Which missions remain overly difficult?

[Awger]

Successfully completed all academy missions so far, but I'm stuck on "Numbers don't matter."  Looks like it was barely do-able in the last alpha (when the BB was 104K tons and "only" had 18" guns) but the monster I get in alpha-11 is 125K with 4ea triple 20"s... and the escorts have 21nm torps.  I either sit at range and get sniped, or close in (with minimal overtake) and get obliterated.

Gonna try a zerg-rush with torp BCs, wish me luck.

[disc]

Prove your might is tough, but the objectives given may be a little confusing. There is no need to engage the battleship. If you destroy all three cruisers, you win.

I used balanced tech. In common with many of these missions, high speed is not necessary. I lowered the "battlecruiser" speed to 25 knots and invested the weight and money into big guns and extreme durability. I used semi-auto 14in guns in 3 or 4 triple turrets, as these are Mark 3 variants. Max displacement, max bulkheads, max aux engines, max shaft, reinforced bulkhead II, antiflood III. Plenty of armor.

Citadel 0 and 4 are both viable. Can try the different torpedo protections, though I was able to go without.

I didn't try a secondary or torpedo launcher focus, but that might work too.

Tactically, run in and keep a moderately close distance to the enemy cruisers with this fast battleship. The AI is not smart enough to go around to the merchants. Primary threat is from torpedoes, so one must carefully watch reloads on the cruisers. Generally can survive at least 3 hits, but even one can be dangerous. I believe the cruisers usually carry maximum reloads, so a ton of dodging is required. Max hydrophones is necessary.

The enemy battleship will keep away and make few hits from long range. The durable "battlecruiser" can shrug these off, mostly.

The destroyers are useful as distractions. If they get to close to the enemy, they will usually be sunk. However, the enemy tends to prefer them as targets, so they can be used at medium-long ranges to attract fire away from the battlecruiser.

The reinforcing battleship is really not needed. It helps near the end, but usually it is either slow and heavily armored (so it gets there too late) or very fast and fragile.

Finally, the enemy cruisers will often run out of main gun ammo after a while. This makes it easier to close in and finish them.

May take a few tries, but it's not impossible.

Edited March 28, 2021 by disc

[disc]

I think Numbers Don't Matter is much more difficult, personally. I ended up building three fairly high-speed all-forward battleships, so I could close in on the monster Dreadnought while constantly firing all weapons. It took many tries. Eventually, I won after getting an ammo detonation. Felt like I was just lucky.

I had tried a torpedo-battlecruiser approach, but the Dreadnought can often absorb a large number of 21in torpedoes.

[Skeksis]

...

Edited November 9, 2021 by Skeksis

[rabidchaos]

I cannot get through the "Meet the US Battleships" mission. For all the mission briefing talks up the battleships, it's the destroyers I am always stymied by. If I get out of torpedo range, I'm well out of secondary range meaning I'm using up primary ammunition - if I can see them at all. If I get closer, then I need to focus on dodging torpedo waves. Additionally, the US battleships have been decently fast, generally with speeds in the upper 20s. With the way the AI just picks a direction and goes, this means that any engine damage to one of my ships is a mission kill, as that ship will be stuck watching the rest of the battle sail off. (Unless a destroyer decides to send more torpedoes its way to finish it off.) I feel like either half of the encounter is a doable challenge, but I can't figure out one ship design that can deal with both.

[Marshall99]

On 3/30/2021 at 8:44 PM, Skeksis said:

'First Casemates: CSS Virginia' mission should be scrapped or moved higher up the list because as one of the first missions it’s quite hard and can be quite long. Beginners shouldn’t play harder/long missions right of the bat, it could be discouraging.  

That mission should move way up the list.

I agree, it is hard to complete. But don't delete it from the list.

[Hardlec]

Got the new update and found to my horror that:

You removed the option for future versions to adjust game difficulty levels

You eliminated my history, so I have to start the academy all over from the beginning

You made the scenarios more difficult

You removed options from the players

IMHO, you made the game worse, not better

[Nick Thomadis]

5 minutes ago, Hardlec said:

You eliminated my history, so I have to start the academy all over from the beginning

This was not intended. Has anyone else got his academy progress reset?

[SonicB]

German Wrath is still a very weird mission. The awful spotting issues with the game in the WW1 tech era are on full display here, with my ship deluged by 12", 9", 7" and even 4" shells with no sight of the enemy. Additionally, the battleships provided by the AI are utterly useless 9" armed pre-dreadnoughts which look like bath toys next to my up-gunned but still 1913-feasible Bayern. If the pre-dreads at Jutland were fünf-minuten-Schiffe these would be lucky to last sixty seconds.



The mission ended in an ignominious defeat when, after absorbing numerous torpedo hits from cloaked Klingon birds-of-prey Royal Navy destroyers, my own destroyers hit MY flagship with a four-torpedo spread while it was doing nine knots in a straight line.
 

Edited April 1, 2021 by SonicB

[rabidchaos]

10 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

This was not intended. Has anyone else got his academy progress reset?

Yep. I assumed it was intentional due to the game being in development and sometimes breaking changes happen.

[admiralsnackbar]

German wrath is definitely still brutal. Destroyers undetectable at 4-5 KM  launching 8+ torpedo salvos at ships so close that not even a destroyer can maneuver out of it. Victory is basically a function of whether you're fleet is properly positioned to never have to deal with those buggers. 

 

[Stormnet]

On 4/1/2021 at 2:43 PM, SonicB said:

German Wrath is still a very weird mission. The awful spotting issues with the game in the WW1 tech era are on full display here, with my ship deluged by 12", 9", 7" and even 4" shells with no sight of the enemy. Additionally, the battleships provided by the AI are utterly useless 9" armed pre-dreadnoughts which look like bath toys next to my up-gunned but still 1913-feasible Bayern. If the pre-dreads at Jutland were fünf-minuten-Schiffe these would be lucky to last sixty seconds.



The mission ended in an ignominious defeat when, after absorbing numerous torpedo hits from cloaked Klingon birds-of-prey Royal Navy destroyers, my own destroyers hit MY flagship with a four-torpedo spread while it was doing nine knots in a straight line.
 

Yeah, that one is also somewhat stupid. Not only that, if I try to make a formation (the other low-end allied BBs and BCs screen my 3 BBs with the few DDs you get scouting), the ships just go around in loops trying to get into formation.

IT TAKES AN ETERNITY FOR THEM TO ORGANIZE. And then the enemy arrives and its omnicience comes into play.

I've tried 3 Krieger BBs, I've tried a Armored Tiger BB. They get wrecked if they go alone. The AI just retreats altogheder if I give it control. 

This mission is a big fleet battle that requires big fleet tactics that the fleet mechanics suck at.

[admiralsnackbar]

5 hours ago, Stormnet said:

Yeah, that one is also somewhat stupid. Not only that, if I try to make a formation (the other low-end allied BBs and BCs screen my 3 BBs with the few DDs you get scouting), the ships just go around in loops trying to get into formation.

IT TAKES AN ETERNITY FOR THEM TO ORGANIZE. And then the enemy arrives and its omnicience comes into play.

I've tried 3 Krieger BBs, I've tried a Armored Tiger BB. They get wrecked if they go alone. The AI just retreats altogheder if I give it control. 

This mission is a big fleet battle that requires big fleet tactics that the fleet mechanics suck at.

Yes a few things popped out at me regarding fleet control and arrangement:
 

1) Why is the AI combining its own RNG pre-dreadnoughts into the battle line with your own ships
2) There needs to be some kind of logic that can be utilized for creating divisions where if two or more ships are moving in roughly the same cardinal direction, the ship that is farthest ahead becomes the lead ship by default. An interrim solution would be to allow dragging and dropping within the division so that the farthest left ship listed in a division becomes the lead ship. Allowing you to  pause the game when you create a division and then force the front ship to be the lead ship rather than doubling back. 

I think issues with general ship maneuvering in formation are already known. Many cases of ships turning to avoid or slowing down completely against other ships where such adjustments are 1. Unecessary 2. actually causing more problems. I can try to manually steer ships in such a way that they would avoid eachother quite easily but they insist on forcing the rudder in the wrong direction and holding it for two long. 

Similar issues occur when ships turn away to avoid torpedoes but they don't straighten their rudders properly or at all once the hull is parallels with the torpedo path and so they end up slamming into even more torpedoes with the other side of the ship. 
 

[HEEL_caT666]

On 8/11/2020 at 7:04 PM, Darth Glorious said:

For the US Super battleship mission, I built a 9 x 18" ship, super heavy shells, best long range rangefinder with 16" belt and 6" deck, 30 kt speed. I kept the distance so most of the the escort did not attack me.

Try to pummel the BB with best accuracy first, you do not need to kill him immediately, just damage him enough so his accuracy drop to ~ 1-2% and switch to other BB. That will keep your BB in good shape so your accuracy penalty does not scale too much. When those BBs cannot hit anymore , you can try to slow down to your cruise speed to maximize accuracy and to conserve the ammo.

My only problem of this mission was ammo capacity. I won this mission with ~ 20 main gun shells left because 1 of the 3 BBs took 141 x 18" shells to sink (my accuracy is about 20% most of the time).

For Prove Your Might mission tips, you can view this post.

Personally, I think Prove your might and  Contest in the Black Sea are the 2 most difficult ones because you need to play a certain way to win.

Some tips for Contest in the Black Sea mission:

- Head southwest, keep your BC and CA close to your DDs to get bonus spotting from them.

- In the early minutes, spam 22,5 km range torps to slow down their BB and BC and strip those 20 chasing DDs of their BB and BC bonus spotting while your group run as far as you can from their capital ships. This is very important because without bonus spotting, those enemy DDs cannot spam torps from afar which can be very deadly.

- After about 1h of running away with spamming torps to your back, your battle group can try to slow down (I used 22 -26 kt speed), let some enemy DDs to catch up and focus fire them to death. Rinse and repeat until you win

Didnt really find US Super BB hard either, did it first try with a design really similar to yours, except I had 4x3 18", 30 knots, Many bulkheads, Stereoscopic V, the works.

[7thGalaxy]

I'm really struggling with cruisers needed, the enemy BB is seriously strong, I've been attempting to build fast CL with strong torp attacks, but get blown out of the water each time. 

Does anyone have any tips? The bb is incredibly fast and accurate, half of the time it destroys the allied BB before I can do anything about it.

[Stormnet]

Academy missions should have been based around good tactics and design. Not slam your head until you get lucky.

Most issues here is when the game simply asks the player to do miracles.

Many missions are essentially, you get either underpowered or few ships and are told to go sink that huge enemy fleet with a few super BBs. Not only that, enemy ships sometimes apear to have unfair multiplier advantages related to spotting and displacement. They might spot you from very far away while you cant even see them from 5km, make super ships impossible for their displacement, etc.

I challenge the devs to try to beat "Proove your Might" (it gives you an underpowered lone ship, and you fight super ships with top grade stuff above their displacement) while recording, and then tell us how many times they tried.

Edited April 25, 2021 by Stormnet

[Cpt.Hissy]

Missions also should be less random if theyr'e meant to be tutorials.

[Funkhauser]

Honestly I didn't find many mission fun to play for a few reasons :

1) Enemy AI loves to run away, a lot of missions feel like chasing an enemy forever. When you have early tech this is even worse because you easily lose sight of an enemy and/or just can't hit them. From the AI perspective it's a good tactic but it makes for absolute $#%$ gameplay.

2) Luck plays way too much a role in a mission. I just failed wounded beast 3 times in a row because the enemy scored critical hits within their first 2 salvos. Literally nothing I can do against that and it's insanely discouraging after you spent 20 minutes perfectly a build. I don't want to mention how many times in Numbers Don't Matter I lost half my ships before even getting into range.

3) I don't understand why torpedoes sometimes fire and sometimes don't. I've had entire missions ruined because I sat broadside way too long with torps aimed at enemy but no launch. Went through 3 BCs recently without a single torp launch, there were 16 tubes on deck!

4) Numbers Don't Matter, if the AI is running away why the heck do I have to chase him down? Isn't the goal to protect the transports?

5) Why can enemies get torps launched at 22 km but I'm locked to 9???? I had incoming torps before I even spotted the enemies.

6) It's almost never a good idea to use the larger main guns because they are typically low tech and widely inaccurate. They cost a butt load and weigh even more, if we can fit them on our ship after some clever design we should be rewarded with the ability to use the damn things effectively.

[HailCOBRALA]

It's just getting tedious now. Some missions are possible given the tech, but others it's simply a matter of pure luck. Accuracy seems to be GREAT for AI but not for me and most of the time I have superior tech and numbers, which should give me an advantage. It doesn't. I suggest going into the source code again because your accuracy percentages are way off from what they should be. 

[ImperatorMorsus]

I am finding that Sink the Raiders is neigh impossible, the AI is terrible in where if you let the AI use the ships and attack, instead they retreat... I'm about to slam my head into a bulkhead, good lord, this mission with the RNG, and the enemy seeing you well before them makes the level very difficult to beat.

[Latur Husky]

20 hours ago, ImperatorMorsus said:

I am finding that Sink the Raiders is neigh impossible, the AI is terrible in where if you let the AI use the ships and attack, instead they retreat... I'm about to slam my head into a bulkhead, good lord, this mission with the RNG, and the enemy seeing you well before them makes the level very difficult to beat.

AI was always terrible at commanding your ships. 

 

[HailCOBRALA]

And the AI ships you DO get are absolute crap. Also, wtf is up with my ships never wanting to launch torps, and if they do, they miss everything they're aimed at. It's kind of ridiculous when I have the tech, the AI doesn't, and yet I can't hit crap. This is really frustrating and i just can't recommend the game in this state. 

[Evil4Zerggin]

On 4/9/2021 at 7:48 AM, admiralsnackbar said:

Many cases of ships turning to avoid or slowing down completely against other ships where such adjustments are 1. Unecessary 2. actually causing more problems.

AFAICT the avoidance code tries to turn away from the other ship's current position. However, this can result in lead-turning a moving ship into a collision.

A first possible improvement could be to compute the closest approach at both ships' current heading and speed, and turn away from where the other ship would be at that point instead of the current position of the other ship. This would at least cut down on single-ship-at-fault collisions.

Edited July 3, 2021 by Evil4Zerggin

[Nereng]

The Virginia vs Monitor mission should perhaps be swapped for a "Virginia vs Some Early Ironclads" as it is nearly impossible to sink in any other way than overcooking it with small calibre HE fire. There is a reason for why they didn't manage to sink each other in real life, after all. Also, as has already been mentioned, it's silly that you can't have a forward gun if you want to balance the ship.

[Evil4Zerggin]

1 hour ago, Nereng said:

The Virginia vs Monitor mission should perhaps be swapped for a "Virginia vs Some Early Ironclads" as it is nearly impossible to sink in any other way than overcooking it with small calibre HE fire.

There is one more solution now---ramming speed!