Will aircraft carriers be added to the game?

[Whomst'd've]

Hi all!

I have been watching this game being played by a few youtubers and has sparked interest as I'm quite the naval enthusiast.

I tried looking for a Q&A topic on the forums and could not seem to find one. If there is one and I'm blind, please do share a link, else it could be a good thing to introduce to let players know where the game is to be heading and to answer any queries.

However as there is none that I cannot find I will just post my question here: Will Aircraft carriers be introduced into the game?

This is quite a big question regarding ship design in the latter stages. In the early stages where aircraft dont exist yet, all is fine. But later on where the 1930s plus period come around, the ships look quite off not having any anti-aircraft weapons on board as there is no need for them. Especially a Yamoto hull when the superstructure is loaded with anti-surface guns. Also on the topic of aircraft, will aircraft handling facilities be added so the larger hull types? And will aircraft themselves (if added) be chosen from select types or have a degree of customizable options to them? 

Cheers.

Edited October 20, 2019 by Whomst'd've

[SiWi]

I don't think that it is quite decided yet (at least I haven't find anything either).

 

Personally I would like it.

 

Giving your ship good AA was a important design consideration and I think a game about designing warships in this time period should reflect that.

Of course there are concerns, how you work out the balance between CV which in theory have a range of many hundred of KM's and other which maybe can dream of 40.

But I think its doable and actually the way submarines are describe could show the way:

needs alot of research and resources, but at the end you get a powerful weapon. 

 

And its not as if BBs cruisers and such would be helpless against planes...

be to simply move, be it having good AA (ideally the stronger the AA so worse is the accuracy of enemy bomb and torpattacks from planes) or perhaps having catapult launch fighters.

This game is about going wild, why not build a BB or BC with has 2x2 14 inch guns in the front an 4 catapult fighters in the back?

[Cptbarney]

Ya!

I wouldn't mind seeing smoll aircraft carriers in the game.

Essentially since (or at least im hoping) that this game will have a pretty decent focus on shipbuilidng plus some empire management too!

(would love to see 19, 20 and 21 inch guns). Also would allow for moar academy missions and maybe even recreating some of the more in/famous CV's.

'w'

[Diabolic_Wave]

Design-wise, could be fascinating. I'd be up for creating them. I'm not sure how you'd implement them, though.
 

I'd be in favour of a CV in a fleet giving a squadron or two of attack aircraft during a battle, for one time use, or being really, really far out of range in normal fleet composition. I'd make it somewhat hard to have CVs outright sink most enemy ships without a large amount of CVs or some other advantage, personally, but likely to slow down targets with engine room hits, or some other support role.

[SiWi]

1 hour ago, Cptbarney said:

Ya!

I wouldn't mind seeing smoll aircraft carriers in the game.

Essentially since (or at least im hoping) that this game will have a pretty decent focus on shipbuilidng plus some empire management too!

(would love to see 19, 20 and 21 inch guns). Also would allow for moar academy missions and maybe even recreating some of the more in/famous CV's.

'w'

well not quite "empire management" but naval management.

Aka you will get funds from the Gouvernement to build ships, focus research and they will sometimes ask if they should go to war.

Read more here:

https://www.dreadnoughts.ultimateadmiral.com/the-playing-modes

[Absolute0CA]

I personally both want and don’t want to deal with carriers. So I’d personally make it an option of yes or no for the campaign. To satisfy both parties.

[SiWi]

Looking at the early CV's we are talking about 21 (HMS Argus) and 34 (USS Langley) for the first generation of CV's.

Given them poor accuracy, the relative harmless bombs and AA fire, I think you will be fine if you prepare yourself and can catch them.

Long recovering time (or reloading the planes) should also help to balance it.

 

Now if we look at something what was taken into service 1927 the USS Saratoga, we are talking about 91 planes and given the possible design player and randomness can come up with you would see more planes and also earlier more planes.

So at that stage I could see the difficulty to deal with CV's. But then again, everyone can build CV in theory and so even if your CV'S are bad, assuming you can chose the plane loadout, you can focus on fighters only for your CV's and keep simply the enemy planes away.

But even without any own CV's, AA should get more deadly and perhaps you can have catapult fighters to protect your captial ships. And while this means that your 20 knots 15 barrels of 18 inches BB will struggle agaisnt them, I think mastering such challange could be a huge bonus for the game.

 

Thou I do admit that I see some difficulty if a player goes full speed and full planes, meaning that he/she builds ships that have the "biggest" range of any ship and can stay out of enemy ranges easily while bombing/torpedoing them into oblivion. But again, the AI can also have Planes/CV's so I do see chances to balance it.

 

Edited October 20, 2019 by SiWi

[Scrap Queen]

At the VERY least I would absolutely love to have seaplane launchers on my bigger ships. Perhaps yeah first gen CVs would be cool. I'd kinda like to build my ships around AA too. I do love me an Atlanta-Class, mind thats a pretty high tech ship compared to most of what we've got. That kind of thing.

[Fishyfish]

Given that the campaign is suppose to run till 1930+ and that the last mission of the naval academy is "build the Notmato" it would only make sense that there'd be some sort of CV action in the game. You could have a WWII era naval with out aircraft carriers but.. would you? I think it's safe to assume that there would be some sort of carrier shenanigans, even if it's limited like what they've described the submarines to be. But I don't know.  

[DarkTerren]

We are considering to simulate aircraft carries as abstract function in the campaign. It is too early to promise something. <---- from dev

Edited October 20, 2019 by DarkTerren
fixing messes from phone

[Diabolic_Wave]

Abstract function sounds good to me tbh. After all- you don't really want to get your CV within range of enemy guns, since in a fleet engagement where neither side can run away effectively the CV is going to get caught and sunk. Better as an abstract fleet unit that maybe you design, but that doesn't do anything in combat per se. Then again, it could be fun to sink one after dealing with escorts, and smaller carriers were used pretty heavily in anti-submarine escort roles.

[SiWi]

to do them as abstract action in the campaign, similar to subs I would imagine, is a bit of a shame.

[Absolute0CA]

30 minutes ago, DarkTerren said:

 

We are considering to simulate aircraft carries as abstract function in the campaign. It is too early to promise something. <-----  This is the only info i know of we got from the devs.  

how did my color change like this i copy and pasted this from steam since im on mobile and had issues copy and pasting from here. Will fix if i remever  when i get to my comp

You need to paste without formatting.

 

Edit: when you paste just above choose files there will be a paste as plain text button to correct this. Hope it helps and have a good day!

Edited October 20, 2019 by Absolute0CA

[Accipiter]

i think in a game about adapting and evolving your ship designs and building a fleet to the changing nature of naval warfare over a long period of time, carriers absolutely have to be modelled in one way or another, they were a huge game changer at all levels.

i also think abstracting them like submarines as they said is probably the right way to go for this game. the issues with CV is that as soon as you are trying to do them, you also have to model all the physics for the planes, bombs airdrop torpedoes, ect, as well as the unique AI for planes and the carrier, all of this is a HUGE amount of work, basically a game on its own.

and concidering this small team is already gonna be strained to model the ballistic physics, armor, armor penetration, Ship AI, gun AI, ship physics, ship damage models, ect ect... this is already a lot to chew off so i kinda dont want them to spread their ressources too thin and start doing something like controllable planes, or CV that can actually launch and recover planes within battle.  i think the ressources for developpement will be better spent trying to do the focus aspect of the game as good as possible.

maybe long after release for a DLC or expansion, wen the main game is done and done well, sure.

[Fishyfish]

Sea plane carriers, the first real functional aircraft carriers hit the scene in 1914 with the Ark Royal, no not that Ark Royal, and while I don't have any exact numbers I do know only a handful of them saw action during WWI. Concurrently airplanes themselves are in their infancy at the time and really were of no serious threat to warships. The first serious aircraft carrier experiments happen during the 20s and move into a very slow increase in aircraft carriers built by exactly 3 nations into the 30s, with a few others playing around with half built ones. WWII happens as I'm sure many of you know and with it comes a large increase of carriers being built by just one nation. And then post war don't really matter as I don't think the game will run that long. Why is any of this rambling worth reading? As I mentioned above the devs have said the campaign is to run from 1890 to 1930+ so, probably through the end of WWII and the end of the era of battleships. Approximately 55 years of naval evolution and play by some assumptions. So we have a window of 31 years of seaplane carriers, greater than half the campaigns assumed length and these are also used by far more nations that CVs, and a window of 21 years for aircraft carriers proper which in turn are relatively rare in comparison to the other surface ships we'll have access to build. I think that there are 10 nations possible to play as and of those historically only 3 had any CVs at all through WWII. But despite being rather rare we all know they played a huge part in WWIIs war at sea. 

I think we can make wild guesses until the devs tell us yes or no or go back to WoWS. My magic 8 ball is in the shop but I'm leaning towards sea plane carriers as more likely than proper carriers, out look hazy, ask again later. 

[DarkTerren]

i really do hope we get carriers to design and all they are my favorite ship class with battleships following close behind

[Whomst'd've]

On 10/21/2019 at 9:26 AM, Diabolic_Wave said:

Abstract function sounds good to me tbh. After all- you don't really want to get your CV within range of enemy guns, since in a fleet engagement where neither side can run away effectively the CV is going to get caught and sunk. Better as an abstract fleet unit that maybe you design, but that doesn't do anything in combat per se. Then again, it could be fun to sink one after dealing with escorts, and smaller carriers were used pretty heavily in anti-submarine escort roles.

Although I would prefer to actually control aircraft carriers directly, I would not mind them being abstract, as that requires the player to build the ship with AA in mind as well, which will make the later ships considerably more realistic.  

Edited October 23, 2019 by Whomst'd've

[Fess21]

For the endgame witch should be in the 30s or 40s I dont feel like you can not have planes. But for getting things out the door perhaps make them a DLC?

[Zak MacKay]

I think they should stick to the dreadnought era. That would be pushing it into the treaty battleship era and WW2. I would rather they invest the time and effort into the core gameplay instead of the last 10% of the game. I suspect many players would never use aircraft as they simply stop playing before then. While a core gameplay improvement would make the entire game better instead of adding a new side show with carriers.
I think some people don't know the scope of the game. The game starts in 1890 just when the first pre dreadnoughts where being launched and before their maturity. Its not a WW1 game its much earlier. Just the game keep going into the interwar with the same model.

That seems like a expansion, or spin off. A different era of naval combat so a different game. No need to have your 19th century ironclads getting dived bombed.

[Diabolic_Wave]

8 hours ago, Whomst'd've said:

Although I would prefer to actually control aircraft carriers directly, I would not kind them being abstract, as the requires the player to build the ship with AA in mind as well, which will make the later ships considerably more realistic.  

The AA part and actually designing the carrier sounds more fun to me than essentially ordering something to stay basically outside the fight, along with an escort of ships to keep it from getting mirked. So long as I get to design the vehicles, it sounds good to me.

2 hours ago, Zak MacKay said:

I think they should stick to the dreadnought era. That would be pushing it into the treaty battleship era and WW2. I would rather they invest the time and effort into the core gameplay instead of the last 10% of the game. I suspect many players would never use aircraft as they simply stop playing before then. While a core gameplay improvement would make the entire game better instead of adding a new side show with carriers.
I think some people don't know the scope of the game. The game starts in 1890 just when the first pre dreadnoughts where being launched and before their maturity. Its not a WW1 game its much earlier. Just the game keep going into the interwar with the same model.

That seems like a expansion, or spin off. A different era of naval combat so a different game. No need to have your 19th century ironclads getting dived bombed.

It sounds like that's roughly what they're doing, as far as core gameplay goes. As for timelines, though, they've got maybe two decades of treaty battleship time. And I wouldn't be surprised if we could make treaty style battleships before they were made historically, nevermind that the timeline goes to the 1930s. By the time we get CVs, we'll probably have put most predreadnought era ships into reserve, or straight up scrapped them. Note, for example, how even some early dreadnoughts (like the South Carolinas) were relegated to second line ships by the time of WW1, and how many British predreadnoughts were used in areas where they were less likely to meet true dreadnoughts.

This isn't to say that the game is somehow a WWI game. But after 1905, less than half way into the planned campaign timeline, the game is in the dreadnought era. I just don't think that an argument that 'less than half of the stated game time is the focus' is particularly correct. Even extending to the 10 years to WWI, the technology doesn't change too drastically up to the point of the war.

[DarkTerren]

4 hours ago, Zak MacKay said:

I think they should stick to the dreadnought era. That would be pushing it into the treaty battleship era and WW2. I would rather they invest the time and effort into the core gameplay instead of the last 10% of the game. I suspect many players would never use aircraft as they simply stop playing before then. While a core gameplay improvement would make the entire game better instead of adding a new side show with carriers.
I think some people don't know the scope of the game. The game starts in 1890 just when the first pre dreadnoughts where being launched and before their maturity. Its not a WW1 game its much earlier. Just the game keep going into the interwar with the same model.

That seems like a expansion, or spin off. A different era of naval combat so a different game. No need to have your 19th century ironclads getting dived bombed.

Considering you can start at 1930 i would thimk late game isnt going to be that unplayed. Do we even no what year the end is?

Edited October 21, 2019 by DarkTerren

[Accipiter]

4 hours ago, Zak MacKay said:

The game starts in 1890 just when the first pre dreadnoughts where being launched and before their maturity. Its not a WW1 game its much earlier. Just the game keep going into the interwar with the same model.

you say that, but radar and fire control radar (essentially WW2 Tech) is confirmed in the game, also, the modern BB hull from the last naval academy mission is literaly the Yamato, a ship that went into commision in late 1941 or even mid 1942 for Musashi...

you also says the game isnt WW1 centered but even earlier, i dont know exactly how you did your math there, but even if you assumed the game ends in 1930 and starts in 1890, that still puts 1914-1918 WW1 almost EXACTLY at the midpoint of the campaign... and then of course we already know the game goes beyond 1930 due to what i mentionned above.

[Angus MacDuff]

If you have carriers, there is no point in building battleships.  This was a huge debate prior to WWII between the Battleship Admirals and the Carrier Admirals...and the Carrier Admirals were proved right.  It doesn't matter if you have poor carriers.  The fact that they can project power for hundreds of miles means that Battleships are pointless.  I think that this should remain a "Dreadnoughts" game and not a '30's and "40's naval power game.  If you are adding carriers because they were present in real life, wouldn't you also have to use the same logic and add submarines (making Dreadnoughts even less relevant)? 

[Cptbarney]

19 hours ago, SiWi said:

well not quite "empire management" but naval management.

Aka you will get funds from the Gouvernement to build ships, focus research and they will sometimes ask if they should go to war.

Read more here:

https://www.dreadnoughts.ultimateadmiral.com/the-playing-modes

Ye, i know its based of rule the waves, should of mentioned pseudo empire building (unless UA won't have any bases for you to take over and invade projecting even more power i guess).

Regardless i would still love to see CV's in the game. You would then have to factor into consideration AA groupings and also how your AA overlaps with each ship (depending on how far they are from each other) and what kind of bonus or negatives they would get while performing certain tasks, manuvouers (can't spell it soz) etc.

I guess subs could be added but they never really had much of an impact during naval fleet conflicts (raiding, harassment, ambushes is what they excelled at generally).

Im guessing the game starts from 1880? since that ironclad is from that era and im guessing it ends at 1942? since you have yammy hull and radar (1939 is when radar started to become promenant).

Thanks for the link btw!

 

'w'

Edited October 21, 2019 by Cptbarney

[Accipiter]

49 minutes ago, Angus MacDuff said:

If you are adding carriers because they were present in real life, wouldn't you also have to use the same logic and add submarines (making Dreadnoughts even less relevant)? 

funny you say that because submarines are also confirmed in the game already (as an abstract campaign map only option, not controllable in battles),

man a lot of you really don't do your research about what was already confirmed in the game before posting do you? 😛

Edited October 21, 2019 by Accipiter