Planning of next updates

[Patton6]

Could you make it so the range finders on the ships actually turn towards the enemy that the main guns are currently engaging? I think that would go a long way towards improving the immersion of the game. 

Love the latest Alpha btw, game is awesome! ❤️

[Shaftoe]

On 2/16/2020 at 9:50 PM, Patton6 said:

Could you make it so the range finders on the ships actually turn towards the enemy that the main guns are currently engaging? I think that would go a long way towards improving the immersion of the game. 

Love the latest Alpha btw, game is awesome! ❤️

Great suggestion! Since main and secondary guns do it, rangefinders should, too. Also, radars should be moving accordingly to their designs. 

[Tycondero]

On 2/16/2020 at 3:28 PM, Tomtom said:

Some good things to add in my opinion:

-ship behavior : it would be nice to set an "erratic" pattern for DD's to do some zigs-zags route in the way to the target  or some other predetermined pattern for heavier units.

-launching torp without aiming (like in Wow) , in order to force the enemy units to manoeuver.

-torpedo aiming cone : to know how to put our unit in the correct position to have a descent firing solution

-as said before : more information about bearing and heading of our ship and of the enemy ships as well

Agree with all of this. I also suggested before to be able to set zigzag patterns as an action by us and the AI, however I do not think the devs were planning to implement it.

[Cptbarney]

8 hours ago, Tycondero said:

Agree with all of this. I also suggested before to be able to set zigzag patterns as an action by us and the AI, however I do not think the devs were planning to implement it.

They should, im not sure how time consuming or tricky it is but they could just make the AI follow a waypoint system which changes either based on the situation or various event(s).

Would make the AI more interesting and AI VS AI fights less samey same.

[Tycondero]

14 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

They should, im not sure how time consuming or tricky it is but they could just make the AI follow a waypoint system which changes either based on the situation or various event(s).

Would make the AI more interesting and AI VS AI fights less samey same.

Indeed, my idea for such an action would be that you just press a button, similar to formations, and your ships (or AI) will just zigzag by themselves.

Edit: this constant manouvering will of course impact accuracy of your firing as well as it will also impact travel times.

Edited February 19, 2020 by Tycondero

[RedHerring]

I know I’m late to the party, so I don’t know if the devs will ever see this but here are the things I would really like to see in future updates.

 

Naval Academy

1 -Split the Naval Academy into two sections on the main menu: Naval Academy, and Scenarios. 

Reason: “Naval Academy” sounds like a tutorial. There are currently 35 Naval Academy missions (thank you Devs and keep up the good work!). The first 8 or so missions teach you the basics of the game, while the other 27 are there for experimenting and exploring the mechanics you learned in the first few missions. For someone coming in for the first time, it is a little overwhelming to see what looks like a 35 part tutorial. So keep the 8 or so ”learn the basics” missions in the “Naval Academy” and move the rest to a “Scenario” list.

 

2 -Give the player the ability to design and use more than 1 type of ship per mission. 

Reason: This would massively expand the enjoyability and replayability of the missions. E.g. In the “Destroy a full fleet” mission, you can build BBs, BCs, CAs, CLs, or DDs. So you can either build 2 BBs, OR 20 DDs. It would be really cool if I could build 1 BB, 1 CA, and 6 DDs. This would allow the player to experiment with fleet composition, which will be very important in the campaign. The way I see this being implemented, (not being a game developer) would be to use the save system that is already in game. Add a slider to each save slot that sets how many ships of that type you want. So you could design a BB that costs 50% of your budget, then set the slider from 2 ships to 1 ship, and now you still have half your budget left for building a ship in the next save slot. I don’t know if this would work from a technical standpoint, but this feature would add so much to the game that I think it would be worth figuring out a way to implement this feature.

 

Custom Battles

1 -Switch the positions of the Quick start and Back buttons.

Reason: Simple quality of life. Most programs go with the convention that left is back and right is forward. Maybe it’s just me but every time I want to go back to the main menu, I almost click on the quick start button instead of the back button.

 

2 -Give the player the ability to save and design multiple ships per mission.

Reason: Mostly the same as in the Naval Academy missions, but even more needed here. Having very little control over the designs of the majority of your fleet can be annoying. 

 

3 -Give the player the ability to design the AI’s fleet

Reason: This would allow players to reenact historical battles with all of the ships involved being as historically accurate as the game allows. It would allow hypothetical battles between historical ships that never met, (like Yamato vs. Iowa) again with all of the ships involved being as historically accurate as the game allows. It would allow the player to experiment and pit their own designs against each other. I think this is a key feature that would greatly improve the game.

 

Shipyard

1 -Give the player full flexibility with the placement of towers, funnels, and barrettes anywhere along the centerline of the ship.

Reason: I know I’m not the first to ask for this and the ship builder on the whole is amazing, so thank you devs for your great work, however the ship designer still feels very limited because of the placement restrictions on some parts. I’ve heard that this hasn’t changed because the AI can’t handle the extra freedom. If that is the case, I would recommend that the player be given more freedom than the AI. Force the AI to use the hardpoints that currently exist, but give the player the ability to place towers, funels, and barbetes off the hardpoints with ctrl.

 

Battles

1 -Add a battle result screen at the end of battles showing stats for each ship.

Reason: It would be nice to have more information on how each ship did in the battle. Things like total shells fired per caliber, total hits scored, damage taken, damage dealt, etc.

Edited February 21, 2020 by RedHerring
Accidentally posted in all bold text :P

[Steeltrap]

7 hours ago, RedHerring said:

I know I’m late to the party, so I don’t know if the devs will ever see this but here are the things I would really like to see in future updates.

Welcome to the party!

To answer your question about being seen, the dev team does a very good job of reading everything in these sorts of threads where they've started them and asked for feedback. You can write in these threads and assume they'll read it at some point.

👍

Not wishing to be a smartarse, might I offer a friendly suggestion?

The point of bold type is to make something stand out from the rest of the work. If everything is bold, however, all it does is make it look heavier. For purposes of standing out, if everything's in bold type then NOTHING is.

I like to use a mix of bold, italic, underlining,, CAPITALS and combinations to emphasise SPECIFIC parts. The structure of your post is great, but everything being in bold works against it.

Believe it or not, just offering some well intentioned comments.

🤪

Cheers

p.s. Let's take a bit from yours and play with it (I've taken some liberties and done edits, not just format changes). Really like your general structure and hope what I've done serves to draw attention to that structure AND the most important points. Compared with all bold, what do you think?

NAVAL ACADEMY

1. Split the Naval Academy into two sections on the main menu: "Naval Academy" and "Scenarios". 

Reason: “Naval Academy” suggests a tutorial. Keep the 8 or so ”learn the basics” missions here, move any others to "Scenarios"

Result: Easier learning experience for new players. Simpler to see what's teaching important if sometimes basic elements of the game. Also makes it easier at later dates to spot 'gaps' in teaching important concepts, or combining them, and so adding more to the "Naval Academy".

Comments: There are currently 35 Naval Academy missions (thank you Devs and keep up the good work!). The first 8 or so missions teach you the basics of the game, while the other 27 are there for experimenting and exploring the mechanics you learned in the first few missions. For someone coming in for the first time, it is a little overwhelming to see what looks like a 35 part tutorial. So keep the 8 or so ”learn the basics” missions in the “Naval Academy” and move the rest to a “Scenario” list.

 

Edited February 21, 2020 by Steeltrap
added an example

[RedHerring]

16 minutes ago, Steeltrap said:

Welcome to the party!

To answer your question about being seen, the dev team does a very good job of reading everything in these sorts of threads where they've started them and asked for feedback. You can write in these threads and assume they'll read it at some point.

👍

Not wishing to be a smartarse, might I offer a friendly suggestion?

The point of bold type is to make something stand out from the rest of the work. If everything is bold, however, all it does is make it look heavier. For purposes of standing out, if everything's in bold type then NOTHING is.

I like to use a mix of bold, italic, underlining,, CAPITALS and combinations to emphasise SPECIFIC parts.

🤪

Cheers

Thanks for the friendly welcome. I wrote my post in docs and pasted it in here. Somehow in the transition it got converted to all bold. Didn't see that until later. My bad. 😅

[Steeltrap]

On 2/21/2020 at 2:23 PM, RedHerring said:

Thanks for the friendly welcome. I wrote my post in docs and pasted it in here. Somehow in the transition it got converted to all bold. Didn't see that until later. My bad. 😅

It happens, LOL. One thing you can do is choose to paste as plain instead of rich text as it will undo any formatting. I do that to avoid different text sizes and types which is useful if you're pasting from sources outside the forum.

As I said before, I liked the structure you'd used and the content. Glad you took my feedback as intended.

Cheers

[Cptbarney]

Well in the meantime, guess we can wait untill the sneakpeak for alpha 5 comes along to determine in limited fashion what they plan to give us next (i assume the campaign in alpha 6-7 at this point).

[Teckelmaster]

Oh, if only we had a FAQ, that gave approximate estimations, of what they currently work on and when they will bring it in an alpha version...

That would definitely help me and my patience and it would help me to go test specific things, so i could give more developmentdirection related feedback.

[angriff]

Not sure why it is called Dreadnaught when it continually adds WWII vessels.  How about some real Dreadnought, Super-Dreadnought and pre-Dreadnought vessels.  I don't know maybe French 1907 Danton Class or Bretagne.

[Cptbarney]

19 hours ago, Teckelmaster said:

Oh, if only we had a FAQ, that gave approximate estimations, of what they currently work on and when they will bring it in an alpha version...

That would definitely help me and my patience and it would help me to go test specific things, so i could give more developmentdirection related feedback.

same i dont have the time to do extensive amounts of testing but, it would help. They don't have to follow every suggestion just the ones that are able to be implemented and are also worthwhile taking on board and are very good ideas in general.

[roachbeef]

In the future, maybe we can choose how much of a torpedo is dedicated to warheads vs. fuel, what types of explosive filling and detonators they have, etc. as well as have the ability to switch between fast and slow speeds for close range vs. long range firing.

[Steeltrap]

On 2/24/2020 at 4:54 AM, Cptbarney said:

Well in the meantime, guess we can wait untill the sneakpeak for alpha 5 comes along to determine in limited fashion what they plan to give us next (i assume the campaign in alpha 6-7 at this point).

 

On 2/24/2020 at 5:31 AM, Teckelmaster said:

Oh, if only we had a FAQ, that gave approximate estimations, of what they currently work on and when they will bring it in an alpha version...

That would definitely help me and my patience and it would help me to go test specific things, so i could give more development direction related feedback.

 

15 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

same i don't have the time to do extensive amounts of testing but, it would help. They don't have to follow every suggestion just the ones that are able to be implemented and are also worthwhile taking on board and are very good ideas in general.

Given I have time available at the moment (off contract), I might approach them and ask if I could help in some way by doing some grunt admin work.

Aim at coming up with a way of us seeing a compiled list of suggestions by game aspect (ship builder, gunnery, damage model and so on).

I've been saying I think it would be very helpful if the comms were to improve as we see more updates, so it's only fair to offer to do some work to help them achieve it if they're interested.

[Intrepid_Arty]

What I'd like to request would be greater variety in gun calibers than just the inch increments that we have, to provide for one thing the possibility of using metricised gun calibers (like 460mm, 410mm etc. ) and also the possibility of gun calibers that don't fit neatly into 1-inch increments, like the 13.5" guns used on British super-dreadnoughts and battlecruisers. 

[Angus MacDuff]

19 minutes ago, Intrepid_Arty said:

What I'd like to request would be greater variety in gun calibers than just the inch increments that we have, to provide for one thing the possibility of using metricised gun calibers (like 460mm, 410mm etc. ) and also the possibility of gun calibers that don't fit neatly into 1-inch increments, like the 13.5" guns used on British super-dreadnoughts and battlecruisers. 

Why?

[Cptbarney]

1 hour ago, Angus MacDuff said:

Why?

Why not? You cant even make yamato since she has the wrong caliber.

[Intrepid_Arty]

2 hours ago, Angus MacDuff said:

Why?

I mean, so that you can make ships like the Lion and Tiger, or like Dunkerque, or so many other different ships that can't reasonably be replicated with the current selection of gun calibers. I'd have thought that that'd be obvious. 

[Cptbarney]

18 minutes ago, Intrepid_Arty said:

I mean, so that you can make ships like the Lion and Tiger, or like Dunkerque, or so many other different ships that can't reasonably be replicated with the current selection of gun calibers. I'd have thought that that'd be obvious. 

We defo need dem quads form dunkerque however.

I hope the next update brings us the dunkerque and alscase hulls, a proper roma hull, some modern DD and CL hulls, and much needed customization options as well (like less limited points of building etc and maybe internal customisation as well which brings it own booms and issues). And older hulls for 1880-1910 too.

And terrain, plus quads, plus 19 and 20inch guns (so we can make H42-H44 and big gun roma and alscase).

With whatever else needed or wanted in the next update.

[Intrepid_Arty]

6 minutes ago, Cptbarney said:

We defo need dem quads form dunkerque however.

I hope the next update brings us the dunkerque and alscase hulls, a proper roma hull, some modern DD and CL hulls, and much needed customization options as well (like less limited points of building etc and maybe internal customisation as well which brings it own booms and issues). And older hulls for 1880-1910 too.

And terrain, plus quads, plus 19 and 20inch guns (so we can make H42-H44 and big gun roma and alscase).

With whatever else needed or wanted in the next update.

I mean, really, what we need are 6 gun turrets, so that we can go all-out with craziness and make ourselves some Tillmans. That might be a step or 2 too far, though. 

[Cptbarney]

4 minutes ago, Intrepid_Arty said:

I mean, really, what we need are 6 gun turrets, so that we can go all-out with craziness and make ourselves some Tillmans. That might be a step or 2 too far, though. 

I dig hextuple turrets lol.

Edited March 17, 2020 by Cptbarney

[Intrepid_Arty]

47 minutes ago, Cptbarney said:

I dig hextuple turrets lol.

And now, let's consider: in general, any caliber of gun can have any number of guns per turret, so a 20" hextuple turret would theoretically be possible with both your requests and mine. And now, we panic. 

[Marshall99]

I think, in the next update we should get more destroyer and torpedo boat hulls. And I am also very curious about the upcoming crew mechanics. Later I would love to see more pre dreadnought hulls, exspecialy those french hulls. 

About the campaign. For me it's okey that the starting age is 1890, but in my opinion we should have 1-5 year in peace befor we start politics, etc... So what I mean, for example: we start in 1885 but we can not attack, we can only build ships, organise the fleet. My other idea is that we could have some late 1880's pre-dreadnoughts, but only those which were fully steam powered. Again these are only my opinions and ideas. 

Edited March 17, 2020 by Marshall99

[Cptbarney]

@Marshall99 i wouldn't mind the game starting in 1880, when pre dreads basically started to take hold (or 1875 if you want to play around with the very first pre-dreads i guess but still).

At least then we can have a pretty cool evolution of all the ships as we progress up the tech tree.