>>> Ship Designer Feedback<<<

[Haveatya]

Hello! After my first day of playing here is my feedback. I see it largely echoes the above!

- Turrets can be placed in a number of locations outside of the snap-to markers, I'd like to see the same thing done with the barbettes. It would make it much easier to use patches of open space as nests of secondary guns.

- The control towers, for the sake of customization, could do well with being a bit more flexible in their placement. In order to fit two forwards guns or two rear guns, you are forced to place the tower in specific positions.

Love the game, keep up the great work!

[Faolind]

Hi! New member just want to put in a request for printable tech readouts on ships we create. I want to be able to save, show off, and compare ship designs outside of game, creating a readout export is the best way to accomplish it and I can nerd out to my friends about this game and try to get them to join too.

Also, the export feature will allow sharing of ship designs online so that players can compare strategies or write game guides using the data.

[Matto]

Any possibility to save design of ship now?

[TBRSIM]

Barbettes only come in three sizes and therefore are near always too big optically. This really ruis some ship designs visually. Could we have the barbettes automatically re-size to the size of the turret ring placed above it please?

[Nick Thomadis]

On 10/4/2019 at 11:32 PM, Wurstsalat said:

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.

Theoretically you can manually do this (The AI never prefers that kind of design at the moment) but, yes, it is very restrictive. It needs more "love" from our side on this matter, that we will give when possible.

On 10/6/2019 at 10:45 PM, Schwieger said:

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.

Weight update appearing while on hover (not after placement) will be checked out to fix, if needed. The easiest think to do from our side would be just to unlock everything for every ship, then player would be puzzled in a maze of contradictory assets that do not even fit on the ship. Imagine for example a Yamato size tower on a smaller hull. We provide ship assets in a wide range, but not infinitely, for you, the players, and also the AI, to be able to pick proper looking assets, that would make a beautiful looking ship.

On 10/7/2019 at 8:29 AM, Tycondero said:

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!

Yes, each nation will have some special advantages in shipyards, and technology upgrades will affect ship building efficiency (less errors in building, overweights,  delays etc.)

18 hours ago, Entropy Avatar said:

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.

You can find it on the right side (Scroll down to the bottom). The UI is WIP, we are sorry for the non-finalized state that can be not very clear, or not include every needed statistic.

18 hours ago, Entropy Avatar said:

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.

It is a bit hard to make this more automated. We can try later to improve.

18 hours ago, Entropy Avatar said:

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. 

We will see to make overriding of mount points for towers an option for player.

18 hours ago, Entropy Avatar said:

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.

It is pending, when possible, to do this.

18 hours ago, Skeksis said:

 

The hulls that are shown are all the hulls of the fleet/flotilla and you design each ship?

 

In mission that you can design several hulls, you choose only one (a nbr shows how many ships can be built, depending on their cost).

17 hours ago, JANXOL said:

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).

Already the following work (notice the respective stats on the right). When we elongate the ship, the loss of speed due to turning and turning rate/steering is affected accordigly. Stability penalties are different due to different center of mass. Hull Form acts as a center point but further stats change as you alter the ship's length, too many to mention in this answer.

17 hours ago, JANXOL said:

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).

We will allow more flexibility in certain hulls to replicate the Nelson type of design. It is pending to do so, as also more hulls arrive in next patches.

17 hours ago, JANXOL said:

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.

In battle, sections considered to receive engine damage are always those under funnels, based on their average centered position.

17 hours ago, JANXOL said:

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.

This is something already considered, to do as soon as possible, when other urgent priorities are fulfilled. 

17 hours ago, JANXOL said:

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)

Generally, the towers are more effective according to their size but they can differ in spotting range, and allowed gun positions. This difference can be examined in late battleships/dreadnoughts.

17 hours ago, JANXOL said:

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.

Generally, the more uniform a gun battery, the more effective and faster the aim progress. This is already simulated. You can try to have a mixed caliber battleship and you will see that accuracy is not going to increase that fast per gun type. It is pending to add an extra accuracy penalty when multiple guns are fired on the same target (From the same or other friendly ships)

17 hours ago, JANXOL said:

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".

Pending to be improved further.

17 hours ago, JANXOL said:

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

Answered already by "akd".

17 hours ago, JANXOL said:

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)

Pending to be improved. Diesel engines should use only oil fuel.

17 hours ago, JANXOL said:

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

Rotation can be done manually per gun now, for less complexities. Low priority to improve further.

17 hours ago, JANXOL said:

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

As above, low priority to improve further.

17 hours ago, JANXOL said:

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

Low priority. You can delete and add again, or move independently with very fast manner. 

17 hours ago, SwaggyB said:

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.

• Yes
• Yes (AI already can build such DD in some late missions, we will make late mission with advanced DD asap)
• Widening the hull can be automatic as we increase displacement in a small margin, up to 5%. We have it under consideration, but is low priority.

 

14 hours ago, Delta_Strife said:

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.

As we will be adding more hulls, possible variations will increase exponentially. You will be able to experiment more freely on all those hulls, in campaign per Nation.

13 hours ago, DatShip said:

-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

Hardpoint restrictions can already be overriden by pressing the CTRL key. We can expand for structures.

As said above, we will allow more flexibility to build "all forward gun" ships, in selective hulls, as soon as possible.
Any minor issues in Ship Designer creating gaps, will be fixed. Reporting within the game, will help us to find those issues you notice.

[Jatzi]

Ok a compromise between the lego system and the preset hull system. Could we at least have the option to change out upper decks? Like the preset hull you could have preset upper decks/superstructures that we could switch between, without switching between entire hulls. Different presets don't have to change anything except available hardpoints and space for funnels and towers and whatnot. 

[MD456]

I think the planned features in the above replies from the devs are all in the right direction, and as long as there's plenty of hull variety options to cover whatever we might want to build (or recreate from history) I'm happy enough with the preset hulls.

In addition to that, might I suggest a better way to change armor values? Perhaps a drop-down list or, better yet and my personal preference, simply type the number value into the corresponding spot. Either of these would greatly speed-up adjusting the amount of armor we want, though personally I think that the option of just typing the number amount we want (either in inches or mm depending on player settings) would be the fastest.

[Schwieger]

33 minutes ago, Jatzi said:

Ok a compromise between the lego system and the preset hull system. Could we at least have the option to change out upper decks? Like the preset hull you could have preset upper decks/superstructures that we could switch between, without switching between entire hulls. Different presets don't have to change anything except available hardpoints and space for funnels and towers and whatnot. 

Honestly, a lot of things could be addressed through the usage of sliders:
 

- slider to adjust beam
- slider to adjust draft/deck height
- slider to adjust length
- slider to adjust where the foredeck gets cut down to the lower stern section
- slider to adjust number of casemates along the hull

...and so on and so forth. 

10 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Weight update appearing while on hover (not after placement) will be checked out to fix, if needed. The easiest think to do from our side would be just to unlock everything for every ship, then player would be puzzled in a maze of contradictory assets that do not even fit on the ship. Imagine for example a Yamato size tower on a smaller hull. We provide ship assets in a wide range, but not infinitely, for you, the players, and also the AI, to be able to pick proper looking assets, that would make a beautiful looking ship.

Thanks for looking into this! I actually did notice after some hours of playing around that it appears to be ghosts remaining after selecting a part to place. If I select a part, hover over a placement area (like a node for a turret) and there's already an object there, the ghosts don't like to disappear. 

Regarding the assets on the hull:

This is an interesting one. On the one hand, I can entirely understand wanting to keep the AI from producing some horrendous immersion-breaking designs (I actually did come across a ship they built that had wing turrets, I think they were 13" or 14", right next to centreline turrets... It looked rather silly), but on the other hand, if the design is something that's plausible, I think it'd be nice to be able to experiment. Naturally some pieces lend themselves far better to this than others. Honestly, giving the player a bit more freedom to tweak the beam/draft/height might alleviate some of these issues as, to use your example, while the Yamato tower certainly can't fit on smaller hulls, if we could tweak hull dimensions, we could certainly make an aesthetically pleasing vessel using another style of battleship hull other than the Yamato's.

[Haveatya]

1 hour ago, MD456 said:

I think the planned features in the above replies from the devs are all in the right direction, and as long as there's plenty of hull variety options to cover whatever we might want to build (or recreate from history) I'm happy enough with the preset hulls.

In addition to that, might I suggest a better way to change armor values? Perhaps a drop-down list or, better yet and my personal preference, simply type the number value into the corresponding spot. Either of these would greatly speed-up adjusting the amount of armor we want, though personally I think that the option of just typing the number amount we want (either in inches or mm depending on player settings) would be the fastest.

Quicker ways to adjust armor would be awesome! Agreed.

[Andre Bolkonsky]

On 10/7/2019 at 10:36 PM, Faolind said:

Hi! New member just want to put in a request for printable tech readouts on ships we create. I want to be able to save, show off, and compare ship designs outside of game, creating a readout export is the best way to accomplish it and I can nerd out to my friends about this game and try to get them to join too.

Also, the export feature will allow sharing of ship designs online so that players can compare strategies or write game guides using the data.

@Nick Thomadis

Yes, the ability to save ships would be very, very nice for people who want to save their best ships between games. A very good idea here, and I think it has been mentioned by others before. 

[Andre Bolkonsky]

So this was fun. 

Going through the Naval Academy exercises I stumbled upon the last mission: the modern BB. 

I built ONE gorgeous battleship, similar to a North Carolina but with a battery of triple 8" guns on each side. Best available options in all areas. Using all the cash and weight allotted. 

Game opens, the 16" naval rifles start barking at targets WAAAAAY on the other side of the map. Shells start falling among them, they scatter because they can't see me. And I"m the Bismark vs. the Hood. 

Foolishly, I close to get a better angle, and a couple hundred shots a minute start pinging off my hull. Like Stalin said, quantity has a quality all its own. I felt like the Yamato against Taffy III at the Battle of Savo Island in Leyte Gulf. 

I took some of their ships out, but they killed me in the end by swarm tactics and a never ending rain of steel from above and fish below. 

Next up, a North Carolina with two rear facing turrets and absolutely no hurry to catch up to the enemy with the speed to create separation quickly. 

[Niomedes]

7 hours ago, Andre Bolkonsky said:

So this was fun. 

Going through the Naval Academy exercises I stumbled upon the last mission: the modern BB. 

I built ONE gorgeous battleship, similar to a North Carolina but with a battery of triple 8" guns on each side. Best available options in all areas. Using all the cash and weight allotted. 

Game opens, the 16" naval rifles start barking at targets WAAAAAY on the other side of the map. Shells start falling among them, they scatter because they can't see me. And I"m the Bismark vs. the Hood. 

Foolishly, I close to get a better angle, and a couple hundred shots a minute start pinging off my hull. Like Stalin said, quantity has a quality all its own. I felt like the Yamato against Taffy III at the Battle of Savo Island in Leyte Gulf. 

I took some of their ships out, but they killed me in the end by swarm tactics and a never ending rain of steel from above and fish below. 

Next up, a North Carolina with two rear facing turrets and absolutely no hurry to catch up to the enemy with the speed to create separation quickly. 

I just built French Yamato, but with 12 instead of 9 Main guns, as well as roughly 50 127mm guns in triple turrets instead of AA. I charged right at them. there were no survivors.

[Entropy Avatar]

I ran out of ammo in the last scenario. The long-range shots are devastating when they hit, but I needed to save more firepower for closer-range fighting I think.

Speaking of ammo, it would be nice to have a slider rather than just 3 options (one of which I would never take). 

 

Edit: Possibly if I was even further way, the miss rate would be acceptable since the plunging shot would penetrate more.

Edited October 9, 2019 by Entropy Avatar

[Duvel_Duvel]

Liking the designer so far, and have a suggestion to help with the armor designer.

I would like something visual on what my current armor scheme could defend against, this would also be usefull to understand at which ranges your armor is most effective, the further you are from your targets the higher the angle of the incoming fire will be. 
The readout could be the effective thickness of the armor when fired from different ranges (and thus angles).
The gameplay around designing for short-range or long-range fights could be a nice gameplay mechanic.

[Pedroig]

As long as y'all are looking at changing the UI a bit some QoL suggestions (from my POV at least)

Left hand side:

Top should ALWAYS be the ship info/plan panel. BE nice to put tabs off to its right for the various categories of items.
All categories should be default closed so one does not have to scroll around to "find" info.

Right hand side:

Majority of this info should be moved to run across the bottom covering the shipyard using some nice bright text color, so it would be between the ship and the selection items.  This would allow any/all statistics to be highlighted when a particular part is selected or mouseover.  This would really help limit scrolling AND reduce the amount of trial and error needed to try getting a value "just right".
At a bare minimum, have the different stat categories (Hull, Maneuverability, Detection, Weapons, Accuracy, Propulsion, etc.) start minimized to clear up "clutter" and then folks can open the relevant info as/when they need it.  Currently one has to do a bit of scrolling to see what all another funnel brings to the power in terms of efficiency, acceleration, etc.

Other items:

Clear Weapon category (mains, secondary, casemate, torpedoes) button, instead of having to manually click and select each one or wiping the whole ship clean.
Internal cutaways for bulkheads, citadels, barbettes, etc.  (Bulkheads should affect how many compartments there are in the ship, so no bulkheads = one internal hitbox) AND/OR
Speaking of hitboxes, different hulls should have (and show) different damage control christmas tree boards, which would be adjusted by bulkhead and citadel selection.  (Bolded lines signifying citadel for example, with special indicators for Turtleback and AoN configs)  Maybe replace the ship outline on the Ship Info/Plan panel, or have a toggle to show it...

[Jatzi]

Oh I've noticed something about ammo. On the design screen when you hover over a turret it'll say so many rounds per gun. Then in combat that number doesn't add up to the number of rounds you get. Is it actually number of rounds per turret rather than per gun? Cuz I saw like 200 rounds per gun and only had like 600 rounds when I had 9 guns. 200 per the three turrets makes sense but not per 9 guns. That being said 200 rounds per turret sounds really low so if that's the case maybe it should be upped?

[Sonar]

Recently it was posted how the team simplified the designer as the version with ship hull cross sections was very confusing, even to the devs for *reasons*.  I buy that.

I would like to ask the devs to consider putting in the designer as much as they can.  Even if it means either an "advanced" mode or maybe a separate advanced program.  Why?  The more freedom, the better the player made ships.  No matter how complex you allow it to be people WILL figure it out and produce absolute master pieces.  Maybe making these ships shareable via workshop would help allow players not interested in deep ship building complexity the ability to use the better made ships.

I am a fan of pre-dreadnoughts and if you know the game "From the Depths"  you know that it has an impressive early BB and pre-dreadnought making crew.  I've made a few myself and my favorite ship I've made is the SMS Seigfried .  However you'll never see that in RTW or currently in this game because this ship is a coastal defense ship and it doesn't fall into any category that this game or RTW's uses.  

The designer as it stands makes pretty ships, but it also sets a common look.  Snap points for casement guns make sense sure, but for large turrets?  For towers?  For smokestacks?  

What if we could place down a tower slightly merged with a rear tower with stacks in front and in back?  Realistic?  No of course not.   Able to make great looking ships and help give the game more legs to stand on?  Absolutely.

I see ship pictures in game that I can't make that that is a bit frustrating (Coastal Dreadnought).  Maybe it's a bad design, but can I play with it?  Please?***

 

***NOTE  I understand the fidelity of one game in no way relates to the other.  The point stands, the more freedom we can get in the maker, the better for the game and the community.

 

If nothing else would the design team consider opening up the hulls for modders to easily make them outside of the game and import them in?

 

There are lots of awesome ships that will never see the light of day if we can't open up the ship designer as much as possible.

 

TLDR: Give us as advanced a ship maker as you can please, the community will use it.

 

Another ship I recreated in From the Depths that wouldn't see the light of day:

Jean d Arc 1899

and other awesome ships, real and fantasy, from talented makers (much more than me):

Pearl Class 1890

Sankt Jacobus Class Armoured Cruiser

USS Cheyenne BM10

[WT91]

I agree with most of the suggestions made already. I've been enjoying the game very much and am very interested in naval architecture. I have a 6 foot long Jean Bart model in my garage haha.

 

1. Give us more freedom with the placement of towers and funnels so we can replicate Nelson/Richelieu/Dunkerque/etc style ships.
2. Give us more freedom with the placement of the barbettes so we can stagger turrets in more locations.
3. More barbette options for different heights and different turret diameters, for superfiring secondaries or smaller caliber guns on cruisers/etc.
4. Let us chose to use a less advanced turret if we want. I noticed in one of the missions that some of the towers have a superfiring turret base built in. Awesome, love that for compact designs. It can fit a triple mk2 16" turret, but a triple Mk3 16" turret is too big for the mount and interferes with the tower. Let us pick and chose up to the maximum unlocked level, just like with engines/armor/etc so that way we can really customize our designs.
5. More Superstructure options, perhaps even entire deck section options. Right now it would be very difficult to visually replicate a WW2 era refit Queen Elizabeth. There are some towers that are visually close enough, but they're entirely too short. Giving us the ability to place a "tower base" or something in the middle of the hull to step the whole thing upward would be very nice. So we can place our towers starting at the superfiring main turret level instead of having our ship's bridge being completely obstructed by a superfiring main turret. These bases could include casemate mounts, secondary turret barbettes, etc.
6. A suggestion I didn't see yet that I would love: When you have your mouse over one of the armor sliders, show us on the model with a highlighted area what exactly we are armoring. This could work extremely well with the citadel schemes, especially "All or Nothing" so we can remove the belt edge and deck edge areas if we so choose to concentrate on the main belt and deck areas. This is, of course, assuming that the armor is placed on the ship in response to the location of items (engine rooms being underneath where the funnels are, magazines being underneath turrets, etc).
7. Right now the funnel capacity system is very obtuse. There is no warning that you are only operating your engine at 50% capacity due to insufficient funnels. There should be a yellow caution indicator advising that you are not at 100% funnel efficiency, so that new users learn about why funnels are important instead of just "You need 1". As it stands you need to scroll all the way down the right side info screen to get the funnel statistic, something I didn't learn until I was hours into the game.

 

I'm sure I'll come up with more as I play more, but you guys are off to a great start. I didn't realize how much I was missing a game exactly like this.

[Schwieger]

Noticed the description for "Search and Destroy" has "ore" instead of "or" where it states design and build one+ capital ships.

 

 

Edited October 10, 2019 by Schwieger

[Nick Thomadis]

Thank you, we will fix.

[Niomedes]

8 hours ago, WT91 said:

I agree with most of the suggestions made already. I've been enjoying the game very much and am very interested in naval architecture. I have a 6 foot long Jean Bart model in my garage haha.

 

1. Give us more freedom with the placement of towers and funnels so we can replicate Nelson/Richelieu/Dunkerque/etc style ships.
2. Give us more freedom with the placement of the barbettes so we can stagger turrets in more locations.
3. More barbette options for different heights and different turret diameters, for superfiring secondaries or smaller caliber guns on cruisers/etc.
4. Let us chose to use a less advanced turret if we want. I noticed in one of the missions that some of the towers have a superfiring turret base built in. Awesome, love that for compact designs. It can fit a triple mk2 16" turret, but a triple Mk3 16" turret is too big for the mount and interferes with the tower. Let us pick and chose up to the maximum unlocked level, just like with engines/armor/etc so that way we can really customize our designs.
5. More Superstructure options, perhaps even entire deck section options. Right now it would be very difficult to visually replicate a WW2 era refit Queen Elizabeth. There are some towers that are visually close enough, but they're entirely too short. Giving us the ability to place a "tower base" or something in the middle of the hull to step the whole thing upward would be very nice. So we can place our towers starting at the superfiring main turret level instead of having our ship's bridge being completely obstructed by a superfiring main turret. These bases could include casemate mounts, secondary turret barbettes, etc.
6. A suggestion I didn't see yet that I would love: When you have your mouse over one of the armor sliders, show us on the model with a highlighted area what exactly we are armoring. This could work extremely well with the citadel schemes, especially "All or Nothing" so we can remove the belt edge and deck edge areas if we so choose to concentrate on the main belt and deck areas. This is, of course, assuming that the armor is placed on the ship in response to the location of items (engine rooms being underneath where the funnels are, magazines being underneath turrets, etc).
7. Right now the funnel capacity system is very obtuse. There is no warning that you are only operating your engine at 50% capacity due to insufficient funnels. There should be a yellow caution indicator advising that you are not at 100% funnel efficiency, so that new users learn about why funnels are important instead of just "You need 1". As it stands you need to scroll all the way down the right side info screen to get the funnel statistic, something I didn't learn until I was hours into the game.

 

I'm sure I'll come up with more as I play more, but you guys are off to a great start. I didn't realize how much I was missing a game exactly like this.

Yes to the funnel thing. This explains why my Battlecruiser never went up to the 32 knots I made his engine for ! Aside of that, I agree with everything you said. Let's hope that that more people do and that the Devs reconsider the more complicated designer.

[Shadow_Dragon]

At this point I am very happy with the game. The ship fights feel very cool. Sometimes I think they are a bit too .. like a movie. But that will change in a real battle with retreat, defense and so on.

The ship designer is very cool, but it lags during placing parts very hard. I would definitely love a Lego like designer. I can understand how complex that may be, but in a game like this more complexity is always good. Alone to have more sliders for hull length (not tonnage, but in meters), high and width would add much more into it. And to have more different superstructure types of the same tier. To add more preset hulls would also be okay, but as I said more complexity and possibilities are always the way to go. 

It´s also a bit said that the gun caliber is in inch (I know that you can change the displayed diameter settings, but the the value stays the same). Quadruple turrets for the Richelieu or Prince of Wales (was that the British ship with this arrangement?) would also be awesome. But as a German I would very like to rebuild the Bayern class with 380mm guns. Also  options to casemates would be nice, to remove them completely or add more of them if the hull allows it. Maybe it would also be cool to add AA guns for immersion.

It were really helpful if we could see the armor scheme and to add options fo add or remove armor for barbettes the superstructure and so on.

Sorry if I repeat some other comments. 

Super game, even in this early stage 

[halfmanhalfsquidman]

Hi,  bought the game yesterday and have had an evening and morning before work to play around with ship design and some battles.

 

As for the ship designer I have the following concerns right now:

1) Forward Towers too far forward.  I often find if I max out the ship size then I end up with a "Reverse Rodney" as I've called it where I have almost all my armament in the rear of the vessel.

2) Mor flex on rear tower placement too.  For example in the BC vs BB battle that BC hull design we are given ends up with a big dumb gap in the middle of the towers that is too small to fit a turret in as was done historically and I can't scootch the rear tower forward to fix weight imbalance issues. Give me the freedom to play out my naval architect fantasies!

3) I know it has been suggested we auto-build and then tweak, would it be possible to also have some histroical archetypes we could select and then adjust? IE give me a Yamato or Hood and let me edit those.

Cheers!

[Skoggatt]

I've put maybe 20 hours into the game so far, and I'm impressed given this is the first available alpha. I don't want to rehash anything else that's been brought up in this thread, so here is what I would add:

-Citadel: Right now Citadel is just a flat series of upgrades you can choose for any ship based on tech. Unlike armor composition though, it doesn't make sense that all your ships start with protected deck and work their way up through armored citadel and turtle back armor to all or nothing. Many of these configurations only apply to some types of ships. The protected deck scheme is what makes a protected cruiser a protected cruiser as opposed to an armored cruiser with a traditional belt. It would make more sense if these schemes were tied to the different hull choices. Protected deck for protected cruisers, armored belt for armored cruisers, battleships and later light cruisers. Add in turtleback or all or nothing armor on later versions of battleship or cruiser hulls as tech advances. I also don't like that all or nothing armor gives percent buffs and nerfs to different armor qualities and costs, when it should instead eliminate extended belt and deck armor while reducing penalties for damage to the bulkheads under those areas. 

-AI designs: I know the game is about designing ships that didn't actually exist, and that extends to the AI as well. However, I think there should be a bit more limitation on what the AI will consider. I've seen some dreadnought designs with 12", 8", 7", 6", 5", and 3" guns mounted all at once. Even for a pre-dreadnought that many calibers of guns of similar size is pretty unlikely, and it goes against what the dreadnought is about. Maybe there should be debuffs to accuracy at medium/long range when multiple guns of similar calibers are firing at the same target to discourage this type of design for both the player and the AI. Historically it was difficult to distinguish the shell splashes from such similar calibers of guns, which is one reason the dreadnought beat out the semi-dreadnought.

Otherwise, I think the game looks great for the stage of development it's in. I want to get my hands on campaign and the tech progression before I judge the designer too much more.

[Niomedes]

1 hour ago, Skoggatt said:

-AI designs: I know the game is about designing ships that didn't actually exist, and that extends to the AI as well. However, I think there should be a bit more limitation on what the AI will consider. I've seen some dreadnought designs with 12", 8", 7", 6", 5", and 3" guns mounted all at once. Even for a pre-dreadnought that many calibers of guns of similar size is pretty unlikely, and it goes against what the dreadnought is about. Maybe there should be debuffs to accuracy at medium/long range when multiple guns of similar calibers are firing at the same target to discourage this type of design for both the player and the AI. Historically it was difficult to distinguish the shell splashes from such similar calibers of guns, which is one reason the dreadnought beat out the semidreadnought

This penalty already exists.