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LeoA

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Landsmen

Landsmen (1/13)

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  1. Most importantly, aside from the lack of hulls/models, the game lacks fundamental systems (or, in this case, the systems in place are inadequate). From diplomacy, to economy, to balance, to land warfare... The game has come a long way and the devs are dedicated and capable, but I think it's a huge waste of potential to call the game finished, or nearly finished.
  2. Haven't played in a while, but upon starting a 1890 campaign as Japan, and touching absolutely nothing on the research screen other than allocating maximum funds to tech, by early 1892 I'm already listed as 'Advanced'. Other countries seem all to be behind in 1, sometimes 2 tiers of research depending on the research line itself. I've reported this on earlier patches, but this absolutely needs to be fixed. An AI that cannot keep up in research is ultimately an AI that cannot compete. AI's number one priority, above all else, should be to allocate the tech budget to maximum. As a player I can do that turn 1, no issue, so I don't see why the AI would struggle.
  3. I think it has already been reported, but there is a very weird bug concerning collateral damage. Say a ship A is fighting two ships, B and C. At a given range, A aims at B with a 2% hit probability. Shells behave accordingly. However, should B (at the very same range) get between A and C, and A's aim change to C, A will suddenly snipe B and land every other shot. Suddenly B, which previously had a 2% hit chance, now becomes a shell magnet and will be destroyed very quickly. Note that this doesn't happen if A aims directly at B; it has to aim at the furthermost ship. Very weird bug, but impacts large battles too much to be ignored.
  4. Aside from all the bugs already reported, I think it would be nice to be able to see ship classes in battle. The game already renders you a neat little drawing which includes the ship's class visible only at the shipyard. I think being able to see that in battle, maybe along with the year of the design, would improve QoL a lot and not be too hard to implement.
  5. Ships are coming back from the dead. I never noticed this issue before this patch. They're easy to spot because you'll suddenly get a pop-up saying 'X cannot fight because it has low crew'. X had, however, been sunk some 5 turns before. Happened multiple times.
  6. Focus Research is still absurdly overpowered. As Italy, I was able to reach Dreadnought tech in 1894. The following clowncar was a design of mine in December 1894: The design isn't great, mainly because my shipwards were stuck at 20k ton because I didn't pay attention during the first few turns of the campaign. The upper cap of this hull is 21.5k ton, and with that extra tonnage it could be outfitted with more secondaries and armor. Or you could achieve something similar to HMS Dreadnought some 12 to 10 years earlier. I have also hit 'Advanced' tech status mere 4 years after the start date. Yes, the unfocused techs should lag behind heavily, but it still seems very unbalanced to me, particularly because the AI has no way to compete. Were the AI to use this feature, then maybe you'd have to worry about some country pulling Dreadnoughts by 1895 and the abuse would be justified. Right now you can break any campaign if you actually try to play your best. Be by designing overpowered super BBs 10+ years ahead of their equals, by doing so with DDs and having very fast gunboats with long range torps, etc.
  7. Yet another campaign in, though keep in mind I'm yet to download today's update. What I noticed: The AI is considerably better at staying competitive production wise. They're not as bad as before. Ideal? Hardly, in a 1910 start Germany campaign I hit 'Very Advanced' by 1915. I have refrained from abusing the 'Focus Research' option and I still insist it is absolutely broken. At least until the AI can use it, and use it well, it needs a massive nerf. Due to the changes regarding scrapping I don't see as many ancient ships around, though I do recall that, once in 1913, a 11k ton BB was sent against a 20k ton BB of mine. It was UK's, and UK had a better BB design by that time. The system was certainly a shift in the right direction, but it still needs some work. Despite the many changes in this regard nerfing ship costs/maintenance, I was still nowhere being close to having money issues. If maintenance is too high as some have reported, then maybe the neft should shift to income. I never felt constrained by lack of funds, not once, and so picking GDP options is always the way to go, which tends to snowball this problem further. In this particular campaign, the only fleet to have 100+ ships was UK's, and they, too, weren't constrained by lack of money. I think losing a modern (for any given time period) BB should be cause for concern because they should be expensive, maybe prohibitively so. This gives value to screening and smaller vessels able to down BBs for a fraction of their cost. Right now what constrains any warship, of any class, isn't price but displacement. I don't think anyone even thinks about cost anymore. If costs are somewhat realistic and maintenance is getting too high, I can only think that income is way too boosted for things to work as they should. Also, some QoL changes would go a long way. Fixed taskforces, setting where a ship should be built before building it, and some others that have been already pointed out. I have suggested a truce mechanic before and I will do so again, since wars are too frequent and meaningless. In battle, a ship's name should probably be accompanied by its class somewhere in the HUD. Maybe right alongside the name, maybe under it, maybe elsewhere. But somewhere.
  8. So finishing up my campaign on previous patch as Italy, it was a 1890 start, by 1909 I hit 'advanced' tech status and anything I could output just steamrolled the AI, which still fielded very outdated designs. I only ever played with 'historical' ON and therefore I can't say whether it being on or off effects anything in this regard. My suggestion is to script the AI, until a better solution is found at least, to immediately start updating its ships, oldest first, as it obtains new tech. Things that can't be updated (Hulls) need to be retired. For instance, I am fielding Dreadnought IVs with 400mm of belt armor, some 800mm effective armor, 356mm main batteries and as many secondaries as the hull can possibly fit. The AI is fielding early Battleship hulls, with all the terrible accuracy and few guns they can offer. I can send a single BB and it would absolutely run down a 10 BB enemy fleet. The AI should try much harder to field only modern designs, and to update their old stuff as soon as possible, to avoid this kind of scenario. It's not that France doesn't have Dreadnought tech - they do, but all I've seen from them are extremely outdated designs. Unfortunately, for this reason, I find the campaign to be unplayable over longer periods of time. By 10 years of campaign the AI starts lagging behind, by 20 it is completely outclassed. The Focus Research feature is still overpowered, and the AI doesn't seem particularly concerned with updating their ships.
  9. Ultimately it's up to the devs to decide whether or not CVs fit the scope of the game, but I'm favorable to their addition. No matter how you look at it, CVs were the most important (and expensive) type of ship and were responsible for single-handedly winning and losing wars in the time period. The objective of whole (sea) campaigns over WW2 has been to locate and destroy the enemy CVs with no regard for any other class of ship, particularly in the Pacific. The decimation of the Kido Butai at Midway was decisive for the IJN campaign and arguably heavier than losing any other ship, including their Yamato class BBs. On the matter of gameplay, adding CVs adds another layer of depth to the battles and I think that's pretty interesting. Ships now have to be designed with their AA complement in mind, having to sacrifice elsewhere to fit this kind of armament, or simply not doing so and relying on other escorts for AA cover. Also opens up other interesting design options, such as the Ise-class 1942 refit, and floatplanes/catapults in general. CVs themselves offer several design choices, such as having a decent secondary/AA complement or armor/safety for the planes in the hangars within, or to focus solely on aircraft output/power projection at the risk of catastrophe when struck. All that is good for gameplay IMO and makes the game much more interesting. By having CVs you'd have war deciding ships that you'd better protect at all cost because they're irreplaceable. This, coupled with potent AI, makes the game a whole different beast on the strategic level. With all that being said, I don't see why subs would be in the game if CVs wouldn't. Not that subs weren't important, but they weren't exactly the combat ships many people seem to think they were, as has already been pointed out.
  10. I played Italy again in 1.08.6 and saw a lot of improvement over my last campaign. Namely, the AI and myself appear to have significantly less ships (because of pricing increases) and I've been nearly 20 years into the campaign without steamrolling the AI in the tech department. However: The Focus Research option is still too strong, I believe it wasn't changed and it still makes any research that would complete in 20-something months complete in 4 or 5. My understanding is that the AI does not use this feature, and consequently you'll be fielding absurdly overpowered designs for the time period if you abuse the research system, or even if you use it intelligently at all. It's 1906 and I can produce Dreadnought IIIs, without focusing the BB hull line of research for more than a year or so. I can see the drawbacks on using the feature, as my DD line is some 5-10 years behind in tech, but the behavior still seems oddly exaggerated for both cases. I think this feature should be a smaller nudge AND a smaller detriment to whatever isn't being focused. If you truly play to win and focus the right stuff you'll destroy the AI because you'll tremendously outpace them in at least three fields of your choosing - you can have an overpowered BB hull, AND guns, AND control stations, and just demolish anything the AI can throw at you. Sure, you'll have extremely outdated DDs and stuff, but it hardly matters. I think skimming both bonuses and maluses would be good for overall balance. And I'll suggest once more that the AI should get a research boost instead of money boost in higher difficulties. Wars happen too often, I think a simple fix would be a truce of 10-15 years between warring nations. For instance I had war with France on 1901, beat them by 1903, had terrible relations and war again on 1904. It's 1906 and war is about to happen again. Realistically speaking a defeat is usually disastrous for the losing nation and no country would be ready for war again in a few years; from a gameplay perspective it's just boring and makes wars feel meaningless. Same goes for AI, it's always war war war war. The AI appears to sack their outdated designs more often, but they still field some weird stuff that's 5, sometimes 10 years old. This is particularly bad in the early years of campaign, where a single hull change is very significant (on my first war with France I had 18,000 ton BB vs their 12,000 ton BB, hadn't focused BB line yet). A shift from quantity to quality would both reduce doomstacks (which are useless against fewer but more advanced ships) and make battles more challenging overall. Early BBs and CAs are still blind, I had a France BB from 189X fight one of my BBs and they hit about 1 to 2% of their main battery AND secondary salvos at 2k range. This isn't bad, it's terrible. Early battles are bad because of this, you just hit 3x-5x and wait a while until something hits. A buff in base accuracy is probably for the best, I think you should expect AT LEAST 5% hit chance in 2k range. 2k range is nothing for main caliber BB guns, and 5% is still very little imo (but over double what we currently have). Despite the changes to money and ship costs, I'm still yet to be constrained by lack of funds. I felt the changes in the previous patches, and had a turn in which I had -200k in income when I turned everything in the finance screen to max, but next turn this -200k became +400k. Then +800k. It's 1906 and I can field whatever I could possibly want without thinking about money. It's less bad than it was before, but still bad. I think BBs should be expensive, as in you should be actively concerned about losing your BBs because it shouldn't be easy to replace them. That's how all (modern) navies felt during all wars and for good reason. This can be achieved by either further increasing ship costs, or if those costs already match history, then by decreasing income. Obviously goes for both players and AI, and further naturally reduces doomstacks and fodder spam. Dreadnought III unlocked before Dreadnought II for me as Italy. That's it. On that note, the research screen and UI could use some love in the sense that many things say (todo), but seem to actually work, and others do not list what they actually unlock. Often times control station research will list <?> as unlocked, but will actually unlock something. It's a minor issue compared to everything else though.
  11. Here are some things I noticed while playing the current branch: Research speed is broken for both players and AI, moreso for players. I didn't go out of my way to certify that the AI was indeed behind, but I recall that by 1920s the AI was employing early 1900s designs. Likewise, I could build ships to match 1930-1940 models by the same date, since the research 'focus' thing is too big to be even remotely balanced. I think focuses should give a 100% bonus at most, meaning techs would complete twice as fast. Right now the bonus is close to 500% or something (I don't have the game open to check), but it's just too much. Any player will eventually outpace the AI and therefore the AI is only really challenging, if at all, during early years of any campaign. Maybe higher difficulties should give the AI more research speed instead of absurd amounts of money. Money is also broken. I played several campaigns, and not once did I feel constrained by lack of funds. I believe costs for ships in general should be increased, or general income decreased; Battleships should be expensive, perhaps prohibitively so, and sinking one (or more) should be more meaningful for both player and AI. This would also naturally prevent doomstacks and reduce battle lag from said doomstacks. If CVs aren't planned to be introduced, and even if they are, until so, I think it would be nice for BBs to fill their role in importance when sunk. I feel like sinking even one BB should be somewhat impactful, and this doesn't happen right now because money is abundant. I build my BBs five at a time, and if I really wanted to, I could build them by the tens. No biggie. Early accuracy of ships is terrible, and early game in a 1890 is a grind to get somewhat accurate control stations/stable hulls. They can hardly hit anything even in the limited range they're usually operating, and battles with 1890-1900 designs can be very boring for this reason. I understand they're meant to be bad, but I think this is overdoing it a little. Maybe buffing the base accuracy of said ships, either by stability or control station numbers, or both, and reducing their 'scaling' into late-game techs would be nice. Ships are too tanky in general. This has already been mentioned, but a durability nerf across the board might be in order. Hits by big guns should be scary, and in my experience I didn't feel as they were as devastating as they should be. Battles felt more like a death by a thousand cuts sort of thing, even with abundant 'penetrations', which I assume to be citadel pens, and should therefore hurt a little (a lot?) more.
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