Galis

Finally update for destroyers. I want my little bois to swarm and bully battleships into submission. PS. USS Johnston is a battleship, don't @ me

Same, that's why I never bother with any guns smaller than 152mm. Though I usually try to never go below 203mm on secondaries. And when I want to sink a destroyer I usually point all my guns at her, including main artillery. Because usually it's the main artillery that sinks it.

Cool thing to add to that would be automated artillery plotting rooms or at least computer-aided calculations. If I remember correctly Iowa-class had fully automated artillery calculations, the computer(s?) would gather all information and produce very crude and simple but at the time revolutionary data that provided the ship with very high accuracy of fire. Though it's middle of the night and I'm more of "heard something somewhere" ground so I may be mistaken, I stand to be corrected. But it would still be a cool idea to have analog computers that could greatly improve the accuracy of your fire. Especially the really small guns of secondary batteries would need that boost.

I don't think the points about men on being on decks of the ships are completely true, I mean, naturally, large chunk of the crew has it's battlestations inside of the vessel. But there are still men manning deck guns, AA guns, firefighters, messengers running across the ship in the case of telephone lines being broken, artillery spotters, torpedo spotters, damage control crews, etc. It would be really nice to see just some crew models, to indicate that it is indeed manned by men and not ghost ships, like in UA: Age of Sails.

This is probably why AI is always able to cramp impossible amounts of armor into their ships lmao Nothing like seeing a dreadnought with over 6 or 7 meters of belt armor.

Are you playing the British or the American campaign? In American campaign's case there are techs that unlock you bigger guns, I believe it's up to 12 pounds in the basic techs, then 24 pounds in the advanced techs and 32 pounds in the last techs. In British campaign's case, it depends on the technology for specific guns, for example in the last tech pool you unlock French re-bored 32 and 42 pounders. And in both cases it very much depends on the luck but even if you don't have enough guns in the shop or in storage, they should still be visible in the menu, just grayed out.

I've got a small question / feedback / rant What's up with AI and its armor fetish? I just gave a shot to the US Super Battleship mission, everything seems to go well. Except the enemy battleships that were supposed to be obsolete had over 600mm of belt armor. My 457mm guns weren't able to penetrate them at range but I somehow managed, thanks to radar and technology I had quite good chance to hit so I just pummeled them into submission. Then comes the Japanese Super Battleship. Over 700mm of armor, guns as large as mine (but much more accurate), 10 knots faster than myself. Naturally, I wasn't able to penetrate her in the slightest so my shells only shattered or ricocheted off. I could get closer, but the enemy had screening force of eight destroyers with a lot of torpedoes. Wouldn't it be good to put some kind of limitations on the AI and how much armor they can strap on their vessels? I want to just remind everyone that USS Montana project assumed that the ship would have 400mm of belt armor (as much as I strapped to my own Super Battleship), Yamato had 410mm and Bismarck 320mm. Over 600 or 700 milimeters of belt armor isn't just borderline unplayable to fight against, it's also borderline impossible. Ships like that would have to be extremely heavy. And I forgot to mention that the Japanese Super Battleship was 40 thousand tonnes lighter than my own. With nearly twice as much armor, 10 knots more on the clock, the same 457mm guns, more secondaries and more ammo onboard. Idk, have anyone got similar experiences or am I just salty?

I've developed very simple tactics that worked for me the whole way through both British and American campaigns. Though it requires very specific ships, I always prefer large frigates with sufficient amount of health and ships of the line. In the case of frigates I put the heaviest carronades I possibly can fit on the vessel on the bottom gun deck and then congreve's on the top gun deck (that would be the perfect situation), sometimes when I don't have enough congreve's I use woolwich guns or similar but cheaper guns like Armstrongs, just some medium-sized firepower with as much penetration on 500 yards as possible. As for the ships of the line, I put the heaviest cannons on the bottom gun deck, the best option naturally would be the French re-bored 42/32 pounders. Then the heaviest carronades on the middle gun deck and some light(-ish) guns, preferably Desagulier's or light carronades if I can't fit anything else. With additional ship upgrades like 20% lighter guns and 30% additional speed from the sails it usually fits well with extra crew over the optimal and my frigates and ships of the line still can sail with 10 knots. The way I use them is simple: Bring more guns to the table than your enemy. And I mean that in a very small scale: Scale of single ships. I usually try my best to always bring two ships to enemy's one. AI is very unwilling to break up lines so usually I get my way and I can pound enemy ships with two of my own, one on either side of the enemy. I then usually use manual aim to direct their fire as low on enemy ships as possible, I usually place the marker right on the waterline. Thanks to that my ships don't hit each other, the top deck guns hit the enemy ship at all, and I can sink them quickly because (maybe it's only placebo) I noticed that it's much easier to flood enemy ships with that targeting.

I'm playing the US campaign for the first time right now, having a blast but that's only natural with UA. I've managed to capture a 3rd rate of Bellona class and I've noticed that unlike the Ardent classes it has access to Dickson&Milla 32 pounders. The description in game describes them as "experimental" but comparing statistics to my favourite, French, 32pdr. guns shows that the D&M one has actually astonishingly low accuracy for being described as "the best money can buy", the French guns have accuracy of 0.95 while the D&M guns have accuracy of 2.6, on par with Armstrongs and Bloomfields. Their reload and damage is average too, as is their penetration. I didn't have a chance to try them out in battle yet but I'm really curious about what is so special about them? I tried to do a bit of research online but due to lack of time I couldn't find anything specific. Anybody tried them out yet? I couldn't find them in the British campaign I played on the last version and D&M were british designers so I assume they are a new addition to the game. Cheers.

Finally a very capable developer that's interested in black powder era. You have no idea how happy that makes me as a huge history buff of that era. Basically, I just wanted to thank you for a game so early into development yet already so playable, after taking some risk to try out UA: Dreadnoughts I knew that investing into Age of Sail wouldn't be a mistake. I absolutely adore the idea of including land-based combat in that game, I honestly hope something similar will be implemented into Dreadnoughts though naturally, I understand how different it'd have to be to be accurate to tactics of the era, and how difficult because of similar reasons. But it just gives a game this another level of gameplay that really enchants the overall experience. Apart from praises I just wanted to propose two ideas I had in my head when playing: 16th-17th century? In the end, the Age of Sail was quite a long period. DLC, free update, whatever, a full campaign in a completely new era of warfare (despite how little it changed through those three hundreds of years) would probably be worth to pay a few bucks for. Another thing: Paixhans guns? I wonder if the devs considered it, I know it kind of exceeds the current timeframe of the game which seems to circle around 1799-1800 since the first French paixhans gun came around 1822-1823 but it would be a cool end-game addition to your biggest vessel, since it wasn't a light piece of weaponry. All in all, thanks for a great game gentlemen and keep up the great work because I absolutely adore your boat-games.

Hello, first of all I wanted to say that I've been playing the game for a couple of days now and I absolutely love it. This is already my dreams come true, I can't wait for the campaign and future updates. But as a boat fetishist I wanted to ask about two things; Quadruple turrets? I think it'd be a good addition, in the end the whole French battleship doctrine created to counter the Regia Marina was centered around the quadruple turrets in superfiring pairs on the bows of the ships, like in the Richelieu class. Advanced Fire-control systems? Iowa would be the best example of what I mean by that I believe, instead of optical rangefinders she was equipped with Mk.38 GFCS which allowed for radar rangefinding and great automatization of the whole process and greatly increased accuracy. The night-time engagement between Kirishima and Washington at the distance of nearly 17 kilometers would be a great example of that. Naturally, I understand that it's only an alpha but I wanted to ask about the general idea about the future of the game, if the developers have those two things even in mind for some kind of later updates. Cheers.