Stormnet

I haven't played UA:D since core v0.5, yet it both pains and warms my heart that this threat is still going with strong AI stupidity contenders.

Mas faz sentido. Aquela torre tripla está bloqueada pelas baterias secundárias laterais, e o ângulo de tiro sofre por causa disso. Claramente tal disposição nunca permitiria disparar para trás, mas podia estar de uma forma em que podia ter um arco maior. Podia substituir aquelas torres secundárias singulares por umas duplas e puxar para o lado, movendo também aquelas torres pequenas para outro lado onde não atrapalhavam, e assim tinha-se um arco de fogo lateral maior (e com menos peso). Ou então podia mater aquelas torres todas, puxando-as para à frente com a superestrutura traseira, e assim colocava aquela primária atrás com um arco maior para à lateral (conseguiria disparar mais para a frente) e com a capacidade de disparar para trás. Os Nelson eram incapazes de disparar para trás, mas não bloqueavam a torre C com secundárias que restringiam desnecessariamente o seu arco lateral. De qualquer das formas, não é a única falha deste design da IA. Utiliza secundárias de alto calibre semelhante às primárias (o que não acontece deste os semi-couraçados [descontinuados após o primeiro couraçado com calibres uniformes]) em torres singulares, para desnecessariamente acrescentar peso, e só tem 8 canhões secundários de baixo calibre, o que remove o propósito da existência destes visto que são insuficientes para as tarefas de baterias secundárias.

What does Nelson having forward main batteries have to do with the AI building mixed calliber ships well after the introduction of the dreadnought?

I'm waiting to see how long will it take for them to dump this sunken cost fallacy of a system and just use templates. This image is from a discord user: I'm a broken record at this time. (Almost) every player says "Ditch this AI, it just doesnt work, get templates.", GL says "No, wE WilL BAlaNce aNd pATch thIs AI". After weeks of more wasted development fixing this little * * * *, we get another bug. When will they get the message...

YES. YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSS!!! After more than a year, it finnaly happened. Now, lets see how good it is...

After more than a year, we finnally got it. Although the memories of the slightly dissapointing nature of v0.5 still makes me rather skeptical, as long as there arent crippling bugs and annoying framedrops, I'm all in on this one.

Well, Im late to this. After my pessimistic rant on the v90 feedback thread, this does come at the right time. Although the "We forgive your toxicity, drama, and agression" to criticism of your paying customers is... insulting at best, I think I can forgive you for calling us that. Even though this update might surprise me, I'm going to hold reservations until I see it in my PC. v0.5 wasnt that good of a experience. Just make sure I don't run into a barrage of bugs and glitches when I fire it up.

I am kind of feeling the same at this. The development is very slow and has been slowing down even more lately. The Core patch was promised for last august. Even if you count the pandemic, it should have only been delayed for about 6 months, and thus release early this year. And then the january/february launch was missed. Its November, and we only got 0.5. When we ask for more info on the state of the campaign, their replies are always "We are working on the campaign, more info to come.". We almost have to beg them to tell us about the game. I came into this game out of curiosity, last October, as Im interested into buildings games, not even knowing what a cruiser or destroyer really were. I learned A LOT about naval warfare because of it and the community, and I am grateful for that. I had high hopes for this project, and the potential new features like modular hulls, gun designers, and so oncould bring. I spent a lot of time giving feedback and especially ideas for new content to expand the game. But then time passed. Alphas came only every 2/3 months, to add a minor feature or two, a bunch of hulls (many copypasted resizes). Core was always "coming soon". And I began to lose interest. Call me spoiled, but as someone who tracked the development of Stormworks since v0.4, I was spoiled with constant streams of devblogs, new features, and such that kept me hooked, almost every 2-4 weeks. Yet, UAD takes so long I no longer care. It took them 7 months to add more turrets to the italians and russians. I know people that could put out these simplistic models in at most a few days. I no longer feel invested in giving them more ideas, because I know they wont put them into the game, or will take months to give us a halfbaked version of them. I am part of two communities that were built around this game. One was bigger and the other one smaller. Both were very active at the begining. As excitement died down, the first one detached from UAD and rebranded itself as a naval oriented server, and survived. The second one was too reliant on the game to be able to do the same, and is now slowly shriveling and dying, and I cant do more than sit and watch. This sounds like a very pessimistic rant, but that is what it is. UA:D as an idea, a RtW game with good 3D graphics was great, but an idea is only as good as its execution. And the execution is a sluggish mess. If you go to the steam discussions, it is a slaughter there, with people bashing the game without stopping. At this point I care more about the communities built around this game (and my rank in them) than the actual game. I want to love UAD so hard, but I feel like I get spit in the face everytime I do so. I dont know how to end this post.

Nice job. It isnt perfect, as the colors can look a tad unsaturated on some ocasions, but it shows that small little tweaks to the game can make a big diference in some areas. I hope the devs are willing to implement these tiny tweaks on a more polished way. I doubt these would take more than a week, especially with this as a source.

A dev that thinks he his impervious to anything that he does not expect, either doesnt care about making profit or is delusional at best. Take a look at the steam community discussions: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1069660/discussions/?fp=3 https://steamcommunity.com/app/1069660/discussions/?fp=2 https://steamcommunity.com/app/1069660/discussions/ Scrool down throught that, what you see? You see a few questions here and there and suggestions, but a lot of this is talking shit about the game and the development. And not talking shit just for talking shit. You see, "Why are the formations broken in a game where they are vital?", "Why keep using slider shit instead of type in values?" (this one is now deprecated, but still, they tried fixing it without actually adressing the issue), and there are A LOT of "Why is this game so out of squedule?", "Why do updates take forever to come and deliver actual content?", "Why is this so buggy?". Mind you, the people on Steam are supposed to be the next big wave of new players. And nearly everyone there is shitting on the (big) flaws of this game and the development. Unless GL is ready to lose profit (not many people will buy into something that is said by plenty of others to be a bad purchase), they really need to align their expectations with those of the playerbase. Failing to do so is a recipe to losing money. Corporations that try to sell stuff that their clients genuinely dont want lose money. Developers that are on the way to doing so, they too risk losing money. There is a big diference between trying to get the playerbase not to expect a masterpiece, and trying to make them accept a lackluster product.

Lets not waste anymore of our time on him. Report him and move on.

But anyways, back to the topic, we need more impactfull explosions. Like, the explosions we hear are... bland. Yeah, we hear some echo and whatnot, but they dont feel that impactful. Besides they feel repetitive. If you ignore the music, the sounds described below are pretty much 95% what you are gonna hear. I keep bringing up the Total War Shogun 2 example of @Danvanthevacuumman because, depite being 10 years old, it looks great. Sure, some of this stuff is rather arcadey and cinematic and will have to be toned down (no, ships dont explode in massive fireballs following death), but the explosions feel so, OHH! The fireball, the smoke, the shards of the ships flying into the sky. We dont just get "baaankle" and then the texture of a hole apears with a flame. It also has the controls more stylized (which looks good) and they have sounds. Yeah, probably hearing "Klinks" for 2 hours may get annoying, so I suggest aplying diferent sounds to diferent controls. Like the "Klink" for changing speed (like if you were pulling a lever on the ship). Limited voice callouts would be nice too.

Yeah, we dont know where you live somewhere in Croatia, but sorry that a spoiled kid is not the target audience for most games without microtransactions. Yeah, those may be good premium headphones, but you dont need premium stuff to have a decent experience. A decent 2.1 system, for at most 100$ should be enought for most stuff the average joe will ever hear. Besides, even if our systems are shit (they aren't), there is stuff which sounds better. UAD sounds lackluster when compared to other stuff running on the exact same system. Pop this video on your 1000$ sound system and compare it to UAD. https://www.youtube.com/embed/9-Ov-j1RPIU?enablejsapi=1 Does your system automatically put UAD to the level of a game with over a decade. I get a strong impression I believe you are either retarded or just trolling. Its just so painfully stupid either way. First of all, the 1930 Audio was an anology on how good hardware cannot magically make bad sounds sound good. Hardware that can do so is actively editing them, and its not just tuning them at the begining that will automatically do the job. If you make explosions sound more powerfull and echo-y, you are gonna have ship sounds, music, and caracters (in other games) sounding weirdly strong and emotional even at moments where they shouldnt. Yeah, old recordings can be scanned and improved, but they rarely match 2021 native movies. And that is done through AI and studio-ing, not throught a (even if expensive) audio-card. Instead of making the consumer get lots of hardware and have to edit the sounds themselves like they work in a studio and make them good, why not just improve the sounds on the game's end so people dont have to deal with this issue? "And "2020 quality"? What would you know about that? Are you drawing examples from the mp3s you play and download from pirated cd rips or some catastrophically compressed bit starved 2 0 audio streams in some 720p movie rips you watch??? LMAO to that!" Buddy, just because we are not rich doesnt mean we "poor people" live in the 1990s. We have several other games and movies (some even a decade old with no remasters whatsoever), including indie ones with small budgets that outperform UAD in terms of sound and graphics. "I don't understand what that means I don't speak Brit." What did the evil British with tophats and monocles did to you that made you a little tramatized child? At this point, you are either completely retarted, or the least funny troll I have ever seen. Either way, since you dont like english (language of the bad and evil british), I am gonna say to you in portuguese "Cala-te, vai dar uma volta, e para de ser um cretino mimado e irritante.". Go ahead and translate that last part. I know you will.

??? Sorry, but what?

I see your point. The graphics look bland, yes, but there is far worst cases. But I see your point here too. Sorry, but this is (supposed to be) a realistic RTS. In 90% of RTSs, you dont direct control the unit, because there is often no point in it. You are supposed to control several units, not one. Its a strategy type genre, not an action one. Besides, of all RTS-Genres, you had to pick realistic naval warfare, the type of combat where realistically you sit for maybe even hours aiming at the enemy with, shooting, missing, waiting for a 30 second reload, and repeat until you are lucky to get a hit after 10 salvos. Sorry, but this is not WoWs. If you want a build-your-ship action game, I agree with barney, pick waves of steel. You will be able to build your ship to surprisingly great detail and direct control it all you want. Its not that the models themselves are bad. But GL often recycles and resizes them, and takes too long to make new ones. It is a issue of insuficient quantity, not a issue about the quality of the models themselves. No, cool ships, what does that mean? No historical ships? No Super-Battleships? That is a very vague statement. And yes, the game is disapointing at this point. But not because it isnt build-your-ship WoWs, but because it is failing to recreate the (great) 3D Rule the Waves concept it set out to.

The point of that was to show (some) people that the AI is not magically working now like some say. In its current state, its still not working. Its because that, despite several (and I mean several) attempts at balancing the AI, it is still broken as of now, that I leads me and some to conclude that likely the system is flawed at its core. You can patch a good if rough system. One that apears to never work no matter how much efford is put into seems like it simply is flawed to the core, and all the fixing in the world may make it work better, but never properly. A lot of it can be optimized. The choosing of tech, systems, and callibers may be improved. But it still requires templates like you say. And even if the AI stops going with stupid decisions, without disposition templates, will this fix the big issues with turret disposition? Some of those flawed ships could work by moving the pieces. You proposed a doctrine type of template (which is still a template), that could fix the weird choice of callibers, armor, and speed (maybe even subsystems), but the AI may still mess stuff up with the right pieces and ideas by just putting the pieces in the wrong place. You tell the AI to use 8 15" turrets for this hull and doctrine, what will stop it front cramming those at the front in barbettes for no reason? IOr putting them in quad turrets at the back? Will this allow force it to place the stuff where it needs to be placed at?

Adaptive AI, great designs? All claims that I decided to test, not with arguing, but with experimenting. 4 consecutive battles featuring most classes on each side, all with AI generated designs. So lets jump into it. 1911 Austria-Hungary VS United States So, first design ever with Auto-Generate going into the battle and its a blunder. 1 Mixing lots of callibers 2 Non-uniform main-gun armaments. This is not 1905. We are well in the dreadnought era. 3 Giving the only 20 cm turret (only one of that calliber) a large barbette it doesnt need. You could use something smaller 4 The wing turrets cannot fire backwards, they are blocked by secondaries. 5 That sec behind the 20 cm has a barbette... for reasons (I suspect it is to fire over the single 5.1s next to it... great fix I know) I clicked the button another 3/4 times before having to settle on this Again, similar blunders 1 Mixing lots of callibers 2 Non-uniform main-gun armaments. 3 Giving the that 15 cm turret an excessively big barbette. But ofc, the AI also likes to inovate in failing 4 Those side 15 cm could be pulled back to allow the forward turret to fire back wards, but nope. 5 There is a funnel right behing the secondary tower... wanna smoke sausages? But lets sail gloriously into battle... S***. Alright, this one may be somewhat acceptable. That B turret probably doesnt need a barbette that big and tall, and you likely dont need those 4 single 7.6cm, but its ok-ish as a destroyer. Yet again, the AI fails in the classic ways while also innovating in how to middle-finger naval design. 1 Excessively large barbettes for the B and "C" (not a main turret, but another lone high-calliber secondary). 2 Single side turrets... why? 3 The funnel, that could be perfectly on the superstructure, is outside, because reasons. 4 Another "Collect the callibers" ship. At least it is very fast... Not that its gonna matter with the pathetic firepower of 9"s mains. Why is this CA exactly like a pre-dreadnought? Heh, doesnt matter for the design. This thing is a Light-Heavy-Cruiser. Its very light, and it only has a pair of double 15.2, 4 casemated 7.6, and 2 casemated 5.1 as it's firepower. Enought for a 1911 CA? Doubt it. That ship must be sinking anyways, the water level is that tall. Im pretty sure that is a early 1900s CA hull, but anyways, there is some mixing of sec calliber, and those single 17.8 may be slightly overkill in calliber but not much in rate-of-fire/accuracy ratio. Also, I just noticed that the Light Cruiser is bigger in tonnage than the CA above... LOL. This one is not a complete blunder, and is a better CA than the pseudo CL-CA above, but it still mixes secondary callibers for no reason Not a complete blunder (it actually picks the right sized barbettes, HOORAY), and it does have a very good speed for the time while still keeping some acceptable armor (still would fit better being a BC), but still some doubtful design decisions, including: 1 Why is there a barbette at the back (spoiler, to fire above the secs). 2 Some mixing of calllibers. 3 It has a ABC-Z (X? I never know) layout, but it doesnt pull the superstructure back to lay the turrets. This leads to me to question the weight balance on them. One must suspect is a large front weight offset. This one has a pretty weak firepower of 4x 2 12"s, and mixes callibers, but its not that stupid at least... 1931/1932 British Empire VS Russian Empire This one is pretty sluggist. I think 1930s ships could be faster than 22.6 knots. The main firepower is very good for a ship its size, and it has thick armor too, but it only has 1 tripple 15.2 and 4 7.6 cm as seccondary batteries. It likely sacrifices on speed to get this armor and firepower. I has a mediocre speed and secondary armaments, but I think it earns the "Good design" award based on the firepower and protection. Lots and lots of single, double, and tripple 5.1s and 7.6s. Coupled with torp launchers blocking the rear turret. Again, not a complete failure, but could use several layout optimizations. Also the name "Porpoise". Say that to a friend and see if you 2 can keep a straight face. This DD aint getting the benefit of the doubt. The confusing and senseless use of barbettes at the front, the 5.1s being scattered around the ship. At least it has good torp armaments. This CA has a weaker firepower than Porpoise, with secs and torps blocking the front turrets, turrets in weird layouts. Its just... confusing... At least it beats Porpoise in speed... wait, isn't it supposed to be the CL beating the CA in speed and vice versa for firepower? Going back to the classics, the AI forgets correctly-sized barbettes exists, that you need more secondary armaments than a single double 20 cm and several 5.1s and 7.6s scattered across the deck blocking the main turrets fire arc, and again, funnel behind sec tower. I forgot to take another pic of this one when my ships identified it. While I cant see its stats nor its overall layout (and thus cant say if it is completely bonkers), you can see those secs are located on the very edge of the deck. Their ring must be drilled on the belt armor. AGAIN, more mixing of callibers, using a large high calliber secondary alone (though this time they actually bothered to add more secs than that), and mediocre firepower (15 13" cannons do not make up the armament of a good 60.000 ton ship in 1932). First of all, this is clearly a recycled destroyer hull. Second, this thing has several (and I mean several) 12 cm double turrets because... bigger tripples bad? Third, that secondary tower is being harrased by both a non-existant rear view and smoke. This one gets a pass. While the layout is a bit weird, I dont see much pea-brain logic here. 1940 Germany VS Italy (I was getting a bit tired at this point so I shortened the battles) We start off by rather weak main batteriy for something this size, even more mixing of callibers and more single turret batteries. At least it has good armor. This one is alright. Some mixing of sec callibers, but picked appropriate secondary armaments, and has a decent main battery. Im getting real tired now, so lets wrap this up with one final battle. 1940 Japan VS France Back in force,the AI reveals to us nonsensical use of barbettes (you dont need a barbette that tall buddy [and that thing doesnt look wide enought anyways] and you wouldnt need a barbette at the back if you didnt cram similar calliber secondaries there), more weak firepower, and mixing callibers... AGAIN. I have a few questions. 1 Why is your 14k ton CA almost as strong as your 50k ton battlecruiser in terms of armor (and a bit of firepower). And why is it slower than an average battleship? And if you like calliber mixing so much, why also mix the barrel amount of the 5.1s? If these questions dont matter, then I think this ship is alright too. Sigh, it doesnt end, does it? MORE calliber mixing. MORE funnels harrasing rear towers. MORE anorexic barbettes. Mix that calliber, Put a barbetted sec (belonging to a 1 turret battery) turret in front of the rear X gun, And more mediocre firepower. It is fast and has a reasonable armount of armor... at least. But its sinking pretty much. And that marks the end of my experiment. The results? 1 or 2 actually good ships A couple of alright ships Several flawed ones A bunch of complete garbage designs. Does this sound like great designs and great "adaptive" AI? Dont think so. Say it's great now.

You are right, looking more closely I see a barbette, so it may not be as braindead as I thought. But it still seems weird to have a massive barbette at the B turret for no reason. What is its porpose? To fire forwards? Then remove that and let the C turret do it, as that barbette blocks C from doing so. Same firepower for less weight. Is it to fire be able to aim further back and bypass the superstructure? But then, with that superimposed C turret, the benefit is neglectible. I think I know why the AI actually did this. A third look reveals a few secondary guns next to the B turret. The AI often priorises deck placement of secs over proper weight and barbette management. If you check my retarded meme-list of AI fails, number 16 "Big turrets are afraid of piranha secs roaming the decks, so they hide on top of barbettes.". This is one of the flaws of the AI. Smaller mistakes that look inocent at first but proove idiotic upon a second thought. Now, if a player wants to do this, then he should be allowed. We actually (or at least usually) know what we are doing, and we may have an idea in my or be just messing around. The porpose of the AI is to be a challenge, not to mess around. Thinking twice, I look a bit weird responding in this big passive-agressive wall of text... heh.

It does belong here. The nonsensical barbette placement adding weight and blocking turrets, the sluggish speed.

Based

So, they finnaly added new turrets for the Russians and Italians, after 7 months of asking and bumping a thread. But this is only the tip of the iceberg, there are still several nations that need some turret designs. One of these is Germany. Germany as of now lacks any quad turret, and must therefore resort to using BRITISH ones, so I want to give some designs (provided by @Shiki) the devs could use to make new ones. The first one is best described as "2 Bismark turrets glued togheder" The second one is more standardised and... less weird And the last one goes for a more Richelieu look, with a slight gap between each cannon pair (where likely is an armored bulkhead). Soo... I guess model them and put in the game? And this time, dont take 7 months to do so please?

It can design good ships, but it does have a very bad f***-up rate of shitty designs.

Going back to the barbettes, why the F*** is this still an issue? (image by RedWing) Is it that hard to make a "tag" for "accepted callibers" so the AI doesnt F this up? I get the AI making glass cannons. I get them messing the designs on the "Idea" level. But I dont get them pulling this kind of stuff off because it simply is not possible for us. One of the most common feedback of this game is the AI. It makes impossible OP ships, it makes brain-dead ships, and it makes ships that overlap somewhat. And the most common solution is to make a list of presets that the AI can partially modify, so they look diferent, but the f*** up rate is drastically reduced. Yes, the AI has gotten much better. But it is still flawed and doing stupid s***. The very good ships it ocasionally makes are likely derived from sheer luck (it just happened to pick values that actually make sense). At this point I suspect it is just a Sunken Cost Falacy. We, the players, are more than willing to supply working designs for the devs to use. Give up wasting time patching this AI that will never properly work.

#stop_turret_rape Look at those stats, and tell me if they are acceptable for a 66k ton ship in 1940.

Remember this half-retarded meme list I made of all the AI fails I knew about 5 months ago? Well, many of these flaws are apparently still in, and I think I can even expand it even more. 1 - Anorexia barbettes. 2 - Thicc barbettes (also known as Caps Lock + Shift). 3 - Secs are feeling lonely here. 4 - Collect all the secondary callibers in UAD! 5 - Aft Weight Offset club. With representatives from all classes. 6 - ITS HMS NELSON TIME! 7 - You get a barbette! And you get a barbette! Everybody gets a barbette! 8 - Pick 'n' mix single, double, and triple turrets. - deprecated? 9 - Mix 'n' match funnels. 10 - WE WANT PLANES, AND WE WANT THEM NOW! 11 - Vision and field of view is for pussies. 12 - With enought funnels, you can smoke screen all the time. Idea by Malboro. - deprecated? 13 - Broadside frigates' club. - deprecated? 14 - Barbettes dont always need a gun on them. - deprecated 15 - Pre-dreadnoughts embody the best of naval design and should be built in modern times. 16 - Big turrets are afraid of piranha secs roaming the decks, so they hide on top of barbettes. 17 - Im not gonna be Yamato'ed or Bismark'ed if I have enought AA secs. 18 - ♫ Going up the waves! Going down the waves! Shaking left and shaking right, vomit all over the place! ♫ 19 - Where armor 20 - Tug boats are underrated warships. Change my mind. - deprecated? 21 - I farm turrets, and ships do that so well. 22 - Underwater turrets just work. - deprecated 23 - Tall barbettes show your dominant position to the enemy. 24 - "Deja vu, I've been in this place before" top speed. 25 - Remember to have your turrets huddle together for warmth. - deprecated? 26 - Sir, the 3x4 17-inch guns are too heavy! We can't fit them on! - Remove the superstructure and make the funnel as small as possible, that'll save weight. 27 - Destroyers aren't a thing. Don't need secondary batteries. 28 - Monitors rule the seas. - deprecated? 29 - Don't put guns on warships if the budget doesn't allow for them. - deprecated 30 - Big turrets are like big balls. Everybody looks at them and understand YOU are the alpha. NEW 31 - ♫ Top turret, top turret, Top turret, top turret. Its a turret, YEAH! A secondary turret! A secondary turret, On top of a primary turret. ♫