Panzergraf

2024-05-03T08:07:40Z

Many early hulls can't mount barbettes at all, but (on some of them?) if you select the tiny square barbette first, even if it's grayed out, it becomes available and "unlocks" other barbettes as well.

Pretty sure you're not supposed to get barbettes for those ships at all, and it's a bug. But hey, until it's fixed it's exploitable and lets us do superfiring turrets on pre/early dreads.

Thursday at 05:33 PM

Or some for of rule that prevents fore/aft belt/deck armor from being thicker than fore/aft main belt/deck armor.
Very often do we see the AI build for example battleships with 0" main deck armor and 12" fore or aft deck armor.
Or ships with 0" (or minimum, depending on class) main belt armor and very heavy fore or aft belt armor.

If there was a rule preventing the extended belts/decks from being thicker than the mains, the AI would have to armor up the important areas before wasting displacement on super thick slabs of steel elsewhere.

Thursday at 06:41 AM

I saw someone else had already made a topic like this too, but I figured I would make my own as I have a few wishes. Some small, which I would guess could be easily implemented, and some that I'm unsure of whether or not they're possible. But hey, it's just a wishlist; not a list of demands😉

Custom Battle Setup:
The option to set battle timer. Currently the timer is 10 hours (ingame) for a custom battle, with no option to reduce it. Would it be possible to give us another drop down menu to select battle time from 1 hour up to 10 hours?

The option to use multiple classes of each type of ship. Currently if we want to replicate something like the battlecruiser fight in the battle of Jutland, Germany and Britain would only get multiple ships of one class, rather than several types of different battlecruisers. Would be nice if we could select for example 2x Derfflinger and 2x Seydlitz VS 2x Queen Mary and 2x Indefatigable (or even try to replicate each individual ship) rather than just having to settle for 4x Derfflinger VS 4x Queen Mary or something.
This would also make things easier when you're trying to fight a specific Shared Design ship - currently we have to remove all other similar designs to ensure we get the opponent we want.

Campaign Setup:
Campaigns could also benefit from more options.

Select Ending Year. Currently a campaign will last until 1965. That's great if you want to play a long campaign, but what if you just want a short campaign starting in 1890 and ending at the dawn of the Dreadnought era in the early 1910's? I would think it would be easy to add this to a drop down menu (and yes I'm aware no one is forcing us to keep playing)

More options for AI behaviour. Currently we can pick Historical, in which each AI nation is controlled by its respective AI personality (Germany is controlled by germanyAI, Britain by britainAI etc.) or Random where Germany might be controlled by franceAI, Britain by defaultAI, USA by jeunecoleAI, etc. Looking at the save files, there are a lot of AI personalities. It's possible to assign specific personalities to specific AI Nations by editing the save file, but it would be nice if we could do it when just generating a campaign.
If possible, setting the AI personality to Default should make their Technology progression paralell that of the custom battle/shared design progression. This should make the AI more likely to build Shared Design ships throughout the campaign, as their tech level would always match.

Divorce Funds from Difficulty. The current difficulty setting just gives the AI more money. It would be nice if higher difficulties gave the AI certain tech advantages at the start, and made all nations more hostile to the player. So on Legendary difficulty it should be very hard to make friends and a player would often see the AI ally with each other and go to war with the player. While on Easy difficulty the opposite would be true.

Funds could have two separate drop down menus, one for the player and one for the AI. High Funds would be similar to the GDP bonus the AI currently enjoys at Legendary difficulty setting. So setting AI funds to High and player funds to Low (or standard?) would give the same experience as the current Legendary difficulty setting, but if combined with the reworked more agressive AI behaviour at Legendary difficulty proposed above, a player would be up for a real challenge.

Submarines/Mines, Enabled/Disabled
Self explanatory

Campaign in General:
More events to lower Unrest would be nice. Currently it is very hard to lower unrest unless you're at war. While I personally don't struggle with very high unrest, the AI constantly does, leading to revolutions and rebellions. I think it would also make sense if Unrest constantly decreases when a country is at peace and the economy is doing OK.

When taking ships as War Reparations, could we always get the plans for them so they can be refit? Currently, if the AI we're taking ships from has deleted the design plans, there's no way to refit our prizes. And there's no way to know which ships come with design plans when selecting ships. As a workaround, could the AI be prevented from deleting plans of ships they still have in service? It would also be nice if we were shown which class each ship belongs to, by mousing over them to see details. Currently we just have to guess based on the value.

The Log in the lower left corner of the campaign map shows a lot of information when a new month is being loaded, but once the month has loaded most of that info is just gone. It would be nice if we could scroll down the full log.

Battles in General:
Something a lot of players have asked for is a "deployment phase" at the start of a battle. I don't need to see the enemy deployment, personally, but it sure would be nice if I could manually set which ships are in a line formation, and their heading, and which are screening, scouting, etc. Currently it can become a bit of a fustercluck doing it at the start of a battle, especially if the enemy is already in firing range. Many DD's have been lost by simply not being able to get out of the way soon enough when the BB's are taking fire.

The bad weather "fog effect"
Note, I'm not talking about DD/CL smoke screens! In certain types of weather, the battlefield is covered in a kind of haze. Not only is this annoying to play in, as seeing your ships, their heading, torpedoes etc. becomes very difficult for a player, but it also looks bad. There are two types of cloudy weather; Cloudy and Overcast. I forget which is which, but one of them has the ugly haze, one of them has a nice steel gray ocean and a cloudy sky box. The second one looks great, and the actual in game effects of both kinds of weather are more or less the same. Can we just lose the hazy fog, please? It also hides the dramatic looking waves in Stormy Weather.
Now again, to be clear, I'm fine with my Ships having reduced view range when the weather is bad, but I, the Player, would like to see what's going on!

Ship Designer:

Could we get a separate Length slider, and just calculate Displacement from where we set the Length, Beam, and Draught?

Could certain ships get access to a third type of optional tower; a Middle Tower that fits between the Main and Rear towers? This would typically have funnel slot(s) and maybe some secondary barbettes or casemate mounts.
Yes, the effect can be replicated currently by just mounting funnels and secondary barbettes on the deck between the Main and Rear towers, but that doesn't look as good...
Would be nice to fill out some of the bigger Super BB hulls, which can often look a bit empty! (and some of them, like the German one, could really use some more funnel slots)

That's about it for my wishlist. Yes, I left out things like Multiplayer and Multithreading support, but I feel that's probably outside of the scope of a Patch. (would love to be proven wrong though!!!)

April 27

On 4/26/2024 at 9:29 PM, StrikerDanger said:

Right-click on the two stacked task forces. That's allowed me to deal with ships/groups that I have stacked on top of one another.

Adding myself to the list of people who had no idea this was a thing. Thank you!

April 21

1 hour ago, HMS Implosive said:

The devs could even remove the width slider and decouple hull lenght from the displacement slider, and then introduce legth-to-beam -slider instead. The new displacement slider would make the ship bigger or smaller in every direction while the new legth-to-beam -slider, (or just length -slider), would add or remove hull sections when needed.

Or just remove the displacement slider and replace it with a length slider, and just make displacement calculated from lengthxbeamxdraught.

April 20

12 minutes ago, HopefullAdmiral0786 said:

However, despite me positioning a sizable task force next to either the Russian provinces around the Back Sea or Russian Far East - the invade option is ALWAYS 'greyed out'. At first I thought that this was a bug, but now I am wondering if one is to launch an invasion of an enemy territory, one needs an uninterupted clear route, with no enemy ships in between, between my territory and the intended invasion destination. Thus allowing ones troop transports to be able to reach the invasion destination un molested.

You need 100,000 tons (in one or more task forces) in the associated sea region* to initiate a naval invasion, no matter what the actual required tonnage to complete the invasion is.
Late game, this is pretty much a non-issue, as even a single super BB or a pair of BC's will provide you the needed tonnage.
But early game, 100k tons is quite a lot, maybe even more than some entire navies.

*hover over the province you want to invade so you get the popup showing population and income etc. It should also tell you which sea region it belongs to. For the black sea provinces it's easy; the black sea. In asia and some other places it can be a bit weird some times; Phillipine Sea, South-East Asia, Yellow Sea, Ohkotsk, etc.

April 19

1 hour ago, Kraut said:

That you cannot properly command your Taskforces at Sea cause as soon as you Split Task Force X into TF A and TF B, only one of them is selectable, cause one is buried beneath untill the other moves away next turn.

For those wanting a quick workaround to this problem:
Before splitting, order the entirety of TF X to where you want TF A to go, then split off TF B and order them somewhere else.

April 16

2 hours ago, Azerostar said:

A suggestion, show the battle results when player use 'leave battle' to end a custom battle.

Not sure if this has been asked by someone else.

Or let us set a time limit to custom battles. Like some of the challenges we've done in Shipyard Champions have involved us trying to sink X ammount of ships in 1 hour. It would be nice if we could just set 1 hour as a time limit when setting up the battles.

April 11

Yeah, I do the same and once the economy starts rolling, it almost becomes impossible to spend all the money.

But I get the frustration with poor early game economy too. If you start a campaign in 1910, you might want to be able to have a few wars and fight some battles in the 1910's, with ships of that era.

April 9

jsoneditoronline?

I checked it now, and no, for some reason it won't save changes when I edit in "tree", but it works when editing in "table"

I hope it'll get fixed, it didn't use to be an issue before.

February 29

Would be nice if we got a pop-up event before every election, where journalists ask us which party we support.
The player's answer (endorsement) will influence the election relative to their Naval Prestige. An admiral with a Naval Prestige score in the thousands is pretty much a national hero, and their political endorsement should carry some weight, whereas a fresh admiral (new campaign) with almost no Naval Prestige yet won't exactly make the front pages.

February 14

1 hour ago, Gregg said:

PLEASE, give us the option to opt out of this upgrade, so we can finish version 1.4 campaigns we are currently playing.

My advice for anyone not wishing to update their game right away (to either finish a campaign first, or wait for mods to be updated) is to just disconnect Steam. That way your game will not be automatically updated.

If you want Steam online for other games, what you could do is set UAD to only update when you launch it, that way you can disconnect Steam whenever you want to play UAD, and keep it online for other games.

It's what I do so my campaign, using Baron's excellent Naval Arms Race mod, won't get messed up whenever there's a new patch.

Hope that helps!

February 7

2) Yes, boosting techs will speed up research even if the tech has not been identified yet.

February 2

You can play as the British and fight against France in the ww1 era, yes.

Either in custom battles, or start a 1910 campaign (or 1900 if you wish) and do your best to provoke the French into becoming your enemy - enemies/allies are not locked to historical examples.

January 10

Are you suffering from transport losses? If you have no operational fleet, it's likely your enemies are sinking a lot of your transports each turn without you even getting a convoy battle (this will be listed in the Transport Losses tab that pops up at the start of each turn, along with there you lost them). Check your finances tab to see if you're getting a huge deficit from transport losses.

DON'T conquer a bunch of faraway islands (or take them as war reparations) before you can afford a big navy to protect their associated sea regions.

GDP growth will take a hit if you're at war. If you're also being blockaded (you said you only had one ship left, right?) it will be hit really bad, and effective GDP will be halved too.

Your GDP will grow a lot more during peace time. Use the months (or years) between wars to build up. When not at war, unless you're conquering colonies or actively trying to provoke potential enemies, just keep your ships in port and set them to "Limited". You will save a lot of money this way.

Torpedo tech will improve torpedo accuracy, and decrease dud chances.
If you're really struggling economically you can also reduce your tech budget, if only temporarily.

The tech tree is the same for all nations, but not all nations get the same hulls. So while every nation can unlock the 20k tons CA tech, not everyone has a hull that can go that large.

January 7

6 hours ago, o Barão said:

Semi realistic/traditional formations

Thank you! I think I'll try Semi Realistic/Swarm tactics then, for added agressiveness

January 7

On 1/4/2024 at 10:35 AM, o Barão said:

Semi realistic: Semi realistic accuracy values based on real life reports.

Arcade: Arcade game experience for players that just want to shoot things.

Traditional formations: Scout; follow and Screen formations are enabled from the start and the AI will use them. AI is also ordered to keep a battle formation.

Swarm AI tactics: Any AI ship with torpedoes is ordered to rush the player at close quarters.

There is no default option, you simply choose what you prefer to be your game experience.

But which of those options is the closest to what it was in previous iterations of NAR, before those 4 options?

December 14, 2023

You can rename ships yourself btw, I do this a lot especially to give nation appropriate names to ships I sell to the AI.
Double click the name of a ship in the Fleet tab and change it from there.
Sold ships have to be renamed while they're still being built, but your own ships can be renamed whenever.

That still doesn't fix minor nation ships bought from AI major nations though.

December 12, 2023

So I take it there won't be a NAR update for the most recent patch (that I need to actually get battles in my campaign) that does not also wreck the current campaign?

December 10, 2023

17 minutes ago, AdmiralBert said:

Nah, sometimes the game decides that firing just isn't on the cards.

I just closed the game mid-battle where a pair of my cruisers decided that firing their main battery on an opposing cruiser was a silly idea. Who cares that they had 15%+ percentage chance to hit (climbing to mid 80%), and were sailing a steady course against a closing target, they did not fire until the enemy was at near point blank range and had done significant damage to one of them. Setting the guns and torpedoes to aggressive did nothing.

Were your secondary guns blasting away?
Some times, if your secondary guns are going off, the mains will cease fire. It's an old bug that somehow returned recently...
Turning your secondaries OFF will often make the mains fire again.

December 4, 2023

From the recent FAQ update:

Quote

Why enemy submarines keep sinking my battleships?
The game simulates in an abstract way the importance -and annoyance- of submarine warfare. It is expected that battleships without sufficient escort to be very vulnerable against submarines.

The ASW value of a task force is based on an average value taken from all ships of the task force. So if you have many battleships with low ASW and a few exceptional destroyers with very high ASW, the overall effectiveness of the task force against submarines is expected to be mediocre at best. The average value simulates the undesirable noise caused by bigger ships which conflict with the effort of detecting the stealthy submarines.

In order to be more effective against very advanced and stealthy submarines of the enemy, it is advised to issue dedicated Task Forces, specific for hunting down and destroying submarines and not mix them up in a large, less effective group.

So, ASW value of a task force is only the average of all ships?

So if I build a dedicated ASW DD, with for example an ASW value of 2000, a task force of 20 such DD's will have the same ASW as a task force of a single DD, because the average will be 2000 in both cases?

And if I have an ASW CL, with an ASW value of 1000, and I indend this to be a "destroyer leader" kind of CL, a task force of one such CL and 4 of the DD's will have less average ASW value than a task force of just 4 DD's?

So for the purposes of protecting my battleships from submarines, the best TF composition would just be the battleships and as many of the 2k ASW DD's as possible, with NO other ships at all, as they would only reduce the average ASW value further?

And for the purposes of hunting down enemy submarines, the best bet would just be single DD's, as they would have the same average ASW value as a larger DD flotilla?

December 3, 2023

56 minutes ago, flashmozzzgg said:

Your words sound like a joke.

In 1.4, the battle played out in 90% of cases ends with the inscription "no submarines detected" and the damage /sinking of one of your ships. The screenshots below show a group with an escort. Only without the battlecruiser, because it was sunk, lol.

I'm saying that's what happened in 1.3.9, unlike what is happening now in 1.4

Also, one more annoying thing about submarines;
If I for example have a large task force, and I move it to hopefully engage a large enemy task force (to get an actual battle, which is what the game is all about), and then my own task force encounters a submarine, I will not get to fight the enemy task force that turn.

It's like the game saying "Nope! You don't get to actually play. Here, click the RNG autoresolve button instead."

December 3, 2023

Submarine balance was almost opposite in 1.3.9.x than it is currently. Subs could still sink or damage capital ships, now and then, but generally if you had enough escorts the subs would not get away with it.

Which caused another problem; the AI just shooting itself in the foot by building lots and lots of submarines...
In my last campaign pre 1.4, at one point the Chinese navy had 300 submarines. Years later, when China dissolved, they were down to ~50 remaining subs (and they had been building more during this long war). The cost to my navy for sinking several hundred submarines? One (1!) light cruiser.

I would like the option to disable subs for this reason too. Either they are too powerful, and it almost feels like something is bugged when you can't sink them, or they are almost useless and yet another way for the AI to shoot itself in the foot (and the AI has plenty of ways to do that already)

I will say though, that in the latest version of the game I have not yet seen the AI build way too many submarines, like the AI would often do pre-1.4, and they just keep a number that relative to the rest of their navy makes sense.
So kudos for that.

November 24, 2023

Will the new powders and explosives cause issues with ongoing campaigns or existing ship designs?

November 21, 2023

3 hours ago, PalaiologosTheGreat said:

For shared designs, can the AI just upgrade the ships by putting better modules and not actually change anything about the ships?

Me whenever I see the AI has refit a Shared Design ship I made for them

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