>>>Alpha-10 Feedback<<<

[coalminer]

At the rate the patches are coming out and just breaking things, i've all but given up hope on this. Devs got to tell the community atleast what are they looking at and what are the visions for the game. 

A quick custom battle of 5 x CAs (1940s) pretty much max tech and just a wee bit below maximum bulkheads (quantity and the other option) vs 1 BB 1 BC, 2 CAs, 5 CLs, 5 DDs (1915), unrealistic as hell but what the heck should be a fun kerb stomp just for the lulz.

First start of the game, i merge the 5 CAs into one single division because for some reason it started off with 4 CA in 1 division and another 1 alone, immediately this breaks the formation AI because one ship is stuck at 1.9knots and not doing anything. OK attempt number 2, i try to disband formation and remake it, now all 4 of my ships dont show up at the UI to select, the 1 ship remaining is still doing its own things. OK i can bear with microing all the ships no problems. Moving on to combat phase.

Immediately the enemy AI starts with bow tanking, OK unrealistic but maybe they just want to close the range ASAP and find my ships. Once the DDs get into range thats where the stupidity begins. 9" HE shells are overpenning all over the place with a combined hit rate of 0.2% at 8km. DD pops smoke and it becomes a magical invisibility cloak and my CAs with radar cant hit for jack. Smoke ends, hits starts landing, more overpens from 9" HE. 6" secondaries deal 30 odd damage that are IMMEDIATELY repaired even with 20+ consecutive hits of mix of 9" and 6" HE. The DD barely drops below 50 floatation and structure.

Phase 2, i finally manage to sink 1 CL and 1 DD, at the expense of my CAs eating 2 torpedoes just for the fun of it even though it was spotted miles away by Hydrophones II, formation AI was dead set on following the formation. The enemy retreats back into formation and starts sailing abit after loosing sight of my ships. I begin shelling at range, again smokes all over the place dropping hit rates to abysmal levels. I turn on "Save" mode for better hit rates. Smoke dies down, shells start landing on the BC dealing quite a chunk of damage, it almost sinks until the DDs begin the smoke rush again. Now the near dead BC quickly finishes repairing back to 100% and sprints away. This time the DDs press on with the attack and continuing with the 0.2% hit rates at 10-8km, by now my formation AI has gone all dumb and started making random manoeuvres barely landing any hits on the DD. After abit of tinkering abit with evading torps and firing, all the ammo stores are down to yellow levels. I look at the damage done and decide its better to just rage quit than to lose my sanity over this.

 

TL;DR, stop tweaking things for the sake of tweaking it, now we have god like DDs that cannot be hit or damaged and things are looking worse off than they did 3 patches ago. I know making a game isnt about making a game *I want* but come on, if this is the dev team's definition of realism then I wonder what world am I living in.

edit: forgot to take screenshots because I couldnt believe what i was "playing", but should be easily replicated, 19km starting range, 1940 vs 1915. enjoy this image of the invisibility cloak shields being popped everywhere.

Edited January 21, 2021 by coalminer
Added a random screenshot i took while trying to figure out how to get my ships into formation

[Cptbarney]

We need a division maker pre-battle and also able to give orders pre-battle too with a 3d or 2d top down view of the battle screen and then once ships are assigned their roles and ranks (flag ship for example) then the player can hit play/continue/begin/battle etc.

[dbs1701]

Still loving this! I know that developing AI, campaign, and crew features are priority, but please still keep considering ways to unlock certain designer options for players but locking them for AI if it breaks the AI. We still really need moveable barbettes and more rational limitations on where things can go.

I'm trying to play with the IJN 8/8 Plan ships (so building and having fun with Nagato, Tosa, Kii, Nr. 13, Amagi, and a Nr 13 BC variant), and while the hulls look great for that, you can't get the Pagoda tower on a hull small enough for Nagato and Tosa, and you also really need an aft barbette point for all of these. Here is a screenshot of the best I could do with Nagato, they really suffer from not having the ability to put in an after superfiring barbette. Amagi and Kii should work, but Tosa again needs to be far too big to fit the fifth turret in.

On a related note, the superfiring barbette on the long fantail of the Hood-inspired super BB hull is great, and fun to work with, but it is really hard to balance the hull because the fantail is so very long, it is almost impossible to get the aft pair of turrets far enough back to balance.

More barbette options, please! Others have also said that secondary barbettes need to be more freely positionable, and I second this absolutely!

 

[Cpt.Hissy]

Sometimes they are ridiculously blind. This is the distance where they appeared.. and instantly entire fleets start shooting at everything!
(thing behind the panel to the right is a heavy cruiser)

Weather says evening and overcast though, i'm not sure at what distance you will realistically notice the presence of a light cruiser in that situation.
Hope there will be some kind of visual hint on your spotting distance.
And that individual ships will need to "see" targets personally to be able to engage them.

 

adding to this, some kind of map view with course plotting will hugely improve the battles, particularly in part of tracking and intercepting targets that you lost contact with, or finding new ones.
especially combined with real campaign map, and AI trying to follow their mission or run to their ports instead of "just straight away".

barely managed to intercept those in time by effectively abusing a bug: you still can see smokescreens on invisible targets and they keep puffing that smoke constantly regardless of enemy presence.

Edited January 29, 2021 by Cpt.Hissy

[CL-86 Homeboy]

I just jumped back into the game for the first time in weeks to see if the problems I mentioned in my previous comment (and by @coalminer more recently) had been fixed. Nope. I set up a battle of 5v5 with BCs, and it started me with four in a div and one alone. I attached the lone one to the division, but it just wandered off for a while. Once it finally decided to start vaguely following the rest of the column, it just crabbed its way along at very low speed. I also noticed that, while my flagship was moving at full speed, the next three were following its track, but at much lower speeds so that they fell way behind.

Until these issues are fixed, I'm going to say that this is an unplayable game.

Edited January 30, 2021 by CL-86 Homeboy

[Bigjku]

1 hour ago, CL-86 Homeboy said:

I just jumped back into the game for the first time in weeks to see if the problems I mentioned in my previous comment (and by @coalminer more recently) had been fixed. Nope. I set up a battle of 5v5 with BCs, and it started me with four in a div and one alone. I attached the lone one to the division, but it just wandered off for a while. Once it finally decided to start vaguely following the rest of the column, it just crabbed its way along at very low speed. I also noticed that, while my flagship was moving at full speed, the next three were following its track, but at much lower speeds so that they fell way behind.

Until these issues are fixed, I'm going to say that this is an unplayable game.

I would agree the speed controls are way off.  The ships just don't seem to really respond to orders to change speed really.  And the station keeping is awful.

I have had the same issues trying to combine specifically with battlecruisers.  They just take off in the dead opposite direction many times.

[7thGalaxy]

A few suggestions from my play this far. I'm sure most of them have been mentioned before

1) more flexible placement of secondary barbettes! This is a sort of minimum change, in general more flexibility of placement of everything, and more modular hulls/superstructure would be good.  

2) some sort of system of morale, there's no way, for example, that a BB would continue fighting until sunk every time. Fire and damage near weapons should reduce effectiveness (of that weapon). High list should render the whole ship inoperable. 

3) formations need a lot of work. Why does the lead ship randomly change after some damage? That should be a player decision. We need to be able to organise into divisions before battle. We need some formation orders (such as all ships in line turn 180 degrees) we need more sensible manoeuvres from one formation to another. Ships in formation should be able to manoeuvre to avoid torps or other ships, then rejoin. 

4) fire arcs shown on battle map

5) compass around ship (toggleable)

6) how about the game shares successful human designs and uses them as ai designs?

 

 

[1MajorKoenig]

4 hours ago, 7thGalaxy said:

more flexible placement of secondary barbettes! This is a sort of minimum change, in general more flexibility of placement of everything, and more modular hulls/superstructure would be good.  

This

 

A million times

 

And on toast

[coalminer]

Also random point I found when playing the "Power of Dreadnoughts" mission in naval academy. Somehow quads are available for predreads if you choose boost technology and you can build some pretty glorious monitors (with terrible firing arcs).

[Wolfmaster057]

Honestly, the biggest issue for me is the placement of guns. On the American Battleships and Battlecruisers, we cant put the barbette against the secondary tower. I would prefer more placement options for both the primary/secondary towers and barbettes. 

[CapnAvont1015]

1 hour ago, coalminer said:

Also random point I found when playing the "Power of Dreadnoughts" mission in naval academy. Somehow quads are available for predreads if you choose boost technology and you can build some pretty glorious monitors (with terrible firing arcs).

Byoutiful.

[Cptbarney]

Also the issue regarding ships in formations especially with 3 or more needs to be addressed as the last ship sometimes doesn't reach the same speed as others, this seems to be more common with slower ships I.E capital ships.

So that bug will need to be addressed.

[akd]

On 12/30/2020 at 11:38 AM, Nick Thomadis said:

Indeed this system can be tricked if you play vs the AI and notice the torpedo reload time

Please remove this information.  Wargames require fog of war.

[Airzerg]

13 hours ago, akd said:

Пожалуйста, удалите эту информацию. Военные игры требуют тумана войны.

 

It helps to win, but it's not fair

[7thGalaxy]

For the purposes of aiming, are a 2 barrel and a 3 barrel mount of the same calibre and shell counted as the same? If not, they really ought to be. Otherwise you get a penalty for the perfectly reasonable and often seen design of making the top Barbette weapons lighter. 

 

[madham82]

5 hours ago, 7thGalaxy said:

For the purposes of aiming, are a 2 barrel and a 3 barrel mount of the same calibre and shell counted as the same? If not, they really ought to be. Otherwise you get a penalty for the perfectly reasonable and often seen design of making the top Barbette weapons lighter. 

 

I know they were counted as separate gun groups for aiming before, but not sure if that has been fixed. 

[7thGalaxy]

7 hours ago, madham82 said:

I know they were counted as separate gun groups for aiming before, but not sure if that has been fixed. 

They're grouped differently in the guns list, do they share the locked on bonuses?

Edited February 5, 2021 by 7thGalaxy

[Cpt.Hissy]

31 minutes ago, 7thGalaxy said:

They're grouped differently in the guns list, do they share the locked on and Simon bonuses?

No they do not, and yes it's a problem

[Right]

On 1/31/2021 at 1:19 AM, CL-86 Homeboy said:

I just jumped back into the game for the first time in weeks to see if the problems I mentioned in my previous comment (and by @coalminer more recently) had been fixed. Nope. I set up a battle of 5v5 with BCs, and it started me with four in a div and one alone. I attached the lone one to the division, but it just wandered off for a while. Once it finally decided to start vaguely following the rest of the column, it just crabbed its way along at very low speed. I also noticed that, while my flagship was moving at full speed, the next three were following its track, but at much lower speeds so that they fell way behind.

Until these issues are fixed, I'm going to say that this is an unplayable game.

When in a formation the speed of the ships is based on the max speed+acceleration+specific set distance, when you add a ship that ship would take a long time to join because it "wait" for the right moment to jump into the set distance/pathing and when you go normal/tight they all would lower their speed. In any formation the speed is locked to a set max and you can't use it for full potential unless it is set to spread and all ships got the same max speed and acceleration. It does sound logical when you come to think of it irl but for a game it does feel somewhat clunky.

[Cpt.Hissy]

32 minutes ago, Right said:

When in a formation the speed of the ships is based on the max speed+acceleration+specific set distance, when you add a ship that ship would take a long time to join because it "wait" for the right moment to jump into the set distance/pathing and when you go normal/tight they all would lower their speed. In any formation the speed is locked to a set max and you can't use it for full potential unless it is set to spread and all ships got the same max speed and acceleration. It does sound logical when you come to think of it irl but for a game it does feel somewhat clunky.

Because in game currently this is indeed broken.
Logic controlling the non-leader ships in formations is bugged right now. May be fixed in next patch.

[CapnAvont1015]

Well now UA:D is not even out yet and it already has some more competition. However I already have some problems with this game and one them is THAT IT'S SET BETWEEN AMERICA AND JAPAN! (DEEPLY INHALES) WhY?!

Edited February 6, 2021 by CapnAvont1015

[SonicB]

11 hours ago, CapnAvont1015 said:

Well now UA:D is not even out yet and it already has some more competition. However I already have some problems with this game and one them is THAT IT'S SET BETWEEN AMERICA AND JAPAN! (DEEPLY INHALES) WhY?!

Because 'Murica, apparently.

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

[Cptbarney]

Also, dispersion still needs working on as well. How guns work in terms of dispersion especially at close range is iffy since you still get the whole shells going wide as a barn problem which needs to be addressed to be fair. 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 and i guess while size will factor into things it shouldn't decrease accuracy by that much too be fair.

Movement will and should still interfere, but still.

[Cpt.Hissy]

at 8km it's still pretty easy to miss without advanced tech, but it won't look like currently in game.
With central fire control, dispersion should be more like "whole salvo goes off target" rather than each individual shell goes wherever it wants.

[Cptbarney]

1 hour ago, Cpt.Hissy said:

at 8km it's still pretty easy to miss without advanced tech, but it won't look like currently in game.
With central fire control, dispersion should be more like "whole salvo goes off target" rather than each individual shell goes wherever it wants.

Ye thats what im hoping for, atm it seems each shell is calculated individually but not as a whole salvo at least from how they act in game.

Thats where you get the weird cross eye shot (lol) or the attempts to fire at the moon for some reason. Otherwise what are peeps general concessions about gunnery atm besides the weird short range dispersion issues.