SodaBit

Cut off for "early next week" is about Thursday, Nov. 25th. After that, we'll need an update as to the revised plan to get the patch out.

I've posted it once, I'll bloody post it again. Just because the silent treatment worked for No Man's Sky doesn't mean it'll work here. I'm hoping it'll work, But Holy **** Just Say Something. Even if it's just a quick quip once a week about what you guys are working on for the next patch, literally any information at all, I Mean Anything, is better than us sitting here without knowing what's going on. For all we know, you could have abandoned the game entirely, you probably didn't, but we don't know that for certain, because you haven't bloody told us what it is you're doing. The thread for this patch is Over 30 Pages Long. I haven't been here since the beginning, but I'm pretty sure this is a record for longest thread for a single patch, or very close to that record. Again, Please Just Say SOMETHING.

I know I've reported on this issue previously, but if anything, hopefully this latest report will help bring attention to it, resulting in a timely fix that we can all enjoy. Anyway, without further ado, I present to you the "winner" of the title of most unreliable ship in the game! This British battlecruiser has decided that, despite his allies being engaged with the entire enemy fleet, he needs to scout ahead of his buddies for... something? Not entirely sure what he hopes to find, seeing as my fleet's closest formation is currently 43 Kilometers Away, In The Other Direction. Beattie would be so proud. In all seriousness, this course of action is unacceptable for any ship, regardless of type. There is no excuse for any combat vessel to be this committed to avoiding the enemy. I'm almost certain that this is due to ships being assigned to the "scout" role. This needs to be fixed, I understand that the scouting role was essential in historic naval engagements, but in its current state, it serves no real purpose, and detracts from the gameplay experience. Ships assigned to this role never actually find anything, and this always results in them having to turn around, and die pointlessly in the face of overwhelming enemy forces, as the majority of their allies have either been sunk, or badly crippled by the time they actually show up to help. Again, Beattie would be so proud.

Kinda major problem here, but some units seem to be incredibly hesitant to fire their weapons, including main guns, despite being ordered to fire everything at everything and make it loot as ridiculous as possible. In pretty much every battle I've equipped large portions of my fleet with long range torpedos, there has been a massive delay between the enemy fleet coming into range and ships equipped with torpedos actually launching them. This problem doesn't seem to be limited to torpedos either, as shown by attached images. First image shows ammo expenditure for 1 of 2 heavy cruisers, over about 15 minutes of engaging the enemy. Note that no torpedos have been launched from this ship, despite numerous enemies having been within range for over 15 minutes at this point. Second image show's the first ship's division-mate, who has expended almost 3 times as much 8" ammo, as well as 8 torpedos, during the same 15 minute engagement window. These two ships are less than 2 kilometers away, and have had access to all the same targets, with similar firing angles and fire-control equipment. I can't think of any realistic reason why there is such a massive disparity between how much each of these ships has fired at the enemy. If there's a reasonable explanation for this, I'd love to hear it.

The range on 8" guns is about 15-16km, which, for the mid 1920's when I'm fighting this battle, is still considered "medium range" for most big guns. Generally, that'd be about where you can start reliably hitting each salvo, so you'd want to be in that range. With the equipment I had to hand, I'd like to be between 13 and 16 km away from the enemy, but that's well within the range of an 8" gun. It's kinda frustrating when the enemy can keep you at a range where you can't reliably hit them with your main weapons, with what is supposed to be their close range backup weapons. 8" guns on a BB can't really be considered a close range backup weapon.

2 problems here. AI seems to be focusing VERY heavily on large caliber secondary guns, nearly every enemy capital unit I see has 8" secondary guns. This, coupled with the increased fire damage is resulting in many battles between capital ships being decided by who has the better secondary battery, rather than the main battery. Armor doesn't seem to help much with this issue, because with the current way armor weight works, on most hulls you have to chose between protection between large caliber guns with an all or nothing armor scheme, or protecting against smaller guns with a comprehensive armor scheme. I'm fine with Kriegsmarine BB's having an impressive suite of secondaries, but when even the Brits are mounting an entire heavy cruiser on the side of their BB's, we've got a problem.

If you upload the image to imgur, you can copy and paste the direct link to the image in the post, and it will automatically display the image, regardless of size.

Further DD issues here, it appears that DD formations are not only badly out of position as a unit, but individual elements of these formations seem to be operating independently of each other, or the formation as a whole. I'm struggling to think of any examples outside of the battle of Jutland in which a single formation was spread out over 15 kilometers, as is shown here.

Actual gameplay feedback here. DD's don't seem to want to anything sometimes. I'm not sure what causes this, but my assumption is that they're assigned to "Scout" for a different formation of ships. On multiple occasions, I've seen enemy DD's or CL's just abandon the fight and leave their buddies to die. This time it was a pair of DD's sitting around 17.5 kilometers away from the nearest enemy ship, and 25.5 kilometers away from my capital ships. Even if they're not the most dangerous ships in the fleet, these guys still could have made a difference in the fight, instead they're just wasted tonnage. Edit: Honorable mention should go to the last enemy CA left, who seems absolutely determined to run as far away as possible from his responsibilities.

I'm not entirely sure, but what I do know is that the current triple turret for the Kriegsmarine BB's must be a real pain in the *** to operate. Having guns that close together may be fine on a smaller caliber gun, but on something the size of a 15" shell, it must be an absolute nightmare to load the middle gun, there simply isn't enough room.

Given that the main reason the Kriegsmarine didn't adopt triple turrets historically was an accuracy issue due to having the barrels too close together, this turret design makes much more sense for them. So if they wanted to upgrade the turrets Bismarck had, instead of shoving a third gun between the two existing guns, they would have probably widened the turret to accommodate the third gun, with the distance between each barrel on the turret being unchanged, despite the upgrade from twin 380's to triple.

This one's old, but the AI really needs to learn how to prioritize larger secondary guns. Or at least de-prioritize peashooter calibers...

Major issue with German DD's here. Rear Tower 5 is able to placed inside the ship's model allowing it to use up significantly less deck-space than other rear towers. This allows for some pretty insane builds when using max tonnage. Currently, my most powerful build with this glitch is a 3,750t monster of a DD with 9 twin 5" turrets and 3 quintuple 24" torpedo launchers.

I'm not really sure what we even do at this point. Posting here kinda feels like screaming into the void, with the only response being other players, just as worried and confused. This patch better be worth it, because holy **** we can't keep doing this **** every time

Thank god, maybe we can stop talking about politics and ideology and get back to talking about the game soon

I'm not sure if this is intended, but stacking the pen stat can have some very overpowered results. Used 20" guns w/ Super Heavy Shells and Tube Powder, and was able to achieve 100% chance of penetration against an enemy BB. It's not like it was an exceptionally poorly armored target either, the armor values were in line with what the AI usually goes with for ships of that type.

I'm really hoping we get a "Save Design" function with the campaign, or at least a few historical presets to use in the campaign for both sides. It's going to be a massive pain in the a** to rebuild a solid design for every mission.

I have found a way to mount all secondaries on Modern Tower 1, but it's kinda weird. I'm pretty sure this works with USN secondaries as well, but I have not yet tested RN secondary models on this tower. However, the massive gap between the main and secondary towers persists, regardless of nation. Update: I have done further testing with the various nation's secondary models on Modern Tower 1. The only nations that have trouble mounting all secondaries on it are Japan and France. Everyone else has no trouble with it. I have also tried using the control key/right mouse to maneuver the main and secondary towers closer together, but with no improvement in the gap between them. I'll be trying the secondary mounts on the German hulls/towers when I get a chance.

The new Yamato hull seems to have some issues, especially when mounting barbettes on the inclined section at the front. Any turret placed behind the barbette can rotate, and even fire through it without issue. There's also the issue of not being able to mount 4"/5" guns on the upper tier of secondary mountings for the Modern Tower 1, as long as there are secondaries on the lower tier.