the firing rate: the faster the guns elevate and depress from and to the loading angle, the faster the firing cycle will be. Additionally: the rate of fire should change dynamically with the range, for the very reason just listed above. At high elevations, a slower firing cycle is expected, and guns tended not to fire as fast as they did on firing trials (unless you're part of the Hochseeflotte); however, at short range, as the gun needs less time to elevate and depress, the cycle should change.

Loading Angle

A settable angle (measured in degrees) that determines where the guns will "rest". There ought to be a tab here with options for All-Angle, Fixed Angle, and Semi-Fixed Angle loading: the first offers a faster cycle but also weighs the most and additionally has a higher chance of ammo detonation, to give an idea of benefits and tradeoffs.

Train Rate

We have included Train Rate merely to say that we are not including Train Rate, as it is directly affected not only by the motors and hydraulics used but also by the weight of the armour on said turret, which is a function of the Ship Designer.

Hoist Type

And here we come to a small, often overlooked, but important part of the designer: hoists. Pusher hoists, bucket hoists, dredger hoists, cage hoists: there are many different types. Each offers their own benefits and maluses: pusher hoists, for example, offer a very high rate of exchange between the magazines and the guns, thus improving your firing rate... but beware if that turret gets hit, because they also create a continuous powder train between the turret and the magazine. While this isn't a critical feature, it would be nice if this important part of the design of a warship should get its own spot in the sun.

Rounds Per Gun

A base number of rounds per gun, to be affected by the increased and decreased shell outfit options.

Conclusion

Thank you for taking the time to read through this. While this will probably not - almost certainly not - be implemented into the game at any point now or in the foreseeable future, I wanted to share my thoughts on part of the direction I'd like this game to take, especially towards an emphasis on creativity and removing some of the hard restrictions placed on the main selling point of this game (the ship designer)... with a little dose of reality mixed in. Fun in moderation.

March 3, 2021

Just now, Hangar18 said:

I dont think we need that many hulls. but your point about hull forms being similar is exactly why i pointed out those few.

Unfortunately, we do need precisely that many hulls if UA:D continues on the path of adding specific ships and then allowing you to deviate from that basic design. Since all of these ships differed appreciably from one another, they have to be added, and sooner rather than later- after all, even in a game about dreadnoughts, cruiser battles are going to be far more common and you'll have to spend a lot more time on them.

March 3, 2021

47 minutes ago, Hangar18 said:

I feel like a Baltimore, and a Takao hull would be beneficial. past that it seems redundant.

A Baltimore - or more specifically, Wichita - based hull would be optimal, since all of the major prewar and wartime U.S. designs (Brooklyn, St. Louis, Cleveland, Wichita, Baltimore, Oregon City, etc.) used that same basic hullform: only the dimensions tended to change in regards to the hull (which works for UA:D since many hulls are upscaled/downscaled versions of one another anyway).

For the Japanese, it's not quite as straightforward. The Myōkō class, for example, share a similar hullform: practically everything is identical across the two '10,000-tonner' designs, except for the fact that Takao's widest point is just amidships, whereas Myōkō's is more aft (you will note that this is where the torpedo rooms, workshop, oxygen generators, and reserve torpedoes are placed, as well as the laundry rooms in Takao's case, so they need that extra space). Unfortunately, the way UA:D has chosen to go with its hulls means that you need two separate hulls in this case (as well as a separate hull for Mogami and the 7,600-tonners, Furutaka and Aoba, since none of those are identical to the two 'Washington cruiser' types either), since the superstructures wouldn't match.

My wishlist for hulls is:
US -

Heavy Cruiser (IV?) - Baltimore / Oregon City / Cleveland / Fargo.

Heavy Cruiser (III?) - Wichita / St. Louis / Brooklyn.

Heavy Cruiser (II?) - Representative of U.S. heavy cruisers between Northampton and New Orleans.

Heavy Cruiser (I?) - Pepsi. Pepsican. Pensacan. Pensacola. Colacan. Many names exist for this 10-gun aluminum death trap.

Light Cruiser (IV?) - Small Brooklyn (there were studies about 9- and 8-gun CLs).

Light Cruiser (III?) - Atlanta / Oakland.

Light Cruiser (II?) - Omaha.

Japan -

Heavy Cruiser (VI?) - Takao Kai (14,500 to 17,500 t?)

Heavy Cruiser (V?) - Mogami / Ibuki / Tone.

Heavy Cruiser (IV?) - Takao (& Atago) (1937) / Chōkai (1929) / Maya (1944).

Heavy Cruiser (III?) - Myōkō (1922) & Myōkō (1941). Maybe Haguro could be used instead for the slightly simpler superstructure.

Heavy Cruiser (II?) - Furutaka (1927) / Aoba (1940).

March 2, 2021

3 hours ago, werwaz said:

Triple and quad gun turrets weigh entirely too much. As demonstrated in a previous post, the weight per gun in a triple or quad is more than a dual, which defeats the entire purpose of the triple and quad turrets, which are to save weight while using the same number of barrels.

The weight of triple and quadruple turrets is necessarily more than a twin: after all, you have a much larger turret, with presumably similar (or thicker) armour, a larger barbette (which also needs armour) and heftier mechanisms for moving that greater weight. The weight savings lie in the arrangement of those guns: two triple turrets will weigh less overall than three twin turrets of equivalent calibre and mount protection, because the citadel - the amount of armour in the hull devoted towards the protection of the vitals - is commensurately shorter, and all of the mechanisms of a separate turret, and everything that turret needs to function, have been removed. The same principle applies to three triples or two quads vs. four or five twins, and the distinction becomes only clearer as time goes on and the amount of protection devoted to the citadel increases.

Now, I guess it ought to be said that UA:D doesn't currently model any of this: how hull armour is currently done corresponds to an extremely simplified version of a pre-dreadnought's scheme. But the equivalent weight savings of not adding an entirely separate turret or two still exist, albeit in smaller distinctions than what they might be otherwise.

February 27, 2021

@Nick ThomadisWill there be any possibility of seeing previews of the new hulls (like those shown in previous patch announcements) over the next few days?

February 23, 2021

6 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

New British Large Cruiser variant with displacement between 30,500 and 36,000 tons, available after 1935, which can produce medium size capital ships with large firepower.

New British Heavy Cruiser III variant with displacement between 16,500 and 19,500 tons, available after 1925. This type of hull has a low freeboard and can produce ships which combine speed, stealth and decent firepower.

New British Heavy Cruiser II variant with displacement between 12,500 and 16,900 tons, available after 1925. This strong hull with high freeboard can offer cruiser designs with powerful armament at a reasonable cost.

@Nick Thomadis If you can provide the information, what base will these new cruiser hulls be using? Will they be using existing assets or will we be obtaining hulls modeled on the County class vessels and potentially the Town-class light cruisers? The latter were the basis for several heavy cruiser studies in the 1930s, so I'm curious about the visual aspects of these new ships.

Additionally, I'm curious if it would be possible to add variants with a displacement of 9,500 to 11,500 tons, to simulate Treaty-bound cruisers, available from 1920 onward.

January 6, 2021

I can't help but feel like

1 hour ago, Cpt.Hissy said:

Thanks for putting this all together and in order. Perhaps this will be noticed and taken into account? Just looked over my own posts on this question and they're such a mess.

Can't resist adding another wall of text here x) Some additions / corrections to this, maybe a bit excessive at times, you've been warned.

H4. Freeboard - not a slider but a set of fixed options, for ease of player understanding and dev implementation. Yes i'm clearly inspired by some other game.
Options would be: high freeboard, medium/normal freeboard, low freeboard and monitor type. With each having some flat modifiers for overall stats. Maybe?

H8. Forecastle. - all of mentioned can be just grouped as Forecastle option, with adjustable length and two types: narrow (as on Dreadnought herself, leaving stripes of main deck on both sides for whatever use) or hull-wide (what you call a step deck). None would mean flush deck.
Something like Iowa is no forecastle, high freeboard. Hood is very long hull-wide forecastle, low freeboard. Dreadnought is long narrow forecastle, medium freeboard. German WW1 designs leave questions though.
Option for a stern cut-off (lowered deck part) could be useful for ships with two deck steps (also making Hood a no forecastle, stern cut-off, medium freeboard ship), but not that necessary.
Forecastle counts towards seakeeping, roughly as if the ship had higher freeboard, multiplied by forecastle length fraction. Narrow forecastle works worse that hull-wide.

I feel like these could do without the simplification. After all, doing this would completely discount things like the Japanese undulating sheer flush decks (which had no continuous level of freeboard, being entirely determined by seaworthiness at the point in question) and their unique style of undulating clipper bow.

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