ArtifaX

Is it just me or the accuracy is completely busted... I'm not gonna argue how accurate guns were in 1890s (probably not that accurate), BUT: 1. Big ships sailing almost side by side within 1-2km should not be missing that much. 2. Miss pattern is a joke.. I was chasing a ship for a long while (like 1h in-game time). It shot over 1000 shells as i was slowly approaching and got 10 hits (which is weird but fine). But all those hits are 10-30m to the left or right. Spot on. It look ridiculous to the point that it felt like the ship had some kind of deflector field just guiding all shell to really close misses. That 2nd one is killing immersion.. shells should be landing randomly in an area and not all be directed to immediate vicinity if rng calculated them as a miss..

Good question. I'm probably on the side of "we have too much info on enemy ship" camp. I dont mind looking at it from bird view, but having an X-Ray on full ship stats and status feels like cheating. There is something rewarding when you just guess torps are coming and do evasion blindly (really enjoy it in WOWS BB gameplay). If you know exactly when the ship has fired - that kills it. If there is a clever system in place that uses probability like - crew thinks they fired while in reality they didnt or vice versa - can be interesting. And accuracy can be based on your optics, weather, distance and so on... But i have a feeling that's just too much trouble and there are better things to do for devs.

We are talking about comms here. So what exactly is being worked on is beside the point (plenty of topics about that). To me communication cycle looks like this: 1. Many threads on various topics are going with minimal participation from the team 2. An update is announced stating the changes (without much specificity) 3. Go to step 1. Very rarely (like that steam release announcement) there is some form of look into the future. There is no roadmap. There is basically no info about what will be in the next update beforehand. Community has no idea what feedback is taken into account and get frustrated when the same issues that were mentioned in alpha 2 are still present and they are left guessing. I'll give 1 hypothetical example of a possible issue, team's thought on it, team's response and how it might be handled better: issue: Bulkhead's damage model is broken thought: Will require a sizable refactor followed up but complete re-balance of HP, Gunnery and Artillery response: total silence proposed response: We acknowledge there seems to be a problem there. This is something we might look into in the future, but currently our efforts are concentrated on other areas.

Well, i think we are passed the time when studios "just worked" and did not communicate much before release. That is a fine way if you do game end to end and release it before collecting money from players. This one (and the industry as a whole nowadays) is doing it in a different way. People essentially pay for a promise in part to be able to see the game early and hopefully influence the outcome. We are no different from investors, on top of which we also provide free testing of the product. So i think a fair bit of comms is required (not to mention the fact that studio claims to listen to community). And to be honest, coming up with a weekly post about progress is not that time consuming (especially if any form of proper dev process is organised). As for the "small team" argument, there are a lot of examples of 1 man projects having better comms. It does not have to be elaborate, but it has to be present regardless of how many people are working on it.

I do... Designing ships is fun, but its the campaign that actually puts meaning to that... You can't just retry that battle with different design, you are stuck with what you thought will work 3 years ago making each decision matter. Not to mention all other features making each playthrough a unique experience. Saying that, i do believe core issues needs addressing in the meantime (bulkheads, armor, accuracy penalties, etc.)

I'm honestly ok with campaign being delayed by half a year, but it being a sole focus without paying attention to core mechanics is a problem... There are still some easy enough re-balancing that can be done (around armor and bulkheads weight for example) and some more considerable issues with damage models. Again, not saying they need to be fixed straight away, but some plan for that would be good... Did devs ever acknowledge there is a problem there?

There was a suggestion to have 2 modes (historic and random). First will try to emulate history, another would have random tech researched. If devs go with just one option I personally think random should be the one (or if they go with both, then random implemented first). Cause this is what gives you replayability and have you react to whats happening rather then memorizing what the enemy has at each stage so u can counter it.

I agree those should be fixed and hence my comment about working on that at the same time as campaign. But the rest of things like bulkheads and armor being OP, this should be easy to fix with changing a few numbers (cost, weight, tech requirement) and should not impede the campaign (again, given that they are addressed b4 release cause everyone here agrees its a problem)

I have to disagree here.. The only real concern with letting campaign out is that all resources would be diverted to it after its done, which i hope will not be the case. I would argue that campaign should be release ASAP so that it can be tested with players. The current state of the game is enough to facilitate battles that would occur in the campaign and that is all that matters really. The fact that some system is not fully done should not prevent main game feature from being released to testers (which we all are), given that it is actually followed up on afterwards. And the fact that some things are not balanced (armor weight, speed, etc) literally makes no sense to fix before campaign simply cause it would be a completely different balance there. There is no guarantee that by reaching 1930 you would have all the same things unlocked as in custom battles now. It might be the case that you would invest in armor quality and bulkheads, which would leave you with shitty range finders and subpar guns. Only by looking at a comprehensive data set from campaign it would make sense to decide on balance.

I really really really hope its a typo=)

Honestly i dont know=) But at least they are playable. With subs, you design them to never see them actually sail. I'd rather have devs spend time on bringing more historical hulls then modeling a sub. Plus with displacement, armament and so on adjustable, devs would need to determine what effect those have. Like what difference does it make if you have 6 instead of 4 torpedo tubes in the context of non-visible, non-playable sub effect simulation and then also balance it out to remain close to historical. So then whats the point of design If everything looks the same? In order to make it interesting a lot of variety is needed and then again, whats the point of that if its not visible to the user anywhere outside of dry dock. The only explanation i can see is to make a cool screenshot=)

Only if they have realistic weight values, which is not quite the case at the moment... But i agree, penetration at ranges and accuracy should be the anchor point for balancing

If refits are not possible, you would have to fight with outdated ships against outdated ships making precise time of conflict a decisive factor (i just finished my series of 3 new shiny BBs while yours are 18 month away, get ready to be dominated!) Again i dont think this is absolutely necessary to be done in upcoming updates (b4 full release it needs to be addressed for sure.)

Probably RTW style would be used by devs. You can research them, chose which type to build and how many and that's about it. If more options on their passive use are present (assign numbers to regions, engagement option and primary targets) would be better though. Should not be hard to code. Designing subs feels like a waste of dev time to me. AWS is probably a different matter. It might not have any visual change to the ship (even though would be cool if it does), but should be one of those part slots that adds weight and price and increase off-battle anti sub properties of the fleet.

I have to agree with that... The level of control abstraction seems to be around controlling ships as an admiral would (course, formation, primary and secondary targets) leaving individual battle stations (like actual gun aim, torpedo launch and damage control priorities) to AI. Maybe implementing some more launch options (wide/narrow/normal spread or simultaneous division launch) can be added, but i dont see too big of an issue with current way to be honest.