VanillaBryce

I still think speed tank ships are too viable at the moment. I encounter dozens of heavily protected cruisers with 20+ torpedo launchers per side that go 35-40 knots in every campaign. Maybe I'm just always getting unlucky rolls, but it is still a pain to deal with. I can never have medium range engagements unless I want to micro my fleet every 10 seconds. These ships are not impossible to kill, but the micro is a friggin nightmare when they are fielding long range torps. It just gets really annoying. Nearly every enemy I face has at least one of these cruiser classes that they field in large numbers. The nerfs to torpedo reliability have helped, but they still seem way too heavily relied upon by the AI. What's worse is that cruisers are super tanky. For instance, there are British heavy cruisers in my 1940 campaign with 10.2 inches of main belt armor, that travel 35.2 knots, have 20 torps per side, 7.5 inch guns, and that can continue traveling at over 30 knots (30.2) when they are missing 40% of their hull and are 10% flooded... I don't see how ships missing almost half of their hull can be running away from the fight at 86% of their top speed. Meanwhile, these cruiser will tank battleship AP and HE rounds like they are 2 inch guns. I usually run medium pen HE and high pen AP. I routinely see light cruisers bounce or partial pen 16 or 17 inch Capped Ballistic 1 shells at ranges of 5-7 km. A quick google search tells me that 17 inch shells weighed north of 2000 lbs. That is essentially a mid-size sedan full of explosives... How on Earth does a CL with a maximum of say, 15 inches of armor block that shell?

I'd also like to add that the 8" guns the enemy fleet was using were somehow ridiculously accurate for 1910. They often had more than 40% chance to hit at 5-7 km range, while my own 11 inch guns had closer to a 7% chance to hit... Supposedly the 11 inch were supposed to be far more accurate...

I've said it before and I'll say it again - many light ships are currently way, way, waaaay too tanky. It is completely absurd how many shells they can take without sinking. Take, for example, this LIGHT CRUISER in my 1910 campaign that took not 5, not 10, not 20, but FIFTY 12" SHELLS, A TORPEDO, AND ALMOST SIXTY 8" SHELLS BEFORE IT SANK: A LIGHT CRUISER... This is what my battleships were equipped with: I literally ran out of AP on my cruisers and battleships because these things would not die.

I do really like the idea of using the communications size to limit task force size, but I don't think this makes sense from an engineering perspective for the AI. Such a system would be a lot more complex than simply telling the AI that its task forces need to adhere to a fixed ratio relative to the size of the player's task forces. This would ensure that the player always has a fleet capable of taking on the AI task force. For instance, the ratio could be set at 3:1 (the best overmatch ratio from a game play perspective imo). This could even be made into a slider on the campaign window! Having a slider to determine the maximum numerical advantage you want to face in battle would be awesome. Of course, there could still be a minimum value of like 1-1.5 : 1, so that the AI at least has a chance. This would give the player the ability to choose how much of a disadvantage they want to put themselves at when they fight. Personally, I'd love the game even if I was facing two or three to one odds a lot of the time. It's the times when I'm facing four or five to one odds that are frustrating and immersion-breaking. With this system, the AI could only organize task forces that adhered to the ratio designated by the player. A system based on a fixed ratio like this would be easy to implement compared to complex logic related to communications technology, ranges, etc. In the case of a 3:1 ratio, 3x fleets would still be incredibly difficult to fight without using cheese tactics like torpedo-spam or speed-tanking, but a skilled player could put up a good fight, maybe even win. It really annoys me when people suggest "Just use cheese-tactic X and the game is a walk in the park." I don't play historical games like this to show how much smarter I am at exploiting game-mechanics than a dumb AI. I play to pretend I'm an admiral trying to fight for their country. In the real-world, there are very few cases where a cheese-tactic exists like in a game. There has to be a balance between realism and play-ability because games can't fully emulate the real-world. My biggest gripe with these gigantic fleet battles is that they don't make any sense. Sure, I shouldn't have left port with a doom stack roaming, but IRL the lead admiral (player) would have several fleets to coordinate with. A real admiral wouldn't just have a single task force engage a massive enemy blob of ships (that you can't withdraw from half the time). They would have several forces engage simultaneously. There is no reinforcement system in the game at the moment, so this kind of realism is impossible. Instead, the player just gets caught out by a death blob when they try to role-play realistically. I don't think players should be forced to put all their ships at one port at the start of a campaign just because the AI can glob together in a giant death-ball.

Lots of people have reported crashes when leaving the ship designer in campaign and I noticed that I always crashed in the beta if I designed all my ships without leaving the shipyard between designs. Using the "New Design" button in the shipyard seems to cause this issue pretty reliably... I have no idea how things are done, but it seems like a cache issue; the shipyard instance is getting overloaded by all the high-fidelity models being stored. Just a theory. Maybe disable the button in campaign until this issue is resolved?

Lots of people have reported crashes when leaving the ship designer in campaign and I noticed that I always crashed in the beta if I designed all my ships without leaving the shipyard between designs. Using the "New Design" button in the shipyard seems to cause this issue pretty reliably... I have no idea how things are done, but it seems like a cache issue; the shipyard instance is getting overloaded by all the high-fidelity models being stored. Just a theory. Maybe disable the button in campaign until this issue is resolved?

The new barrel length and diameter features are really cool with this patch, but holy mother of g o d, please revisit the doom-stacking of AI fleets. I just faced OVER HALF OF THE BRITISH FLEET IN THE FIRST BATTLE OF THE WAR: Oh, and I can't forget to mention that they are fielding ridiculous speed-tank destroyers that are traveling at OVER 37 KNOTS IN 1912: These suckers even took multiple 12 inch rounds at point-blank range and wouldn't sink. I don't see how this is reasonable at all in this era... The Russian Novik could go just over 37 knots in 1910, but it also had some 40% more displacement than this smolboy, British race-car. It was also a single ship... Pretty sure they didn't have 35 of them... Most destroyers weren't going more than 35 knots even around 1920. I could not run away because they were so insanely fast, so their nine battleships were able to shell me from over 17 km because the DDs could spot me. Very frustrating. I had to leave the battle. Please work to fix the doom stacks as soon as possible. Situations like this could theoretically occur, but they don't make for very good battles. The performance is terrible, the fleet management is a nightmare, and it is nearly impossible to fight. We really shouldn't face more than 3:1 odds... Aside from the massive numerical advantage, I also had to spend the first 10 minutes of the battle fixing my fleet because the divs were organized in such an asinine way. This makes these undermatch battles even more frustrating, because I have to reorganize my fleet instead of focusing on engagement tactics. SHIPS SHOULD NOT BE IN THE SAME DIV IF THEY ARE ON OPPOSITE SIDES OF THE DESIGNATED FLAGSHIP. I run into this issue all the time and it is infuriating. The formations are actually pretty good, but the div assignment is just nonsensical. I don't understand how this is such a prevalent issue... It should just be an x,z position check before assignment. The fleet I was using was very reasonable, and I would have happily fought a battle against 40-50 ships, but almost 90 is just insane. I can usually put up a good fight when outnumbered by 2:1 or 3:1 odds. I would have just surrendered in this position in real life... Realistically, I just never would have gotten within 10km of a fleet more than 4 times the size of my own... That's suicide.

I am having the same issue. This battleship used to only have a .4% fore weight offset... Now it is over 31%: I believe this could be related t o the weight distribution changing when an engine technology is researched (just a theory). I had just finished researching advanced engines when I went back to check my design. Apparently my BC now has almost a 77% longitudinal weight offset LMAO (started with < 1%). I rarely design a ship with even a 1% longitudinal offset. Sometimes pitch gets into the 20s and it can't be helped, but 76.8?! LOL: The problem may be hull-related? The CA I designed at the start of the campaign still has all the same offsets:

I don't know if it's the cadet crew or a bug, but my heavy cruisers could not hit this CL to save their lives. Even when I was at ~~800m~~ range, I only had a ONE PERCENT chance to hit with 1940s tech... My ships are reasonably balanced with up-gunned 8.9 inchers... How is this CL running rings around my entire fleet. Is it because it goes 40 kn? Still, my CAs could not hit it when fully broadside at sub 1 km range - no smoke. The Mk5 guns on my battleships also only had around 1% chance to hit at ranges of 10km... Their stated accuracy is something like 70% at that range... I apologize the screenshots are somewhat out of context, but I only thought to take some after it started running away. On the initial charge the crew on my ships could probably wave at these Italians... My ships were that close, but I could not hit them. it may be because the traverse speed of my turrets wasn't high enough, but I don't think that was the issue because they were well within 2.5km for several minutes and only one 8 inch shell hit them with a BC, BB, 2DDs, and my 2CAs firing at them... I ended up losing the battle because I just couldn't hit them.

Devs, I have to say that the work you're doing is pretty stellar for an indie company. I have started doing some game development as part of my contracting work, so I can appreciate the fantastic amount of detail already in the game. Most people can't even begin to understand how complicated some of the simplest projects can become in game dev. With that said, there is always room for improvement and your team seems to have the skills to make great games. I'm glad that 1.06 is nerfing torpedoes a bit. They were way too easy to use, way too reliable, and they didn't really pose a risk to the ships they were deployed on in 1.05. Seriously, awesome improvements. I haven't experimented enough with the deck torpedo detonation mechanic, but it would be cool if the damage on the explosion even was tied to the reload percentage using a round-down operation. For example, a quad launcher would explode with the force of one torpedo on the destruction event if it was 47% reloaded (4 torps / launcher -> 25% / torpedo -> 1 torp fully loaded '@ destruction ) I'm not sure what the current detonation mechanic is, so if this is already the case, then ignore it. I also have to say that sea mines are a bit of a missed opportunity at the moment. They may not be as glamorous as torpedoes in the pages of history, but they have sunk more ships. It would be cool if ships could deploy mines. I don't think it would be necessary for mine-laying to be part of the RTS battles, because they are a strategic, defensive weapon. A "Mine" stance would be a fantastic addition to the fleet stances. All small ships could optionally field a mine-laying station: The station could simply be part of the hull options along with bulkheads, rangefinder, etc. - modeling of the station would be cool, but isn't necessary. The mine-laying station could have options for size and type, just like torpedoes. A fleet engaging an enemy in the mining stance would be able to detect the mines based upon their acoustics, spotting, or some combination of the two. Fleets that fail to detect mines would obviously take some RNG-based damage before a battle starts. I feel like this would greatly increase the amount of strategy involved in the narrower portions of the campaign map. It would also add a lot more viability to Austria Hungary and Italy because they could play more defensively. With the current budget balance, it is nearly impossible to start the campaign with a fleet of more than 25 decent ships... The AI easily outnumbers the player by 3:1 or 4:1, which makes even minor losses very frustrating... Yeah, I'm winning by TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND POINTS and haven't lost a battle, but half of my 22 ships need repairs, Italy is coming for that booty with 10 battleships, and it's 4 months before I get my next... destroyer... great. Mines would make the early game build-up much less of a grind. They'd help the player avoid taking on entire enemy fleets at full health with a paltry taskforce of three ships that somehow managed to blunder its way into conflict. The AI could also use mines to prevent the player from just steamrolling their ports.