JeeWeeJ

My two cents of stuff I'd like to see (in random order): Pre-battle deployment: the ability to deploy your ships so you can somewhat avoid the AI going bonkers as you try to reorganize your fleet Faction-wide diplomacy: Make it so faction wide diplomacy can take place. Now it's quite annoying when you try to make a peace deal...and get dragged back into the war the next turn because your allies are still at war. Option to make national preferences "neutral": right now certain nations have a preference for certain other nations (like Austro-Hungary has a preference for Germany and Italy), give us the option to ignore these and make our own minds up who we want to be friends with. Camouflage/paintschemes: this would be some seriously nice eyecandy if we were able to paint our ships in the colors of the great white fleet for example. Mod/Workshop support: I'm sure this community is filled with people with amazing modding skills that can enhance/expand this game.

Anothing few things I noticed: 1. Ships joining divisions at random. I have not been able to reliably reproduce it, but it goes a bit like this: There are two division; Division A: 3 BB's Division B: 4 CA's set to follow division A Battle is joined and one of the BB's is hit hard and slows down. For some reason this BB now joins division B and tries to join the end of the battleline. Which pretty much messes up my organization of divisions. I also noticed some divisions just...joining at random. I just had a division of pre-dread BB's join a division of transport ships...and my mouse hadn't even come close to those transport ships, let alone any order to join divisions being given. Given how the AI is...quite terrible...when it comes to organizing divisions, this is less than ideal. Suggested sollution: give players an option to have these ships leave the division and automatically follow their original division. (and make this optional, like a button in the UI menu) 2. Ships just stopping when divisions get messed up I noticed a few times that when you try to reorganize divisions, ships just...stop and refuse to follow orders. They just sit still in the water no matter what order you give them. The only way it can be apparently fixed is to remove the ship from the division and add it again. All you have to do then is pray no other ships decide to get the derps. This seems to happen at random, but happens more often in bigger battles.

It seems the Austrians have already discovered the use of zombie crew? Or have the devs secretly added the Netherlands with their flying Dutchmen? 🤔 About 50% of the enemy fleet had no crew and the ships immediately surrendered at the start of the battle. EDIT: I just noticed in the second screenshot two ships of my own fleet also surrendering. Those two ships were sunk in the previous battle! Something surely is off here...

I don't know if this has been mentioned before (if so, couldn't find it and my apologies) but in my recent 1890 game with Austria-Hungary I noticed that the first new BB hull you get...is the dreadnought hull? That...doesn't feel right? Shouldn't there at least be a BB2 or BB3 hull before that? Let alone that it's massively unbalanced given the AI is still happily building pre-dreads. (I am ignoring that it's totally not in line with the progress you make on the other tech lines)

So I started a new campaign as Italy and joined late in a war between Austria and France. Austria apparently peaced out, while I got in a few more fights with France...but now I got in an interesting situation: Can someone explain to me how I am to win a naval war...against a navy that doesn't exist anymore? 😅 (In the end I fixed it through blockading France, but was still a funny situation as the war just kept going)

So I just had a battle against Germany where the AI fielded...WAY too many ships. (it was this one) Suffice to say, the game slowed down to a crawl and any battle speed that went faster than normal speed resulted in a slideshow. Maybe there should be a limit to the battle size? Also, please PLEASE give use the option to arrange our taskforces before battle. When battles become a bit bigger it becomes utter chaos with the AI trying to re-arrange the taskforce (as they never start in the positions I want them) The only casualties of that battle (pressed "End Battle" as soon as possible) were ships that crashed into other ships trying to re-organize the fleet.

I just had this very same issue! Also with a Convoy battle, so might be related to this type of battle. What I noticed was that the battle no longer ends when you destroy all the escorts. However, when you do complete the mission (sink 50% of the convoy or somesuch) the battle fails to end. You cannot leave battle, you cannot exit to main menu etc. I haven't had this issue with other battle types, so I think it's related to the Convoy mode. Given that I continued my old save game, I also noticed that Alliances now actually work when it comes to wars. I (Germany) had an alliance with both Italy and Austria, yet Italy was also in a war with Austria (and so was the UK and France...damn Austrians and starting wars. xD) So now I'm suddenly dragged in that war om Austria's side.

Is anyone also having issues with completely passive AI after this latest hotfix? As Germany I'm at war with both the UK and France but no matter if I keep my fleets at sea or at port, I just don't get any missions. Only my allies (Italy and Austria) have some small fleets out, but otherwise...noting. 🤔 And it's not like the AI is lacking ships, France is equal in numbers to me while the UK outnumbers me 2 to 1.

I saw it mentioned before on this forum, but in this hotfix the AI seems to once again get an insane accuracy "range found" bonus ranging between 420% and 636%. Now, I know that the AI will happily keep building ships using just the most basic of basic technologies and just ignore stuff like rangefinders, but giving them an accuracy bonus like this is just stupid IMHO. I just had a ship get blow up which was superior in technology, armor, guns and crew, just because I could only top out on a 6% gun accuracy (it's a 1890s game) while the AI ship (with a green crew and without rangefinders I might add) topped out on 18%. Instead of giving the AI bonusses like that, please make them build sensible ships as I don't mind getting my ass handed to me if my ships are just outclassed.

This was interesting, a GLORIOUS™ battle on the plains of Germany with...land battleships? 🤔 One of the funnier bugs I've encountered so far imho. 😄(and reported ofcourse)

New thing I encountered, finished a war of me (France) and my ally the UK vs the other AI nations. War ended with the remaining three AI nations being left with no ships to speak of...but even though most of them have enoguh money, they're not building new ships, pretty much ending my campaign. I did notice that their manpower pool stays the same and money keeps going up and down as if they are building stuff. Bugreport has been sent...wondering if someone else encountered this.

Am enjoying this patch so far...but always up to the point where I just don't get any missions. Right now I have a campaign playing the French and I'm at war with Italy and Austria-Hungary. Italy has a sizable fleet...but they just don't leave port, leaving me in the situation where I can't fight them and the blockade doesn't seem to do anything. Same issue with the Austrians, just not blockaded. Other thing I encountered were battles where my fleet spawned right in the enemy fleet, so my CLs and TBs just got instagibbed at the start. And the really large battles my fleet was just a mess with the AI not knowing how to handle the "avoid colission" stuff, so had to spend more time getting my fleet in order than actually fighting the enemy. But beside that, this patch shows real promise and I love the long campaign option.

I was talking about in game terms, not real life. The pre-dreadnought equipment has much lower spotting range than stuff you get later. Just compare the stuff you get at the start of the 1890 campaign vs the 1920 campaign. This just makes the the impact of the spotting issue worse, especially for new players who do not realize that there is stuff like weather etc (which they cannot see ingame yet unless they know what button to click). I found that for more modern equipment spotting becomes less of an issue.

Hi all! New forumite here who has been playing this game for quite a while now but only recently dabbled with the campaign mode. Given that I really like this game, I thought I'd share my feedback here. I'm sure quite a few things I mention here will have been discussed in one of the many topics on this forum...I haven't read all threads yet, apologies for that. Please note that I am very much aware that this is a very early version of the campaign and that it is work in progress. Anyway, to the wall of text! Note: this is mostly based of v97. Haven't been able to play v98 that much yet. GAMEPLAY - The transport mechanic: In essence I like the transport mechanic and how you can actively invest into your own economy. However, due to it not being explained how you actually protect your transports (as in: how do you decrease the chance of losing them) it can be somewhat game breaking when you suddenly start losing 10+ transport per turn and actually go bankrupt even though you are winning all battles thrown at you. Please let the player know WHY they are losing the transports so you can respond to it before some politician throws a hissy fit and decides you lost the war. (For example a warning that not enough ships are available to protect trade lanes or something) - Spotting is weird: this has ofcourse been discussed to death in other threads, but right now it's just weird how ships can suddenly pop into existance right next to you. I know this is due to a lack of visible clues regarding the weather effects, but if you didn't know this (like your random Steam early access purchaser) it would be frustrating and more or less "unfair and game breaking". - The AI bravely runs away: another thing that has multiple topics on this forum. Like the brave Sir Robin, the AI seemingly decides that bravely running aways it the best course of action. Always. Even when it has a numerical advantage. (I especially found this to be the case in the 1890 and 1900 campaigns. It becomes less of an issue in the later campaigns) - Convoy Missions: I really like the idea of convoy missions, but so far they seem to have little actual effect. If you only kill the transport ships, you don't get any victory points. So right now it's not clear to me, as a player, why I should focus on these missions. For example, skipping a convoy defence mission doesn't always result in me losing transports. - Already visible Work in Progress stuff: I really like that we're already able to see stuff that doesn't yet work, but gives us an idea of what is coming. Gives me something to look forward to. UI - In general: the UI is nice and clean and overall is easy to understand. Nice work! - Mechanics need more info: This game has quite a few underwater mechanics which aren't really explained ingame. For example the option to have ships "In Being" or out at sea. Now I get the gist of what it means...but what does it mean in game terms? Like, which option is better for the protection of transports? Having popups with a short explanation would be nice. - Need weather info before entering combat: What I would really like to see (or maybe I'm blind and missed it completely?) is having weather info before you go into battle. I really like pre-dreadnought era ships but entering a battle where you suddenly find out that your commander Hanz forgot that it's nighttime...and it's storming with a seastate that would make a hardened sailor cry...not much sense even going into that battle, right? But hey! At least they can see smoke on the horizon! - Speaking of smoke: While I really like the "Smoke on the horizon" mechanic, it's also a bit frustrating. Especially in the pre-dreadnought era where spotting distances are low and speeds are even lower, it's kind of annoying to just sail around and not finding your foe. (especially now with the AI's tendency to run away without even spotting you) It would be nice to have an (optional?) indicator of some kind showing you exactly on what bearing the smoke was spotted instead of just "East"...no make that North-East...no, East!...or maybe West? SOUND I can be brief about this. Both the effects and the music is GLORIOUS really well done! OTHER SUGGESTIONS - Wars between AI's: One of the things I really disliked from Rule the Waves 2 (sorry, had to make the comparison once) was that it was always you vs the AI. The AI nations never had wars between themselves and alliances didn't mean that much excepty for some extra ships during battles. So I really hope that in this game the other AI nations will get into wars with eachother to keep things in balance. (with balance I mean nations which just have their fleets grown and grow because they never suffer any losses...and then declare war on you with a massive numerical superiority) - Moddable nations: While I really like the ten nations we have so far, I'm sure everyone can think of other countries they'd like to add. I'd love to see us having the ability to add nations via mods. I mean...who wouldn't want to rule the seven seas with the dreaded Swiss war canoes? Seriously though, I think being able to add not just equipment and 3D models to this game would greatly expand the replayability value. All in all, I really like what I see in this first version! Sure, it needs polish and more stuff to be added. And I'm not sure if it would be wise to put it on Steam in its current state given how some aspects of the game can easily be seen as "broken"...but it really has a lot of potential and I cannot wait for the stuff to come!