Maneuvering wants a fairly complete re-work

[DulcetTone]

Giving the user a GUI means of setting a rudder angle seems entirely wrong for a game at this level.  It is just too close to the hardware and demanding of the player's attention when he must also attend to other duties (I'm guessing this advances beyond one ship against one ship ... I am on level 3 of the tutorial).

Fleets of this era (indeed, since Trafalgar and earlier) maneuvered in divisions, usually in line ahead.  Divisions, in turn, took up position relative to another division or were told to turn to a given heading.

There have been plenty of games which answered to such a design.  It produces orderly (well... YMMV) battles that are easier to command at the high level and a rather chess-like match of position and maneuver. 

I would be happy to share a copy of the Royal Navy or the Imperial German Navy's signal books, which provides a good overview of their systems of maneuver and command.  They lend themselves to simplification, but you would see that their very nature is quite different than what your design is offering players.

tone

 

[RAMJB]

all that true norwithstanding, full helm orders (Even including trying to reverse engines to give differential propulsion and sharpen the turn) were perfectly available to each captaín's discretion in case of a serious extreme risk of collision, or far more commonly, in case of the ship spotting incoming torpedoes.

No captain would've eaten a pack of torpedoes because he didn't turn "not to break formation". In fact there are numerous instances of the opposite.

Meanwhile no captain would've smashed himself against another ship in a collision because "the UI doesn't give me a max rudder setting" or "because he had to keep formation". Well ,maybe the captain of HMS Camperdown used that in his defense on his court martial to justify what happened to HMS Victoria, now I think of it XD.

Bottom line: I think that control is perfectly fine where it is, and I don't find it unrealistic at all that the player is given the option to use it at will.

Edited January 16, 2020 by RAMJB

[arkhangelsk]

6 hours ago, DulcetTone said:

Giving the user a GUI means of setting a rudder angle seems entirely wrong for a game at this level.  It is just too close to the hardware and demanding of the player's attention when he must also attend to other duties (I'm guessing this advances beyond one ship against one ship ... I am on level 3 of the tutorial).

To be more exact, there will be battles of all sizes - one ship, pair, division, multiple division. The GUI must cater to all those possibilities. You don't have to use the rudder controls if you don't want to. One click will set the course or waypoint for your division, and you can tell one division to trail another with the Follow button. If you detect torpedoes you can't find on the screen, just turn the AI on - it is pretty good at that.

You have to remember for every Jutland, Trafalgar or Tsushima, there are many more smaller actions from Dogger Bank, River Plate ... etc where only a division or two of ships participated. 

You can try getting an early feel for multi-division combat by using the Custom Battle option and just putting on dozens of ships - tests have suggested computers can mostly handle it at a tolerable frame rate.

[akd]

For torpedo evasion, or generally just turning away from the enemy, I’d really prefer a simple toggle for “turn together” to a new heading rather than having to micro-manage the rudder settings, but the direct rudder input is appreciated and useful in other ways, particularly in overcoming some of the AI’s more boneheaded collision avoidance logic.

[Shaftoe]

I like having direct control over every ship's rudder - useful for torpedo evasion. What I truly hate is how ships in divisions run into torpedoes while trying to maintain formation, as opposed to actually evading...

[admin]

On 1/15/2020 at 10:47 PM, akd said:

For torpedo evasion, or generally just turning away from the enemy, I’d really prefer a simple toggle for “turn together” to a new heading rather than having to micro-manage the rudder settings, but the direct rudder input is appreciated and useful in other ways, particularly in overcoming some of the AI’s more boneheaded collision avoidance logic.

it will come - better formation controls as well (+ reverse speeds)