RAMJB

Out of the japanese, which had completely different carrier doctrine to everyone else and used their fleet's floatplanes as the main means of "carrier searches" (instead of using carrier planes for that, as the british and americans would do)... They were used for general search and patrol purposes. Graf Spee got a good use out of hers as a raider (to find out potential merchant contacts), for instance. Some of them were used for SAR if the situation called for it. Liaison duties too at times. That kind of stuff. All of them fall into "operational" roles. When it came down to actual engagements, exception made of the one sample of the battle of River Plate, those things were never used. By 1943 and at least on the allied side they were seen as more of a liability than an asset, at least on cruisers, but also on some cases of battleships (you'll note that Vanguard, for instance, didn't have any kind of floatplane facilities). As a result many ships saw their catapults and associated equipment retired, and the space and weight saved used for AAA mounts, extra crew spaces ,etc. Translated into game terms those things would be of limited use in the campaign strategy map (limited use because single planes were of very limited effectiveness at search missions - consider how many times whole "fans" of long range recon planes doing organized recon missed to spot pretty large fleets during wartime, now think how effective would be a single rather short ranged floatplane in comparison) But as soon as the game moved on to the battle engine, there'd be no real use for them. Other than being pretty huge and mostly widely exposed explosive hazards for incoming shells.

There's nothing "basic" about it. To get to the point of that "basic implementation" you need a lot more things beforehand. First you'd need some kind of flight mechanics for the planes, and damage model for them too. Then you'd need some kind of structural pieces to be used in the designer (catapults: both on turrets and separate ones - fixed and turntable ones, etc... And then floatplane hangars, recovery cranes, etc) to give ships the ability to launch, operate, and recover, those vehicles. Then you'd have to teach the AI how to incorporate all those needed pieces in it's designs. Then you'd need to model the planes themselves, several models of them to represent the several nations there are in game, and in different evolutionary models per nation to represent their visual and performance progression across the very long period of time those floatplanes existed - from the mid 10s down to the end of the game. Then you'd need some kind of UI mechanic to launch them, operate them, give them orders, recover them... Oh...and you'd need AA guns too. With their proper AA mechanics, mounts, marks of guns, etc, neither of which exist at the moment. And then modify the damage model to account for, and give the proper results, of shells hitting the hangar spaces, avgas storages, the planes if they're on the ship, etc. And then, only then, is where the mechanics by which those things would work in battle (of which yours is a suggestion) would matter. After which you have to implement the proper routines for the AI to properly use those things too. I don't see anything "basic" in what the whole proposal entails, if you ask me. Finally, "to expand to more realism"; players should keep their floatplanes on their ship's deck or hangar, whatever is the case, because, once again, those planes historically weren't launched at all during surface engagements.

I'm on topic, and I've already done so. The ONLY TIME that a naval engagement had place where floatplanes were launched, was on the battle of River Plate, December 1939. Nobody else even bothered to use theirs in any of the (many) surface encounters that happened between enemy forces which had several ships with perfectly functional catapults and floatplanes aboard. To the point that most fleets by mid-war were just taking the things off their ships. And some refits were (Amongst many other things like adding extra AAA), making crew messes and recreation spaces out of the space left by the floatplane facilities removed (this is actually true and happened in several ships). That's how useless they were thought to be. Your suggestion is about how those things should work in battles in this game. And my answer is that given the almost null usage those things had in battles in history, whatever concern about adding them is FAR secondary to many other things the game needs first. Of which there's a list that could be several pages long; from a complete revision of gunnery and gun mounts to a total rehaul of the armor model, going through literally dozens (if not hundreds) of new hulls for the designer, not to mention further work in the designer to make it more flexible, and that's without even entering into the whole campaign mode we still know very little of and will need a tremendous ammount of time and dedication to get it right ...etc. Meanwhile to have a thing that only was used once in the history of naval surface engagements (and which impact was pretty much none in the one surface engagement where it was used), there's little urgency to put it anywhere in the classification of "things that we need in this game for a good number of months to come". And that only to add floatplanes, which, as mentioned, were as useful historically that the general perception is that taking them, and their their facilities off and substituting them a couple 40mm AA mounts was a far more valuable deal than having those highly flammable bombs aboard, in a good number of the ships that had them in the first place. Also, your suggestion has nothing to do with "roles of searching out the enemy". You're making a suggestion where a floatplane would "circle around" a "target", with "Antiair auras" "Air to air auras", etc. That's a combat mechanic suggestion. Something that would happen in the battle engine, so your suggestion is about the usage of those planes in battle to begin with, and accordingly the posts and aswers you're going to get out of it are related to the actual use those things had (or rather, had not) in naval surface engagements. So I'd suggest that, if you want to tell others to "stay on topic", at least do so when they are actually off-it, and not as an underhanded way to try to silence diverging opinions on the merits of the ideas you're putting forward.

Firepower turrets will run out of ammo as fast as your design. Because it has more guns, but also accordingly larger magazines to store the shells those extra gun needs. To make it simple, if both your and my designs had standard magazine loadouts, mine would have a total of 1500 shells in the magazines. Yours would have 900s. Both would have exactly the same number of shots per barrel. Both would run out of ammo at roughly the same time if fired at the same rate of fire. With extended magazines is exactly the same way. Both designs have exactly the same number of rounds of guns, both designs have exactly the same number of salvos. Caveat here is - you guns fire faster...in fact it's your ship the one that will run out of ammo faster ;). In fact given the limited magazine model in the game right now, the disposition favors the design with more guns more. As shells come from a "shared virtual magazine" instead of being spread, as they should, between one magazine per turret that once depleted, the turret is out of action, I can keep on a pure bow on chase (six guns aimed directly forward) for almost twice the time your design can, as I have almost twice the shells. And given the AI love for withdrawing once they hit 50%-ish structural damage, that's not a meaningless advantage (even if it should, and hopefully it is soon when proper magazines are introduced). Yet another side of this is redundancy. A single well placed hit from an enemy big gun can put 33% of your firepower offline in a single stroke. vs 20%. It's a quite significant difference, and one that if luck ends up dictating you're going to lose a turret, spells the difference between being able to finish the scenario...vs not being able to at all. Another thing you're undervaluing is the actual per-shell hitting power of the larger caliber. Which actually is quite important because, whatever the damage numbers mean in the popup screens, my in-game experience tells me that bigger guns do drastically more damage (which is exactly what happened with ever-growing calibers historically). If your hit ratio ends up being around the same (less rifles with more hit %, vs more rifles with less hit %), the end bargain is that the ship with the bigger guns will do disproportionatelly more damage. I don't know how the damage calculation is done by the game, and I know this is only a subjective opinion based on my own perception of what I've seen in game. Both means there's no proof to it, but it still it's my experience and what it leads me to believe. In general as I stated I do agree that firepower bonuses are hugely attractive on their own and allow for exceedingly powerful designs without too much time spent in the design screen and knowing exactly how to toy around with your design to get the best compromise between speed, armor, and firepower. I also believe that the extra advantages given by maneouverability make a difference, but not an incredibly large one. The end result is that both options are fine for that scenario. Said that, I think that in gamemodes that favor minmaxing (and the scenario mode of this game does just that for the most part XD), if you're looking to max out your ship overall quality, then maneouverability is the way to go.

In my particular case because I've not seen a single game that was mainly designed and centered as a SP experience deliver any kind of MP one that would justify the resources invested in delivering it. Meanwhile I've seen a lot of online controversy, drama, whining, flamefests, toxic communities, and rants caused by a MP mode shoehorned into games where SP were supposed to be their main mode, which would've been easily avoided by the game just not bothering with a multiplayer mode it didn't need in the first place. I won't even mention what I think about what truly goes into really MP games - because this is not one and whatever I think about those has absolutely nothing to do with a game like this which is foremost, a single player game. But it isn't a positive opinion, as you might guess. There are far more reasons than that - the nature of modern multiplayer "playerbases" having the collective IQ of a brain-damaged lemming when suffering from severe withdrawal effects, and it's correspondent demonstration in the forums of the multiplayer games they partake on, not being the smallest one either. I used to think very differently 15 years ago but things have changed a lot in the meantime, and I've seen enough to know Multiplayer means trouble in too many levels for a game intended, from the very beginning of it's development, to be mainly and primordially a singleplayer experience, for said game to even bother with it. even then I'm not against 1v1 modes based around custom battles where both players are given the same resources. After the whole rest of the game is completed first and all the significant bits of it properly represented. Including air power (which is something I honestly think can't reasonably be done unless is in a very similar fashion to what RTW did, meaning, a sequel).

The second I see a "damage aura" with "damage dealt in increments"...the second I See any kind of "hitpoint", "Dps" or the sorts of mechanics, the second my brain just switches off and becomes completely uninterested. Besides, as Akd points out, floatplanes weren't used in combat. As far as I can't really recall the only use of them in an actual fight was on the River Plate where a floatplane was launched, a Seafox from HMS Ajax, which pretty much had no impact whatsoever in the encounter. To be completely honest most fleets found floatplanes of little relative use. To the the point that by 1943 a vast number of cruisers that were going through refits were losing their floatplanes and catapults, the space and weight savings going for other, far more pressing needs. In general the weight and support facilities needed by those things was considered a waste given the limited usefulness those planes had proven to have. Not to mention the massive fire hazard caused by the avgas handling and storage facilities those planes demanded, which those ships could perfectly do without too. One notable exception being Japan, but that only due to their doctrine about how to provide naval recon for carriers, where the carriers didn't use any planes for scouting instead reserving them for striking roles - that was the role of supporting cruisers (the Tone class, and the Mogami's rebuild, were prime instances of that role). But without carriers in the game those would be pointless too. I've insisted on it elsewhere, but I'll do it here too: air power is an exceedingly complex matter that needs to be in this game...after the foundations are already built, solid and work as they should. And air power should be introduced as a whole. Not in little bits here and there, particularily so not in roles so limited historically that not even the fleets using them considered important enough to retain their planes on rebuilds. The complication of adding that stuff is not justified by the objective usefulness it would have in the game. Floatplanes have a place in the game. Same as carriers and landbased air power. When the rest is working as it should.

...and I just think that whatever people say, you open this to multiplayer, the cries and whines and moans and complains from the "balans" crowd would utterly ruin it.

Subs should be as abstracted as they were in RTW. Probably with a somewhat larger control of their strategic deployement, but other than that being out of the player's control. In general and in raw terms - submarines did not work well for surface fleet operations. The few times they were deployed with that intended use, their effectiveness was next to none and their general impact pretty much zero. When operated independently (hence, out of the player's objective scope of tactical map control in a game like this) is when they shined. Besides there are precedents of submarine "implementation" in games with similar thematic of both subs being abstracted and not being abstracted. RTW and RTW2 abstract them ,and works perfectly fine (with some minor caveats here and there, specially when the AI goes bonkers and begins putting out hundreds of them, but that's a whole different discussion). Atlantic fleet fully modelled them in and gave players control over them, strongly featuring on the dynamic campaign gamemode. Once the novelty faded (And didn't took much to fade) it ended up being a completely surplus part of the game, one I wished would be automated so I could just ignore it because it ended being tremendously repetitive (that submarines weren't really adaptable to the turn-based system of Atlantic Fleet was an extra problem with them). When you're playing a game of this thematic and scope you know what you're signing for. And playing Silent Hunter is not part of it. To play submarine games there are games of that thematic. They must be here, of course, as they were an important part of naval warfare of the era the game covers, but there's no need to make them playable in a game which scope is centered around fleet operations where those submarines were pretty much useles. And much less plug the player into convoy battles with submarines. Something that to be accurately done would need a game on itself.

Once more, there are precedents of this. Granted that the original iteration of RTW had a "soft" end at 1925, but you could keep on playing after that for a long while, and most players did, up to 1950. Nobody really cared that planes weren't present, because everyone understood why they weren't present. If it worked there I don't see how that is not possible here too :).

I'm not sure if the idea has been ditched or not, but I'm going to assume it's not, given that the video I'm about to talk about is still up and working in steam. In steam the trailer video for UA:D shows a designer where hulls themselves are built by the player, in a modular fashion, by choosing different pieces and placing them on the builder. This would mean a huge dynamic and complex (And amazing) designer system when you'd be tailor-building your ship's hull and superstructure out of pieces, to make it exactly the ship you want it to be without any kind of limitation. I'm guessing that if that video is still up and functional (and it is), that's still the end goal of the designer, the different hulls being added progressively at this stage just being "packed up" parts or "prefabricated" hulls made up by the pieces we'll later have access to. I'm not sure if I'm right or not, maybe some developer insight can clear that part up. In the meantime what's in here already while having it's limits and not giving all the freedom I would want, is still more than enough to be engaging and interesting enough to have me hooked to the screen for a long time just toying with the designer and seeing what kind of stuff I can get done with it.

The most immediate precedent of a game with a thematic like this one's proves that assumption is completely incorrect. Air power is an extremely complex thing to introduce and you can't put in some aspects of it while completely ignoring the rest. RTW did a good job in introducing new things as it did - making sure the foundation of the game (ship design, tactical combat, campaign dynamics, etc) were working properly and optimally, before messing with, and opening up, the huge can of worms air power means for a game like this. I expect the development team of UA:D does a similar thing. Rushing up new features just for the sake of having them always means big trouble. I totally expect the game, on it's initial release, to not bother with planes at all. And I'd fully support that decision if it's really that way. Whatever other alternative entails introducing yet another highly complex layer to an already complex game, before that game is settled down enough to take the new features. TL:DR: let's get a proper, immersive, believable and WORKING game with surface units first. Planes can come up at a much later stage, once everything else is working as it should.

No. To counter the effect of having radar being "too good" (which only really was since the introduction of centimetric wavelenghts in sets with proper power output, and that didn't happen until 1943), is for the player to focus on that technology in the campaign mode. Radar was a revolutionary piece of equipment, specially as it became more developed and reliable, and *WAS* a defining factor in determining naval technological superiority. So should be in this game too. No need to "compensate" for it. I think the early date cutoff in 1880 is the earliest the game can go. Go earlier than that and suddenly the game has to emulate sail power; not to mention the literally dozen of hulls (some truly unorthodox) that were common in the ironclad era. Which is one I also find exciting and highly interesting, but one that would force the game to spend far too much resources on, considering the scale of what it already intends to cover.

The only radars in 1935 were experimental, had a very limited range, the resolution of the pre-fix hubble telescope, and weren't fitted to operational units. First seagoing radars were german, the Seetakt, and that one was quite limited in it's abilities. The British followed very closely almost at the same pace. 1938-39 should be the lower end limit for the first radar technologies to come online in game, as they were in history. And the US wasn't in the vanguard of radar technology. Germany and UK were, and their early war sets were terribly limited in anything that wasn't detection purposes. The americans jumped into the radar race and took it by storm during WW2 but that was only AFTER they had been given the technology the british had developed, including the revolutionary magnetron. Gen1 radar in game should simulate the first, early WW2 sets able to do search and very limited FCS assist roles. 1940 tech. Gen 2 should be centimetric wavelenght radars in their first iterations, that allowed for blind fire control but were quite touchy and still of limited capabilities (1942 tech). An hypotetical Gen3 should be end-WW2 radar sets, much more reliable and powerful, corresponding to the 1944-45 sets. And there should be no radar in the mid-30s. Because there was no radar then.

Except for the fact that she'd been never built. Japan didn't have the resources (money, industrial capability) to complete what they actually intended to build in the first place. The WT saved them from either quitting the naval arms race and "lose face", or bankrupting themselves into oblivion if they kept their naval building program up as it was in 1922; let's not even think of them upscaling it with even larger ships of yamato size. Ditto with the UK, a bankrupt nation after WW1 and one that had trouble completing the much humbler Nelsons with the very low (for the task they had) interwar navy budget they had to live on, let alone go wild with N3s and G3s, let MUCH MORE alone going wild with 65000 ton battleships. The ony ones with a confirmed will to expand their navy like crazy AND the finantial, industrial, and shipbuilding, means to achieve their intended goal was the US Navy (and even then, they'd been strained to fullfit it). And the US Navy was NOT interested in battleships that size, as the story of the Tillman designs prove (designs complete to satisfize an, let's say, extravagant senator, but that the US Navy had absolutely no interest whatsoever in seeing completed). Without the treaties naval construction would've grinded to a halt by the late 20s. You can't build what you can't pay for.

If you think that map somehow represents a place where a big naval engagement between capital ships of the dreadnought era would take place at all, then UA:D is not only what you expected WOWS to be but that never was...it's also a lot of things you're not expecting it to be. Realistic, for one ;). Now I don't say this to discourage you or to somehow feel I'm dishing you, which can't be farther from my intention. I'm just pointing out that the kind of gameplay you can expect out of a game which has high regard for historical fidelity and immersion has absolutely nothing to do with that you'd find in an arcade game like WOWS where the only thing "Naval" are the 3D models of the vehicles that fight there. And part of the complete lack of regard for realistic naval engagements WOWS shows, is in where it forces those vehicles to fight, and in the way those vehicles are artificially allowed to move so they CAN fight in the maps they're put into. Plainly stated, a big ship could perfectly take more than half an hour from full stop to full ahead, and several minutes to stop from max speed to a full stop. Ship's turnrate was very slow (compared with the racingboats of WOWS). Risks of running aground were nothing to sneeze at, a grounded ship could get stuck with ease in shallow waters (several battleships were lost that way, becoming stuck on some uncharted shallow rock and then being destroyed by the tides). No battleship captain would ever venture into an area like the one you drew. Not even a lunatic would risk such expensive warships in a place so likely to get his ship nose-in into an island. Nor any cruiser one, now we're at it. And probably destroyer skippers would have a serious stressful time trying too. You've drawn a map for a multiplayer deathmatch-style arcade game. UA:D is nothing of the sorts - it's a very different animal. No big surface fleet would've ventured in an area like the one you depicted. Now don't get discouraged by it: UA:D might not be a fast paced arcade multiplayer deathmatch, but if you like ships (if you REALLY like ships) and if you're interested in how they actually fought (Vs the completely made-up stuff of WOWS), then you'll love it and learn a lot in the process. But if you expect it to be WOWS 2.0...well, that it is not. Like, at all.

I had not truly noticed this until a couple days ago. Let's begin with the factual stuff. In the Big Gun Era, shell weight was mostly a factor of caliber. Of course there'd be variance from case to case, but largely the bracket of weighs the projectiles you fired fell into was decided by the gun caliber. This is because going far lighter or heavier than the "average" would produce pretty bad side effects for your guns and/or your gunnery (specially at longer ranges). So what's a representative scale of shell weight per caliber?. In what naval gun shells regards the averages in some of the most common calibers, it would look like this: 6in: 50kg/110lbs weight 8in: 100kg/220lbs weight 11in: 300kg/660lbs weight 12in: 400kg/880lbs weight 14in: 670kg/1480lbs weight 15in: 800kg/1760lbs weight 16in: 1000kg/2200lbs weight 18in: 1500kg/3320lbs weight Now granted, this is an aproximation. Variance happened amongst fleets even for what was considered the "average". But in general you could go somewhat lighter, somewhat heavier depending on your doctrine. Lighter shells than the average allowed for higher muzzle velocities for same chamber pressures, meaning lesser TOT (Time on Target, shell travel time per distance) higher vertical penetration (performance vs belt armor) at short and medium ranges, at the cost of a loss of penetration at long range (lighter shells had lesser inertia, tended to lose speed faster than heavier projectiles and as a result they had much poorer terminal ballistics), higher dispersion and poor plunging performance at long ranges. Conversely, heavier shells caused a lowering of the muzzle velocity, that allowing for better long range performance and dispersion (and lesser barrel wear), at the cost of larger shell travel times and a slight loss of vertical penetration at middle and short ranges. You could also design your gun breech to stand a heck of a pressure for the caliber and go high MV and high weight too. In practice very few did, and for good reason, at the italians proved, their 15'' gun fired a massive projectile (885kg) fired at very high MV (850m/s). The results were less than spectacular because that gun suffered from massive barrel wear, not to mention problems with dispersion at long range (probably because subpar charge quality, but also probably because of muzzle interference). In the late 30s and the 40s the americans stirred the pot quite a bit. They went off-scale in the weight of their shell in what was called the "superheavy" shell, by accepting lower MVs and going even larger on the shell weight. The result was monster sizes for shells (compared with their caliber). Their 8'' gun fired a 152kg shell (vs the roughly 100 as average). Their 12'' superheavy shell (for the alaskas) weighed 520kg (vs the standard 400-ish). And the star of the show, the 16'' superheavy shell, 2700lbs (1230kg), widely renowned as the most destructive naval shell ever produced (per caliber). The cost is that all those shells were fired at MVs that ranged from 750 to 770m/s, which is quite low for naval guns of the era. That was history. Because in game things are VERY different. let's take as a sample the 14'' Mk3 gun, with the superheavy option enabled. 1273kg. 2800lbs. Yep, you're reading right. In game a superheavy 14'' shell weighs more than an historical 16'' superheavy one. And it's not just the 14'', it's across the board. All shells weigh well avobe what they should as standard - go heavy or superheavy, those things turn into absurdities. In case you're wondering, in game a Mk3 16'' gun fires a ... 1867kg superheavy shell. 4100lbs of pure destruction. Yup, that's 900 more pounds than the shell fired by Yamato's 18.1'' guns (granted, Yamato fired a rather light shell for the caliber at 3200lbs but even then, what the heck). Which is hardly surprising because the baseline for the Mk16'' gun (standard shells) is 1316kg (2900lbs). Which means in game standard 16'' guns are firing heavier shells than the renowned historical american superheavy ones.... TL:DR Methinks the guns need a serious re-check and revision all across the board XDDDD. BTW penetrations are also out of whack (but we all know that). Particularily blatant is the exceeding penetration of very early marks of guns that shouldn't have any kind of advanced AP cap, and accordingly be pretty limited in penetration (IIRC, in Jutland there wasn't a single case of an armor plate over 10'' thick that suffered a full penetration). Meanhile in game those shells go through truly astonishing thicknesses as if it was butter. But that's a topic for another day ;).

I know is not game related but..."ought not to be" is one thing..."never was" is a different one. Japanese turret farms (Fusos and Ises, specially the former) had far thinner protection alongside their extreme turrets than the middle ones did, as their main belt tapered towards the ends of their coverage area (they were covered by the equivalent of less than 200mm of armor, a far cry from the 300mm of nominal belt armor they supposedly had). One could qualify that as "being behind an extended belt" ;). At any rate, sorry for the little offtopic, but, well, that magazines were supposed to be given very good protection doesn't mean they always did - and in game whatever the final version of the final armor layout mechanic is, care should be taken to give them proper armor too :).

As for what does that option truly enable you to do... well, Meet Akagi... Max bulkheads and survability options (save for double bottom instead of triple), 15x14'' mk3 guns with superheavy shells on expanded magazines, 20 inches of armor, almost 9 of deck and turret tops, moving at 28.5 knot top speed. Not even in my best try I could get anything of the likes with the firepower option unless I went with 9 main guns only. And even then either speed or armor had to give compared with this one. And those are 15 rifles firing superheavy shells. Sure, not the same long range accuracy or individual hitting power as 16in guns Mk3 with firepower option. But still, 15 of them, firing 1210kg shells apiece. That's a broadside throw weight of more than 18 tons. Firepower gives you 21 tons with 12x16in guns but good luck achieving the kind of speed and protection this thing has with four triple 16in turrets. 9x16in just does not compare (not even close). Firepower gives you better hitting chances per gun (thanks to radar and class 5 rangefinders vs class 4 rangefinders). But 15 rifles means more rolls per volley, 14'' guns allow you to use the best superstructures (their barbettes won't take 16'' triples) so I save both the weight of a separate barbette, AND get the extra accuracy bonuses of the top superstructures. I also have the speed to control the range of the engagement so I can come faster to whatever range I choose. Tradeoffs and compromises are part of any design process, but I'd say that the firepower option compromises far more in armor and speed than the maneouverability option compromises on firepower. Both options work and are excellent for the "fight a fleet" scenario.

I think you're confusing things a bit because you think the bonus weigh % is flat added from one option to the other (meaning - one option will give you 11% less engine weight, for instance). It's not the case. Look at the tooltip on the firepower option - it's listing a -38% engine weight bonus due to that option's hull form. Look at the tooltip on the maneouver option - it's listing a -49% engine weight bonus due to that hull form PLUS the bonus of maneouverability (11%) The end result is that you don't save a flat 11% of weight from one option to the next one, it's a bonus to whatever bonuses you already have. Given that the first option already gives a good bonus, the end result is that you save less weight than what you might think at first. Still those are 400 tons saved in weight. Translated that into armor, it's a crapload of extra protection on it's own. Also, while you're on it, take a look at the hull weight in both options ;).

I'ts been ages since I last played Jutland, but if memory serves right, was based around statistic calculations aswell.

I actually was thinking Europa Universalis. Where believe it or not I've had cases of players having MASSIVE temper tantrums about the fact that other players were more powerful than his nation, and correspondly (and realistically) were pretty much dictating what he could, or could not, do: like going to war with minors they had declared under their immediate sphere of influence under the threat of being DoWd in response. Dude ignored the warnings, got the promised response, got accordingly crushed in the subsequent war: And you should've seen the chatbox (And what went on in the forum thread where we were doing the MP game's AAR) about how unfair the game was, how much of a band of bullies we the rest of players were, and how stupid the game was for allowing things like that. In a multiplayer grand strategy game by Paradox. No less. You would think that someone playing a game like that would think that was a given. Well, trust me: NOPE. And I'd rather sit on a spike bed than having that kind of crap going all around this forums too.

And that's exactly the kind of thing that can't be leveraged against RTW's system. Out of the legion of things that can be said about how limited and infuriating it's battle generation system is, that specialized ships are forced to fight engagements they never were intended to in their design process isn't one. Let's put this in perspective. Atlanta was lost in the night engagement of Guadalcanal. Several of her sisters and half sisters were heavily involved in surface engagements during WW2, something the design wasn't really suited for nor intended for. They **STILL** were fielded on those fights and battles by the relevant commanders, not left at port "because they were AA cruisers". A ship you have is a ship you use, because it's one more hull and some more weapons you're putting on the battlefield, which even if subpar, are better than not having them. And accordingly those ships, even if really never intended for heavy surface action, *were* used in heavy surface actions. Because it was better to have them on a battle than not having them. Henceforth, that a player is given the choice to NOT use a ship he, rationally, would've used if a real war even if subpar for the purpose, is something I don't want any game to do. I'm all for creating divisions, flotillas and squadrons, and task forces. Whatever the strategic unit is around which battles are generated/called/offered/whateverthecaseis ,should be that, an UNIT. And if that ship is part of that unit, that ship gets dragged into battle with the rest of that unit. Exactly the same way it happened in real fights. You don't pick a couple ships off that unit and plug them out of battle "because hey, that CLAA? I never intended to fight other ships". If they are present, they get engaged in the battle. As it'd been the case with any such ship in the era the game covers (and there are a good number of instances of just that). I'll have to insist that the compromise entailed by highly role-specific ships entail seeing them engaged in actions they were never designed for. A game that artificially, and unrealistically, gives you the chance to NOT get those ships engaged in an action they weren't designed for, is a game that's doing something wrong. As for the information presented to the player before battle, having no idea what you're about to find was perfectly fine. The completely random way ships you were given control of, was not. You'd find yourself in situations where the AI had control of a couple battlegroups while you were sailing around in a CL. What the... if I'm the commander and admiral of the action, I'm not going to be stuck in a small cruiser when there are battlesquadrons involved. I'd be in one of the big boys. Things like that really soured RTW at times, and things like that is what I expect this game to NOT have. But ships that aren't suited for surface action because they're specialized for something else?... you put them in your one of your active task forces, then you should see them pulled into fights alongside the rest of the ships that form that task force. Simple as that.

Not the first time this subject has been brought up. My position hasn't changed (nor is likely going to). Campaign should be a SP experience and be left alone at that. People read "Multiplayer" on a game description and their first reaction is "Balans". The day MP campaign in a game like this is a thing, the day we'll have the forums full of people whining about how their small nation of choice can't fight in equal terms with the Royal Navy player and that "balans" demands him having the same chances to "win" as he does. bollocks to that. That alone means a huge red flag to me. The whole lot of other reasons (complexity, development time needed for the netcode and the MP indispensable anticheating measures, minmaxing, etc) just underscore that red flag. Now, a custom gamemode where you can fight against an human opponent, after deciding year, initial funds, and top tonnage to then design your warship lineup and then give it a go?. Maybe in the far future, when EVERYTHING ELSE in the game is sorted out, why not. But only then, and only in that particular shape. Anything else is a huge NO in capital letters from me. Both at this stage, and any other stage of development down the line, sequels included.

Not gonna lie that I'm in the same group of people who think RTW's worst aspect is just that. But the argument used I don't agree with. RTW should allow the player to define task forces because it's how ships operated (and still do). You'd not bag them all in a collective group which only common denominator would be which area they were placed at. You'd assign them to permanent squadrons, divisions, flotillas (Depending on the kind of ships) which them would be formed into persistent, even if temporary, task forces. And then those task forces would act as a tactical unit in the strategic map. This is how it was done and for very good reasons, both logistical and tactical. The same way in a strategy game about land forces you wouldn't have your forces organized in "infantry, cavalry, armor, artillery" in a given geographical zones. You'd have regiments, forming up either brigades or divisions, forming up army groups, forming armies. That is enough reason to push that kind of feature in a strategy game. No need to pledge for the usefulness of specialized ships. Because those, simply said, always were less valuable than designs which were balanced for several scenarios, instead of a single, specialized, one. I get that there's a certain allure to design your ship to a particular scenario, making it deadly for it. There also was, historically. That doesn't mean reality sugar coated things and threw those ships in the ideal scenarios. For instance: Atlanta was sunk in a massive fleet encounter where two battleships were involved. Did the ship designers ever accounted for that?. No. Would've it been better to have a ship less focused for one particular role, and more flexible in it's design's intended roles in that battle?. Yes. And like that, many others. From the "British BC", intended to hunt cruisers and sweep away enemy light forces, that ended being the focal point of battleline actions which they were woefully protected to fight, to the japanese torpedo hotels (Kitakami and Oi) that even the japanese recognized they were such a bad idea that they ended up converted into fast transports or into, of all thing, suicide midget sub tenders because even with that many torpedoes on board (and, in fact, partly because of that) those ships were aknowledged to be absolute stinkers for actual naval combat. The initial batch of condottieris, laser-beam-focused on top speeds avobe anything, devastating vulnerable and useless for anything but running (And sometimes, at running too). And a long etcetera. Simply stated: well balanced, flexible, adaptable designs were loved and gave sterling service. Highly specialized ships in general performed poorly. Because at the end of the day a warship can't choose what battle it's going to fight - if battle presents itself, it HAS to take part of it, or it'll be a waste of money and resources. Thus that the game throws your highly specialized ships into situations they were never intended for I don't see as a flaw. It was the risk you were running by designing and building ship classes that focused on single roles, leaving the rest pretty much as an afterthought. Said that I repeat again that RTW's system of battle generation is indeed the weakest part of that game and it's biggest flaw. But alluding to specialized ships suffering because of it is not a good argument - highly specialized ships will suffer in any game that portrays naval combat of the era for what it was, for the same reason they did in reality :).

They're rare but they happen. And that they're rare is good. Other than carriers (for quite evident reasons of having to be loaded to the brim with avgas), no big warship was lost due to fire since Tsushima (And even there, it wasn't really fire what killed them) and up to the end of the big gun era.