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Sir Guppy

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  1. Further testing, playing as Germany, did pretty much the same as in the previous games, and this time got loads of battles generated versus Britian. Not really sure what I've done that is different, but feels more like a game now! Might just be the lack of feedback/instructions, which makes it hard to understand what is going on. Also be nice if the fleet movements were animated.
  2. Agree, particuarly on points 1 and 2. In general the whole UI is quite clunky.
  3. Played two campaigns on the recent build with the expanded map, and not much seems to actually happen in the campaign. There is a real lack of battles being generated. First as Italy, I make a fleet put it all to sea against Austria-Hungry, the Austria-Hungry fleet seems to very quickly disappear, I don't think it was destoryed, I get to fight 1 or 2 battles against them, and thats it, I give up after 5ish years because no more battles are generated. Then play as Austria-Hungry, make a fleet put it to sea, I get to play two convoy defences which I win, and then I loose the game due to naval prestige. I don't understand what is really going, the whole campaign map is pretty confusing as stuff just jumps around, there is a real lack of battles being generated, I spend 30 minutes designing a fleet and don't actually get to use it. Am I doing something wrong?
  4. The current state of the game is very much early access - if you are buying in now you are buying into the journey of what the game could be. There is strong and compelling core set of mechanics: build ships and fight a battle. However, many of the supporting mechanics that flesh out the game don't exist or are barebones: campaign, missions, and diplomacy to name few. That said £28/$38 offers reasonable value. I would suggest watching a few YouTube videos, anything recent will give you are clear insight into the current state of game mechanics. You can watch entire campaign playthroughs from thehistoricalgamer. Nick Thomadis appears to be the only developer posting updates so I track his posts to see what is being developed. To answer your points specifically: 1 - Yes, but in the current state of the campaign it hardly comes into play, I've never run out of money. 2 - You can design and build ships, and then very broadly give them an order. Each turn the campaign generates some random battles based on your and the AIs fleets. Win enough battlesand win the campaign via a victory points system. Apparently the campaign will be getting fleshed out as its a major weakness at the moment. At the moment the campaign only lets you play Germany and Great Britain for 1 war, in the future I think we will be able to do multiple wars against multiple opponents over a much longer time period. 3 - Easier to watch YouTube videos than describe it all. You can pick a hull type from quite a wide range - but you can't draw the hull shape yourself. You can place all the major external components; guns, torpedoes, bridge, and funnels. You then use various sliders and options to control the ship internals and armour. Cosmetics are automatic. It provides a decent amount of flexibility to build ships which look the part, but its not a 3D modelling tool where you can make anything you want. 4 - Fine, both sides have very similar stuff, torpedoes are particularly deadly. In any case the AI isnt hard to beat in a campaign, but you might loose the odd battle. 5 - It's very basic, hard to tell its even there, in the current state of the campaign it hardly comes into play, I've never run out of money. 6 - I don't really know (common problem with the game, most mechanics lack decent explanations). It's very basic, you spend more or less money each turn, and set prorites, but the campaign is so short at the moment its not uncommon to win before researching anything. The campaign has multiple start dates, so its more practical to just start playing in the time period you want the technology for. 7 - Yes, but again the length of the campaign limits this occurrence. 8 - Ships crews gain experience via use. Can customise the ships via building them described above. 9 - Never seen anything that big during campaign. I find you get a good mix of smaller and larger battles. It's more common is fight with a few ships each, and then every so often you get a much larger fleet engagement. Largest is probably 15 v 15 but that isnt common. Worth mentioning that the game is also very slow as befitting the game context, which provides plenty of time to make orders, I usually play with a high time compression. 10 - At the moment ships crews gain experience via use, not sure how it works exactly.
  5. 1. Levels of information - the game shows far too much information for new players. It needs to graduate the levels of detail it presents, for example: a game setting to show "detailed information", or an click to expand further information after an initial summary. Using detailed percentages is useful for an experienced player, but hard to grasp for a more casual one. Furthermore, percentages are difficult, as they are proportional to some other value I don't always know, why not just summarise it rather than making me do the math? For example "-2.5% Acceleration" could be "Makes the ship accelerate a little slower", or "+1.3% Hull Weight" could be "Weighs 1 ton". 2. Campaign: missions - the campaign feels a lot like a random mission generator. I don't have enough agency over what happens. I've no idea where one of my ships will appear or what it will be trying to do. I would like to be able to create task forces and assign them to missions and areas, Hearts and Iron 4 does this well. For example: destroyers scout for the enemy, which then triggers a task force to engage, in battle this is represented by reinforcements joining mid battle, providing both sides with additional options. 3. Battle: deployment phase - battles need a deployment phase where I can organise my ships position and divisions. I don't like the way the AI lays my fleet out (e.g. I want by torpedo boats out in front charging abrest). I've tried reorganising in battle but its chaos and on the enemy is upon me before they form up in new positions. Alternatively the map should be much larger, to allow for reposition and scouting, effectively becoming an extension of the world map.
  6. Been following the game for a while, and just picked it up on Steam. Solid core mechanics, but a little hollow at times. Suggestions in no particular order. 1. More micro actions - sometimes there isn't much to do, ships just sail and fire at each other and I just get the watch it. Be good if there was something I could interact with, like with smoke screens, for example: assigning crew allocations to various duties, firing flares (at night), or salvo settings. I end up playing the entire game at 3x/5x speed to skip the tedium. 2. Levels of information - the game shows far too much information for new players. It needs to graduate the levels of detail it presents, for example: a game setting to show "detailed information", or an click to expand further information after an initial summary. Using detailed percentages is useful for an experienced player, but hard to grasp for a more casual one. Furthermore, percentages are difficult, as they are proportional to some other value I don't always know, why not just summarise it rather than making me do the math? For example "-2.5% Acceleration" could be "Makes the ship accelerate a little slower", or "+1.3% Hull Weight" could be "Weighs 1 ton". Some examples. In the ship designer: In battle: shoot info shows an absurd level of information, which only works if I manage to read it whilst hovering over the enemy as everything is moving. It could just give me a colour coding, or a simple good/bad/poor indicator. The detail is interesting, but hard to fathom for a beginner, feels a lot like a debug log. 3. Campaign: missions - the campaign feels a lot like a random mission generator. I don't have enough agency over what happens. I've not idea what "sea control" or "fleet in being" means as its not explained. I've no idea where one of my ships will appear or what it will be trying to do. I would like to be able to create task forces and assign them to missions and areas, Hearts and Iron 4 does this well. For example: destroyers scout for the enemy, which then triggers a task force to engage, in battle this is represented by reinforcements joining mid battle, providing both sides with additional options. 4. Campaign: convoy - convoys have always been a significant part of naval conflict, I should be able to set their routes, assign patrol vessels, and assign raiders. 5. Campaign: intel, on enemy ships - the intel system works fine in custom battles. However, in the campaign I would like the gradually gain information regarding the enemy fleet (with varying degrees of detail based on research/rng/encounters/scouts/etc), this feels like a more organic and interesting system, e.g. the enemy launches a new battleship - I wonder have scary it will be, how could I best counter it, I'll have to send some scouts, run away when I see it, build my own battleship killer. 6. Campaign: ship design comparisons - when I design a new ship I should be able to easily compare it to my own ships, and enemy ships (based on available intel), e.g. if I want to build something better than the enemy, what would that need to be? 7. Campaign: intel, on enemy missions - I should gain access (with varying degrees of detail based on research/rng/encounters/scouts/etc) to enemy mission assignments, so I can assign my ships to counter. 8. Campaign: start date - the ability to change the campaign start date. 9. Campaign: repairs - when ships get repaired they go to a different port, and don't return to the port I originally set them to. This creates boring busy work to send them back later. 10. Campaign: fleet - the current fleet tab is painful to use, needs to group by port at least, or preferrable is shown visually on the map. I want the experience of an admiral shuffling wooden toys around a giant map, not someone working in a spreadsheet. 11. Campaign: technology - I appear to have won the campaign on my first attempt by 1890, this hasn't given me much scope or variety to play with different technologies. Technology needs to come faster and in greater variety, or campaign needs to advance through time more quickly. 12. Campaign: time, weather, and season - I imagine these were important factors in naval warfare, but it's hard to understand how these impact the campaign. 13. Battle: player division selector - the division selector isn't at all helpful in helping me play the game. Why have divisions of 1 ship? How do I know what is in each division? 14. Battle: AI division selector: I noticed the division selector allows me to jump to the location of ships I haven't spotted, if I have spotted at least some of the division. Assuming this is a bug. 15. Battle: dropping out of line - the movement orders need some greater control particularly when ships drop out of line (I'm assuming that's what is happening). For example when I have CAs in a line and one slows down so drops to the back it makes sense. When I'm suicide charging a load of torpedo boats I just want them to keep going. 16. Battle: changing division formation - this happens in a very inefficient manner, when I go from ahead to abrest, it appears the lead ships becomes the middle ship, so one ship has to overtake the lead (which in ahead is a long way away). They should just attempt to form abrest in the same order, with an option for abrest right or left, (e.g. all trailing ships moving to the left/right). This means if a formation change is paired with a 90 degree turn the division would reform far more quickly (which is usually when I want to do it). This should work the same way vice versa from abrest to ahead. 17. Battle: target assignment - assigning a ship multiple targets is very clunky, why all the weird key combinations? Pair this with divisions where is it very easy to accidently assign the entire division instead of just the ship I clicked. A nice left click and menu option would be appreciated. Also, standing orders, e.g. always fire secondaries at closest light craft, or division CAs should split fire on enemy division of CAs. 18. Battle: AI - I've found the AI in general to be okay, few odd moments though. In the first naval academy ironclad missions the AI just ran away from me. In some battles the enemy charged my fleet me with its battleship, once that was sunk, the torpedo boats appeared sometime later, didn't appear to be moving in a coherent manner (e.g. I would have expected the torpedo boats first as scouts). 19. Battle: deployment phase - battles need a deployment phase where I can organise my ships position and divisions. I don't like the way the AI lays my fleet out (e.g. I want by torpedo boats out in front charging abrest). I've tried reorganising in battle but its chaos and on the enemy is upon me before they form up in new positions. Alternatively the map should be much larger, to allow for reposition and scouting, effectively becoming an extension of the world map. 20. Battle: wave height - I see a lot that ships appear to be underwater at times, I've seen guns fire from underwater, it seems the waves are far to high/large on average. 21. Battle: movement orders - it's a nice idea but I'm not really sure why the point of movement orders is given the overall size of the maps, e.g. having my CL scout, sort of makes sense, but the scouting phase of the battle ends in pretty much the first 30 seconds. 22. Battle: group selection movement - this might be a bug. I select all ships by dragging a box, and then order a new direction, they all form up ahead, instead of just each adjusting their individual division direction. 23. Battle: report and log info - these only show the most recent events, they should show all events, and the filters should only filter what is displayed, not what is captured. 24. Battle: suicide torpedo boat charge - the tactic of charging torpedo boats seems unreasonably effective. They just close the distance too quickly, and the much larger ships can't sink them quickly enough. The AI should target rapidly closing torpedo craft more quickly. This should still be an effective tactic but I feel a much larger number of TB should be required to pull it off. 25. User interface - in general the UI feels clunky, and needs an overhaul. 26. Tutorials/knowledge base - the game doesn't do a very good job of explaining it's concepts, and there doesnt appear to be any tutorial. I basically I have no idea how most of the game mechanics work, what's things I really need to worry about, what things are minor min/maxes. I don't understand the basic options, e.g. is it always better to have more and bigger guns? If the naval academy is the tutorial, it isn't clear what the lesson is. I recommend having a look at Crusader Kings 3, another game with a lot of concepts - their tooltips, have tooltips! 27. Naval academy - I don't get it, the missions I found a bore, stopped playing after 5 missions. In the ironclad missions the AI just kept running away if it was faster, or would just remain stationary if it was slower. Also watching two ironclads fire 1/2 cannons at each other for 20 minutes was tedious. Ended up just ramming everything to sink them. 28. Visuals cues - Show me, don't tell me. The game appears to model behaviours, but it's not apparent it's actually there. For example, time and weather varies, but every battle looks the same. Furthermore, I have never once seen smoke on the horizon even though the game tells me it's there. 29. Quick mission settings - ability to control time and weather. 30. Ship designer: visual highlights - when I'm designing a ship its hard to see already placed components, a visual highlight (like in battles when hovering over weapons) would be useful.
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