>>>Alpha-10 Feedback<<<

[Cptbarney]

Ye when it comes to ships in scouting and escort they sort of just...fly off into the distance and not try to put themselves between the enemy and your own fleet really or the battle line itself, think we need the ability to designate capital ships, so that way the AI knows what the boss ships are and the ships to sail around and to protect. Really when it comes to divs, the other ships should try and match what the lead ship is doing and also slow down in advance to allow the lead ship to get some room when manuevouring. 

The AI seems better, but still suffers from the above problems. Reverse is fine doe.

[Ehrler]

Some suggestions to the battle mechanic:

• Ships on scout or defender tasks shouldn´t attack the whole enemy fleet alone
• Its should be possible to advise a defender division to secure one side of the fleet to face the enemy (both sides only on the march)
• If i merge e.a. two BB-Divisions, than should all ships hold the line and the first ship of the second division should follow the last ship in the first division. At the moment it is possible that a big chaos will break out and some ships will sail in a mess until the new order is in place
• Divisions need the command that all ships in a line turn at the same time to enable quick changes of direction (this is really a must for me) 

Thank you for your constant good work. The game is a lot of fun. With the suggestions above, I look forward to being able to play the campaign and fight large naval battles. 

[SonicB]

7 hours ago, WiselessOwl said:

Also it seems that the old problem with target lock has reappeared.
During heavy manuevers, ships often lose their lock on target (which is fine as it is expected to happen IRL). The problem is, they tend to be completely unable to reacquire the lock after finishing manuever and keep probing the distance with one-two turrets forever. The only workaround I found is to switch targets or briefly disable firing at all.
Lighter ships (up to the CA) are most affected by that, while heavy artillery usually is fine

I always had this problem even in Alpha-9, and with heavy artillery too. I'm also noticing ships losing lock randomly even when neither they nor the target are maneuvering. It is mostly in these cases that the turret is unable to recover the lock until I manually repeat the attack order.

[Cpt.Hissy]

So, scouts and screens do indeed try to keep themselves to the sides of their designated main fleet, at significant distance just as advertised. Real problem is, they do not have any situational awareness and pick sides and positions "in vacuum", at random. Sad thing is, before "fixes" this worked better, they at least rushed head first towards enemy and not in random directions.
Also, screens try to engage whatever comes to them as to keep it away from screened fleet, as advertised; but they again are not aware of situation, and engage not what treats their main fleet or them, but simply whatever came too close.
On top of this, endless little derps in movement make them wander off or lag behind, so they often simply are not around during battle, which creates this impression of them doing nothing.
conclusion, fleet formation logic does not take into account the current disposition, and this is the main reason of all the problems.

Yep merging and managing battle groups is another big issue, in that it's just non existent. They pick order seemingly at random, change leader whenever and to whatever ship they please, shift positions when not asked to.
We need consistency and predictability in what order our ships will keep. If not direct control, then at least manual designation of the leader and for other battle worthy ships to keep their initial order at all times, regardless of what ship sank or detached.

[SonicB]

21 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

We implemented Smoke Screen to work in a radius (it has area of effect). You can check nearby ships that they gain smoke coverage by their shooting stats. Smoke screen is a feature that would need later an improvement, to work directionally and hide ships that are behind but it is of low priority. Making it very much more complex would certainly decrease game performance as a battle in Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts can contain a lot of ships and a very detailed LOS for each ship emitting smoke, would greatly increase game calculations per second.

Thank you for addressing this. It's understandable that it has low priority right now, but it's very good to hear that it's on your radar for eventual improvement.

I think that's the case for a lot of suggestions and complaints mentioned here (dare I mention the ship designer...) No-one is expecting a lot of major improvements to be done in the next patch or even before beta, but it is very reassuring to know that suggestions are listened to and such improvements are in the development pipeline.

Personally I'm finding the collision improvements to be a big step in the right direction. Screen and scout behaviour definitely needs improvement as I find escort ships often choose to hang back out of range rather than supporting capital ships.

I have one suggestion regarding formations, and that is to rework the 'cruising speed' targeting bonus so that it gradually reduces right up to the ship's top speed. This would make 'medium' formations a better compromise between accuracy and speed, and would also generally feel more realistic and less gamey.

[Tycondero]

1 hour ago, Ehrler said:

Some suggestions to the battle mechanic:

• Ships on scout or defender tasks shouldn´t attack the whole enemy fleet alone
• Its should be possible to advise a defender division to secure one side of the fleet to face the enemy (both sides only on the march)
• If i merge e.a. two BB-Divisions, than should all ships hold the line and the first ship of the second division should follow the last ship in the first division. At the moment it is possible that a big chaos will break out and some ships will sail in a mess until the new order is in place
• Divisions need the command that all ships in a line turn at the same time to enable quick changes of direction (this is really a must for me) 

Thank you for your constant good work. The game is a lot of fun. With the suggestions above, I look forward to being able to play the campaign and fight large naval battles. 

I agree, I would like to be able to set a position/area for the screens/defenders to focus on. Either the AI needs to be very good as in that the screens will start to sit in between the hostile and their escort and engage or keep between the two fleets depending on the size and severity of the treat or we should be able to manually assign sectors to screens as such that a division can be patrolling between 315-45 degrees (in front of to be escorted division), 315-225 (left), 225-135 (rear) or 135-45 (right) degrees of the heading of the lead escorted ship/division. 

Regarding division commands, I think we need much more sophisticated/detailed commands on a divisional/fleet level and indeed a hard turn executed by all ships in the division simultaneously would be great (Sheer's turn at Jutland).

Edited December 31, 2020 by Tycondero

[Dannavy85]

Sometimes, it's better NOT to keep your ships bundled in "squads" but to un-bunch them and work them as separated units especially destroyers and cruisers who's jobs are to deliver close in fire and become "shell sponges" for your capital units. Normally I'll go three, three, three and split up BB's and CA's while sending in the three destroyers as lambs for slaughter. Sometimes it works....sometimes not. 

[Cptbarney]

37 minutes ago, Dannavy85 said:

Sometimes, it's better NOT to keep your ships bundled in "squads" but to un-bunch them and work them as separated units especially destroyers and cruisers who's jobs are to deliver close in fire and become "shell sponges" for your capital units. Normally I'll go three, three, three and split up BB's and CA's while sending in the three destroyers as lambs for slaughter. Sometimes it works....sometimes not. 

Thats not the issue. The issue is the AI doing things it shouldn't be such as battle lines sodding off into the distance along with escorting type vessels, or fleets switching lead vessels half the time. Causing formation issues and weird AI behaviour that puts their ships or your ships or some of them out of action. Also what causes the occasional ramming and ships not actually being in proper places to fight. Unless this is intentional, it should be fixed regardless.

Your BB's should be taking hits from bigger vessels, not your lighter vessels they should be engaging their own lighter vessels, so then you can launch torps easier and set them on fire and reset their accuracy more often. Allowing your fatties to land more hits and deal more damage.

Also you will need them when no capital ships are present or when you need to send in a force quickly to deal with something in the campaign when it arrives as the missions are basically hinting at with the various dd and/or cruisers vs bc's and bb missions.

[Cpt.Hissy]

^^about all this, isn't it supposed to be part of the game's scope, to let the player to develop their own strategies and set their own roles to ships or classes?
And then, campaign will show which strategies work better and which lead to revolutions x)

[CapnAvont1015]

Ok I don't know if I'm just having bad luck with the auto generation system but is anyone else getting Battlecruisers with basically no armor? The description for BCs is they take the guns and armor of a BB and the speed of an cruiser. But in the game when its A.I generated they almost all ways get cruiser armor than battleship armor and always go way to big on the gun caliber. (Seriously who needs a BC with 20inch guns?) I really hope the Devs allows us to create our whole fleet in custom games instead of an auto generated on because frankly auto generated ships make no bloody sense. 

[Cptbarney]

3 hours ago, CapnAvont1015 said:

Ok I don't know if I'm just having bad luck with the auto generation system but is anyone else getting Battlecruisers with basically no armor? The description for BCs is they take the guns and armor of a BB and the speed of an cruiser. But in the game when its A.I generated they almost all ways get cruiser armor than battleship armor and always go way to big on the gun caliber. (Seriously who needs a BC with 20inch guns?) I really hope the Devs allows us to create our whole fleet in custom games instead of an auto generated on because frankly auto generated ships make no bloody sense. 

Technically thats actually correct, BC's should have around supercruiser heavy cruiser armour if not a bit more with the guns of a BB and the speed of heavy or light cruiser. Although i'd rather not have a BC with the armour of a light cruiser even if it means it can reach 45+ knots.

[Tycondero]

15 minutes ago, Cptbarney said:

Technically thats actually correct, BC's should have around supercruiser heavy cruiser armour if not a bit more with the guns of a BB and the speed of heavy or light cruiser. Although i'd rather not have a BC with the armour of a light cruiser even if it means it can reach 45+ knots.

True, there is some difference between WW1 and interwar BCs and between countries. If we look at the nation that developed most BCs (Britain) they went for high speed (usually 30+ knots) combined with BB batteries (-1 turret) and sacrificing armour to make it work (meaning somewhere between 6-10 inch armour usually). 

The Germans went the other way.  If we can count Scharnhorst and Gneisenau as BCs, these ships were developed with BB like armour, fast battleship speed and comparatively tiny guns (11 inch).

BTW, reaching beyond 32 knots for a big (and even small) ship should be really difficult. I will have a look into that whether it now makes more sense, but diminishing returns should really kick in hard here for battleships and cruisers alike. If you look at the Iowa class of fast battleship (57500 tons) these reached 33 knots (WW2) and had engines producing 158 MW, whereas the Bismark (50900 tons) that reached 30 knots could do with engines producing 110 MW. Thus for 3 more knots (~10%) the Iowa required around ~44% more engine power. Tonnage corrected it would be 27% more power for 10% more speed.

Edited January 1, 2021 by Tycondero

[Marshall99]

Happy New Year to everyone!

I hope we will have better year.

[1MajorKoenig]

Happy new year

[Cptbarney]

5 hours ago, Tycondero said:

True, there is some difference between WW1 and interwar BCs and between countries. If we look at the nation that developed most BCs (Britain) they went for high speed (usually 30+ knots) combined with BB batteries (-1 turret) and sacrificing armour to make it work (meaning somewhere between 6-10 inch armour usually). 

The Germans went the other way.  If we can count Scharnhorst and Gneisenau as BCs, these ships were developed with BB like armour, fast battleship speed and comparatively tiny guns (11 inch).

BTW, reaching beyond 32 knots for a big (and even small) ship should be really difficult. I will have a look into that whether it now makes more sense, but diminishing returns should really kick in hard here for battleships and cruisers alike. If you look at the Iowa class of fast battleship (57500 tons) these reached 33 knots (WW2) and had engines producing 158 MW, whereas the Bismark (50900 tons) that reached 30 knots could do with engines producing 110 MW. Thus for 3 more knots (~10%) the Iowa required around ~44% more engine power. Tonnage corrected it would be 27% more power for 10% more speed.

i forgot about german BC's they seem to went the other other route, a focus on armour compare to britain that went with speed mostly. although game-wise im not sure if the ability to go 35+ knots with fat ships is mostly a thing for if we want to rather than historical accuracy or realism so basically allowing us to build ships that go stupid speeds in custom battles for example.

I know smoll dds could get to 38 or even 40knots but sacrificed quite a bit for that and only really happened around ww2 (although makes me wonder if we kept it up till now how fast same sized ships could reach.)

[madham82]

12 hours ago, CapnAvont1015 said:

Ok I don't know if I'm just having bad luck with the auto generation system but is anyone else getting Battlecruisers with basically no armor? The description for BCs is they take the guns and armor of a BB and the speed of an cruiser. But in the game when its A.I generated they almost all ways get cruiser armor than battleship armor and always go way to big on the gun caliber. (Seriously who needs a BC with 20inch guns?) I really hope the Devs allows us to create our whole fleet in custom games instead of an auto generated on because frankly auto generated ships make no bloody sense. 

If it's got BB gun and armor, but cruiser speed it is a fast battleship and no longer a BC (i.e. Hood). It's when they sacrifice armor or biggest guns for speed it becomes a BC. 

[CapnAvont1015]

Do you guys think we should get different types of gun salvos? 

 

I think this video might be good enough to explain naval salvo.

[Cptbarney]

6 minutes ago, CapnAvont1015 said:

Do you guys think we should get different types of gun salvos? 

 

I think this video might be good enough to explain naval salvo.

Ye, something i've wanted for sometime now. And it should solve some of the weird shooting problems we get at times (or at least visually anyways).

[Tycondero]

9 hours ago, CapnAvont1015 said:

Do you guys think we should get different types of gun salvos? 

 

I think this video might be good enough to explain naval salvo.

I think this is a very good suggestion to expand the possibilities we have for firing in the game. Especially a double salvo or fire at will command would be great, however I would imagine that this should only matter if crew morale ever becomes a factor in the game. Double salvo is great to demoralize opponents by offering a more continuous amount of fire. However, sadly even the regular broadside salvo is not fully working in the game due to a bug. I think the devs should first try to correct this before expanding into other types of firing commands.

 

[Hangar18]

On 12/31/2020 at 9:06 AM, Cptbarney said:

Ye when it comes to ships in scouting and escort they sort of just...fly off into the distance and not try to put themselves between the enemy and your own fleet really or the battle line itself, think we need the ability to designate capital ships, so that way the AI knows what the boss ships are and the ships to sail around and to protect. Really when it comes to divs, the other ships should try and match what the lead ship is doing and also slow down in advance to allow the lead ship to get some room when manuevouring. 

The AI seems better, but still suffers from the above problems. Reverse is fine doe.

Instead of designating it, it should be automatic. and CB/CC/BB should just have that automatically.

[Cptbarney]

51 minutes ago, Hangar18 said:

Instead of designating it, it should be automatic. and CB/CC/BB should just have that automatically.

too be fair, i would also have the option for manual regardless, in-case something happens where it does just keep changing back and forth.

[CL-86 Homeboy]

I just jumped in and played a few battles for the first time since the patch went live.

In all the battles I played each team had five ships of the same type. As usual, I spawned in with them in two divisions, one with two ships and the other with three. As usual, I merged them into a single battle line. Before the patch, they would typically find their way into line reasonably quickly (albeit with a bit of bumping), and we'd be off. In all of today's battles, however, the division which was supposed to fall in at the back would seem to make little effort to get there for a good while. Also, regardless of whether I set the formation to tight, normal, or loose, the whole line would get extremely spread out, with the ships toward the back appearing to be barely moving and not getting involved in the battle. One one occasion the two ships at the front of the line were out of ammo before the last one had fired a single shot. I assume this has to do with the collision avoidance mechanic, so y'all may want to take a look at it.

Also, when one battle ended, I went to replay it, but it would not allow me to restart immediately with the same ship because it said that one of my main guns and several of my secondaries were "badly placed." They were exactly where they had been before, and I was able to delete them and replace them exactly the same, but it was still an annoying bit of time wasted.

And finally, is there some way to get the AI to at least make some effort toward building good ships? I'm trying to test out my designs against enemy squadrons of similar ships, but they often end up bringing ships with less than half the displacement. It's not much of a test of my super-battleship with 18" guns and a 16" belt if the opponent has 14" guns and a 9" belt.

Edited January 4, 2021 by CL-86 Homeboy

[Nismodriver]

I'm new to the forum but im not exactly a battleship nerd so if the game doesn't have tooltip pros , cons to the different parts of the ship, I'll be at a loss, very interested in the game. Like for example this ammo propellant is prone to flash fire but is more likely to pen, etc.

Edited January 4, 2021 by Nismodriver
Typo

[Neverkbowsbest]

I'm interested in knowing if secondary firing solutions are being considered. If you target secondary guns on an enemy on the port side then none of your starboard guns fire on any targets. It would be nice to see main/secondary and port/starboard target designations. I know this would be a nightmare to display all the accuracy info but would be way more realistic in regards to how real fire control would operate on a ship. Real warships would never limit themselves to only one primary and secondary target.

[IronJager]

I have been playing for one day now, and I am very impressed with this game. There's a few things I would definitely like to see improved/implemented.

1. I would like to be able to create multiple different ships in a fleet, instead of just a single vessel/class. Also building the enemy fleets. (Unless I just have not figured out this feature yet).

2. I would like to be able to save ship designs, so I don't have to rebuild them constantly.

3. It would be nice to have historical pre-built ships that can be used for recreating naval battles.

4. More damage and sinking animations. I love it when a magazine explodes on an enemy ship, but that kind of explosion should rip the vessel apart and sink it extremely quickly. Having ships capsize from an extreme list would be nice to see. (British battlecruisers seem to be very prone to magazine detonation, which seems accurate. I really like that.) 

5. Ships that have an extreme list should not be able to fire guns. The barrels are sometimes pointing in the water, but they still manage to shoot with relative accuracy. 

6. The AI does not play very aggressively. I would like to see different tactics employed by different nations. 

 

That's all I can think of for now.

 

Thanks so much for this awesome game! It is very addictive.