General Frustrations.

[Hardlec]

Okay:

I am severely concerned when I bring a fleet of 4 battleships, with best possible fire control and 12 by 15 inch guns each, and I can't score a hit.  In the meantime, my enemy is shooting me to pieces with 10 inch guns.  This is wrong.  Please don't insult me and say it's not.

I am also extremely concerned when I pay the price for a 30 knot ship, set my division speed to max, and can't get a single ship to exceed 19 knots.

The AI always hits first.  Always.

There is no way for me to make a simple tactical choice:  Stay out of torpedo range.  It is to laugh.  Undetected destroyers announce their presence when they hit my capital ships with a salvo of torpedoes  I have NO ABILITY TO DODGE.  I may as well not bring battleships to a battle where there are destroyers.

I want to test my ability to design ships.  There is no documentation on how to design ships.  I watch videos on all these cool ship designs that I can't reproduce.  Look, Mr. Designers, I want to design ships, not spend hours trying to master an arcane and undocumented ship designer.

I want to test my tactics, not my ability to master an arcane and undocumented tactical interface.  It is also very frustrating when I can't zoom out far enough to see the whole battle.  Most of the time, I can't even get my whole fleet in frame.

There needs to be a way to choose the difficulty level of combat.  Sorry, guys.  The AI always hits first, scores disproportionate numbers of critical hits, and my commands to my ships, allegedly under human control, are ignored.  Ships with 30 knot speed which are not damaged, ordered to full speed, should move at 26 to 28 knots, not 18 to 20 knots.  Let's see a slider to allow me to run a scenario at various difficulty levels.  Like:  my enemy has the same probability to hit that I do. 

I love the concepts, and I love the art.  But it doesn't compensate for an outright poor user interface.

Yeah.  I'm a paying customer and I want to do the same cool things they do on Youtube with complimentary software.

[Cptbarney]

Sounds like confirmation bias since, i've had matches where i've hit first and others where the AI has and others where it takes awhile for both to hit. I guess the AI does hit first sometimes but not always to make a difference, Also if you know there are dd's in the given scenario just simply dont send your ships so close and you can dodge their torpedoes, doing that requires quite a bit of micromanagement.

Also none of us can help you if you don't post screenshots of any issues you are facing, the ship designer isn't that hard to use once you know some of the shortcuts what doesnt and does work essentially.

Also somethings can hurt your chances to hit first such as moving too fast the enemy moving too fast, guns that aren't as accurate, horrible pitch and roll, sharp manuevours etc. I though it does seem like the enemy hits first half the time, this is mainly due to the AI having few restrictions on what they can use to build hense the mental designs half the time.

Also i don't get the speed thing, a ship can only go as fast and accelerate as fast as its engine and funnels can output and how bulky plus heavy the ship is as well.

I guess we can have a better zoom function. Things will get better as time goes on.

[Brenton]

100% agree with this post ,  The AI is mental  its very frustrating getting brassed up within 10 mins of any mission.  the UI is lacking in all aspects I would like current heading , charts , and the ability assign certain guns to different tasks basically more ability too utilize each gun platform if I want my 15 inch to fire HE and my secondaries for instance fire AP this setting is very much needed .

I am aware this game is still in the making stage and we are the testers but I hope and I am confident the devs take these gripes on board .  

[Brenton]

28 minutes ago, Hardlec said:

Okay:

I am severely concerned when I bring a fleet of 4 battleships, with best possible fire control and 12 by 15 inch guns each, and I can't score a hit.  In the meantime, my enemy is shooting me to pieces with 10 inch guns.  This is wrong.  Please don't insult me and say it's not.

I am also extremely concerned when I pay the price for a 30 knot ship, set my division speed to max, and can't get a single ship to exceed 19 knots.

The AI always hits first.  Always.

There is no way for me to make a simple tactical choice:  Stay out of torpedo range.  It is to laugh.  Undetected destroyers announce their presence when they hit my capital ships with a salvo of torpedoes  I have NO ABILITY TO DODGE.  I may as well not bring battleships to a battle where there are destroyers.

I want to test my ability to design ships.  There is no documentation on how to design ships.  I watch videos on all these cool ship designs that I can't reproduce.  Look, Mr. Designers, I want to design ships, not spend hours trying to master an arcane and undocumented ship designer.

I want to test my tactics, not my ability to master an arcane and undocumented tactical interface.  It is also very frustrating when I can't zoom out far enough to see the whole battle.  Most of the time, I can't even get my whole fleet in frame.

There needs to be a way to choose the difficulty level of combat.  Sorry, guys.  The AI always hits first, scores disproportionate numbers of critical hits, and my commands to my ships, allegedly under human control, are ignored.  Ships with 30 knot speed which are not damaged, ordered to full speed, should move at 26 to 28 knots, not 18 to 20 knots.  Let's see a slider to allow me to run a scenario at various difficulty levels.  Like:  my enemy has the same probability to hit that I do. 

I love the concepts, and I love the art.  But it doesn't compensate for an outright poor user interface.

Yeah.  I'm a paying customer and I want to do the same cool things they do on Youtube with complimentary software.

 

[Hardlec]

I see.  You don't have an answer, so I must be a turkey.  

Sorry to bother you.

 

BTW:  since I don't have access to all the cute features of this game, Screenshots are almost impossible for me to make.  So, your answer is pretty much useless.

[Hardlec]

Ther interface for Ship design has no documentation.  I may have another issue, because I am not able to reproduce the results of ships I see in youtube videos.

Edited May 9, 2020 by Hardlec

[Hardlec]

The Tactical interface seems to have issues.  

A:  I am not able to zoom out enough to view the "big picture."  If I have more that 3 ships, I can't zoom out enough to view my whole fleet.  I consider this a serious omission.  Because I can't zoom out far enough, the information I'm supposed to get on the ranges of my guns is muut.  Range bands only appear when I am viewing  a ship.  I can't zoom out enough to see my ship and it's range bands.  I am therefore hampered because I can't keep my enemy in range while I keep myself out of range.

B:  I don't know how far away the enemy's light ships are.  Again, I can't zoom out far enough to see them from my ship, and once I move on to an enemy ship, I loose all the information the interface provided me about my ships.  SO:  Do players pause every 20 seconds so they can update tactical information?  Pause, check  out everything from each ship, friendly and enemy, and then run the game for another 20 seconds?

C  As a commodore or Admiral of an fleet, I should be able to issue the order:  "Keep 10,000 yards away from the enemy," or "Keep out of Torpedo range."  I am totally bored by the idea that I have to micromanage the interface rather than make tactical decisions. 

D  When I issue an order to the lead ship of a division:  "Full Speed,"  and my division has ships with 30 knot speed, the division should be making 26-28 knots, not 16 to 18 knots.  This is enormously frustrating when I want to keep my speed up to avoid enemy torpedoes.  Sure, the computer has my ships running at just the right speed for target practice, and way to slow to do any sort of evasion.

My analys of the tactical interface:  Needs major work

 

 

[Hardlec]

Played "Meet the American Battleships 20 times.  Got hit first all 20 times.  I have the best fire control, the biggest guns with the longest range, (15 inchers) and the American is hitting me at will with 10 inch guns before I'm judged to be "in range."  This is not "Confirmation Bias."  This is a glitch of some sort  (Yes, mes ami, I select the right powder type, the right shell weight, etc.)

[Norbert Sattler]

One thing I noticed whenever both sides start within firing distance of each other is that in the first 30 or so seconds of a mission, the chance-to-hit and chance-to-penetrate values are way off.
If the AI is in range and able to point it's turrets at you within this time-window, they have a ridiculously high (though not 100%) chance to hit. But the really out of whack thing is the penetration, because if they hit, it WILL be a full penetration, no matter how small the gun and how thick your armour.

Once that time-window is over, everything seems to go back to normal... more or less, but those first few hits can already leave you crippled for the rest of the mission. This is definitely something the developers need to fix before the game goes live.

Though there is one thing I'd like to point out to you: The game is still in alpha, so already pulling out the "I'm a paying customer" card might be a bit soon, when the game isn't released yet... or even in beta for that matter.

[Hardlec]

I want to reproduce a design I saw, a speculative version of the HMS thunderchild.  It would have 1 main gun turret forward and a torpedo in the bow.  Well, I have to put 2 turrets for a main battery, okay, I can deal with that, but then I have too much forward weight to launch.  But I have seen similar designs on Youtube.  

There should not be any cheat codes  Players with the paid version should get all the doo-dads that they have on youtube.

I would also like to know how to design a ship for ramming.

Don't ask for screen shots.  I can't make them.  My computer, "Windows 10" can't take a snapshot of a video.  I have no screenshot do-dad in my interface, or, maybe I do, but with no documentation, I'll never find it.

[Hardlec]

4 minutes ago, Norbert Sattler said:

One thing I noticed whenever both sides start within firing distance of each other is that in the first 30 or so seconds of a mission, the chance-to-hit and chance-to-penetrate values are way off.
If the AI is in range and able to point it's turrets at you within this time-window, they have a ridiculously high (though not 100%) chance to hit. But the really out of whack thing is the penetration, because if they hit, it WILL be a full penetration, no matter how small the gun and how thick your armour.

Once that time-window is over, everything seems to go back to normal... more or less, but those first few hits can already leave you crippled for the rest of the mission. This is definitely something the developers need to fix before the game goes live.

Though there is one thing I'd like to point out to you: The game is still in alpha, so already pulling out the "I'm a paying customer" card might be a bit soon, when the game isn't released yet... or even in beta for that matter.

I bought and paid for the full version, full price, before the game was released.  I wanted to play this game.  I do not have the same access to features they have on Youtube.  This is wrong.       I should be able to reporduce anything on youtube, aand I should get all the hints and special codes and documentation, just like they do.

 

[Norbert Sattler]

You can make screenshots by hitting the print screen key on your keyboard (usually right above the page up key) and then instert it into any picture editor, like MS Paint (or whatever the windows 10 equivalent is called these days). No fancy do-dad needed.

And as far as I can tell, YouTubers have the very same version anyone else with early access has.

For getting more weight into the back you can increase the quality of your propeller shaft, since the better ones weigh more and they are in the back. Putting more armour on in general can also help to balance your ship. Since you want to build a ramming ship (at which point I'd like to point out that ramming isn't implemented in the game yet) you could also save forward weight by picking a smaller and thus lighter main tower. For a ship who's main weapon are torpedoes and ramming, the loss of gun accuracy shouldn't really matter.
Futhermore you can put secondary guns and another torpedo tubes on the back of the ship to balance out the foreward weight.

And for turrets and torpedo launchers you can use the shift key to place them on a finer grid, often allowing you to place them further back than the regular grid allows. The hotkeys that can be used in the designer are shown if you mouse-over the symbol looking like A, B and C keys in the top right of the designer window.

I "only" have the regular pre-order version too and I have yet to see a Youtuber design a ship I can't re-create by replicating what they do click-by-click.
Maybe they had a ship of a different nation than you. Different nations sometimes have slightly (or very) different designs. Time-periods also change things. And adding or reducing dispalcement makes ships longer or shorter respectively, changing how much room there is.

Edited May 9, 2020 by Norbert Sattler

[johnson smith]

approximately when will the game be drop on steam

[Ink]

1 minute ago, johnson smith said:

approximately when will the game be drop on steam

There is no exact date yet but we will share the information as soon as possible 

[roachbeef]

19 hours ago, Hardlec said:

I see.  You don't have an answer, so I must be a turkey.  

Sorry to bother you.

We're not telepaths. You gave us almost zero context. Please show us screenshots while you're in the ship designer with the ship stats, especially the funnel capacity and engines, so we know what your ship looks like. Stop being passive-aggressive against people who're only trying to help.

[Cptbarney]

23 minutes ago, roachbeef said:

We're not telepaths. You gave us almost zero context. Please show us screenshots while you're in the ship designer with the ship stats, especially the funnel capacity and engines, so we know what your ship looks like. Stop being passive-aggressive against people who're only trying to help.

Basically this, we can only help so much, but without specifics and visual cues we can only give educated guess which can go either way, AI can be bonkers and i think DD speeds are too high (47knots is mental for a DD at 1920 even if somekind of engine boost kind of thing becomes avalaible for limited usage, even then won't reach speed that high).

I played 3 games 1 where i struck within 10mins the other 2 where the AI hit at 9mins in and 13mins in. So it does vary a lot. With torps if you can see dds by clicking their icons just keep out of 10km for missions around 1900-1925 and 14km for missions above 1926+ untill you can identify them and what torps they have plus the range on them.

[Wurstsalat]

5 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

Basically this, we can only help so much, but without specifics and visual cues we can only give educated guess which can go either way, AI can be bonkers and i think DD speeds are too high (47knots is mental for a DD at 1920 even if somekind of engine boost kind of thing becomes avalaible for limited usage, even then won't reach speed that high).

I played 3 games 1 where i struck within 10mins the other 2 where the AI hit at 9mins in and 13mins in. So it does vary a lot. With torps if you can see dds by clicking their icons just keep out of 10km for missions around 1900-1925 and 14km for missions above 1926+ untill you can identify them and what torps they have plus the range on them.

If he wanted help he would have provided screenshots already, this seems to be a post that only serves to vent frustration.

Screenshots arend hard to make at all all you gotta do is press print and you can even directly paste them into this forum.

Nothing constructive to work with even... what are we supposed to do to make you feel better?

[Hardlec]

And for turrets and torpedo launchers you can use the shift key to place them on a finer grid, often allowing you to place them further back than the regular grid allows. The hotkeys that can be used in the designer are shown if you mouse-over the symbol looking like A, B and C keys in the top right of the designer window.

 

How am I supposed to know this?  I'm not a telepath either.  Hugely complicated interface.  No Documentation.

[Hardlec]

You want screenshots, aye? 

I don't see any in other posts.

I can't roll back time to the point that a screenshot would be of any use.  I can show my ship sinking, but not how it was sunk.

Only now have you said that there is a multi-step process, requiring a special graphics program, which might provide a screenshot.  It's not so simple.  I use graphics all the time.  Mainly GIMP.  It would take me several minutes to make, edit and save a screenshot.  

So:  I'll jump through your hoops.  But I remain hugely ambivalent that you will actually answer any of my questions.  This is because I haven't seen much that is an answer, yet. 

 

[BobRoss0902]

Certain guns have accuracy differences. Bigger is not always better, double guns are more accurate than triples, and you want to be going at cruise speed.

Just slapping on the biggest gun you can find while it may be easy is not always the smart choice.