Littorio

This is a long-standing complaint of mine

Seems to me then that the real issue is the gamification of spotting and correcting gunfire. This "target signature" being automatically inflated simply because more little secondary guns are placed along the flanks is idiotic. Your guns would not be able to hit them more reliably or not just due to a few more guns on the enemy vessel. They would do nothing to increase the visual profile beyond the main turrets, superstructure, and funnels. This game is too tied to arbitrary mechanics based on stats that would have no bearing in reality.

Do you have any good sources on IJN floatplane use? I know they used them more frequently than other navies in general, but not specifically for ASW work. This strikes me as odd because USN sub doctrine was to primarily target Japanese merchants, the exact opposite of IJN submarines which focused on warships. USN subs shouldn't have been near large fleet units too often, with notable exceptions like Midway, etc. It just seems odd that ship-launched floatplanes could be expected to have many operational uses as ASW assets. I know they used coastal flying boats like the H6K and H8K far more often as they had very long range and endurance, and could carry a proper ASW loadout, providing cover for the battle fleet.

Ship-launched seaplanes were never a significant ASW asset of any note. They usually had little-to-no armament and were primarily used for gunnery spotting or scouting. In fact, the whole concept of CL/CA/BC/BB-launched floatplanes never developed into quite what's it's tactical and operational proponents believed it would be. Carrier's clearly took on the role of being the bird farms for both offensive and defensive purposes, and many ships removed their floatplane catapults entirely, as the planes themselves and the spare fuel for them turned into massive fire hazards when under enemy attack. I think players overestimate the historical importance of ship-based aviation, outside of carriers obviously. In reality, land-based, or at least coast-based seaplanes, played a far more important role in ASW and scouting work. It wouldn't bother me at all if the devs never added ship-launched floatplanes, and the mechanics to do so would likely cause more bugs and trouble than they would be worth. Why this emphasis on gamifying everything? What logical AMW value does a different "tower" have? Minesweepers were not know for their fancy, advanced towers. They were know for being little, wooden deathtraps that tried their best to steam between the mines and snag them. Components, hulls of a certain type, yes, but towers have no place in mine sweeping.

perhaps you misunderstood, but this was is literally what I was saying in my points, and your response was just "no it's fine." It's not fine to expand at the expense of fixing/adding mechanics that address current issues, so it seems we are in agreement? All I have ever seen is port-shuffling every game. If anyone has ships that return to where they departed from each time on a regular basis, I would be very interested to learn who and where.

Perhaps they are waiting for an expanded set of operations that make sense for them. Deploying monitors with a battle fleet would not happen very often.

I think they said somewhere that they won't do monitors. Or at least if they ever do, I don't think we will see it for awhile.

Yeah the UI needs work on the map. Ships overlay each other and the ports like you said and it can be a real pain to quickly and easily select what you want, assuming you can at all....

I don't quite know what you mean by that statement. Building what? Itself? They should be focused on building the missing pieces to what they have already made. I agree totally, it is horrible for immersion. Sometimes you can get a 50-60% malus (or more rarely a 5-10% bonus) to accuracy and you wouldn't even know why unless you moused over that odd green thermometer thing (which is horribly textured). I don't think wind is independently modeled in any way physically, but it is part of the effects that go into the malus/bonus to accuracy. There are four components to this: Time of day, "weather" as in rain, wind, and sea state. Well I disagree in full. If we could wait years for campaign mechanics at all, I don't see why it needs to be continuously rushed out the door now that we finally have something to play with. They are being rushed at the expense of basic gameplay factors, such as the things I outlined above earlier. Having another few country options and some start/end to wars won't make we want to play this game right now. Ending the unholy abomination that is port-shuffling your ships every single turn to all corners of the empire, will. Totally agree that infrastructure changes to ports should be very high on the list of things to do. This will have many beneficial effects to the nature of the war(s) and how they are fought. Coincidentally, this is one of the sort of things I would love to see the devs implement now before madly rushing off pell-mell in order to further expand and widen the campaign...

I have mentioned this many times, and most recently above. It should be a priority over many of the other things they have done/are doing.

I agree about spotting on the campaign map. I have brought it up several times before. I can't find the most succinct one, but here is stuff from 1.0 feedback: We really should have the ability to see "smoke" on the map, and then need to investigate and ID the contact on the battle map.

These are all well and good, for sure, and I am most excited about the detailed citadels. Anything that improves shipbuilding to make it more realistic is a fine addition. However, I still see an overall emphasis on adding new things versus fixing existing things. What we need most is a pause in this mentality of build build build to improve what already is in game. Namely: - I have said it many times and must state it again. We need an overhaul on how ships return to ports, whether alone, or in task force, whether damaged or not. The current system is completely illogical, even for it's stated purpose of preventing "overfull" ports with too much tonnage in them. There are simple ways to prevent this. The current system of port-shuffling most of your ships every turn is extremely tedious, wastes time, and is the #1 factor making me not want to actively play this game. I am tired of figuring out which distant port my vessels have steamed off to every single turn. - Naval Intelligence anyone? This should be a priority for campaign as it is, far more than simple "expansion." As it stands, test an intelligence system while the game is still relatively small, and uncomplicated. Expansion will just make it harder on the engine, more to keep track of. We need to be able to know what to build against, what vessels the enemy might have in which ports. This was crucial to naval warfare historically, and should be a top priority over simply making the game larger to appease Steam people dreaming of a world war... - Lastly, I would still like to see, and have been pushing for since the autumn, an overhaul to visual backgrounds/weather. This is crucial in it's own right for full immersion and for the game to make sense (penalties to accuracy for being in a "full gale" while the sky and sea look normal???). But, it is also a stepping stone on the path to the mythical spotting redo that we all want to see someday. How can we have a true naval wargame with barely any visual differentiation and no true weather?

Intelligence is a must have

I sort of wrote a little about a couple back to back BB duels I had in older versions. I left them in one of the past feedback threads. Once this game is more developed, and we finally fix how ships return to port, spotting, weather, etc, i think you will see more people interested in this since more intriguing things will occur.

Someone already did something like this on here in the past. I don't believe it went very far but if you look you will see the thread

Anything related to alleviating this ridiculous system whereby we spend half or more of our gametime shuffling ships around ports gets a vote from me. I have posted on this general subject extensively multiple times...

Not that I have seen but I rarely play anything but campaign

I mentioned this in my update 12 feedback. I haven't played 13 yet but I am sorry to hear this still exists. It can be a serious problem on some maps. The graphics for the movement lines and weapon range circles are basically covered by the sea. I will play 13 tomorrow if I can and see what I get...

Issue Feedback as of Update 12: 1. I have noticed that shells at close ranges are passing right through enemies sometimes. They are not overpens, they just pass physically through the models without interaction. I know that this must be some bug from all the tweaks to shell dispersion and inherent to the fact that each projectile is not a physical object using in-game physics, but essentially nothing more than a image. 2. Torpedoes at times can do this too. I have seen certain ships "survive" contact with 2-3 torps from different directions and angles. They just pass right through the model without physically interacting with it at all and continue on their course. 3. Cowardly enemies seem to be slowly returning. While not quite as bad as it had been in the past, ships of various types seem to be fleeing very early again. BBs and CAs run from CLs, and I suspect it's the torpedo logic. But some of these vessels are supposed to be protecting TRs and they just steam away leaving the TRs defenseless. 4. Austria-Hungary breaking their own port tonnage limits at game start with overcrowded ports was fixed before, but in this most recent update the new campaign I started had all three of their ports in the red and around 10,000 tons overweight. 5. There have been some graphical issues on the battle maps the last few updates. I have noticed that the green "directional lines" and arrows, whatever you want to call them, are often almost completely obscured. At first, I didn't know what was causing this, but then I noticed it happens to be the sea itself that covers them. The lines clip in and out of the sea surface, moving with the plane of the hull itself. As the ship dips lower in the water, so too does the green graphical indicators. You can also see this happen with the weapon range circles. The bug is not consistent and happens intermittently. 6. Please make the Strait of Messina passable to vessels. This was a fundamentally very important waterway for all of Mediterranean naval history. Maybe it doesn't matter for time of travel as far as the game is concerned, but it is visually very off-putting to see a ship traveling from Messina to need to route all the way around the entire island of Sicily vs. simply sailing south through the Strait........ 7. And once again I just feel the pressing need to reiterate this point - no matter what you add or not in the next coming updates, please strongly consider changing how ships return to port, whether damaged or not. It is extremely annoying and time consuming to spend the beginning and end of every turn (after fighting the battles I am forced into), to have to check each port in my country to see where my ships decided to steam off to after their latest engagements. It is completely nonsensical where some of these ships end up, and it has real effects as far as power projection is concerned because they end up in different bodies of water. Even if this were not true, it is extremely annoying and tedious to the point of not making things fun. I don't want to spend multiple periods each turn finding ships and moving them back where I originally wanted them. I know you are afraid of overcrowding ports past tonnage limits [except for A-H it seems ;)], but this would not be a problem if every ship simply returned to where it departed. If a ship leaves Taranto, it should always return to there unless it is sunk, or else you are modeling that it is too badly damaged to make it that far, and so thus must return to Bari (or Ancona) instead. In this case, make it so that a ship normally assigned to Bari will instead return home to Taranto, essentially performing a 1-1 swap of port placement. You can justify this logically in your head as the admiral calling that ship on the radio and informing the captain that a sistership needed to take their normal berth in port for emergency repairs, so since they are still at sea and thus mobile, to please route to the next closest friendly port. This can be temporary if desired, until the first ship finishes the emergency repairs, or else permanent, a swap of these two vessels among divisions and squadrons of the same class of vessel. But this port jumping between ships of all types after every mission needs to end. Sometimes ships return to distant ports 1000s of km away from where they started, for literally no reason...as in, they were never in that sea, never on patrol there, never fighting there. Instead, they just decided to f@@@ off and go on a little pleasure cruise and vacation. I can't see any logic to this system as currently designed, and it is my largest issue with the campaign since day 1.

Well then I guess we must agree to disagree. I don't believe that further developments in this area do anything concrete to help the game for long, but instead offer a illusion to the masses. In other words, further expansion before refinement only helps Steam ratings.

Learning to swim, yes. Making this game? No. Because the deep end here will be built on the foundations of a leaking pool that's cracked and slowly draining. If the cracks aren't fixed no one is going swimming for long.

Well they have fixed some things shortly after I started this thread, so while it's not moot, at least some things have been alleviated. I do not expect the game to be finished soon, and I am not saying it should be perfect right now. I understand where it is at. My issue is people "...expecting the game to be playable RIGHT NOW..." as you say, because this can lead to things like rushing map extension to try and placate the masses. That is my point.

Making ships for all the AI nations. Thank you for these Nick. The jitter needed to go and you listened to us. Thank god the VP bug is fixed. I'm excited to test out the casualty mechanic. No, what year are you playing? In 1890 they tend to make weirdly under-armed CLs and heavily armed CAs, but the latter don't always have torps. Hell, sometimes the CLs don't even have them. Skybox updates are desperately needed, plus physical weather. This is a something I have heard other people report, but never seen myself. I will keep an eye open. Also the idea of losing more or less crew based on quarters is interesting... Not at the expense of mechanics. Diplomacy and map extension should not be undertaken just for it's own sake. It should not be rushed.

Ehh, see we had plenty of updates just Britain vs. Germany for campaign. Suddenly we get one, a beta no less that still isn't officially released, and suddenly everyone gets a juicy taste of the big-map-end-game-full-world sweetness and wants to jump the gun. Let's hold here for a few moments and nail down the tent stakes before ripping them out and making everything wider again without a single polishing update in-between. I don't understand this paradoxical need to expand-expand-expand very rapidly, and yet elsewhere you seem to espouse a more cautious: "Well the devs are working as hard as they can so it'll come when it comes. Patience." You can't have it both ways. All the things you labeled "minor stuff" I would say are absolutely not. The fundamental part of this game is not the campaign. It is not strategic, or even operational - though those are important pieces in the final product eventually. The foundation of the game is tactical, and thus on the battle map, using the individual ships you designed in their builder. If things are insecure in the designer and on the battle maps, those things need to be addressed before we start worrying about big-picture campaign extension on a strategic level.

While I agree that timed events could work as a way to generate tensions, I am not in agreement on pushing the envelope as far as actual diplomatic interaction yet (unless it is a quickie to free us from this imbalanced 3v2). I don't believe "the core game [is] fleshed out" yet at all. There is still a lot of work to be done in many areas that are intrinsic to the core of the game. Spotting (which yes, I remember you disagree on mostly), background visuals, weather, transport refinements, shipyard building limits, a basic logistics system, adding coast defense vessels and/or monitors, there are many things that should take precedence before delving into yet another round of fixing these totally bizarre game issues stemming from diplomacy, alliances, and allied-involved battles.