Which missions remain overly difficult?

[Darth Glorious]

On 9/4/2020 at 2:42 AM, shieldy44 said:

well I only have 2 Naval Academy missions left and one of them is Dreadnought vs Modern Cruisers and im the only one that voted on it lol. So if anyone that has gotten past it has some advice i would love to hear what you did.

 

I built a bow-on battlefship with 15 x  9 inches gun on the bow so I don't need to show all my side to them and it is easier to dodge torpedoes like that

Edited September 7, 2020 by Darth Glorious

[OochyCoo]

On 9/5/2020 at 7:19 PM, draconins said:

Battle of Savo Island and Battle of Tassafaronga

Thanks for the input Draconins - a long time since I looked at the pacific campaigns - it was good to re-read these two accounts. Not sure if this proves what I mean though - it was only truly effective either from planes, subs or perhaps as in this case when using Japanese long lance torpedoes. The American torpedoes were deemed either defective or launched out of range (not sure if that was ever concluded satisfactorily). If you tried to re-enact either battle in the game chances are pretty much every torpedo from both sides will have caused enormous damage with both sides probably losing over 50% of the ships.

As an example I just completed the torpedo banzai mission by sinking two US battleships (out of a fleet with 3bb 1bc 2cl 9dd) with 7 Japanese destroyers (although I did lose 6 of them).

 

I will also confess I was thinking more so of battles involving capital ships and primarily thinking of world war one to early world war two era technologies - Im not sure what the remedy would be in game - maybe its just me - but it just feels out of kilter.

 

 

[OochyCoo]

On 9/4/2020 at 1:42 AM, shieldy44 said:

well I only have 2 Naval Academy missions left and one of them is Dreadnought vs Modern Cruisers and im the only one that voted on it lol. So if anyone that has gotten past it has some advice i would love to hear what you did.

i went with a lot of torpedoes, 9inch twin mains and a lot of 8 inch secondaries - with as much armour as i could manage

on second inspection i went for numbers - see second picture

 

Edited September 8, 2020 by OochyCoo
wrong ship

[draconins]

1 hour ago, OochyCoo said:

Thanks for the input Draconins - a long time since I looked at the pacific campaigns - it was good to re-read these two accounts. Not sure if this proves what I mean though - it was only truly effective either from planes, subs or perhaps as in this case when using Japanese long lance torpedoes. The American torpedoes were deemed either defective or launched out of range (not sure if that was ever concluded satisfactorily). If you tried to re-enact either battle in the game chances are pretty much every torpedo from both sides will have caused enormous damage with both sides probably losing over 50% of the ships.

As an example I just completed the torpedo banzai mission by sinking two US battleships (out of a fleet with 3bb 1bc 2cl 9dd) with 7 Japanese destroyers (although I did lose 6 of them).

Torpedoes still effective in certain condition, it is just there are tech to make it less useful or more useful. Even in prior WW1 "destroyer" originally created to counter torpedo boat, as torpedo attack is dangerous to capital ships. It was originally "torpedo boat destroyer".

IJN invested and train heavily for torpedoes hence their torpedoes really powerful. In real life though some aspect is less useful due to technology, for example radar make ambushing using torpedoes difficult. Please do not judge all torpedoes just by WWII US torpedoes, if US torpedoes mishap in the game, you won't hit anything with those torps, or even when hit it would not explode, and this would just cause too much frustration to player akin what happen to US submariner in WW2.

Also do not forget, even large guns are less effective in WW2 in many condition, it would better to just send planes and submarines. However radar did help to improve some aspect of gunnery. I do not know say if IJN  press forward with Yagi radar early on, would that making ambush more likely? Or if they managed say to make guided torps?

I have tried torpedoes in the game, honestly I find it is inaccurate and often time I really annoyed with the way of torp launch right now, it is actually very difficult to target general area correctly (ever try hitting circling ship?) and I really want a button to force launch. It does not mean you will not get hit, but simply just more difficult. Torpedo banzai specifically it is supposed to be ambush scenario, and not helped by the way the AI control the fleet, though arguably if the US fleet is controlled by human, this mission become extremely difficult as human know they will be attacked.

My problem with current torps in UAD is basically the modelling, you can make a ship basically array of torps with high reload while real life torps has weight and size.  There is discussion already on this. However on other side, right now in UAD destroyers is rather useless without these reloadable torps, due to availability role in UAD.

 

Edited September 8, 2020 by draconins

[shieldy44]

well thanks for the 2 suggestion's guys I guess i just suck I still cant get past that mission Dreadnought vs Modern Cruisers. I just get blasted apart by their guns before i can do much the torpedo's aren't even the problem. I just saw that build with all the torpedo's I will try that next. I can normally just RNG these things out thats how i have pretty much gotten past all of them but this one is still a thorn in my side.

[shieldy44]

I just read what you said i think armoring up way more will probably make a big difference i already do max bulkheads and pretty much all the max survivability stuff

[admiralsnackbar]

I find 'Battle of the Destroyers' difficult because only 1/3 of my fleet are ships i built myself. The 5 good destroyers i build cannot compensate for the weird and ineffective designs the AI gives me. 

A lot of the modern BB missions are easy but a bit random in that they usually end in one side getting hood'd. 

Torpedo banzai is tricky because the enemy BB will simply "Try spinning, that's a good trick" which can basically negate torps at long range since they always seem to assume the enemy is moving in a straight line, so the torps miss 100% of the time.   I don't know if the spinning is something it does by default or if the AI is being told that torpedos are incoming the moment they are launched. if the latter, PLEASE fix that. That's insane and unfair. The AI should only do maneuvers if it spots torpedoes or at the very least should only do maneuvers if it spots destroyers and THINKS torpedoes are incoming. 

 

Edited September 14, 2020 by admiralsnackbar

[Steeltrap]

"Hurry Up".

1. You're at the mercy of AI designed ships, both the CLs and, in some respects more importantly, the transports. If you win "the bulkhead lottery" you're soooo much better off.

2. You're at the mercy of the AI manoeuvring the TR, and it remains as dumb as a bag full of rocks. Here's a hint as to why I say that:

Imagine you're a convoy commander. You're on a generally Westerly course, and you're told a vastly superior enemy is to the North (to starboard). You are told a friendly BC is heading at maximum sustainable speed from the South (to Port).

Question: Do you

A. Continue on your current course in line ahead, following a transport many km ahead of you, or

B. Immediately turn ALL transports to Port and make their best speed, effectively at least being in some sort of line abreast formation heading AWAY from the threat and toward the BC coming to your aid?

If you chose B, congratulations, you're correct in 99.99% of cases and have acted as pretty much any naval officer in those conditions would.

If you chose A, congratulations. you're the AI.

Keeping TR alive is a crap shoot as it is. Forcing us to be at the mercies of the AI is adding insult to injury, LOL.

3. The victory conditions make little to no sense. You are outnumbered AND have to protect the transports. Yet you're expected to keep 50% of TR alive but ALSO kill 75% of the enemy? WHY? Your mission OUGHT to be to keep the 50% of TR alive for a certain time period. Going on the ATTACK against a numerically and generally technologically superior enemy is just daft on so many levels, ESPECIALLY when the weather is locked in with VERY bad conditions that make longer range gunnery very difficult. So you're meant to close on DDs with loads of decently ranged torps yet you can't hit those ships worth a damn because you can't even SPOT them until they're in torpedo range (they see you before you see them, even though you have radar that ought to turn the tables on them)? Even ignoring all that, their ridiculous speeds (not affected by heavy sea waves, by the way) plus size means your ships can't hit them even when you CAN see them. Putting a condition that requires you to force an engagement that is ENTIRELY AT ODDS with sensible tactical behaviour is just daft,

It's just a mess from top to bottom. I'd prefer the missions to encourage sensible actions, fitting the doctrine of navies AND that would make sense in the context of the campaign.

I probably can work it out. The thing is, do I want to, and If I succeed will it be fun? Absolutely not one bit.

[Cpt.Hissy]

"Prove your might" too much depends on random luck. Also the goal is nonsensical.
Look at my last run:
It spawned my ships around 15 km behind the transports. Enemy apparently spawned with some shells already fired and incoming onto transports, thanks RNG they couldn't hit a yamato.

My destroyers thank god are actual destroyers this time, but they can be sluggish gunboats.
My battleship has actually 16" guns instead of often happening 10", and decent protection instead of usual "no bulkheads" and 8" armor, but It is 80 km away and for some bug related reason is slow as molasses - 16 knots! while it is supposed to be a 20 knot ship, but it refuses to go faster no matter what (it actually sped up within 30 km from main fleet)
Also enemy has some magical all-seeing, while all my ships suffer from some severe case of mass blindness: i'm well within 9" firing range (from what did actually hit and the fact that i've sent destroyers another 10+ km in) and i have the best available towers, enemies spam at me like crazy, yet none of my ships can not see them at all.

Now on gooal, okay, it's convoy protection mission, and i've distracted enemies from my transports and lured far enough, convoy is saved. I still cannot even see them. Time is running down. But i'm expected to actually sink them all?!

Edited November 24, 2020 by Cpt.Hissy

[CaptainSlow]

The mission "Numbers don't matter" was very hard. Now that AI can fit 20 inch quadruple guns it's even harder. Maybe a shorter starting range or somehow limiting the AI design will help. 

[Fishyfish]

I'm still helplessly flailing about in the casemate ironclad mission. 

[LordFowl]

First Turrets USS Monitor: No matter what I try with armor, I end up with multiple fires, yet rarely can set the enemy on fire. I can often have dealt twice as much damage, but then I catch fire and structural damage eventually does me in. Sometimes I've had the enemy nearly sunk - down to 20% - then they rapidly "unsink"  

The mission takes a very long time (even with accelerated time), and having spent several hours on multiple attempts already, I think I'll just abandon it.

Edited December 23, 2020 by LordFowl

[Amadee]

German pride is absolutely terrible trying to chase down a battlecruiser  fleeing at 30+ knots at the first sign of trouble while trying to dodge waves of torpedoes. If you can't score that lucky hit you can forget it and get overwhelmed by torpeoes.

[Dannavy85]

Please vote for one or more missions which remain overly difficult for you. The missions of the list are those that were previously reported as very hard. Feel free to complain about the reasons you find a mission very hard. The mission you complain can be out of this list.

Monitor against Virginia is very difficult but the number of times I've pulled a dead draw is about accurate to the event. Unless you get a good shot to damage rudders, shafts or engines both these ships were hard to kill for their time.

[1MajorKoenig]

I started once more to go through the academy missions and find them mostly nice and entertaining for a short while.

 

One great feature is the “safe design” function to go back and optimize your designs.

 

However: in all my recent missions the AI built exclusively “Maximum Bulkheads” ships which make for rather long session of chewing on the enemies. Don’t get me wrong - these minimum bulkheads thingies were not great either. I think the bulkhead slider in general would need to be looked at though 

[admiralsnackbar]

German Wrath in the North Sea:

Basically the detection range is so short that you can get stealth torpedo'ed from a range where even a destroyer would have almost no change of maneuvering away safetly. 
I only won that mission once and it was due to luck of the AI destroyers basically not rushing me.

 

 

[1MajorKoenig]

On 12/22/2020 at 9:57 PM, Fishyfish said:

I'm still helplessly flailing about in the casemate ironclad mission. 

It feels very random. Tried to win it by fires but it is largely random how well the enemy copes with that. 

[A. vT]

I'm currently struggling with the mission where you have the pre-dreadnoughts vs. dreadnoughts. 

[Armchair_Admiral]

I am replaying all the missions strictly linearly and I am not finished (so no vote yet). There were only 35 of them when I last installed the game, so a lot should have changed.

On the Monitor vs Virginia missions. The first one should be doable once you realize that you can enlarge your Monitor to carry two turrets. The second one depends on luck, but the following strategy helps. You will notice that at some point in the batte the Monitor will stop (this also happends in the first mission, in which the Virginia stops). You need to cross the T of the Monitor with your Virginia when this happens and stop your Virginia in the T position relative to the Monitor. With some luck, your should then be able to burn the Monitor with your HE broadside while the Monitor will be able to bear a single turret only (which hopefully gets disabled soon).

The next mission is Hurry Up. Any advice on what class to build?

EDIT (while waiting for moderator approval): Hurry Up is done, with a single fast battle cruiser!

Edited January 31, 2021 by Armchair_Admiral

[Right]

I don't think any of the missions is hard, the control over large numbers, mostly torpedo avoidance, and sometimes the fleeing ai were to be the problem for me when I had hard time.

[Right]

on one hand I don't believe in "hard", on the other:

the mission "design a dreadnought" seems to be on the adge, your ship isn't very mobile, your guns are limited and the funds are enought for 1 good or 2 lame vassels.

Going for fire power is ok but the survivablity/mixed/funds are a slug fest, dodging torps for 1:30 hours just to find out time ran out. After all you are going one against 6 hard to kill enemies.

It is not that the mission itself hard, it is the time limit to catch 4spreaded all over CL is the problem.

about an 30-40 plus minuts would make it much more doable.

 

edited:

it seems more of a problem of the ai repetative behavior, sadly once you get it the mission becomes too easy for the ai act as sitting ducks. as long you don't try to close on him he just circles you.

Edited February 6, 2021 by Right

[Stormnet]

Some missions (like German wrath at the North Sea) are hard to me due to how stupid/broken fleets are.

Im pretty sure I designed well 3 small (but modern and well armored) battleships (they take quite a beat before sinking), but its the fleet formation system that is screwing everything up.

I want all battleships and batlecruisers to screen the flagship while destroyers scout ahead. But they take so much time to get into formation, that by the time they are finally getting somewhat organized the enemy fleet has already reached mine and employed its superior omniscience (spotting ships before mine do, even with maxed towers) to start shelling, conditions that make the flimsy formation break completely.

This causes my flagship, SMS Krieger, to essentially go alone into the enemy (the best situation I had was it going with another battleship), and get wrecked. If I say "screw it", and set the entire fleet on AI mode and let its ommicience and multitask ability to deal with it, even if stupidly, the damn CPU makes all ships dash as fast as they can away from the enemy.

THE AI AUTOMATICALLY RETREATS ALL SHIPS ON ITS COMMAND BEFORE THE ACTUAL FIGHT!

 

Also, althought the First Casemates may be sorta tilted against the player, its still perfecly beatable. Maybe its due to it being a tutorial mission. Once you did quite a few missions and return, it becomes easy. I found a design to fight the monitor that around 2 out 3 times its a win and doesnt feel that exploitive.

This design reliably takes out the monitor. Choose Speed. The complete armor scheme doesnt show up, but belt and belt extended are gonna be your main focus on armor (make sure to add 9 cm of sec armor). Use your speed to get close to it and make sure your side is facing him (to allow more guns to fire at the same time). Your main trick is to stay close, and use your superior rate of fire to take him out.

Note: I made a small change that doesnt show up in the pic where I replaced the front 25 cm for a pair of 20 cm and took out just a few mm of armor out, as it has a too low fire rate to be useful, and is facing only fowards, while the 20 cm can fire while you close in oblique to the monitor.

Maybe its simply a complex strategy for the very 3rd tutorial mission of the entire game.

 

But many missions, like Proove your Might, are completely broken and biased against the player, as the game essentially asks the player to try to beat a vastly stronger foe.

There is simply a limit where all the design, strategy, and tactics are rendered useless when you simply have too little resources to fight a enemy that outguns you, outnumbers you, has stronger ships (sometimes these ships being too well equipped and armored for their weight showing that they clearly have a few multipliers going on), etc...

 

So, I'm my opinion, this game relies a lot on artificial dificulty, and usually apears in this forms:

1 The game gives you very little resources to fight a enemy that has plenty

2 The game wants you to fight an oponent with fleets, something that the fleet mechanics (that make ships go around in loops forever when you try to form a proper one) sometimes makes impossible

3 The game spawns overpowered ships that shouldn't be even possible to build in the tonnage requirements, that have pin-point accuracy, have unbelievable armor, are fast, etc

4 Some or all of the above

 

 

And by the way, the mission objectives are also and usually pretty bland, vage and unclear. They are usually:

A - sink X% of enemy ships of certain or all types

B - keep Y% of allied ships of certain or all types

Missions are essentially varied combinations of A and B. This makes them unoriginial. No "Do B until F time ends" or else.

 

Also, the percentage of ships can be quite misleading, vage, confusing, or all. You'd think percentage would be based, you know, if enemy has X ships, you have to sink Y% of those ships. Number based kill count right? But then we run into issues:

First the rules are inconsistent and unclear. Apparently in Proove your Might, despite needing to sink 70% of ships (the enemy has a BB and 3 CAs, so you need to sink 2/3 warships right?) you can get away by just sinking the BB (althought it sorta makes sence, as I'll explain below, the rule is still flawed);

Second, think about this example: If enemy has 10 ships, 5 DDs and 5 BCs, and mission tells you to sink 50%, does that mean sinking 5 DDs counts the same as sinking 5 BCs? You see where I'm going? If the game rates the % based on numbers, it sounds stupid that sinking a torpedo boat is the same as sinking a large expensive battleship. If the game rates them based on their value/strenght/specs, then its impossible right now to know what those parameters are.

Third, as you saw above, the objective rules are either unclear, inconsistent, or complex, which leads point 3, that having to do calculations to know how many ships of a certain type you have to sink, what specs are they, or whatever, is ridicoulous. Even if the rules were clear and consistent (and made sense), with percentages you would always need to do calculations to know what you have to sink, or how much. Who would want to do math, not while designing a ship or coming up with a strategy, but TO UNDERSTAND YOUR ORDERS.

 

This post might sound confusing, as I stiched togheder several points that I thought of seperatly, but I hope you understand it.

Edited February 28, 2021 by Stormnet

[Ignominius]

Been a while since I played through the naval academy missions and overall my experience is much better compared to the last time (Alpha 3 for most missions), however I've run into a bit of a stumbling bloc with the mission 'Cruisers Needed' the premise of which is that you must build light or heavy cruisers to defend one of your own battleships against a French super-battleship which is unescorted and vulnerable to torpedo attack. Since the last time I played this unassuming mission a couple of changes to the game have made this mission very frustrating to play conventionally.

 

In the mission you were previously limited to using either normal or fast torpedo propulsion, which made sense since the AI would almost always sail in a straight line until the last possible minute whereupon they would be struck by a salvo of torpedoes. Now, the AI almost always is running Sonar II or III on their ship, making successful attacks with torpedo ships unreliable at best due to the ease with which they can be detected and avoided.

 

Secondly, the player battleship which must be protected as the mission objective starts on 80% structural integrity at a range of 13.5km nearly fully broadside to the opponent. In previous iterations of the game where capital ships were almost laughably too survivable this was not an issue, however currently, especially with the addition of 19 and 20" guns, this results in the almost immediate crippling of the player battleship. In a couple of test runs my battleship has been destroyed on the first salvo by flash fires caused by penetrating 20" shell hits.

 

The remedy to this situation is simple: for the torpedoes, either limit the use of detection techs for the French ship to at least Hydro or consider giving the player the option to use electrical or oxygen torpedo propulsion; for the second, consider spawning the player ship farther away from the AI and/or at a steeper angle to prevent near-instant destruction or incapacitation.

 

If any of you have any feedback of your own on this mission, or you beat it yourselves with no problem, I'd like to have your input as well.

Edited February 28, 2021 by Ignominius

[Armchair_Admiral]

On 12/29/2020 at 2:39 AM, Amadee said:

German pride is absolutely terrible trying to chase down a battlecruiser  fleeing at 30+ knots at the first sign of trouble while trying to dodge waves of torpedoes. If you can't score that lucky hit you can forget it and get overwhelmed by torpeoes.

I second this, "German pride" is unplayable.

[BlueOrange]

Prove Your Might caused me to stop playing for a couple of months (having worked through the list in numerical order so far).  I came back, tried it 4 times, and it is still terrible.

Defending the convoy is not too much of a problem (most of the time), but sinking the enemy battlegroup is pretty much impossible.  How is a lighly armored battlecruiser supposed to close in on a BB/CA group?  If you go with range, you'll run out of ammunition.  If you stall until the battleship arrives, it turns out to be useless.