kjg000

Just wondering if you can see a way to setting an end date for a campaign. So, say I selected to start 1910 but wanted the campaign to end 1930? even better if i could select the start/end year, not just decade. Looks like an excellent mod. I look forwarded to playing it when I come back to UA:D

1. i don't think this would work until the code is re-written to optimise computer resource usage, ie using more than one core. 2. I think there is already. "Own Guns Splashes" although it seems quite low (<5%). 3. I would have thought it would have been a reasonably straightforward formula involving gun caliber, barrel length, propellant and some sort of Q factor incorporating tech and other factors, but apparently its just a lookup table! interesting, the crappy German BB I threw together to test 2. above , horribly unbalanced, little armor, slow, and with as many different caliber guns as I could fit, both mains and secondaries, won! Edit: second battle, this time with a AI designed ship, up to about 40% "own guns splashes"

Hi All Just back as I’ve seen UA:D is now in full release. I’m about to post the following review on Steam but would like the communities views before I do. Caveat: I have not played the game between 1.03.20(ish) Beta to 1.1.3 Live. This review pertains to 1.1.4 Live, after the game came out of early access. Score 2.4/5 (2.5/5 needed to recommend, Steam really needs a better ranking system) synopsis: 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. I would suggest shifting through other reviews and discussions to find those that present reasoned, reasonably detailed arguments, good and bad, before buying. Definitely a case of “Buyer Beware”. The following is not a complete list and in no particular order. Shipbuilder: 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. For example, barbettes are limited to only locations with a historical precedent, whether or not is is a valid location, and funnels are limited to fixed positions when placed on on superstructures, even those with a large area allowed specifically for the funnels. The size of casement guns also seems to be largely arbitrary and doesn't allow for historical mains casement guns. Meanwhile it is still possible to mount a torpedo launcher midships on the centreline of a BB, where it should be impossible to launch, being both too high above the waterline and too far from the edge of the ship. 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. Campaign: Transports get a free pass if their escorts are destroyed, even if your ships are within 100’s of meters of the nearest transports and all transports are spotted. 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 when operating near the pacific ocean 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 or incorrectly arriving with low fuel. Trying to select a port is often frustrated if another port, territory or other feature is nearby. This can sometimes be resolved by closing in to maximum zoom, then selecting the port. Although it can take several tries and does not always work. 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 still too random so it is nearly useless designing complimentary or speciality ships, composing TFs of complimentary ships or trying to deploy specialists ships with a specific mission in mind. Missions are still populated based on arbitrary random considerations. Hence the strategic element of the game is heavily restricted. Too much is simply 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, 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 requiring the player to constantly drag the map to their nation. 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 Battles. 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. 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. Battles: Much has been written on the problems with armour, armour 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 glance at the screen. General User interface and Quality of Life issues. 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. General Principle:-The AI does not care so the players information should always be presented first and be easily found. 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 fulfill a substantial part of its promise. I have participated in the Games Labs forum in the hope that I could assist in generating an enjoyable, profitable and frankly awesome game. 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. Of course there would have been pressure to add the USA, Japan and China to the campaign but these could have been added to a more robust and polished game and still been available in Custom Battles and Naval Academy. They could have initially been incorporated as a second campaign. The UK, Germany, Austria-Hungary, France, Spain and Russia as the first campaign as that map already existed, USA, Japan, Russia and China, possibly with other nations as colonies, as the second campaign based on a Pacific map. Fill in the rest of the world later. The war in Ukraine clearly impacted the game and will continue to do so for some time yet as the Ukrainians defend themselves from Putin's aggression. However it was the dev’s decision to push for more content rather than consolidating and polishing what they had, when they already had the basics of a superior game. On the whole I’m dissatisfied with the direction the game has taken and reluctantly cannot recommend it at this time. While this has been a long review, it is by no means complete. Reading other detailed reviews, hopefully unbiased and certainly more than just a few, sometimes meaningless words, and also the Steam Community Discussion page will give a more complete picture as to weather this a game you would enjoy despite its current failings.

Can I suggest taking some time away from the game and the forum? I too get frustrated with Nick's responses, especially when they come off as "it can't be us, it must be you". I myself intend to peruse other projects, indeed I only intended to take a quick glance at the "state of play" today. After this I probably won't be back for a few months. it helps when the frustration levels get too high.

Yes, when using the manual rudder improperly the ship should be difficult to control and possibly even capsize. Just as when sailing a recreational boat, IRB etc. However this problem exists when redirecting a ship or formation via the mouse and with ships trying to keep formation. I’m not too concerned with the behavior of ships or formations when using the manual rudder, that is a part of learning the game. However I am concerned with the behavior when redirecting ships or formations via clicking the mouse. Actually the problem is a common one in control systems whether it be air conditioning, automated vehicle steering, antenna positioning or whatever and the solution can be found in just about any engineering text. Put simply, as you near the intended target (in this case ships direction) you continually adjust the rate of change (rate of turn) until you achieve the desired result with no, or minimal, overshoot. In ships of this period that is what the helm is for and the crew is trained accordingly. The manual rudder is important when trying to avoid torpedoes, for example, and there are ample examples of dreadnought era ships maneuvering violently in this way.

I am not sure what your point is here. Ships are nearly uncontrollable without the manual rudder ever being touched as it is. Ships in formation have never behaved realistically and need attention, but disabling an important feature is only going to make the game worse. Yes, ships in formation should have the manual rudder disabled while a part of a formation, except for the lead ship. However the manual rudder is an important means of controlling individual ships (not in formation) and formations (via the lead ship). Removing manual rudder will severely impact the play-ability of the game and players frustration with the game.

The Dev's seem to be more interested in dogma than realism. Navies spend a great deal of time and money training officers and crew to avoid the "drunken sailor" effect mentioned in this forum and any officer qualified to be on a ship at sea, who allowed this type of behavior, would be dismissed. They also seem to be continually blaming players for our attempts to make the game playable, and enjoyable, by compensating for poorly developed features. it has been a couple of months since I last visited this forum and while the game has many new features it seems to be less playable than ever as old problems are largely ignored and new features bring more problems, and frustrations, than benefits. Everyone here wants this game to succeed, I would hope that everyone here is aware of the difficulties many of the Dev's face and wish them success and everyone here realizes this is an early access game. However "blaming the messenger" is not going to improve the game and punishing players for not playing as the Dev's intended will just result in a poorer, less popular game.

Good luck and every success

Sorry, when I say 'turning into each other' I mean colliding then locking together and heading off in whatever direction they were going. Trying to push each other out of the way and unable to separate.

This is one of the reasons I keep advocating for better explanations of events and a more strategic game. At the moment events and engagements seem largely random to me.

Improved, yes, fixed, no. I tend to emphasize speed and accuracy over armor and I am still finding the second ship, while not often hitting the first, comes close then swings wildly away and out of formation. typically for ships over about 30kts or so with standard spacing or tighter. I find loose spacing tends puts the last ship too far from the target and often too close to the enemy as it tries to keep formation. Hmm, looks like we need to go back to running performance diagnostics while playing again.

Unfortunately not. I had it happen less often, but it still happens. Also still getting ships 2 and 3 trying to turn into each other, presumably to regain position, resulting in them either sailing off into the never never or doing a suicide run into the enemy fleet.

scenarios such as 'South America' could make interesting campaign options.

Games-Labs:- Please stabilize the game before adding more features, even ones I, and others, have suggested and are eagerly waiting for.

(Talking about unoccupied ports not being available for attack) This is partly because the game is missing shore batteries and air power. Er, grater realism? Yes it would need to be balanced but it would go some way to reducing the over-abundance of small vessels in death-stacks. Someone pointed out a while ago (sorry, don't remember when, about 1.06 I think) that the ratio of ships in death-stacks was about correct for the ratio of ships in (I think) the U.S. Navy circa 1940 (?) and others have mentioned than commanders would scrape up every available vessel for a major battle. Well, respectively, yes and no. Most vessels would have other duties such as port security, administrative functions etcetera, so only a subset would actually be available for battle. This would go some way to replicating that. Yes, we would have to learn to design cheap 'port defense' ships along with our 'fleet' ships, and/or relegate obsolescent ships to port defense after refitting to be cheaper. But, if balanced, this could enhance the game.

Ok, much of this was addressed in my other posts in this thread. Shown in blue. What are we missing by having month long turns? Missions based on our actions and positioning of our fleet rather than a near random event generator with ships being included in engagements from thousands of km (or one months sailing) away. I’m not including ships teleporting through landmasses or past blockades in this, as that is a separate issue. Interception ranges would be shorter and thus positioning would be more meaningful. The ability to make command level decisions, for example Do I try to chase enemy stranglers from an engagement or reinforce my own stragglers? Can I move my forces in time to intercept enemy movements? I’m not saying week long alone turns would resolve this but I believe it would be a better fit than month long turns and would require fewer compromises. I’d like to see the above even if (as is likely) month long turns are kept, it would just be a greater loss of realism. You mentioned that other games use a month long turn but still allow missions like ‘Hunt the Bismarck’ but as I mentioned this game claims to be aiming for a greater level of realism. The Bismarck breakout attempt, including initial positioning, the battle of the Denmark Straight, pursuit and final sinking took about 3 weeks (e.g. 3 1 week turns, < 1 month long turn). Hard to replicate with month long turns when, as you say, it only takes 4-5 days to sail from Wilhelmshaven to Gibraltar. Game would be too slow! There are things Games-Labs could do to speed up the game as it matures. I’d like to see some of these regardless of turn nominal time. There are options here, aside from optimizing the code. Some examples:- Allow players to set a start and end date for their campaign. I.e. 1939 to 1945. Stop showing a splash screen for every single event! I find this is slow and annoying, although it is a mechanic used by many games. Better to show the beginning of turn information as a summary with roll-over tool-tips for more detail with only events requiring player input in a separate window. Combining this with ‘Split the month into 4 phases each about a week long. Politics and research (and AI ship design) only take place during the first phase.’ and the game should have better flow. Before the save files were encoded there was an apparently unused variable called something like ‘Espionage’ which suggests to me that it will be included in game play at some point. I really hope it is as at the moment we have far too much perfect information. This could make positioning of ships more important but it would make far less of a difference if the game can draw forces from thousands of km away. I doubt that Games-Labs will change the turn time span, so I think you have little to worry about but I do think it will be a lost opportunity. BTW I haven’t seen anyone mentioning RTS and I agree that would not be the way to go. So again I think you have little to worry about on that score.

Badar Seri Begavan in Bruni is unreachable. The tool-tip displays but it cannot be selected as a destination for ships. It seems either the 'Southeast Asia" sea or the 'Bruni' labels, or both, are blocking selection. Same with Abu Dhabi and Dubai, reported as 'Same Port'

I'd like the map to be a continuous cylinder, i.e. be able to continuously scroll East/West.

Yes, and while this was annoying and poor game play in the past, we now suffer an additional penalty in fuel use as well as free VPs to the AI if your ships started with damage or low manpower (Caveat: I have not confirmed the latter in 1.09, definitely a problem in earlier versions though).

I agree, the balance between periods of war and periods of peace is currently off. Other games have used a "Skip to next event" mode which may be useful during peace time and help speed up the game while improving game balance.

I think the problem here is that it is difficult to compare games in this way. Design choices greatly affect how something such as the time scale will interact with the rest of the game mechanic. I have never played a naval game with such a focus on smaller ships other than those focusing on Submarines or Sub hunters. Also, most (if not all) other naval games I have played only had a vague, nominal, time scale. Accuracy was not considered and a "month" was just a synonym for turn. In this game the Dev's are attempting to simulate the actual range a ship (or task force) could cover in an actual month. As such a month is too long a time period, allowing for too many possibilities to be missed, ships seeming to teleport (although teleporting ships is a real problem in the game) and other seemingly incongruous events.

The entire post is worth reading but this point in particular is important. Some have argued that this is Ultimate Admiral not Ultimate Government or whatever and so the player should not have the final word on a nations diplomacy. Fair enough, then we need to delete the research options, delete the ability to design ships, limit the ability to build ships to only those with government approval, stop players from directly controlling ships and so on as these are not the usual duties of an Admiral. We also need to give players the ability to designate patrol routs, choose which ships to detach for specific missions, approve supply expenses etcetera, which are some of the usual duties of an Admiral and their staff. Sounds like a boooooring game to me. Ultimate Accountant anyone? Obviously the above is nonsense, UA:Dreadnoughts is a game, not a true historical simulation. As such we take on many roles Admirals (more like Commodores), politicians, naval architects etc. Realism in this context is a vague term, certainly relevant, but not as important as game play. Even the Dev's acknowledge this through their design choices. So yes, we need more agency over the political domain and less inconsistent focus on questionable realism.

Yes,the Dev's drive to force their 'type' of encounter, regardless of positioning is frustrating. Sometimes too much information, down to the exact specifications of each opposing ship. Other times teleporting the entire Russian fleet from the Baltic to the Sea of Japan, no need to do all that pesky sailing through Suez or around the Cape of Good Hope like they had to do in 1905.

Well ... no. We don't get that type of encounter. Sure some ships may be slightly out of formation IRL but what we have are mismatched divisions intermixed with each other. Even if we just had the ability to assign ships to divisions (just like a real Admiral!), we would be a lot better off. Being able place these divisions in relation to each other would be even better. A full fledged placing of ships, Total War style would be best. Remember you won't know the placement of the enemy until battle commences. This is quite likely an easier solution than getting the program to intelligently, or even adequately, assign and place divisions.

Yes, but there options here, aside from optimizing the code. Some examples :- Allow players to set a start and end date for their campaign. I.e. 1939 to 1945. Split the month into 4 phases each about a week long. Politics and research only take place during the first phase.