>>> Ship Designer Feedback<<<

[Steeltrap]

14 hours ago, Skeksis said:

What is the difference between your suggested “pitch” penalty and the current font/aft offset?

Nothing right, they're the same thing, except the offset that shown is a 'general user warning', to let users know that there are penalties, apposed to be listed within the general stats of which would be harder to determine or not even listed at all.

 

OK, so I needed to be more specific? Thought I'd addressed it but will have another go.

The point I was trying to make, and I did mention it specifically, is that if you can't build a ship that existed historically without suffering really cripplingly bad penalties for fore/aft imbalance, there's something wrong with the system. Or are we suggesting all those ships had woeful stability if not being permanently down by the bows?

It just doesn't make sense to me. The system as it is currently implemented forces you to move certain things around because you CAN'T move others in ways that matter. It's as though the hull were delivered without ANY thought as to the armament and its layout, the armour and required machinery to achieve design speed.

I'm pretty sure the naval design process didn't start with "here's a hull, see what you can do with it", lol.

Besides which, hulls in the game ALREADY has baked in factors as to how they cope with different sea states, wind etc etc. The builder makes the point that changes you make to the ship can modify THOSE. My suggestion was to get rid of the fore/aft modifiers that AREN'T already in the hull so we don't tie ourselves in knots doing weird things to get proper balance (like sticking a 3" or 4" mount on the bow, for example, something I've used often on the early BC hulls).

Even IF I were to accept your assertion "there's no difference between the system and what you suggested", I don't see a suggestion as to the problem of "you can build HMS Nelson for example if you like but holy cow will your gunnery suffer some additional penalties by putting the turrets ahead of the superstructure, even when hull is designed with precisely that layout in mind with the superstructure and machinery aft" if we leave things as they are.

My basic assertion is the system gets it backwards. Ships were designed with armament, armour and machinery as known factors. Yet placing armaments where they were designed to go can force you to jump through hoops to achieve a zero fore/aft imbalance, something the ship would have been designed to have with the guns in the intended layout.

That's why I somewhat worked backwards, wondering if it wouldn't be possible instead to have a system where you input intended armament (and layout), armour and speed and the system gives you a hull that will achieve those including being correctly in balance. You know, pretty much exactly how the process worked historically.

Having said all that, thanks for the feedback. Always interested to learn how others may view things differently from how I do.

Cheers

Edited October 29, 2020 by Steeltrap

[thesethawa]

I saw the ads where you stacked sections on top of each other and am sad you can't do that. Was there some kind of tech limit that made that not possible? It feels a little close to false advertisement. It's not mobile game levels of lies but it is slightly misleading. Having said that I still like the game, I just wish I'd got what I thought I was getting. Also, I agree with some other users in the opinion that hardpoints should be dispensed with, or maybe the ship could just have a grid of universal hardpoints that work for every component. There have been some weird ships made in the past and it would be fun to recreate them.

[Skeksis]

1 hour ago, thesethawa said:

It feels a little close to false advertisement. It's not mobile game levels of lies but it is slightly misleading

Anybody can review gameplay videos to get to the truth of the matter, most people do before purchase.   

Edited November 8, 2020 by Skeksis

[Kebla]

In realtà è molto facile: lasciate scafi predefiniti e aggiungete i pezzi staccati, così chi è alle prime armi può comunque capire, così il gioco  unirebbe più comunity diverse, non solo quella di wows ma anche quella di wt o Simple Planes etc.

On 4/10/2019 at 14:44, Nick Thomadis said:

Dicci cosa pensi dell'innovativa meccanica "Ship Designer" e suggeriscici come possiamo renderla ancora migliore!

 

[1MajorKoenig]

Nick was mentioning increased availability of equipment/hulls with the next update. If I got it right he was referring to make the existing equipment available for more occasions/nations?

 

I HOPE we see a “modernized” Dreadnought for the German Kaiser and Torpedoboat hulls past 1908!

[Jatzi]

On 11/8/2020 at 12:34 PM, Skeksis said:

Anybody can review gameplay videos to get to the truth of the matter, most people do before purchase.   

That doesn't change the fact that those ads are still out there when the system doesn't exist which is blatant false advertising. Not cool. I wonder how many ppl have gotten excited by that ad and then seen it's not real and understandably completely lost interest in the game

[ioulaum]

Please remove Turret and Barbette mounting point, only left those obvious one (casemate, tower small guns, tower main turret).

Currently, barbette especially barbette for small guns is pretty useless, remove the limitation of mounting points of barbette will make it way more useful. 

Also, centerline mounting points for big guns is not that useful as well, maybe the better way is to draw a greenline in the middle as an indication for centerline mounting. And when move the turret near to the greenline the turret will be auto centered, better than clipping to several central mounting points that is messy and unintuitive. 

[Xenospartan653]

This was talked about a while back, but more nuance in actual types/quality of armament would be greatly appreciated. Right now, the game automatically updates each caliber of gun (the "Mark" system) based on year, but doesn't give any choice as to the mark selected -The designer also allows selection for propellant/filling (which should really be separated, by my understanding, but for all intents and purposes work satisfactorily), as well as weight of shell.

The designer does *not* take into account barrel length or other quality differences, for a given caliber of weapon. As you all know, the most obvious example of this difference in real life is the Iowa's 16"/50 Mk 7 gun, versus the South Dakota's and North Carolina's 16"/45 Mk 6. The Mk 7 had increased muzzle velocity and penetration compared to the Mk 6. rendering it a fairly different weapon in practice. However, this is hardly the only example.

When designing new 15" rifles, the French chose a 45-caliber weapon and the British used their old 42-caliber weapon. The Germans, having used a 45-caliber weapon in their WW1-era Bayerns, decided to use a 52-caliber weapon for the Bismarck; likewise, the Italins decided to use a 50-caliber weapon in their Littorios. This lead to the Germans and Italians having muzzle velocities of anywhere from 2,700 to 2,900 f/s, while the British were stuck with roughly 2,500 f/s until they started packing as much propellant as was safe with their "Supercharge" shells, which were never issued to ships with gun elevation beyond 20 degrees. The French attempted to do something similar, but experienced premature bore explosions, and so ceased doing so. Thus, while Italian rifles were markedly less accurate than their British counterparts (which is mostly put down to substandard manufacturing and close barrel spacing, rather than any fault of the gun design itself), they had markedly better muzzle velocity - as did the German guns.

Increasing barrel length, instead of bore size, was thus a viable armaments upgrade, and one that was seen many times from the dawn of the Dreadnought era. The British St. Vincent-class, in 1907, upgraded to a 12"/50 armament, from a 12"/45 armament on the preceding Bellerophons. The American Wyomings did so as well, from the preceding Floridas, while the later New Mexicos upgraded to a 14"/50 rifle from their preceding Pennsylvania-class's 14"/45. The Moltke-class BCs upgraded to an 11"/50 from the VDT's 11"/45. The Japanese Kawachi-class ran into problems because the Japanese couldn't acquire enough 12"/50 guns, and so had to substitute four of the six turrets on each ship for 12"/45 guns. And so on, so forth. That's not even counting how many pre-dreadnoughts operated 12" guns of 40 and even 35 caliber, even just a scant few years before their Dreadnought cousins mounted much larger variants. They certainly served together, and thus can't be merely abstracted as different "marks" of weapon.

While all my examples above are capital-ship weapons, rest assured that these differences continued as the bore size decreases. There's a world of difference between the American 5"/25, 5"/38, and 5"/54 guns, even though all were serving by the end of WW2, and a likewise difference between the Japanese 12.7cm/50 Type 3 and a 12.7cm/40 Type 89. These differences should certainly be simulated in the game, if at all possible, as they were a major part of warship design for the 20th Century.

---

Also,while we're on the topic, more denominations of caliber would be nice. Both the French and British used 340mm (13.5") guns on a widespread capital-ship scale, while the German L20e design was set to field 420mm (16.5") guns. The British fielded 4.5, 4.7, and 5.5-inch guns throughout both World Wars, while the French 138mm gun was nigh-omnipresent on it's destroyer fleet. The Japanese used a 140mm gun as well. On a smaller level, many nations used 88mm-90mm naval guns (3.5") as secondary pieces - and, of course, when going even smaller, 40mm/4cm guns were far, far more common than 50mm/5cm pieces. None of these are necessary, of course, but either their implementation or, preferably, the ability to customize, yourself, the bore diameter of a weapon, would be much appreciated.

Edited November 29, 2020 by Xenospartan653

[Paolo2700]

I know that I'm probably one of many others asking the same but I'd love to have more variety and historical accuracy regarding cruisers and battleships, especially looking to US, Italian, British and Japanese ships.

Edit: It also came to my mind that the tower designs could be improved, especially with the British I feel like the got the short and of the stick.

Edited December 20, 2020 by Paolo2700
wanted to add specifications

[Amadee]

Would there be a possibility to allow us the choice of using obsolete equipment/hulls/ships for custom battles?

Edited December 26, 2020 by Amadee

[traeng]

I think torpedoes in ship editor could be reworked:

-Add 2 speeds, slower but longer range, faster but shorter range.

-Remove "standard torpedo" and put "wet heater torpedo" instead.

-add other kinds of old torpedoes such as compressed air, flywheel... especially for dreadnoughts era

[Stormnet]

There might be a few suggestions here that have already been said, but I say them anyways:

1 - Remove the "Side Main Guns" menu.

Right now its just an unecessary menu to navigate when placing main guns. I can centre them myself, and I dont need to distinguish centered and sideways main guns. Also this causes the game when in battle to diferenciate between center and side turrets. Simply remove it and make their placement like secondary guns.

 

2 - Remove tower and barbette hardpoint restrictions. 

This has been said a lot of times by a lot of people but ill stress it out again. Right now barbettes (especially secondary ones) are limited in use. People want to place them in the center, or in the sides, etc, and the hardpoints simply stop them from doing so. What was the last time you saw a secondary barbette on a player designed ship? Just allow us to place ctrl and place them wherever we want. Same for towers (thought these should still be placed in line with the hull, just with freedom of movement when "ctrl-ing" instead of more hardpoints)

 

3 - Allow guns to delete hull decorations in their range

Guns in this game are constantly overlapping with the hull hatches, spotlights, and etc. This effect looks worse on small turrets ones. What I'm suggesting is for these assets to be deleted when a gun is placed next to them, so we dont get ugly messes.

 

4 - Designer Save Feature:

Again, been said by a LOT of people. But this feature should be one of your top priorities in terms of features right now. What kind of "vehicle-building" game doesnt have a designer save feature? There are players saying they would play more if they didnt have to rebuid their ships from scratch. Just do this, nearly every player in this game wants at some level this feature.

 

5 - In-battle saving

This isnt as needed as the designer save feature. However, many would like the ability to save their progress during battles (campaign, academy, and custom ones). The slow paced nature of this game means battles can sometimes take up to hours in real life to complete. Its frustrating when Im halfway throught it, and most enemy ships are heavly damaged or have sunk, and I have to exit it (due to real life situations) and loose all progress. Most would like this feature, so please do it.

 

These are my suggestions.

 

 

 

 

 

[Faolind]

It really feels like everyone wants the moon.

I like the designer as is, I think most people who aren't so invested as to use the forums do too. Those using the forums are a class of people heavily invested in naval history and so want to see each little thing, when in reality its not realistic to expect that, I think.

The designer as is captures the broad spectrum of design in high detail while maintaining a degree of accessibility to a naval novice. My fear is that any changes driven by above comments will lead to further obfuscation of the design issues at hand in dreadnought warfare, and thus to a loss of interest and playability in the populace at large.

[Microscop]

14 hours ago, Faolind said:

It really feels like everyone wants the moon.

I like the designer as is, I think most people who aren't so invested as to use the forums do too. Those using the forums are a class of people heavily invested in naval history and so want to see each little thing, when in reality its not realistic to expect that, I think.

The designer as is captures the broad spectrum of design in high detail while maintaining a degree of accessibility to a naval novice. My fear is that any changes driven by above comments will lead to further obfuscation of the design issues at hand in dreadnought warfare, and thus to a loss of interest and playability in the populace at large.

Oh cmon 

The designer is currently a snap togeather model kit for 5+ age group and lacks many basic functions.

If you worry about novice naval players you could simply add some templates that would simplify some deeper aspects of the design without the need to manualy adjust them. 

When i look at the current state of the game and opinions of people like you it makes me lose the remaining hope i had left for it. This will indeed be rule the waves wows edition for people who have no interest in naval beyond cool graphics.

Edited February 8, 2021 by Microscop

[1MajorKoenig]

On 2/8/2021 at 1:01 AM, Faolind said:

It really feels like everyone wants the moon.

I like the designer as is, I think most people who aren't so invested as to use the forums do too. Those using the forums are a class of people heavily invested in naval history and so want to see each little thing, when in reality its not realistic to expect that, I think.

The designer as is captures the broad spectrum of design in high detail while maintaining a degree of accessibility to a naval novice. My fear is that any changes driven by above comments will lead to further obfuscation of the design issues at hand in dreadnought warfare, and thus to a loss of interest and playability in the populace at large.

I have a different opinion.

 

Currently the Designer is Limited to a degree that it produces very similar designs —> same ship Syndrom.

 

This feature is one Probably the key features why people would want to play the game. From an RTS standpoint there are certainly better games. If the team succeeds in building a ship designer which allows enough freedom to really create different and interesting ships this would make the game unique. And it doesn’t even need to be the moon — it just needs to allow for enough freedom and variety. And that is currently by no means the case.

[Microscop]

1 hour ago, 1MajorKoenig said:

I have a different opinion.

 

Currently the Designer is Limited to a degree that it produces very similar designs —> same ship Syndrom.

 

This feature is one Probably the key features why people would want to play the game. From an RTS standpoint there are certainly better games. If the team succeeds in building a ship designer which allows enough freedom to really create different and interesting ships this would make the game unique. And it doesn’t even need to be the moon — it just needs to allow for enough freedom and variety. And that is currently by no means the case.

Machinery space (dependant on your technology and speed you want to achive) and turret placement should dictate your citadel size. This was a crucial design factor that influenced the shape of many ships but it's compleatly missing from the game. Armor layouts are also missing.

There is 0 reason to build a ship like Nelson at the moment beyond some cheesy tactical world of warships bullcrap.

Edited February 9, 2021 by Microscop

[1MajorKoenig]

2 hours ago, Microscop said:

Machinery space (dependant on your technology and speed you want to achive) and turret placement should dictate your citadel size. This was a crucial design factor that influenced the shape of many ships but it's compleatly missing from the game. Armor layouts are also missing.

There is 0 reason to build a ship like Nelson at the moment beyond some cheesy tactical world of warships bullcrap.

You mean something like this...?

https://forum.game-labs.net/topic/38090-propsal-ship-designer-20/

[Faolind]

On 2/8/2021 at 7:43 AM, Microscop said:

Oh cmon 

The designer is currently a snap togeather model kit for 5+ age group and lacks many basic functions.

If you worry about novice naval players you could simply add some templates that would simplify some deeper aspects of the design without the need to manualy adjust them. 

When i look at the current state of the game and opinions of people like you it makes me lose the remaining hope i had left for it. This will indeed be rule the waves wows edition for people who have no interest in naval beyond cool graphics.

I want you to take a moment and look at the hundreds of variables already present in the designer, from torpedo propulsion to armor scheme and type, engine, efficiency of ventilation, weight of shell, load of shell, propulsion of shell, hull bottom, torpedo belt, bulkhead type and number, range, fuel type, gun number, placement, and turret design, armor of individual elements...

And you go ahead and tell me whether an increase in complexity is going to make the game sell more. Because in the end, the game has to sell. Not just to you and your friends- it has to sell enough to pay these people the wages they need to earn to feed themselves and their families. Any work they put into it has to be justified firstly against this reality.

Is the work required to redesign the build system from scratch worth it in terms of sales numbers versus time and money spent? Probably not.
 

It may be worth it to tweak the UI of the builder, or to add more assets to it, or to tweak the system as-is.
 

I don't know what you mean by "People like me," but I'm an indie game designer myself. It's why I'm thinking about it in these terms. Honestly, its like you want the business to fail, acting this way. This isn't Creative Assembly or CDPR. They don't have the resources to start over on something if they screwed up. They also didn't screw up- The game needs to be able to be played by a wide audience. This isn't a one man low budget programming build like RTW. It's a full game and it needs to sell like one. The number of people not already on this forum that would buy the game this forum keeps proposing is slim.

Lastly- a snap together model kit is exactly what was advertised in the early videos, and there are other people on this forum complaining this isn't snap-together enough for them. It wasn't advertised like say, Robot Arena 2, with the intricate placing of internal parts. That was never an option.

[Microscop]

2 hours ago, 1MajorKoenig said:

You mean something like this...?

https://forum.game-labs.net/topic/38090-propsal-ship-designer-20/

Yes

[Microscop]

2 hours ago, Faolind said:

I want you to take a moment and look at the hundreds of variables already present in the designer, from torpedo propulsion to armor scheme and type, engine, efficiency of ventilation, weight of shell, load of shell, propulsion of shell, hull bottom, torpedo belt, bulkhead type and number, range, fuel type, gun number, placement, and turret design, armor of individual elements...

And you go ahead and tell me whether an increase in complexity is going to make the game sell more. Because in the end, the game has to sell. Not just to you and your friends- it has to sell enough to pay these people the wages they need to earn to feed themselves and their families. Any work they put into it has to be justified firstly against this reality.

Is the work required to redesign the build system from scratch worth it in terms of sales numbers versus time and money spent? Probably not.
 

It may be worth it to tweak the UI of the builder, or to add more assets to it, or to tweak the system as-is.
 

I don't know what you mean by "People like me," but I'm an indie game designer myself. It's why I'm thinking about it in these terms. Honestly, its like you want the business to fail, acting this way. This isn't Creative Assembly or CDPR. They don't have the resources to start over on something if they screwed up. They also didn't screw up- The game needs to be able to be played by a wide audience. This isn't a one man low budget programming build like RTW. It's a full game and it needs to sell like one. The number of people not already on this forum that would buy the game this forum keeps proposing is slim.

Lastly- a snap together model kit is exactly what was advertised in the early videos, and there are other people on this forum complaining this isn't snap-together enough for them. It wasn't advertised like say, Robot Arena 2, with the intricate placing of internal parts. That was never an option.

Most of those options are basicly tech levels and not valid choices which are competative among eachother. Some may seem valid because of silly academy rules but won't be in the campaign context.

They don't need to scrap the current designer just expand it, currently key design aspects that actually had the biggest influence on ship design are compleatly missing.

Edited February 9, 2021 by Microscop

[1MajorKoenig]

11 hours ago, Faolind said:

I want you to take a moment and look at the hundreds of variables already present in the designer, from torpedo propulsion to armor scheme and type, engine, efficiency of ventilation, weight of shell, load of shell, propulsion of shell, hull bottom, torpedo belt, bulkhead type and number, range, fuel type, gun number, placement, and turret design, armor of individual elements...

And you go ahead and tell me whether an increase in complexity is going to make the game sell more. Because in the end, the game has to sell. Not just to you and your friends- it has to sell enough to pay these people the wages they need to earn to feed themselves and their families. Any work they put into it has to be justified firstly against this reality.

Is the work required to redesign the build system from scratch worth it in terms of sales numbers versus time and money spent? Probably not.
 

It may be worth it to tweak the UI of the builder, or to add more assets to it, or to tweak the system as-is.
 

I don't know what you mean by "People like me," but I'm an indie game designer myself. It's why I'm thinking about it in these terms. Honestly, its like you want the business to fail, acting this way. This isn't Creative Assembly or CDPR. They don't have the resources to start over on something if they screwed up. They also didn't screw up- The game needs to be able to be played by a wide audience. This isn't a one man low budget programming build like RTW. It's a full game and it needs to sell like one. The number of people not already on this forum that would buy the game this forum keeps proposing is slim.

Lastly- a snap together model kit is exactly what was advertised in the early videos, and there are other people on this forum complaining this isn't snap-together enough for them. It wasn't advertised like say, Robot Arena 2, with the intricate placing of internal parts. That was never an option.

The problem is that the result of the design process is too similar all the time as some critical variation options are missing. 
 

It is not necessarily a whole redesign but it needs certain more options to offer variety. 
 

See the point of a designer is to create variety and there the current tool so lacking 

 

[Ernst Preuss]

Thankyou for  great game.  I line with some others may I also ask for

*  Option to save designs

*   Option to start designer with real world ships.

With regards to building real world ships, weight of the base hull is way too high making real world ships impossible to build. 

*   Add a "Fun mode" where weight and cost limits are greatly relaxed..

 

Thanks again for your great work,

Ernst

 

[Cptbarney]

Ok so now we are getting the ability to ignore snap points, as mentioned in the alpha 11 reveal thread, we should be able to configure the draft and beam of ships.

Also it would be pretty cool if ship parts could be split up so maybe towers are split into 3 sections, the tower block itself, the superstructure and any masts or whatever this could be for more complex ships later on.

A gun designer, shell designer and Turret designer would also be pretty cool to have as well, would really give the game a huge adv over its competitors in terms of free design.

[Skeksis]

12 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

Ok so now we are getting the ability to ignore snap points

Without even dropping the campaign, in a single stroke the team has restored UAD glory with placement freedom, including all "mounts".

Nicely done by Dev's and they still have their ACE! 

Edited February 24, 2021 by Skeksis

[Cptbarney]

2 minutes ago, Skeksis said:

Without even dropping the campaign, in a single stoke the team has restored UAD glory with placement freedom, including all "mounts".

Nicely done by Dev's and they still have their ACE! 

Oh, i missed mount part lol. But yeah very nice indeed, i guess if we can't have the modular system for the hulls, my suggestion above would be the next best thing really.

Also beam and draft configuration also very nice so we can make thicc short stubby boags or long thin ones if we want too, although i suspect that will come in alpha 13 or maybe 14 as they need to finish off core patch 1 and any inevitable bugs, hotfixes and glitches they will need to go through.

But yeah very, very nice indeed!