TheMadTypist

I am very happy to see the new hulls on the list, I’ve been very happy with the game lately and I think the best priority is filling in those variety gaps some nations suffer from. I’m also pleased to see it’s not just battleships on the list, as much as I love the big boys, cruisers and destroyers are fun to build and field too. Otherwise, maybe certain UI elements could be tweaked or tutorialized- I learned how to invade by watching brothermunroe, and I do wonder if I’m missing behavior around stances or mines or torpedoes because everyone else already knows them.

This is a very impressive litany of features, a considerable expansion on what we have today! I certainly wish you the best of luck in implementing them. I would say that which interests me most are the interactions with minor nations, and the use of an Oil resource. I wonder if being on good terms with an oil producing nation will let us use oil more cheaply than otherwise? Either way, it provides a good incentive to value certain territories, even if they lack major port facilities. I’m also happy to see so many early-game hulls added. I have enjoyed starting in 1890 recently, with the challenges of making the best of rough technology and squeezing enough range to cross the Atlantic from a ship with poor engine efficiency. When you have enough tech to build a more functional ship for the first time it feels very rewarding when they start coming into service. All these additional hull variations will be great for the variety of that era.

I am intrigued by these new campaign factors, the impact of recon/fuel/mines/asw/ammo and so on, as pressures against purely combat optimized ships. Previously we did not have any such pressure and so it was easy to produce designs with universally superior performance to the AI’s competitors. By forcing us to balance our intent between utility, endurance, and battle functionality, our designs will be less razor optimized and may reduce the gap between player designs and the AI. The recoil mechanic, I hope, will have each hull’s limits clearly defined in the UI during construction. It could be rough to start a campaign only to discover your main battle-line design attempts a barrel roll with every salvo. It will be interesting to see how this new research will play now that more categories are valuable. Previously using priorities was something I didn’t often do, now with even more things of value that could be impacted the decision will be more difficult. Perhaps research should display a hint as to what the outcome might be when the current research is earlier on, like “improves a gun caliber between 4-7 inches” for a small guns 6 inch research at 30% progress, or “a new funnel design for light ships” for advanced small funnels II. ??? until 70% makes understanding short term benefits and costs more difficult.