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I'd love to see an "Advanced mode" for Custom Battles which allows you to specifically select arbitrary techs (per side) rather than just selecting a year. It would allow for a far greater range of possibilities in both historical and ahistorical scenarios, such as: Better representation of Refits outside of the Campaign. e.g. 1930's refit of a WW1 Era Dreadnought with older engines, armour and primary armament, but modernized towers, fire control and secondaries. What if [Insert Technology Here] had developed much faster/slower than in OTL? Pre-Dreds with Radar FC and/or 18-inch guns, 1940's Torpedos in 1900, strongly lopsided naval gun development (Mk V 2-inch but only Mk I 12-Inch guns), etc. Greater ability to simulate Historical ship classes. For example the various 15-inch armed Battleships commissioned early in WW1 (currently the 15-inch guns don't become available ingame until the very End of the War and even then are straight up worse than the 12-inch guns they are supposed to replace). As for implementation, i could see something along the lines of being shown the research screen from the campaign (with all techs revealed) and the being able to select and deselect any of the techs presented, in the drop down menus of the individual categories.

before I start with my suggestion credit to the individual who commented on the roadmap requesting the ability to change caliber by a tenth of an inch for the ship designer because I feel like that could be and should be implemented and it caused me to think of this suggestion. Something akin to a mix of the torpedo system and armor thickness could work where you choose your model of gun amount of barrels single, double, triple or quad and then in a menu akin to the armor system where you would have a min and max value for your prospective mounts with said values affecting weight, size, reload time, cost, accuracy similar to the torpedo models allowing for some gun mountings on hardpoints that were previously not allowed or that looked uncanny. Now I realize this would turn into a spreadsheet looking nightmare and the issue of having the same gun mount but of differing caliber would be a pain however I feel like it could be circumvented by having the menu pop of when you click that mount or hover over a mini menu would pop up for that mount and the any mount mirroring it in the case of guns offset from the centerline. If anyone has addon suggestions please do mention them or anything related to this

Welcome back. First i want to thank the ppl who read and liked my posts for their moral support.😃 Second i want to create a collection thread for all our feedback to give us and the devs an easy overview about what are the hot topics around the game. My idea was as follows: I will shorten down my feedback points to a few words, maximum a sentence. the goal is that one Talking Point does not take up more than one line of text. When i created my original post, i was aware that it was to much of a wall of text to be properly readable. thx again for those who still did it Edit 19.01.2022: since there is already a "Big List" of feedback for the ship designer itself, i will cut on my points that were already made in the past and link the feedback list for the shipdesigner under the segment "Shipdesigner". I wonder though, why are there no own threads for the other gameplay parts of the game like the battles or for the recently added campaign? I think, that overviews and summaries of frequently disussed feedback topics are nessarry to keep track of things, but it seems, that apart from a few ppl beeing concerned with the ship designer thats not the case for many other ppl? What i wonder the most is, that the devs themselves havent installed such threads, since they would profit the most from a time efficient scanning of an overview list of all the feedback to a certain topic (or the whole game). Maybe we should split up the feedback gathered here on multiple threads too? Anyone else can post feedback in this thread my original list does not cover and i will implement them in the first post of this thread. The last Step would be to create a permanent poll about all Talking Points wich shall indicate, wich topics are the hottest, the ones that the player base are most concerned with. Im looking forward to ur participation and ur feedback on my proposal. Make Ultimate Admiral great Again... or... for the first time! 😜 I also propose to create pinned threads for certain topics like ... Torpedoes! to gather and focus all our feedback and opinions there giving us and the devs a better grip on the pressing issues. End of Introduction. More Detailed Feedback / thoughts to my points can be found here: Feedback-List. Beeing updated with your Posts in this thread. Graphics - Increase ship size / object size in relation to the players perspective to match realworld size scaling ( no toys in giant bath tubes anymore pls) Ship Designer an already big list of ship designer feedback can be found here: - Pls Remove any Requirements regarding Hulls / Roles about Towers/Armament etc. to allow complete freedom for the players design choices / ideas - pls remove obstructions for placing superfiring barbettes on certain hulls / positions etc. - in general pls remove as much restrictions as possible to give them players teh freedom to express their design ideas - Pls switch out the displacement slider by sliders for the key dimensions of a ship (length, width. height) - Pls make Towers / Superstructure sie and weight scale with the Size and weight of a Hull - Pls give equipment absolute weight and cost values instead of relative ones bound to the Tower stats - Pls introduce real / possible ahistoric engines instead of just engine types. That creates more Research possiblities and provides more educational content. - if u decide to stick to the current layout, pls fix up the values of the engine typs, cause they are not quiet right atm (18.01.2022, patch 1.03) - Pls overwork Funnel Capacities. The Capacity per Weight of a Funnel should always increase with the size of a Funnel, not decrease or suddenly jump up high - Pls Correct the Barbette tooltip and add either add "superfiring" to the barbette section or switch out barbette with superfiring position/mount - Pls fix weight and weight of armour of casemate / underwater torpedo-systems. atm they are to heavy( 18.01.2022, patch 1.03) Battles - (BUG) ships ignore movement orders when to close to each other resulting in collision instead of preventing it - pls give the player the full control over speeding up time over all battle distances (maybe except for x30 since that maybe unbearable for most machines / game engine) - bigger ships should have also a horizontal bulkhead sceme (otherwise listing to sides wont make much sense in the game) - pls correct the tooltip/ loading screen tip about flooding - pls overhaul / overwork flooding so it actually matches realworld experiences and therefore the players(or just mine??) expectations - shooting / targeting should be affected by listing of the ship. a gun thats pointing into the ocean or up high should not be able to land hits on its target in usual combat situations - pls introduce abandoning ships / ships going silent, when for example beeing on fire over the whole lenght of the ship etc. - pls introduce taking ships as prize / the need of towing them to port incase of severe dmg/ engines out - maybe introduce the rescuing of humans from sinking ships if the ship leaves any survivors - AI is still incompetent at calculating fleet strength and situational awareness leading to easy and huge victories in battles making campaigns extremely short due to VPs - pls let torpedos be fired freely / at will at any range and angle to allow for a correct use of that weapons system and the creating of proper torpedo fans over all ranges - pls fix torpedo-ranges. The Torpedo-Range determines its maximum travel distance due to fuel/air(gas mixture)/power storage and not an aiming range - pls also fix torpedo ranges regarding their propulsion system and speed - pls overwork torpedodmg and the dmg calculation of said dmg regarding the existence of torpedoprotection and the kind of T-Protection - pls make ships automatically dodge / attempt to dodge torpedoes - and or constantly highlight spotted torpedoes so the player busy commanding multiple ships doesnt miss those and can actually react without pausing the game every 10 secs - pls fix the detach / attach behavior when multiple ships are select ( detach shall always mean and result in detachment, not random attachment) - pls add a shortcut for "select all ships by type" - pls add control groups (CTRL+Number) asap - pls reduce the amount of information about enemy ships and their status regarding ammo/ reload / dmg etc. that is available to the player. Especially the information bout torpedo reloading leads to the possible abuse of "detecting" torpedoes without beeing able to do so - Ammunition explosions shall increase in dmg potential so that actually the magazine explosion of a main turret rips apart a ship and becomes the significant and terrible even that it is in reality - pls give indication of the reload of the indiviudal turrets / torpedo racks - pls show the penetrating capability of HE-Grenades instead of just saying "Minimum-penetration" - pls clearify what kind of HE-Grenades are fired. Atm they seem to be Bottom-fused, to make sure they explode after a penetration/ partial pen. if thats so, they should also richochet on high angles instead of exploding on hit like a head fused grenade would do almost regardless of the impact angle - edit(always forget that): ships high/slow speed should be depending on actual speed in knots instead of the Throttle/ Lever Position of the targeted ship. A ship with a constructional top speed of 17 knots is not moving at high speeds ... 😕 - edit: CPU target priority should be overhauled. Instead of trying to attack / sink a dmg ship of the player it should focus on the ships closest to its own ships aka best hit chance and than wich poses the highest threat, than wich is easierst / fastes to kill. Battle / Designer - pls introduce projectiles as ingame objects and make them really penetrate and dmg internals instead of calculating that in excel tables - pls introduce all major components of a battleship as objects in a game so they can actually be hit / dmg after a penetration / by fire / flooding - maybe introduce the distinction between bottom and head fused grenades to give player the choice of maximixing dmg after a penetration with less penetration power or with explosion on hit capabilities to inflict atleast a bit dmg instead of none due to richochet / non pen. Campaign - pls remove the display of all enemy ships participating in a battle before that battle and before them beeing identified - pls reduces the amount of missions / battles taking place and / or switch from monthly to 3 monthly turns ( so we can actually research, create new designs and build those too) - pls overhaull the distribution of VPs according to the actual overall fleet size, funds and building capacity of a Nation / State - pls add goals to campaigns and those shall affect the effort a Nation / State is willing to make and how much losses to take - creating flotillas / groups of ships and setting them up for regions / mission types has to be a thing - pls give Mothballing its own button instead of hiding it behind the "set the crew" function - Increase shipyard building speed according to other changes u make to the campaign so building bigger warships later one actually becomes a thing - why does peace time in a campaign does not exist from the beginning? - BUG? the game peaces me out after turning done the ask for peace several times. Is that intentional? - Give more informations in the Campaign screen about what is going on; - how much transports are 100% ? - permanently display the tonnages and power projection of the own and the enemies fleets and not only when a blocade is taking place - Make Naval Intelligence a thing so we have atleast a rough estimate of how effective ecomonic warfare is or what the capabilities of the enemies are - there needs to be a tab where information bout identified / known enemy ships is stored - Research should be diviced stronger in sections and each section should have its focus points - Seperate between private Research and State Research - BUG ? why are ships moved to random harbours in the baltic Sea ( furthest away from the enemy? ) turn that off pls. - pls add the feature to slow down / speed up / hault repairs to control the repair costs / process - ships beeing repaired shall not take part in operations unless the CPU / Player dliberatly decides to do so - damaged and ships in repair shall not add to the power projection / Blocade tonnage or, if they do, only to a certain degree that needs to be determined - pls vastly increase the size of the eventlog and allow the player top back track it ( store the info in its own tab for example) - pls overwork the tooltip for ships within the designer and campaign screens so all the campaign and combat important information are shown (e.g. RANGE! TURNING CIRLCE, E.EFF,..) - the most vital campaign informations shall be displayed on all campaign tabs all the time - Why is economic growth not a thing yet? (18.01.2022 patch 1.03) - the economic effect of a blocade musst be delayed and musst build up over time - make repairing transports a thing so dmg them in a battle has an effect Battle / Campaign - when a ship was identified in a battle, in shall be identified quicker in future battles. Best Regards, Kraut

How exactly do you choose which guns are the best to use? This is probably one of the first things you think about when starting your design! This will be a pretty long post, but I've spent a couple of days (slowly) gathering the data and darn it if I'm not going to share! If this has already been done, my apologies! I'm going to split this into a few parts on this post, so feel free to jump around. CONTENTS: What are the stats that affect gun effectiveness? Which of those are the best guide for a designer? How can one test this? Conclusions and Suggestions for Game Improvement Further Research or Information needed PART 1: Elements of gun effectiveness I am neither a programmer, a mathematician, or a developer, or even a particularly skilled player in terms of datamining or minmaxing stats. However, there are some interesting coincidences and game design elements that made me want to crunch some numbers and do a few tests! First, it is boring game design to just make the biggest guns the best, or the most guns the best. So is there a "sweet spot" where, all things being equal, you should start a new build? On the flip side, as a game with so many scenarios and possibilities, if you have an obvious "sweet spot" that is objectively the best way to build, you lose a lot of creativity in the designer as the player thinks they MUST do certain things! I will argue in this post that, yes, there is a sweet spot, and also, yes, there is an element of maximizing is better, but also there is a remarkable flexibility, so you won't be failing too much if you get this wrong, either! I would say overall this is pretty well set up. With that out of the way, here we go! Accuracy: Obviously, we want the ships we shoot at to kindly sink or explode or not shoot at us anymore, so one would think accuracy is the most important thing. It is certainly important, but focusing on it exclusively is not ideal either and leads to some...weird builds (see videos of players maxing kill rate with single 18" guns for example. This will be debunked in this analysis). There are two caveats to this number: Note that in the game, accuracy is percent of shots that are on target at a given range BEFORE bonuses are added. You can see changes to BASE accuracy if you add equipment like towers, but weather, speed, aiming progress, and other bonuses won't show up on the gun info screen. It is given per single shell. So when you look at the penalty of using triple or quadruple mounts, you aren't getting a less accurate weapon overall, it's just each individual shell will scatter more. The real question is does the extra shell downrange make up for the loss in accuracy? Rate of Fire: This is the other interesting one, and the same caveats apply. We want to send as much explosives down range as quickly as possible to make the red ships go away, preferably in spectacular explosions. Rate of fire isn't really affected (yet) by in-battle conditions as far as I can tell, so what you see after applying your technologies and mods is what you are going to get. Note that once again, the reload time is per barrel. So even though a dual turret might reload in 30 seconds and a triple might reload in 35 seconds, the dual turret is firing at 4 shells per minute (2 barrels x 2 rounds per minute), while the "slower" triple turret is firing a bit over 5 shells per minute (3 barrels x 1.71/min) This analysis is thus going to focus on how rate of fire, barrel number, and accuracy come together to create guidance for you beleaguered designers! Penetration: This is a very interesting one. Generally bigger is better, but knowing when and where "plunging fire" happens is important. I haven't looked into this yet, and remember that while penetration is based on range (how much horizontal armor vs how much vertical armor it will defeat), the armor schemes in game are a bit convoluted and as I said, I'm not a dataminer! Penetration is the MOST affected by little things like range and angle of armor, so it's quite difficult to explore without tightly controlled experiments or digging around in the code. It does apply, and I'll explain at the end, but for now we'll leave it behind. Damage Dealt: This is assuming a full penetration. Partial pens and fires do not count here for this number. It is affected by shell weight and technologies as well, and those numbers do pop up on the information card. Modifiers: Towers, Propellant (Explosives), and Shell Weight all affect the gun barrels stats. Aiming time is affected by towers, turret techs, and reloading buffs, but once the guns are dialed in, the shells will hit with the same accuracy, penetration, and damage. Therefore, I'm not too concerned about aiming time here. Note that things like aiming time, 3 and 4-barrel accuracy and reload penalties are applied EQUALLY regardless of gun size. So all we're interested in here to choose your gun type and layout is really just accuracy vs. rate of fire. The rest will make it better or worse, but it won't change you your gun decisions stack up against each other, all things being equal Picture Break! (figure 1.1) ! Here we see a graph of the 9" mk 5 gun in terms of accuracy and penetration. Note how quickly accuracy really falls off. Finding the best range to fight at depends on how well the penetration values match up with actually being able to hit anything. Note that larger weapons (15"+) actually do reach a point where the vertical pen will exceed horizontal penetration. If you aren't clear about what "plunging fire is", that's what it is. The tables also might help you determine how much deck armor your ship will need. PART 2: Which Elements should figure into weapon choice? As we've seen, there are so many possibilities, and the developers have really done a great job of making them all viable. But, how can you tell if some are "more viable" than others? What is the "best" design? First, let's focus on accuracy, rate of fire, and equipment. Spoiler alert: All things being equal, there is a best gun to use and a best turret size. However, most will work well. So you want to get the best firepower you can before you start to make compromises on rate of fire or barrel number. Triples are indeed better than duals, so if you can fit triples up to 16", but need to switch to duals to fit 17" on your ship, better to stick with the triple 16's! The same goes for auto reloading. If you can fit auto reloading on 15" turrets but can't on 16" turrets, stick with the ones you can get auto reloaders for. The "Why" gets a bit interesting, and here is our experiment! Because some equipment works across all gun sizes, to control for that we'll need to ensure that our test ship will have the same equipment fit regardless of weapon choices. If you were to look at French triple turrets, with no modifiers (no tower installed, no auto reloading, same propellant), and compare the accuracy across all ranges, you end up with a chart that looks like this: (Figure 2.1) Accuracy for main battery weapons from point blank to 25,000 yds. Note that to spread out the results at effective battle ranges, we are looking at a logarithmic scale for the vertical axis. Takeaways: "Mk" number may refer to an in-battle bonus, it does NOT affect accuracy on the info card. You can see that the smaller guns run out of range before reaching 25Kyds, while some have better accuracy at longer ranges. You can see there is actually quite a lot of variance, but some weapons are clearly more accurate than others. I was surprised to be honest that there wasn't more "grouping" between the different patterns (ex. all Mk 4's ALL being better than the Mk. 3's; which does not actually happen - more datamining required; is this the "guns grade" bonus in game?). I also expected to see each weapon have a point where it's accuracy was better than others. This does not seem to be happening, so the idea of building around a SPECIFIC range seems to be out the window. There are obviously differences between close and long range weapons, though! However, this is only HALF of the story. The other thing that matters is how quickly shells are sent downrange. The more shots you can take, the sooner you will score a hit, especially at longer ranges. So, I plugged the accuracy percentage into a "drop calculator" (because I don't math) to figure out how many shots must be taken to guarantee a hit (I call 99% a guaranteed hit for these charts, by the way - the math holds for lower thresholds too, so it doesn't matter here). So I plugged in the number of shots needed, divided by the rate of fire (remembering these are all triple turrets) to come up with "effective" accuracy. That number, to me, is how long you can expect to fire at a target at a given range to guarantee a hit. Basically, If you have half the accuracy, but twice the rate of fire, you are still going to score hits at the same rate. And here it is! (figure 2.2) This is the TIME taken to reach 99% chance of a hit for each gun size, using triple turrets. IMPORTANT - lower is better here, because more time taken is bad. This is to GUARANTEE a hit, not "get lucky". Of course you will score hits sooner on average, but your second hit might take a while. This does NOT count ladder aiming or radar aiming progress, target lock, etc. This is ONLY the stock guns with the same equipment. Imagine a turret on a firing range with no technology to assist the aiming. Notice that the time taken really flares up beyond 15KYD. This is basically the inverse of your accuracy curve. As long as your armor can take it, you need to get within a certain range to be hitting ships consistently. We all know this already, but it's kind of neat to see on a graph in real time! As a Log chart, we can expand the closer range and actually see what's happening here: (figure 2.3) This is the TIME taken to reach 99% chance of a hit for each gun size, using triple turrets. The log scale opens up the closer ranges so you can see that some weapons are consistently "better" at scoring hits over some ranges. Again, lower lines are better, because the less time taken to get hits the more damage you'll be dealing! So, we can start to see some winners here. Notice that the 12" gun in INCREDIBLE at getting shots on target inside of 10KYDs. At greater ranges, you see that the 9" gun takes over, until it runs out of reach, anyway! The problem, is how much damage are you doing to your targets with such light shells? If you want to look at the "heavy" weapons, you can draw conclusions as well: Note that the 13" and 15" guns are very similar. You are going to get a similar number of hits over time (at closer ranges, the 13" is a little better, at longer ranges, the 15" is slightly better) However, the 15" shell is going to hit a lot harder. Interestingly, the 14" gun is consistently worse than both! There is also a "Pack" of guns around 15KYDs. 14", 16", 17", 18", 19", and 20" are all getting hits at about the same rate. So at that range, bigger really is better. BUT - all things being equal, and assuming all shots can do damage, you can still see the 9", 12", 13" and 15" guns ahead of the pack. Against small ships, the light guns seem to indeed be better. Against medium ships, 15" is looking like the best balance of accuracy and hitting power. Against the big baddies, heavier is probably better, as long as you can control the range (and SURVIVE at 15K Yards!) PART 3: Testing Time! I was inspired by the YouTube "Taskmaster" challenges where various gamers tried to kill 10 early battleships as quickly as possible. I've done two levels of test here, so I'll share both. The first test was whether or not the accuracy and reload penalty of more barrels offset the increased fire. My thesis was that more barrels is still going to be faster, even if the guns are less accurate and slower firing. To test, we used the same 5 Turret "Test Hull" (see figure 3.1) with 18" guns, changing only the number of barrels per turret. We used 1940 tech, vs. ten 1900 BB starting at 20,000 Yds. The results were pretty compelling! (Table 1:) This was my first test, it is not as controlled as the following test and just gives a rough estimate. The results were consistent however, demonstrating the concept that even though larger turrets have reduced rate of fire and accuracy, the extra barrels more than make up for it. First, against such weak targets, the time to get the first kill was pretty much tied to getting the first hits. I was surprised at how similar the times for that were. The guns do dial in much more quickly (and much more consistently) than my "Effective Accuracy" table would predict. True, we were using the same guns, but the rate of fire was going up very consistently, which WAS reflected in the total time, but was NOT reflected in the first kill time. This suggests a bit of a tweak to the code as far as getting that first hit, maybe there is a little bonus to ensure a quick hit that disappears after that first hit. More research!) So, if you can afford them, quad barrels are best! However, what about different gun sizes? That was the point of the first bit of analysis, anyway? Well, glad you asked! Here we go for the "BIG TEST" The Test Ship (Figure 3.1) The specific stats don't really matter. This is the gun layout all of the test ships for both the preceding and succeeding tests are used. The tonnage was always maxed out (to fit the largest turrets) but armor was changed to allow them to fit. We always used a 125,000 ton hull so that we could fit quad 18's (and eventually quad 20's) for the purposes of the test. To get the biggest guns, we limited to speed to 25 knots, and cut the armor as much as needed to do so. We always used the same towers, the same explosives (TNT) and standard reloading. Because we know that quad turrets are fastest at getting the kills in this scenario, we only changed the size of the guns - 14", 15", 16", 17", 18", 19", 20". (smaller guns do not allow quads). Because the variance between what the AI builds, RNG, and different starting angles makes a big difference, we ran several tests per weapon loadout. We looked at: Time for first kill, Time to complete mission, and Time from time of first kill to the end ("effective time") Table 2: Note: The 14" was predicted to perform poorly in the stat analysis above, and after two tests it was clear that that was in fact borne out, so I did not complete the third test. Looking at this data, I believe the predictions based on the graph of effective accuracy were borne out in the results. As expected from the predictions based on data, the 15 inch gun stands out as the most effectively accurate of the heavy weapons, the 14" is noticeably worse, and at moderate ranges the other heavy weapons are remarkably consistent (but still worse). The 19 and 20-inch guns seemed to overperform, considering that although their raw accuracy is indeed the best, their effective accuracy is hurt by their slow rate of fire and they are EXPECTED to line up with the 16-18" guns in terms of effectiveness. My theory is that there is a hidden buff to early "rangefinding" accuracy to get players hits sooner than mathematically should be happening, which then disappears after the aiming process is complete. The 19" and 20" weapons will basically one-shot a 1900 BB, so those "lucky" first salvoes are more effective than would otherwise be expected. It is also important to note that at a range of 15KYD, we should expect the TIMING of hits to be relatively consistent, so the very largest weapons are just showing the point at which the heavier shell does in fact start to overwhelm the other stats! It is also important to note for rangefinding purposes, we are sending 20-shell salvoes downrange, so there is an awful lot of "stuff" to throw at the wall. When some of it invariably sticks, those heavy guns pack a whallop! PART 4: Conclusions and Suggestions Based on these tests, a few things emerge. Firstly, how effective your fire is depends a lot on the range of engagements. If you get to around 15KYDs, you will find that the heavy guns all perform relatively consistently with each other. If you get closer, accuracy improves a lot over all weapons, and your first hits will be devastating. Also, at the closer ranges, the rate of fire really will make a difference especially if you are crippling targets every salvo. Because penalties for 3- or 4-gun turrets apply to reloading and accuracy, it is fair to ask if they are worth it. As of this patch, they are very much so. The extra shells going downrange compensate for the lower accuracy and rate of fire. It is clear that the more guns in a turret, the better! We also see that unless you are needing very heavy weapons, 15" guns work just fine at least against weaker targets. My personal conclusion: The quadruple 15" gun is probably the sweet spot for me. Against similar class vessels or less, it is probably the best overall weapon in the game. I would only use heavier weapons if I know I am facing modern or super battleships. This leads to a few design principles commanders might consider: For a given number of turrets, the more guns in a turret the better. If you can substitute triples or quads without having to sacrifice a turret, do. If you are limited by weight or costs, consider how you can get the most barrels possible. Invest in technologies to boost rate of fire and accuracy. RoF makes a HUGE difference. If you can invest in autoloaders, do so. I didn't include it here in a table, but I took out my test ship with a full 15" accuracy and ROF, and it brought down the engagement time to consistently around 20 minutes, with one run having just 16 minutes between the first hits and the last kill. Those boosts in rate of fire directly translate to expected time to sink targets. Assuming your shells can damage the target, and assuming all other things being equal, the 15" gun is the most effective, barrel for barrel. BATTLECRUISER DESIGNERS: This is a HUGE takeaway for you. Since you SHOULDN'T be engaging heavy enemies, based on this, you should probably go no larger than 15" guns. You will get more bang for your buck and slightly less dangerous shells lying around. If you are going more for a "super cruiser", the stats suggest that 12" guns may be best, at least on paper, out of the triple-only mounts. If you need to go for heavier weapons, it won't make the biggest difference as long as you can maximize the technologies. If you can get better tech or more barrels on, say 17" guns but have to sacrifice to get 18"'s, it's better to stay with the biggest weapon you can "max out". Suggestions for Developers: Based on this study, it seems that gun size balances VERY WELL with rate of fire and accuracy. As long as we choose weapons that are effective against the expected targets, there isn't a "right" or "wrong" answer as long as we consider the applicable elements. Revise how quad turrets are selected for or are possible in designs. The way the stats work right now, all things being equal, quadruple turrets are ALWAYS the best as long as they can fit and be afforded. This probably is something that needs to be addressed because we see in reality only three battleship classes ever used them, (with a few more designed and not laid down) while the vast majority of battleships used dual or triple turrets. Perhaps the weight penalty should be reexamined, so that you could fit a quad turret to replace two smaller turrets but could not fit two quad turrets in a similar area. Perhaps also turret and hull size should be considered - where guns larger than 16" simply cannot fit in a quadruple turret on anything short of the super battleship hull. That is, unlock different turrets based on hull. I would prefer something like this: Battlecruisers/Super Cruisers: 12/4, 13/4, 14/4, 15/3, 16/2, 17/2, 18/1, 19 or 20 can't fit at all Small/Medium Battleships: 12/4, 13/4, 14/4, 15/4, 16/3, 17/3, 18/2, 19/2, 20/2 Modern Battleships: 12/4, 13/4, 14/4, 15/4, 16/4, 17/3, 18/3, 19/2, 20/2 Super Battleships under 100K: all quads possible except 19/3 and 20/3 Super Battleships over 100K: all quads possible. By the way, quads of all main guns should be possible all the way down to 9". PART 5: Further Research, datamining, and Study: I would love to know how initial accuracy is figured out. It seems that ships consistently get their first hit much earlier than expected, especially on the larger guns where it should take vastly longer time to get that first hit (considering the increased time between salvoes). Is it always a hit on Salvo #2, 3, or 4 and an RNG decides which it will be? If such a system exists, what happens after the first hit? Once the first hit is achieved, performance approaches what is expected for gun size and range. Based on the evidence suggesting that more barrels is better with the same techs, I have not compared, say, quad 15" guns to triple 16" guns. The penetration vs accuracy over range curves would be interesting to plot or see for all weapons. This has not been done on secondary weapons either. This study has only worked with French pattern guns. How are other nations different? If you made it this far, Cheers! Happy Sailing, please let me know if this borne out or if I am barking up the wrong tree! -dbs1701

This is mainly going to address the "two turret" system for gun aiming that is still in place. I feel like I've been a pretty big proponent of this, but here it goes: I am fully aware that for, basically, every warship ever designed with a gun turret...the number of guns were the same across each turret (like the Iowa with three triple turrets, the Bismarck with four twin turrets, the New York class with five twin turrets, etc) and the guns were the same size (both shell size and caliber). Now, from what I have seen, read and can deduce from a wide array of source material...the main factor in deciding whether or not a triple turret would fit is how wide the hull was or how much space is available below decks. Take the USS Pensacola for example: it had the two triple turrets placed in the superfiring position, with the two twin turrets on the main deck. Why? Because if they went the other way around with the twins firing over the tops of the triples, they would have to redesign the hull and widen it to accommodate the added size of the machinery required to operate the triple turrets where as if they put the triple turrets where they wound up putting them, the hull was already wide enough so they would fit without any hull altercations or redesigns though it lead to the Pensacolas being very top heavy and having excessive roll (this isn't a problem in UA:D, since so long as you have the displacement left over you can basically swap out a dual for a triple no problem). The USS Nevada, by comparison, was able to use the twin and triple turrets in the more "conventional" way of the twins firing over the triples which was an improvement over previous designs that had to use 5 turrets to carry the same 10-gun compliment, whereas the Nevada's could get away with 4 turrets. Now that the short history lesson is over, here's how it ties back into UA:D. It's no secret that the gun aiming system has it's flaws and can sometimes make certain designs unworkable or render some turrets useless due to a lack of accuracy in certain situations (just try building a USS Nevada/USS Pensacola style ship and tell me whether you like the gun accuracy/"effectiveness" at any firing angle other than broadside). It's because of the two-turret system that depends on at least two of the same turret (i.e. at least two guns of the same size and number of barrels) being able to bear against a target. Why the game treats single, twin, triple and quadruple turrets of the same gun size as different batteries with different targeting data I do not know--then again, I don't know much about developing a game either, maybe it's easier/simpler this way idk. For an example: you could build a USS Nevada style build with your twin turrets being 14" and your triples being 16" and the only difference you would get between 14" triples and 16" triples is the reload, range, weight of the turret and damage (if the guns even hit the target). Alternatively, you could build a ship that has a single, dual, triple and quadruple gun of the same caliber and the game would treat each one of those turrets as if they were all a different gun size. I've got a very hard time trying to picture somebody on the USS Nevada during WWII telling his captain, "The triples are blazing away sir, but the twin turrets are basically useless since only one of the twin turrets can bear against the target!" That defeats the whole purpose of a "unified" main battery: so long as the shell size and gun caliber (barrel length) are the same, it shouldn't matter whether or not you've got all dual turrets, all triple turrets or a mix of turrets with different numbers of guns in them. Reload times are almost guaranteed to be different since it takes less time to reload two guns than three, but that's not the issue here. Now, onto the second point: gun caliber, or maybe better known as barrel length. The Japanese Kawachi class of battleships carried a "unified" gun size of 12", but some guns were 50 caliber and others were 45 caliber (meaning their barrel lengths were 600" and 540", respectively) which also caused problems with rangefinding and accuracy of the main battery as longer guns give you higher muzzle velocity and increased range, thus leading to the 50 caliber guns having different performance than the 45 caliber ones. If your guns are the same size but different caliber, you'll have just as much luck trying to hit a target as a ship with multiple gun sizes but equal barrel length. And one last thing before I close: I'm fairly certain that in the game tips that pop up while you are looking at a loading screen, there is a tip about keeping your gun size the same to increase effectiveness and speed of ranging/aiming ant there is another tip/piece of info about the Kawachi class and their mixed gun length problem that led to them having issues rangefinding despite having the same gun size. If those are tips that are put into this game, by the creators, on the topic of "unified main batteries", shouldn't a unified main battery actually mean something? (Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about those tips popping up on the loading screens) Now, I'm well aware that you could argue that playing around with shell weight, propellant amounts/materials could fix or "make better" the different gun caliber ordeal and one could also argue that if you don't want half of your main battery to be helplessly stuck in the ladder aiming process...just make each turret have the same number of guns. Well, the first argument doesn't really need to happen since we can't change barrel length in this game and the second one takes away from this game's "freedom of design" aspect that allows you to, for the most part, create what you want the way you want it. Not to mention, the second argument could be reversed and the question then becomes "if the guns are the same size and caliber, and fire the same ammo...why does every turret have to have the same number of guns per turret just to be accurate or effective?" I also haven't seen anything in the patch notes for a while on gun accuracy/this issue in general...so I don't think it's been addressed or taken care of. I realize that much of the dev team's focus has been on the campaign for a while, and while they seem to have been very receptive to feedback as of late, I feel as though this issue has been around for too long now. It's not enough to make me stop playing and supporting this game if this issue is never fixed...but it still bothers me. So I guess all there is left to ask is this: With game tips that persuade you to have a "unified main battery," gun stats that are basically identical when it comes to muzzle velocity, range, penetration, and damage between all four turret options (single, dual, triple and quad barreled) and the inability to change barrel length to effect the aforementioned stats, and no influence/limits from the ship designer in situations like the USS Pensacola's where just moving the larger turret back will allow it to fit.......when will a "unified main battery" finally mean something? I hope I'm not the only one who feels/thinks this way, and I hope this eventually makes it's way to the eyes of @Nick Thomadis and/or the other devs. I also hope nobody is dead from reading a wall of text as this was pretty lengthy.

One that has bugged me for a bit. Why all the hull weight/engine weight modifiers for equipment that has very little to do with that part of the ship. I mean the boiler been a engine weight multiplier makes sense, the boiler has to scale with the engine, but why a hull weight modifier? If I put the same engine in a bigger ship, why does the boiler suddenly have to weigh more? Why does propellent choice affect hull weight? If I've got the same number of guns on 20kt ship and a 40kt ship, the weight saving should be the same right not proportional to hull weight. Not like the larger ship is carrying loads more propellent just cost it can when it hasn't even got the shells to use it. Turrets... no reason for these to be linked to engine % or hull % at all... should just require extra HP on the engine per turret based on turret size. No reason a ship with a bigger hull or bigger engine would have more expensive/heavier requirements to upgrade the turrets compared to a smaller/slower ship with the same guns. Add a HP draw on the engine makes a lot more sense than a engine multiplier as you are effectively requiring the same turrets to use massively more engine power to achieve the same thing. Reloading... Again, no reason for this to modify hull weight... fitting this for 4x4 20" guns should always be more expensive than for 1x12" gun on the same hull. Oxy Torp Propulsion - Again why a BS with 4 oxy Torps need a oxy generated 50x larger than a destroyer brimming with torps. Really makes no sense, weight increase should be based solely on amount of torps, not at all on hull weight. You'd fit a generator big enough to generate the Oxy you need, not just randomly fit one based on hull weight. Range-Finders - Again why multiply tower weight? It does the exact same thing if I fit a lighter tower so why is it multiplying space instead of a fixed size addition? I could kinda justify this one in saying its replacing default equipment so there is more on larger towers, but thats kinda off as then it should be a tower effectiveness multiplier instead really. Also kinda stinks for heavier towers with built in barbs e.t.c. Sonar - I can kinda give this one as its harder to fit effective sonar (barring modern towed arrays) on larger, noiser ships. I'd still prefer it to be a fixed weight component with a bonus/malus based on ship noise.

Greetings All! (Feel free to skip text wall to Tl;Dr at bottom) Long time lurker, I have been playing since the game dropped...wow almost a year or more ago? It's been a long time. Mostly, my concerns are voiced by others and so I usually don't have much otherwise to say, but I had some thoughts and suggestions. The major one on my mind for this post is focused on the ship builder and its' implementation in the upcoming campaign. I do understand that a rework of the builder is (is?) in the works for the future, these are things to just perhaps bear in mind: How does the game team intend to allow for potential major rebuilds or refits in the designer? I'm talking full on Conte Di Cavour style facelifts that can completely change the performance, armament, and appearance on what is otherwise an older hull. This is very important because historically EVERY navy of this time period did major refits and rebuilds, to some extent, on their more expensive investments. This saved cost obviously on building a new hull, and it also extended the lifespan of older designs in a period of technological explosion. However, we should also be able to conduct smaller refits and refinements as well. Things like new more efficient boilers of the same type, or more accurate turrets of a similar design to those equipped. Potentially shipping this game without some sort of answer for this, I think, misses a very BIG element of naval management. As it exists, the current shipbuilder is very limiting in this aspect. For example, I can't potentially refit a ship with a straight stem to a clipper bow. Big "L". You can't custom build superstructures or redesign machinery spaces, other than choosing the next big number or the better pre-designed set (which might not even fit) so ships will be arbitrarily made impossible to refit or rebuild. What about adding torpedo bulges to an older ship with a somewhat obsolete torpedo defense system, an old battlecruiser for example? Sure it may already be a secondary or reserve capital ship already, but it is still worth a lot of money. Cheaper to add those bulges than to build a new battlecruiser for the same role, right? Maybe you have a huge number of aging destroyers. Do you sell them for a severely depreciated scrap value, or perhaps refit them to be coastal patrol craft or dedicated escort ships? Armament even too! Your ship just need to replace old barrels? Can do, maybe a few months moored at home station and done. No need to redesign or build an entirely new hull. Or, want to rearm it with your shiny new 15 inchers from the old 12 inchers? That’s cool, you’ll have to deal with a reduction in barrels for sure, and less ammo. But now you got bigger guns on an older hull without coughing up the dough for an entirely new design and study board. Tl;Dr: I think a much more custom ship designer (similar to the features 1MajorKoenig has on his list of suggestions) would make this sort of feature a trifle to implement. Other games have it as well and present simple cost and benefit. It adds depth. Do you spend significant money to refit an older battleship, or spend more money and time building a new one? Strategy right there, and real decisions real naval boards would have to digest. It also allows the smaller, more monetarily disadvantaged navies to make the most of their existing fleet. As an Italian main in a certain other game of this flavor, I certainly rely heavily on my rebuilds to keep my battleship numbers up since I cannot always afford to build new ones constantly. Please let me know all your thoughts on this!

So I have a question/observation. I was recently doing a custom battle British vs. Japan. Just to warm up 1940's tech was gonna build the biggest battleship I could, But then I noticed that the biggest battleship The Brits could get are the Dreadnought IV and the N3/G3 hulls which top out at 62k displacement. That got me thinking does Britain actually have the smallest size battleship displacement in the game? All Displacements are max French 93k Germany 130k Japan 125k USA 109k Spain 69k Russia 69k Italy 65k Austro 90.5k China 87k British 62k Spain and Russia share the same hull but it begs the question of balance late game. Obviously not all of these nations designed ships with high displacements but the problem is that how are the devs going to balance these hulls out? Britain tops out at 62k but Germany for example has 4 battleship hulls that hit a max of 62k and up. Some hulls will inevitably be shared across nations like how I noticed in Spain and Russia with the modern battleship 69k hull but I thought I'd post this here for the community to brainstorm ideas for the devs or maybe share historical designs for nations they can find of specifically capital ships. One Idea I had was for if this game has an espionage system (I haven't seen anything confirmed yet) is that your spies could actually steal hull types that you could then build in your own faction. This would stop specific nations having a hull advantage. But ideally I'd hope us the community could find some examples the devs could look at and see if they want to eventually include into the game!

So i read a bit about they way that your ship classes work and what are they composed of. I have question however. Will there be any possibility of designing or playing with predesigned auxiliary vessels like minelayers and support cruisers? Also will we be able to give roles of those vessels to our ships. For example could i create destroyer-cargo transport hybrid (like destroyer usage during WW2 Pacific by Japan) or give cruiser/destroyer ability to put minefield (something like what orp Gryf was) I assume that tender ships both as a repair ship and as a support seaplane tenders are very hard to implement not to mention make them designable - and therefore will not be the case, am i correct? I also asume that we will be able to create cruiser that has some asw capabilities?

I was attempting to use the ship designer to somewhat accurately model the IJN Fuso and or Ise class battleships in their original 1914-1917 configuration and ran into an issue. The designer set for 30,000 tons specifies a ~214 meter hull which should be ample room to construct the 6 x 2 x 14" gun setup of either class on the Dreadnought II base. It's the only hull that works in this time period and visually it appears perfectly suited to the task. However, in actuality, the base model Dreadnought II does not have a weather deck / casemate of sufficient length to hold the main armament of the battleship. The maximum allowed distance between the front and rear towers with the requirements of placing a funnel at a specific lock in point as well as two 14" turrets in between is insufficient to build the correct layout. Moreover, because of the tower configuration placement limitations (rear tower too far forward) and in regards to a centerline barbette only being able to be placed forward as opposed mid or aft, the design cannot be balanced in the game to remove a severe foreheavy condition and retain a correct gun configuration. If the attachment points for towers and barbettes will not be loosened up in future designer builds, I'm requesting that the base hull have the casemate length extended slightly so this iconic Japanese 6 x 2 x 14" gun setup can be realized in game. Update: I just tried redoing it as a pagoda build to model the 1930-33 refits and the same issues still exists. In fact, excacerbated due to pagoda front tower weight.