Abuse_Claws

This! It's been a problem since forever, so much so that usually 90% of my attention during a battle is focused on ensuring that my BBs stay on the designated target. Please add "stay on target" firing mode, where the ship will not switch targets unless target is sunk or the player manually selects a new target (EDIT: or if the target goes out of sight I guess, although even then I'd implement a waiting period of a few seconds in case the enemy pops back in sight). Even if the ship is at the moment unable to fire at designated target, please let it stay on it. Even if it still loses the aim bonus due to whatever whatever, just make it so we can tell a ship not to switch fire from an enemy BB 10km away to some crippled CL 16km away that will immediately pop smoke and disappear when fired upon, thus triggering yet another target switch. Also of note, can we please have some way not to alter the course of the ship while trying to select targets? It's *SOOOO* annoying to try and pixelhunt an enemy ship 20km away only to realize you accidentally changed course 4 times in the process and your ship is now headed directly at the enemy while this was never the intention

As the devs said in the FAQ thread, the AI does not cheat. Maybe the AI uses smaller torps to improve reliability and sometimes designs ship with good gun accuracy, but overall in my experience (700+ hours across updates since early beta) I'd say the AI has never cheated, maybe with torp dodging a little bit in some updates (to match the player being able to spot torps before they are *spotted* as per game mechanics), but not in the current state of the game, I don't think At the moment, the only thing difficulty affects is money, so I'd suggest playing US/France/Britain on Normal difficulty as a stand-in for 'Easy'. On the other hand, playing, say, AH on Normal difficulty is closer to 'Hard', as it has very little money compared to the US As a game developer myself (not working on UAD or for Gamelabs at all, to be clear) I can tell you that adding multiplayer to a game that didn't have it originally is a GIGANTIC pain in the ass. I wouldn't expect multiplayer to come anytime soon, maybe in like UAD 2 or even UAD: Online, if something like that ever happens, but not in the first game. I think that kind of goes against the whole point of Naval Academy as a set of progressively more difficult challenges to help you learn ship design and combat management. I haven't played much in the last update, but it used to be just as (if not more) likely to produce slow thick bricks, as speedboats. Maybe with the new armor limits in place the devs forgot to adjust the armor thickness selection of the AI, idk. Dictatorships existed well before 1915 (case in point: Paraguay). The history in the campaign is not exactly equivalent to the real world, nor do I think it should be, as otherwise we would get the same sequence of events in every playthrough Again, a huge feature that I wouldn't expect to come before UAD 2 if ever. I don't think Age of Sail was a big success, so I'm not sure how many of the features of that game the devs are willing to copy to UAD. Sadly, treaties of this kind (or even Washington-style naval treaties) are not part of the game. Would be nice to get a Politics DLC of some kind with more intricate (and less random) campaign politics, including treaties

That would be me vs the Spanish small DDs I mentioned above xD That is literally how that fight went more or less, with me spending a few in-game hours and burning through the entire 1k HE 12" rounds I had just to sink 20 fast bois Honestly - the most thrilling battle in UAD I've had in months. But I get what you're saying. Still, there should be some balance point between IRL "3% accuracy of the German fleet at Jutland was regarded as a display of outstanding marksmanship for the era" and the current in-game "The hyper-intelligent 16 inch shell will hunt you down from extreme range no matter what you do! You can run, but you can't hide! Coming soon to cinemas near you!"

True, though that penalty is not nearly enough I'd say. Gun accuracy is too good in general I think, with some designs genuinely behaving like missile cruisers, achieving 60+% accuracy at like 40km range, whereas IRL the longest recorded naval artillery hit was 24km iirc. That was in early 1.4 updates though, maybe they fixed that in 1.4.0.7-9 EDIT: it was earlier than I remember, 1.3.9.9 actually EDIT (x2): https://imgur.com/a/Nj5nW4V

I think that's still hull-dependent, right? Like, for more streamlined hulls the doubling point should be higher. And then also what's the displacement here? In-game the Italian Large Cruiser II hull I used for this test has 38.5kn "max optimal speed" and 105 "hull form", while the American Fast BB hull (which I presume should represent the Iowa?) has 32kn "max optimal speed" and 82 "hull form", whatever those are. So the super-cruiser is much, much more streamlined than Iowa and also has significantly larger length to beam ratio from the looks of it at least. If IRL Iowa could reach 35kn with her hull being rated 32kn in game, I guess such a hull as the Large Cruiser II could in theory reach 40 with 38.5kn rating - although whether such a perfectly streamlined hull is technically possible is a huge question

I did cross-torp them, but messed up the timing big time. One of the BCs still just waltzed right into torpedo soup, ate about 8 and sank. I can't say whether there was a way out for her, as I was more focused on getting my DDs the hell away safely. Maybe just the sheer number of torps made escape impossible, IDK Sequence firing would be nice, yes. I remember some designs from UAD letsplays where say triples and quads were used on the same ship to try and make them fire separately with some gimmicks, so that their reload cycles would de-sync and then they could be fired one group after another, something to that effect. Also I wonder if acoustic torps would be fun or break the game. Another point is, I don't think you can quite dodge shells the same way you dodge torps in UAD. Shells have a hit chance, where target speed and maneuver are just modificators. So if I'm not mistaken, if the enemy ship fired with say 80% accuracy and you then proceed to make a sharp turn and head away from the original point of aim, you still have an 80% chance of eating that shell. Am I wrong? IDK the exact mechanics for this. Whereas torps you can actually see in the water and turn away, even before the exclamation point thingy appears if you pay attention. With hand-targeting you can usually persuade the ship to stay on target and keep gaining accuracy long enough to achieve hits on AI DDs. For example, when the AI tries to surround my ship with two groups of DDs, I usually turn to tangentially approach one of them and keep targeting the closest enemy DD in that group no matter what. This way, the futher flank of the enemy fleet is kept at range by their own maneuver, while the other flank can't get too close either, because the closest ship keeps getting destroyed time and again until there's none left. Usually works if I'm focused enough to spot and dodge enemy torps in time. The other option being just running away at flank speed and also always targeting the closest ship to slow down the enemy approach. And when enemy DDs go on reload, I can come back and strike down a couple before running again. Rinse and repeat until there are no more DDs. Why the AI keeps switching targets every two seconds is honestly beyond me. This happens sometimes even in capital ship battles, where the battle lines sort of just sail in a straight line, so there's exactly zero reason to switch. If the AI was just better at staying on target, it would be a much more challenging opponent IMO.

First test for me controlling the DDs: 10 Japanese giga-TBs vs 5 Italian super-cruisers 4 cruisers sunk for 1 sunk and 3 damaged DDs. The last cruiser escaped (the only two DDs of mine with torps left were damaged and could not properly chase down the enemy BC due to the speed penalty) IDK if AI got worse at dodging torps or what, but the AI BCs seemed not to even change course before being hit with torp salvoes. On the other hand, the AI somehow detected my DDs a bit further away than when I did the opposite test (20-25km, sometimes even up to 30 vs 15-20km back then) EDIT: Also, the AI kept switching targets like every two salvoes, so that's why the BCs couldn't hit shit and that's why I have to constantly wrestle with auto-targeting when playing big gun ships myself

This is what I came up with for my "smaller DD" design. Mixed feelings - on one hand, it's extremely expensive for a 1300t torpedo boat, on the other hand - it's much harder to spot, and those pesky little ships appearing out of fog and smoke less than 10km away is genuinely scary. However, I did manage to beat twenty of them - on my second attempt, that is. In the first run I got a bit too complacent, got ambushed, ate a dozen torps and sank after destroying only 3 enemy DDs (still technically cost-effective, but not impressive by any standards). In the second battle I had to muster all my concentration, skill and patience. I still ate 4 torps for a total of 2.8k damage, but carefully timed hit'n'run attacks did the trick. Maybe I could've won against the giga-TBs too with the same tactics, but that I will find out some other day

Actually, we don't know. The BC concept was largely abandoned after the Jutland fireworks, some BCs being converted into BBs or carriers, other spending the rest of their service life in what the game describes as "Limited" state, and HMS Hood, well, following the trail of her predecessors. The only post-1920 BCs that actually saw service were the Alaska-class ships (not counting Soviet missile cruisers). Also, with the development of carriers and torpedo bombers, fast capital ships lost a lot of their meaning: you can't exactly outrun a Swordfish squadron. You needed a shit ton of AAA on your ship more than you needed speed Also also, the Washington and London treaties happened IRL, which severely limited any BC development: you couldn't exactly label them as cruisers due to tonnage and the capital ship tonnage limit meant that building modern BCs just to see whether the concept works was not an option even for rich nations. All three factors aren't really applicable in the game: planes don't exist, naval treaties are not a thing and if you don't use cordite/dunnite combo with insufficient barbette protection, your BCs won't go boom. The one modern BC that did get (mostly) completed (Stalingrad) had a top speed of 35.5kn at 40k ton displacement (whereas my BC for this test has 40kn at 34k ton displacement). Now, sure, the gap between 35 and 40kn is harder to close than one between 30 and 35, logarithmic scale and all that. But consider a world, where BC development went unhindered all across the globe. Constant search for improvement and competition between nations, Air Force doesn't exist at all, so a bigger percentage of military spending goes to the Navy and related research. No carriers are needed, so there's more room in dockyards for artillery ships. Is it possible under such conditions that a 40kn 30k+ ton BC is developed? I'd say yes. Another thing to consider: unlike planes (where more engine mass means more lift is needed) and cars (where more engine mass means more friction), more mass in a ship doesn't neccessarily increase water resistance: you can (to a reasonable extent) make a ship longer. In theory, as long as the hull structure holds, you can increase the engine weight (and hence top speed) quite a bit on a ship, if you are willing to make it larger and more expensive. USS Iowa at light load could almost match the speed of USS Fletcher (35.2kn vs 36.5kn) despite being about 23 times larger in displacement. And you can't exactly call Iowa just a speedboat - it was a 16" BB with decent armor and a whole load of secondaries, plus spotter planes and later helis.

I'm trying to eliminate factors one by one. Now we see, that AI designs were responsible for some of the effect, although it should be noted that the DDs I built are much more expensive. I also wanted to iterate through DD designs to see what works, so than I can use more successful ships when I switch to the DD side. I also want to do one more test vs AI light ships to see if a smaller DD design will work (minimal dimensions, max speed and say 2 quint launchers, still oxygen torps and radar III), as the capital ship will have a hard time detecting them. They should also be quite a bit cheaper, so when doing the "same cost" battle, they wouldn't find themselves in a 10v5. Then I will probably do two tests playing for the DD side (one for the Japanese super-DDs and one for a swarm of smaller DDs). As the AI is indeed not great and will probably blunder a single BC immediately, I will do this test in the "same cost" format, so 10 super-DDs vs 5 BC super-cruisers and presumably 20v5 for the smaller DDs, IDK since I haven't built those yet. BTW, if you wish to help with these, I can show you my BC design. It might be better, as you are more well-versed in light ship tactics than I am. Actually, I don't think that's the case anymore. Huge props to the devs, the AI can now sometimes produce a real threat. In my 1915v1920 attempt, the AI-controlled light ships did pretty well and ate me for dinner, while still being AI designed too. The cost comparison there was certainly on the AI side too. This doesn't happen often, but sometimes the AI finds its game and valiantly fights back. Also of note, when I'm saying "light ships are useless" what I mean is "all the tactical applications for light ships in late game are either obsolete or better performed by capital ships, particularly BC-based fast cruiser killers and/or frigates". What are those tactical applications? ASW - best left to the frigates. Why? Maths. Frigates are dirt cheap, you can build dozens and dozens, and you need the numbers to bring up the average. You can build a 2622 ASW frigate for 20-25 mil, so at least 5 of them for the cost of even a cheap universal DD, let alone super-DDs such as ones used above, which cost 1.6B apiece Mining/sweeping - same thing, frigates are the best tool due to numbers. Even when I run normal light ships in my campaigns, I still use frigates to perform ASW and mine duties, so that I can remove all that gear from battle-line light ships. Spotting - as we can see, it is more or less obsolete by the late game. radar-equipped capital ships can spot even large DDs at 20km in Overcast weather. With clear weather or larger enemy ships it's even further, super-BBs sometimes can be detected at extreme range like 40+km. That's enough for me honestly. Sure, there may be some tactical advantage in using dedicated light spotter ships, but they would need to be manually controlled at all times with extreme care so they themselves are not detected and destroyed. And I need my full attention for dodging torps and wrestling with the AI auto-targeting on my capital ships. Keeping enemy light ships at bay - as demonstrated by the test above, the super-cruisers do this quite well. A squadron of them can pulverize enemy light ships before they can harm my capital ships, while being quite cost-effective and not suffering partial losses: even if my BC is beat up, it still can be repaired, and since most of the crew survives, the training level doesn't drop that much when crew is replenished from reserves. In contrast, if say 3/10 DDs are lost, they are dead, and so is their crew. Hunting enemy capital ships with torps. Honestly, this one is mostly a matter of personal taste. Doesn't really matter if the enemy BB is sunk with big guns or torps, as long as it is sunk and you haven't lost your ships. The last batch of tests (player DDs vs AI super-cruisers, maybe also player DDs vs regular AI BBs just for the fun of it) is specifically aimed to test this application. Keep in mind, the sentiment is applicable both ways: are light ships any good for the player in the late game and are they any good for the AI? The second part may even be more important: while the players can build whatever they personally prefer and are best at controlling, what the AI builds impacts greatly the level of challenge it presents. You said it yourself, most of the time the AI doesn't feel like a hard opponent to beat. It's more about "how long will it take me to beat this giant AI fleet", whether it is possible or not isn't much of a question. Among other things, I'm trying to look for ways the AI may be improved.

Nope, I'm still controlling the BC, but the AI-controlled DDs are now hand-designed

Made some tweaks to my ship (reduced armor slightly here and there to get Sonar III and Increased ammo). Killed 16/20 DDs before going down, that's roughly 8 times the cost of my ship. Honestly, it may be possible to tweak the BC even more to combat those giga-TBs, but I want to still keep the BC campaign-viable and versatile, so I don't want to say cut the range to add a larger anti-torp belt Edit: also I could've removed the 2" guns and try to squeeze in 1 extra grade of torpedo belt instead, but I want to keep the AA battery if only for the looks Edit (x2): I also calculated the costs without crew (as in the campaign you can't just buy a veteran crew), it's still about 2 DDs for the price of one BC

Dropped some range and reduced hull to double bottom, in exchange made launchers quint instead of quad, switched to oxygen torps, installed RDF and Gen III Radar. Oh, and upped shaft to III because I had some displacement left. Sure, this time I've lost the fight, but only after taking down 10 enemy DDs with me and severely damaging 4 more. Keep in mind, those DDs cost 1.6b each, v.s 3.2b for my ship, so I took down more or less 5 times the cost of my ship (more than that if you count the crippled DDs). Oxygen torps seem to work... As long as the DDs can get in range, that is. Most of the damage was taken after I ran out of HE shells, so possibly with Increased ammo the result would've been a bit different. Also of note, I only have Sonar I on my ship, as the AI usually does not go THAT much torpedo-heavy. Might change that too, give me a minute

Okay, 20 of those dealt a grand total of 10 damage to my BC. Apparently, they are too large, and me spotting them at 20+km even in overcast weather means they're toast before they even realise what hit them

@GrantK can you please show me a DD design of yours for 1940 Japan. Haven't designed late-game DDs for so long, I honestly don't remember how to do it well anymore. Experimental DD hull, 3x4x24" torps and maximize speed I guess? EDIT: Is this fine or should I change something? https://imgur.com/a/SGkfGio