James Cornelius

Sadly there was a lot of potential with this game left on the table - much like there was with Ultimate General: Civil War. Such a pity, because the games themselves are excellent....they just could have done so much more for not much additional effort.

The campaigns are great, don't get me wrong. But one of the areas that I thought UG:CW really excelled was in allowing you to play the Civil War battles with the historical forces allowing you to see how you'd do when compared to history. Can you route the Rebels at Antietam like McClellan failed to do? Was Burnside's plan at Fredericksburg doomed to failure no matter what? Could Lee have stormed Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg? So why are there no historical battles in UA:AoS? Why no First of June? No St. Vincent? No Finisterre? No Trafalgar? None of the single ship duels that defined the War of 1812? I know that many of the campaign missions are either based on, or literally are, these battles, but it's not the same. I urge a future patch to include the ability to fight historical battles with the historical orders of battle. In nearly all of these, the condition of the forces is readily available in the historical record.

Are you sure that is a good thing? Naval Action is, in my opinion, decidedly inferior to what it was in, say, 2018.

Hello everyone, I'd like to suggest the future inclusion of the major (and some minor) naval battles of the era with historical orders of battle. UG:CW had plenty of them, after all. There are dozens of possibilities, and in many of them the outcome could have gone either way depending on chance or decisions made by the admirals and captains. Food for thought.

It's absolutely a lower priority than that stuff, sure. However I would wager it would be much easier to implement than, say, the campaign.

I would like to see the ability to change paint schemes on the ship - either in the pre-dreadnought era of painted hulls (like the US Great White Fleet or other navies aesthetic choices) or the ability to put dazzle or other schemes on in the WWI/WWII era.

You're absolutely not wrong, but in a way, too right: there is a reason that major fleet battles of the era were never planned to take place far from their home areas, and that is because it was not inherently possible to have sufficient logistics to maintain a large battle fleet so far from home waters and their supply ports. A raiding fleet, yes, but I don't think that's what you're talking about. Consider one of the primary reasons that the imperial/colonial powers of the day had bases on ever far flung island across the globe - it was for resupply. So, as far as raiding fleets go, such as what the Germans tried to do in the beginning of WWI, I think you're absolutely spot on. But, no logistic train was good enough to keep a large battle fleet at sea for months. The closest a fleet ever came to that feat was the Russians in 1904-1905 when they sent the Baltic Fleet to relieve Port Arthur. And look how well that turned out for them.

I think he means in a situation where he's not at risk of losing his ship. Being sunk by the AI is no less permanent than being sunk by a player.

The current model where you effectively fight a tradeship in order to board it is extremely historically inaccurate. If a merchantman couldn't outrun his pursuer, he surrendered. No solution to this problem of balancing that against it so it is not too easy in the game to raid trade ships is fully satisfactory. In Naval Action, hunting tradeships is limited by 1) the time it takes to do it and 2) the need to either fit its cargo into your own hold or add the ship to your "fleet". You are therefore limited in what how many you can take. Historically, captured merchant men rarely continued to accompany their capturer. A prize crew was put aboard to sail it back to a friendly port. Eventually, the limit to how many you could take was therefore how reduced your crew eventually became. My proposal (which now that I have thought of this I might post elsewhere) is that when you capture a trade ship you have the option of assigning a prize crew and sending it back to one of your outposts. In doing so, you have a malus of x number of crew your ship can hold (regardless of how many total you still have available through replenishment) until you go to that outpost to "claim it" from the Admiralty and do with as you will. This makes it possible to have a profitable cruise as many frigate captains did. Eventually your effective crew count will dwindle to the point you are forced to return to port - and woe to you if you encounter an enemy in your reduced state. Finally, in addition to that, when entering battle with an NPC merchant ship, there would be RNG to the effect that it will take into account speeds of relative ships, condition of your ship (damaged, etc, but only the kinds of things the captain of an opposing ship could physically see to influence a decision), size, and so on for a chance that the NPC ship would surrender rather than fight.

Hello all, I was wondering if there is a listing of the tracks used in the game. While I definitely like all the music, what got me thinking about it is that last night I was watching the first episode of "GRANT" on the History Channel and a couple times the background music in the reenactment scenes was definitely the title music in UA:D. So now I'm very curious as to what it actually is. Thanks!

I concur on all points: this is great, and it's also damn near impossible! I got luck(?) as the Monitor, sinking the Virginia with flooding. However I can't sink the monitors as the Virginia (I got one down to 0.7% structure due to fire with the other at about 50% - closest I've come).

Thanks for replying. It looks to be any Gettysburg battle/scenario where the historic II Corps OOB is used. So the "Historical" Battle of Gettysburg and the "Custom" battles of Devil's Den and Pickett's Charge when using "scenario" armies. Since the II Corps was not present then, it is not included in Gettysburg Day 1, or the "Custom" battle of Culp's Hill. Playing as the Confederates, it also seems to be present in the opposing Union troops at Gettysburg in the campaign. Thank you once again.

Hi, I'm wondering if @Nick Thomadis is aware of this in the base game, or if this is something that @JonnyH13 or @pandakraut could correct in their rebalance mod. I'd like to bring a fairly minor (yet annoying) error in the Union order of battle to your attention. It exists in all historical scenarios regarding Gettysburg, including the smaller scenario battles of Devil's Den and Pickett's Charge. The problem is the brigade commanded by Brigadier General William Harrow in the 2nd Division, II Corps, is labelled as "BROOKE" in duplication of Colonel John Brooke's brigade in the 1st Division, II Corps. This has personal significance to me, as my great-great-grandfather was in the 15th Massachusetts Regiment, which was in that brigade. Would it be possible to have that corrected so the brigade is properly named "HARROW"? Thank you very much.

I had a brainstorm today and I suspect this has already been suggested but I'm too lazy to search for it! Eventually it would be nice if there was a pre-built group of historical ship classes as well. Like most people, I want to be able to design my own but even if only from a reference standpoint it would be nice if you could, say, plug in "Pennsylvania Class" for the US and make adjustments from there or use historical classes as they were. Keep up the good work!

Hi, A quick comment since my F11 error reporting in game seems not to send a ticket. With the exception of Horatio Nelson. the other two "base" admirals to choose from at start have their names reversed. It should be "John Jervis" not "Jervis John" and "George Brydges Rodney" instead of "Rodney Brydges".

Frighteningly accurate.

Perhaps. Could someone with specific knowledge from the staff weigh in on this please? Should I create a new thread specifically for it?

Thanks for the information, but I don't think that's it. I have the game on my desktop and laptop - since the laptop travels, they have different firewall setups. I can launch and play the game without issue - but I've never had anything say "Admiral Edition", other than the receipt when I paid. I figured it would be done by email or something like that closer to release.

Good day, I have a similar problem. I purchased the Admiral Edition, but there is no window saying "Admiral Edition" in the bottom corner of the main menu.

Thank you, but you didn't understand what I meant or perhaps I was not clear. I purchased the Admiral's Edition quite some time ago - two months or more? I never saw such an option and I do not believe my copy even says Admiral Edition in the corner like that.

Where is the option to even do this? I purchased the Admiral edition and don't recall this opportunity to enter my name.

Maybe I represent a minority in this, but I really enjoyed the "Fleet Combat" missions that used to exist where you could take one of these missions and fight an AI NPC fleet with a number of friendly NPCs with you (I believe the player's side was always outnumbered, but for any decent player this was not a problem). I don't recall exactly when this was removed as I took a hiatus from the game for a while, but I suspect it was related to the looting mechanics of ships and I recognize there could be a belief that it would give a player a potentially unfair way to loot a bunch of ships at once. I thought those missions were incredibly fun, from cutters all the way to line ships. I would like to see these types of missions return. and if looting of the sinking ships is a problem would there be a way to remove loot from NPC ships in these battles? Unlike an OW NPC fleet, I would imagine these would be much more randomly generated. For solo players or small clans, it can be very difficult to have a battle with more than one or two ships and very hard to find an appropriate NPC fleet to attack in the OW, so it would be bringing back a feature to the playerbase that is now missing. For me personally, I rarely have the time to try to find people who would go OW hunting all over the map to find an appropriate NPC fleet. Please consider this when adding new mission content.

Perhaps this has already been mentioned, but I would suggest the ability to manipulate the hull somewhat. For example, lengthening the hull was proven to have a positive impact on speed, and would functionally increase both the total tonnage of the ship as well as the available tonnage (some kind of sliding scale). This would allow players greater customization as they create their ships and open the door to more interesting trade offs between speed, armor, tonnage, etc.

I agree with all this as well. Plus, there were historic examples where for whatever reason, the "optimum design" wasn't practical, so there should be allowances for that too.

That's great to hear, thanks.