[>>>Beta 1.05 Available!<<< (Update: 18, PRE-RELEASE)]

I know a bit about physics. Don't try to make me buy that a 12" shell won't oneshot for example the 200t TBs on early games. The sheer kinetic energy of the 12" shell would snap it in half, no matter what. That is my point.

As much evidence as it might be, that is the exception. Exceptions like that exist in warfare. Ye Olde Pub B-17 bomber is a good example of it. I'm talking as in the general rule, and as general rule, light ships should be oneshotted by large caliber guns.

[>>>Beta 1.05 Available!<<< (Update: 18, PRE-RELEASE)]

17 hours ago, Littorio said:

Also, damage from said guns seems higher than ever before. My poor CL got 1-shotted stem to stern, clear through the bow and all the way aft. It sank immediately from 1 main-battery hit. I have never before seen such accurate and damaging main battery fire since this game went public, so watch out to the unwary....and this was 1890s base technology. Close range accuracy from large guns in later years must be practically 100%....

As it should be. TBs, DDs, and small CLs (like the ones found on early capaigns) should be oneshotted by main gun hits from BBs. Anything else is simply not reallistic.

[>>>Beta 1.05 Available!<<< (Update: 18, PRE-RELEASE)]

Okay, some good feedback: I like the changes  on the interface. Having a parameter so important as the engine efficience displayed so at hand is a good move. Same for the war summary interface on the campaign. Good change.

Now, the not so good feedback. The problem of A-H not being able to build battleships at the start of the campaign hasn't been tackled. Also the poor CL hul choice of them. What is whose, the auto design fleet on campaign again gives them an unusable battleship.

About the new ships and model: I like what I see. But since I went to look at the new spanish hulls, I noticed two things: The flag on the hull is still the 1978 one (incorrect one) and the naming list for spanish ships is simply ATROCIOUS! Not only has religious sounding names, like Santa Elena or San Juan, when those kind of religious sound names where deprecated on the 1850s (with the sole exception of the Cardenal Cisneros armoured cruiser) but a lot of them are clearly Google Translate made! (like Real Felipe instead of Rey Felipe. But even if it was the right one, we won't name a ship like that either, so...) Why don't you let an actual spanish (wink wink) to take a look to the list and point out all the mistakes? I'd gladly volunteer for that, and I'm almost sure that there is at least another spanish on this part of the forum.

[>>>Beta 1.05 Available!<<< (Update: 5)]

Okay, @Nick Thomadis since we shouldn't edit saves anymore to prevent bugs that flaw the testing, then we need implemented some kind of stopgap game option to make campaigns longer. Like, an option to make campaigns not end when there is a revolution, and make the AI not ask for peace. As of right now, the average campaign is still too short for some features to be properly and throroughly tested.

[>>>Beta 1.05 Available!<<< (Update: 5)]

6 hours ago, Littorio said:

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!

I think you misunderstood me, my friend. My proposal is not getting rid of the CA/CL (or even more possible cruiser classes) but that the kind of cruiser your ship is becomes determined by the specs of your ship (mostly the main guns and the armouring) rather than by the hull you choose. That, also, would allow for reclassification of ships. Just like some late protected cruisers were reclassified as light cruisers after WWI.

[>>>Beta 1.05 Available!<<< (Update: 5)]

4 hours ago, Candle_86 said:

 

This is why I'd like to see Armored cruiser separated from Heavy/Light, because an Armored did have 10in guns, but heavies didn't. I'd break it down as Protected Crusier, Armored Cruiser, Light Cruiser, Heavy Crusier.

 

the Leniage is

 

Armored becomes Battlecrusier, while protected gives rise to Heavy/Light with the diffrence only happening in the London Naval Treaty, prior it was just a ship with 8in guns under 10,000 Tons. 

 

Honestly it only exists because of the treaty system, because what happened when it broke, everyone planned large crusiers with 11 or 12in guns or bigger

 

That's precisely why I proposed gettin only Cruiser hulls, without the current distinction between heavy and light, and the ships made with those hull being classified dinamically depending on their specs: if you mount 6" guns or smaller, you'll get a light cruiser or a protected cruiser depending on the armour. If you mount guns between 7 and 9" you'll get a heavy cruiser, and if you mount guns larger than 9" you'll get a large cruiser.

And I agree, Armoured cruisers should be classified as battlecruisers for gameplay purposes, as their role were the same.

[>>>Beta 1.05 Available!<<< (Update: 5)]

1 hour ago, SodaBit said:

Got some ship designer feedback here.
I once again, must suggest that Panzerschiff/Large Cruisers be made their own class of ship, due to how much of a difference in capabilities they have in comparison to both Heavy Cruisers and Battlecruisers.
As it currently stands, Panzerschiff armed with 11" guns are classified as Heavy cruisers, but are an absolute nightmare to fight with when you only have 8" guns to hand, and your armor is only rated at withstanding 8" shells.

Results like this would be outstanding for normal 8" CA's, but are only average when you consider that the 3 CA's on the German side looked like this:

That's not a heavy cruiser. That's a Scharnhorst, being classified as a "Heavy Cruiser." Exeter had a bad enough time fighting Deutschland with just 2 triple 11" turrets, and doesn't stand a chance in hell against Scharnhorst. So, for this design to be classified as a Heavy Cruiser doesn't really work.

However, it wouldn't be fair to classify it as a battlecruiser either, given what is possible to field as a battlecruiser in 1940. 2 examples are as follows:
First, the "Battlecruiser Scharnhorst."

Again, that's not a Scharnhorst-class Battlecruiser. That's Bismarck, with 20" of belt armor and a 13" deck. The heavy cruiser shown above cannot crack that armor at any range, while its own 12" belt can be shredded by "Scharnhorst's" super-heavy 15" shells.
Second example, a USN "Battlecruiser" that everyone here will probably recognize immediately.

Again, this is a far, far more capable unit than the other hull option the USN gets for its battlecruisers, that option being based on the Alaska-class Large Cruisers. Say what you will about the capabilities of the Scharnhorst's or Alaska's, but there's no way in hell either of them could beat Bismarck or Iowa. But on the other hand, I'm not sure any CA has a chance at beating Scharnhorst or Alaska mono-e-mono.
There's other examples I can bring up, like Amagi versus B-65, but the point is that as it stands right now, Large cruisers don't really fit into either the CA or BC role. With the campaign's tendency to match ships against enemies of the same class, having the bigger ship usually leads to victory. For Kriegsmarine players this is going to mean using Panzerschiffe in the Heavy Cruiser role, as these ships can simply roll over any actual CA's that get sent their way. Likewise, for Royal Navy players this means ignoring the Large Cruiser hull entirely, as a 30k ton ship isn't going to get you very far against a Kriegsmarine battlecruiser that could turn out to actually be Bismarck under a different classification.

This. Panzerschiffs should be grouped with CBs. As most CBs were equipped with 10 to 12" guns, they would neither have a fair match against either CAs or BCs. We need more ship classes.

[>>>Beta 1.05 Available!<<< (Update: 5)]

1 hour ago, Handam said:

Refit is initializes ship performance.

 

Refit Before.

 

The design I want.

 

Refit After...

Is this a convoluted way to say that refit is still broken?

[>>>Beta 1.05 Available!<<< (Update: 5)]

6 minutes ago, DerRichtigeArzt said:

are the new hulls in game already and just havent been listed or are they gonna be added later?

AFAIK they're going to be added in the full release of the 1.05, not in the beta.

[>>>Beta 1.05 Available!<<< (Update: 5)]

1 minute ago, beepboop6 said:

Ah, I never thought of doing that, although I did try just now with the new patch starting a campaign as A-H with an auto gen fleet and it didnt give me any BB, did give me like 21 CA's though. Thanks for the heads up though

It didn't get you any BB? It was like the first thing I tried after the new patch was announced (Because I like A-H, and once the full campaign gets released it will likely become one of my most played nations), and I got 10 BBs. And pretty decent, I'd say.

 

 

4 hours ago, Fangoriously said:

The refit editor hates my turrets, says they are "too far from previous place" as soon as i enter the editer. the Q turret it doesn't mind for some reason, but i can't move or add main gun turrets anywhere else. At least tech i unlock is showing up to select.

 

Very clever turret placement for that hull. Mind if I borrow it? 😋

[>>>Beta 1.05 Available!<<< (Update: 5)]

24 minutes ago, beepboop6 said:

If you are playing as Austria-Hungary, you Dont get BB in 1890 to start with as your shipyard is too small, but if you play against Austria-Hungary in the same time, they do get BB from the start. Is that intentional?

This has been fixed. with the new patch, the AI is capable to use beam-draught to make battleships of the adequate tonnage. If you play A-H, and use auto generate fleet on the campaign options, you get BBs aswell. And if you decide to create your own fleet, you can choose any other hull, lower the beam-draught sliders until the BB hull becomes available, and then start building your own.

[>>>Beta 1.05 Available!<<< (Update: 5)]

I've notice that the auto designer is able to place guns in places where, no matter how hard you try, the designed doesn't allow you to place them. Is that a bug, or it is intentional to try to give the AI some edge over human made designs?

As an exmplae, I provide the auto designed armoured cruiser I got on my new A-H campaign. No matter how hard I've tried, I have failed to reproduce the gun placemente of the highlighted guns.

[>>>Beta 1.05 Available!<<< (Update: 5)]

Also, I like that, apparently, the initial number of ships for all the countries have been tweaked, so you aren't at a stupid numeric disadvantage if you choose to design your own ships for the campaign.

[>>>Beta 1.05 Available!<<< (Update: 5)]

Suggestion: Please add a "lock tonnage" option in the designer, so when you modify draught/beam, the lenght of the ship changes automatically to keep the same tonnage. This would ease a lot the ship design process, as currently, trying to adjust the tonnage to shipyard/class limits when having modified draught/beam is a very tedious process.

[>>>Beta 1.05 Available!<<< (Update: 5)]

1 minute ago, AurumCorvus said:

No. Well, at least not until the full map and campaign, at which point I might (still retaining strong skepticism) encourage something like that.

The fact of the matter is that naval wars are not fast paced, with rare chances for an actual fight. In World War I, the North Sea area had (over four years) barely 25/26 encounters, if you include everything remotely resembling an encounter (including some air raids). Of those, Heligoland Bight and Jutland would be the two major encounters.

For the World War II in the Pacific (three-ish years depending on when you stop the naval war because Japanese naval forces stopped engaging), I quickly counted 19 naval encounters (though, I did leave off the kamikaze encounters as I had no way to accurately count or sort them on short notice). While there are a few more 'major' encounters thanks to CVs being able to be "in battle" while being hundreds of miles apart, most of these are also destroyer and cruiser actions.

Well, maybe that is realistict, but this a game. And a game is supposed to be fun. In a game, entertainment>>>>>>>>>>realism. Always. And being only next turn-> next turn -> next turn ->next turn, and only having a fight ever now and then, is not precisely my definition of fun.

[>>>Beta 1.05 Available!<<< (Update: 5)]

9 minutes ago, RedParadize said:

What about having the option of doing at least one battle per turn? If the withdraw or delay would be more likely to work that could enable both.

What nation made you say that btw? As the Austrian I had quite allot of battle, as the french almost none. I think its due to one side being stacked very heavily.

My test campaign with germany lasted for around three years, in which I had like 5 fights. And there is other people reporting not having any fight whatsoever for years and years.
 

8 minutes ago, SPANISH_AVENGER said:

Uh… at one battle per turn, it would take several hours to do any significant progress on the campaign xD

I fail to see the problem on that. Grand strategy games, even ones as speciallised as this one, aren't supposed nor intended to be fast paced. If you want faster progress, you can always use auto resolve.

[>>>Beta 1.05 Available!<<< (Update: 5)]

45 minutes ago, RedParadize said:

Well I certainly hope we do not get too many battle. Ship are long to build both for the player and AI.

I disagree. This game is about naval combat. In fact, I think it should be scripted so you're forced to have AT LEAST one battle per turn. If you're not capable to gestion your resources well enough (AKA, your ships), then you rightfully deserve to lose.

[>>>Beta 1.05 Available!<<< (Update: 5)]

Yeah, something is seriously broken with battles now, before 1.05 you easily got 2-3 battles per turn, besides the occassional free turn, and now you rarely get a battle at all.

[>>>Beta 1.05 Available!<<< (Update: 5)]

2 hours ago, Littorio said:

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!

I totally agree. I have a still reasonably powerful but fairly old computer (I7 2600) and it takes around two minutes to load the initial capaign. I can't imagine how it might be for computers with lower specs, or even older than mine.
 

 

2 hours ago, Littorio said:

5. Strange fleet compositions appear to be the norm. A-H built 36 CAs...and handful each of CLs and TBs, and no BBs.

That's because currently, A-H's initial dockyard tonnage is set at 7500t, while they minimum tonnage for the initial BB hull they have is 8000t. Which means that they can't build BBs at the very least during the first 6 months of the campaign. Also, theit CL hull is garbage, they get essentially a the same hull as the CAs but with smaller guns, so no real reason to build CLs with A-H. I suppose that will be solved when the hulls intended to be in the full release of 1.05v are added and A-H (hopefully) gets their own hulls.

[>>>Beta 1.05 Available!<<< (Update: 5)]

Okay, can confirm what Candle says. Started a new game with A-H in 1890, researched noze fuze and guncotton, I'm not able to refit my existing ships with it.

So, it seems to be confirmed that today's update broke the refit function.

[>>>Beta 1.05 Available!<<< (Update: 5)]

Okay... I tried my pre-update campaign, and refit didn't work... I started a 1900 campaign and built deliberately obsolete ships only to try the refit issue, and as far as I can tell, refit is working for me with new campaign.

As a non related note... Anyone else has issues with new campaign taking forever to start now?

[>>>Beta 1.05 Available!<<< (Update: 5)]

you have to use the View Design option, then there is a Wrench that gets you into Refit mode. Once you sabe it, and you have the refitted version, you can use it once there are ships that can be refitted using that design in any port.

[>>>Beta 1.05 Available!<<< (Update: 5)]

@Nick Thomadis I think he means this:
 

4 hours ago, Candle_86 said:

Was working previously until patch, now you can't refit to improve range finders or add radar to older designs, matter of fact I can't refit any newer tech suddenly outside of towers, i can update towers 

 

[Player Suggestions - January/February]

25 minutes ago, Norbert Sattler said:

I unlocked the ability to build Battleship 3 with Austria Hungary and the only primary towers available are cage-masts, which to my knowledge AUH never used. Is this just an issue of AUH not having their own BB3 hull yet and thus using the US variant?

Most likely is due to the hulls that are planned to be part of the full 1.05v release not being yet implemented.

[>>>Beta 1.05 Available!<<< (Update: 5)]

I feel that more roles for ships not being part of task forces are needed. Like "coastal defence" or "convoy escort". That last would be a good way to use your older, slower warships. Because lets be serious, you don't need 30 kn heacvy cruisers to escort ships that more often than not can barely make 12 kn.