One and the same hull for 21 years. Are you serious?

[TAKTCOM]

One and same hull for 1898-1919 timeline? 

For some reason, developers focus on late game while ignoring early game. I understand that super battleships are cool and all, but this is a late game. Quads, 20 inch cannons and other super Yamato, it's all late game. But early game is a placeholder content. And the player starts early game, not late game. And the first thing the player sees is the placeholders. Great first impression, what can I say.

The situation with battleships seems to be better

but then you look here

and holy moly!

Somehow, "Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts" turned into "Ultimate Admiral: 20 inch Quad  SuperDreadnoughts". For the complete set, it remains to add the Yamato's ability to fly in space.

But seriously, what's going on? Why this game built from the end?

[Steeltrap]

I've been saying more or less the same thing for a LONG time now. You can see just how great an effect that has had.

🙃

As you said, early game is what a lot of players will encounter first if they start with the Academy missions or dive straight into the campaign, and the mechanics are the mechanics regardless of what era ships you are using. You might expect, therefore, that those things would be the priority, or at least mechanics plus an approximately equal spread of attention to the main periods of shipbuilding.

If one were to be harsh one might suggest the Devs appear to chase the loudest "give me every possible fever dream ever to occur to any Admiral or naval architect" cries in the forum.

Addressing really serious flaws/shortcomings of fundamental mechanics for 12 months? Crickets.

It's why I, like others who have said the same, don't even bother playing the game. If I do, all I see are the same old problems regardless of whatever latest 1940-50 tech monster BB nonsense is thrown at us as distractions.

The only thing of any significance from my perspective that's supposed to come in the next version is the revamped formation system. Formations ARE really desperately in need of fixing, and it's great attention is being shown to the system.

The continuing absence of attention to, or even acknowledgement of, the other serious, baseline stuff that has been highlighted for a year or more, is as disheartening as it is puzzling.

I've spent the money and there are other things keeping me entertained/busy, so I suppose it doesn't really matter.

((other than to the nature of the review I'll write for Steam depending on how well those things are addressed by the time of release  😎).

Edited October 30, 2020 by Steeltrap

[BuckleUpBones]

10 hours ago, Steeltrap said:

((other than to the nature of the review I'll write for Steam depending on how well those things are addressed by the time of release  --).

You're already bias because GameLabs is not making YOUR game, all your post say so. How can you review a game by its alpha history? 

Edited October 30, 2020 by BuckleUpBones

[Tousansons]

If having less copy pasted hull for the year XXXX make the dev team focus more on the numerous core gameplay issues listed in several threads and for a long time. I couldn't care less.

For exemple right now I'm more interested in having my copy pasted hull not run into each other when I order some basic movement while retaining some semblance of historical doctrine of the time period.

About new player impression, I don't really know. UA:D seems already lost between people expecting to recreate historical ships (and not being able to because it's not an historical game) and those who just want some power fantasy with their shitty H-surelythiswillwinthewar and A-howdoweevenbuildthesewithoutsteel while theorically there is indeed 40 year of naval history before that.

I'm more and more thinking that the engine and graphics was a mistake. UA:D will probably never let you create some mighty warship/blueprint of the time, because the campaign will limit you, the builder will limit you and finally the graphics will limit you. 

[TAKTCOM]

2 hours ago, Tousansons said:

If having less copy pasted hull for the year XXXX make the dev team focus more on the numerous core gameplay issues listed in several threads and for a long time. I couldn't care less.

It's doesn't work. For example, new patch will include French super-late battleships.

It's not "we can add mechanics, or we can add more ships, pick one." They are adding new ships AND working on game mechanics.

The problem is that most of these new ships are WW2. 

As a result, first thirty years we have little choice of ships (or no choice at all)  but then, 1920 happens and "few hulls" turns into a hell of a lot hulls.

Why is that bad? Because there are shipbuilding restrictions. For example, for cruisers this is no 6+ inches in casemates. Which was actually typical of this era. 10'' guns on 3k ship? 13'' on 4,4k cruiser?

The ships pre-dreadnought era was diverse, amazing and strange. Real variety. And developers almost completely skip it to ... add another superdreadnought to the dozen already existing???

Edited October 30, 2020 by TAKTCOM
WAR FOR IMPROVEMENT

[Tousansons]

 

1 hour ago, TAKTCOM said:

The ships pre-dreadnought era was diverse, amazing and strange. Real variety. And developers almost completely skip it to ... add another superdreadnought to the dozen already existing???

It will become a more valid complaint if the campaign ship with this poor early year hull selection. I'm just seeing them focusing on the more visible and well known ship hulls to keep us waiting while they are working on other gameplay elements. 

In my opinion it is a bit too soon to complain about them "skipping" anything. Although the development is really slow and I can understand that a few shiny end game new hulls is starting to feel not enough.

[Wowzery]

Here I am wondering if the campaign mode came out and I missed it.

[Cptbarney]

Still too early to determine anything, as i assume the devs will add more hulls between 1885-1925 (which they should), as we are missing out on chances to make some really noice ships.

Development has been pretty slow, but they have had a lot internal stuff to deal with so we don't know exactly how much work they have got done and what the plan to release with the campaign update as a whole.

Theres nothing wrong with having updates either end, just make sure that they cover both ends. They might end up doing all the nations with 1930+ hulls first before going below 1930 and dealing with those hulls as well.

Besides there are still some major issues to fix with the game as of now, so we should focus on those first before adding more hulls really.

Although i agree we need moar stuff anyways.

[Cptbarney]

Also we are still in alpha so we got a long way to go before we even get to a reasonable state, i think people are forgetting this too be honest. Theres a lot of stuff they need to focus on really.

[Marshall99]

Well I made lots of topics about early tech ships, like pre-dreadnoughts and ironclads. We need more hulls, and this is why modding is nescessary (dev team is small and they need to work on other things too)

Also I think we need more early cruiser hulls, like the USS Maine.

So in my opinion, the next thing the devs should focus on (also the campaign) to make early gameplay great again, with adding more hulls. The key is adding hulls, because without hulls, the game will become repetitive.

[Bluishdoor76]

I voted its ok, because we're still in alpha and its far too soon to say that they are skipping on content. Focusing on just the later hulls is a bit of a mistake, even tho they are adding my personal favorite ship I still recognize that they are focusing a bit too much in adding WW2 stuff. Quad guns was the thing I kept pushing for because there are dreadnoughts that could use them, aka things like Lyon and Normandie. As for pre-dreadnoughts, I hardly have any interest in them, find them all a bit too similar to one another but, they are still important to the game and we really need them to start filling in the era of 1890-1910 with more hulls, and at the same time start to remove the harsh limitations on the designer. Which the pre-dreadnoughts are the worse when it comes to design-ability, theres is one design you can come up with every hull and thats it.

[Dan Dare]

Pretty sure variety will arrive...be patiente...zzzzz

[ReefKip]

I surely hope they are going to focus more on the Pre-Dreadnought area in the coming updates. there are a shit ton of different hull designs between 1890-1906 that i would love to see in the game. especially the French  floating Hotel Pre-Dreadnought below. while not practical IRL. it would be a lovely addition to the game.

seeing that the pre-dreadnought area is a pretty big chunk of the timeline, you can't expect players to be interested in a campaign were most factions are fighting eachoter with basicly the same hulls with some very slight variations for the first 20 years and real Hull diversity only showing up Late game  in the last 15 Years of the timeline  like we have now.you need to catch a player's interest right from the start 

if the campaign would be released right now the early game would be bland and boring as hell from a ship design perspective. leading to players just skipping the campaign and go to custom battle to get access to the actual interesting different designs you get later on. 

It,s just bad game design.



 

[Steeltrap]

On 10/30/2020 at 5:59 PM, BuckleUpBones said:

You're already bias because GameLabs is not making YOUR game, all your post say so. How can you review a game by its alpha history? 

How can I review a game by its alpha history?

Let's have a look at the quote you exploded on the screen for a clue. Let's focus on the important bit:

On 10/30/2020 at 5:59 PM, BuckleUpBones said:

things are addressed by the time of release

The very quote of mine tells you I am going to review the game on the basis of how various things have been addressed BY THE TIME OF RELEASE. Just as everyone else not given a press release key (should they decide to do that) will do.

In other words, you went to the trouble of quoting me to demonstrate I was NOT going to do the very thing of which you were accusing me.

🤔

🙄

OK, perhaps that makes sense to some people, but I'm not one of them. 

🙂

As for the rest of your accusations, you can't imagine someone could look at the evidence and make a 'fair' review? I'll put that down to "projection" on your part.

I might add that my year long history on this forum suggests one thing I value highly are FACTS and DETAILS of how things perform. Where I have a difference based on 'preference', I pretty much say so. Where I don't like things because I have good evidence to suggest if not clearly demonstrate something is INCORRECT, I say so. There's a BIG difference. I've also spent quite a bit of time giving feedback on various potential bugs, and a bunch of other things not always in the main forum. ALL designed to help the game achieve success.

Sure, some of it is because I think the choices are not supported by known evidence and that ought to matter when the devs have themselves pitched this game to the public as containing 'high degrees of realism' or whatever the quote is from the Steam Page (I linked to it somewhere else not long ago). Again, when it's a case of "I don't think this is a very good/accurate/effective treatment of 'X' aspect of naval design and combat of the period", that's what I say. If it's "This doesn't appear to be working properly, but I'm not sure (because often we don't know)", I will tend to put that in the Technical Issues forum where it belongs and let Ink and Nick and whomever else is relevant deal with it as they choose. Sometimes they say it's working as expected, others they've said they'd look into, and some they've confirmed were indeed errors they would look to fix.

The fact that it would be utterly ridiculous to "review" a game based on its Alpha state versus its RELEASE state ought to make clear I WOULD NOT. Just In case that wasn't obvious enough, however, I EVEN SAID SO and YOU QUOTED ME DOING SO. Seriously?

Part of writing it so small was to see who might bother to examine it and how they would respond if they did.

IT WAS A JOKE. My bad.  🙃

Nobody who knows my history here could honestly believe otherwise, not unless they themselves were being deliberately dishonest or spectacularly stupid. I'll leave it to others to answer the implicit question in that statement. 😀

Anyway, thanks for the entertainment. Have a +1 on your splurge. 😎

Edited October 31, 2020 by Steeltrap
typos

[Steeltrap]

17 hours ago, Marshall99 said:

Well I made lots of topics about early tech ships, like pre-dreadnoughts and ironclads. We need more hulls, and this is why modding is nescessary (dev team is small and they need to work on other things too)

Also I think we need more early cruiser hulls, like the USS Maine.

So in my opinion, the next thing the devs should focus on (also the campaign) to make early gameplay great again, with adding more hulls. The key is adding hulls, because without hulls, the game will become repetitive.

I remember some of them; had some great pics too, I think?

500 hulls with the current mechanics won't make me any more inclined to play because it's what those hulls DO in combat that I'm mainly interested in.

Having said that, the greatest mechanics in the world would be rather pointless with 20 hulls in total over 100 years.

Really they need to do BOTH. As to which they do first I should think is down to preference.

My reason for focussing on the mechanics is because they, more than anything, are what will need testing. It's not hard to see if a hull works; I'd expect them to have a PC more or less constantly running custom battles between the AI using certain hulls and tech to see what designs are built and how they perform.

It's not quite as simple to revamp the damage model, or damage control, or introduce a proper 'stability' issue when flooding, or all the other important nuts and bolts that combine to produce what we see on the screen.

That's not to say more hulls, especially not chasing so much late tech and even stuff nobody ever bothered to do (not that I mind that per se, I just don't see it as being as important), wouldn't be welcome.

As you may have seen, I suggested being limited so much by hulls put in the game vs parameters that means various hulls can be produced but those hulls are not fixed with characteristics that aren't open to the player to influence much (stability, resistance and the like) is to me evidence of a short term 'quicker and easier' approach to the whole question vs an admittedly more difficult but arguably MUCH more satisfying and long term approach, and I fear it will come to bite all of us. I'd like to be able to prioritise speed or resistance or stability or whatever, potentially to extremes, and see what gets thrown on the table for consideration rather than be limited to A, B and C where those figures are arrived at and fixed behind the scenes without our involvement. Yes, doing that is more difficult, but I suggest it's ultimately more interesting and, dare I say it, more in line with historical evidence?

The second method would be limited as they sorted out exactly how it would apply to various classes across time periods and so on, but in the long run could produce a vastly greater number of variations of hulls precisely because it's a system that generates hulls vs the current system OF hulls to which we're limited. The more difficult in the short term is IMO far, far more scaleable with potentially far greater variety and thus replayability in the long term.

In fact I would argue that the fact we're sitting here discussing which hulls will be put in the game and when somewhat makes my point for me. I'd far rather be testing and giving feedback on what the system designed to toss up hulls based on OUR choices (that we can then build) is in fact putting forth than waiting for the next batch of fixed characteristic hulls from the Acme ship design bureau to be delivered, lol.

Oh well. It's Alpha, who knows what they've got in mind or how long it will take. One thing's for sure, they've got plenty to keep them busy. 🙂

Cheers

Edited October 31, 2020 by Steeltrap

[Skoggatt]

I still think it was a mistake going all the way to the 1940s. I think the game should have ended around 1925 to avoid getting distracted by WW2 ships and technology. Such a cut off date would also make the lack of aircraft feel completely natural. As it is we have a preponderance of WW2 ships with their AA mounts modeled for no reason and which usually can only be built a couple different ways because of the way the pieces fit together. Meanwhile, 1890 to 1910 has hardly any variety and many nations share the same hulls. In reality, not only were there more varied designs in this time period, but there were more nations with blue water navies as well.

[ReefKip]

4 hours ago, Skoggatt said:

I still think it was a mistake going all the way to the 1940s. I think the game should have ended around 1925 to avoid getting distracted by WW2 ships and technology. Such a cut off date would also make the lack of aircraft feel completely natural. As it is we have a preponderance of WW2 ships with their AA mounts modeled for no reason and which usually can only be built a couple different ways because of the way the pieces fit together. Meanwhile, 1890 to 1910 has hardly any variety and many nations share the same hulls. In reality, not only were there more varied designs in this time period, but there were more nations with blue water navies as well.

I disagree. you need to have interesting late game technology for the player to look forward to. just the way how they implement it currently is wrong by focusing only on the late game designs. why even bother wasting development resources by  implementing early game pre dreadnoughts and dreadnoughts if the content is so shallow that people just skip to late game designs because it is were the fun is at the moment. designing a part of the game that makes the other part redundant is a horrible design philosophy. 

[Bluishdoor76]

6 minutes ago, ReefKip said:

I disagree. you need to have interesting late game technology for the player to look forward to. just the way how they implement it currently is wrong by focusing only on the late game designs. why even bother wasting development resources by  implementing early game pre dreadnoughts and dreadnoughts if the content is so shallow that people just skip to late game designs because it is were the fun is at the moment. designing a part of the game that makes the other part redundant is a horrible design philosophy. 

I think the best way they could of gone about is adding to each portion equally each alpha, adding similar amounts of new content to each era as each era should be treated just as important as one another. But the pure focus on only late interwar and early WW2 is now creating too much of a rift between all the eras, with Dreadnought and Pre-dreadnought just being left on a corner, WW1 and interwar sort of pretty much in the same state and all those hulls just being the worst with their limitations.

[ReefKip]

3 minutes ago, Bluishdoor76 said:

I think the best way they could of gone about is adding to each portion equally each alpha, adding similar amounts of new content to each era as each era should be treated just as important as one another.

yes. this would have been a good way. atleast better then it is now. but i am more in favor of a Era focused based aproach. like they should have just started implementing ship era,s  piece by piece. Like first complete the 1890-1900 era. once that has been fleshed out proceed to the 1900-1910 era etc  up until you have reached the end game at the end of Development. in this way you can focus your attention as a developer on the Era you are at in this step by step process, instead of adding tiny bits of every era in every update .the Downside of this aproach is that all the people yelling for muh 19-20 Inch guns and other late game tech will not be catered to for a long time. so you will lose some impatient Big Barrel loving people. but the game quality you get in return is massive.

[Doomed]

I'd like to have seen a 3rd option - OK for the moment. 

I can't see the point of adding more hulls whilst there are several outstanding gameplay issues still be sorted. 

On the other hand if new hulls can be added without impacting the gameplay coding then it wouldn't do any harm  but like a couple of the posters above I'd like to see the early  eras given some attention. 

I also agree with Skoggatt that they should have gone for a narrower time range to start with to keep things manageable. There's plenty of technological change from 1890-1925 to keep us occupied and the big gun brigade can have the Duilio

 

 

 

[Cptbarney]

5 hours ago, ReefKip said:

yes. this would have been a good way. atleast better then it is now. but i am more in favor of a Era focused based aproach. like they should have just started implementing ship era,s  piece by piece. Like first complete the 1890-1900 era. once that has been fleshed out proceed to the 1900-1910 era etc  up until you have reached the end game at the end of Development. in this way you can focus your attention as a developer on the Era you are at in this step by step process, instead of adding tiny bits of every era in every update .the Downside of this aproach is that all the people yelling for muh 19-20 Inch guns and other late game tech will not be catered to for a long time. so you will lose some impatient Big Barrel loving people. but the game quality you get in return is massive.

Nah cus you get the same problem as before, lack of ships per era and also the devs focusing less on core game mechanics which need fixing. It would take ages to implement new hulls for every era that way and by now we would probs only just gotten to dreadnought or orion at this point.

Game quality only improves when you make the designer far less restrictive and sort out the various problems that are currently plaguing this game otherwise like steeltrap said, you can have 300+ hulls but if the game mechanics are trash or unrefined, theres no point.

It's better to add a few hulls from each era rather than a bunch from only one era for x number of updates, because then you get more work done across the board as a whole.

Either if the devs, want to add a certain group of ships to the game, nothing we can do about it really besides whinge on the forums about it.

[Zuikaku]

The way I see this is that many of you folks were begging for fictional superbattleship hulls, quad turrets and 20 inchers (under influence of World of Warships arcade shooter). Devs complied. 

I find early era (even going into 1870's) far more interesting and hope we get more early hulls and even ironclads eventually. Also have hopes for campaign starting at least decade earlier.

But I'm also happy to see wide range of late designs.

[ReefKip]

2 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

Nah cus you get the same problem as before, lack of ships per era and also the devs focusing less on core game mechanics which need fixing. It would take ages to implement new hulls for every era that way and by now we would probs only just gotten to dreadnought or orion at this point.

Game quality only improves when you make the designer far less restrictive and sort out the various problems that are currently plaguing this game otherwise like steeltrap said, you can have 300+ hulls but if the game mechanics are trash or unrefined, theres no point.

2 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

It's better to add a few hulls from each era rather than a bunch from only one era for x number of updates, because then you get more work done across the board as a whole.

Either if the devs, want to add a certain group of ships to the game, nothing we can do about it really besides whinge on the forums about it.

How i understand it the problem was not Lack of Ships per era. the Problem is that not a single Era feels properly fleshed out. and what they are focussing on right now is going to be a smaller part of the game then what they are neglecting.

 

 

2 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

we would probs only just gotten to dreadnought or orion at this point.

So? we would have had more different hulls very likely better fleshed out mechanics because the developers would have had less variables to consider when it comes to Different weapon systems etc which come later on.

Core game mechanics are more easier to fix if you focus on one era at a time. i don't understand why you get the idea  that Gradually developing into more advanced Era,s would impact Game mechanics negatively? the opposite is the case. what they did now is expand Technology and weapon systems to such a high tech level which makes Developing those Core game mechanics even more difficult. while if they had stayed Pre-Dreadnought era with limited Techs and weapon systems. those Mechanics would be far easier to  develop and balance. and then build and develop those further when moving into Other Era,s.

 

 

2 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

It's better to add a few hulls from each era rather than a bunch from only one era for x number of updates, because then you get more work done across the board as a whole.

its not better. what you get then is bits and pieces of different Era,s which are very bare bones,unbalanced and lack the proper Mechanics implemented. like you see now.

 

[Cptbarney]

@ReefKip Not what i was talking about really, if you add new hulls across each era, this literally does nothing to improve, change or enhance or even worsen mechanics as whole as models have nothing to do with code, except when that code interacts with said modules, but a model on its own does nothing unless assigned to previous game mechanics.

The core game mechanics you are talking about have problems in EVERY era not just confined to one era as you think they do, for example the rudder shift thing seems to effect most if not all ships regardless of era, same goes for the basic gunnery mechanics, physics, collision meshes, pitch and roll, weight systems etc are all core game mechanics found at every level. Also things like transports being able to pump out flooding with only max bulkheads and no anti-flood or ships still being able to take 10+ long lance torpedoes for example.

Things like radar, hydro and radio aren't core mechanics as the game can function without them and be limited to nothing more than the game simply plotting basic and maybe advanced gunnery courses and formulas to shoot at ships with. Obviously this would make the game boring and lack any imagination nor variety save the ship designer itself.

Also the designer itself is a core mechanic and lower end hulls tend to not provide much in differences in terms of customisation or looks so actually the later hulls are needed to solve any bugs or potential problems that would arise when added anyways (which btw, they have).

Hulls do nothing, but add another way to play existing content, all hulls regardless are bound by the same core mechanics which in some areas need fixing like bulkheads for example. The devs can ignore era balance, just like life did if they wanted too or they could try and balance it (i don't recommend it unless, they add various options into the game and very good mod support).

Focusing on one era does not solve this problem, actually it could even make those problems worse in fact especially when new mechanics are added in and now they have to warp the previous ones to the new ones to ensure balance. Besides from a work point of view it is better to make hulls for each era, as it adds more variety to all era's in terms of looks and how ships will form.

You could focus on 1890-1910 and still have the problems we see here, none of the eras feel fleshed out at all and you like most people here seem to forget this game is still in early alpha and only came out of indev around mid october last year.

Yes i want to see all the eras fleshed and yes i want too see all the mechanics finished and fleshed out from their current semi-primitive iterations, but adding hulls doesn't effect this since thats the job of the art team and not the programmers.

 

 

 

[Antean]

My thought is this game will require as many ship design options as possible. Starting from the beginning, whichever year that is. I think the early steel ship hulls & ship 'looks' were extremely beautiful. I want as many ship hull shapes as possible. I will prefer, also, as many ship components as possible. I note there are weight & area limitations for a ship design and some call for variation in what components are available. I'm all for as much variation as possible. I mean, isn't this ship building process, one of the main selling points for UA:Dreadnought? Sure, many will want national particulars to the different ship lines. Yes, by all means, for 'historical' flavour. However, the real concept will be designing unique 'own' ship designs, as well, as a method to do the economic progression from early ships to the later WW2 ones. How this all comes together will be crucial. I would also like to learn how to conduct squadron and/or fleet actions. As Cpt Barney says, there is still a lot to do in Alpha here.