CL-86 Homeboy

I got back into the game hoping that, after a few months away, maybe the bugs I kept encountering previously will have been fixed, but they haven't. Anyway, I started wondering if maybe it wasn't the game, and maybe it was me misunderstanding what I'm supposed to be doing. So let me describe what happened in two battles I played, and y'all can tell me if it's the game or me that's causing these problems. I set up a battle in 1920 between the US and Japan with 5 BBs, 3 CAs, 2 CLs, and 7 DDs on each side. I didn't get any warning about it being too many ships, and after designing my BBs I started the game. I assigned the 3 CAs to scout with 3 DDs screening them, and the 2 CLs and other 4 DDs were to screen the BBs. I turned my BBs due north to where I knew the enemy would be. Now, when I think of scouting, I understand that to mean steaming ahead of the battle line to get eyes on the enemy fleet first (think the "Run to the South" at Jutland), but instead, my CAs just chilled off to the starboard side of my BBs steaming in circles. Eventually we found the enemy, and I turned my battle line to steam a parallel course. A little while later, I noticed one of my DDs steaming off into the sunset in the opposite direction of the enemy fleet. As soon as I told it to detach from its division, it immediately turned around and headed back to where it was supposed to be. I then looked back and noticed that my other BBs were not following the flagship, but had turned and were steaming away from the enemy fleet (no, nothing was in anywhere near torpedo range by this point). At that point I quit the battle out of frustration. I then set up a battle in 1915 between the US and Germany. Same fleet compositions but with the CAs replaced by BCs. I organized the fleet in the same way as well. Since BCs apparently can't be set to scout (which is stupid - see the Jutland example cited above), I just directed them to steam north with their screen ahead of the BBs. As the battle started, all was going well until I noticed one of the screening DDs had decided not to turn with the battle line but instead kept steaming straight into the enemy fleet, where it was quickly chewed up by every gun they had. As I returned to my BBs, I noticed that, while the flagship was doing exactly what I had told it to, the following ships were getting incrementally slower as I went back down the line, with the last two BBs basically sitting stationary in the water. These are issues that have made the game unplayable for me every time I've tried to go back to it over the last few months. Are these because I am doing something wrong, or are these AI bugs that either the developer is unaware of or which their programmers just don't have the know-how to fix? I do remember that they weren't a problem when I first started playing, and that it seemed like they started after one of the patches several months back. On a separate note, I did notice that the issues with some of the AI ship design absurdities have been improved, and while the ships that the AI designed for the above battles weren't exactly what I would have gone with, they weren't as comical as they were the previous times I've played. There is one very simple fix that I think they definitely need to implement, though, and that is making sure the design speeds of AI ships in my fleet are appropriate relative to that of the ships I design. For example, during the first battle I played today, the CAs were an appropriate speed for CAs, but the CLs and DDs were actually slower than my BBs, making them not really helpful for screening. Just a simple code that ensures that BCs and CAs are faster than BBs, CLs are at least as fast as BCs and CAs, and DDs are faster than all the others is something I think definitely needs to be added.

I just jumped back into the game for the first time in weeks to see if the problems I mentioned in my previous comment (and by @coalminer more recently) had been fixed. Nope. I set up a battle of 5v5 with BCs, and it started me with four in a div and one alone. I attached the lone one to the division, but it just wandered off for a while. Once it finally decided to start vaguely following the rest of the column, it just crabbed its way along at very low speed. I also noticed that, while my flagship was moving at full speed, the next three were following its track, but at much lower speeds so that they fell way behind. Until these issues are fixed, I'm going to say that this is an unplayable game.

I just jumped in and played a few battles for the first time since the patch went live. In all the battles I played each team had five ships of the same type. As usual, I spawned in with them in two divisions, one with two ships and the other with three. As usual, I merged them into a single battle line. Before the patch, they would typically find their way into line reasonably quickly (albeit with a bit of bumping), and we'd be off. In all of today's battles, however, the division which was supposed to fall in at the back would seem to make little effort to get there for a good while. Also, regardless of whether I set the formation to tight, normal, or loose, the whole line would get extremely spread out, with the ships toward the back appearing to be barely moving and not getting involved in the battle. One one occasion the two ships at the front of the line were out of ammo before the last one had fired a single shot. I assume this has to do with the collision avoidance mechanic, so y'all may want to take a look at it. Also, when one battle ended, I went to replay it, but it would not allow me to restart immediately with the same ship because it said that one of my main guns and several of my secondaries were "badly placed." They were exactly where they had been before, and I was able to delete them and replace them exactly the same, but it was still an annoying bit of time wasted. And finally, is there some way to get the AI to at least make some effort toward building good ships? I'm trying to test out my designs against enemy squadrons of similar ships, but they often end up bringing ships with less than half the displacement. It's not much of a test of my super-battleship with 18" guns and a 16" belt if the opponent has 14" guns and a 9" belt.