For Alpha 7

[Hardlec]

Full documentation, i.e. a useful help file, for the designer.  Let the players know about all the features, and how to use them.

 In the Battle interface:  

There needs to be full documentation of how the battle interface works.  

There needs to be an easily accessible button to order a ship to evade torpedoes. I'd put it right next to the smokescreen button.

To the left of the pause button will be a button that pauses the action and moves out so that all ships are visible.  Next to each ship will be an arrow showing the direction the ship is headed, and next to the arrow, the ship's speed.  The player may also put her cursor on a ship and have all range bands shown for that ship.  

A feature to record the battle, so that the player may play it back

The screenshot (F11)  feature  in the interface is not very good. It leaves out a lot of detail.  Using window screen saver can be problematic.  If you use the "Windowed" option, your screen shot shows what's on the Monitor, not  what's in the window.

 

The play balance for the academy sucks.  This needs a complete re-work. Also, players should be able to start with an academy mission and modify the parameters.  Right now, in the academy, the computer hits first 98% of the time.  The computer scores hits over the player at a ratio of 100 to 1 or more.  

Do have your testers work on playability and balance.

 

[Bluishdoor76]

None of these seem necessary at all imo. All the info you will need in a battle is given to you in the UI.

1 hour ago, Hardlec said:

There needs to be an easily accessible button to order a ship to evade torpedoes. I'd put it right next to the smokescreen button.

 

 

There is , you have the speed bar, direction bar and for ships you arent currently controlling theres a button that sets them to AI controlled and guess what, the AI will automatically dodge torpedoes.

[BobRoss0902]

MFW we are already talking about alpha 7.

[o Barão]

19 hours ago, Bluishdoor76 said:

There is , you have the speed bar, direction bar and for ships you arent currently controlling theres a button that sets them to AI controlled and guess what, the AI will automatically dodge torpedoes.

This is complete nonsense and the reason why i said this is how AI handle battle formations and strategy plans. In a short answer AI doens't have clue what it needs to do. The best example i can give you is with the new academy missions where you have battles where you controling around 20 destroyers.

If you set the divisions to AI they will rush the enemy right in the middle making it easy for the enemy to get some torpedos hits and create some crazy traffic with ships ramming each other , ships losing touch with the division because other ships are crossing is path. Complete chaos.

Now if i am controlling all the 5 dds divisions i will always want them to come from 5 different directions at the same time. It is impossible to keep my eyes  open and babysitting all divisions at the same time not only that have you ever tried to save a ship that is not leading the division from a torpedo attack? good luck . You need to quickly detach the ship , make a sharp turn and then organize everything again. Now imagine this with 20 dds.

And other thing , why is the AI divisions automatically dodge and not my divisions? Do you think the captain of the ship would call the admiral in the middle of the battle asking permission to leave the formation  because is going to get hit by torpedos?

So what you are saying is only somewhat reasonable if you have only 1 division in battle and i would still think is complete nonsense since if you have a battle that could go long for hours and you need to play in real time just to have time to react and make the sharp turn  for that moment the torpedos are spotted.

Edited May 14, 2020 by o Barão

[Aceituna]

I honestly don't think academy needs some rework or improvement.

1. Academy missions are supposed to be hard And unbalanced because they Are supposed to teach you how to act in difficult situations.

2. Maybe it's just my opinion but honestly Will Somebody play academy missions after campaing is out?

[Alcar]

2 hours ago, Aceituna said:

I honestly don't think academy needs some rework or improvement.

1. Academy missions are supposed to be hard And unbalanced because they Are supposed to teach you how to act in difficult situations.

2. Maybe it's just my opinion but honestly Will Somebody play academy missions after campaing is out?

1. Agree completely.

2. I enjoy them, but I doubt it I will touch them. Perhaps I will clear them all again when it is released on Steam just to get my green check marks back.

[lordcmdr]

I'm a simple man. All I want is to design my own enemies in custom battles and save all my designs.

[nigelnire]

Would be great to see a few static crew sprites. I know they are tiny but they add to the immersion. Also a few crew in the lifeboats when a ship sinks would look great. They are so small there is no need for detailed uniforms. This is nicely done in Atlantic fleet where you can see them in the towers and crows nests in this example of the HMS Prince of Wales.

 

 

Would love to see these two missions /scenarios historically recreated  with possibility to play as either side , it would be awesome in this game.

Battle of the Denmark strait  ---  HMS Hood and HMS Prince of Wales Vs Bismarck and Prince Eugen

Battle of the river Plate  ---HMS Exeter ,HMS Ajax ,HMS Archilles Vs Pocket Battleship Admiral Graf Spee.

 

   

Edited May 16, 2020 by nigelnire

[nigelnire]

3 hours ago, lordcmdr said:

I'm a simple man. All I want is to design my own enemies in custom battles and save all my designs.

 Totally agree   

[The_Real_Hawkeye]

16 hours ago, Aceituna said:

I honestly don't think academy needs some rework or improvement.

1. Academy missions are supposed to be hard And unbalanced because they Are supposed to teach you how to act in difficult situations.

2. Maybe it's just my opinion but honestly Will Somebody play academy missions after campaing is out?

1. I agree with the "those missions are supposed to be difficult" part, but I draw the line where the missions pretty much force me to game the system to beat them. Sure, I can create a specialized ship to beat the mission, but that ship is only good for that specific mission and be of little use in the campaign, so what did I actually learn? How to game the system?

2. While this might be true for some, personally, I specifically played through the missions because I want to be ready for the campaign. I played a ton of single fights in BATTLETECH before starting the campaign, so I at least somewhat knew what I was doing, I played through most of the scenarios in Atlantic Fleet before starting the campaign for the same reason and I read/watched a bunch of tutorials/YT videos and played some 100 co-op games in WoWs before entering my first Random Battle.

Maybe it's just me and everyone else jumps just right in, I don't know.

 

I guess, the bottom line is this:

If the missions are meant as a kind of tutorial for the full game, quite a few of the current missions are out of whack, if, on the other hand, they are meant as entertainment of their own with no relation to campaign-play, they are perfectly fine.

[Hardlec]

Look, guys:

I expect a lag between when I issue a course change and when the ship starts to move, but ordering "hard over" is pretty difficult.  As in:  if you use a waypoint, it's pretty common for the order to be ignored.  If you use the rudder control, you may, once in a while, get what you order.  Rudder control needs to be better.  I'd like to key in numbers rather than use the slider.  

BTW:  If  i'm attacked by torpedoes, the AI will not move to dodge.  

[Bluishdoor76]

As many, MANY have stated before, this isn't World of Warships. Large dreadnoughts and battleships take a very long time to initiate a turn, and depending on the speed it can be a very long turn. And no your ship isn't ignoring your order to turn when using the rudder or the waypoint, its telling you that the ship cannot perform the turn due to many factors.

[Jatzi]

The academy missions are meant to entertain us and bring people into the game early so they can get more money while they continue to work on the game. It's also an easy way to test out certain combat mechanics by forcing us to do certain things. That's it. They don't represent the whole game or the campaign and how it'll be and imo there should be minimal effort put into them. Like don't put tons of effort into making them perfect cuz they're just not the point of the game. I'll never touch them again after the campaign comes out. Sure some effort should be made into making them like playable, as few bugs as possible and whatnot but that's it. 

As for dodging torpedoes and juggling huge fleets, there is a pause button and regular speed is really slow so if things are moving too fast just drop to that. And dodging torpedoes shouldn't be last minute thing cuz it's not gonna happen. Actively maneuver to avoid them before you detect them by doing S-Turns and such. Change direction, change speed, whatever. The AI isn't the greatest and needs work sure but you can directly control every ship and it's honestly not that hard. Saying it's impossible to control 20 DD's is just not true. A little hard sure but not impossible so don't get so worked up about it? Just imagine what Jutland style fleet battles are gonna be like, complaining about the AI pathfinding is deserved but also not hard to avoid. Leave some space between your formations and keep them in normal spread. For the most part problem solved. I rarely run into pathfinding issues honestly unless I'm trying to ram someone, the AI really doesn't like that

[Entropy Avatar]

On 5/15/2020 at 8:59 PM, nigelnire said:

Would be great to see a few static crew sprites. I know they are tiny but they add to the immersion. Also a few crew in the lifeboats when a ship sinks would look great. They are so small there is no need for detailed uniforms. This is nicely done in Atlantic fleet where you can see them in the towers and crows nests in this example of the HMS Prince of Wales.

That would be great. Helps provide a nice sense of scale.

[Shaftoe]

On 5/17/2020 at 8:13 PM, Bluishdoor76 said:

As many, MANY have stated before, this isn't World of Warships. Large dreadnoughts and battleships take a very long time to initiate a turn, and depending on the speed it can be a very long turn. And no your ship isn't ignoring your order to turn when using the rudder or the waypoint, its telling you that the ship cannot perform the turn due to many factors.

This exaggeration is not exactly accurate. It depends on specifics of a vessel in question. 

[DougToss]

Some of the suggestions made to balance the game based around the Academy missions are ridiculous, and I think that grounding those missions in reality will go a long way towards finally convincing people that 20" guns were not the norm. How could players not be crying out for more accurate and powerful secondary guns (already far, far more accurate and powerful than any such guns and mounts in reality) if a lone capital ship is expected to flight off a flotilla of 40kt destroyers single-handedly?! Having arcade scenarios shapes perceptions of the game's design and goals, especially considering that for many people this is their first expose to naval combat in the first place. Of course it is causing bias towards arcade suggestions. 

If the scenarios are missions that were imagined as part of real doctrine, and consequently real ships were designed for,  fighting those scenarios can be compared to the historical actions, both in testing/feedback, and in the player's conception of naval warfare. When players participate in actions similar to those that were fought, historical combat records can be analyzed and compared to player feedback during testing empirically. That makes the design process and tester feedback process more effective, and to account for my own bias, results in a more realistic/accurate/authentic game. Rather than feeling ships are "unbalanced" or guns "don't feel right" and so on, it would be much more useful for feedback and design changes to see if 4" guns are performing in an environment where the historical results are known. That way there is a point of reference and bias and emotive, "gamey" reactions are taken out of the equation. 

To put this in concrete terms, if the purpose of Academy missions is to teach players how doctrine, design and combat work, posing realistic questions will better educate them. Let's say we want to teach the player how to design a German Armoured Cruiser. That's a reasonable training goal, and a skill that we can expect them to use in the campaign. We know the doctrine and missions real armoured cruisers were designed for, and we can see those factors at play in the design of the Scharnhorst-class.  The situations presented to players to use the ships will influence how they design and employ them, just like real naval architects, staff and flag officers. We want the players to design ships along the same lines as the real people tasked to do that, so for the lesson to work they have to be posed with the same problems. 

All else being equal, given the problem of designing an Armoured Cruiser to fight the Battle of Coronel, the player should reasonably come up with something along the lines of the Scharnhorst. If done correctly, through practicing the scenario, they should also be able to handle armoured cruisers in this action even if the historical ships are substituted for their own designs. They may not come out as skilled as von Spee, but they should be trained through gameplay to approach the situation in roughly the way he did, with the tools he had. 

From the design and testing point of view, the feedback from players approaching this scenario can be compared to the historical data. It will be easier to see if guns, armour, ballistics, propulsion, damage, crew effects etc. etc. are working as intended since the inputs match a historical example for which the results, including detailed firsthand accounts and statistics, are known. The empirical feedback from players is simply matched to the extant historical empirical data and the game parameters are adjusted until they align. 

What players are being asked to do now is "Design a German Armoured Cruiser  to fight the Battle of Coronel, where a King George V-class battleship is present on the British side." 

My problems with this are as follows:

1. What sort of feedback is supposed to spring from that?

• How can any of that feedback be quantified? There's nothing to compare it to, nothing of the sort  ever happened. 
• What information exists, or could exist, that could provide comparison?
• Are we hoping players can provide meaningful insight into the performance of a 1905 8.3" gun versus 1939 14.7" armour? 
• In short, from a feedback perspective, what is the point of the exercise?

       2. How does this train the player in gameplay and prepare them to fight the campaign?

• Are we teaching players to design ships for scenarios they will reasonably never encounter, and therefore teaching players to design bad ships?
• What does this exercise teach players about naval doctrine and combat? Does the lesson imparted gel with historical training and doctrine, and thus translate them into acting as a real naval officer would given the same forces and mission? 
• Are we teaching players to manage their fleets and building programs in such a way that they have to design ships in 1905 expecting them to fight state-of-the-art ships 35 years on? 
• In short, from a gameplay training perspective, what are we teaching the player to do?

      3. Does this improve players understanding of gameplay mechanics, which is to say, naval warfare? 

• Most people will not be coming into this title with a body of knowledge. The gameplay, academy especially, will shape their perceptions, and as outlined above, those perceptions colour their feedback to devs, but also their approach to the campaign, design and combat. If a player does not know what a Protected Cruiser is, seeing it employed in the environment for which it was designed is more meaningful than a task for which it was ill-suited (Taking on the aforementioned King George V say) . An easy example of this would be seeing the utility of protected cruisers for scouting, cruiser warfare, etc. rather than in match-ups with heavier ships. The lesson ought to be, "this is what a protected cruiser does" rather than "a protected cruiser is weak, and should be 'upgraded' to 'stronger' 'units' like heavy cruisers and battleships.  Only when that lesson is learned will they have the conceptual tools to design and fight ships, and manage their fleets and building programs on the campaign layer. 
• In short, from a conceptual perspective, what are we teaching the player about naval warfare?

Edited May 20, 2020 by DougToss

[Wowzery]

On 5/14/2020 at 10:08 AM, o Barão said:

If you set the divisions to AI they will rush the enemy right in the middle

Played a custom game, and gave the enemy a battlecrusier and two destroyers.  Both destroyers followed the battlecruiser the entire game until it sank.  So while the DDs didn't rush up the middle, they were just as useless in a long range battle.

[o Barão]

1 hour ago, Wowzery said:

Played a custom game, and gave the enemy a battlecrusier and two destroyers.  Both destroyers followed the battlecruiser the entire game until it sank.  So while the DDs didn't rush up the middle, they were just as useless in a long range battle.

First i must say it was watching videos from you and others on youtube that made me to buy this game so thank you.

 

When i was talking "If you set the divisions to AI they will rush the enemy right in the middle " i was mentioning the AI behaviour on this new academy missions with many dds. Sadly there is no way to turn the division to AI and send them to attack from a particular direction so they all rush the middle until they spot the enemy fleet making them easy targets to incoming torpedos.

Also doing a few more tests where i set all my divisions to the AI and just watching their behaviour to understand the mechanics i also found that is not always they will try to evade the incoming torpedoes. Sometimes they will continue to sail in a straight line until they got hit by a torpedo and sunk. And i am talking about dds equipped with sonar. 😕

 

So yes there are some big problems with the AI behaviour in this game.

 

- Ships should always try to to evade incoming torpedoes if they know about their presence. And i am talking ships from the AI divisions and also controlled by humans.

- A tactical map feature is needed in game where we as an admiral could give orders to AI divisions to where they should move.

- A 3 option AI behaviour switch for each division would be nice. This options would be. Scout/kite ; neutral ; Agressive/pursuit.

- When the leading ship takes enough damage , he will make a an 180 degree turn to go to the end of the line. The problem with this is AI can do that turn in the side that is near the enemy making it easier to get hit. Should be always the opposite side if possible.

- AI should not wait to spot the torpedos to start the evading maneuvers. AI should expect that a torpedo attack is probaly coming and should change course from time to time if he (AI) knows is in range from a torpedo attack. This would make battles against AI more difficult/fun.

 

 

[Cptbarney]

21 minutes ago, o Barão said:

First i must say it was watching videos from you and others on youtube that made me to buy this game so thank you.

 

When i was talking "If you set the divisions to AI they will rush the enemy right in the middle " i was mentioning the AI behaviour on this new academy missions with many dds. Sadly there is no way to turn the division to AI and send them to attack from a particular direction so they all rush the middle until they spot the enemy fleet making them easy targets to incoming torpedos.

Also doing a few more tests where i set all my divisions to the AI and just watching their behaviour to understand the mechanics i also found that is not always they will try to evade the incoming torpedoes. Sometimes they will continue to sail in a straight line until they got hit by a torpedo and sunk. And i am talking about dds equipped with sonar. 😕

 

So yes there are some big problems with the AI behaviour in this game.

 

- Ships should always try to to evade incoming torpedoes if they know about their presence. And i am talking ships from the AI divisions and also controlled by humans.

- A tactical map feature is needed in game where we as an admiral could give orders to AI divisions to where they should move.

- A 3 option AI behaviour switch for each division would be nice. This options would be. Scout/kite ; neutral ; Agressive/pursuit.

- When the leading ship takes enough damage , he will make a an 180 degree turn to go to the end of the line. The problem with this is AI can do that turn in the side that is near the enemy making it easier to get hit. Should be always the opposite side if possible.

- AI should not wait to spot the torpedos to start the evading maneuvers. AI should expect that a torpedo attack is probaly coming and should change course from time to time if he (AI) knows is in range from a torpedo attack. This would make battles against AI more difficult/fun.

 

 

For the tactical map you could press a button (m for example) and have a view similar to that of world of warships, with the decor around the edges looking like a table, with map equipment around it like its in an office (for immersion).

Also AI in formations should slow down just as the lead ship does or when the lead ship turns out (or inwards towards the fleet furtherest away from the guns) to cause minimal formation impact and somekind of manual control to stop the game from screwing up controls when torps appear nearby. Maybe messages as well like 'The captain panicked or Captain of the Blah Blah misread signals or something to have somekind of screw ups occur like in real life).

But yeha like the ideas.

[Wowzery]

 

8 hours ago, o Barão said:

A 3 option AI behaviour switch for each division would be nice. This options would be. Scout/kite ; neutral ; Agressive/pursuit.

I actually really like this idea.  Though, honestly, I fear I'd forget to change it during the game.

8 hours ago, o Barão said:

First i must say it was watching videos from you and others on youtube that made me to buy this game so thank you.

So glad us YouTubers introduced into the game. 

[Jatzi]

RTW has different behavior sets. You can set ship divisions to scout or support or screen a parent formation. The AI will change the exact formation for the division to fit that role. You can do it manually as well. Over time you unlock new formations and division roles such as destroyer screens. You can order a flotilla attack which basically makes all your screening elements charge the enemy fleet as they try to conduct torpedo attacks. It's very useful for trying to get pursuing enemies to back off briefly or to overwhelm unscreened capital ships. In RTW 2 as you progress into the air age carriers go from being supporting units for the main battle line to their own separate task forces with the battle line mainly supporting and screening them. That's a bit more in-depth than 3 options so I would like the system to be like that. And honestly I'd be surprised if it wasn't. Misunderstood signals are also a thing in RTW that decrease over time and again I'd be surprised if they weren't in this game as well. 

Also someone Wowzery said that the destroyers followed the battlecruiser during a long range fight as if that's a bad thing? They're escorts they were doing exactly what they should have been doing. 

As for the AI automatically evading torpedoes I disagree entirely unless the formation is set to AI control. I really hate the auto-collision avoidance stuff in the game right now. Messes up maneuvers and I don't want that sort of thing happening even more often. I can evade torpedoes myself just fine. AI divisions avoiding torpedoes yeah sure makes sense that should be a thing. It can't be too good though, on either side friendly or foe. Honestly I don't totally get this preoccupation with setting stuff to the AI. Like just micro it a little if you want to set up a certain attack it's not too hard even with large numbers the game has different speed settings. I understand ppl might want to make things harder for themselves and act as just admirals in charge of just their own division and giving commands, RTW has a difficulty setting which forces that to happen vs the easy difficulty mode where you can take control of any ship at any time. However, in my mind setting something like that up sounds like something to deal with later

[Reaper Jack]

On 5/20/2020 at 10:34 AM, Shaftoe said:

This exaggeration is not exactly accurate. It depends on specifics of a vessel in question. 

Indeed. When Repulse was sunk by Japanese torpedo bombers for example, the Captain gave absolutely exemplary skill towards keeping his ship turning and avoiding torpedoes, right to the very end, the only reason she even took them (on the final run no less) was because she was dropped from both sides of the ship at the same time. Up until then, on all previous runs she had avoided every drop, and the Japanese pilots afterwards said they were very impressed by a ship that size being captained so well. 

[DougToss]

On 5/22/2020 at 11:13 AM, o Barão said:

Ships should always try to to evade incoming torpedoes if they know about their presence. And i am talking ships from the AI divisions and also controlled by humans.

I think there is room for flexibility here, fear of torpedos lead to the loss of the ship in at least one famous engagement: 

“At the Battle of the River Plate, Captain von Langsdorff occupied the tower mast gunnery officer's observation platform (he was criticised for getting in the way of his gunnery officer). He had been trained as a torpedo officer rather than a gunner, and there was speculation that he was too concerned with evading the cruisers’ torpedoes and therefore did not steer the sort of steady course that would have made his gunnery more effective." 

Excerpt From: Norman Friedman. “Naval Firepower: Battleship Guns and Gunnery in the Dreadnought Era”. Apple Books. 

Edited May 25, 2020 by DougToss