Ohmtastic

Hello, I've enjoyed the earlier campaigns however when going up to 1940's and playing British I'm going up against CA's and CL's with 20+ tubes each side. AI appears to love building these and making them oxygen or electric. Their preferred tactic is to also run away and dump torps in the process, making for a x5 speed battle dodging a steady stream of torpedoes and slowly slowing them down by hitting them with HE. Don't even get me started on a fleet battle I had where they dumped 3 CA's worth (about 60 torps) at me at once.... Then they turned and did the other side. So it brings me on to some improvements. Torpedoes 1) Once they are detected by a friendly ship, please can they be more visible, make it a hotkey you hold down or something. 2) They have unlimited range it seems, but only tend to be fired once target either 100% range and approaching, or 75% range and away. 3) A manual fire mode for torps would be great as the ship targeting is terrible (It judges at the speed/direction of the ship at the time of launch) so mid-turn it will be way off. 4) An indicator as to ready to fire or reloading would be good. This can simply be using the current UI however where they highlight on the ship to show location which appears yellow at the moment, it could indicate Green for ready to fire, Red for destroyed and yellow for reloading. This way you can tell which side have launched and which are reloading without having to remember for multiple ships. 5) Friendly ship targeting doesn't take in account when launching torps, this is for both friendly and enemy ships. Ships at the back of the fleet that do not have a clear line to target (Friendly ships blocking) will still dump torps, usually killing their own ships. Guns 1) Auto shell selection appears to currently be based on penetration chance. It should also factor in ricochet chance and any angle that is a high chance of ricochet should force a switch to HE. 2) They also have a habit at the moment of stopping for a short time, randomly. An order to attack again will make them fire. Movement 1) The torp dodge function is interesting, however I've had it bug a ship out when turning it off again and had to use the AI button to toggle on and off to get a ship to obey any movement order. Otherwise they will just sail in circles. Campaign 1) I'm not sure that the finances are quite correct yet. I can do a tech heavy fleet and have perhaps 19 ships before my money starts to get tight. Repair, in being and sea control costs need to be looked at 20million a month for a 1940's BB on sea control. 2) I'm not a fan of the current build for campaign in regard to fleet. It's simply a list and nothing more once the ships are built. Rather than being tied to a port and being around the port or going further afield, it would be better to be able to assign a fleet, or assign to convoy patrol/raiding etc. I tend to build my ships for a specific role, while yes they can be caught in a fight they are not designed for, having them being told and performing their role would be good. 3) Destroyed ships do not mean the loss of all crew - Lifeboats, rafts, jackets etc. were all used and developed over time. So losing 1200 souls may not be the case, it should be a % based on distance the battle was from port for example. A battle a long distance away would mean it is less likely that the crew are rescued and more likely they simply drowned or captured by the enemy. 4) A visible representation of a frontline effect would be good also and battle should take place along there, with a victory pushing it towards your opponent. 5) Blockades should have a scaled effectiveness and shouldn't simply be an on/off function. This is kinda already covered with convoy % anyway. 6) Intel provides what ships are in the area, this should scale with your convoy amount and radar/rdf ships as to how accurate this is. Being informed of what time, weather, sea state is like prior to battle is beneficial also and having a small map / indicator as to where the ships are likely to be prior to going into battle and perhaps having some pre-set formations to auto deploy into would be great. It's a pain having a screen switch through 2-3 BC's or BB's. 7) Crew experience on game start - They shouldn't all be cadets, it should be a flat 0% bonus across the board. Early battles in campaign just suck due to poor accuracy. 8- Crew provisions/ship supply/rearm should be a slider - Ships should use their range/ammo etc. and then have to re-arm/re-fuel/re-stock, staying out longer means a reduction in these. At the moment ships being caught in a follow up battle are rare. 9) Repair costs are insane, 30Million a month to repair a BS, it's better to critically damage your enemy than destroy them sure but this is just crazy. I can't recall if there is a function to pause ship repairs or even prevent it. There should be a threshold also that light damage (not including destroyed modules) is automatically repaired for free by the crew... bashing out the dents, patching etc. Obviously if a turret or two went bang, they can't repair that at sea. 10) Building ships should be a have an option as to how much you want to pay upfront. A CA for 90M takes 15 months to build, so 6M a month. I have 60M spare at the moment in my funds, my income is good. I want to put 45M into paying for this ship, so the rest is 3M a month for 15 months. At the moment naval funds are just a buffer to going bust, nothing more. Missions 1) The Auto-end function should stop, the transports that could be left do not count as destroyed when they could be after killing their escorts. 2) Everything is in open water, are we adding coasts at some point? Islands etc. Reefs/shallows where larger ships would run aground/risk flooding effect to move through. 3) A port attack scenario would be great, ships in port being repaired etc. still aren't safe from enemy guns. Maybe recreate subs sneaking into harbours etc. Ship Design 1) Super Battlecruisers and other Battlecruisers (modern), simply do not appear to be able to lose any speed, this includes via harsh turns, bringing the speed to 0. The only way I've found is to hit reverse, but of course that knackers the engine. 2) The AI design of ships above is crazy. Don't even get me started on the 42kt CA's that just run every fight. AI ship design should be more average/rounded for the role of the ship, not a CA acting like it is a very very big DD where it's torps block out the sun and it's running like a cheetah on cocaine. 3) Engine/hull weight just appears to be too high at the moment, can't get anywhere near to a historical Battleship build as it is overweight. 4) Having a number of pre-designed stock ships based on historical ship designs would be good. Perhaps ask the community to share a design. 5) Export ship design feature to share in the community. Looking forward to future content Thanks Ohm