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Game no longer fun


Daniel Silver

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I have only been playing this game for 2 days but I must admit it is almost a non-starter game.  I agree with the original poster, even though I never saw the previous version.  If you have to close within km to get a 12% chance for a hit while the enemies lower ships are hitting you from five times that distance.  The only ship you can build in the raider defense is a low rated 1914 BB against what appears to be four 1945 heavy cruisers that start pounding you before you can even shoot back it is a bit meaningless to even start playing the game.

 

I wish you could build your ships and select from your own list to play scenarios.  This having to build a ship from scratch every time is, well terrible game play.

 

Post Script 11:56 AM Central US Time Feb 24, 2020

OK I just GAVE UP on this game ... you have to be within 0.1 km to get a hit with 11 inch and 8 inch guns on a CA that does any damage on the Raiders scenario.   Three CA and they cant even get your trader ships to retreat without being attached to the.  I mean the first 4 or 5 mission ok but after that it is complete crap. 

 

Almost sorry I wasted my money because I was looking for something to play for more than a day.

Edited by angriff
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15 hours ago, angriff said:

I have 1. only been playing this game for 2 days but I must admit it is almost a non-starter game.  I agree with the original poster, even though I never saw the previous version.  If you have to close within km to get a 12% chance for a hit while the enemies lower ships are hitting you from five times that distance.  The only ship you can build in the raider defense is a low rated 1914 BB against what appears to be four 1945 heavy cruisers that start pounding you before you can even shoot back it is a bit meaningless to even start playing the game.

 

I wish you could build your ships and select from your own list to play scenarios.  2. This having to build a ship from scratch every time is, well terrible game play.

 

Post Script 11:56 AM Central US Time Feb 24, 2020

OK I just GAVE UP on this game ...3. you have to be within 0.1 km to get a hit with 11 inch and 8 inch guns on a CA that does any damage on the Raiders scenario.   Three CA and they cant even get your trader ships to retreat without being attached to the.  I mean the first 4 or 5 mission ok but after that it is complete crap. 

 

Almost sorry I wasted my money because I was looking for something to play for more than a day.

1. With all due respect, and bear with me, perhaps your 2 days' of experience could be part of the issue you're having?

There are a LOT of factors that go into how well a ship will "work". If you don't know or understand them, it can be very frustrating. Consider a few.

You want to go faster. You push the slider to give you a higher speed. Great! Hmm, not so fast. Have you increased your funnel capacity and checked engine efficiency? If not, you might have a theoretical speed of 30 knots, but your engines are running at such poor efficiency your ship will perform much worse than had its speed been restricted to 26kts. We have suggested to the devs they need to do something to make this MUCH more clear, as 'engine efficiency' is at the VERY BOTTOM of all the stats available on the right side of the screen in the shipyard.

OK, so add some funnels. Hang on, what about smoke interference? Those funnels produce smoke, and they get in the eyes of your gunnery spotters. This is done in the game by applying a penalty to BASE accuracy across the board. You may go faster. but you're not as accurate as you would be with a lower smoke production.

And so on and so on.

That's why we need to see your ship. It might LOOK like it should fight well, but it could have a heap of design flaws that are making it fight very poorly.

 

2. If you are playing battles from within the Naval Academy, it saves your design under each of the choices (such as improved gunnery, increased funds, etc). It used not to, but that was changed (we all agreed with you, and the devs understood why). If you have designed something under any of the choices and you return to that choice you ought to see the design sitting there. You can alter it, or copy it and alter that (I do that a fair bit), or build a new one. Either you're not playing scenarios, changing your starting choice (firepower, survival, etc), inadvertently wiping your earlier design, or your system has a problem. When I go to scenarios, all my designs are present.

If you choose 'custom battle', however, I believe they don't save designs (easy to see why that's true at the moment).

 

3. The other important point is that various changes made through the different versions of the Alpha has meant the scenarios have shifted in balance. Some made easier, some harder. Some became largely unplayable in one version, only to become easy in another.

That specific scenario might now be extremely difficult if not impossible to win. I might go try that scenario myself so I've a better idea of how badly balanced it may be as I've not played it for ages.

Most of us have done the majority of the missions, often at the first attempt. Perhaps the fact we've played the game for some time and understand how it works could have something to do with that?

As to the comment about having to be at such a range to hit, I find that all but impossible to believe.

General Comments

What we need is to see your ship design, with ALL the relevant stats on both sides of the screen in the shipyard. Than means a few screenshots, or you might be able to use Windows 'snip' feature to cut those bits more efficiently.

This game is attempting to be somewhat realistic about these ships and weapons. That means it's complicated. It also means it's NOT always going to be easy.

Guess what? WAR ISN'T BALANCED. How 'balanced' do you think the final fight of KMS Bismarck was?

You might like to look up the related Battle of Coronel followed by the Battle of Falkland Islands from WW1, the first and second significant naval battles of WW1. The interesting thing about them is the same German ships were involved in each. In the first, they greatly outclassed their Royal Navy opponents and wiped them out. In the second, the RN "cheated" by turning up with two 'modern' (for the time) battlecruisers. Those battlecruisers wiped out the German ships suffering next to no damage in return. They were DESIGNED to destroy EXACTLY those types of ships, and they did.

The whole idea is NOT to be balanced. A commander who keeps getting into even fights is most likely a very poor one. You want to smash your opponent in war, not wait around and make a nice, "balanced" fight of it.

If you'd like some assistance in ship designs and understanding the many game mechanics that combine to produce certain things, many of us will be happy to help.

With all due respect, however, if you quit so soon, perhaps this game was never a good choice for you. If you blame the game because YOU don't understand it, same thing.

If you expect to win every battle, or that battles will be fair, then ANY decently realistic wargame is not going to be a good choice.

Up to you if you'd like to post any of the info I've suggested so we might offer some help. I assure you, plenty of us here are happy to do so.

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1 hour ago, Steeltrap said:

I might go try that scenario myself so I've a better idea of how badly balanced it may be as I've not played it for ages.

@angriff

Well I just played that scenario, modifying a ship the game saved automatically the last time I played it. I did this because the previous ship was designed to suit a different version of the game and thus wasn't optimised for the current won.

Used the increased firepower option, pre-dread BB,

Won it easily, with a slight wrinkle. It's important to note that each attempt can be very different, as it gives different sorts of opponents. What I faced really had little chance against my ship, as I'll explain.

The enemy had CAs using a mix of 7" and 6" guns. They had NO torpedoes. They were using Cordite 1.

What that meant was they could NOT penetrate any of my significant armour (extended belt = 9" + 80%, for example) without getting into crazily close range. Trouble for them is my 2x12" fore and aft, plus my 2x (2x8") each side, had no such problems.

The greatest danger was they would spot the Transports and start shooting at them. That's exactly what happened.

Fortunately I was able to distract them by closing and putting myself directly between them and the transports. Was looking bad, however, for a few moments. One transport had an engine damaged, some flooding and fires. Luckily for me, it had 'many' bulkheads which can make even a 1905 era merchant ship able to soak up stupid amounts of sub-10" munitions.

They hit me plenty of times and started fires. As I said, however, given I know my own armour scheme and can see their guns' abilities to pen at various ranges, I knew they could not really achieve much. Sooner or later I'd hit them as the range closed.

Which of course I did. They didn't do very well once that happened. As soon as they suffered engine damage and slowed, they suffered more because they were relying on their high speed to make them hard to hit.

I took a bunch of Windows Snip cuts from screens to walk through my thinking etc, and to illustrate the battle...and found I'd forgotten to enable clipboard history. Dammit!!!

I can run it again if you want.

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I think this thread is highlighting the fact that during ship design many of the variables which are going to affect your ship's performance are inscrutable and hidden away in the mountains of data on the right hand side of the screen. While the dedicated dreadheads are going to be prepared to dig around in these numbers to discover their meaning and impact, the vast majority of players are going to be left baffled and unsure what difference their various design decisions are making.

I feel that the devs are going to need to spend some time looking at the shipbuilder UI and the way it communicates information to the player. 

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I would love a way to just select a dam historical ship against another historical ship.  This building your ship may be fun but it is just a copy of World of Warships that really detracts from the reality shown in the game play.  Also how about a  few land masses to simulate battles in Thailand, Mediterranean or China during pre-dreadnought days.

Should I mention I get tired of building a ship everytime I play this game.  How about I build a ship, save it and I can use it anytime I want a heavy cruiser or dreadnought until I need to build something else or tire of it.

 

PS

After a 12 hour respite.. I took another scenario and made a heavy cruiser that could do 38.5 knots with six 12" guns and killed the 4 CAs and 2 BBs sailing against me.. a bit unrealistic but still got me playing again.  I know there is a sweet spot for sailing around under fire when you deck is 11 inches of armor on a cruiser but while I was able to draw away the convoy escorts and quickly double back because of almost twice their speed it seems a bit like Prince Eugen vs Olympia. 

Edited by angriff
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3 hours ago, Squatter said:

I think this thread is highlighting the fact that during ship design many of the variables which are going to affect your ship's performance are inscrutable and hidden away in the mountains of data on the right hand side of the screen. While the dedicated dreadheads are going to be prepared to dig around in these numbers to discover their meaning and impact, the vast majority of players are going to be left baffled and unsure what difference their various design decisions are making.

I feel that the devs are going to need to spend some time looking at the shipbuilder UI and the way it communicates information to the player. 

Agreed, and some of us have suggested it might be great to include very specific tutorials within the Naval Academy. Someone recently posted something suggesting the Academy be split between core concepts and then missions, which also seemed a good idea.,

The hardest part is, I think, remembering we're in only the 4th version of Alpha. I'm sure the devs would agree with our feedback but it's simply not as important as many other things given where things are on the development schedule.

I get around this by playing very little. I have a few missions I return to each time to see what the latest version may have altered in terms of what does and doesn't work. I'm probably one of very few people who almost NEVER plays with the late era ships because they ought not represent much of the game. Nor do I bother with custom battles. i don't want to burn out, and I'm the sort of person who will become unable to see anything beyond the things I consider to be significant problems if I play too much. So I play a battle or two every now and then, and otherwise interact here with others who DO enjoy playing a lot. Works for me.

Cheers

Edited by Steeltrap
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14 minutes ago, angriff said:

Should I mention I get tired of building a ship everytime I play this game.  How about I build a ship, save it and I can use it anytime I want a heavy cruiser or dreadnought until I need to build something else or tire of it.

Trouble is the missions are based on certain tech levels. What you can build in one usually won't be available in another. Annoying in some ways, but once you've built something within a 'bonus choice' (firepower, extra funds, etc) you can use it over and over.

There will be months yet of several more versions of Alpha, let alone beyond that. My suggestion, for what it's worth, is when you find something annoying you too much, do something else. Burnout is a thing, lol.

Cheers

Edited by Steeltrap
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