Planning of next updates

[DougToss]

Seeing casemates on a ship laid down in 1933 is going to drive me crazy but that's just a quibble. 

For turrets, I would like at minimum the options available in RTW2 if we're going to be confined by presets. 

Otherwise, for how early the game is in development there are a lot of options for recreating historical ships and the designer is very impressive, if somewhat inflexible. 

Edited January 10, 2020 by DougToss

[Teckelmaster]

I just started another game and noticed one more qol thing i would love:

Once your rdf finds the direction of enemy vessels, or the smoke is spotted, can we have it, that turrets start rotating that way, as i think a real admiral or captain would go into "combat ready mode". Not certain, how that was/is handled in navies, but there must be something similar to star trek "yellow/red alert"?!

 

[TAKTCOM]

3 hours ago, arkhangelsk said:

I went to check out what kind of things you could more or less build now, not counting aesthetics.

First, if you want Mogamis, you can have them.

Excellent. Now please, build this protected cruiser. Spoiler: you cannot, because the casemates of small cruisers do not support 6 inch guns. No, new hulls are needed. Don’t need to drag every ship ever built into the game, but typical should be.

[Cdodders]

Be able to split your batteries into groups, so you can direct each group to a different target.

 

Possibly also an option for Independent Fire Control, each turret becomes independent and engages its own target, useful for knife-fights

[Hellstrike]

6 hours ago, arkhangelsk said:

So my thinking is that while we can't build replicas of real life ships all the time, we can get ships that are broadly speaking of comparable combat coefficients and basic equipment. (Not that you should use that design - it's pretty obvious you should try and exploit the hull better than just copying the stats off the real world...) That should be enough to begin testing the campaign.

Except that each hull has stats, as have the superstructures. Old stuff generally performs worse, as do narrower hulls (although they are faster). And triple turrets perform worse than dual or single mounts, not to mention that triples were never used on destroyers.

[Marder]

On the Shipbuilder: Granularity and Extending Player's Own Design Capability

 

Would extending the scope and granularity of the shipbuilder be possible at this point in the development process? I'm seeing a lot of folks mention stuff like removing limitations for barbettes, turrets and what not. But I see this more as a challenge with how the game allows players to design their ships and I think these limitations are a bit critical. Rather I think they're more symptoms of some other challenge than just simple placement issues.

What I mean by this is that the current way of building ships relies too much on complex placement rules that players end up forcing concepts through the shipbuilder like a sieve, with the result being that players in the long run would end up maximizing against these limitations instead of maximizing for the benefit of their own original designs. I understand this is necessary for the AI to self-generate, but as a player I find the freedom to design is actually a rather limited with this in mind.

Judging from recent modeling and asset work, it all seems like the overarching goal here is to build around "ship kits" than having a box of Lego bits to play around with. There was a user on the Cancel Barbette Limitation thread that, to sum it up, pretty much captures this challenge: That if you were to build around a Nassau hull, players would simply end up with alternate versions of it instead of having something else that is truly original. The South Carolina hull captures this as well.

Once these restrictions are acknowledged I find that the shipbuilder is seemingly more limited in scope than it actually seems, hence why I'm asking if the shipbuilder and the overall design process for players could be expounded upon and be more granular, with simpler placement and compatibility rules than what we have at the moment; and leave the strict rules to the AI instead.

Because right now, the game is reliant on it's developers for large, work intensive prefabricated assets that would also comply with these restrictions. To the AI, this is critical, yes. But for the player, their designs would eventually funnel into standard archetypes. A quick look around the forums and one could already see rather similar designs overall. Having superfiring secondaries on the port and starboard of the ship for example requires an entirely new asset to be built, instead of allowing for secondary barbette placement on these areas instead - and with the current way placement rules are, Developers would have to add barbette nodes on the side manually instead of letting the players do it on their own. As a result, we rely on the Developers too much for diversity in the ships that could be built, instead of letting the players add to this diversity on their own with the parts they have on hand. 

Simple rules lead to complex outcomes. Right now we have rather complex rules for shipbuilding and player's products end up funneling into homogeneous designs as a result. 

So in effect, at this stage would it even be possible to allow players to break off from these and have the ability to be more granular in their own designs? There's potential here to expand on these, and I think this would really benefit players and give them the opportunity to be as creative as possible and maximize their own concepts instead of having to force them into preexisting molds.

Or is it too late to make this possible already?

 

[arkhangelsk]

@Hellstrike @TAKTCOM Look, I think I get it. I concede, you can't build perfect replicas. On the other hand, I'm not sure if you are facing up to the fact that we are working with a time budget of maybe 30 weeks. In addition to the campaign, the damage model does need an overhaul, the AI can be a better formation handler ... there is a lot of competition for these same 30 weeks. People just are all "We are OK with extensions". Well, Nick and his buddies have to earn the mullah from selling this program sometime, so they can eat.

And I don't know what you are imagining as the time cost for your new hulls. I'll confess to not having experience in programming or 3D CGI, but right now I'm imagining that each hull would eat up at least one week of this 30 week budget. The hull has to be selected, researched, reproduced, any fixture points selected, the appropriate coefficients for Hull Form et al entered and playtested. I don't know but I think one week is pretty conservative.

So, before just asking for hulls, I think it is important to sort them by priority. Can you build a similar design using an existing hull? Can a broadly equivalent design be made, even if it has to use triples? Would unlocking barbettes to allow superfiring patch over the problem for now? What specific capabilities will we be deprived of if we can't build a Bogatyr replica - can we substitute with other capabilities to achieve roles like screening ... etc? Maybe an armored cruiser?

Frankly, given the competition for time, my sense is that "asking for a new hull" should be close to the last resort solution. I'm sorry. It's not like I don't want to see more hulls. It's just that when there are only 30 weeks left, I value other things more.

[roachbeef]

57 minutes ago, arkhangelsk said:

Frankly, given the competition for time, my sense is that "asking for a new hull" should be close to the last resort solution. I'm sorry. It's not like I don't want to see more hulls. It's just that when there are only 30 weeks left, I value other things more.

In the end, I feel like adding new hulls at all will be a waste of time as they are stop-gaps to a larger problem: the lack of creative freedom. @Marder's solution is the best one: scrap the fixed placement points for parts, scrap the fixed hull types, and scrap the fixed armor schemes and let us truly build freely.

If this cannot be implemented within the 30-week deadline, then an alternate option would be to have hulls made out of modular blocks a la NavalArt (on Steam). We need to be able to choose armor angles as well.

All that being said, I feel like custom battles can only offer so much and the campaign will take a lot of time to develop, test, and bugfix, and I can live with a limited and suboptimal ship designer if we can get a taste of the campaign this year.

[Skeksis]

1 hour ago, arkhangelsk said:

Frankly, given the competition for time, my sense is that "asking for a new hull" should be close to the last resort solution. I'm sorry. It's not like I don't want to see more hulls. It's just that when there are only 30 weeks left

Didn't you know, alpha is the very definition of rescheduling! 

I hope you're not one of those guys who are going to throw there toys out of the cot if 30 weeks are surpassed!

[roachbeef]

13 minutes ago, Skeksis said:

Didn't you know, alpha is the very definition of rescheduling! 

I hope you're not one of those guys who are going to throw there toys out of the cot if 30 weeks are surpassed!

There was no need to make such ridiculous comparisons or to insinuate another forum member is immature.

 

 It's not unreasonable to assume that the developers have real-world (i.e. financial) reasons to try to meet that 30-week deadline and release in Steam early access. When they do release in Steam EA, plenty of people are going to expect some sort of campaign in order to get a feel for all aspects of the game.

[TAKTCOM]

51 minutes ago, arkhangelsk said:

@Hellstrike @TAKTCOM Look, I think I get it. I concede, you can't build perfect replicas.

No, you are not. Each patch developers add few new hulls: USS BB, russian / french BB, german CA/BB, heavy cruiser, and several others.  As a result, we can make a classic ironclad, with a battery of six-inch guns in casemates and four main-caliber guns in turrets. Or a little less classic, with six-inch guns in turrets too. We can make a dreadnought with superfiring turrets, use hexagonal layout, linear arrangement or even cross-deck fire! 

All this is excellent, until it comes to cruisers with a displacement of 10,000 or less. Suddenly, it turns out that we can build light cruisers Tenryu and Emden style but that's all for that. Even the Svetlana-class can no  be build, although her design does not represent anything new. So no, you can't put 8'' on casemates you CA, or 6'' on casemates you semi-armored cruiser. No, you cannot use superfiring position on light cruisers. No, you cannot put 12.6 cannon on protected cruisers in  Matsushima style.

Where large ships have extensive customization options, smaller vessels are much more limited. So this post is not about "drop everything, give players 100 500 hulls all the ships that ever existed". This post is about "we already have a bunch BB and BC hulls, stop making new ones. There is only one light cruiser hull in the game and semi-armored cruiser hardly better". 

The new hulls are in the top ten things that I would like to see in the game, but they are not even in the top five - 

 

 

[arkhangelsk]

On 1/11/2020 at 2:01 PM, TAKTCOM said:

All this is excellent, until it comes to cruisers with a displacement of 10,000 or less. Suddenly, it turns out that we can build light cruisers Tenryu and Emden style but that's all for that. Even the Svetlana-class can no  be build, although her design does not represent anything new. So no, you can't put 8'' on casemates you CA, or 6'' on casemates you semi-armored cruiser. No, you cannot use superfiring position on light cruisers. No, you cannot put 12.6 cannon on protected cruisers in  Matsushima style.

Here's my honest question - other than historical replication, why do you want to insist on traverse-limited casemates, when for just 4200 ton full load displacement, you can have Svetlana's armament on turrets (this is 1897 setting)?

 

And here's Bogatyr - OK, it's overweight but again, everything is on turrets.

 

And Matsushima. I think if the Japanese government saw THIS Matsushima (made using the 1890 setting), they'll buy it over that thing with one "Mark 0" 12.6-incher that takes an eternity to reload (and I can easily make this thing better if the game isn't blocking me from going over 3750 tons full load). Besides, the Japanese built those Matsushimas out of desperation because they can't afford battleships yet. You will have instant access to battleships.

 

I guess I'm just thinking - instead of worrying about the things you cannot do, think about the things you can in ship design. In terms of real game utility, are you really losing out on that much?

On 1/11/2020 at 1:05 PM, roachbeef said:

All that being said, I feel like custom battles can only offer so much and the campaign will take a lot of time to develop, test, and bugfix, and I can live with a limited and suboptimal ship designer if we can get a taste of the campaign this year.

I think this post best agrees with my view on either new hulls or an even more time-consuming procedural parts system. It's a nice to have, but it just isn't a priority project. Not to mention, I don't seem to be as bothered by the limitations as many others.

Edited April 5, 2020 by arkhangelsk
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[Skeksis]

15 hours ago, roachbeef said:

It's not unreasonable to assume that the developers have real-world (i.e. financial) reasons to try to meet that 30-week deadline and release in Steam early access. When they do release in Steam EA, plenty of people are going to expect some sort of campaign in order to get a feel for all aspects of the game.

ah but it is reasonable to adhere to the conditions laid out as alpha contributors, 're-wording' of statements (promises) is a fact of alpha.

please don't get hung-up on said scheduling. 

My point 😈…/…☺️ my opinion is, not to cut the game short, rush nothing, e.g. take the time to have a full complement of hull shapes.

Edited January 11, 2020 by Skeksis

[Cptbarney]

I think taking time to flesh out stuff and get it working far, far more important.

Remember: "a delayed game can become good, a bad game is forever bad". And humans are very, very good at remembering negative events.

[TAKTCOM]

8 hours ago, arkhangelsk said:

Here's my honest question - other than historical replication, why do you want...

This is a really good question, but I'm afraid you are asking it to the wrong person. You should probably ask Nick why they do Hood hull then player already build can some sort Hood in the game?

 I have no idea, maybe he just likes Hood 

8 hours ago, arkhangelsk said:

I think this post best agrees with my view on either new hulls or an even more time-consuming procedural parts system. 

...which the developers have already announced, regardless of your thoughts on this matter. Yes, in the new patch  will be new hulls. Like they were previous patches.

8 hours ago, arkhangelsk said:

 Svetlana's armament on turrets (this is 1897 setting)?

And here's Bogatyr - OK, it's overweight but again, everything is on turrets.

And Matsushima.

Stop posting cadavres, plz. They are so ugly that I don’t even know if I should laugh, sympathize with their grief, or run away from the screen with horror cries. And yes, you build wrong Svetlana. Since i talk about light cruiser.  And the less we talk about the other two pictures, the better. Somewhere in hell, the builders of the gunboat “Brave” cried out, spinning in the hot pans “Our man! Our!”.

Edited January 11, 2020 by TAKTCOM
*

[SiWi]

I don't get the argument about ship hulls... is pretty obvious that the game is far from done and adding more hulls is probably one of the easier jobs for the devs...

[ston5883]

I don't get the ship hull argument either. We have enough base hulls as it is that people who get it on steam EA would have enough to test things even in a campaign mode. I'd think that they would most focus on balance and basics of playability to reach the target audience and draw in some extras that you might not necessarily expect to pick this up. Quite a few here (and excuse the term but it best sums up those who have a lot more knowledge in the era than I) are dreadheads and that's what drew them in. I got drawn in because of the ability to make something and test it against an enemy. I think I'm on the other end of the spectrum from the main target audience and more closer to the extras. There is enough here in the way of design to keep me satisfied long enough for them to add more hulls later though I do wish for a bit more freedom in placement of parts. Sometimes I want to create an abomination just for the laughs be it practical or not.

[HusariuS]

I have (in my opinion) great idea about barbettes.

Instead of creating new ones, you can just create one barbette, and we can manually set up height and width by using similar options to adjusting hull displacement by slider.

 

[Cptbarney]

35 minutes ago, HusariuS said:

I have (in my opinion) great idea about barbettes.

Instead of creating new ones, you can just create one barbette, and we can manually set up height and width by using similar options to adjusting hull displacement by slider.

 

Yeah, i think some peeps mentioned this not sure where doe (not the one barbette thing and sliders thats unique). Regardless i want too see this anyways. Maybe to expand upon it, under the hull tab, you open up a drop down menu with sliders for various things like your idea plus maybe turrets and gun barrels? (if you wanted to make fat chonky turrets or turrets with long gunz or short sawn off like barrels).

/'w'/

[Hellstrike]

1 hour ago, ston5883 said:

I don't get the ship hull argument either. We have enough base hulls as it is that people who get it on steam EA would have enough to test things even in a campaign mode. I'd think that they would most focus on balance and basics of playability to reach the target audience and draw in some extras that you might not necessarily expect to pick this up. Quite a few here (and excuse the term but it best sums up those who have a lot more knowledge in the era than I) are dreadheads and that's what drew them in.

The thing is, it is impossible to build treaty-era/WWII light cruisers, making it hard to judge the state of balance in those times because you lack certain elements of a fleet screen. A pair of light cruisers could keep destoyers away from your battle line. And while you can frankenstein together something with similar stats, it won't be effective (odd firing angles, unstable platform, old towers) or ridiciolously expensive (eg Armoured Cruiser 5 with countless 6 inch turrets). The same goes for destroyers to some extent. 

And let's be honest, it would not take many hulls to fill the gaps in functionality. A Fletcher hull can be used for a G Class, a Sims or a Type 1934 as well, a J Class for a Gearing or Sommers, hell even most Japanese DDs if the superstructure is flexible enough. Same goes for treaty era cruisers.

 

[arkhangelsk]

Of the two, I'll say the Light Cruiser has a higher priority, because right now, you can easily mount twelve 5-inch guns on the Destroyer (A, Q, X, Y) which surely should make up for any insult. If you use the funnel with a platform in the middle, Q gets raised, making it equivalent to V. So really, you are missing only B, which can be solved by adding one barbette point on the raised front part of the present Destroyer IV that you can put a Medium Barbette on (and plop the 5" there), or for a more elegant solution we can have a new Front Tower which includes a raised platform.

While we are on destroyers, it might be worth letting us use Destroyer III as well as IV even in the late game, because sometimes people prefer smaller and cheaper destroyers. It might also be a good idea to never let the "torpedo boat" line die out. It can just become a kind of "second class destroyer" line. Just copy the Destroyers I and II hulls. When Destroyer III comes out, resurrect Destroyer I as Torpedo Boat IV (I think it is IV) and when Destroyer IV comes out resurrect Destroyer II as either Torpedo Boat V, Frigate or Destroyer Escort. It can represent all the second class destroyers like the German T-series, the Matsus, the 600 tonnes series ... etc.

[SiWi]

5 hours ago, Hellstrike said:

The thing is, it is impossible to build treaty-era/WWII light cruisers, making it hard to judge the state of balance in those times because you lack certain elements of a fleet screen. A pair of light cruisers could keep destoyers away from your battle line. And while you can frankenstein together something with similar stats, it won't be effective (odd firing angles, unstable platform, old towers) or ridiciolously expensive (eg Armoured Cruiser 5 with countless 6 inch turrets). The same goes for destroyers to some extent. 

And let's be honest, it would not take many hulls to fill the gaps in functionality. A Fletcher hull can be used for a G Class, a Sims or a Type 1934 as well, a J Class for a Gearing or Sommers, hell even most Japanese DDs if the superstructure is flexible enough. Same goes for treaty era cruisers.

 

yeah I see the problems but I don't see a way forward where the devs develop the game more but don't add more hulls.

Other things on the hand are more likely to go without fix if we don't talk about them.

In other words, as long the go on making the game they will always make new hulls, so my believe.

Hence I don't see the missing of hulls and there are a lot of course missing, as a real problem, because it revolves "itself" "automatically". 

Edited January 12, 2020 by SiWi

[Hellstrike]

I agree in so far that it's not a question whether we'll get enough hulls eventually. I just think that even two or three should be added before the campaign in order to allow us to build more competitive, somewhat realistical light ships in the late game. Here's what I'd consider crucial:
 

- All centerline cruiser, can accommodate 4-8 guns in single mounts. This should cover everything from the C Class to the Kuma and cover the time between 1914 and 1930.

- Light CL, capable of supporting A-B-X-Y turrets so that you can recreate everything from an Arethusa up to a Nürnberg or a Condottieri. A lot cheaper than just using an existing CA hull. Ideal for convoy escorts and oversea duties.

- Heavy CL, can even be a copy of the CA hull we have. For the Brooklyn, Mogami or even Worcester.

- A-B-P-X-Y DD, for everything from the G Class to the Minsk, Fletcher or Type 1934. Basically the standard DD for the interwar period.

- A new superstructure for the last DD hull to accommodate superfiring forward turrets. That one should take the least amount of work.

 

[Skeksis]

11 hours ago, HusariuS said:

Instead of creating new ones, you can just create one barbette, and we can manually set up height and width by using similar options to adjusting hull displacement by slider.

Variant barbette is not needed, currently there are 3, 400, 300 and 200 tons, size calibre relative, these suit all large calibre turrets.

Size-wise all that's needed is one more, 100 tons, to suit smaller turrets, 4, 5 and 6" guns. Maybe some non-armored to elevate light caliber or light secondaries, 2, 3 and 4" guns.

Total: 4 armored, 3 non-armored (not deck penetrating).

Heights are all determined by there suited turret as if it was if placed in front of it.

The confusion is they're mostly not available, especially placements, like the 'medium superimpose barbette' (200 tons) which could be used for alot more options such as side barbettes for secondaries.

Edited January 12, 2020 by Skeksis

[arkhangelsk]

On 1/12/2020 at 10:18 AM, Hellstrike said:

- All centerline cruiser, can accommodate 4-8 guns in single mounts.

- Light CL, capable of supporting A-B-X-Y turrets

- Heavy CL, can even be a copy of the CA hull we have. For the Brooklyn, Mogami or even Worcester.

- A-B-P-X-Y DD, for everything from the G Class to the Minsk, Fletcher or Type 1934. Basically the standard DD for the interwar period.

- A new superstructure for the last DD hull to accommodate superfiring forward turrets. That one should take the least amount of work.

Of these five, I'll say the light CL hull seems like the most worthy addition. For the heavy CL hull, I question why you can't just use the heavy CA hull since it is almost the same weight range (and really I question if there was never a treaty whether anyone would really put 6 inch guns as the main armament on a hull of over 10000 tons).

As for the "all centerline cruiser", what you are saying is that the thing would have eight mounting positions (either designated or allowed). How do you propose to stop players (including AI) from slapping on triples and giving themselves twenty-four 6-inchers on the hull? (To a smaller extent, this also applies to your destroyer since we can already put 12 guns on the thing which IIRC is more than any destroyer in history and the added mounting point will increase it to fifteen).

Just in case anyone is wondering, you can put triples on your light cruiser as of 1925. Here are the single and triple 6 inch guns.

 

 

Yes, they are of the same length, and the triple only about 10 pixels wider. How can you justify a mount that would accept the single and reject the triple?

Edited April 5, 2020 by arkhangelsk
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