Littorio

Ah, so you can choose the "Barbette" component in the designer and get the armor perks even if you don't mount actual raised barbettes on your ship, aka your turrets are flush with the deck and not superfiring? I always avoid selecting a barbette component because I assumed it only applied if you used the raised structures. Thanks for the read, it was very interesting! I had no idea the terms were so conflated.

Subs and mines aren't implemented at all yet. The techs are placeholders hence the "WIP" next to them. Refits are a must for secondary armaments, fire control, radios, and auxiliary equipment etc. I'm sure tech speeds will be balanced overall once the whole tree is finished. As it stands now, large portions aren't active so it's hard to do any balancing for how long things take.

This always confused me in naval designs. So, a raised platform on which a gun can be used to make superfiring above another is called a barbette, yes? Then there is also the actual..."shaft" into the deck per say on which the turret gunhouse is planted. That's also a barbette, correct, but a different type? Then there are old-school, open barbette mounts for guns that we don't see in game because that was 1880s and earlier, right? The whole multiple usages of the word always confused me, so I would like to hear from some of the fine people with more naval knowledge. For example, in the components part of the designer, does the "Barbette" part offering armor and whatnot apply to the raised structures for superfiring, or the sunken shafts into the deck?

I wish I knew and am interested to hear from anyone with more knowledge myself.

LOL I observed much the same myself before. The same ships from different ports covering vast distances together, quiet unusual.

😆😆 LOL exactly. I demand proper spotting for myself!

In order to build larger ships you need to invest in your port size capacity. I think you start around 8-9,000 tons. Only by adding to that can you construct vessels of larger displacement. I agree though that research is a bit opaque at the moment and needs transparency. The UI could be cleaned up. I must say though, I don't see the AI surpassing me in tech in my games. Perhaps you just need to do enough damage to them economically to make them lower the funding for research. There are no transport paths as of yet unless there are invisible ones under a layer that they have not revealed.. I would assume that now they operate more on a pool basis where dicerolls determine how many, if any TRs from your overall national pool are sunk each turn in a given sea region. Which by the way is something else that needs explaining - borders for sea regions! The UI needs to show this more clearly. Range isn't visually modeled yet if it ever will be. Just go by the range numbers for each class of your ship, do the math, and try to eyeball it. Again, patrolling is determined - as far as I can tell anyway - by range, whether your given ship is set to in being or at sea, and the corresponding toggles on enemy forces. At this point, I advise you manually control most ships. At most, I will form a couple different battle lines, but the rest I maneuver independently. Having one line but everyone else on screen/scout/follow is just a recipe for disaster right now because of AI bugs regarding collision evasion. The result is stalled ships.

Yes...sadly you are barking up a tree of a long established issue here. Many have said it. All that remains is to see if anything will be done about it

Toggles are always good. As long as this is a late project/DLC kind of thing. I don't want any time or resources from the main game going to this anytime soon.

See...this once again goes to show a fundamental issue with the game: the spotting system. A proper, sensible, at least somewhat realistic spotting mechanism would solve this issue. I too have noticed the AI dipping into and out of visual range. I believe it is as you say, they try to find you, but then another part of their AI logic tells them they need to get further away to the optimal range for their weapons/armor...only to lose contact. Thus they turn back towards you...Repeat ad nauseam until someone is dead or flees.

I can't speak for the turret/casemate issues, but I can say the same for the transports. It took me awhile to figure out exactly what was going on there. I felt stupid, but I didn't realize that "100%" referred to your nation's shipping needs. So at 100% you have exactly as many ships as your domestic+international trade needs. Lose one or two ships and you start having penalties from the lack of vessels to meet those commitments. But you are absolutely right, it's an all or nothing situation - which begs the question then: why have percentages? If that's how they are going to code it, then just have a condition: Do you have all the TRs needed? If yes, no economic penalties. If no, a penalty is applied. But bothering to have a percentage there that doesn't scale the penalty in correlation is just absurd and depressing. It's why it took me so long to figure out what that whole bar actually meant in the first place, because the flat rate threw me off.

Well for starters your ships won't be on patrol at sea so their budgetary requirements will be cut in half. If you're not in a war for a long period it may leave you with tons of cash, transports, etc. All things to consider for long-term balance, especially given research. Exactly how manpower and training works is still a bit opaque to me. The crews can get up to "trained" while sitting in port if your budget is high enough, but can you slack off on the monthly $$$ once they are at that level? Will it regress if so? As it stands, most of the systems in game are not very transparent for the players and are either confusing or just completely hidden. Of course, this is without even going into INTELLIGENCE. I'm not even talking operational intelligence - aka where ships are deployed and what they are doing on patrol. I mean strategic intelligence - such as what kind of classes they have and what their armament and armor is. This is a CRUCIAL aspect of the wider gameplay because you need to at least have estimates on this so that you know what to build...and building ships is the backbone of this game. They SHOULD be testing out the first version for their intel system now in small campaign, rather than complicate their work on map expansion. The same goes for submarines and mines. God only knows what kind of balancing this will require... As I have said, of course I want a large, full game, with many nations - eventually. There are still too many missing, confusing, or just incomplete mechanics that aren't fully realized just yet to be able to safely expand. It isn't wise, regardless of how much you might just want the fun of a bigger map. But as others have said, they said they are going to Steam this week so it is already probably too late.....

I have tried both and never seen it work myself. This to me is a big issue. Currently, as things stand, their is an UNREAL level of operational coordination between totally random units from very different bases. I expect we will see changes when units are finally visible on patrol (and not just moving between bases), and hopefully this can all be clarified. It's quiet jarring to see ships from Pillau and Emden casually sortie together into the Irish Sea on a regular basis until of each watching their own sectors. They did acknowledge the stalled ships as an AI logic bug regarding formations and collision avoidance, so that should be en route soon, perhaps this week.

Yes it is was very annoying when I first figured out all the conditions we were under but couldn't see. This won't be good for a wider release...

That's exactly what I have been banging on about. People are just going to review bomb it because they will see sunny skies and go "WTF is going on it's clear and nice!" Meanwhile in reality you'll be in the middle of a ridiculously invisible full gale with high seas and a visibility of 1km at best. I agree...at this point it might just be best to remove all "weather and time" effects. Since no one can see them, and they really do nothing but get in the way when they interact with the spotting system, I see no game benefit to them. As for realism, well we will need the conditions actually visible for that to make any sense.

It does the good of knowing how a 1v1 nation fight should be balanced. Obviously every nation will be a little bit different in terms of budget, economic power, ports, etc, but if this first attempt at a campaign can't be balanced, simple as it is, how can you add to the complexity with 2-4 more nations? Now, I am not saying you spend a year optimizing every last little detail of Britain vs. Germany, but I think it's a bit early to talk about expanding to more countries given this has only been out what...two weeks? Diplomacy will be key, but again it adds to the complexity. We need to make sure all the systems that will be built on: transport convoys, port usage, proper budgeting, manpower, etc. all work on the smallest scale possible in a war. Once we know what works in war, we will know how to structure the peacetime, because let's be honest, the point of the game is to be at war and fight. There isn't any other use for all your ships. The issue with movement is it's instantaneous effect when returning from a battle, and the fact the AI sends you ships to other ports than that which you assigned them. Every turn I am moving the same few ships back from the Baltic to the North Sea. And it is a little ridiculous how far they can go in a turn. One movement they are near Gotland, and next turn in the Bay of Biscay, the same ships? There needs to be better control of where your ships are and get sent, or if not, at least explain WHY certain ships are being moved by the AI. Players don't like things that aren't under their control, and this is a perfect example.

^ This

So one thing we vitally need ASAP is actual night backgrounds and proper conditions. It's jarring and incongruous with the penalties we get. Perhaps I and others could also be less harsh with the spotting system if we saw that it was ACTUALLY "Night - Stormy - Strong Gale - Very Rough." This picture shows none of those things. I'm not asking for super-intense, graphically-perfect conditions, but we need something other than blue skies and mist. Another example: All the same conditions except Day vs. Night and no real difference. It's hard to take battles seriously this way and Steam people will likely eat it alive because they won't see where their debuffs are coming from.

Steam keys haven't been released yet because it isn't actually on Steam yet. it should be this week.

Smoke DEFINITELY needs a rework, not just how it works mechanically in the game on the battlefield, but in the AI logic on when to deploy it. Ironically, the only times I have found some enemies is when one of their number blunders into me, say a CL, pops smoke, and suddenly way out in the "fog" I see another 3-4 magic smoke rings. Funny how that renders and is visible but not exhaust, or God forbid, the hull itself! 😆 The first AI cruiser goes "Crap I need to escape." I have no issue with that. But all his buddies who haven't even made contact should not waste their smoke. It seems they all act like a hive mind as one...

Thank you Nick. Do you keep a detailed changelog somewhere for those of us who are weird and like to read every little thing 😅 ?

Yes, a good point about the Ottomans...I don't think they are even going to be included right now. Regardless, there is no way British ships should be operating in the Baltic unless they have overwhelming superiority. The Germans should be able to hold the Danish Belts against them.

Lol DLC...true. That's actually something that deserves a DLC, like the old meaning of the word, an expansion. It would expand a game about battleships to include carriers. I like it. That way, if someone doesn't want all that messy air content ruining their nice, perfectly balanced battle lines, they simply don't need to buy the DLC.

Precisely. Small vessels should have to use tactics to survive a close approach, taking advantage of weather/visibility as available. Currently they just get hammered given the artificial constraints of this system because the enemy might not see your battleline when they clearly should be able to, but they certainly have spotted your much closer screening vessels. The result is your screens taking all the fire from everyone as you say...it's the worst of both worlds. It's fake and gamey and doesn't even really end up helping small vessels, a lose-lose.

I concur with this.