Littorio

Funny that you got that one, as I had one with a single 7in gun made by AH. Must be something in their code...

I second the issue of the politics page listing all nations as democracies. Sunk ships are absolutely reappearing and this is a very maddening issue that must be fixed ASAP. In regards to the torpedoes, I have noticed two things that may describe what you are saying. First is torps running too deep. I have seen some physically much lower in the water column than they normally are, and as a result pass clear under the enemy ship. I don't know under which precise conditions this occurs, but I have clearly watched it occur in open battle. I know they stated on one of the hotfixes that they had "Improved ship buoyancy" and thus fixed a "rare" issue regarding torps passing under craft. This would indicate that the problem was the ship's positioning, rather than the weapon...but that is not what I am seeing. Rather, the weapon is physically deeper in the water than it usually is and thus passing under normal ship keels. The other issue/feature that might cause some of your torpedo troubles is the minimum arming distance. The real question though is what exactly that value is, and does it change based on era/type/angle/etc? It definitely is a factor in-game currently, and if ships fire torpedoes too close they simply either disappear or bounce off and sink, I have never been able to look closely enough to tell. They do not detonate, and they do not keep running "through" the ship either. So all things considered those are the factors I have seen that affect torpedo detonation or not, but nothing specifically tied to "firing rate" alone. You say "point blank," but the minimum arming distance would prevent such a detonation anyway. Can you describe or better yet get a screenshot of the scenario you are describing?

Ah, well in that case I don't think it should be too big of an issue, except the necessary code to facilitate different kinds of generated events pertaining to these newer classifications. Still, I don't think they will touch upon this if at all until later in development once larger issues are removed.

I think it varies and is currently largely RNG given their hull designs. I have seen a single 2in shell cause a flash fire that cooked off a large CA's forward turret and blew it out, only for the fire to spread internally to the aft turret and do the same thing. This was all from 1 shell of the lowest caliber currently in the game. On the other hand, I have seen and had ships survive multiple flash fires, some of which didn't lose turrets. I find that the difference between flash fires and magazine explosions is that the latter doesn't seem to ever pop off turrets.

Beware! The French are zombies and field Flying Dutchmen! I have seen ghost ships too but I didn't look at the crew count. I will keep an eye out. While in theory I agree with this, in practice, I expect game design (at least as it currently stands) will trump it. As things are, the CL/CA divide is important to the battle generator because it is UAD's way of getting rough parity in said generator when engagements are created. Of course, we know this doesn't mean that CAs can't duel CLs or whatnot, but the distinction is currently important nonetheless. Ultimately, I don't see this being changed until the campaign recon/ battle spotting systems are finally redone, and I believe that would be optimal for the following reasons: 1) With a redo of campaign layer pre-engagement intelligence+reconnaissance, the decision to enter a prospective battle or not takes on new meaning. Currently, you know exactly what you will be facing like 1 BB, 2CAs, etc. In reality, this would be next-to impossible to know. Therefore, having general cruisers in early years which could vary widely in tonnage and gun caliber, and in later years something like CBs, doesn't really matter anymore because it might be TBs you face, or a whole squadron of BBs! You won't necessarily know. Engagements won't be generated by the computer ("gamemaster" I will call it) for parity, but by simple positioning of your forces and the enemy's. 2) The same applies on a more micro level to the actual in-battle spotting system, which ideally would be an offshoot of what happens on the campaign map. For example, you have 2 "CL" tier cruisers, and you decide to engage a group of three enemy vessels. However, you took a risk because you only knew the class of one of their vessels, a TB. The identity of the other two is unknown. When the first enemy is on the horizon at the proper distance, you see the TB. So far it is alone, it comes at you slowly to engage, but you sink it, congratulations. But then suddenly masts and smoke appear on the horizon, the following unknown vessels, which were obviously far behind the TB and slower. Oh no, it turns out it is a BB and a CA! Suddenly you are very much outranged and outgunned, and decide to use your superior speed to flee the engagement envelope of their guns and retire from the battlefield. This is infinitely more satisfying that the current WoWS type spotting linked to arbitrary values on "more advanced" towers, but that is another discussion largely and beyond the current point. For now, we simply see that making general cruiser classes to start, and CBs later on, loses its current importance to battle generator parity and actually fighting. We will be taking risks anyway, so potentially being widely outgunned cruiser versus cruiser isn't a big deal, because at least it isn't a battleship!

No, what happens is if you click the lead ship sometimes the order doesn't seem to transmit to the rest, but if you click the division card the orders do transmit.

That's really odd. I have never seen that. Also but unrelated: I have seen other players mentioning "ghosts ships" in the latest 1.05 beta and now I see what you mean. I know I just sunk a particular CA, and then a couple turns later I see it's name again. It might be possible that they used the name again on a new ship, but this is less than a year into 1890 so I don't think they would have had sufficient time to make the vessel, as CA's take ~ 8 months usually.

I remember that in old versions and I never got an answer to it. I guess there is some kind of general crew attrition or else it's a minor bug.

So this was before this most recent update, and I will have to restart a new campaign, but my feedback so far is this: 1. Great job fixing the awkward camera 2. France seems to make a lot of ships, more than everyone else 3. Ships seem to sink awkwardly now. Everytime a deathblow is landed, the animation gets weird and the ship immediately tilts at 30-40 degree angle before it starts to actually sink. This is jarring and inconsistent with how sinking was animated earlier

I have not noticed this is 1890 myself. If anything, I find many AI ships without sufficient torpedoes. I have only heard of what you are describing happening in later years. Truly odd.

You should have gotten a code in an email. Go to the support section and ask them there.

Very nice description of citadel armoring. I think that is the solution to this "juicy" issue - properly modeled citadels. I believe that right now all they do is add stats. I think we are still a long way off from actual ship model changes however. I think this would require a lot of code. Are magazines or engine spaces actually even physical, or is there just a certain chance that any one hit will cook off the mag or crack an engine?

Go to support and ask there. Old backers should have gotten keys by now.

You should have gotten it already. Ask for help in support.

BEHOLD this absolute ABOMINATION of a cruiser. It possesses a single 7in gun forward with almost no ammo, and two torpedo tubes, one per side.

This is beyond absurd. @Nick Thomadis please save poor neph from ragequitting and do something about this autoresolve....

So my initial impressions of the 1.5 beta and the issues I see are these: 1. The camera seems...slower, harder to move, "jankier" than before. Whether with the keyboard or mouse, it seems delayed and "stuck" often. This happens in the designer, campaign, and in battles, but is most annoying in the battles because situational awareness is key and a slow/stuck camera doesn't help that. Basically, it doesn't seem as smooth as it used to be for whatever reason 2. Please, please, please, please, please come up with some better system for returning ships to port(s) after a battle. It needs to be more transparent and perhaps have player input if you are worried about overfiling ports past tonnage capacity (I.E. "Ship A wants to dock at Port A but it is full! Return to Port B instead Y/N ?"). I have brought this point up many times in the past and this needs to be changed ASAP. It is extremely annoying to have for example - a battle off of Pula in the Adriatic Sea, only to have one of my TBs and CL decide to go to CAGLIARI in SARDINIA for repairs. Ancona...Bari...Taranto...no, let's go to Sardinia and leave the area altogether! And no, the ports were not at capacity. I don't know what calculation goes into which ships return to which ports, but I had hoped this would be changed by now. It was bad enough as Germany with ships that left Emden ending up in Breslau after battles...but this shuffling is even worse given Italy's geography and it's scattered ports. I can just imagine what could happen with France w/ both Med and Atl ports... 3. The initial campaign loadup is much slower than before. I know there is obviously a larger map with more nations and thus vessels, but this should be optimized. I have a fast CPU over 4GHz, and it still took over a minute, whereas the old Britain vs. Germany map would load in a few seconds. I could quickly see this becoming an issue for people with slower computers, and I saw @Admiral Short suggest being able to play custom battles while waiting to load. When I first saw that prior to loading up this beta, my brain went: "This man must be crazy! It only takes a few seconds!" If it took 60+ seconds for me, I can only imagine how long it must be taking some players' machines if they are resorting to asking for custom battles during loading! 4. Once again I don't trust my ships' pathfinding and formation keeping worth a damn...but I won't go too far into this as it is a longstanding work in progress, I understand. Basically I manually control all my vessels because otherwise it just gets too messy. I don't have specific feedback at this time, but I still believe many general improvements are needed here, particularly at a battle's start with screens and followers barging through the general formation. 5. Strange fleet compositions appear to be the norm. A-H built 36 CAs...and handful each of CLs and TBs, and no BBs. Germany had 50+ ships to start, while Britain had 30 something. Not saying the Brits might not have built quality over quantity, but I suspect this is some buff to Germany or nerf to Entente so that the Germans don't automatically get steamrolled 2-1 by GB and France. 6. I need to play more but so far I would like to see more visual backgrounds/weather, my other longstanding issue. More could be said but I don't want this too long and it is sufficient for this stage of the beta. Nice work on the map and new mechanics. The bones are there.

Yes...my poor Littorio sadly was never used to it's full potential...kinda like all Axis ships lol. I'll have to watch that Drachinfel video though. Shells gimped what would have otherwise been a fine weapons system.

...? I know. I did not state otherwise. I was making a comment on range, which is why I literally said: "Accuracy aside, it would be interesting to see what ranges would be"...

I think you touched something with the idea of bifurcated or forked paths in autoresolve. Turning it into a mini sequence of choices would be far more immersive than just one button. Plus it would reduce the complexity of the number crunching at each stage because not everything would have to occur all at once. Different outcomes would occur based on the different stages, such as in the "pursuit" as you said. The only good point of Rome 2 was it carried over having a tech tree from Shogun 2/Empire as well as naval combat, the last part even being expanded upon with combined arms, land/sea, amphibious assaults. That, and having the codebase to simply have more factions instead of needing them to labeled "rebels." Everything else was a dismal failure (to say nothing of the completely botched launch and innumerable bugs): the "province" system and subsequent relegation of most "cities" to the status of unwalled villages, the utter lack of lack a simple family tree that they then retroactively tried to awkwardly shoehorn into the game, the fact that single units cannot be created and sent around at will and need a general at all times, etc. I could go on and on but that's another thread entirely off this topic. Also off topic would be a larger discussion on your last points. While I see where you are coming from and don't wish to get into a socio-political debate here, culture matters. Good and bad of course exist everywhere, but not all cultures and cultural trends are equal; that's just absent-minded relativism. I only use the labels as far as they are worth in helping to frame discussions, nothing more. I'm a very late millennial, borderline zoomer, so I am in a perfect position to criticize here as I am among such demographics daily, but remember a little of what used to be. I mentioned them in regards to Rome 2 and similar gaming trends because of the broader implications to society and popular culture, including game design. Do you notice now how "gaming" is acceptable (and this meaning has largely eclipsed the old notion the term had regarding gambling) and kids openly talk about "needing" special chairs, glowing mice, light-up keyboards, etc? Lol that's ridiculous and such talk like that used to get you labeled a nerd and a loser 😄. While it's nice that that has changed for newer generations, I am concerned that the utter.....mainstream commercialization of what used to be a much more niche activity, is adversely affecting game design towards making things quicker and flashier at the expense of substance. It's the Tiktokization of games. That is one of the reasons I liked the idea of UAD when I first saw it, because it seemed to promise more depth than many modern games. We will of course have to wait and see how this pans out though. If you wanted to discuss this further later, I would say we should move over to the appropriate forum to avoid derailing nephs thread on autoresolving.

Agreed, scale for now based on barrel count, and later make actually different designs.

I can't wait to see national profiles for weapons, but that will take time for specific naval rifles. Accuracy aside, it would be interesting to see what ranges would be. Contrary to popular belief, the longest range naval rifles ever fielded were not the guns on the Yamato class, but the Cannone da 381/50 Ansaldo M1934 on Littorio and her sisters. These guns could reach almost 43km at maximum elevation, despite being significantly smaller than the weapons on Yamato and Musashi. For further comparison, the Iowa's guns made it to just over 38km, Nelson's 36 and change, Bismarck's 35 and change, and KGV's 14in weapons slightly less than Bismarck's. Of course, high barrel wear on Littorio's guns was the downside...an interesting thing to think about if this game ever gets that far. Will gun's have to be serviced and maintained in order to keep range/accuracy? At this point we have no logistics whatsoever but it's an intriguing thought exercise.

Yeah Rome 2 was a huge fail that all the zoomers in their love of Warhammer have forgotten. Rome 1 was king. Autoresolve has always been crap. I don't know what is up with it either across games and genres, but it must be inherently hard to balance. It is just random dice rolls at the end of the day, so there should be a chance, however small, that good units die, you lose, etc. The issue is that it never seems weighted to reality...i.e. your overwhelming force should win 99% of the time, instead of the autoresolve turning it into a crapshoot. I hope UAD optimizes this better, but given the current situation who knows if we will ever see this game completed at all....

I think right now it's overly slanted to target torpedo threats. Hopefully this will be tweaked and balanced with the coming update.

I was just going to say this. Total War long, loooong ago taught me never to trust autoresolve in anything. It's never balanced and always causes you losses you don't want. Same thing happens in Warband/Bannerlord.