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I tried to set Turrets up for crossdeck firing but it took me pretty long to get turrets in the right positions and balancing them out. Also sometimes i noticed it doesnt want to balance the turrets with eachother. Maybe you guys have specific "crossdeck" type hulls planned but rn with the current hulls crossdeck firing ships are hard to realize.

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I'm very excited for this game so I'll be glad to share feedback on it. Currently my main feedback is for the designer part of the game, so that's what I'll put here along with a question or two, starting with the latter and then moving to the former.

First, the teaser video kind of gave the impression we would put the hull together section by section when designing ships (which would give immense and practically endless customization combinations), which is quite different than adjusting preset hulls with a displacement slider to make them longer or shorter. Was this a misconception or is this coming in the future possibly?

Second, though possibly partly in connection with the first, will we see options to determine ship freeboard and the gun/turret visual styles different nations had, or will those styles be strictly tied to tech? Also what about further determining barbette thickness to an actual specified number and/or further specifying how much armor goes where? Or is this too much for the game?

Moving to feedback, I've come into encounters where it's impossible to build a ship with specific part combinations due to the limited hardpoint/mount system. In particular for funnels and superstrcture/towers, as well as trying to put 'secondary' guns (not the casemate guns) on anything but the 'modern battleship' scenario. In addition it doesn't currently seem possible to mount secondary gun turrets on a barbette, such as trying to model something after Yamato's forward and aft triple 155mm gun turrets above the main battery.

In addition and as mentioned by someone else somewhere, I've found it's impossible to recreate certain historical ships like the Brandenburg class for example. Though I also remember a response to that was a limitation with the different techs available in the Naval Academy scenarios or something of those lines.

 

That's all I've got right this moment, I'll be sure to give more feedback as I spend more time with the game and watch it's development.

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You designed an amazing game, congratulations! 😊 

1. I would like to see a feature to save a ship design. 

2. The rearmost main gun hardpoint is impossible, because there is not enough depth for turret base and magazines.

3. It would be nice to have the ability to lock features before autodesign. E.g. I want a ship with a speed of 21 knots, so I lock the speed slider at 21 knots, before clicking on the light bulb. 

Edited by Bontainer
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At the moment propellant and burst charge for ammunition are combined in one designer choice. But both were seprate (though interrelated) technology issues and should be separated in the tech tree and the designer (e.g. you could have guncotton burst charges and cordite propellant).

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8 hours ago, MD456 said:

First, the teaser video kind of gave the impression we would put the hull together section by section when designing ships (which would give immense and practically endless customization combinations), which is quite different than adjusting preset hulls with a displacement slider to make them longer or shorter. Was this a misconception or is this coming in the future possibly?

I'll second this piece of feedback right here. I was really hoping to being able to put together the hull myself, including superstructure and all that.

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Increasing displacement only lengthens hulls when it should make it a bit wider too. It also doesn't move hardpoints so on some ships the tower will be placed too far in the front. More hard points in general would be nice, but this is amazing so far.

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it seems like the hulls are all too big in general and it makes it hard ro develop. For example, you try to build a battleship and the limit is 22K and the hull is 19K.

How does towers, turrets, funnels, and then armor make an efficient battleship with 3K left only

Overall, the game is nice though

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16 hours ago, MD456 said:

First, the teaser video kind of gave the impression we would put the hull together section by section when designing ships (which would give immense and practically endless customization combinations), which is quite different than adjusting preset hulls with a displacement slider to make them longer or shorter. Was this a misconception or is this coming in the future possibly?

The hull selection definitely is the most restrictive element of the designer right now.  I can understand that there may have been technical limitations that prevented the full implementation, but the few presets we have really limit the ship designs possible.  Even allowing an increase in width would allow a lot more freedom then we currently have.

Otherwise, I'm really happy with how the ship designer has turned out!

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While watching a stream, I noticed a very, very minor error in your shipbuilder:

The Acceleration is given as kn/s², when it should be kn/s, as kn is already a measurement of distance over time.

Anyways, your game looks awesome, can't wait to play it myself.

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  • The displacement slider isn't sensitive enough. IE the preset for 'torpedo bascis' is 350t. Once I move the slider there is no way to get it back to 350t.
  • Please add a way to lock certain design elements for auto design. Make it more like auto complete.
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On 10/5/2019 at 8:43 AM, MD456 said:

First, the teaser video kind of gave the impression we would put the hull together section by section when designing ships (which would give immense and practically endless customization combinations), which is quite different than adjusting preset hulls with a displacement slider to make them longer or shorter. Was this a misconception or is this coming in the future possibly?

The Auto-Designer is made in a way that player can easily understand what to do, create his ship fast and send it to combat. Making the system even more detailed, with cut parts (we tried that) would raise so many questions about usability for players, even ourselves the developers, that the game would lose a lot of its playability. We will add several more design options but not cut parts. Much later, we can try to add more complexity, but first we have to focus on finishing the game's campaign.

On 10/5/2019 at 8:43 AM, MD456 said:

Second, though possibly partly in connection with the first, will we see options to determine ship freeboard and the gun/turret visual styles different nations had, or will those styles be strictly tied to tech? Also what about further determining barbette thickness to an actual specified number and/or further specifying how much armor goes where? Or is this too much for the game?

Gun turrets will be strictly tied to technology, but some special hulls will be available only to specific Nations. Barbette thickness/function is planned to become more detailed in the near future.

On 10/5/2019 at 8:43 AM, MD456 said:

Moving to feedback, I've come into encounters where it's impossible to build a ship with specific part combinations due to the limited hardpoint/mount system. In particular for funnels and superstrcture/towers, as well as trying to put 'secondary' guns (not the casemate guns) on anything but the 'modern battleship' scenario. In addition it doesn't currently seem possible to mount secondary gun turrets on a barbette, such as trying to model something after Yamato's forward and aft triple 155mm gun turrets above the main battery.

Press Ctrl while moving the mount point for more placement freedom. If the problem persists, please use the in-game report button, so we can take a look and fix accordingly.

On 10/5/2019 at 8:43 AM, MD456 said:

In addition and as mentioned by someone else somewhere, I've found it's impossible to recreate certain historical ships like the Brandenburg class for example. Though I also remember a response to that was a limitation with the different techs available in the Naval Academy scenarios or something of those lines.

In campaign it would be easier to recreate this ship for Germany. But in missions you can find it and possibly recreate close enough. For example in mission "The Power of Dreadnoughts" with no tech boost option.

On 10/5/2019 at 2:56 PM, Bontainer said:

1. I would like to see a feature to save a ship design. 

It is planned for the future.

On 10/5/2019 at 2:56 PM, Bontainer said:

3. It would be nice to have the ability to lock features before autodesign. E.g. I want a ship with a speed of 21 knots, so I lock the speed slider at 21 knots, before clicking on the light bulb. 

We will note down to make, if possible.

18 hours ago, william1993 said:

it seems like the hulls are all too big in general and it makes it hard ro develop. For example, you try to build a battleship and the limit is 22K and the hull is 19K.

How does towers, turrets, funnels, and then armor make an efficient battleship with 3K left only

Overall, the game is nice though

I suggest to you and also everyone else, to first use "Auto-Design" button then make any necessary adjustments for an effective and faster ship design.

7 hours ago, dotu said:

While watching a stream, I noticed a very, very minor error in your shipbuilder:

The Acceleration is given as kn/s², when it should be kn/s, as kn is already a measurement of distance over time.

Anyways, your game looks awesome, can't wait to play it myself.

Thank you. We shall correct that.

4 hours ago, Norljus said:
  • The displacement slider isn't sensitive enough. IE the preset for 'torpedo bascis' is 350t. Once I move the slider there is no way to get it back to 350t.
  • Please add a way to lock certain design elements for auto design. Make it more like auto complete.

We will check, but if possible make an in-game report to check specifically this issue you notice.

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21 hours ago, Ishtar said:

Increasing displacement only lengthens hulls when it should make it a bit wider too. It also doesn't move hardpoints so on some ships the tower will be placed too far in the front. More hard points in general would be nice, but this is amazing so far.

It was examined to increase width a little according to displacement, but due to other priorities was not made yet. We will see if we can prioritize.

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Just got the game and it looks like things are going pretty well for it so far. I've noticed some problems (maybe) and some things I think would be nice to have -

Some items appear to double-place on a hull. Every now and then I'll place a turret or a superstructure bit and I'll get the "some items are poorly place" or "port/starboard overweight" notification. If I then use the right-click to delete what I just placed, it will delete what I can only assume is an invisible duplicate of the part that was causing the overweight. 

It'd be nice to be able to place any superstructure/mast part on any hull. I'm pretty partial to the double funnels and think it'd be cool to have them elsewhere than the hulls they're specifically tied to. Same goes for the American cage masts. Just food for thought.

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Ok, a small comment here without even seeing the campaign stuff (as we do not know of course), but just judging from the great designer you made I would like to suggest to make the game a bit more complex for the campaign later by adding production/engineering bonuses to your shipyards. The idea behind this would be to let your shipyards build up experience when they produce each vessel, this experience could maybe enhance tech research (if it is in line with their familiarity) and/or slightly lower time to develop/build a very similar configured ship that uses familiar parts/modules. That way a nation can become specialized in game without the need of for example outright predetermined nation wide bonuses and penalties.

With your game you have gold here! I think that the designer is already great and if we can get this cross integrated into the campaign very well (having feedback loops, so that the new build programs effect the designer and not only the other way around), this game has the potential become even much better!

Perhaps you are already contemplating this, I just want to give my 2 cents into game design (before it is fully set in stone and done) which I think would benefit the game.

Again, thank you for making such a great game!

Edited by Tycondero
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I kinda disagree about the whole less complex ship design thing. Now I don't know about implementing things like hull customization and if you guys don't put it in cuz it's hard to do from a technical standpoint then ok. But not doing it because you want the ship designer less complex is a mistake I think. Being able to change the hull, even a little, in order to fit what we want would be really nice. And in some cases it just makes sense. For example, in a lot of the pre-dread hulls there's dedicated space for funnels with casemates on the sides but I, at least, haven't used all space yet in any design. I can't get rid of it though and am stuck with empty space, in some cases quite a bit of space too. Why would a ship be designed with all that empty space? Let us be able to change if we have the tech for it, centerline turret tech for example. You can make it a tech thing if you want, idk. But just let us be able to change the hulls a little bit, to add more space or main guns, or casemates, or whatever. Complexity is good, we like complexity. Please

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One thing I like in RTW2 that I'm missing in this ship designer is the weight contribution from various elements (or maybe I'm not looking in the right spot?). It would be nice to what my deck armor is costing me, what the engine costs, etc. I guess that would apply to financial costs as well.

I was a little annoyed that when I increased the displacement, some of the previously-mounted components moved to invalid positions. I can see that happening if I decrease ship size, but increasing size should IMO give more room for everything.

Placement of the forward and rear towers seems a bit restrictive. I don't know why I can't move the larger forward tower back a bit if I have extra space behind, in order to accommodate a pair of large forward turrets. 

Error messages when attempting to place too many center-line turrets/barbettes could be clearer (e.g. current technology only allows N center turrets).

This probably involves more technical difficulty, but I would prefer the casemate locations to show up on the model only when I actually add casemate guns to the ship, and only at the locations where guns are installed.

 

 

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I am mostly going to criticize but I am aiming to do so in a constructive way. I will split my points into major - regarding features, mechanics or lack of thereof and minor - mostly UI, usability and details.

Major:

1. The designer is terribly restrictive. In my opinion it is absolutely crucial to have more control over several design characteristics, the first of which would be hull shape. You have already stated that ships will get wider as well as longer with displacement and that's a good thing, but i also propose the following: add another slider underneath displacement slider called "hullform". That slider will control the length to width ratio while keeping set displacement. Hulls already have hullform statistic, which could be used as a middle point. Moving slider to one side would make the hull longer and thinner - improving the hullform statistic, acceleration, and centerline space. Moving the slider the other way would make the hull shorter and wider -> the armor belt and deck weight would decrease (because it is now shorter), there would be more space for side mounted guns and stability would improve (wider ship will lean over less in a turn).

2. Continuing with design characteristic that we need more control over - towers placement. As opposed to main battery turrets and funnels (which must be placed where the hull is deep enough) there is absolutely no reason why "this forward tower cannot be placed any further back, even though the hull is perfectly capable of supporting it". The only limitation to placing tower should be that rear tower must be aft of the forward tower. Even if you want to associate some sort of spotting penalties if the forward tower is in the rear half of the ship, the player should be able to build ships such as Nelsol and Rodnol Nelson and Rodney. There is already a weight balancing factor player needs to consider when placing things (and that's a good thing).

3. Casemates. Let us remove them. And not just leave them empty, add a button to the designer that says "Remove empty casemates", which will replace all casemates without guns with smooth hull. Having the empty/welded over casemates will be awesome if you're planning refitting ships in campaign (see visible  spots were casemates were before removal on US Battleships), but having them on brand new ship designs is awkward.

4. Funnels and machinery. Machinery does provide a weight balancing aspect toward the middle of the ship and that's a good start, but I feel like it would be better (and more sensible) to tie the exact point where this weight is applied to the funnel placement. It should be underneath the funnel (or in case of multiple funnels, halfway between them) rather than the exact middle of the ship. It would open up a lot more balancing options, especially when trying to build ships like Nelson, where you could use the machinery to counterweight the all-forward armament.

5. OPTIONAL. As in "it would be cool and helpful to have in the game, but not strictly necessary". Allow the players to indirectly control the citadel size and thus its mass. The citadel would span from the most forward main battery turret/funnel to rearmost main battery turret/funnel. It would allow for additional incentive of all-forward armament (with shortening of the citadel and associated weight saving). You could also gate that ability (adjusting citadel size) with tech, to simulate the adoption of all-forward scheme.

6. Towers. Right now the towers are strictly on the basis of "this one is heavier, more expensive and better than the other one", I'm hoping more towers will be added and that there will be multiple in the same tier, for example: one that gives a bigger accuracy boost, one that gives a damage control boost, one that is better at spotting, etc. Make the player think "what do I want?" rather than "can i somehow fit the best tower on this hull". Also, I would hope for addition of towers with inbuilt barbettes also in a barbette-less versions (especially if said barbette on a capital ship tower is too small for capital ship-grade calibers)

7. I don't know if this is already a feature in the game, but I couldnt find any mention of it, so I'm mentioning it: There should be accuracy penalties if a lot of different caliber guns are shooting. (Difficulties with rangefinding and differentiating splashes from one another, especially if calibers are similar). It shouldnt matter much at short range (which is why pre-dreadnoughts had a very mixed gun armament), but become more relevant as range increases. If it's already in the game, congratulations, you deserve a cookie.

8. OPTIONAL. . There is a barbette armor slot on the left side of the screen. But what does it mean exactly? Will heavy armor on a barbette be the same regardless of whether ship has 17 or 5 inches of armor? Consider giving us an additional armor thickness box for barbette instead of that unspecified protection level. So that we can say "14 in turret armor, 12.5 in barbette".

9. Allow us to mount secondary guns on top of main battery turrets. It was often done on early dreadnoughts.

Minor:

1. Give as a button in the designer that will highlight all empty casemate mounts and display a number for their max size. It will save clicking through all casemates caliber trying to find ones that fit.

2. Let us use the forward underwater (?) torpedo launcher on the TB. The launcher is modelled as part of the hull, but you cant put anything in there, and i don't think its functional.

3. Restrict certain combinations of engine-fuel-boiler setup. Otherwise I present to you the brand new diesel engine fueled by coal and using induced draft boilers. (In that case probably combine all the bonuses into the diesel engine and completely disable the other two selection boxes)

4. Rotating side guns only rotates one of them, while the mirrored gun is pointing the default way.

5. Moving "incorrectly placed" mirrored guns only moves one of them

There might be more of the minor category but right now that's all that comes to my mind.

In summary, the designer feels good when designing pre-dreadnoughts, but when attempting to design a legitimate dreadnought it feels clunky and restrictive.There is however a lot of potential and space for improvements and i hoping there will be improvements, as this is still early access. I hope my criticism was helpful and if you need me to elaborate on any of the points above feel free to @ me.

Cheers

 

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I have a few queries/suggestions

  • Will you allow a bit more flexibility with tower placement, in particular will you allow the towers to be placed to the rear of the ship in order to allow for all forward main battery arrangements as seen on Richelieu/Dunkerque/Nelson?
  • Will you allow dual turrets and superimposed guns on destroyers?
  • I appreciate there have already been suggestions regarding hulls but i would just like to add that it would be great if there were options for widening hulls as i have found it difficult at times to add a decent secondary battery to some dreadnoughts, particularly with ships with large main armaments. 

Overall i have found the ship designer fairly good and appreciate that it is not overly complex.

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Quote

7. I don't know if this is already a feature in the game, but I couldnt find any mention of it, so I'm mentioning it: There should be accuracy penalties if a lot of different caliber guns are shooting. (Difficulties with rangefinding and differentiating splashes from one another, especially if calibers are similar). It shouldnt matter much at short range (which is why pre-dreadnoughts had a very mixed gun armament), but become more relevant as range increases. If it's already in the game, congratulations, you deserve a cookie.

Loadingscreen text and the help function ingame (thats allready fairly full of stuff) mention that mutiple big calibers make the ranging process take longer.

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2 hours ago, JANXOL said:

9. Allow us to mount secondary guns on top of main battery turrets. It was often done on early dreadnoughts.

Disagree with this.  Anti-torpedo boat guns were mounted on top of turrets under the expectation that they would not be in action when the main guns were in use, and vice versa.  There is no way these guns could be used at the same time the main turrets were firing.  They went away when it was realized that torpedo boats would not only be attacking under the cover of night / poor visibility against stationary ships and that both systems would need to be fought at the same time.

Or do you mean the fixed secondary guns in a housing on top of the main turret like in the Kearsarge class?  I'm not sure "often" is justified in this case as it was failed design arrangement.

Edited by akd
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7 minutes ago, akd said:

Disagree with this.  Anti-torpedo boat guns were mounted on top of turrets under the expectation that they would not be in action when the main guns were in use, and vice versa.  There is no way these guns could be used at the same time the main turrets were firing.  They went away when it was realized that torpedo boats would not only be attacking at night in harbors, but could participate in fleet actions.

Or do you mean the fixed secondary guns in a housing on top of the main turret like in the Kearsarge class?  I'm not sure "often" is justified in this case as it was failed design arrangement.

I meant the anti-torpedo boat guns, like on hms dreadnought. I realize why they did away with them, but they were used for a time. Inability to fire while main guns are in use is a valid point, as such I would understand if these dont make it into the game.
I haven't heard of any ships other than Kearsarge class that used that peculiar arrangement, so I would call that a gimmick rather than "often" and it was in fact not what I was referring to.

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Loving the ship designer. What I would love to see and would spend hours tinkering is a hardcore ship designer mode (Everything available at once) which allows us to save our creations. I would spend hours creating replica's of ships from the past if given the pieces besides the hours I will spend in the campaign once its released. I know more hulls are on the way but I am hoping in the future you do allow the ability to build your own hull designs and that the turrets/masts will visual reflect the styles of various nations. Might be nice to allow players to select the style you want to use such as the french tumblehome hull design or the pagoda masts of the IJN 

The only real criticism is with the hulls currently available it can be hard to create wing or centre line turrets on a BC or Dreadnought. This includes non case-mount secondaries. The German navy in WWI for example had 88mm guns on there decks and with the currently options its impossible to recreate that look.

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Hello, new member here. Im having a blast designing ships for the naval academy.

I think what i wanted, some of it, is already said by members above. Idk if this is already asked but i kinda wanna add one more thing:

 

-Remove hardpoint restrictions for main guns and structures.

 

Just let us put what we want, where we want, including structures. Im kinda sad that i cant recreate Rodneys turret arrangement when i bought the game lol

I seem to notice that by hardpoints, we leave some ugly empty spaces that we cant really do anything with. It really ruins the complexity of the ships :P

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