Alpha-4 News

[TAKTCOM]

19 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

• You can now set specific targets for main guns, secondary guns and torpedoes

3 minutes ago, Fishyfish said:

Not at all interested in the headliner news, the Bismarck and the Hood? Don't we already have a flush deck dreadnought hull thats akin to the Bismarck?

Bismarck and Hood it's iconic ships for German and English navy. 

[Nick Thomadis]

Just to clarify something regarding main guns.

It is mentioned briefly in changelog, that we improved several aspects of ship design, and those improvements include the fixing of issues reported by players regarding main gun, funnels, towers not being flexible enough. This is not a complete improvement, but we will improve further according to reports from you for the upcoming build.

Please note that a completely free mode, an "irrational" mode, would destroy a major aspect of the game, to create beautiful ships with ease. Placing funnels in front of main towers, guns very near, obstructing each other etc. are issues that historically were never made in any ship, so we have to create a smart system, to help player (and AI) to use sensible logic when designing a warship.

In any case, issues that are known, will be repaired over time, thanks to the help and kind requests we receive from you.

Now, regarding new hulls, our next priority is to fill up the gap regarding post WWI cruisers and destroyers, and of course, more ships will arrive that will enrich the pre-dreadnought era. 

[Shaftoe]

5 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Please note that a completely free mode, an "irrational" mode, would destroy a major aspect of the game, to create beautiful ships with ease. Placing funnels in front of main towers, guns very near, obstructing each other etc. are issues that historically were never made in any ship, so we have to create a smart system, to help player (and AI) to use sensible logic when designing a warship.
 

That is agreeable. Just make sure that your system accounts for some more interesting ship designs. Like Wyoming class, which is impossible to create at the moment, due to barbette placement limitations. 

[Fishyfish]

5 minutes ago, TAKTCOM said:

Bismarck and Hood it's iconic ships for German and English navy.

So? The Warspite is more iconic than the Hood, which despite being the pride of the Royal Navy is more remembered for exploding than anything else. Sure I get it, an exploding battle cruiser and the only ride of the Germans poor investment are indeed iconic. I'm well aware why they're so revered. Myth and ledgend and all that. One bottled up in a fjord its whole life, they other getting pounced and paddled. And as the the Hood? Britain's last battlecruiser, well known for being one of the Royal Navy's biggest and baddest, with a proud career of showing the flag all over the empire. 

What about the Konig class from the first world war? 

 What about the Victoria class from the 1880s? 

 

But hey, I get it. I personally think that the Battle of the River Plate was more interesting than the Hunt for the Bismarck. I'd rather see the Admiral Graf Spee.

[Ruan]

8 hours ago, ColonelHenry said:

Can we please allow the players to design AI ships in custom battles?

IMO, I'd like them to allow for us to build multiple ships within our own fleet first. It can be a pain when you have to rely on the AI to build the support ships in your fleet that just don't quite synergize well.

[DougToss]

2 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Just to clarify something regarding main guns.

It is mentioned briefly in changelog, that we improved several aspects of ship design, and those improvements includes the fixing of issues reported by players regarding main gun, funnels, towers not being flexible enough. This is not a complete improvement, but we will improve further according to reports from you for the upcoming build.

Please note that a completely free mode, an "irrational" mode, would destroy a major aspect of the game, to create beautiful ships with ease. Placing funnels in front of main towers, guns very near, obstructing each other etc. are issues that historically were never made in any ship, so we have to create a smart system, to help player (and AI) to use sensible logic when designing a warship. 

That's sensible. 

Would it be possible to have a system like RTW's, where there are a number of turret locations, each one checking to see if the technology is available and against conflicts? In RTW's case there are 24, but I suppose there could be arguments for more here. Obviously the ship modelling here is more granular, so there would be room to move the A turret around a few meters forward or backward, but there could be an "ideal" A turret location where the turret starts for the player and that the AI would use.

This also allows for templates so the AI uses a hexagonal arrangement, then turrets en echelon, then wing turrets in various ways combined with more centreline turrets, and finally a superfiring arrangement as the technology moves along. These templates also help players who are not familiar with naval history "discover" the ways to save weight and maximize broadside firepower.

Someone who has never seen a British battlecruiser is probably not going to figure out turrets en echelon by themselves, and if they are restricted to 3 centreline double turrets, without superfiring their designs might suffer without being presented with the solution.

That's not to say they shouldn't be restricted! I absolutely believe that both players and AI should have the same technological limitations as real designers and that designs should evolve as the game progresses. Only that many people are most familiar with the ABYX arrangement that came much later and that is what they are going to try to build initially because that's what they envision when they hear the words "battleship". Guiding them through the progression of ship design, and giving them freedom within the constraints of what was possible at a given "tech level" is a good way to impose realistic restrictions without frustrating players. 

Another benefit of this system is the checks against technology or conflict with other ship elements. Each location has a maximum number of guns, and some cannot be mounted at all on some hulls (i.e A turret on a carrier) or cannot be combined with other turrets (Y cannot be combined by 3 or 4. 3 or 4 have narrow arcs of fire to the rear and are single mounts only). 

One way to communicate these restrictions to the player is having a Civpedia type naval encyclopedia explaining what for example, Turrets en Echelon is, and what the restrictions to cross-deck firing are.  A pop-up in the designer saying "You already have a turret in the Y position, you cannot add turrets to 3 or 4" would effectively do the same thing, without explaining why. 

[Cptbarney]

1 hour ago, Fishyfish said:

So? The Warspite is more iconic than the Hood, which despite being the pride of the Royal Navy is more remembered for exploding than anything else. Sure I get it, an exploding battle cruiser and the only ride of the Germans poor investment are indeed iconic. I'm well aware why they're so revered. Myth and ledgend and all that. One bottled up in a fjord its whole life, they other getting pounced and paddled. And as the the Hood? Britain's last battlecruiser, well known for being one of the Royal Navy's biggest and baddest, with a proud career of showing the flag all over the empire. 

What about the Konig class from the first world war? 

 What about the Victoria class from the 1880s? 

 

But hey, I get it. I personally think that the Battle of the River Plate was more interesting than the Hunt for the Bismarck. I'd rather see the Admiral Graf Spee.

There all boring, just gib me ships to build and tinker with pls.

[ColonelHenry]

1 hour ago, Ruan said:

IMO, I'd like them to allow for us to build multiple ships within our own fleet first. It can be a pain when you have to rely on the AI to build the support ships in your fleet that just don't quite synergize well.

Why not both? Wouldn't a custom mode really easy to make since we already have AI building ships themselves? Why can't we just assign player made ships to the AI?

Also regarding the free placement of structures on ships, I'm fine with having restrictions on funnels and whatnot but barbettes should be placed freely like the guns; and imo, the option of having the gun determine its own barbette instead of pre-made ones is a must have in the future, having to use the big barbette on a x2 14" turret are both weird and inefficient.

Edited January 30, 2020 by ColonelHenry

[Cptbarney]

28 minutes ago, ColonelHenry said:

Why not both? Wouldn't a custom mode really easy to make since we already have AI building ships themselves? Why can't we just assign player made ships to the AI?

Also regarding the free placement of structures on ships, I'm fine with having restrictions on funnels and whatnot but barbettes should be placed freely like the guns; and imo, the option of having the gun determine its own barbette instead of pre-made ones is a must have in the future, having to use the big barbette on a x2 14" turret are both weird and inefficient.

They are probs working on that, i mean people seem to immediantly forget that it is a small team afterall. Either way i wouldnt expect these things untill alpha 5-6 at this rate (which is fine i'd rather they take their time too be honest).

We could do with more 1875-1910 ship hulls and we defo need more light cruiser and destroyer hulls as well. Also having a free structure system would most likely crash the AI unless two seperate build modes were assigned to two seperate entities so one for the AI and another for the player.

And i agree we need more barbettes in general, would be brilliant if we could scale them but im not sure if thats capable of being completed or implemented properly without a load of bugs and errors (just thinking about my experiences with code).

[Skeksis]

14 hours ago, DougToss said:

I am hoping to convince both the devs and the community the secondary armaments on capital ships were neither accurate nor powerful and that large guns were much more accurate than small.

Alpha 1-2 showed us that secondaries and small calibre on light cruisers and destroyers was not effective enough to have reasonable impact on approaching light ships. They became pointless to include in ship designs, other than for aesthetic reasons, so forth the buff.

While Dev’s don’t always share their reasons for change, we can assume (from forum history) that this was one of the reasons for their buff in alpha III.

If Dev’s return to historical values then secondaries and light calibre will disappear again, since there usable resource would be better spent elsewhere, e.g. battleship armour. In a freedom of choice open world campaign only light ships carrying torpedoes would be viable and all light gunnery ships impractical.

Alpha 1- 2 ‘big gun game’ has happen, it will happen again, of cause this is Dev's choice, and Dev's choice to go full circle.

I just wanted to point out that some ‘compromises’ have their benefits and while some historical implementations have their disadvantages.

 

Edited January 30, 2020 by Skeksis

[TAKTCOM]

1 hour ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Now, regarding new hulls, our next priority is to fill up the gap regarding post WWI cruisers and destroyers, and of course, more ships will arrive that will enrich the pre-dreadnought era. 

And another good news, thank you.

1 hour ago, Fishyfish said:

Sure I get it, an exploding battle cruiser and the only ride of the Germans poor investment are indeed iconic.

I am on a similar point of view, but it is just that. In Russia, we have in “iconic ship” Varyag , who fired a thousand shells in a single battle for his life into ten Japanese ships and killed a some number of innocent fish. And Aurora, about which there is an anecdote sounds like "One shot, and seventy years of destruction".  The icon is not necessarily the best, but rather the most famous. And sometimes fame is just PR and nothing more. 

 

 

[Fishyfish]

11 minutes ago, TAKTCOM said:

And another good news, thank you.

I am on a similar point of view, but it is just that. In Russia, we have in “iconic ship” Varyag , who fired a thousand shells in a single battle for his life into ten Japanese ships and killed a some number of innocent fish. And Aurora, about which there is an anecdote sounds like "One shot, and seventy years of destruction".  The icon is not necessarily the best, but rather the most famous. And sometimes fame is just PR and nothing more. 

 

 

I know about the Varyag and the Aurora, I do dig what your saying though. Don't mistake my salt, I appreciate the Hood and Bismarck, but they're just kinda like Ensigns first battleships. 

 

I'd love to see some good old Russian boats though, the Peresvet or Georgii Pobedonosets or some of the others.

[Suztown]

2 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Please note that a completely free mode, an "irrational" mode, would destroy a major aspect of the game, to create beautiful ships with ease. Placing funnels in front of main towers, guns very near, obstructing each other etc. are issues that historically were never made in any ship,

I'm not a game designer by any stretch, but would it not be "easier" to have a few simple rules like "funnels cannot be placed in front of main tower" or "turrets/barbetts cannot be within xx of each other" but have free reign of placement within those parameters rather than the rather clunky and limiting snap point system we currently have? just some food for thought I guess.

 

Additionally if the snap points have to stay for the ai then perhaps we the player can just turn them off in our own ship yard.

Edited January 30, 2020 by Suztown

[RAMJB]

47 minutes ago, Skeksis said:

Alpha 1-2 showed us that secondaries and small calibre on light cruisers and destroyers was not effective enough to have reasonable impact on approaching light ships. They became pointless to include in ship designs, other than for aesthetics reasons, so forth the buff.

No. I'm just not going to dig up the whole discussion that went on during Alpha 2 once again because it's not even relevant at this point. But no, it did not "show us that secondaries were not effective enough". It showed up that they had limitations. Same as real guns did. And that there's plenty of people who were unaware of those limitations and expected unrealistic results out of guns, discarding them as "pointless"...when they really weren't anyway.

And if you skimp on secondaries on a campaign game, you're in for a world of pain. Just saying. That the campaign is not yet here, and that the main reasons why secondaries were a thing in historical ships (supression effects, ability to engage ships that were to small to warrant spending big gun ammo and barrel wear, etc) are not yet in the game / are important in a gamemode not yet available but not on the one-off scenarios we currently has, doesn't mean they have to be ridiculously overbuffed to be far more effective than their historical counterparts just because "balans".

Again all this was extensivelly talked about back then, no need to dig the whole thing up again. But to say that "alpha 1-2" showed what you say it showed is false. It "showed" that only for people who had absurdly high expectations out of those guns. For the rest they were perfectly fine as they were (if limited, because of the game's current limits)

And that's not enough of a reason to make them more accurate than they were, or more damaging than what they were. I'll have to repeat what I stated elsewhere in this forums: if something is properly modelled, but doesn't work to it's full extent because something else is not yet in the game or not working well enough yet, the solution is not to break that something by making it stupidly powerful to compensate. It's to bring the parts of the game that are not yet in the game, and fix those that aren't working well enough.

Secondary guns were fine, and whats me, I'm really glad they're going back to being fine after this spell of "secondary madness".

Edited January 30, 2020 by RAMJB

[RAMJB]

56 minutes ago, Skeksis said:

I just wanted to point out that some ‘compromises’ have their benefits and while some historical implementations have their disadvantages.

that's the kind of stuff you have to decide when the whole game is complete, the features implemented and it's time to fine tune things.

Not when the damage model is incomplete, the armor model is incomplete, the gunnery model still being worked on, the campaign mode is unavailable, and generally most of the roles secondary guns had at the time are less relevant in the game currently because it's not yet complete. At this point you have two choices: 

a) Leave guns as they are supposed to be, and see how they integrate within the game as new features creep in, which eventually will increase their usefulness to the point where they are as necessary as in historical ships.

b) turn them into laughably unrealistic OP railguns, breaking them in the process, so when the new features creep in they have to deal with something that's batshit broken...so in turn they'll have to be broken too to "compensate". Which eventually will lead to a mess that will look nothing like actual naval combat, but stuff shooting at stuff, the only naval thing about it is that the stuff shooting each other is ship-looking graphics that fight nothing like ships of the day did.

At which point you might aswell drop the pretense of making a naval game altogether, swap the designer for a starship-building-screen, have the battles take place in the belt of Orion and call the game "Ultimate Star Admiral: Orion Starcruisers" for all it matters.

Dunno about you, but I do I know which of both choices is the smart one.

Edited January 30, 2020 by RAMJB

[Whomst'd've]

Really glad to see these update notes, and especially glad to see an expansion on barbettes into centerline and side mounted! Now just waiting for the turrets to be revised to have appropriate barbette diameter due to both gun size and number of guns to put the icing on the cake!

[Skeksis]

36 minutes ago, RAMJB said:

not going to dig up

You just did! lol.

Actually @Nick Thomadis dug it up with the nerf, henceforth the debate begins. He should have left it to rest, but hey np.

There are two clear sides to this, you are either with us or with the historians!  🤣.

As for the rest, it’s just your opinion, post as much as you like, heaps and heaps if you like, the more the better too, because of the two sides, this debate is only going to strength the argument for 'player preferences'.

Edited January 30, 2020 by Skeksis

[RAMJB]

24 minutes ago, Skeksis said:

You just did! lol.

Oh no, trust me I did not. That "discussion" spanned several pages of at least three different threads before Alpha 3 was launched....and after alpha 3 launched it spanned some more pages of some threads to discuss up to which point the "new" secondary guns had effed up gameplay.

I merely made a side reference to it, let's put it that way, so, far from "digging it up". I just don't think that arguing more is necessary. It was argued before Alpha 3. It was argued AFTER alpha 3. Alpha 4 will see them closer to the pre-alpha3 status.

I'd say the devs have made their mind about it, so keeping on beating the horse any further is pointless.


As for the rest, I'll just refer to whatever the developers want to achieve with this game. "opinions" are very nice and fine, but this is not a case of two factions fighting it out and the "winner" (whatever that means) gets the dev to do their bidding. It's a case of a game with an intended goal, namely, put you in the place of designing realistic designs of the big gun era and fight it out with them in realistic battles. 

Based on that goal, the different aspects of the game will have to be done a certain way  - there's no middle of the road, no "feelings", no "opinions", but rather facts after which things will have to be modelled and implemented - otherwise the goal will be missed and the end result will not be what they intended in the first place.

All I'm doing is pointing out that the stated goal of the game is a given one and that in order to pursue that goal certain things just have little weight. Such as "feelings" about how things "should work" according to the probably unrealistic expectations of someone who's not really familiar with the topic of naval warfare.

at any rate, yeah, the whole secondary gun topic was more than talked enough already. Not that the horse is dead and there's no reason to keep on kicking it, is that the horse just took off at full speed a good while ago, and he's far removed from being in a proper range to be effectively kicked anymore, in the first place XDDDDDD

Edited January 30, 2020 by RAMJB

[RedParadize]

He did not, just 3 wall of text on a single page that doesn't count lol.

 

Joke aside, I can't wait to try it.

[akd]

3 hours ago, Skeksis said:

Alpha 1-2 showed us that secondaries and small calibre on light cruisers and destroyers was not effective enough to have reasonable impact on approaching light ships. They became pointless to include in ship designs, other than for aesthetic reasons, so forth the buff.

While Dev’s don’t always share their reasons for change, we can assume (from forum history) that this was one of the reasons for their buff in alpha III.

If Dev’s return to historical values then secondaries and light calibre will disappear again, since there usable resource would be better spent elsewhere, e.g. battleship armour. In a freedom of choice open world campaign only light ships carrying torpedoes would be viable and all light gunnery ships impractical.

Alpha 1- 2 ‘big gun game’ has happen, it will happen again, of cause this is Dev's choice, and Dev's choice to go full circle.

I just wanted to point out that some ‘compromises’ have their benefits and while some historical implementations have their disadvantages.

The problem is this is all predicated on a error.  The problem is not the base accuracy or the penetration of light guns.  The problem is with the gunnery model (which applies several negatives to accuracy to the most likely target for these guns that is completely independent of the actual gunnery solution problem, e.g. no regard for the fundamental difference between long range fire and point blank fire) and a damage model that completely distorts the historical relevance of attacking the majority of the ship that is unarmored or lightly armored by treating the ship itself as an armored box.  Introducing additional errors in an attempt to patch these problems just layers more problems on top and sends you down the endless balance rabbit hole where multiple broken systems are interacting in implausible ways and each adjustment just adds a new error.

Edited January 30, 2020 by akd

[akd]

RAMJB also raised very good point about the campaign in relation to judging whether or not systems and their relation to each other are either 1. balanced or 2. reflect the historical relationship between various factors that drove design (and therefore makes it interesting to try your own designs in a "historical sandbox" setting).

All of these academy and custom missions are completely artificial and have very little to due with the decision making a ship designer faced.  No ship designer was every told: "Make the perfect ship to counter 3 torpedo boats and an armoured cruiser that have design specs within these specific limits and will only appear in this very narrow set of conditions.  Rest assured this is the only purpose this ship will ever be tasked with."  These sort of artificial one-off challenges encourage players to min-max designs and punish those who simply attempt to insert a historical design into those circumstances, because the missions must in turn be "balanced" for the min-max design otherwise they will not provide challenge.

They also lead to artificial mission goals that in turn drive false expectations about the performance of technology.  The mission objective is to destroy X torpedo boats in Y time, so my goal should be to load my ship up with anti-torpedo boat armament to accomplish this, right?  But then the mission is over and I have failed, even though not a single torpedo reached any of my ships and all the torpedo boats are trailing far behind in various states of disrepair completely impotent to pose any further threat.  But they did not immediately sink and I lost the mission!  Increase anti-torpedo boat gun accuracy and damage!

Edited January 30, 2020 by akd

[DougToss]

1 hour ago, Skeksis said:

You just did! lol.

Actually @Nick Thomadis dug it up with the nerf, henceforth the debate begins. He should have left it to rest, but hey np.

There are two clear sides to this, you are either with us or with the historians!  🤣.

As for the rest, it’s just your opinion, post as much as you like, heaps and heaps if you like, the more the better too, because of the two sides, this debate is only going to strength the argument for 'player preferences'.

A simulator either attempts to recreate realistic results, through a series of game mechanics and working from the historical data available, or it doesn't.

You've seen detailed analysis of the historical guns. You've seen the hit rates in both training and wartime conditions. Your perception of  "not effective enough" is completely out of line with the data. It's entirely subjective. 

Not effective enough for what?

To sink enemy ships? Well secondary guns didn't sink enemy ships. 

To hit at long range? Well they didn't  do that either. 

And yet they were installed on warships. Which means they did have a utility beyond hitting the enemy with precision or at long range, tasks larger calibers do better, as evidenced by the data. The people designing real warships, to send real sailors into action with their lives at stake decided to include them. They obviously did not think their inclusion was a waste of resources.

500lbs of ordnance hitting the enemy is much less than 2885lbs, it is also better than none at all. 

Some players choosing to omit secondary batteries is not a game design problem. Most people don't know much about warships. They might erroneously believe that the purpose of secondary guns is to effectively sink torpedo boats at range. When the guns don't do that, they may omit secondary batteries. The consequence of that is pretty simple - their main battery is either focussed on the enemy battle line or on torpedo boats. Encountering this failure enough times should encourage them to start thinking about 1) The importance of screens and 2) how a secondary battery allows them to keep their main guns on the highest threat while engaging a secondary threat. A 0.5% - 1% chance of hits by secondary guns is better than 0.

If you model the data as accurately as possible, players will be presented with the same problems and choices that guided real design, and their designs will be attempts to solve those same problems. Players can still try to solve these problems creatively - there were many historical ships built and designed that tried - some successfully, some not - to come up with innovative solutions to the problems of their time. The benefit here is that not only are players learning through gameplay with the data gathered through the game and their own experience in battle, they will be able to read the existing literature and expand their understanding, and so build better ships. 

The hope is always that when presented with information people shift their point of view accordingly. 

So, rather than deviating from the information available to suit your preconception, consider rebalancing your expectations. 

[akd]

Mark 4 6" doubles have higher base accuracy at 10,000m than Mark 4 13" doubles.  Makes no sense.

[DougToss]

41 minutes ago, akd said:

Mark 4 6" doubles have higher base accuracy at 10,000m than Mark 4 13" doubles.  Makes no sense.

😂

[Skeksis]

2 hours ago, akd said:

All of these academy and custom missions are completely artificial and have very little to due with the decision making a ship designer faced

Well in the context of AI and the result or performance of your design against the AI, it can’t be "completely false", I mean we will be facing the same AI whether it’s in arcade, custom or the campaign, therefore the performance of your design and the knowledge you gain would be relevant in the campaign.

Besides isn’t arcade missions a type of tutorial, Dev’s wouldn’t try to create artificial tutorials?

Edited January 30, 2020 by Skeksis