CommodoreWesley

So, here's at least my "meta" for Alpha 1.05, though it is essentially the same as previous builds. What I mean by "meta" is that the easiest way to play the game. Therefore, I am only really proposing the fewest number of designs needed. There are quite a few things that I think should be debated about here, but there are some major balance issues that I bring up that are being addressed (torpedoes) but also some others. 1890: Battleships and Torpedo boats - Cruisers are pointless due to awful engine efficency. Fire will be the easiest way to knock out enemy vessels with guns, though it is best to use fire with concentrated main caliber battleship guns on one target than trying to add secondaries. In general, aiming is heavily based off of pitch and roll, therefore having fewer guns is typically far better than quantity. Torpedo boats should also only be armed with 51 mm guns, due to their rate of fire for torpedo boat vs torpedo boat actions. AI torpedo boats however are hardly a threat to player battleships, as they are too shy to get close, allowing for the BB to usually take them out extremely easily. 1900: Battleships and Torpedo boats - Relatively the same as 1890, though torpedoes are more effective due to increased range and damage, putting more favor to them than in 1890. Cruisers finally sort of catch up, but the battleships are typically faster, therefore are still largely a waste of valuable starting money. 1910: Battlecruisers only (Destroyers optional) - Probably the most fun era currently in my opinion, though once you play it with only Battlecruisers, that's really the only way to play it. Destroyers are really only there to help protect your own transports from other destroyers in raiding actions. Battlecruisers however should be essentially built as fast battleships from here on out. Keep the number of guns limited, typically three sets of twin turrets. Don't bother with casemates as all they do is increase roll, and honestly don't really have weight savings over turrets and make the hull more likely to be penetrated due to armor thickness limitations. Make a few turreted secondaries. Typically, I do one twin turret on each side, with one superfiring over the rear main turret. Destroyers however should be kept out of fleet actions, as they tend to get targeted, and their torpedo range isn't far enough. Cruisers are absolutely pointless in this era due to heavily restricted hulls and funnels and high costs. Fire can still be an extremely effective way to knock out enemy ships, therefore stock up on HE still. 1920: Battlecruisers and Destroyers - Similar to 1910, though this is where the game starts becoming less fun for me due to how dangerous torpedoes can become. While cruiser design has greatly improved by this era, light cruisers are so extremely weak against torpedoes that they are really not worth it at all due to their lack of torpedo defense (seriously, destroyers can take a torpedo better than a light cruiser for some reason...). There are also so few cost savings of them compared to heavy cruisers, it's far better just to build heavy cruisers. However, I still don't recommend building heavy cruisers either, as big gun battlecruisers (think fast battleships) are just far more effective at taking out the enemy. The Battlecruiser might be twice as expensive than the cruiser, but they are like 4 times more effective, and are cheaper per ton of displacement than cruisers, making it somewhat ironically more difficult for the enemy to blockade you despite having fewer ships in your fleet. Secondaries from here on out really become optional. Your main enemy will be torpedoes and enemy light cruisers (they are essentially expensive destroyers but can last a bit more under shellfire though their cost is not worth it for the player). Also keep the destroyers out of fleet actions, maybe let them fire torps once then let them retreat, otherwise all the do is feed the enemy victory points). 1930: Battlecruisers and Destroyers - by this time, torpedoes are king, or well, at least the most important thing you need to pay attention to from the enemy. Extreme range plunging shellfire is also very good, and with Radar it is pretty easy to do. Still, I even arm my battlecruisers (fast battleships) with torpedoes by the stage due to the range torpedoes have. The AI overloads their designs with so many unnecessary secondaries that they typically have abysmal long-range accuracy. Most of your battle is largely just trying to avoid your ships from hitting enemy (or your own) torpedoes. Therefore, long range gunfire should be the main focus to try and take out the enemy. 1940: 1930, but even more dangerous torpedoes. Basically, after 1910 just build "Fast battleships" from battlecruiser hulls and have destroyers to kill other destroyers. Torpedoes become so powerful and abundant in the later years that they will be the main threat to the player, while enemy shellfire will be largely ineffective due too many secondaries. Cruisers in general are pointless in battle effectiveness and economically (light cruisers EXPECIALLY so). I would recommend a major decrease in their cost. They may become more useful once more theaters open up in the campaign, as they were historically more so a strategic weapon, rather than a tactical one, but with the exception of build times, it seems like it is better to build battlecruisers due to their overall greater displacement as that has the blockade effectiveness. Player destroyers are really only there for potentially torpedo opportunities and for destroyer duels to protect convoys. Later era destroyers are also a bit too expensive to throw away in the screen orders (which are too aggressive and risky for my taste, particularly with the limited funds available to build our starting fleets). I think with longer term campaigns in the next version, ship designs will be more diverse, as I likely won't ever have more than 4 capital ships of the same design reducing "fast battleship" battlecruisers, though I guess we will have to find out.

*Facepalms* You know, a lot of us were already quite upset that due to the lack or ship parts that have to be crafted to build ships (blocks, frame parts, ingots, and etc.) as the production for it allowed for smaller players to be able to participate in the crafting economy and assist the shipbuilders. Taking out the crafting experience for repairs and guns is extremely ridiculous as now there's no way for us to get the crafting level up to get the labor hours to get the resources out of the production buildings... This is literally the complete opposite direction that we wanted.

I love heeling ships, because only there it separates men from the boys.

Rattlesnake HYPE!!!! And I get my Essex back!!! (and hopefully she is not the wooden wall of indestructibility this time, but behaves more like a Frigate) And crew changes! More reasons to press the 6, 7, 8, and 9 keys again! And... okay, to save you gents some time... pretty much everything. It's just so nice to be able to test new features again!

I think it should be updated weekly, most port battle invasions take two to three days to happen. Particularity right now, the battles for the frontiers of the national empires are starting to begin, there is going to be a bit of port fighting coming soon...

Daw... It was moved from the shipyard... That didn't last long... Really, this should belong in the history topic.

I'm pretty sure the Devs have declared that 1820 is going to be the real cut-off date, so the most modern ship in the game is going to be the Russian Mercury brig.

Yes, this is more of a joke than anything, but the thing that I am shocked about is that I never heard about it until a few days ago. I don't want it in the game, I just want to see what kind of reaction I am going to get.

So, the other day I was doing my normal what-I-do-when-I-am-not-playing-Naval-Action routine of searching through history articles on the internet, I found a ship that fits in this game's time period! INTRODUCING: USS Demologos (1815) Launched in 1815, and designed by the legendary American naval architect Robert Fulton, the USS Demologos was the first steam propelled warship. She was designed as a floating self-propelled gun battery to defend the Harbor of New York. Armed with 30 32-pounder guns and 2 100-pounder Columbiads, she was able to mount a full broadside due to the fact that her paddle wheels were mounted inside of her hull, therefore protected from enemy gunfire. Unfortunately, the Brits were content with just staying outside of New York and wrecking the American economy with the blockade. Also, the war would shortly come to a close. Later renamed the Fulton, she would be lost due to a powder room explosion in 1829. (Please don't kill me for suggesting this ship...)

No, no grouping of alliances, that is what made Uncharted Waters Online's port conquest thing so lame was that it was already balanced and rigged before it even started. The Devs however have already proposed an alliance system for the game, where each nation is able to make a limited number of alliances. I believe it is in their posted development plan. Each nation should be able to choose their allies through a voting system. The catch is however nations have a limit to the number of nations that they can be allied with. For example: GB currently should not be able to make alliances in PvP 1 due to their sheer numbers. Americans will be limited to one ally, while all of the other nations will be able to only ally with two other nations. Pirates are pirates, so no alliances allowed for them.

It's all about our nationalistic fervor for conquest! And I get to jump on the forums and TeamSpeaks to talk about ships and history all day! I mean, who would want to pass that up?

I would like the ability to select your own ship color, but I don't know if that should be restricted to particular nations. Personally, I would get bored with seeing the same ship paint color for all of my ships from cutter to ship-of-the-line. It's also not just the paint color, but also how the hull is marked up, some have extra lines between the gun deck, others paint the lower hull different colors. It was suggested in a post a while back, but it is probably buried under hundreds if not thousands of threads by now... I would love it if players were able to paint up their ships to seem like they have more gun ports than they really do. I hope that one day they will remove the ability for us to be able to see the health bars, number of crew and gun ports on enemy ships, or even the name of players and ships on the list when you press Tab, so people could disguise their trade ships to appear like warships to frighten away the people with not well trained eyes.

Oh my... What have I've been missing?

I personally don't like each nation to have special benefits, as one stat will make one nation seem to be the more preferred than another. I prefer battles to be out of skill of players, not the extra bonus multipliers for which nation you pick. However, I am not opposed for individual nations to have special national ships, which can only be crafted by that nation.

I guess I am the only person who has not regretted calling myself CommodoreCommodoreWesleyTestDutch...

Huzzah! I guess my glorious name CommodoreCommodoreWesleyTestDutch will soon be a distant memory... But nevertheless, still looking forward to it!

I'm sick of neutrals of stealing all my resources... On the accounts issue, I lean more towards having only one player for one account. For me, multiple accounts are just too exploitable with the current crafting system. Now, if the crafting system was real-time based (each ship and ship part takes actual time) rather than storing up crafting points to build something instantaneously, I would be more open to multiple characters, but only if they can only play as one faction.

While I find this project interesting, the sheer number of these battles may slow things down for you... One thing that might make it easier is to try and divide battles into wars, for example the current active conflicts are Danish Conquest of Puerto Rico (longest running war currently), Second Franco-Dutch War, and the Second Anglo-American War. Of course, this may be a bit confusing as one could consider all of these conflicts to be part of the same war as Great Britian (SLRN) is theoretically involved in all of the wars. I could write a brief history of the DAS if people are interested, however I would prefer the diplomacy overview to be made in a separate thread rather than in the history section, and only fleet/guild/clan leaders and diplomats should be able to post there.

Yes, I do think we need ships to fill the gap, say some 44-48 gun frigates armed with 18-pounders, however, my argument is that the Essex from her design is not the ship meant to fight against the Trinco.

I was going to make a different thread about this, but I guess I could bring it here... You can't raise and lower nor turn your yard arms while you are in gunnery or survival mode. In turn, your guns will not reload in survival or sailing mode. Would change a few things, make changing your crew focus at the right time a lot more important, and less battles of constant turning. It is probably too extreme, but at least there does need to a more of a significant difference between the crew focus modes than there is currently. The main problem however is that it might penalize people in smaller ships more.

Lol, you can just play the game and compare the ships that are already in. There are actually quite a few ships that probably need tweeking, like the Trincomalee, but pretty much all ships need a bit of adjustment. However, I do strongly support release more of the ships prepared for early access to more people so that we can fully test their stats out and balance them if necessary. (Like the Bucantare has a battle rating of 300 in the game files, and she's only a 80-third rate...) This game is also still in alpha/beta. Many of us here like testing things. Yes, I have read those discussions and they are very good, and I really hope that they do change. I personally believe that smaller ships are a bit under armored while first rates are overly armored. I'll try and find that discussion, and try to put the Essex through the recalculations that others have proposed, however, the stats I suggested in the original post are really only there to balance her with the other ships currently in the game. However, stats in general do need to be worked on, but we can suggest and discuss changes on the forum while we still have the chance to talk about them.

Actually, the main thing that that having a distance associated escape window will change mainly is that more Ships of the Line will be lost in large battles as it it will be practically impossible for the ship to escape out of the battle instance once they are severely damaged. That would be more of an effect to the game than people trying to tag people to keep them out of the big battles. Also, a distance system is exploitable, if a Pickle and a Victory attack a lone enemy Sani, the Victory can just sail away while the Pickle run towards the Santi to "stern camp" it, preventing the Santi from leaving the battle. However, this would require that the enemy would have to have a close or equal battle rating to the enemy that they are fighting. Baltic also has a good point about the amount of data being transferred may increase, which might be a penalty for people with poor internet connections (like me...). It would be nice to see if someone would be able to make a calculation about how much data that will be. I don't think it will be a lot, but I have little to no knowledge on the transfers of server data.

Gents, don't get bent out of shape by the Admin's comment. I've created a naval modification for Napoleon: Total War, so I understand what the Admin is talking about completely. It is like comparing apples to oranges. Most/all of the time, the values you put in the code do not have a real life measurement, therefore it is impossible for you to change something to be exactly accurate to real life data events. All that I am comparing is the Essex to the rest of the ships in the game as that ensures for her balancing. If I can compare something in the game to something else in the game, then they can be compared with each other properly and accurately because both are being modified by the same functions. Basically, instead of asking if a Essex can go 13 knots, the real question is "is an Essex is faster than a Belle Poule or not?" I say yes, therefore, I set the Essex to be faster than the Belle Poule. To do that, I set the max speed value to 13. I can go to bed and wake up without worrying about the mathematical formulas and complexity of converting that 13 to make it be in exact accurate scale to the real world. Anyway, back to the topic. Currently from my tests, the crew is very well protected on the Essex, as I hardly suffer casualties from ball shot from my sides (which is kinda ironic as she lost nearly half her crew due to ball when she was captured). In my opinion however, I don't think that barricades/bulwarks would necessarily improve the structural integrity of the hull to resistance to water coming in, therefore shouldn't count much to the hitpoints.

Distance system. Once a ship is 2000 units away from any enemy ship, that ship will be able to escape from the battle. It makes sense, and I don't think that there needs to be any more extra features added like timers and such. (max carronade range is 500, max medium is 1000 and max long is 1200 I believe) And for those that worry that this will make players able to escape from them early on in the battle instance, then the attacker did not engage them close enough on the Open World before dragging his target into the battle instance. Also, the attack circle can also be set to be the 2000 units away mark, solving the issue.

Really, to be honest, she wasn't a 12-lber super-frigate. I would call her an ordinary frigate. The reason why I kept the speed high is that she does have more modern lines, as well as having top royal sails. The stats can be trimmed, and the sailing qualities might been due to the condition of the ship, being bombarded to lose 50% of the crew is obviously going to do irreversible damage to a ship. Also she may of had a problem of hogging over time, she was reasonably pretty old for a frigate (15 years) by the War of 1812. Also, using Maturin's little quote: