Nick Thomadis

Indeed, the feature is not complete yet, but is scheduled.

When we make Operational Range "Medium" or higher for Battlecruisers in Custom Battle too, it will not be as easy to reach such speeds. In reality, Battlecruisers consumed a lot of tonnage for achieving a long operational range. This will be reflected in campaign but in free custom mode it is not, so it is possible to exploit as you do. Enjoy it while it lasts.

A new major game update has just become available! Read the full content in our blog: >>>Follow the Link<< or below ================================================================================= Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts Alpha-5 SPECIAL NEW FEATURES Major improvements in ballistics: Repaired issues that made shells to travel at unusual wide arcs or at inconsistent speeds. Shells now can hit other vessels except the ship you target, making cluttered ship formations more vulnerable to shell fire. Friendly fire can happen if ships fire too close to each other. Previous ballistic system had some omissions that were needed to save game performance. After latest game optimizations we added more calculations into the model addressing the following: - Shells fly-through other ships: Completely fixed. Please report inconsistencies if you face them in battle. - Unusual wide arcs from guns of the same turret: Not completely fixed, but it should be barely noticeable now and very rare. - Shells that seem to follow targets during evasive maneuvers: It should be completely fixed and more improvements will follow to address any related issue. - Even more detailed calculations for effective armor thickness, based on heel/trim motions, hull sections, belt wideness etc: Improved but still work in progress. Improved damage system: Damage is now using a more natural probabilistic model, causing less random and more consistent damage to ships according to the damage power of shells and torpedoes. This new system will simulate better the rare critical hits that happened in history. Gun visual variance: Guns differ in appearance,depending on gun technology, nation and class of the ships. Britain, USA, Germany, Austria, Italy and Japan have currently the more diverse visualization. As we add more 3D model assets, more special visual characteristics for each nation will become available. (Note: All previously saved designs will be incompatible due to this new feature and it is advised to clean them up. Nation flag will be saved for any newly created design in Naval Academy.) Ramming damage: Finally, ships receive damage when they collide with each other. There is not a special visual effect yet but you will hear a distinctive sound effect after the collision. Known issues of inconsistent ramming damage will be addressed in a next update. (Note: Damage will happen against hostile ships only). Influx of new ship models: Many new ship types are now available in the custom battle system and Naval Academy, covering a wide range of cruisers of the World War I and later era, as well as several new modern battleships and battlecruisers. In particular the following are added: - Detailed model of the Italian Heavy cruiser “Trento” of the 1920s. - Detailed model of the British Armored cruiser “Warrior”. - 2 new light cruisers of the dreadnought era, special for Germany, based on the Light Cruiser “Emden”. - 7 new heavy cruisers distributed for all nations. - 5 new modern light cruisers distributed for all nations. - 1 French super battleship. - 1 French modern battleship. - 1 new USA Battleship hull type: a smaller version of modern BB that can represent South Carolina and South Dakota battleships. - 1 new Italian Modern Battleship hull type. - 1 new UK Battleship hull type: It can represent a variant of HMS Nelson and generally the N3/G3 class. - 6 new Battlecruisers designated as "Large Cruisers" distributed for all nations except Britain. - Improved a late UK Battleship with modern towers (The model that appears in mission “German Pride”). - 1 new Russian modernized Battleship. - 1 new generic modernized Battleship. NEW NAVAL ACADEMY MISSIONS German Raiding Squadron: Your light cruisers must sink several cargo ships defended by a British armored cruiser. An enemy Battlecruiser approaches so you need to act fast. Dreadnought vs Modern Cruisers: Powerful modern cruisers with state of the art fire control and devastating torpedoes should have no problem sinking a dreadnought of older technology. You can prove the opposite, either by enhancing your battleships with equipment of advanced technology, or investing more money for building more ships. Wounded Beast: Your German battleship is damaged from a previous engagement and is hunted by the British fleet. Reinforcements are on their way to help you out. Cruisers needed: An Italian Battleship is chased by a French Super-Battleship and your cruisers must rescue it. SHIP DESIGNER IMPROVEMENTS Operational Range is locked in “Medium” for Naval Academy (it will work fully in campaign). The player will no longer exploit the system by setting it at minimum range and create overpowered ships versus the AI. Several improvements/fixes in weights/costs of ship assets. AI will design more effectively the ships allocating weights for guns and speed in a more balanced manner. AI will increase Turret armor over technology era and this will be a necessity for player too, for reducing the chance of ammo detonations and main gun destruction. (Note: in late era battles, the maximum armor setting will usually correspond to the turret armor now. We will improve UI to be more specific). Auto-Design (for player and AI) is now smarter, since it realizes which technologies are better to use according to year. For example, you will no longer see ships auto-designed with full coal engines in the 1920s or with weak torpedoes. PS.The initial technologies will be set up according to tech era, so that player designs the ship from scratch with less micromanagement. Various improvements/fixes to hulls according to player reports. Deceleration of ship is now properly affected from various ship design decisions. (Previously it was only affected by ship’s size and weight). Turbo Electric Drive auxiliary engines now offer a significant boost to acceleration/deceleration, making them really effective for initiating sharp maneuvers and dodging torpedoes. One more upgrade (Turbo Electric Drive II) is available with stronger effects. Light Cruisers’ maximum gun size is now 7-inches (from 8-inches) so that we reflect better the class distinction between Light and Heavy Cruisers. BALANCES/COMBAT IMPROVEMENT Damage fine tuning according to the new ballistics/damage model. Smoke from funnels obstructs directionally the gun aiming. Accuracy penalty is received if the smoke emitted from the ship’s funnels interferes with the target at some angle. Reduced target signature of guns. It is now more balanced the effect of ship size and targeting, while player should no longer be able to exploit Naval Academy battles by over-reducing the target signature with less secondary guns. Torpedoes can now cause ammo detonation, if they penetrate the hull. Torpedoes of large diameter will be extremely dangerous, even to large and well protected battleships. White powder shells rebalanced (removed shell weight loss, because it made shells too ineffective with bad ballistics at medium range). Lyddite I shells penetration penalty reduced (They could become too weak). BUG FIXES Fixed a rare crash issue after exiting battle. Fixed a sound bug (it caused only a console report during battle). Fixed bug not allowing to set up target for individual ship of a division. Fixed an issue that could cause lag after exiting a custom battle. Fixed bug that could desync damage of gun & barbette, making them become destroyed independently. ========================================================================================================================== Hotfixes: 1st April Update v71 - Two extra missions featuring two of the world's first ironclads: "USS Monitor" and "CSS Virginia". - Penetration slight improvement (You will notice more partial penetrations). - 8-inch guns sound improvement. - Various small bug fixes. HotFix v70 - Fixed problems with (Mark 5) 7-inch guns of USA/Britain ships. - Fixed a german funnel that had no name text. - Fixed hull issue of new Italian Battleship that did not had enough space for some secondary towers. - Repaired hull issues of Italian Heavy Cruiser III. - Battlecruisers hull limitations tuned so that they cannot exceed easily the 40 knots speed. - Minor costs rebalance (fixes some issues in several missions of too few funds, making auto-design to not find enough funds to add necessary guns or speed). - Resize of some early small guns to fit better on battleship hulls (according to feedback). - Auto-Design should build more powerful ships often, with multiple and heavier guns. - Fixed bug when choosing to start custom battle only with transports.

Patch is about to be released. Closing thread

Tomorrow we release! Sorry for waiting so long captains!

Guys, the team needs a little more time for testing. We want to make sure that the new damage system is not containing any bugs. Thank you a lot for your patience!

Yes, we will do so as soon as possible. Yes, we will do this too, we try for next patch but if it needs much time, later, because crew is top priority now. First we need to make weathers work consistently and offer more variants. As above, we will do asap. Designing more than one ship can be done a bit later, probably some complexities will delay us to take this task now. Weather conditions, will be improved first, then we can add them to custom battle (as replied above).

Not yet, a minor issue that will be fixed.

Target switching should be more effective overall, as the AI adapts to the damage model too. For much later, we can do. In next update 🙂

It is handled. First we examine the angle of hit at the belt/deck section, and if there is a penetration, we examine the penetration angle on internal barbettes/bulkheads (hard coded at the moment, but we can add specific design options for those later).

Hello Admirals, We would like to share information about the upcoming major update of Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts. Here is what is included: Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts Alpha-5 SPECIAL NEW FEATURES Major improvements in ballistics: Repaired issues that made shells to travel at unusual wide arcs or at inconsistent speeds. Shells now can hit other vessels except the ship you target, making cluttered ship formations more vulnerable to shell fire. Friendly fire can happen if ships fire too close to each other. Previous ballistic system had some omissions that were needed to save game performance. After latest game optimizations we added more calculations into the model addressing the following: - Shells fly-through other ships: Completely fixed. Please report inconsistencies if you face them in battle. - Unusual wide arcs from guns of the same turret: Not completely fixed, but it should be barely noticeable now and very rare. - Shells that seem to follow targets during evasive maneuvers: It should be completely fixed and more improvements will follow to address any related issue. - Even more detailed calculations for effective armor thickness, based on heel/trim motions, hull sections, belt wideness etc: Improved but still work in progress. Improved damage system: Damage is now using a more natural probabilistic model, causing less random and more consistent damage to ships according to the damage power of shells and torpedoes. This new system will simulate better the rare critical hits that happened in history. Gun visual variance: Guns differ in appearance,depending on gun technology, nation and class of the ships. Britain, USA, Germany, Austria, Italy and Japan have currently the more diverse visualization. As we add more 3D model assets, more special visual characteristics for each nation will become available. (Note: All previously saved designs will be incompatible due to this new feature and it is advised to clean them up. Nation flag will be saved for any newly created design in Naval Academy.) Ramming damage: Finally, ships receive damage when they collide with each other. There is not a special visual effect yet but you will hear a distinctive sound effect after the collision. Known issues of inconsistent ramming damage will be addressed in a next update. (Note: Damage will happen against hostile ships only). Influx of new ship models: Many new ship types are now available in the custom battle system and Naval Academy, covering a wide range of cruisers of the World War I and later era, as well as several new modern battleships and battlecruisers. In particular the following are added: - Detailed model of the Italian Heavy cruiser “Trento” of the 1920s. - Detailed model of the British Armored cruiser “Warrior”. - 2 new light cruisers of the dreadnought era, special for Germany, based on the Light Cruiser “Emden”. - 7 new heavy cruisers distributed for all nations. - 5 new modern light cruisers distributed for all nations. - 1 French super battleship. - 1 French modern battleship. - 1 new USA Battleship hull type: a smaller version of modern BB that can represent South Carolina and South Dakota battleships. - 1 new Italian Modern Battleship hull type. - 1 new UK Battleship hull type: It can represent a variant of HMS Nelson and generally the N3/G3 class. - 6 new Battlecruisers designated as "Large Cruisers" distributed for all nations except Britain. - Improved a late UK Battleship with modern towers (The model that appears in mission “German Pride”). - 1 new Russian modernized Battleship. - 1 new generic modernized Battleship. NEW NAVAL ACADEMY MISSIONS German Raiding Squadron: Your light cruisers must sink several cargo ships defended by a British armored cruiser. An enemy Battlecruiser approaches so you need to act fast. Dreadnought vs Modern Cruisers: Powerful modern cruisers with state of the art fire control and devastating torpedoes should have no problem sinking a dreadnought of older technology. You can prove the opposite, either by enhancing your battleships with equipment of advanced technology, or investing more money for building more ships. Wounded Beast: Your German battleship is damaged from a previous engagement and is hunted by the British fleet. Reinforcements are on their way to help you out. Cruisers needed: An Italian Battleship is chased by a French Super-Battleship and your cruisers must rescue it. SHIP DESIGNER IMPROVEMENTS Operational Range is locked in “Medium” for Naval Academy (it will work fully in campaign). The player will no longer exploit the system by setting it at minimum range and create overpowered ships versus the AI. Several improvements/fixes in weights/costs of ship assets. AI will design more effectively the ships allocating weights for guns and speed in a more balanced manner. AI will increase Turret armor over technology era and this will be a necessity for player too, for reducing the chance of ammo detonations and main gun destruction. (Note: in late era battles, the maximum armor setting will usually correspond to the turret armor now. We will improve UI to be more specific). Auto-Design (for player and AI) is now smarter, since it realizes which technologies are better to use according to year. For example, you will no longer see ships auto-designed with full coal engines in the 1920s or with weak torpedoes. PS.The initial technologies will be set up according to tech era, so that player designs the ship from scratch with less micromanagement. Various improvements/fixes to hulls according to player reports. Deceleration of ship is now properly affected from various ship design decisions. (Previously it was only affected by ship’s size and weight). Turbo Electric Drive auxiliary engines now offer a significant boost to acceleration/deceleration, making them really effective for initiating sharp maneuvers and dodging torpedoes. One more upgrade (Turbo Electric Drive II) is available with stronger effects. Light Cruisers’ maximum gun size is now 7-inches (from 8-inches) so that we reflect better the class distinction between Light and Heavy Cruisers. BALANCES/COMBAT IMPROVEMENT Damage fine tuning according to the new ballistics/damage model. Smoke from funnels obstructs directionally the gun aiming. Accuracy penalty is received if the smoke emitted from the ship’s funnels interferes with the target at some angle. Reduced target signature of guns. It is now more balanced the effect of ship size and targeting, while player should no longer be able to exploit Naval Academy battles by over-reducing the target signature with less secondary guns. Torpedoes can now cause ammo detonation, if they penetrate the hull. Torpedoes of large diameter will be extremely dangerous, even to large and well protected battleships. White powder shells rebalanced (removed shell weight loss, because it made shells too ineffective with bad ballistics at medium range). Lyddite I shells penetration penalty reduced (They could become too weak). BUG FIXES Fixed a rare crash issue after exiting battle. Fixed a sound bug (it caused only a console report during battle). Fixed bug not allowing to set up target for individual ship of a division. Fixed an issue that could cause lag after exiting a custom battle. Fixed bug that could desync damage of gun & barbette, making them become destroyed independently. OTHER Transport ships became available in custom battles. You can now set up convoy missions as you please (Note: Transports will still be uncontrollable). Improved ship floatation motions. Ships should not pitch/roll so much as before, especially the heavier ships.

We try to offer this in the upcoming patches. Very glad you enjoy the game!

These 2 are features of the upcoming patch 🙂 Destroyers will arrive afterwards.

Target signature is going to be improved in upcoming patch. Guns will not have such drastic effect and player will not exploit this to create less targetable ships by having less secondary guns.

We do prioritize to fix in next updates. It was just an issue we considered less important than having ships not firing torps or an idle AI.

They have a limited rotation range, to make them useful in gameplay. Otherwise, most players would argue why their ships do not fire torpedoes.

Can you elaborate on that? How are 7 inch guns as deadly as 13 inch guns?

Known issue, thanks, we will fix this.

In most cases a fire delay is expected. Fire delay can be caused: - By slow gun rotation (if all guns reloaded but ship turns too fast). Gun rotation speed is related to tech, so if ship has very big turrets and slow rotation mechanism, it sometimes it might delay too much to fire, depending on target orientation. This is 90% the reason of the issue reported. - By random aiming delay. - Gun is blocked by some obstacle, so it never fires, and waits for next reload cycle. We have not found yet any other reason, a bug that is critical, to look to it further. PS. In next patch we fix various issues with ballistics, so any such related bug should be resolved.

This is already included for next patch.

A slight Weight offset fore or aft is expected in ship design according to the objects mounted on ship and affects the metacentric stability of the ship in an expected way. The weight offset across the beam, even if everything is placed symmetrically, is a minor known issue to some hulls, that is going to be addressed in next patch.

The penetration info updates also according to the angle of the target ship, so this can be a reason of a low pen chance.

This is a feature that is many times requested. We have not been able to offer quadruple turrets, but it is something we want to offer. It will depend on the progress of our other main priorities = campaign/crew You can already combine optical rangefinders and special radar rangefinders for increasing accuracy, aiming and spotting. We want to offer more option for Director systems and Radar, we shall gradually.

Barrel length is something already considered but we are far from putting it in our priorities list, because we have to focus development on crew and campaign. Using guns of lower technology is something more complex than it appears, it will need more work and therefore we cannot promise it at all. When we make all the necessary for the game, we can develop this and other similar details of the ship design system.

I answered about pagoda towers. Superstructure will work as now.