kjg000

Good example of why ChatGPT is unreliable. Every word is true but overall the statement has little or no relevance. Yes, heavy rain and sea spray will degrade the performance of RADAR and may introduce transient false images, but this is not significant in the example given. Heavy seas may also temprarilly hide a ship but again not relevant in the example given nor is the example of a modern ship's RADAR failing to detect a missile, designed to give a small RADAR return, relevant to seeing a thousands-of-tons slab-sided ship. Any seas heavy enough to consistently hide a LC from detection from a RADAR antenna mounted tens of meters above sea level would likely be a threat to the LC and would most likely prohibit any thought of combat. So while, maybe, technically possible it is implausable that a LC could move undetected to within 10k of a BC with a functioning late war RADAR. PS. Ground clutter behind the target, such as a coastline can render RADAR unusable, as can the sun (due to noise) if it is in a near direct line (a few degrees) with the target and low on the horizon. Neither apply in this game.

OK, thanks. Although one of my goals was simply to make the armaments entries in the summary function as they do in the "Armaments" section, so I may not need access to the actual text, just relocate the "Armaments" entries to the summary. Same goes for pitch etc shown at the top of the screen. The only thing I was going to add was the turn circle to the summary.

Excellent mod which has gone a long way to making the game enjoyable again. Well done. I noticed you added spotter planes to the shipbuilder, I'd like to see if I can add some tool-tip info to some of the variables on that screen, can you point me to the relevant container in UABEA and perhaps any other info you think may be relevant. Sadly I don't have lots of time to devote to this but I would like to make some QoL improvements if I can. BTW do you know where the hull obsolescence date is defined?

Yes, but we would need to slow down or halt research otherwise a whole new level of game mechanics are required. Other than that, yes let the player set the start and end years.

Let the player set start and end dates. Also introduce some smaller campaigns, Pacific, Atlantic, Mediterranean, Americas, East Asia etc. Sometimes the world is just too much! (Mr. Bond)

I asked about this in a separate thread several months ago but no one replied. At the moment I'm not keen on the idea but I could be persuaded, which is why I asked. I'd need to see how you wanted this to work.

Many excellent suggestions from the community, sadly I don't currently have time to read them all. The devs are clearly working hard to improve the game but I wonder if they actually PLAY the game? Devs, please take time to play the game because, to me, some of Nick's comments seem to indicate that they haven't tried to play, for example, Japan or the USA. Perhaps at least an afternoon a week playing testing the game, then compare notes afterwards? Please try playing Japan or the USA! I think you will soon see why this not just aesthetics. In general, as already mentioned , directly or indirectly, by many players above, the UI needs a lot of attention. The current UI was good enough to suffer through during EA but for a full release it needs a lot of attention. A good UI can make a poor game BUT a poor UI can kill a good game! Currently I think we have a mediocre UI severely hampering a great game. This thread already contains many great suggestions to accomplish a better UI. Generally the game should be challenging but rewarding, not frustrating. The UI should facilitate enjoyment rather than be one of the challenges. BTW time spent getting this correct here will pay you back many times over in future games (or any other software). Please ask yourself "Why am I playing the campaign". If the campaign is dominated by RNGs and positioning of fleets has little impact, why would I bother. If I position my TF on top of an enemy TF something should happen! Why am I placing ships in a TF, or designing support ships, if they will be separated and thrown into battle randomly, or even ignored just so some support ship in a remote port can be required to sail past them to engage an enemy it is not equipped for! Strange as it may seem, my dedicated mine layers are NOT convoy raiders. They should never be so AWOL that they even see an enemy convoy. BTW please let me design dedicated mine layers! Just drop the requirement for TBs and DDs to have a torpedo. If I want them to fill a role requiring them to have a torpedo I will give them some torpedoes. The other option is to provide dedicated service ship hulls, but I think the already high workload for new hulls indicates this is not required for minor ships when such a simple change would suffice. My TFs attempting to blockade (I.e. deny the use of) say, the Straight of Gibraltar should NOT be engaging enemy forces in the Adriatic! So OK, perhaps we need some additional orders such as "Deny", for hold position (and TF composition) and only engage enemy ships in your ZoC, and "Dominate", for "if it floats and doesn't quack kill it" (quote, or misquote, from an old game Imperialism II). The devs are clearly working hard and that may contribute to the miscommunication issues between both players and the devs. The devs may simply be too close to the code to see the problems. A very common problem in all software development.

Ok, this is what I posted based on the comments above and Steams char limit. I had expected to be above the char limits but wasn't sure by how much as I've never posted a review this long before. Comments, good or bad, are still welcome. This review pertains to 1.1.4 Live, Score 2.4/5 (2.5/5 needed to recommend) [b]synopsis:[/b] Not recommended unless you have a high tolerance for buggy and frustrating game play. This game can be enjoyable but only if approached a suitable mindset at the moment. I think the dev’s passed up several opportunities to (mostly) pause feature development, fix bugs, improve the AI, UI and other QoL improvements, optimise the code and still release a truly outstanding game. For me the current offering is subpar and a lamentably missed opportunity and has probably baked in many bugs and faults. The game IS slowly improving, but for me it is not improving in the ways I would like. It has been pointed out to me that this review is mostly cons with little pros. I would suggest shifting through other reviews and discussions to find those that present reasoned, reasonably detailed arguments, pros and cons, before buying. Definitely a case of “Buyer Beware”. The following is far from a complete list and in no particular order. [b]Shipbuilder:[/b] From Steam store page “Design warships the way you want them,...” Well kinda, but only true if you accept a lot of arbitrary limitations that have nothing to do with what is possible but every thing to do with the dev’s dogma. More accurately “Design warships the way the dev’s want them”. Many arbitrary limitations on the placements of weapons and structures. The size of casement guns seems to be largely arbitrary and doesn't allow for historical mains casement guns. It is possible to mount a torpedo launcher midships on the centreline of a BB, where it should be impossible to launch. Ships are always limited to which components they can mount, even when choosing “Unlock:On” from the “Custom Battles” menu. How would HMS Dreadnought fared with US style cage masts, we will never know! There are many other irritants in the designer, however at least some of these, but not all, are slowly getting to be addressed. [b]Campaign:[/b] Transports get a free pass if their escorts are destroyed, even if your ships are within 100’s of meters of the nearest transports. This is a very old and common complaint. It is either a bug the dev’s are ignoring or very poor game play. Transports should not be harder to spot than cruisers. The world map is a rectangle without “infinite scrolling”. This means it is often required to drag the map back and forth across the screen. This also seems to affect some game calculations such as a fully fuelled fleet being unable to sail from Fiji to the Solomon Islands as it is falsely reported as out of range. Trying to select a port is often frustrated if another port, territory or other feature is nearby. Trying to select a Taskforce if another TF is on top is still impossible. Detaching ships from a TF places the detached TF on top of the original TF, preventing further selection. TF composition and positioning is not a strong influence on missions generated. Ships used in missions is too random so it is nearly useless designing complimentary or speciality ships or trying to deploy specialists ships with a specific mission in mind. Missions are still populated based on random factors and ships placed virtually on top of an enemy TF are often ignored. So the strategic element of the game is heavily restricted. Too much is random, land battles, politics, which ships are used in missions, auto-resolve for battles, these are all nearly entirely random. Whatever the dev’s concept is, for me it makes for poor game play. The default map zoom should be over the players nation, instead it is usually somewhere in the North Atlantic. Research continues to be problematic. Many players will take an “It is what it is” philosophy but generally it is clunky in both concept and implementation. I’m tending to the conclusion that the game would be better off with research removed and hard wired as it is in custom games. Mines, Subs and Ship defects are unnecessary features which more often than not detract from game play. I’m agnostic about them but they all need to be greatly improved and ideally should be selectable as options. I can see no justification for having these features without also having air power (land and sea), at the appropriate times, probably dealt with in a similar abstract way as subs. This is particularly relevant in the latter decades as ship design was heavily influenced by the need for air defences and air power was a major reason the age of Dreadnoughts came to an end. Fog of war should be selectable as an option for the campaign map. The current campaign map is unwieldy and clumsy. The campaign needs to have selections available to limit it to regions (World, Mediterranean, Atlantic, Pacific etc), time span (Jan 1938 to Dec 1946 or Feb 1890 to Jun 1920 for example) and possibly nations. The player has almost no control over their ships. If ships are sent a port it is not possible to set their orders on arrival. This often means that before the player can set new orders for the ship, it will be grabbed for a random mission along with other randomly selected ships. After completing the mission these ships will be distributed randomly to other ports, as any ships involved in a player controlled battle, as opposed to auto-resolve, have to immediately rush of to a random port to have a nice lie down. Even if no enemy were sighted and no shots fired. The player then has to search for the missing ships in every possible port. [b]Battles:[/b] Much has been written on the problems with armor, armor penetration and accuracy. Frankly, these seem to be going around in circles. I think the removal of the manual rudder was a mistake. Game play has suffered because of this, although it is noted that some players report they did not use it. Spotting is still unrealistic. I have no problem with small fast ships being difficult to hit, but large ships have high towers and trained spotters for a reason. Chasing unseen ships for an hour or more IRL as enemy ships initiate an engagement then immediately run away, taking hours to close with even though they are slower than my slowest ship, is not good game play. Weather needs to be better represented. Ideally fog banks and rain squalls should be represented but at the very least players should be able to tell the current weather conditions with a just glance at the screen. [b]General User interface and Quality of Life issues.[b/] The UI is a mixed bag. Splash screens often obscure whatever it is that you are trying to look at. Information is often buried in long lists while also being redundantly repeated. i.e. Engine Efficiency, Pitch, Roll, weight offset are all presented on the design screen but you need to hunt them down in the “Ship Details” menu to get any further information. Armaments are presented in the “Overview” menu but you need to hunt for the “Ship Details/Weapons” menu to get details. On the “Politics” screen the players nation is often buried low on the nations list and needs to be scrolled down to. On the “Research” screen the current item being researched under any category is often off screen and needs to be hunted for. Many Beta players have suggested good solutions to this but the problem persists. This is also an indication that some of the research categories are too long. I have been playing this game on and off since Alpha 2 (2018 or 2017, I cant find the receipt to confirm, well before the first campaign anyway). I have persevered with it when changes tended to remove any enjoyment from the game in the hopes the game would eventually fulfil a substantial part of its considerable promise. Many times I thought the dev’s should have stopped adding features and consolidated the game. Around the time we had the Mediterranean map the dev’s could have stopped, consolidated and released an amazing game. On the whole I’m dissatisfied with the direction the game has taken and reluctantly cannot recommend it at this time.

-Be able to RECOMMEND to refuse friendship/alliance with minor nation. And loose prestige points or add to unrest if the Gov ignores your recommendation. I'm not really a fan of this "your not the Gov" argument, especially as there are already to many RNG elements to the game, BUT the Devs should at least try to be consistent.

Also stop them merging simply because they were close to another TF. Only merge if the TFs are set to precisely the same point or the player has set the destination of one TF as another, stationary TF.

I agree some change should be possible but perhaps it should be limited to a percentage? I don't know of any ship which refitted its draft or beam hugely. Having said that I'm happy with the current system as long as hulls, particularly CA and DD, are subject to seemingly arbitrary limits. Ie I can build a 35000 ton BB but can't build a 1000 ton DD!

I think the Devs went "A bridge too far". Hindsight is great but I would have loved them to have consolidated with the full Mediterranean map, possibly adding a Pacific map and then added the rest of the world later, as a DLC if necessary. Same with Defects, Mines and Subs (and airpower). I think this would have resulted in a much more robust game with at least two different campaigns, three if they included a limited "World" campaign (Med + Pacific). They would then have been in a much stronger position now and with less damage to, possibly even enhancing, the companies reputation. If handled well there would have been more than enough content to justify the full cost of the game and even the cost of a DLC and I hate DLC's unless they really do add value. There is enough value there now except it is swamped by bugs and frustrating gameplay.

Agreed although I do wonder if it is this simple for a functional in-game model. I get the impression the Devs are clearly rushing things, possibly for good reasons not obvious to us. It is a great pity they won't or can't throw some of this design load out to the community.

While it may look easy on the surface, lots of tech advancements or tweaks go into something as simple as adding an extra gun to a turret, not to mention academic or dogmatic inertia. This is why I would have preferred a "capabilities" based tech tree rather than a "things" based approach. sadly not much help for your excellent mod!

Yes, fair call. Thanks. I have recommended the reader seek out other meaningful reviews, both pro and con, but, yes I probably should review this with your comment in mind. The problem of course, is time.

NZ South Island, you'd be mad not to!

I make a class of cheap, minimalist TBs or DDs as minelayers armed with 4 serviceable gun turrets (and unfortunately armed with a single torpedo cause, well, Devs!) which I call Harbor Class and manually name each one with a prefix and the intended port and a roman numeral, ie ZH_Dover III. In this case Z - to make sorting easier, H - Harbor class, III - the third minelayer allocated to that port. I can then sort by name in the Fleet screen. A painful but serviceable kludge to the problem. Caution as the devs insist or randomly assigning ships to battles and these ships are not intended for open sea combat you need to keep them as Inactive, Defend or, when sailing, Protect missions (well, any thing BUT Sea Control). Keep them as small as possible and if they do end up in combat use the small ship cloaking exploit to keep them alive.

Not so much that I'm advocating for aircraft, more that I can't see the rational for including subs but not aircraft. I agree with the RNG comment, far far too much RNG ingame, as mentioned in my review. However IF subs are kept, as I'm sure they will be, I think this would be a reasonable, minimalist, way to implement aircraft. Although I also see it as a way of countering subs, which airpower did historically. Also, as mentioned, it would force ships either to have strong AA and/or an AA escort. Again this is historically relevant. Anyway, I'd like Subs, Mines, Defects and, if implemented, airpower, all to be optional. I was surprised, but not displeased, when the Alpha campaigns grew out to 1950, but if the game goes that far, the end of the era, it should probably include the reason the era ended. It becomes a balance issue as to weather it would work or not. It should not prevent capital ship battles, as an a-historical tweak, but should introduce new considerations when positioning fleets.

Are you running in a window. I generally run in a 3k window on a 4k screen and don't generally have any problems.

I always have a second activity planned, book, video, read emails or another game, generally something simple like TTD or Atlantic Fleet. Problem is, I often get to be more invested in the other activity than UA:D.

Low priority but yes. I'd also like to see all the "Report" window (lower LH battle screen) entries available for reading throughout the battle. After all this would be a simple text file. I too often miss something while I'm micromanaging my fleet.

Yes, though abstracted in a similar way to subs. A zone of control on the campaign map, possibly 2 zones, attack(smaller) and spot(larger), radiating out from a port (for convenience) or from a TF with CVs. No actual air combat, zones visible to all as enemy capabilities would be more or less known. CVs treated more or less as transports if caught up in naval battles which should be unlikely during flying weather. The point is to approximate the historical "no-go" or at least high risk zones for ships and subs as well as justifying the preponderance of AA defenses and dual purpose guns of the later era while introducing a minimum of new features or dev resources. As for the era, I think air power should grow in importance from about 1920 (very weak) to significant in 1940s.over this period secondaries and tertiary guns evolved from a priority of close in anti ship defense to AA or dual purpose. No need for yet another research option, make the development fixed. Oh yess, zones should be in the form of a selectable overlay.

Also, when placing a mirrored rotated component the mirror component should also be counter rotated and placed, unless something is in the way.

Between your post and now (30/1/23) the game has gone from iffy to bad and back. Some players have little or no complaints, others are frustrated and disillusioned and everything in between. I personally don't think the game is currently at a high water mark and am not inspired to further game testing. I assume you own a copy (I'm pretty sure that you do), if so try it again if not read the reviews, good and bad, and decide for yourself.

Thanks for the feedback, this is precisely why I posted here first. I kinda agree, but as I went on to say, if you use that argument for mines and subs how can you ignore the massive influence air power had on designs starting in the 1930s?