brothermunro

What you have there is what I call “The Target Lock Bug”. It used to be a huge problem, then it got fixed, and then reappeared during the 1.06 beta. As far as I can tell what happens is a ship makes a turn and one of your gun turrets loses line of sight. The game then applies a massive negative modifier to the aiming progress and it ends up at -40,000% or some similar ludicrous figure. That number isn’t really supposed to go negative so the game gets confused and the progress gets stuck at zero. If you manually retarget the enemy ship it will fix the problem (but that is annoying to do).

I’ve had this happen as well (I’ve reported it in game) when I had a large number of designs - going back from the designer to the campaign view between each ship fixed it for me.

Really excited to try out 1.06! Absolutely love how the campaign is sounding - and thank you for the turret rotation stat being added!

I’ve seen this one a lot - I can’t quite work out what causes it but it occurs for all nations in all start dates - even with a clean campaign save file.

Been greatly enjoying the update and I had a small bit of feedback/suggestion about the task forces. I’m a little confused as to how they work, I seem unable to move my own fleets into or past the zone of control (the red circle) of an enemy fleet but they can move into mine? And if enemy fleets are within the green circle of one of my task forces it doesn’t seem to automatically generate a mission. I know a lot of this is work in progress so please don’t worry if future updates/features make this unnecessary but it would be intuitive (for me anyway) if when you try move your fleet you could right click on an enemy and chose an option - (attack) & persue where you try to force a battle or ‘drive off’ where if the enemy retreats your forces let them. Would also be nice if we could attack enemy ports in the same manner edit: if we could interact with ports like this with a task force could ‘blockade’ be an option & replace the current power projection based mechanics?

Transports currently count towards crew losses and if you achieve victory or not but they don’t give you victory points - they do however impact your enemy’s economy (or your economy if you’re the one losing them). I believe however that if you are being blockaded or blockading your enemy that does accrue victory points. This means you can have a war where you win every battle but still lose the war because you are starved out economically.

If you have the Xsolla version and install the steam version it keeps your campaign & naval academy progress - I haven’t checked designs in custom battles yet but those are stored in the same place so I think those will be preserved too.

Going by the devs previous statements and the game’s steam page it is going into Steam’s early access program - not a full retail release. Going by that standard UAD is in a fine position. Perhaps game labs will consider selling the game on other stores once the game is ‘finished’.

Agree with you there Stealth. We know that these bugs can crop up - it would be better just to tell us the patch is in closed testing and that it will release as soon as it is ready & we will update you on Friday on how it’s going. That way we’d know the patch was close, that we would hear on Friday more news. If the patch is actually ready and it’s released early then that’s great and the community is happy (happier anyway). Same wait - better experience.

Thanks for the update & welcome to the new member of the dev team! I was curious if Core Patch 2 was still to focus on Crew and Officers as previously mentioned?

I’ve been thinking a bit about the game post CP0.5 and I have some thoughts and suggestions for consideration. Components I’d like to see a new component - fire control computers/tables. These were a key item in naval artillery development and it would be nice to have some granular control over them (perhaps by moving some of the accuracy stats from the towers to the new components). I’d like to see a bit of a change to shells. Currently the only reason to go with smaller shells is to lower the chance of your ship exploding. I think larger shells should have less penetration due to their lower muzzle velocity (the idea behind them as I understand it was to smash down through the deck of a ship) than smaller shells. You should also get fewer (super)heavy shells than you do standard ones. To balance this out a bit, and to give players another interesting option, I’d like to see a new component for the charges used. Similar to shells they could be standard, lower, increased and super. More charges means higher muzzle velocity, range, and penetration, but slower reload and higher explosion risk. Torpedoes The purpose of these changes are to make torpedoes more balanced between player and AI use. Reducing the range at which torpedoes are fired by the AI more than the devs have already. Reducing the detection range of all torpedoes. Adding some sort of delay for AI ships starting avoidance measures if they aren’t the ones spotting the torpedoes (so a DD basically shouts ‘torpedo!!!’ and starts dodging then there’s a delay before other ships in the formation start to move and they might not move in the optimal fashion). Your formations and ships should have a button (next to or metered with the AI button perhaps) that allows your own ships to use the same torp dodging method as the AI. Currently the most effective way to deal with torpedo attacks is to completely dissolve your formations and micro each ship individually. An increase in torpedo damage, especially to ships with no torpedo belt and a single bottomed hull. An effect of crew on torpedo ability - speed of aiming, likelihood of firing in the right direction, spread, range etc would all be good. Currently there’s no real reason to have good crews on torpedo boats. I’d also like to see torpedoes being slightly ‘wobbly’ and have a tendency to go off course - especially the earlier ones - though that’s much harder to pull off. Formations I would like the ability to disable the AI anti collision behaviour - perhaps merged with the AI control button (none, avoid torps, avoid torps and ships, full control as options for example). I can see how the formations should work, so I’m not going to complain about how they currently operate, I’m sure improvements are on the way. I still find the way the unit cards work counter intuitive - I keep expecting them to work like ships do in Empire Total War (select ships, press g to group as an example). I know I’m likely in the minority here but I’d like it to be clearer how the cards work. It would also be fantastic if there was a way to set up formations, or even ship positions, before the battle starts for real. Either a ‘deployment mode’ like E:TW or Battlefleet Gothic or perhaps a set of standing orders you can chose in advance in the campaign - perhaps using the paper map graphical style we saw in some of the dev diaries about formations. Anyway just some thoughts - I’d be interested to know what the rest of the community thinks could be good improvements (or what you think of my suggestions).

I run the game on max settings on a much less powerful PC (i5 4690K/GTX 1660Ti) with very few issues. Only time I really see slowdown is when there is a very large number of ships & shells flying around. So sounds like you are having a genuine issue - I’d post your issue in the tech support forum

Interesting points, just my from my own experience: Ship Builder - I like the tightening up of the designer. You really do have to make a decision between the balance of firepower, protection, and speed. The earlier versions allowed you to make pretty crazy ships which had lots of everything. Adding difficult choices and trade offs I think makes the game more fun, especially long term. Reload Speed - I’ll let those more qualified make historical comparisons but I genuinely don’t find reload times to be excessively long, they feel pretty appropriate to the era and I rarely feel the need to use autoloaders. Fleet Formations - the formations are better than they used to be. The ‘anti avoidance’ system I wish I could just turn off. Ships sometimes get stuck or wander off doing the strangest thing. Any major changes to your fleet composition tend to resemble a cloud of angry bees more than a polished naval unit. I’d love to see a pre battle deployment option where you can set your ships up. As well the UI & behaviour of the unit cards is still pretty wonky, it’s easy to mess up divisions by accidentally merging them for instance. Visuals - An after action report would be a godsend! I think the game looks pretty good though. Doubly so when you consider the size of the team. Graphical polish is something that can be done later as far as I’m concerned. Oh except the brown UI elements and typefaces that came in CP0.5 - not a fan. AI Goofs - the AI loves to leave transports it is defending to their fate. Some of the AI designs are pretty out there as well (though that has a certain charm). Dev Feedback - I think the devs wanted to make ship design more difficult - so your complaint (as you put it) made it more likely for them to put it in. The devs are pretty… quiet. Whilst I’d love to hear more from them if it’s a choice between that or them getting some more stuff done I’ll choose the stuff.

I’ve been enjoying the update and have a couple of thoughts: First that crew experience is very powerful and is primarily balanced by cost - that means in a custom battle there’s not much reason not to use a veteran crew but there certainly will be in the naval academy (which I’ll now have to play through again 😫 ) Second is that we now have two UI designs in game - the Alpha 12 ‘blue/grey’ and the CP ‘brown’. Maybe it’s just me but I find having both jarring. To be frank the ‘brown’ UI is not an improvement - it looks much less professional and polished - the old UI design was much better! And whilst I’m on UI please consider moving the ‘design player ships’ buttons in the designer to the left of the launch button so that you can add ‘design enemy ships’ on the right (same sides as in the custom battle setup) 😉

Good news indeed!

Thanks for the update - I’m dead keen to see Core Patch 1, but I also completely understand (and admire) you only releasing it ‘when it’s ready’ 👍🏻

Hello there, Greatly enjoying the update! There’s just one thing I’d like to draw the teams attention to - the ‘target lock bug’ (this is also present in Alpha 11) Essentially a ship can be firing at an enemy (this affects both player and AI ships, as well as both main and secondary guns) with the ‘locked’ phrase showing after completing aiming. Due to any number of factors (usually a manoeuvre by the firing ship or target) the game registers a massive negative input to the aiming calculation - usually something like ‘-434%’ Following this the ship loses the ‘locked’ status and of course accuracy - I assume this is as intended - however the aiming progress will never increase pass 0% or be able to lock back onto the target and the guns will be stuck in the aiming firing mode indefinitely. This can be fixed by ordering the ship to retarget the enemy via right click. This seems to happen much more often if there are a small number of guns in a battery - it is especially noticeable on single guns. It’s not a massive issue - it just requires a fair bit of micro on a players part (which the AI cannot do).