JaM

were download links removed? edit nwm, im blind, but wouldnt hurt to make it a bit more clear where they are

So i guess it is not compatible with 1.3.2?

Actually, large waves will block the radar, create a lot of false returns, making it almost impossible to spot something.. Guess why russian cruiser Moskva got sunk? it was unable to recognize Neptune missiles against sea due to slightly higher waves.. onboard S-300 radar just couldnt handle all the false returns..

My probably biggest beef with this game is how time acceleration is handled.. It just makes you WASTE so much time waiting for something to happen.. Please, make it customizable by player!! Either give us option to set the range for certain time speed, or at least double the last two acceleration options so chasing enemy ships is a lot faster.. Nobody enjoys watching ships with only slight speed advantage (2-5knots more than chased enemy) to literally crawl into gun range, while timer is not allowing you to speed it up...

Latest beta - game is stuck at loading battle, its "preparing for battle" for 15 minutes.. cant submit bug report..

Dual Barbette for small and medium guns is impossible to use on ship stern, as it refuses to be rotated... even if you rotate it (which is quite chaotic) it still gets placed the opposite way.. I have reported this bug at least 5x since 1.3.0 Beta came out, checked after each update, but still these barbettes are unusable.

Economy issues - reduce economy growth of certain large nations.. 20% economy growth USA has is very unrealistic. US had some great growth in the past, especially during WW2 and after, but it was never in such scope as in this game.. Implement a ceiling let say 10% max, or make it only possible to exceed 10% for a year or something like that.. Having 5billion income per month, with 300 billion in bank means money have no value whatsoever... At the same time, research speed is too low. As USA, even with full 100% tech spending, i could never catch up to historical designs.. in 1918 i was researching 1913-1914 Cruiser designs even with priority put on cruiser research to speed it up.. Allow overspend on technology same way as its possible to overspend on transport fleet.. it should be costly, but there should be an option to get ahead of research curve if player focuses on it..

well, from my experience, its a valid tactics i also apply.. only problem in this mod is that research is very slow, so getting some decent research ahead of everybody is much harder (but doable).. anyway i usually end up with a ton of money and nothing to spend it at.. i usually try to not join alliances, as these just drag you into World Wars.. i rather try to end the conflict fast, send my cruisers and destroyers to raid enemy trade while making sure i wont get blockaded.. anyway, sometimes i take my BB task force to engage enemy, and thanks to my superior technology, i usually easily overcome whatever fleet AI manages to assemble even if its 10:1 in their favor (always having extra ammo in my heavy ships) which tends to end war quickly

Yeah, dont bother with it right now.. if game is out of active development in summer, these changes can wait.. most important changes your mod is bringing right now (at least what I think) is the spotting improvement, which drastically decrease amount of frustration in vanilla game.. If the research was a bit more costly but not as much reduced, it would be perfect as usually, i end up having huge piles of money with everything maxed out.. which makes those financial sliders pointless..

Suggestion for Research - dont decrease the speed of research, instead make it cost a lot more to have it maxed out..

which is how it should be... game is a lot less frustrating when trying to find the enemy..

Some feedback on game: Campaign layer: - Technology while nice to have, plays minimal role as campaigns tend to be way too short... focusing on technology research is completely waste of money as you can easily win within a year or two, which is not enough time to research something and then put it on a ship, and get that ship into battle.. - Mission generator is completely random, with player having no control over mission types. There should be more in terms of war strategy player should control. Let player to decide what forces he wants to use to protect transports, raid enemy transports, or for port defense, instead of game deciding these things for the player. Battle Layer: - AI and mission generator need to be in sync. If mission is to destroy transports, AI should not run away first thing the mission starts.. At the same time, transports should provide Victory Points.. so losing them all should mean you lose the mission even if you manage to sink all enemies, because you failed at your objective... but of course, ship tonnage should still matter, so if enemy raids a small convoy with a battleship, sinks 2-3 transports but losses the BB, its hardly a win.. Same logic should be applied to all missions.. AI should not run from battle, there should be no missions where enemy is running away and is actually faster, because this just creates dull mission with player getting frustrated to never see enemy..

I think battles should always start with both fleets within visual range of each other.. otherwise what's the point? faster ships will just sail away and battle ends up being frustrating 5minutes for the player... If AI is faster and overall tonnage is much weaker, it should not even get into battle to begin with.. so technically, its more about how these battles are set up in first place, then making them actually battles..

One thing - i think there should be an option to scuttle the ship and save the crew (lifeboats).. these fights were not always waged till the bitter end, and crew would abandon the ship if situation was dire.. plus, it is kind of a strange if every single men from such ship dies and nobody can be saved..

Problem is, these guns are not properly modeled in the game, are out of place, while others that should be there are badly misrepresented (Bloomfield pattern guns). Yes, you don't have to use them (i don't). But, as they are, they are destroying the game balance, making every other gun completely irrelevant. Instead of having a choice which gun you want to use based on its characteristics, Gunnades always win, because they have no weakness, no drawback.. If they were so superior in real life, they would not get declined by Royal Navy as a failed experiment... This game strongest point is its historical authenticity.. problem is, things like these make the game less enjoyable for people who prefer this type of games.. Ultimate Admiral Age of Sail is not a mainstream game, it never will be.. so dropping historical authenticity for casual players makes no sense..

Hello Husserl, I've seen the change in latest patch, anyway i dont think changing tech description for Congreve Gunnades changes anything... Description itself mentions guns which design was submitted in 1812, and it took some time for these to be tested.. Plus eventually, Navy declined the design, because in tests they (24pdr Congreve gunnade) were found to be less effective than standard 18pdr gun (Bloomfield or Fredrick Armstrong pattern..) The whole problem with crazy stats remains - Gunnades in this game have Dispersion 1.7 despite having (per description) barrel length of 7 and 1/2 feet long... Comparatively, Bloomfield pattern guns were typically 9-10 feet long, yet in the game, they all have dispersion 2.6... Penetration profile for Bloomfield guns in game is also much worse than the one for gunnades...For example old Borgard guns were typically 8 and 1/2 feet long, so even these had better kinetic performance to a Congreve gunnade... And there is a whole issue with the fact these guns are set in Tier 2 tech tree, costs just 3000$ and 2 rep.. Yet historically these were not even designed before 1812, while Bloomfield pattern was in early introduction at 1780..With the current campaigns that are in the game, Congreve Gunnade is out of place completely, because last battle you can fight is Trafalgar in 1805, and Congreve submitted his design 7 years after Trafalgar.... So, if you want to have Congreve Gunnade in the game, it has to be Tier 3, should cost a ton of money to research, Its accuracy/dispersion should be comparable to Short guns (which were typically 7 feet long), but they should be slightly lighter.. Personally, i would just drop them completely. Some countries did use Gunnade type of guns, for example Russians, but their gunnades were shorter (5-6 feet) and Russians are not in this game anyway... Gameplay wise, Congreve Gunnade remains a cheat OP gun that makes naval combat trivial.

But thats how they should work actually.. problem is, AI can manage them right, but human player cant due to retreat functionality which makes human controlled skirmisher units painful to micromanage because they tend to run away and end up facing enemy backwards.. Maybe they should implement a check which would turn the skirmisher unit around based on where enemy is, when they retreat..

enemy skirmishers are annoying yes, but they can be dealt with relatively easy, because they are small unit and cannot survive shootout against line infantry unit that is usually 4x larger... there is no point chasing them around..

Suggestion i posted on discord: - Skirmishers needs to get some bonuses.. right now, they are not really good when using rifles due to their tendency to run away.. in my recent campaign i had much better results with them when i used Infantry carbines on them due to fast reload... when i had two skirmisher units, one equipped with rifle, other with a carbine, carbine equipped unit completely outperformed the rifle equipped unit every single time... Effectivity of smoothbores right now is way too high compared to rifles, so slow reload is way too big disadvantage. Personally, i think skirmishers need to get build-in cover bonus at least 50% so they are tougher to shoot at by normal units or artillery. At the same time, i think they should be the unit that ignores the terrain penalty to shooting... because right now, it looks like if you have a skirmisher unit facing line infantry in a shootout, both units tend to take approximately similar casualties... which is wrong, because skirmishers were actually using aiming fire, while Line Infantry used un-aimed volley fire which was more like an area effect fire... Maybe just give them the tactical training perk that artillery has, which increases stealth by 200% and adds 25 to cover? It makes no sense for artillery to get such huge stealth bonus anyway (cover bonus could remain for artillery) and skirmishers could really use something like that to be less likely to wiped out so easily

True, but considering how big fleet you end up having by Trafalgar, it would be kinda strange having frigate actions with 1-rates present...

There were no big naval battles after Trafalgar.. most actions were just blockade actions.. (either forcing blockade, or trying to break it). but French fleet was rebuilding, while Napoleon did not put major importance on fleet and rather focused on his army, which was best what he could do as there was just no chance to challenge British in open battle..

Just wanna add - Smoothbore ballistics was relatively quite simple, as each gun fired projectile of same shape, so only thing that changed was muzzle speed and weight of the ball.. Muzzle speed was a function of barrel length and weight of powder charge.. shorter guns tended to have lower muzzle speeds, and Carronades/Gunnades used less powder charge(it was necessary because short barrel means powder would not burn completely up) than normal guns due to further weight savings.. so overall, its practically a linear function where barrel length and gun weight shows the clear picture how certain guns would perform (heavier guns could withstand more powder) Therefore when it comes to performance (accuracy/penetration over range), Carronades were least effective, followed by Gunnades, Short guns, Medium guns and on top were the Long guns..

@Husserl : problem is, stats you have for Gunnades are better than what you have for Medium guns... and Gunnades are much shorter than Medium guns... Mediums in your game should have a lot better penetration and accuracy than any gunnade or carronade... yet Bloomfield guns have dispersion 2.6, where Gunnade have dispersion just 1.7... And look at penetration values over distance... Gunnades right now, can penetrate more armor at greater distance than Armstrong or Bloomfield guns of the same caliber... 5foot long Gunnade should be nowhere near to a Bloomfield pattern gun 9foot long... So No, its not question of Gunnade vs Carronade right now... Gunnades are clearly superior to every gun in the game... even those super accurate (French re-bored) guns are worse, because they are slow to load, and their accuracy boost is not that better (1 vs 1.7) for much slower rate of fire and a lot more weight... If anything, Gunnade should be worse than EOC short gun of the same caliber, but should be lighter because its also shorter.. Short gun should be more accurate, but slightly slower to load compared to gunnade. Plus, lets not forget that gunnades and carronades did not actually used full powder load similar to medium or even short guns.. so their muzzle velocity was slower than what short guns had..

But of course, its not just gunnades that need some work. Whole naval artillery technology needs some work to better represent actual gun development during those times.. You have Borgard guns in game, which were introduced in 1690, and at time period this game starts, these guns were quite rare. Armstrong guns which replaced the Borgards in 1720, were already obsolete as well, and were replaced by updated Frederick-Armstrong guns, which were technically identical, but manufactured by much more advanced process, which made them a lot more accurate than older types. Bloomfield pattern guns were the most modern guns, introduced in 1780-1790, and were further improved, but difference was not that drastic, and most ships still carried older Fredrick-Armstrong guns even during Napoleonic wars. Yet in game, obsolete Borgard guns have for some strange reason extremely bad penetration, comparable to carronades, despite being a lot longer.. Armstrong and Bloomfield pattern guns have in game same accuracy, so they are practically identical, which is quite far from truth - If in-game Armstrong pattern represents later Frederick-Armstrong guns, then there should be a small difference in dispersion. But if those are old Armstrong pattern guns, then Bloomfield pattern needs to be a lot more accurate - as thanks to more advanced manufacturing process, these guns were a lot more accurate than old Woolwich bronze guns ever were.. (yet in game, Woolwich bronze guns have dispersion 1.65, where Bloomfield only 2.6 {and gunnade 1.7}...)

@sterner Gunnades in particular right now, have better dispersion than medium guns, have better penetration over distance, take less time to reload and on top are lighter than medium guns... YET, historically, Gunnades were hybrids between short naval gun and carronade, and therefore were nowhere near as effective as standard Frederick-Armstrong or Bloomfield medium guns used.. In fact, when they were employed, they were found less effective than one caliber smaller long guns - 24pdr Gunnade was found less effective than 18pdr Bloomfield gun. So,right now, Gunnade is practically the best gun possible, because it doesnt have any negatives, just positives.. If it was modeled based on reality, their accuracy would be just slightly better than EOC Carronades (which were already slightly longer than normal Carronades), but worse than EOC short guns of the same caliber (so 24pdr EOC short gun would be superior to 24pdr gunnade in terms of accuracy and penetration, but gunnade would be easier to reload and slightly lighter) Technically, in game Armstrong and Bloomfield guns, can be assessed as medium guns, as they were typically 8-9 feet long. Long guns were usually 10feet or longer. Short guns like EOC ones, were typically around 6-7 feet long, Gunnades 5-6feet, and carronades 3-4feet. So penetration wise, best would be long guns, followed by mediums, shorts, gunnades and carronades. same would apply to dispersion. In terms of Gunnades, they should get about the same penetration as carronades, but slightly better dispersion than EOC carronades (let say around 2.8 instead of current 1.7). But Short guns should definitely be better than gunnades, because they had barrels longer than gunnades.