>>>Alpha-10 Feedback<<<

[SonicB]

On 2/6/2021 at 12:36 PM, SonicB said:

Because 'Murica, apparently.

Seriously, I cannot describe how happy I was when Nick announced this wouldn't be yet another WW2 Pacific default campaign.

That said... having played the hell out of Cold Waters, I've now played a few hours of 'War on the Sea.' Though the interface is a bit clunky, in terms of information and control it's miles ahead of where we are now, from individual turret fire-control with accurately modelled director firing to a minimap with waypoint functionality. I confess I didn't fully realise what I was missing in UA:D until I played this game.

Very much hope the devs are looking closely at this, because that level of control should be a bare minimum at launch.

[Skeksis]

On 2/8/2021 at 3:20 AM, SonicB said:

ahead of where we are now, from individual turret fire-control with accurately modelled director firing to a minimap with waypoint functionality. I confess I didn't fully realise what I was missing in UA:D until I played this game.

And to add to that, interactive damage control, sub & depth charge actions, aircraft & AA actions, realistic collision damage/sinking, column formations and...

A interactive world map, which I do like very much, nothing better than to see your fleets move about the globe in RT (turn base is fine too, e.g. TW). 

I hope the campaign revamp means scraping RTW2 spreadsheet map format and replacing it with a visual representation of fleet movements (But you know with Gamelabs when they use any words like 'revamps', it should be speculated on the 'smallest' of scales, like it would be unlikely revamp means anything too differently from the RTW2 format). 

RTS combat, well you gotta give them him credit for that.

Edited February 14, 2021 by Skeksis

[Right]

For me the main reason I like this game is the ability to make decisions and see them come to life in real time naval battle.

This is a game and as such even though I would be happy to see it as close it can get to real world combat that just never going to be perfect, there are way too many variables. Saw some people talk about ton differance, realy? you truely belive they made them perfect by design and materials back then to suit up with a virtual computer generated game? 

But for a game I think the gameplay is solid and the type of game is way better then all those other comperisons people do with other games, they realy got nothing in common but that they both rts battle games set to a close time in human history but that is it, all the vibe and gameplay focus is just nothing to compare. I truely think UA:D is way better for the basic idea is just much more fun then the normal "take this army and let it fight". Going into what guns to use inyour ship need much more work then just slap you with a premade designe that obviosly much more easy to implement.

srsly, go easier on the devs, they did and do great job, your expectations are way too much compare to the man power they have.

It reminds me of when people compared the mass effect andromeda, with 200 ppl for develope and 2 years to the witcher 3, with 250-1500 ppl and 3.5 years, so stop compare and try to help how to make this one better as itself.

[Masonator]

21 hours ago, Right said:

srsly, go easier on the devs, they did and do great job, your expectations are way too much compare to the man power they have.

It reminds me of when people compared the mass effect andromeda, with 200 ppl for develope and 2 years to the witcher 3, with 250-1500 ppl and 3.5 years, so stop compare and try to help how to make this one better as itself.

This. The game is developed by, what, 10-15 people max? This isn't a big-budget AAA production to begin with, and the bloody game is still in pre-alpha.

I also have great expectations for this game, but I believe it's in everyone's best interests if we as a community set the sights a little lower here.

[admiralsnackbar]

There are a few 'core' features I think the game desperately needs before the campaign can be properly tested, assuming that the start of a game campaign means that core features are locked down. If the campaign is simply being added as extra testing material, but it's understood that everything is subject to change then I'm less nervous about it. 

A lot of the academy missions themselves are extremely frustrating because, as they become more difficult, victory often depends less on good ship design and captainship and more on a series of dice rolls: - Favorable Enemy ship design - Favorable allied ship design - Favorable Fleet orientation - Favorable Weather conditions. 

The randomness of ship design is especially frustrating because it not only forces a large number of battle restarts but it (I suspect) increases the load times to restart the battle in the first place. 

German wrath on the north sea comes to mind here. I know the historic battle of Jutland was a confusing foggy mess. But the rules on detection plus the AI destroyer design and orientation means that some battles are instant victory for the AI, because the destroyers are detected at a range where their torpedoes cannot miss, even against other destroyers (At least when the designer gives them large numbers of tubes) 

There's a case to be made that some of these things should be randomized, some of the time, in order to teach the player, but in other cases it keeps the player from knowing for certain whether they're getting better or whether they got lucky. 

I'll also add that AI pathfinding still needs work, as does the ability to easily command larger fleets. That north sea mission is a good example, because before battle is even started I find myself having to re-order the fleet. Sometimes it looks like the ship in front isn't always the lead ship and starts doubling behind. 

So all that said these are the features I'd like to see by order of priority:

1. The ability to utilize more than one ship design in a mission. For example, if a mission involves the player being given both 1 battleship and 2 light cruisers, allow the player to set the designs for each.  
2. The ability to Save designs between missions and campaigns 

3. As others have asked for a tactical map view where you can:

• Quickly create groups of ships by click and drag. 
• UI options to automatically scroll through the the bearing, speed, structure/flood, hit-chance, ammo of your ships. 
• Custom designate how far or close you want your screening vessels to be to the battle line (They'll stay parallel but roughly retain the distance you set for them

As an aside I recommend screening vessels that are assigned to different sides of a battle line be kept as separate screening groups so you don't have ships attempting to cross straight through a battle line. 

4. More nuanced victory conditions such as 'mission kill' where  an enemy vessel is sufficiently damaged that they disengage from a fight 

5. The ability to save both mid-campaign and mid-battle. (Think ultimate general civil war) again this takes away some of the frustration from the RNG elements.

6. (low priority) A UI option between that of pure player and pure AI control for ships and fleet groups where ship movement and targeting is set by the player and not the AI, but the AI will take over ship and fleet maneuvers when torpedoes are detected. 

7. (low priority) AI logic that allows under certain circumstances for ships to turn into rather than away from torpedoes. 

Everything below #4 are "Nice to haves" rather than need to haves and are things that I imagine could likely be implemented through modding after the fact.

People have asked for a few other things that I think would make the game cooler for some, but would not make the game any more or less playable which is essential for ensuring that the game sells well and can therefore be supported by modders and developers post-release. The things I listed above are things that I imagine would be very difficult to do through mods alone. 

Examples of things I've seen mentioned elsewhere but can probably be done through mods:

 

• More realistic relationship between armor thickness and weight and the different armor types
• Fewer cases of overpenetration on destroyers and torpedo boats from HE shells, especially HE shells from the smaller caliber [2-5 inch] guns. I don't know off the bat whether or not such a change would  be more historically accurate, but I also don't know why a navy would intentionally build their high explosive shells to over penetrate lighter ships
• UI options to Show armor in terms of effective thickness so that we're not having to do multiplication in our heads or on a calculator in a different screen. 
• More realistic relationship between engineering space/weight and ship speed, with higher speeds resulting in exponentially higher engine space/weight/cost requirements. 
• Ship targeting system that is fire solution based rather than purely based on every shot being more or less perfectly on the target but with shrinking or growing dispersion. 
• Instead of a 'Citadel' tech module have the player give armor to the citadel as they would the belt and deck. If a shell penetrates midship, whether the structural damage results in engine or magazine detonations is based on whether the combined armor of the belt/deck and citadel exceeds the greater or less than the penetration of the shell. Citadel types like turtleback change the effective thickness depending on whether the shell penetrates the deck or the belt. Armoring a Citadel inch per inch takes less $ and weight (though these things increase when the player adds more turrets and more engine space)  
   

 

[madham82]

3 hours ago, admiralsnackbar said:

4. More nuanced victory conditions such as 'mission kill' where  an enemy vessel is sufficiently damaged that they disengage from a fight 

 

• Fewer cases of overpenetration on destroyers and torpedo boats from HE shells, especially HE shells from the smaller caliber [2-5 inch] guns. I don't know off the bat whether or not such a change would  be more historically accurate, but I also don't know why a navy would intentionally build their high explosive shells to over penetrate lighter ships

 

Your point 4 I have been suggesting for a long time. I have not heard the Devs speak to it directly, but they certainly need to build into the battle map "retreat zones". Victory at sea is about control of the sea, not sending every enemy ship to the bottom. This will be essential for the campaign to work. 

For the HE overpen issue, it most certainly is not realistic. There is no such thing as HE overpen. HE is contact fused. So as long as the round strikes something solid enough to trigger, it will detonate. That's an external explosion, not internal like AP does when it pens the armor, then fuses. The whole reason for HE in ship to ship combat is to be used against "soft" targets because they won't overpen. HE damage should be reduced by armor, but the lack of armor should not reduce the full damage roll as it does with overpen logic. 

I guess we need to post a thread in the Long List of Issues thread to make sure it is noticed. 

[Right]

I like most of your ideas but there are tree things in preticular, that I think, need some love:

AI - the way the ai randomise a ship but then have a very specific behavior that doesnt suits it is a big off, for me atleast. I've been playing for many hours now and think that flaw makes the game too easy, while knowing what I'm doing with my ships I have about 90% win rate at the naval academy missions, mostly because I build a perfectly working ship and guid it right against a lacking designes and engagments by the ai.

HE/PEN - while I know how it might be hard to implement I think they need to change the mechanic of HE to first damage the "health" of sections in the armor so it would work as reduction to armor and not doing any substantial damage before the armor count is or drops to 0. That way pen rounds would have the chance to flood and damage inner parts and HE to be more of a more slow sure work. That way it would also give the players the decision what strategy we would like to use against different enemies and battles.

Flash fire and other random explosions - while it is beutiful and interesting mechanic it makes the best engament very limited. There is no reason to go into close combat if you have the bigger guns and the cost of using seconderies just doesn't worth the invest for the amount of armor you need to have on them cost a lot while the chances you would get hit in a weak spot raise for each gun you have. Yes the damage from a secoundary explosion compared to a main does much less damage but it is still too much to be worth the extra, very limited, firepower and the cost to blance it off compared to other smarter investments.

[admiralsnackbar]

5 hours ago, madham82 said:

Your point 4 I have been suggesting for a long time. I have not heard the Devs speak to it directly, but they certainly need to build into the battle map "retreat zones". Victory at sea is about control of the sea, not sending every enemy ship to the bottom. This will be essential for the campaign to work. 

For the HE overpen issue, it most certainly is not realistic. There is no such thing as HE overpen. HE is contact fused. So as long as the round strikes something solid enough to trigger, it will detonate. That's an external explosion, not internal like AP does when it pens the armor, then fuses. The whole reason for HE in ship to ship combat is to be used against "soft" targets because they won't overpen. HE damage should be reduced by armor, but the lack of armor should not reduce the full damage roll as it does with overpen logic. 

I guess we need to post a thread in the Long List of Issues thread to make sure it is noticed. 

 

I didn't want to assert without primary source documentation that HE shells could or did never over penetrate targets. I can *imagine* the possibility that an exceptionally high velocity shell with *some* delay in the fuse time might over pen an exceptionally thin and lightly armored ship like a torpedo boat, but this is far from what we actually see where destroyers and torpedo boats get *lots* of over penetrations, and light cruisers get comparatively wrecked. 

I'll also add before I forget that with the way damage works, a penetrating hit from a light shell can at times do less damage than an overpenetration hit from a large shell. My 'non historian-thought experiment-mind' would say that the damage of an overpenetration should be proportional to the volume of the shell, but that also depends on whether or not a shell goes cleanly in and out of an armored plate or crushes/smashes it on entry and exit. Again I'm not well versed enough to know whether one or both of these occured. 
 

[Fishyfish]

On 2/7/2021 at 9:20 AM, SonicB said:

That said... having played the hell out of Cold Waters, I've now played a few hours of 'War on the Sea.' Though the interface is a bit clunky, in terms of information and control it's miles ahead of where we are now, from individual turret fire-control with accurately modelled director firing to a minimap with waypoint functionality. I confess I didn't fully realise what I was missing in UA:D until I played this game.

Very much hope the devs are looking closely at this, because that level of control should be a bare minimum at launch.

I'm really enjoying that game myself, a pleasant shakeup. It's clunky, it needs some work, but I really enjoy it.. and goddamn do I spam aircraft carriers at any chance possible, haven't even touched a battleship... This is my biggest concern for what would happen to UA:D if they were implemented. Buuut I digress.. 

[Lucas1708]

I really like the new Mechanics. I'm playing since the second or the third patch and I have to say it is amazing how you guys are moving on despite the Difficulties of the past/this Year.

But still there is something I would change If you are on the early ages like 1910 or something where 14'' is rare and very big sized the normal barbette fits but, if you wanna go smaller you basically have a very oversized Barbette under a small turett.

I also would add somthing called sudden Stop and normal slowdown. The Sudden Stop would work like now you get engine damage if you use it the other one uses the reverse to slow the ship down but slower then Sudden Stop and without engine Damage.

Further more I would overwork the damage Hud that you maybe sees the interior more like War on the Seas cause It is sometimes problamatic to kinda figure out which guns are damaged if the hole Hud is allready Red,Yellow, and Green everywhere. Also you should consider to mind to make a front view of the Hud to see wich side for example is flooded or damaged. Cause the Bird View is very hard to overlook if its quite multi colored.

Have a nice Day

[Cptbarney]

On 2/9/2021 at 7:58 AM, Masonator said:

This. The game is developed by, what, 10-15 people max? This isn't a big-budget AAA production to begin with, and the bloody game is still in pre-alpha.

I also have great expectations for this game, but I believe it's in everyone's best interests if we as a community set the sights a little lower here.

Besides the point, if there are fundamental issues with the game, they need to be sorted out regardless. We pick out these issues to solve as we believe this will make the game either much more enjoyable, much more complete and/or increase the games reputation which is vital for it too make more money than it normally would.

Also when your competitors have stuff that you don't, then you are shooting yourself in the foot. Also the game left pre-alpha at around the end of 2019. 

The other stuff like hulls, better weather systems etc are just niceties something that would be nice too have but if the devs can add it then fair enough. But when games like world of warships have things like a better gunnery system and x-ray armour viewers or war on the seas have proper internal damage systems and the ability for turrets to fire individually then thats when the devs need to be notified otherwise, memes about this game having a shoddier gunnery system than wows would be sad to be fair.

At the end of the day everyone on here wants the game to succeed and the devs too, personally i want a far more customizable ship designer, improved gunnery system (not sim like, just far less reliant on RNG), more QoL stuff, hulls, guns, models, proper ship library for ships and names, along with a tactical map and pre-battle formation maker and a post battle leaderboard. 

Then ill be pretty chuffed, especially if the first thing and the last five things are added in as hulls and guns etc will be added in anyways.

The game still have a long way to go to be fair, but that doesn't mean we should offer suggestions, otherwise whats the point?

We are alpha testers, lets test the game shall we?

[Right]

6 minutes ago, Cptbarney said:

The game still have a long way to go to be fair, but that doesn't mean we should offer suggestions, otherwise whats the point?

We are alpha testers, lets test the game shall we?

I think we all agree there is gold in this game compared to others, so compering it to others doesn't help. Test YES, but we need to focus on compering it to itself other then to others.

I think that even as alpha it is still better then most games I've encountered in the last decade, not to mention since 2019, so I would give them a slack and hope for best.

Big fan for your suggestions!

[Cptbarney]

2 minutes ago, Right said:

I think we all agree there is gold in this game compared to others, so compering it to others doesn't help. Test YES, but we need to focus on compering it to itself other then to others.

I agree as game on a whole, but disagree when comparing the features the game has. I know its bare bones, but i really do like the game and the devs can just use the stuff we chuck on here as suggestions or fat christmas list (or both).

2 minutes ago, Right said:

I think that even as alpha it is still better then most games I've encountered in the last decade, not to mention since 2019, so I would give them a slack and hope for best.

True, actually when i first arrived in october 2019, i was genuinely surprised by its quality. Also the covid stufff didn't help nor did the internal problems which im pretty sure delayed everything. 

Too be fair i have little optimism for the games industry due to the many times it's churned out horrible games or most of all horrible business practices.

Still Nick does obviously care, i know he can't fit everything in, but he could still pick the more relevant stuff and things they can do well.

2 minutes ago, Right said:

Big fan for your suggestions!

Thonks, even if they can't add any of that stuff in, i hope we get good mod support as this will take some of the load of them in the future.

Or release some of the features later down the line, but with this roadmap i'm actually impatient now for alpha 11 lol.

Too be fair ill be surprised if they hit every target in one year considering the work and how fickle games design is. I just also want to make my shipfu's or slam in my own models at some point.

Also i don't want it too be like the forest, great game, but little mod support. Im glad they improved the bug report tool as it was weird not being able to send in images of bugs.

[CapnAvont1015]

38 minutes ago, Right said:

I think we all agree there is gold in this game compared to others, so compering it to others doesn't help. Test YES, but we need to focus on compering it to itself other then to others.

I think that even as alpha it is still better then most games I've encountered in the last decade, not to mention since 2019, so I would give them a slack and hope for best.

Big fan for your suggestions!

I'm gonna be completely honest. Even with all the bugs and stuff, I've gotten a more thrilling experience from this than from WOWS for a long time, especially with going on with WOWS right now. It feels so good hit a DD with 20inch guns not get overpens. Secondary guns in this game actually do they're job in keeping light ships away from me and still gives me almost the same experience I got from WOWS secondary guns pre 10.0. The fact were still this early gives me tons of hope for this game and its future.

[Admiral Lütjens]

10 minutes ago, CapnAvont1015 said:

I'm gonna be completely honest. Even with all the bugs and stuff, I've gotten a more thrilling experience from this than from WOWS for a long time, especially with going on with WOWS right now. It feels so good hit a DD with 20inch guns not get overpens. Secondary guns in this game actually do they're job in keeping light ships away from me and still gives me almost the same experience I got from WOWS secondary guns pre 10.0. The fact were still this early gives me tons of hope for this game and its future.

Me too I can say really detailed from wows except ship modeling but it still has a very good system There was a game called Atlantic fleet which I liked the most, we could watch underwater. That sinking of the ship was calmly nice

[CapnAvont1015]

1 minute ago, Admiral Lütjens said:

Me too I can say really detailed from wows except ship modeling but it still has a very good system There was a game called Atlantic fleet which I liked the most, we could watch underwater. That sinking of the ship was calmly nice

Let me tell you something. If the Devs had the same team size as War Gaming a lot of the bugs and stuff will probably be done by now. But the fact they managed to get this far with the small team they have is amazing.

[Admiral Lütjens]

2 minutes ago, CapnAvont1015 said:

Let me tell you something. If the Devs had the same team size as War Gaming a lot of the bugs and stuff will probably be done by now. But the fact they managed to get this far with the small team they have is amazing.

They are very faithful and strong, this will not happen in some groups, I personally envy it, it would be hard for me I couldn't do it that much. I hope the games come to the position they want when it comes to selling.

[akd]

On 2/7/2021 at 2:46 AM, Cptbarney said:

I know its to make the guns more inaccurate, but at less than 8km range most shells are going to be hitting regardless of the targets speed

In 1890? no.

[Cptbarney]

1 minute ago, akd said:

In 1890? no.

I doubt shells back then went wide at low ranges. Also why pick out a precise date anyways?

[akd]

Because the game starts in 1890, so you clearly need to add some qualifiers to the claim that most shots should hit at less than 8km regardless of target / own motion.  Look at some of the hit rates achieved in gunnery practice (not battle) against stationary targets in the years before WWI.

Edited February 11, 2021 by akd

[lordcmdr]

On 2/7/2021 at 2:20 PM, Skeksis said:

And to add to that, interactive damage control, sub & depth charge actions, aircraft & AA actions, realistic collision damage/sinking, column formations and...

A interactive world map, which I do like very much, nothing better than to see your fleets move about the globe in RT (turn base is fine too, e.g. TW). 

I hope the campaign revamp means scraping RTW2 spreadsheet map format and replacing it with a visual representation of fleet movements (But you know with Gamelabs when they use any words like 'revamps', it should be speculated on the 'smallest' of scales, like it would be unlikely revamp means anything too differently from the RTW2 format). 

However their campaigns isn't empire building and are rather tiny in nature/scope, they do loose out on that in a big way, at least!

RTS combat though, well you gotta give them credit for that.

I got ripped in my thread about that game for those points. My thoughts are the devs read this forum and implemented our complaints with dreadnaughts in their game 😉

[Skeksis]

42 minutes ago, lordcmdr said:

I got ripped in my thread about that game for those points. My thoughts are the devs read this forum and implemented our complaints with dreadnaughts in their game 😉

Suspicious isn't it... or great minds think alike!

[SonicB]

19 hours ago, Skeksis said:

Suspicious isn't it... or great minds think alike!

I've thought for years that the first thing to do when you start designing a new game is go on Nexusmods, search your closest competitor, find out the most popular QoL mods and implement them. Guess that would apply to forums too.

[DerRichtigeArzt]

any guess when alpha 11 drops? kinda dry in here, not a good trait in a ship water boom boom game ya know?

[Cptbarney]

No clue, might be march time before we see update notes to be fair.