Should we be able to design our own submarines in the campaign, plus how much control do we have? (Poll)

[Whomst'd've]

Hi there, I'm here to talk about submarines.

I know that the submarines will not be player controlled from earlier statements from the developers in the campaign, and I'm not here to argue against that, I think its a good way to keep the focus on surface guns fleets. However I do have a few questions regarding the topic, as submarnes are a massive part of naval warfare from WW1 onwards. 

1) Will we be able to design the submarines ourselves in the shipbuilder? I know theres not really much one can add to a submarine externally as most of it is hull, but things like torpedo tubes, sails, etc should be available for tweaking, heck maybe cruiser grade guns if your feeling French. This would allow us to set up the subs to follow a doctrine we intend to deploy (long range, large spread fleet subs, to small coastal defense subs). 

2) Will we be able to dictate their positioning in the campaign and what laws they follow, (cruiser warfare to unrestricted submarine warfare)?

3) Will we be able to place anti-submarine weapon systems on our escorts manually, or will that be automated to a particular set of hulls? 

Please do vote on the polls!

Cheers. 

[BOP_ARP]

Вполне поддерживаю, но необходимо сделать и автоматизированную функцию, чтобы не перегружать игрока микроконтролем, если он этого не хочет.

(I fully support, but it is necessary to make an automated function, so as not to overload the player with microcontrol, if he does not want to.) (Google translate)

[johnson smith]

Number 1 and 3 is hard to determine because they are A.I control ( as you said ) then i guess they won't participate in actual battle, meaning why would they add ASW weapon in the ship design phase  if they're not gonna be use in the battle. That is my thought 

Edit: my english suck 

[Aceituna]

1 hour ago, Whomst'd've said:

Hi there, I'm here to talk about submarines.

I know that the submarines will not be player controlled from earlier statements from the developers in the campaign, and I'm not here to argue against that, I think its a good way to keep the focus on surface guns fleets. However I do have a few questions regarding the topic, as submarnes are a massive part of naval warfare from WW1 onwards. 

1) Will we be able to design the submarines ourselves in the shipbuilder? I know theres not really much one can add to a submarine externally as most of it is hull, but things like torpedo tubes, sails, etc should be available for tweaking, heck maybe cruiser grade guns if your feeling French. This would allow us to set up the subs to follow a doctrine we intend to deploy (long range, large spread fleet subs, to small coastal defense subs). 

2) Will we be able to dictate their positioning in the campaign and what laws they follow, (cruiser warfare to unrestricted submarine warfare)?

3) Will we be able to place anti-submarine weapon systems on our escorts manually, or will that be automated to a particular set of hulls? 

Please do vote on the polls!

Cheers. 

1. I would like to see the possibility to design submarines. I started a topic where I asked about this but there wasn't any official answer.

When we talk about this, i have a three theories of how their design could look like. 

1. Designing them the same way as surface vessels.-Which Is the way i would like the most.

2. We would't be able to actually place parts at them. But only move stats-like we do with displacement, speed, range and bulkheads. So we would just have a hull and we could just regulátor stuff like: range, strenght of torpedo armament, artillery, stealth, etc.-         -Which would be ok for mě altrought I would prefer the first option.

3. Or we could just unlock certain historical hulls through research which would have fixed stats.-Which I think would be the worst possibility.

 

 

About the second question(s):yes we can choose their position and yes we can choose how they will act. It's described here: https://www.dreadnoughts.ultimateadmiral.com/the-playing-modes

 

 

And the third one: It would be nice because (at least to me) earlier destroyer hulls seems quite empty when I design them so anything se can put at them is welcomed. But i think that we won't be able to put ASW at them because at newer hulls there are already there as cosmetical thing.

[SiWi]

given that you only use them passviely aka automatic designing them seems probably less important to the devs since you don't see them in action.

[IronKaputt]

3 hours ago, Whomst'd've said:

1) Will we be able to design the submarines ourselves in the shipbuilder? I know theres not really much one can add to a submarine externally as most of it is hull, but things like torpedo tubes, sails, etc should be available for tweaking, heck maybe cruiser grade guns if your feeling French. This would allow us to set up the subs to follow a doctrine we intend to deploy (long range, large spread fleet subs, to small coastal defense subs). 

Accommodations!

Crew is love, crew is life and I want my Gato-ripoff.

[ArtifaX]

Probably RTW style would be used by devs. You can research them, chose which type to build and how many and that's about it. If more options on their passive use are present (assign numbers to regions, engagement option and primary targets) would be better though. Should not be hard to code.

Designing subs feels like a waste of dev time to me.

AWS is probably a different matter. It might not have any visual change to the ship (even though would be cool if it does), but should be one of those part slots that adds weight and price and increase off-battle anti sub properties of the fleet.

[admiralsnackbar]

Sub and ASW would be fairly difficult to implement correctly in the current system IMO, it would also require insane levels of micro. 

[madham82]

1 hour ago, ArtifaX said:

Probably RTW style would be used by devs. You can research them, chose which type to build and how many and that's about it. If more options on their passive use are present (assign numbers to regions, engagement option and primary targets) would be better though. Should not be hard to code.

Designing subs feels like a waste of dev time to me.

AWS is probably a different matter. It might not have any visual change to the ship (even though would be cool if it does), but should be one of those part slots that adds weight and price and increase off-battle anti sub properties of the fleet.

Agreed, maybe a separate research tree as well. You could research endurance/range, firepower, speed, etc... to build boats suited to your tactics like commerce raiding, fleet, or coastal types. 

[Tycondero]

11 hours ago, ArtifaX said:

Designing subs feels like a waste of dev time to me.

Completely disagree here. If designing subs is a waste, what was designing ironclads all about then? They are likely not going to be in the campaign game at all.

I think we need to be able to determine submarine specifications. I am not expecting to see them in action, but to dry-dock design and build them wouldn't be a waste. I expect that the devs do not need to assign a lot of dev time into this as:

- We only need a couple of hull designs (1 for every decade after 1910). These can even be generic (not nation specific) as far as I am concerned.

- We do not need a lot of visual parts, only a number of torpedo launchers, like the underwater torpedo launcher tubes for surface ships. Perhaps only a couple of conning towers need to be designed and be able to place a deck gun of a limited number of sizes and locations (forward or aft).

- The majority of the specs can be determined by the build interface where you already have sliders for displacement, speed etc. This would determine the number of torpedoes and their size, just as we can with surface ships.

Even if this design would only determine some stats that would abstract their effects on the campaign map, I still think it is important to implement sub design for the emersion into the game. Also that way we can still specify things like range, build cost, build time and maintenance cost in a more controlled manner than just given it the reliability score that was given to subs in RTW.

Edited June 8, 2020 by Tycondero

[johnson smith]

11 hours ago, ArtifaX said:

Probably RTW style would be used by devs. You can research them, chose which type to build and how many and that's about it. If more options on their passive use are present (assign numbers to regions, engagement option and primary targets) would be better though. Should not be hard to code.

Designing subs feels like a waste of dev time to me.

AWS is probably a different matter. It might not have any visual change to the ship (even though would be cool if it does), but should be one of those part slots that adds weight and price and increase off-battle anti sub properties of the fleet.

It also increases the chance of getting detonation.  

[Shaftoe]

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

[Danvanthevacuumman]

All yes

[ArtifaX]

10 hours ago, Tycondero said:

If designing subs is a waste, what was designing ironclads all about then?

Honestly i dont know=) But at least they are playable. With subs, you design them to never see them actually sail. I'd rather have devs spend time on bringing more historical hulls then modeling a sub. 

Plus with displacement, armament and so on adjustable, devs would need to determine what effect those have. Like what difference does it make if you have 6 instead of 4 torpedo tubes in the context of non-visible, non-playable sub effect simulation and then also balance it out to remain close to historical.

10 hours ago, Tycondero said:

We only need a couple of hull designs (1 for every decade after 1910). These can even be generic (not nation specific) as far as I am concerned.

So then whats the point of design If everything looks the same? In order to make it interesting a lot of variety is needed and then again, whats the point of that if its not visible to the user anywhere outside of dry dock.

The only explanation i can see is to make a cool screenshot=)

[DougToss]

As with aircraft, people are getting lost in the weeds here. 

Did the specific differences between a Type VII U-Boat and a Salmon Class Fleet Boat matter?

The US Fleet Boats had longer range, that's what mattered. Everything else grew from that, which of course was a doctrinal issue. The United States had to project power across the Pacific Ocean. Germany did not. Therefore, the US had to build longer ranged submarines. That long range can be an abstraction where Long Range Submarines cost more to build and maintain. 

Anything else is granularity in search of purpose. Looking at submarines in both theatres of WW2, what was the difference really between a 3", 4" and 5" gun? Between x and y number of tubes? Between certain types of diesel arrangements? 

[SiWi]

I feel that for subs, it would be enough to "tip in" the end results of the design.

Aka if I want 10k km range and that and that speed with that many toprs how expensive will it be?

 

Given the fact that you don't see them in combat.

Edited June 8, 2020 by SiWi

[disc]

 

1 hour ago, DougToss said:

Anything else is granularity in search of purpose. Looking at submarines in both theatres of WW2, what was the difference really between a 3", 4" and 5" gun? Between x and y number of tubes? Between certain types of diesel arrangements? 

...? A lot?

The 3in was simply too small. The US moved to 5in deck guns to attack sampans and boats for its greater power. The 5in shell weighed four times as much as the 3in.

Had USS Darter and Dace only four bow tubes, like the S class or some of the Type VIICs (the others having just two or four and a stern tube) Palawan Passage would have been different. Ten available torpedoes is very nice.

The snorkel-battery arrangement is what made I-201 and the Type XXIs so revolutionary. The full electric transmissions of US subs made them much more flexible than their contemporaries. Unreliable Diesels crippled the early US and Japanese fleet submarines.

I would agree that each of these characteristics individually did not make a devcisive difference. But put them all together, and things change.

Edited June 8, 2020 by disc

[DougToss]

Bear with me. Reading patrol reports, I am very hard pressed to find vessels larger than a sampan sunk by submarine gunfire in the PTO. Moreover, most gunfire engagements happened in '44-'45 after the back of the Japanese merchant marine had been broken. My point is that rather than worry about designing the mounting of every deck gun of every sub in game, having this fully abstracted or, selecting caliber, maybe doctrine and then having a dice roll determine results accomplishes more or less the same thing. With hundreds of hours in SH 4 and 5, with the latest and greatest rivet-counting grog mods, deck guns are still mostly an afterthought except for sampan busting. 

The difference between submarines was mostly role (coastal/patrol/fleet) and doctrine. The nuts and bolts differences can be abstracted in the same way the role of aircraft, if any, can be abstracted. 

[disc]

That sounds pretty reasonable, when you put it that way. I am inclined to agree.

[Steeltrap]

12 hours ago, DougToss said:

As with aircraft, people are getting lost in the weeds here. 

Did the specific differences between a Type VII U-Boat and a Salmon Class Fleet Boat matter?

The US Fleet Boats had longer range, that's what mattered. Everything else grew from that, which of course was a doctrinal issue. The United States had to project power across the Pacific Ocean. Germany did not. Therefore, the US had to build longer ranged submarines. That long range can be an abstraction where Long Range Submarines cost more to build and maintain. 

Anything else is granularity in search of purpose. Looking at submarines in both theatres of WW2, what was the difference really between a 3", 4" and 5" gun? Between x and y number of tubes? Between certain types of diesel arrangements? 

^

What he said.

DougToss captured all the essential bits as I see it.

I'd add the fact that suggesting it's not significant work for the devs is mistaken. First of all, it's almost certainly UNNECESSARY work (can they implement subs 'meaningfully' without it?). Secondly, issues such as engine sizes translating to speed when based on the various hulls is plenty of work. Then there's the question of how ASW works, and THAT then needs to translate both the the ASW stuff put on DDs or DEs or Frigates or Corvettes (can we build those more specific escort sub-types? More work again if they're designable) AND what design elements are relevant to that on the submarine design side of things.

Would it be nice to have everything ever to have existed, let alone imagined but not yet to have existed, open to our fingertips and whims? Sure.

Would we like a fully functional, well enough balanced game to play within the next 5 years?

We'd better decide where to draw the lines on the first because we sure as hell won't be getting second if we don't.

[Steeltrap]

I forgot to add a specific mention of +1 for the OP for including a 'neutral/undecided' option.

Thanks.

[Steeltrap]

10 hours ago, disc said:

Had USS Darter and Dace only four bow tubes, like the S class or some of the Type VIICs (the others having just two or four and a stern tube) Palawan Passage would have been different. Ten available torpedoes is very nice.

The snorkel-battery arrangement is what made I-201 and the Type XXIs so revolutionary. The full electric transmissions of US subs made them much more flexible than their contemporaries. Unreliable Diesels crippled the early US and Japanese fleet submarines.

I would agree that each of these characteristics individually did not make a devcisive difference. But put them all together, and things change.

Surely all of which can be reflected through research options that unlock different 'classes' of subs?

My worry is it's just more and more stuff to do that's not essential to arrive at the intended in-game role of submarines.

Another way of looking at it is to ask to what degree do I as the player NEED to be able to design these things for me to achieve their role as I want them to perform. If they're NOT going to appear on the tactical simulation screen, I don't want to waste my time worrying over the exact positioning of this or that element to get perfect weight distribution etc etc. Armament comes down to bow/stern tube numbers plus numbers of reloads. Range is range, speed is speed. Do we really want to introduce another measure such as design depth? And so on.

Of course I'm not against the concept of being able to control EVERYTHING, provided the game gives me the ability to turn off what I don't want to do directly and not suffer dreadful performance loss because the AI can't do a proper job of designing and managing things.

What I AM against is trying to load every possible naval force ever done on the shoulders of the devs when many of them are not at all necessary for the "give us your money and here's what we're promising you'll receive" proposition of the game.

Cheers

Edited June 9, 2020 by Steeltrap

[Whomst'd've]

5 hours ago, Steeltrap said:

I forgot to add a specific mention of +1 for the OP for including a 'neutral/undecided' option.

Thanks.

Chur!

Edited June 9, 2020 by Whomst'd've

[IronKaputt]

On 6/8/2020 at 9:37 AM, Tycondero said:

- We only need a couple of hull designs (1 for every decade after 1910). These can even be generic (not nation specific) as far as I am concerned.

- We do not need a lot of visual parts, only a number of torpedo launchers, like the underwater torpedo launcher tubes for surface ships. Perhaps only a couple of conning towers need to be designed and be able to place a deck gun of a limited number of sizes and locations (forward or aft).

I think fuel stain on water would be more than enough for visual part for now.

[Cdodders]

Dammit I want my T class boats!