Here’s what I would like to see happen:
(I should preface this by saying that obviously I have no idea what the code behind the game looks like, and as such it’s very possible that some of my ideas will be way, way harder to implement into the game than I assume).
====================================================================================================
Stuff to do before the game is released (aka before the champaign is introduced):
Savable designs and better custom battle setup
A lot of people have already pointed out that the ability to save your ship designs is a must, and I agree. However, there is another aspect I think should go hand-in-hand with this; the ability to design multiple ships for a single battle, both yours and the enemies. There are a few different ways of doing this.
1) Have a ‘ship designer’ screen where you build and save ship designs, and a separate ‘custom battle’ screen where you select designs to go up against each other.
2) Use the current system, with a single screen where you both pick the ship types and then design them (or select them from a saved design). This method is inferior IMVHO, since it would unnecessarily complicate the process.
My proposed solution is to use method one. From the main menu you enter the ship design screen and select what type of ship to design, from what era and what country, and them you design that ship and save it. Then you exit back to the main menu and go to the custom battle screen, which I imagine would be similar to how it is currently, but instead of just having text that says ‘cruiser’ or whatever, it has a drop-down list of all your saved ships. And maybe if you don’t have any saved it will show options to either auto-design them or take you directly to the ship design screen.
Or, and this would take more work but is my preferred option, you revamp the custom battle screen entirely. Instead of just being a list of different ship types and engagement ranges and whatnot, it’s an actual battle map, and you can drag ships from a sidebar and place them on the map. This would be really, really cool, and would allow all sorts of possibilities. Especially if you could select from a few different background maps, selecting the weather, time of day, and whatnot. And of course you could keep the current system as a sort of quick-battle thing, where if you don’t want to waste time fiddling around with stuff you can just select an engagement range and it’ll do the rest for you like it does right now.
Fix ship over-displacement issues
This is pretty self-explanatory. Right now large ships have a tendency to be slightly overweight when compared to their historical counterparts, and I see no reason why this couldn’t be fixed with a simple tweak to some numbers.
Make “unlock all” unlock towers as well as hulls
Also pretty self explanatory.
====================================================================================================
Stuff to do after the game is released (aka after the champaign is introduced):
Revamp the torpedo system
Right now torpedos are modeled somewhat strangely. There are a few things that I would like to point out in particular:
1) The torpedo launcher models don’t scale with torpedo diameter. This could be fixed by making the torpedos work similarly to the guns, where it displays a list of sizes and then once you click on one it displays a list of tube arrangements (aka single launchers, quad launchers, etc).
2) Historically IIRC reloading torpedos at sea was an extremely risky thing that almost never happened, and certainly not during battles. I recommend making no reloads the standard automatically-selected option, and making reloads come with massive flash-fire chances and huge mounts of extra wight, as is realistic. Except for underwater tubes, which did historically have reloading capability.
3) Make it so that you can’t place torpedo tubes in ridiculous places. The obvious thing to point out is that right now you can place tubes such that there is no way the torpedo would make it into the sea without slamming onto the deck first (aka placing tubes centerline or forwards-facing on large hulls), but something else to consider is the fact that IRL big ships didn’t have deck-mounted torps because they would fall so far that they would break upon hitting the water.
4) Add more customizability. Stuff like fuel types, ranges, and speeds being separate options to modify.
Revamp the gun turrets
Right now any turret of a given caliber is always the same size, regardless of the number of barrels. Making it so the turret width changed would be cool. And in addition, maybe make it so that you can sometimes place turrets on top of other turrets? That was a thing IRL after all. Additionally, make it so that we have more options in barbette placement, so long as it doesn’t impede the engine rooms or whatever.
I’ve seen some people go as far as to suggest having a dedicated ‘gun design’ screen, almost itself as complicated as the ship design screen, while others have suggested simply having more turret designs, possibly down to one-tenth of an inch precision. While I’m all for more calibers, perhaps that’s a bit extreme. Also perhaps consider adding smaller guns, like machine guns and whatnot, although that will probably need to wait for when/if planes and PT boats are implemented.
Also, add quintuple and sextuple mounts (five and six guns per turret) so we can properly make the larger Tillmans.
Revamp the armor system and add an interior component viewer/editor
Right now the way armor is modeled is, to my knowledge, very unrealistic, basically consisting of a box inside the hull. Having the armor be modeled inside the hull realistically, with many, many different sections, like upper belts and rudder rooms and multiple decks, and having an armor viewer to display it all in the ship designer, would be great.
In fact, having a way to see all of the ship’s internal systems and spaces would be quite useful, maybe even making it so you can chose how bulkheads and such are placed, or the position of the engine room? And maybe make it so that you can click on specific armor plates in that viewer and edit their thickness and slope angle? I have no idea how hard that would be to code, though.
Add customizable towers, hulls, and systems
I’m not even sure how you would go about implicating this, but the ability to design your own towers would be cool. Or if that’s to difficult, maybe make it so you can right click on a tower and select the number of things like gun emplacements and whatnot you want it to have? For example adding the forward secondary mount for the Iowa King-Nimitz redesign. And perhaps even make things like radar systems and rangefinders separate objects that have to be placed on the towers manually.
Another way of doing it would be to make the towers out of multiple parts, like base structures, bridges, conning towers, masts, rangefinders, radars, and gun emplacements/barbettes.
In addition, making the hulls somewhat customizable as well would be good. Stuff like changing the number of propeller shafts and rudders, or the number of internal components like engines and boilers, aircraft hangers and launch catapults, boat storage and cranes, and things like that.
Add costal defense ships, monitors, and other classes like corvettes and frigates
This is also pretty self-explanatory. Basically some more hull options would be nice.
Add submarines and ASW
And here’s one of the big ones. Submarines. And I’m not talking about intangible strategic elements. I think that actual playable subs would be really cool, although I doubt we’ll see them anytime soon because of how much work they would take to implement. Making it so a ship could go underwater on command probably wouldn’t be too hard to code, but adding all of the new hulls and equipment and AI would definitely take a while.
Also hand-in-hand with this is the implementation of hulls like escort destroyers and frigates, and ASW systems like depth charges.
Add aircraft and carriers
And here’s the second big thing. Planes have been a hot topic on these forums, but I want to actually examine how they might be implemented.
Firstly, I should point out that the way planes fly, maneuver, and fight is very complicated, and developing an AI for them from scratch would no doubt be ungodly complicated. Nevertheless, other games like War on the Sea have been successful at this, although I am not sure how much time those devs had to spend working on it. I would be quite surprised if it was less than a year. As such, it’s likely that the first implementation of aircraft will either be spotter planes as ship equipment similar to current radar and rangefinder systems, or strategic-level assets that never take place in spectated battles, therefore removing the need to develop 3D models and the AI to fly them.
However, I find it inevitable that aircraft will eventually be added in their full splendor. Probably at first as scouts, launched from capital ships. This by itself will require a lot of effort, making the planes interact with the ships realistically as they land on the water and are recovered by crane, and may take a lot of work to get right. But once that happens, it shouldn’t be too difficult to upgrade to full-scale carriers.
As for what those would look like, at first I imagine they would be like the ones in War on the Sea, unable to launch and recover planes while actually in a spectated battle, serving as strategic assets only. Maybe at first they would never actually be seen, just the planes from them. Nevertheless, it’s possible that eventually we may get controllable fleet carriers, and maybe designable ones too. It’s worth noting however that that would require the implementation of a whole new set of hulls and equipment, not a small task.
Here’s what I would like to see happen: (I should preface this by saying that obviously I have no idea what the code behind the game looks like, and as such it’s very possible that some of my ideas will be way, way harder to implement into the game than I assume). ==================================================================================================== Stuff to do before the game is released (aka before the champaign is introduced): Savable designs and better custom battle setup A lot of people have already pointed out that the ability to save your ship designs is a must, and I agree. However, there is another aspect I think should go hand-in-hand with this; the ability to design multiple ships for a single battle, both yours and the enemies. There are a few different ways of doing this. 1) Have a ‘ship designer’ screen where you build and save ship designs, and a separate ‘custom battle’ screen where you select designs to go up against each other. 2) Use the current system, with a single screen where you both pick the ship types and then design them (or select them from a saved design). This method is inferior IMVHO, since it would unnecessarily complicate the process. My proposed solution is to use method one. From the main menu you enter the ship design screen and select what type of ship to design, from what era and what country, and them you design that ship and save it. Then you exit back to the main menu and go to the custom battle screen, which I imagine would be similar to how it is currently, but instead of just having text that says ‘cruiser’ or whatever, it has a drop-down list of all your saved ships. And maybe if you don’t have any saved it will show options to either auto-design them or take you directly to the ship design screen. Or, and this would take more work but is my preferred option, you revamp the custom battle screen entirely. Instead of just being a list of different ship types and engagement ranges and whatnot, it’s an actual battle map, and you can drag ships from a sidebar and place them on the map. This would be really, really cool, and would allow all sorts of possibilities. Especially if you could select from a few different background maps, selecting the weather, time of day, and whatnot. And of course you could keep the current system as a sort of quick-battle thing, where if you don’t want to waste time fiddling around with stuff you can just select an engagement range and it’ll do the rest for you like it does right now. Fix ship over-displacement issues This is pretty self-explanatory. Right now large ships have a tendency to be slightly overweight when compared to their historical counterparts, and I see no reason why this couldn’t be fixed with a simple tweak to some numbers. Make “unlock all” unlock towers as well as hulls Also pretty self explanatory. ==================================================================================================== Stuff to do after the game is released (aka after the champaign is introduced): Revamp the torpedo system Right now torpedos are modeled somewhat strangely. There are a few things that I would like to point out in particular: 1) The torpedo launcher models don’t scale with torpedo diameter. This could be fixed by making the torpedos work similarly to the guns, where it displays a list of sizes and then once you click on one it displays a list of tube arrangements (aka single launchers, quad launchers, etc). 2) Historically IIRC reloading torpedos at sea was an extremely risky thing that almost never happened, and certainly not during battles. I recommend making no reloads the standard automatically-selected option, and making reloads come with massive flash-fire chances and huge mounts of extra wight, as is realistic. Except for underwater tubes, which did historically have reloading capability. 3) Make it so that you can’t place torpedo tubes in ridiculous places. The obvious thing to point out is that right now you can place tubes such that there is no way the torpedo would make it into the sea without slamming onto the deck first (aka placing tubes centerline or forwards-facing on large hulls), but something else to consider is the fact that IRL big ships didn’t have deck-mounted torps because they would fall so far that they would break upon hitting the water. 4) Add more customizability. Stuff like fuel types, ranges, and speeds being separate options to modify. Revamp the gun turrets Right now any turret of a given caliber is always the same size, regardless of the number of barrels. Making it so the turret width changed would be cool. And in addition, maybe make it so that you can sometimes place turrets on top of other turrets? That was a thing IRL after all. Additionally, make it so that we have more options in barbette placement, so long as it doesn’t impede the engine rooms or whatever. I’ve seen some people go as far as to suggest having a dedicated ‘gun design’ screen, almost itself as complicated as the ship design screen, while others have suggested simply having more turret designs, possibly down to one-tenth of an inch precision. While I’m all for more calibers, perhaps that’s a bit extreme. Also perhaps consider adding smaller guns, like machine guns and whatnot, although that will probably need to wait for when/if planes and PT boats are implemented. Also, add quintuple and sextuple mounts (five and six guns per turret) so we can properly make the larger Tillmans. Revamp the armor system and add an interior component viewer/editor Right now the way armor is modeled is, to my knowledge, very unrealistic, basically consisting of a box inside the hull. Having the armor be modeled inside the hull realistically, with many, many different sections, like upper belts and rudder rooms and multiple decks, and having an armor viewer to display it all in the ship designer, would be great. In fact, having a way to see all of the ship’s internal systems and spaces would be quite useful, maybe even making it so you can chose how bulkheads and such are placed, or the position of the engine room? And maybe make it so that you can click on specific armor plates in that viewer and edit their thickness and slope angle? I have no idea how hard that would be to code, though. Add customizable towers, hulls, and systems I’m not even sure how you would go about implicating this, but the ability to design your own towers would be cool. Or if that’s to difficult, maybe make it so you can right click on a tower and select the number of things like gun emplacements and whatnot you want it to have? For example adding the forward secondary mount for the Iowa King-Nimitz redesign. And perhaps even make things like radar systems and rangefinders separate objects that have to be placed on the towers manually. Another way of doing it would be to make the towers out of multiple parts, like base structures, bridges, conning towers, masts, rangefinders, radars, and gun emplacements/barbettes. In addition, making the hulls somewhat customizable as well would be good. Stuff like changing the number of propeller shafts and rudders, or the number of internal components like engines and boilers, aircraft hangers and launch catapults, boat storage and cranes, and things like that. Add costal defense ships, monitors, and other classes like corvettes and frigates This is also pretty self-explanatory. Basically some more hull options would be nice. Add submarines and ASW And here’s one of the big ones. Submarines. And I’m not talking about intangible strategic elements. I think that actual playable subs would be really cool, although I doubt we’ll see them anytime soon because of how much work they would take to implement. Making it so a ship could go underwater on command probably wouldn’t be too hard to code, but adding all of the new hulls and equipment and AI would definitely take a while. Also hand-in-hand with this is the implementation of hulls like escort destroyers and frigates, and ASW systems like depth charges. Add aircraft and carriers And here’s the second big thing. Planes have been a hot topic on these forums, but I want to actually examine how they might be implemented. Firstly, I should point out that the way planes fly, maneuver, and fight is very complicated, and developing an AI for them from scratch would no doubt be ungodly complicated. Nevertheless, other games like War on the Sea have been successful at this, although I am not sure how much time those devs had to spend working on it. I would be quite surprised if it was less than a year. As such, it’s likely that the first implementation of aircraft will either be spotter planes as ship equipment similar to current radar and rangefinder systems, or strategic-level assets that never take place in spectated battles, therefore removing the need to develop 3D models and the AI to fly them. However, I find it inevitable that aircraft will eventually be added in their full splendor. Probably at first as scouts, launched from capital ships. This by itself will require a lot of effort, making the planes interact with the ships realistically as they land on the water and are recovered by crane, and may take a lot of work to get right. But once that happens, it shouldn’t be too difficult to upgrade to full-scale carriers. As for what those would look like, at first I imagine they would be like the ones in War on the Sea, unable to launch and recover planes while actually in a spectated battle, serving as strategic assets only. Maybe at first they would never actually be seen, just the planes from them. Nevertheless, it’s possible that eventually we may get controllable fleet carriers, and maybe designable ones too. It’s worth noting however that that would require the implementation of a whole new set of hulls and equipment, not a small task.
