SonicB

I feel this is just part of the arcade/simulation argument seen all the time on this forum. Personally, I don't feel it would be frustrating, because there is always an element of player choice involved. Do you invest in the shiny, new, unproven technology, knowing it might fail you but also might provide a big advantage, or stick with what you know works? This is a question faced by every admiralty in history, so it seems strange to leave it out of the game completely, especially since in reality malfunctions played a part in almost every significant naval battle I can name. Nevertheless, your opinion is valid. Perhaps a good compromise might be to add a greater critical hit chance to ship systems, and more potential maluses - temporary or permanent - as a result. For turrets, this could be modified by the number of guns mounted to add a decent alternative to RoF/accuracy nerfs. For example, one or two guns knocked out, slower rotation, partly blocked turret arcs, turret completely jammed, that kind of thing.

There are rate of fire differences at present. I'm arguing for them to be removed in order to allow for unified main battery salvos between different types of turrets in the same calibre. This is because there is little historical evidence to show a significant rate-of-fire penalty between twin, triple and quad mounted guns, at least as part of a warship's main battery. Reliability is unfortunately not modelled in the game at the moment. I'm hoping this will change in future patches, as it was a critical factor in historical battles and campaigns. One good example: the King George V class battleships carried ten 14" guns in two quad and one twin turret. They were capable of two salvos per minute, which is broadly comparable to other late Treaty-era and post-Treaty battleships with triple turrets, and earlier twin-turret ships such as the Queen Elizabeths and Colorados. However, the quad turrets were notably unreliable throughout their career - it's arguable that the Battle of the Denmark Strait was decided not when Hood was sunk, but when Prince of Wales's aft turret jammed and her forward turret guns suffered repeated faults, forcing her to retreat.

Seconded! It's also very frustrating to have centreline and wing turrets (as in early dreadnought-type battleships and battlecruisers) ranging and firing separately, when the whole point of a unified main battery was to simplify targeting. The ROF and accuracy differences between different turret types would have to be removed, but these are pretty arcadey and ahistorical anyway. Triple and quad turrets should have a weight, cost, reliability, and possibly barbette size penalty as suggested above, not some random nerf to the individual performance of the guns.

Even just click-dragging a length of the hull and saying 'here is the machinery, here are the magazines' would be better. And then that decision could reflect where we are allowed to place turrets and barbettes, not some arbitrary restriction that differs wildly between hulls.

Good analysis as always. My understanding is that the 'core patch' currently being worked on alongside campaign is supposed to be the one that basically locks in the game mechanics. As such, next patch really is the make-or-break one, and I suspect the delay reflects that.

Not all delays are bad news and I really, really, really hope you're right. Been burned more than a few times on early-access and kickstarter projects... but then none of them were taken over pre-beta by a deep pocketed pay-to-win mobile games company so what do I know.

I've noticed some correlation with turrets which have no 'red' area in their rotation arc (i.e. cannot turn or fire within that arc.) If I build a ship with every turret positioned so that it has a large 'red' area, the problem seems to either go away or be diminished.

What can I say, it's a Fishist coup.

@Fishyfish returning to the thread after missing all the Nazi drama

Again, why are you still here?

Microsoft 3D Builder or Fusion360 (used to be netfabb) have decent auto clean-up tools. Might be worth a shot, although in my experience most directly exported game assets of any complexity have garbage geometry.

Well, I for one did Nazi that coming.

People have been suggesting this for rather a long time now (over two years since I joined the forums.) What we have is not a great system, but since it functions (mostly) I don't think it's going to change any time soon.

I get your point and it's a valid one, but think I'm going to have to disagree here. Plenty of strategy and RPG games are guilty of this; a game should create replay value because its mechanics are complex, not because they are poorly explained. It's a fine distinction, but if you will, it's between 'I didn't know that was possible' and 'I didn't know that possibility had tactical value in this context.' Out of interest, what did you discover recently?

There's one principle I follow professionally (editing various business/technical texts) that applies here - a misunderstanding is still a bug. In other words, if a feature is working as intended but your audience is asking that question, either your feature or your context & presentation of that feature should be changed. Either way, something still needs to be done, which is why all honest feedback is valuable to a good author.

Would accept anything other than pedants fighting over the definition of 'nazi' which is a sign any forum is slowly dying. But update news would be preferable.

I have a couple of resin printers and I'd like to second this. In my experience (as a cosplayer of game characters lol) any exports from game assets usually need a lot of work to tidy them up for printing... but if we have a favourite design from a campaign it really would be great to access the model. You would need a resin or very good FDM printer to recreate warship details at scale, though. Hell, you might even get people buying the game just to use the designer for tabletop miniatures - you probably wouldn't believe how much tabletop gamers will throw at their hobby to get custom pieces. (hey devs, if you want to offer this as an official service, call me 😄)

How is that relevant? I quoted one specific example from a well-known battle. The fact is that an admiral on a battleship of the era had exactly the kind of information and tactical picture that you are claiming they didn't. Whether or not it's 'useful' in UA:D battles is a completely different point not related to historical accuracy, but many people other than you seem to think it would be. As for UA:D battles being 'mostly of skirmishes size' - 1) even small-scale actions often involved significant separation between friendly ships or groups where a tactical picture would be useful, 2) what of the larger battles such as those we see in many academy missions, and 3) we have no idea how common large fleet actions will be in the campaign so it's rather pointless to speculate.

Historical admirals on larger ships often had plotting tables showing every hostile and friendly ship in the battle, and an entire staff keeping it updated with reports from lookouts and other friendly ships. In other words, exactly like a minimap. What we are doing right now is playing as a lookout, the admiral's staff, and the admiral himself. Great layman's article here, and I quote: "Admiral John Jellicoe, commanding the British Grand Fleet from the HMS Iron Duke, had at his disposal not only superior numbers but also tactical plots showing the relative positions of both the ships in his fleet and the positions of German ships."

I was replying to @ThatZenoGuy raising the issue of heavy secondaries on modern dreadnoughts - i.e. those with a unified main battery. Of course, there were plenty of pre-dreadnoughts with guns of that calibre.

In an alternate universe where aircraft didn't exist and secondary batteries were never required to double as AA armament, I could maybe see 7-8" secondaries as realistic by the 1930s and 40s. It would be logical to expect them to keep pace with cruiser main armament, and also to counter the increased range of torpedoes. However, in this alternate universe of UA:D, you're completely right in that there's no logical reason for a bunch of 2" and 3" guns. One problem is that the devs have decided to base the towers on real historical designs that did co-exist with aircraft, and so the AI is presented with a bunch of small-calibre slots to fill because the real ships had AA guns there. The only solution I can see for that particular issue, at least for the time being, is model inactive AA guns on the towers much in the same way as depth-charge racks on DD hulls. As for the small calibre guns all over the deck, that's clearly still an issue that needs to be looked at within existing auto-design rules, and I'm sure it will be addressed.

As the starter of the Clown Car thread, I'm aware that it's pi*sed off Nick in the past, but... I just wanted to say this patch seems to have gone a long way towards making it unnecessary. Aside from too many Mogami-type turret layouts (three turrets forward, only C turret superfiring with B turret obscured), some uneven weight distribution, and still too much variety in secondary armament, I haven't noticed any more immersion-breaking issues. So, well done devs. Keep up the good work! and let's have anadjustable length:beam ratio in the designer please ❤️

The spotting mechanic in general is just absurd. In good weather and visibility any ship up until the advent of radar should be spotted long before it is within weapon range. That was the main reason that Dreadnought was so revolutionary - she had the range to engage any other ship at a firepower advantage, and the speed to control that range. Not seeing your opponent until they're within their own, shorter, range makes a mockery of basic warship design principles in the dreadnought era. Furthermore, incoming rounds splashing all around without even a hint of a sighting in return should be confined to science fiction. Any ship firing should automatically receive a significant visibility increase. As for this being a design issue... designing for 'stealth' is thoroughly ahistorical and should not be in this game, full stop. See also: American cage masts and later British & Japanese superstructures.

This would definitely be a good feature to have! Especially with secondary armament on larger ships, which can run between 2" and 8" and which can only now be directed at a single target. Some finer control over gun targeting would be most appreciated - ideally by a) having separate targeting for each calibre of gun, and b) the ability to set primary and secondary targets, or allow turrets which have no line-of-sight to the primary target to fire 'under local control' at targets of opportunity.

Yep, the bug where your turrets lose lock and have to be manually retargeted to start getting it back. Still not been squashed.