Deadpan_Alpaca

That's going "a bit too far" but adding Ottoman Empire and Brazil as majors (with small economic) could add some interesting dynamics into the game. Maybe Netherlands as well (though, they are prone to dying in case of European war).

Yes! This thing is being consistently asked for quite the time. If you don't engage into war, you simply sit and play a clicker game. One of reasons, I never pick an early 1890 start is that there are more minor powers and I can't do anything with them unless RNG blesses me and my run (usually it does not).

Agree on this. Right now there is possibility to start the game with no navy at all and sit for 10 to 15 years just hoarding money (which as we figured out, doesn't work this way IRL) and waiting for GDP to grow while everyone else is beating each other to bloody pulp. It is a solid long-term strategy (ingame, ofc) especially for poorer countries - while everyone else would slow their growth, you sit and play clicker game and then jump into the fight with the cutting edge tech navy.

After playing some games in the current version, I have a feeling that current usage of naval budget feels somewhat wrong and has a place for rework/improvement. We have naval budget. Thing with governmental budgets is that you are not supposed to hoard all that money in some stockpile - you use EVERYTHING because if you have any money left, that means that you are: 1) not using money efficiently - maybe higher ups should think about your replacement; 2) using money efficiently but receiving too much for your current needs so budget for the next year should be cut. Great Britain kept laying down new pre-dreadnoughts even at the time when Dreadnought project was already in development (speaking in game terms, dreadnought hull tech was ~6 months from completion - they used all the budget available to start building new Nelson-class ships and then suspended unfinished hulls to rush Dreadnought). "Income" and "treasury" mechanics should be removed. You always use 100% of your naval budget, period. And here come sliders - where you define exact parts of budget, allocated to convoys, ship building, research, training and so on. They are interconnected so you move one slider right - others are moved to the left (ability to block one or few sliders from moving would be appreciated). Some sliders should have "base minimum" - like, crew training, ship maintenance- you can't spare 0% on them (or maybe you could but then it should actively harm your crew pool/ship health respectively), others like convoys, research, shipbuilding and expanding naval yards may be put to 0%. IMO this way fund using becomes more complicated than "put everything to 100% the moment you can afford that and forget until end of campaign".

If to think about it, it is an interesting mechanic but then sliders ATM are not doing what they are supposed to do. We have naval budget. Thing with governmental budgets is that you are not supposed to hoard all that money in some stockpile - you use EVERYTHING because if you have any money left, that means that you are: 1) not using money efficiently - maybe higher ups should think about your replacement 2) using money efficiently but receiving too much for your current needs so budget for the next year should be cut "Income" and "treasury" mechanics should be removed. You always use 100% of your naval budget, period. And here come sliders - where you define exact parts of budget, allocated to convoys, ship building, research, training and so on. They are interconnected so you move one slider right - others are moved to the left.

Oh, that sorta explains everything now - especially the last part about research boost. Game stays silent on the matter mentioning only economic boost so I had no way to guess the research effect as well. Probably better for me to drop it to just "hard" - "legendary" has the potential to become really legendary with AI ships of late 30-s in year 1920.

Can anyone explain, how exactly does research function in the current version? I mean, some time ago I was just setting research at 100% and tried not to focus on specific tech - so had a more or less reliable advance through the tech tree on par with AI or even making ahead of them. Meanwhile in the current build I had a few instances of consistently to lag behind AI by ~10 years in the game despite doing just the same things I did before - max funds to research and no focus, which left me puzzled on the matter of how may I keep up with AI. Is research being affected by GDP or naval budget? Are there any new rules on the matter? I am puzzled because it looks quite inconsistent - if it is dependent on GDP and naval budget, then how the hell did AI USA end up "behind" in one of my runs? Or may this be affected by game difficulty? I picked "Legendary" to help AI economies stay afloat no matter what preventing early state destruction by bankruptcy.

I have a question which may (or may not) be related to the mod mechanics so sorry in advance. Does research rate being affected by the naval budget size? Like, let's say I have 5 million naval budget as a whole and I don't pick any focuses on any tech, but it seems that I would still lag behind AI with 10-15 million budget, so that at some point of time my tech level becomes "behind". Can't remember such development in my earlier campaigns.

Well, the repeatable techs increasing weight of existing ship projects is still weird gamedesign - rendering ships useless and constantly forcing players to rebuild the ship - saving weight here and there. A bit counter-intuitive thing to do - considering the assumption that new designs should be better thought hensewhy efficient.

In my opinion, game could quite benefit from ability to interact with minor powers the same way we currently do with major ones - push them into alliance or antagonize until war starts. While, yes, we don't play as head of the state, we still have quite a lot of power for "just head of admiralty". Right now it is just way too random about "colonial invasions" and similar war types. Also, IRL there were false flag operations used to start such wars (looking suspiciosly on the Maine incident) through the legit casus belli of old obsolete ship sunk in the foreign port. Something, we could certainly organize in the position, we are in the game.

I'd say, shielded/semi-turret small guns should be an option up until the end of campaign. At least single/double mounts. Sacrificing protection for the weight/space is the logical choice, especially for some hulls where you can't fit anything in turret but technically there is place for "just only gun".

An interesting interview to listen, thanks. Nevertheless, let's agree to disagree - hardly anything of this was an eye opener - I kind of knew about problems of Russian/Soviet Navy. Let me clarify my point: by ingame rules, USSR emerging in 1921 (actually it is not even "USSR" yet) is a collapsed state which wasn't present on the ingame map for a few years (Civil war) and then emerged and returned control over the core territories. It's GDP is inadequate, and so naval budget is cut - but nothing of this comes out of ideology. In ingame terms, Russia lost the war, Russia collapsed, Russia returned extremely weakened and took ~15 years to reestablish own naval budget to the point of starting building something serious. If something, communist approach to rushed modernization (running 100 years of development in 10 years) has shown quite a result - most collapsed and then reemerged states in the UA:D won't start building anything other than submarines at all because that's all that they can afford, well, maybe some TBs as well. Ingame China is quite a stretch of realism: it is a failed state with no navy, is in constant turmoil between 1910 and 1940 and basically should be a territory with a bunch of minor nations to be conquered by anyone. Should state of Chinese navy affect any of ideologies, it has at different start dates? Ingame Spain isn't a case and reason of how constitutional monarchy and then "democracy" with nat.right regime can't have proper fleet. Literally any nation can become communist in the game. Let's say, USA did - they lost a war and picked wrong options in certain events, and now they are communists. USA industrial and economic might, all those factories and dockyards, suddenly vanished in the nothingness? Or, let's assume, Britain did - I recall seeing them do so couple of times. A huge industrially and economically developed empire with huge naval traditions and huge navy suddenly decides that "hey, let's send these ships rotting and wait for enemies of proletariat to pick us apart"? Soviet Union problems were coming from the foundation it was built on - Russian Empire. Hardly efficient agrarian inland empire to which army always was the core priority - and navy came second. You inherit geography- you inherit the problems. If something, absolutist monarchy deserves nerfs way more than communist party - if we are using Russia and China as the metric why certain regime is bad. Yet, in the game if I take Russia and never "reform" it through piling unrest, but stay absolutist - I would do pretty well. Sure, GDP of UK or USA would be just a dream but huge buff to naval budget would allow me to build a big enough fleet to project power in all four naval regions (Arctic, Baltic, Black sea/Med, Pacific). -- Still you are right, would probably try doing that myself. Yet, I would certainly appreciate some pointers - like, what program to use for opening and editing the .asset files?

I had a couple of games where I tried converting to Soviet Union in 1900 start - so I have a question: is it really that good idea to have those kind of budget cuts for naval budget if communists are in power (same for other ideologies though to less degree)? It basically forces player to skip turns for ~20 years to start doing anything at all, when GDP finally grows a bit. If AI faces revolution and goes communist, it is bad as well - less AI money = less ships to sink. Maybe there is sense to "moderate" exactly those debuffs a bit (or a lot)? I mean, if we look at pre-war USSR, it wasn't building huge fleets because economic of the state in general wasn't that great but when it got somewhat better in 30-s, a big program of Ocean-going fleet was started and was interrupted only by WW2 - when more urgent priorities have appeared. Yet, ingame communist state (no matter which in fact) isn't constantly facing threat of enemy tanks rolling to the industrial centers - so there is little to no reason not to allocate a bit more money in the navy (in the game about navy). And if said situation with land war going disastrous occurs - well, naval budget cuts would happen naturally along with the province loss.

I double this. Small barbettes should be free for capital ships to be placed - so that player could work out his own architecture of secondary artillery.

That's their normal behavior: 1) you design the ship with wide firing angles of torps 2) you manually lead your DD close to the target 3) you press aggressive mode for torps 4) they don't fire, meanwhile target starts turning, shows you the aft and that's when torps would be fired