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I saw somewhere a request for how to build a campaign and I thought I'd try my best to come up with one suggestion. I searched for the correct place for the post - but hopefully a moderator will move it if necesary. I would like the option to run a single semi-historical campaign spanning through the time periods of the game. I know other people want more options/freedom but I think it's a choice and the campaign need to be structured accordingly and so I hope my suggestion makes sense for what I would like to see. I suggest the campaign will be built after a master semi-historical timeline with historical navy conflicts fitting the timelines of the game. The suggestion limits a players sandbox, but makes it easier to balance and secure the player experience while still having the option to be rather flexible. This is a very good way to make sure a campaign will be able to follow a somewhat accurate picture of history, but at the same time prevents a lot of random or chaotic campaigns some other players might like. If necesary it's possible to script necesary peace deals or conflicts when historical situations are difficult to find. The player should select 1 player nation from a handfull of great naval nations - some of them perhaps limited in their starting period if necesary. Minor nations will play a part but not as a main nation. To narrate the experience I find it usefull for you as an admiral to not be the commander of your nation but a subject of a government, but also an important advisor allowing you to take some decissions, but also be forced along the timeline for participation in further conflict. The player will start in the timeline he/she decides and as time progress will either be involved in conflict with his own nation - or as an "advisor" on behalf of other major or minor nations. This makes sure that no matter your choice of nation you will be able to participate. Basically splitting the campaign up into several small mini campaigns linked together. As an example starting as germany you could fight your own wars in the proper timelines and at other times you could "Supervise" and play as minor nations or other major nations. Perhaps even be able to supervise in 3 different levels: a) entire command basically taking over as it was your own nation (but returning to your own nation later) b) Help designing ships - perhaps using tech from both nations but not playing the battles c) Just give them tech and money (maybe earn some foreign ship designs) but let them handle themselves This means France should be able to play even in the part of time where they are occupied or in peace either from foreign ports or supervising some or part of the british, us or chinese fleet. And in the times of european peace participate in conflict in other parts of the world... This also - depending on the conflicts in which you are an advisor - could give you faster research in some areas, better own economy and the ability to build some ship hulls from other nations? Would also be cool to play as England but advising either Russia or Japan in that conflict and both being able to build your own designs and bring home some of the foreign designs when moving on... Maybe some nations should have more options for who to support and others be restricted. Apart from this raw sketch I have a few issues witht eh current mini campaign: Its over way too fast To get more variation perhaps the enemy AI should develope more than 1 design for each shiptype at a time. The transport slider makes very little sense Torpedos are king in the early campaign timeline - You can build a lot of torpedo boats and even though you get blockaded without bigger ships you will turn around pretty fast. I would advise looking into either shorter range (600m), duds and/or make the torpedoes more inaccurate... The map and port system I think is pretty cool. Ships should be organised into fleets/armadas - ships not in fleets should be in a reserve pool. Fleets/armadas should have a restricted tonnage or number decided by the admiralty or nation leadership which could be modified during the game Ships should be sailed to and operate from a port You need to have better control of your fleets behavior like being able to set allowed range from port, behavior and tasks like Coastal patrol, Coastal defense, Convoy guard, Raiding, Combat patrol, Harbor/fleet assault. Maybe even have a fleet operate in a specific area. More than 1 fleet could engage at a time, but if you have a fleet with plenty screening ships it should be difficult to catch that battleship alone. You should look into the balance when talking ships and economy. Players should not spam large ships (perhaps from restrictions made by his national leadership?) - at the same time its also important that a player is not always able to sink large enemy ships at will but maybe thats an AI problem? PinkyDK

Dear Ultimate Admirals: Dreadnoughts Dev Team I recently bit the bullet and spent the money for the early Alpha access to your game. Overall the game play is engaging and has tons of replay value as you give yourself self imposed restrictions or lack thereof. I understand the UA:D is in extremely early alpha so I will be taking all included features and issues objectively and with a grain of salt. P.S. I haven’t read any other reviews or change suggestions so please keep that in mind if someone has already covered something. First off will be the ship designer: User Interface: >Overall it’s not bad though I would change some portions of it. >Problem: The Right hand scroll menu overlaps with the buttons in the top right hand corner of the screen, and as a result can make both hard to use. >Solution: make the scroll menu’s upper bound so that it don’t overlap with the buttons. >Reference Image: Reference Image 1 >Problem: Main gun selection should use the same system as for secondaries rather than the redundant centerline/side system. >Solution: Copy the system used by secondaries it’s a much cleaner and easy to use system that doesn’t introduce extra complexity. >Problem: Data Entry in general. Armor values, speed, tonnage, etc. It’s slow, clunky and makes my pointer finger hurt something fierce after I make several hundred clicks in rapid succession trying to make a ship. >Solution: Make all of the above enter able via text, scroll shell on mouse, and current up/down buttons. >Problem: Ship preview in bottom left with stats is covered by the central component buttons when the left side menu is open. >Solution: Allow it to be scrolled up so it can clear it. Reference Image: Reference Image 3 >Problem: In the ship information car the data is covering the ships top down and side on profiles. >Solution: Make it so the information is displayed below these profiles >Reference Image: See Reference Image 3 >Problem: Component interface is very bland and uninteresting with only text differentiating components. This is a chronic issue with the current version of the game. As seen in Reference Images 4 and 5 below. Reference Images 6 and 7 is something that would be more representative of what you should have. Obviously done up in you games art style. Reference Images: Reference Image 4 Reference Image 5 Reference Image 6 Reference Image 7 >Suggestion: Add in a cinematic mode for those glorious shots. Building: >Problem: Torpedoes, Where’s the Japanese Oxygen Torpedoes? >Solution: Add Oxygen Torpedoes. >Reference Image: Reference Image 2 >Problem: Lack of freedom with creating guns >Solution: Let us have exact control over… Bore size, ex. 16”/406.4 mm Barrel length, ex. 50 Calibers long (50 x bore) Shell weight, ex. 2700 lbs/1225 kg Muzzle velocity, ex 2500 ft/s /762m/s Separate Propellant and Shell fillers Rifling: type and twist rate Breech block mechanism Allow us to pick gun construction, Wire wound vs Built up. Replaceable Liners vs Having to replace the gun. Chromium plated bore vs not. >Problem: Lack of freedom choosing/modifying gun mounts >Solution: Allow us to chose the following… Common cradle or Independent Mounting, ex Twin/Triple/Quad vs. Two/Three/Four gun mounts, also the French “Two Twin Quad turret.” Make the size of the mount correspond with the size/number/length:loading mechanism of guns. Allow us to pick loading systems. Manual, Power assisted, and Automatic. (I would recommend 3-4 degrees of power assisted loaders.) Allow us to place turrets anywhere regardless of blast effects from firing. Fix that changing orientation of guns can limit gun placement in same location Possibly Eventually include some of the more wacky historical gun layouts, planned or otherwise, but for now stick to the bog standard gun mounts. >Problem: Barbettes Nothing much to say here besides placement and sizing. >Solution: Allow is the following. Allow Barbette size to match turret size so we aren’t wasting weight on an 18” Three gun turret’s barbette for a 16” Twin gun. Allow placement of Barbettes anywhere. Allow All sizes of barbettes on all ships for main guns and secondaries Allow us to choose barbette height with turrets giving specifications for how tall a Barbette needs to be to allow super firing. >Reference Image: Reference Image 9 >Problem: Boilers, Engines, and Transmissions are not the same thing, and shouldn’t necessarily be paired together. >Solution: Allow the players to chose the following… Boiler type, large tube/small tube and low/medium/high pressure. Engine type, Piston, Multiple expansion piston, Turbine (I would make 3 to 4 qualities of Turbines.) Transmission, I would call these gear boxes but some lack gears so… Direct Drive, Hydraulic, Electric, Geared, Double Geared. Diesel is in a class of its own and would Be considered an Engine but totally removes the need for boilers. Fuels are Coal and Oil and you should allow us to chose %fuel coal/oil Should also allow us to mix propulsion types. >Problem: Lack of control over armor thickness for… Forward and Aft Transverse Bulkheads Barbettes Turret sides and Back (They often didn’t match the thickness of the face plates or the roof.) Secondaries (Same case as main guns) Torpedo Bulkheads Upper belts found on Dreadnoughts/Pre-Dreadnoughts >Solution: Allow is full control over all these areas. >Problem: Lack of control over Armor length and location of coverage. Many ships used differential thickness over their magazines, machinery and fore/stern belts/decks. >Solution: Allow control over fore and aft belts and decks, separately. Along with independent control over belts and decks over main battery magazines and machinery >Problem: Lack of control over Length, Beam, Draft, and Free board. >Solution: Give us limited control over this, but make it so that every change effects tonnage and vice versa. With us being able to lock any 2 dimensions with in reason. >Note: This will also correct your wildly incorrect draft stats. >Problem: Where do you find how many funnels you need. >Solution: Put this somewhere obvious its important, perhaps on the funnel information card. >Reference Image: Reference Image 8 >Problem: Lack of Save Function in ship builder. >Solution: Add it! >Problem: Rotating guns and the like is annoying and painful because it reverts to default orientation every time you wiggle. >Solution: Make it so rotation doesn’t revert itself. >Suggestion: Separate Radar into Search and Range Finding >Suggestion: Add in targeting aids, like to begin with range tables, but later on mechanical targeting computers and the line. I think this will be exceptionally important for the campaign. Game play and Balancing: >Problem: Torpedoes are too hard to spot even on the best of graphical settings. >Solution: Add in some kind of visual aid for the player to know where they are. >Problem: Twin and Triple mounts suck badly due to their accuracy, and reload debuffs, especially triples. >Solution: Historically weapons of all calibers with few exceptions for cramped or poorly designed mounts usually didn’t have rate of fire issues. That being said some triple and quad mounts had issues due to blast interference affecting neighboring shells as they leave the muzzle. Also give guns their historical fire rates please what you currently have not is worthless. >Suggestion: Add in Technology Interrupter coils. >Suggestion: I am aware you are possibly making UA:D multiplayer I would recommend not balancing the single player game for this. The reason why is because the biggest group of people you are going to be attracting to UA:D are historical enthusiasts that want to play a game with historical ships and weapons or at least historical feeling. For example the 16” Triple Mark I takes Problem: Certain missions crash but you were already aware of this. >Suggestion: Small ships especially torpedo boats and destroyers seem to be a challenge to engage and im finding the best way to counter them is to use my main battery rather than my smaller secondaries. This is because they quite simply do not seem to die under secondary fire. End notes: I’m getting tired and I'm certain there is more that I can find but right now I can’t be bothered and I’ll revisit this later with each patch, or at least try to. Thank you for this wonderful experience and have yourselves a wonderful future. This was a fleet Review by Absolute0CA

Not what I thought it was going to be, at all. Completely mislead by the Steam page. Rating: 2/10 -Missions constantly crash to desktop, the first 5 and last 5 worked fine, everything in between had quite a few problems and no reason stating why. -The ship building is nothing like it was shown on the Steam page. -On the Steam page it stated: [Below] Now the game went from $25 to $35 despite what it stated on the Steam page. Fantastic. -The graphics are mediocre, extracted directly from a 2002 PS2 game. -Buggy, laggy, optimized, completely unplayable for the most part. -Demanded a refund and got no message pack for 19 days now, terrible customer support can't even shoot me an email even though both on the phone and in live chat they said they would. Going to give Paypal a call and demand my money back, this is a complete rip-off for $50. What an absolute scam. -Not to mention the forums are completely censored, everything has to be "approved". Can't even post freely so how am I supposed to give "feedback" when anything not supporting the devs is censored.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/08/18/the-flare-path-mostly-positive/

So, I've played through the Union campaign and finished Antietam on Medium. I've managed to win every battle through a bit of trial and error and save and redoing. My gaming experience is... well I dunno how to describe it but I've played UG:Gettysburg liked that, and like playing strategy games such as Total War, XCOM and XCOM 2, Civilization 5 and Starcraf 2. SO i'm used to strategy games. Ultimately, I was entertained greatly, but there were a few things that could have been done to make my experience a bit less frustrating and make the game a bit more... smoother, not easier, smoother. However, let's start with the good stuff. The battles are difficult and fun. They have variety and they are challenging. I haven't felt so challenged even when playing XCOM 1 or 2. I tend to do a save before every battle so when I do lose I can figure out exactly how to pull off a victory and try again. They're also fun though b/c the AI is a devious bastard and the openness and terrain of the maps allows you to try different strategies. The customization of the corps.divisions/brigades commanders, weapons, unit count is amazing. It gives this game so much replayability as you could start another game with another set of brigades. It also gives me the feeling of playing an XCOM like game where the brigades are your favorite soldiers who will do and die for you. Thus, it is amazing to see when your veterans rip the bloody hell out of the enemy. It's also gives a player a great feeling when you assign historical generals to command brigades or divisions. I have Grant as the commander of my 2nd Corps and Reynolds commanding one of my greatest veteran divisions and it feels great to have them "working" for you. I've also never played a game where you could customize and organize your army to such an extent and still have it have impact. The corps/brigade system is very interesting and you have to make a lot of choices when putting your career points and equipping your divisions/spending your money. I love the detach skirmishers mechanic which allows defense in certain maps and an ease of withdrawal. Cannons also work MUCH better than in Gettysburg. They're actually incredibly useful as they can blast divisions at point blank and allow you to defend points with a lot more ease. Unfortunately this is where I come to the parts where... frankly do need some work. The tutorial is not extensive enough. I've played UG: Gettysburg, which allowed me to figure out how the move commands work (I also watched a streamcaster). However, beginners might have no idea how to orientate their units aside from drawing lines b/c... well it's never really explained how. Grammar and spelling on certain cut-instructions and screens need to be corrected to give the game a more polished note. I have heard cavalry is good... but I haven't seen any use for it but that may just be me. Thing is though, tutorials can be tweaked, grammar and spelling can be reworked. I also don't think the set-battle nature of the campaign is a problem. I don't mind that you can't decide your own attack. You're following what they historically did and that's fine by me. However, what I am annoyed about is how the attack plan is explained after you deploy the required corps. Due to the nature of how the player will build an army up through putting them into smaller engagements and gradually raising more troops, their 1st corps are going to be full of veteran badasses and subsequent corps are going to be less badass. However, when you deploy the corps into the load screen thing, you have no control over which one attacks first or the plan itself b/c it's not told to you. Thus, the battle results are going to vary WILDLY simply b/c you had to deploy willy nilly when the battle plan that you in a general should if not have control over, be explained to you. Case in Point, The Battle of Antietam. I brought 57,500 troops ish against the Confederates numbering 56,000 I think. Basically I outnumbered them slightly and I had 3 corps. I deployed my 3rd Corps to attack from the right (north), 1st corps to go into the center and 2nd corps to go attack the left near the town. I didn't know though that my 3rd corps would be leading the attack because there is no indication on the corps deployment map of which corps is attacking or defending first. This corps I had raised fairly recently and they had less powerful firearms, no veteran units, and had lower-ranked commanding officers in general. In short, they were the noob corps. So as the battle panned out, I fought a vicious battle around the church, but was eventually able to achieve victory at Antietam with the arrival of my more experienced 1st and 2nd corps under my character's Major General and Ulyssess Grant. Unfortunately I forgot to screen capture the results screen but my and the confederates losses were fairly equal about 30,000 each That got me thinking though, what would have happened if I deployed my 1st Corps on the North and had them attack first? They were more experienced, they simply had better firepower in firearms and they had better morale and command. What if they spearheaded the assault? So I replayed Antietam and the results couldn't have been more different. I literally rolled the Confederate army up. My veteran divisions made taking the church WAY easier. Then my 2nd corps attacked as they had, but b/c the initial offensive was so successful... taking the sunken road just destroyed the Confederate army's centre. All in all, I felt as I was playing that the offense simply went far faster than it did in my first replay. didn't know for certain b/c I felt I had lost a lot of men especially from my first corps even though I had taken ground faster, but then I checked the post battle results. Compared to my first attack, I had lost only 22,000 men whilst inflicting similar losses on the Confederate army. They lost around 30,000 men. I had lost 8,000 men less than I had the last time. The result was happy to me, but also annoying. That I had 1st corps on the right in my second replay, spared me a lot of trouble... if Only I had known to do that in my first replay... which apparently I could have, but the game said NOTHING about which corps was attacking first (unlike 2nd Bull Run) so I just deployed randomly. I was able to replay the battle b/c I had made a save file to ensure that if I screwed up I could figure out what went wrong and try again, but the autosave system would only save the results of THAT battle. Thus, if someone didn't make a save... they'd be dealling with the consequences of something they'd have no control, which is which corps makes the attack first. I'm not so sure how to rework the corps deployment interface screen to make this possible, but please, if one of the developers is reading this, make it so the commanders understand WHICH corps is attacking/defending first in the battles. Particularly for Antietam which is a large grand battleplan that the player as the general should have some awareness for. Maybe alter the corps deployment screen just to show which corps you're committing to the battle. Then show them the opening battle plan animatic so it's actually impactful and not just a info dump. Then FINALLY you take them back to a corps deployment screen where the player commanders can then decide which corps to execute the attack. It just would give the player actual control over something the game is suggesting he has control over, which is where to deploy the corps. As of right now, the corps deployment screen is confusing b/c the player doesn't know the full battle plan and what his/her corps are going to be doing. But overall... I am REALLY glad I bought the game in early access. I got a lot of fun from it. It just needs interface tweaking so that the tutorial is clearer on basic (how to move unit), and so the corps deployment screen can allow the player to affect the outcome of the battle according to his or her intention. I await the coming battles so I can commit my army to them! Yours sincerely, vren55 Edit: I just found out you could switch brigades around in various corps and divisions... so I suppose my point on the tutorial is now even more valid. That doesn't change my opinion on allowing the general to know the plan in the Union and Confederate Antietam battle in particular. (I've just finished the confederate battle)

Hello Everyone, Now that I have achieved the highest rank (1100 crew) on a pvp server, I thought I would voice my review, opinions, likes and dislikes of this game- what better place to review it then after you've seen pretty much all that it has to offer? I'll try to be short and concise and to the point and base it on known and current game mechanics Grind Time: I actually like this one, it took roughly 700 hours to achieve rear admiral, but it could of easily been 550-600 that's a pretty good number for time invested to reach the "top level" for $ invested in the game, worked out really nicely. Grind Mechanic: I was a bit let down by some of the higher end PVE Missions, I was hoping they would be a bit tougher, Rear admirals contain 2x third rates at the moment, I'd of liked to see 2x third rates and their companion fleet of smaller ships ( tops 7 ships) to force the player to involve in some social aspects the entire game is schooling you with these missions first from the removal of A.I fleet to the sudden jump from a frigate class ship to 2x constitutions or 1 third rate. (No solo fourth rate mission) Port capture: I'm glad to hear it is going to change, currently deep water ports can be taken by one person (if undefended) There is not much to add here until the admin have the port siege in its final form. OW PVP: Here is where I get hung up, right now almost every ship except the largest can achieve similar speeds, Having an alert eye knowledge of wind and ships can grant you almost total immunity to OW PVP I find PVP is too easy to avoid and or cheese in its current stance (Cheese as in manipulate game mechanics unintentionally) Holding battle screens, Reinforcement buttons, Logging off, Teleporting. And when you do catch someone on OW the 30s counter gives them quite some time to try and get out from under you so the battle starts at range, and you have to spend another 30 minutes chasing them down in battle Make OW (open world) PVP Faster, Remove the 30 second timer, or reduce it to 5 or 10 seconds. Adjust not just battle speeds but OW speeds as well 20 knots is excessive, if we need 20+ to achieve good playable travel times, shrink the map scale and speed up the in game day time Small and large battles: What is the point? if it is to teach people to pvp, limit it to levels, if it is to give access to instant combat, why? Shouldn't OW combat be that fulfilling and rich? Isn't catering to a need for instant queues admitting that OW PVP is lacking? Durability: Neat idea, but I'd make it tougher, have durability stop being a thing at the surprise from then on out it is only one durability, this will aid in keeping the ships of the line rare and help dwindle gold stock piles and push more people into crafting A lot of my suggestions have already been brought up by the Admin and are in development stages of ideas to fix them, I just wanted to add my two cents in case anything was missed, Over all, I enjoyed the game a fair bit, and enjoy the path it is headed for.

Some new ships have been introduced and we need to have a peek: I decided to start with the Pickle since the SOL fever is running high these days. I think it looks ok, but that's it. Simple hull design with fairly fluffy rig. When I first started seeing these in the OW I thought the squarish looking sails were ugly, but inside the instances I thought they looked good. After having a long and hard look at the details, I think the ship, and the rig in particular, is very good looking. It's a tiny little one trying to look like it's square rigged elders. The guns are standard little boat: Six (6 lbs) guns or (12 lbs) carronades each side. That gives you the choice of a broadside weight of 36 lbs up to 72 lbs with nades (Maybe 108 lbs with nade doubles?) I think it makes sense to compare the Pickle to the Cutter and the Privateer, but where does it place itself in specialty and overall abilities? You'll have to forgive my yellow speed trim, but I tried for hours to get my hands on a vanilla Privateer for comparison but found only silly blue planking and blue copper fitted Privs. I gave up and just ran my Pickle much like I would've for gameplay. Maybe the planking and copper on the priv cancels eachother out? I dunno... Note that I used the yellow speed mod on the Privateer also. Anyway... The Pickle shares armor HP values with the Cutter and they're both better than the Privateer in that regard. The Privateer has around a knot higher top speed than the Pickle, but look: Pickle: Privateer: The Pickle can claw it's way up against the wind better than the Privateer, and in my book that's the most important speed to have in those little ships. I thought a bit about how this could be and I've come up with a theory. Look at how the square sail bends around the mast going upwind: The Privateer's sails doesn't have that feature. If the game visuals clues us in on the physics modeling; this may be clearer: The "mast bending" of the sail rotates the force vector Mr. Bernoulli is sucking on towards the bow and speed vector of the ship giving superior upwind performance. The listed turning rate is almost equal among these three. We know the Cutter, with it's single mast and some sail fiddling can flip and turn faster than the two mast ships. However both the Privateer and the Pickle can be made to turn almost as fast. (Note: I could've been more aggressive with turning the sails to eek out even faster turn rate in the following demonstration:) Did you notice the heel values from the speed images. The Pickle heels way less than any of the smaller ships. It is most likely modeled that way because it sits lower in the water: I guess the increased and effective sail area makes up for the displacement and keeps the Pickle from being a dog. Shallow heel makes taking shots very comfortable compared to the others. Armor HP is one thing, but planking/hull thickness is also modeled in Naval Action, at least it seems so to me. This is an area where the Pickle excels among it's peers. Judging from the visual representation the sides looks quite thick, relatively: The Privateer does appear to have thinner sides: Armor thickness helps to deflect balls thrown at you from sub-optimal angles so it is an indirect increase in side armor, it is further boosted if the captain knows what he is doing. The Cutter's sides could be as thick, I can't say for sure, but here another factor comes into to equation. The Pickle is higher than it's rivals and has more protection along the entire railing. Both relative height and armor work together to protect the Pickle's crew. It is very hard to get decent grape shots at the crew from one of the lower rivals. The developers have stated that boarding action sustains a penalty when initiated from a low to a higher ship. I have no idea how significant those modifiers are when comparing between these three ships, I won't speculate more than I already have. In summary: Sheep gud, purdy and stronk! I think this is the best of the small ships. It has that fantastic closehauled specialty, and shouldn't need to lose fights to any Cutter or Privateer. It is an extremely comfy gunplatform. Ok, so a Priv can manage to get away every now and then, apart from that everything is in the Pickle's favor. My Pickle says: "I can bully everyone I can't outrun!" waow, rood! ... but true.

Gamestop has posted its Early Access Review of Ultimate General: Gettysburg. The review grants high praise to UGG. Noting the excellent AI and intensity of battle. http://www.gamespot.com/articles/ultimate-general-gettysburg-early-access-review/1100-6421384/ Another congratulations to Game-Labs!