Upcoming Alpha-3 News! (OLD)

[Latur Husky]

On 11/12/2019 at 5:12 PM, Nick Thomadis said:

(...)

Please let us know if we missed anything you consider VERY IMPORTANT for this patch that must be added or fixed.
 

The Game-Labs Team
=======------=======
Nick
Michael
Max
 

Music.

Would be nice to be able to see Campaign in current state even if it's very incomplete.

[Entropy Avatar]

On 11/12/2019 at 12:12 PM, Nick Thomadis said:

Cage mast towers will be available to a series of US hulls.

Am I the only one who read this as "mage cast towers"? Seemed a bit ahistorical.

[Admiral_Alpha]

This game really needs custom battles, even some barebones implementation would be better than the repetetive tutorial we have now.

[Steeltrap]

5 hours ago, Entropy Avatar said:

Am I the only one who read this as "mage cast towers"? Seemed a bit ahistorical.

LOL, I want to see that tech tree in campaign.

👽 😱

[Captain_Sir_Loughton_Peto]

Cant wait for this guys. I think youre knocking this out of the park 👍

[phsylent]

6 hours ago, Admiral_Alpha said:

This game really needs custom battles, even some barebones implementation would be better than the repetetive tutorial we have now.

Yes even if it was just some sliders to set the funds available and tech level for player and AI. Maybe go so far as to have number and class of ship selectors as well for AI but that's just bonus points

[Absolute0CA]

1 hour ago, Steeltrap said:

LOL, I want to see that tech tree in campaign.

👽 😱

Yeah just for the lols, maybe an intentional typo as homage to the hilarious thought of a mage casing a fireball at an enemy ship.

[Noders]

2 minutes ago, Absolute0CA said:

Yeah just for the lols, maybe an intentional typo as homage to the hilarious thought of a mage casing a fireball at an enemy ship.

well if this was Airships Conquer The Sky's Id say that was totally possible xD

[Cptbarney]

1 hour ago, Absolute0CA said:

Yeah just for the lols, maybe an intentional typo as homage to the hilarious thought of a mage casing a fireball at an enemy ship.

instant transmission as well for teh bois. 😛

[Tycondero]

Ok. Maybe not a very good choice for performance, but we need ticker and more pronounced smoke from the funnels, especially when traveling faster.

[rapa pott]

We need more freedom for placing main-/secondarytowers and funnels. Would be great when we could determine where we put them at the hull like guns.

[Marder]

11 hours ago, Admiral_Alpha said:

This game really needs custom battles, even some barebones implementation would be better than the repetetive tutorial we have now.

Pretty much what I'm waiting for. The mission requirements, limitations, and the current constraints of the shipbuilder are all starting to come together to really push the game's limits as far as mission content and replayability is concerned. 

I've always been quite curious how far back the custom battles feature seems to be. Won't it make sense to have it early so we can break as much of the game as possible?

We have CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+A (I think that's how it goes) and a couple missions to try everything out, but it's still rather constraining. 

It might be of significant use to the devs to release even a rudimentary way of generating missions so we could push harder in terms of testing. That'll at the very least allow us to put this game through multiple scenarios of play - intended or otherwise. 

 

[Capt in pyjamas]

On 11/12/2019 at 5:12 PM, Nick Thomadis said:

Hello Admirals,

We would like to provide a small insight of what is coming in the forthcoming update “Alpha-3” which is scheduled to arrive within this month. First of all, several gameplay fixes, balances, additions as follows:

Gameplay tuning and fixes:

• Improved Secondary Guns' Penetration & Accuracy.
• Torpedo Boats less resilient against gun fire.
• Penetration rebalance for more effective medium/long range encounters. HE shells should not be as overpowered as previously.
• Fixed issue with hull damage that made severely damaged ships and torpedo boats too hard to sink.
• Reduced ladder aiming penalty of initial salvo shot, from -75% to -50% because it caused too low accuracy at close range.
• Cordite, Tube Powder, TNT explosives rebalanced to reflect better their special characteristics. Cordite offers more explosive power but is unsafe, Tube Powder is the safest explosive and more effective in penetrating armor, TNT is very expensive but overall the best compromise.
• Fixed issue of Radar towers, increasing too much the surface visibility of ships that carry them.
• Late tech torpedoes have even more intensified damage so they are useful against heavily protected battleships.
• Torpedo protection now also increases floatability but reduces acceleration and turning speed making a ship slightly less maneuverable, yet, it will be vital for your capital ships in order to survive against the stronger torpedo threat.
• Citadel armor schemes increase the armor quality, but are more expensive. Citadel is a feature not yet finalized, but this new functionality simulates better its influence in armor schemes and vitals protection.
• Ship steering/acceleration slight rebalance for more realistic maneuvering. This balance addressed additionally the over-effectiveness in evading torpedoes and the unnaturally very tight turning circles of small ships, which causes also issues in formation and evasion logic.
• Sinking mechanic improved so that ships do not “jump” to a default sinking state as previously. Ships will gradually sink according to their last floating state.
• Fixed issues with USA battleship hull type. Now mission “Design a Dreadnought” will include a properly looking and scaled model based on BB South Carolina.
• Fixed issues of AI related to engage mechanics. AI ships should approach more gradually and fire broadside salvos at more effective angle and distance.

New features and improvements:

• New Oxygen fueled torpedoes.
• New 23-inch and 24-inch torpedoes.
• Penetration chance better details: When we hover our mouse over a ship, the pen chance will update also according to angle, so the info will be more accurate for player.
• Cage mast towers will be available to a series of US hulls.
• Detected torpedoes will be indicated by a visual warning for a short period of time.
• Improved AI ship design (with proper focusing on armor for Battleships).
• Many game performance optimizations, increase the FPS.
• Further reduction of crashes and instability.
• Loading of Ship Designer will be faster, battle loading will be slightly faster.
• You will be able to name your ships.
• You will be able to save your ship design, for the respective missions.
• New hulls improving the variability of ship class designs. 
• New missions based on the new hulls.
• In-game music will be reverted back to full functionality.

Additional visual work:

• Damage decals will improve the visuals for the battles.
• Various water displacement effects (waves, splashes etc.).
• Better fog and particles affected by the atmosphere at distance.

As the patch gets closer to completion, more features and improvements will be added. Soon we will post the roadmap that will show the major features we plan to deliver before launching the game on Steam.

Please let us know if we missed anything you consider VERY IMPORTANT for this patch that must be added or fixed.
 

The Game-Labs Team
=======------=======
Nick
Michael
Max
 

Great news, looking forward to trying it out. 

A question about your philosophy in developing the game, are you attempting to increase realism with changes or playability/fun? 

 

I ask because I have played plenty of naval games where fun and 'balance' seem to have been the focus of the development, but have been frustrated by lack of realism. However with ultimate admiral dreadnoughts, I feel you have aimed at more realism in many aspects, such as visual range, weapons effectiveness. I think this is a good thing as it differentiated dreadnoughts from many competitors. When choosing how to make changes I would prefer you to ere on the side of realism. For example if early torpedoes were fairly useless, then model them as they were, not 'balance' them to make the game more player friendly. Well, I guess there are limits, perhaps you have an arcade mode that turns off some of the more realistic aspects? And a sim mode for more realism? 

As I have already written elsewhere, I think what you have already created is wonderful and I am very impressed generally with the game. 

My son (age 10) has also been having a go with the game and he enjoys the build 2 fight aspect a lot. We talked about the design decisions that a naval ship designer needs to make, so it has an educational aspect. Another reason to prefer more a realistic approach as it ties into the historical aspects of ship design.

Edit. One thing I would like, but is not so urgent is a deck view. With the free camera in battle you can get a 'on the deck' or bridge view by moving the camera position, but it won't track with the ship. When the camera view is tracking the ship I can't zoom in enough to give me the same view as if I was standing on the deck. This is something Wows does do, and it seems like I can nearly do it in UAD but not quite. 

Having said that, you can get a lovely tracking view of a ship from either Bow or stern which shows the side of the ship end on. This produces wonderful views of broadsides coming in and going out. So the deck view is a nice to have, and I wouldn't want to loose the other viewpoints I can get for the sake of a deck view. 

 

Edit edit yay to saving and naming ships! 

Edited November 14, 2019 by Capt in pyjamas

[bossbrigand]

Very much enjoying the game. There are very few naval strategy games with anything close to realistic pacing (speed, steering). I have been after a game with pre-dreadnoughts that isn't World of Warships for a long time.

The editor is phenomenal but I do sometimes feel arbitrarily restricted (things that should fit don't).

Edited November 14, 2019 by bossbrigand

[Matto]

Thanks for update, looking for it ...

[Skeksis]

 

@Nick Thomadis is this^^ and all the other posts enough to allocate some programming/resources?

We’ll await your response in the upcoming roadmap.

Btw, this game looks suspiciously like a 3D remake of Rule the Waves, but because UA:D is 3D there’s so much more visual information, it allows for more “down-to-earth” features, such as secondaries targeting (just continuing to build the case for).  

 

[Cptbarney]

4 minutes ago, Skeksis said:

 

@Nick Thomadis is this^^ and all the other posts enough to allocate some programming/resources?

 

We’ll await your response in the upcoming roadmap.

 

Btw, this game looks suspiciously like a 3D remake of Rule the Waves, but because UA:D is 3D there’s so much more visual information, it allows for more “down-to-earth” features, such as secondaries targeting (just continuing to build the case for).  

 

 

To further expand upon that you could also instead of just all secondaries target another ships you can have primaries engage one 8inch secondaries engage some CA nearby, 5inches engage some light cruiers and the 3inches could engage some DD's.

I would suggest maybe clicking on the ship then clicking on the gun picture itself and the clicking onto the target you want and even if it's not in range it will track said target (and a little message in red will appear saying out of range or something so you understand as to why it isn't targetting the ship at all or at the moment).

maybe even going further as to select rate of fire as well for each gun type.

Again this depends how much time the devs have. Still im greatful for this game regardless.

[Nick Thomadis]

1 hour ago, Skeksis said:

 

@Nick Thomadis is this^^ and all the other posts enough to allocate some programming/resources?

 

We’ll await your response in the upcoming roadmap.

 

Btw, this game looks suspiciously like a 3D remake of Rule the Waves, but because UA:D is 3D there’s so much more visual information, it allows for more “down-to-earth” features, such as secondaries targeting (just continuing to build the case for).  

 

 

We have already prioritized this feature, but because we are not certain if it is going to be available (in the needed quality) on next update, we cannot promise yet.

I will try to personally reply to some other posts, as soon as possible.
Thank you all for the ongoing feedback.

 

[Muttdog1945]

Some structures in the ship designer could use some attention, there are many cases where you can use certain primary, secondary towers and smoke stacks because they collide despite there being plenty of open air between them. There are also some structures that should connect with each other fine that simply wont because they supposedly collide. There are also some gun positions that don't work with any caliber for the same reason.

[Cptbarney]

1 hour ago, Nick Thomadis said:

We have already prioritized this feature, but because we are not certain if it is going to be available (in the needed quality) on next update, we cannot promise yet.

I will try to personally reply to some other posts, as soon as possible.
Thank you all for the ongoing feedback.

 

It's fine if it gets delayed to alpha 4, i'd rather the mechanic be working to a suitable degree than rushed (and also not to stress you guys so much).

Cheers!

'w'

[Muttdog1945]

The ability to mount turrets facing bow or aft like the HMS Agincourt or Brooklyn class. More freedom on the placement of barbettes and the medium on in particular. Using the Yamato as an example it would be nice to have 2 forward facing superfiring guns and a taller medium barbette behind them for a turreted secondary.

[Ishtar]

31 minutes ago, Muttdog1945 said:

The ability to mount turrets facing bow or aft like the HMS Agincourt or Brooklyn class. More freedom on the placement of barbettes and the medium on in particular. Using the Yamato as an example it would be nice to have 2 forward facing superfiring guns and a taller medium barbette behind them for a turreted secondary.

 

 

Turret rotation is already possible, press R

[Muttdog1945]

Was not aware, much appreciated.

[Muttdog1945]

Having the ability to display measurements in both metric and imperial would be nice.

[Hellstrike]

12 minutes ago, Ishtar said:

Turret rotation is already possible, press R

Or T to turn stuff the other way around.