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PROPSAL: Ship Designer 2.0


1MajorKoenig

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Hi all!

After leaving my feedback regarding the Ship Designer - in my opinion the most interesting and unique selling proposition of the game - in multiple threads I decided to write up a summary of what I would like to see. The whole thing is aiming to improve flexibility and create more interesting (and less repetitive 😞  ) Designs!

 

As a Start I would expand on what we can do on the Hull! These steps are marked as H1 to H11:

 

H1. Hull Selection
Fewer hulls needed as the hull itself becomes part of the design process. Example: tumblehome, pre-dreadnought, dreadnought, fast battleship. Each hull comes with a tonnage restriction (eg. something like 20.000 - 50.000 t for dreadnoughts, 30.000 - 100.000 t for fast BBs, etc.).


H2. Tonnage Slider
As today but instead of simply lengthening the hull it would make the hull bigger in the whole (lenght, beam and draft) -> scale in all dimensions instead of just lengthening


H3. Lenght-to-Beam Slider
Change the hull form within the tonnage. Has impact on seakeeping, speed, turning, accelaration, stability, etc.


H4. Freeboard Slider (UPDATED)
Has an influence on stability, buoyoncy and target size (hit propbability of the enemy). Alternatively a simple high / medium / low option as proposed by @Cpt.Hissy . For me it is important that this is represented in 3d meaning a „low“ freeboard ship would sit deep in the water.


H5. Speed Slider
Desired top speed as today. Determines needed power output.


H6. Selection Bow-Section 
The bow has influence on seakeeping, speed, stability, etc. and is visually represented in the 3d model.
- Ram pronounced
- dreadnought bow
- straight bow
- slight positive
- pronounced positive / clipper bow

744065641_Bow1.jpg.c27e7b6ff1c8089dd1d9e40ffc96bb9a.jpg


H7. Selection Stern-Section
The stern has influence on seakeeping, speed, stability, etc. and is visually represented in the 3d model.
- cruiser
- round
- transom


H8. Selection Flush deck or step? (UPDATED)
Possibility to add:
- Forecastle 
- step 
- or flush deck

As @Cpt.Hissy mentioned, maybe there are better ways to achieve that. But in general iT would be good to shape generally the form, and decide if you want a step in the deck, a forecastle or just a flush deck. 


H9. Selection Propulsion
As today (triple expansion, turbines, diesel, etc.). 


H10. Place machinery Spaces 
Machinery space volume required based on all above criteria is calculated and represented as a couple of slices of the hull which can be moved fore / aft to be placed within the ship. These could be split up or placed next to each other, eg. in the center. Machinery spaces will not allow centreline primary guns over them. I would suggest to allow "side" primary gun turrets over machinery space though. Funnels can only be placed over machinery spaces. There should be a couple of seperate sections of these to be placed, eg. three. Machinery Space Section marked yellow (red means no placement of primary guns at the very ends of the ship).

2A94FFE5-EA86-4167-8E47-E66F33148DBD.jpeg.ae2915d800a665e145bd88a5aaf8d5f9.jpeg


 

H11. The osther selection boxes could mostly remain as they are in my opinion. However - I don't like the "Bulkheads" Slider at all! It is simply a matter of "the-more-the-merrier" thing. I would replace it with some selection box potentially like the one for double bottom.

 


General remark to the Armor: I am one of the few who don't mind the armnor settings through thickness on certain parst. However there is currently an issue how the program determines "main belt" - it is the center three sections of the ship regardless of what's inside. I would propose a dynamic "main belt" calculation based on the first main gun or main gun barbette and the last one and including all the machinery spaces. 

 

 

Once the hull is defined we can come to the modules which are currently added in the center section in the lower part of the designer. To give the player the possibility to create much more diverse designs the current modules are split up into more granular categories - named M1 to M7:

 

M1. Casemate Deck (UPDATED)
Possibility to add an additional deck below the actual superstructure. As mentioned by @Cpt.Hissy a few predefined models would most likely suffice here. It would be great though if the length of the deck could be changed to create longer or shorter ones and if Barbettes could „snap“ into the very ends of the deck (same for the step in the deck btw).


M2. Bridge Module
Lower half of the current "main tower" module. This module includes basic fire control, damage control, spotting, etc. values


M3. Mast Module
On top of the bridge we would put a mast which provides different bonuses to the bridge base values
- Spotting top (mostly spotting bonusses)
- Tripod Mast (spotting and long range accuracy)
- Pole mast (spotting and long range accuracy)
- plus some more modern masts, such as the thick Bismarck mast, the Dunkerque mast, etc. as stylish elements (spotting and long range accuracy)

B58349A6-F90D-4687-B8FD-15EA3C07CB06.thumb.jpeg.8ef933496e06fba63eda36350788197c.jpeg



M4. Rear Tower Module
Mostly like today but it must be easier to combine them with other modules, eg. smaller modules


M5. Funnel Module (UPDATED)
We certainly need more funnely, bigger funnels and so on! But most importantly I want to place funnels ANYWHERE over the machinery spaces and on the superstructure and casemate deck over machinery spaces. And we need these thick trunked funnels and such 🙂

 

Edit: after thinking about it again and reading the comments I think every machinery section should have their own funnels. So the program should allow for placing funnels anywhere over the machinery spaces. Funnels should „cut“ through casemate decks and bridge structures if possible — with some exceptions like the coming tower part.


M6. Main Guns and Barbettes
With all of the above it become easy: you can place main guns and mnain gun barbettes ANYWHERE on the ship - safe bow and stern and machinery spaces for centerline armament. I would propose to allow side mounted main guns over machinery spaces to simulate that they sit to the side of the engines, boilers and such.

Plus: make it so barbettes are represented in the correct size in the 3d model which should be relatively simple to do as the program knows the turret ring size - as proposed by @SonicB


M7. Secondary guns and Barbettes
Secondary Guns should be able to be places ANYWHERE safe the very bow and stern section. It would be awesome if placing such guns could "CUT" into the casemate deck if placed there. No idea how difficult that would be to do.

 


AI Designs: we discussed multiple times that the AI needs support to avoid these "Clown Car" Designs - well for them just put a couple of hardpoints and presets in the background - but leave the players the freedom!

 

Thanks all for reading and hope you like it!
 

Edited by 1MajorKoenig
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7 minutes ago, 1MajorKoenig said:

Damn — prepared two nice sketches but can’t upload them — anyone knows how to fix that (apparently not enough space available)?

You can assign existing image through URL. This can be easily done if you put the picture to the Discord. Then you copy the link and post it to: Other Media (right-down corner) - Insert image from URL.

Edited by Aceituna
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For machinery we can have an internal section so sort of x-ray mode would be nice. For the armour belt, the reason why it should be split into multiple pieces is because it was uniform and some ships had some weird belts and also icebreakers (Teehee, peegee reference). It could be simple as well and divided into, Main belt, Upper belt (or deck belt), lower belt/torp belt, icebreaker, bum belt (lol) and also internal armour (like turtlebacks for example).

It would help the game simulate hits better too be fair and with internal components should allow for more accurate results rather than the weirdness we have atm and also probs stop the engine spam the AI does half the time.

otherwise very, very nice regardless.

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Thanks for putting this all together and in order. Perhaps this will be noticed and taken into account? Just looked over my own posts on this question and they're such a mess.

Can't resist adding another wall of text here x) Some additions / corrections to this, maybe a bit excessive at times, you've been warned.
 

H4. Freeboard - not a slider but a set of fixed options, for ease of player understanding and dev implementation. Yes i'm clearly inspired by some other game.
Options would be: high freeboard, medium/normal freeboard, low freeboard and monitor type. With each having some flat modifiers for overall stats. Maybe?

H8. Forecastle. - all of mentioned can be just grouped as Forecastle option, with adjustable length and two types: narrow (as on Dreadnought herself, leaving stripes of main deck on both sides for whatever use) or hull-wide (what you call a step deck). None would mean flush deck.
Something like Iowa is no forecastle, high freeboard. Hood is very long hull-wide forecastle, low freeboard. Dreadnought is long narrow forecastle, medium freeboard. German WW1 designs leave questions though.
Option for a stern cut-off (lowered deck part) could be useful for ships with two deck steps (also making Hood a no forecastle, stern cut-off, medium freeboard ship), but not that necessary.
Forecastle counts towards seakeeping, roughly as if the ship had higher freeboard, multiplied by forecastle length fraction. Narrow forecastle works worse that hull-wide.

If armour scheme is to be detailed, Forecastle is to be unprotected part unless chosen armour scheme means armouring literally everything. For example, will allow to save on armour weight without sacrificing seakeeping: a low freeboard, maximum length forecastle hull will have seakeeping close to that of medium freeboard, but armour weight and stability-from-armour almost that of low freeboard. Drawback is unprotected side strip that will eat HE and small rifles.

H9. Propulsion. - Mixed steam+diesel anyone?

Now, important remark. From design standpoint, Machinery spaces and Main barbettes are integral parts of Hull, also the major parts, and ideally should be added in at this stage.
It's not something you just plop down on top. So now i'll change your order.

H10. Machinery and Magazines. - These you place at the same time, shuffling and squeezing until it fits. Machinery volume you already have from speed and engine tech settings. Magazines just depend on gun caliber of choice, though can be generalized as standard sized module, those arent that much different in most cases.

It can be done simplified - Auto place machinery as a block in the middle, then allow placement of guns/magazines everywhere, but if some of them go over machinery - account for this by increasing machinery size by some value depending on gun size.
For "realism" it should somehow differentiate fore and aft guns from midships guns, with only latter able to go over machinery. It is technically possible to fit machinery parts everywhere around and past the guns, but it was never actually done for good reasons, so probably shouldn't be allowed.

Or would be good if you could fit barbettes/magazines first, and then "fill in" machinery by clicking at free spaces in between magazines, and the game will calculate volume of these spaces and subtract it from total volume you need, until everything is filled in.
This can be done fancy, changing with tech level: on early ships, you can only place machinery in square, ship wide blocks, and maybe only 2 or 3 of them, but on latest designs you can squeeze it into corners and in between turrets in small and even asymmetric pieces. in any case there is mininal size for an machinery block, so no pixel wide pieces.
Remark, i personally would not like the main guns to intersect with machinery in complex implementation. On wing turreted ships, these turrets magazines usually were filling whole width of the hull, still cutting machinery spaces in blocks just like midships turrets.
add. Main Barbette Height. - No more variety of sizes of barbettes. Have built in barbette coming with the main gun turrets, and a setting of barbette height. It can be a slider with some small increments, or have just a couple of predefined positions, like Deck level, +1 superfiring, +2 superfiring. Barbette itself is always mounted onto main deck, regardless of superstructures, and you must lift it up with height setting to get above those.

Other options.
- Bulkheads even now work just like drop-down menu would, no reason whatsoever to have it as slider. Here you are totally right.
- Range might be a proper slider instead, to fine-tune if your boat happens to be just a little bit smol for desired range, but way too big for the next option. An option to just "fill displacement with fuel" would be nice.
- Aux. drive - i think this category should be explained better or maybe discarded, with these modules incorporated into other settings. For now it includes actual auxiliary diesel engines of steam-diesel hybrid, and US style electric transmission which is not an aux drive but rather a variant of main engines.
- Shaft. What is it even? Why does it have these stats? Utter nonsense to me...
- "Barbette". Same as shaft, nonsensical set of bonuses.

- Ammo could be a number to put in and not just fixed options.

M1. Casemate deck. - Predefined models could more or less work, but it still will heavily limit your options (as casemate is huge thing and there will be a lot of "doesn't fit onto a hull" problems) and bloat selection menus, also still limited numbers of guns and ugly empty slots.
Ideally it's a semi procedural piece. It should be able to scale in length and width, snap in shape to the end of forecastle (most obvious for those german designs) and to main barbettes. Should be possible to stack casemates on top of each other, perhaps even with no enforced limits on this, physics will limit you anyway.
For gun placement, casemate should have two options - gun caliber and number of slots.
Default casemate has just plain flat walls, angled from midhips points/barbettes/forecastle to the maximum width and then flat along hull sides. Can have a couple of generic shape options too, that mostly define the angle of casemate end walls and if they come to the point at centerline or are cut off by flat transverse bulkhead.
Each casemate gun caliber has specifically sized slot model for it, and how many guns you can squeeze in depends on those and size of your actual casemate deck(s).
As you add more slots, appropriately sized flat sections of casemate deck are replaced by gun mount models, starting from its ends first, then going along flat sides.
Casemate should have it's own armour setting. It can be left empty of guns to serve as upper belt.

M5 Funnels. - Always go onto the main deck and can be intersected with casemate and forecastle (so to not be limited in position by those), but cannot be intersected with towers, masts, guns etc.

M7. Secondary mounts. - deck and turret mounted secondaries. Secondary turrets, just like mains, are always placed onto main deck and must be raised on dynamically set barbettes. Big guns (over 5" lets say) count as turrets and have "barbettes" in form of armored trunk and a platform, as was done on some US ships.
Small guns can just directly and freely go on whatever deck space you got on main deck, forecastle, casemate, certain types of bridge and deckhouses, some masts.

Bridges and towers. Split that, definitely:
- Main conning tower / bridge. Should be small-ish and come in variety of arrangements for any type (mainly vertical and horizontal one). Does not contain actual fire control, but has main steering and will contain important crew
- Aft/Aux tower: smaller secondary tower that just supplements/doubles the function of main tower. Not mandatory, just nice to have.
- Masts. I know this was not done since predread era, but why not leave an option. Allow up to 3 masts of any kind at any position, where one of them MUST be a main mast with rangefinders etc, and others CAN be mains, but also can be other types or absent at all. Masts with fire control equipment contain said equipment, obviously, ones without still give some spotting et.
Masts with rangefinders can give some additional aiming related bonuses if placed close to center, and penalties if soaked in funnel smoke.
- Additional deckhouses(?) - just variety of random, mostly decorative blocks and pieces with small bonuses to crew accommodation and effectiveness, radio quality, etc., whatever makes sense. Some of them may include stuff like searchlights (bonus spotting in the dark) and double as secondary/AA mounts.

 

 

aaaagain awfully huge wall f text.

Edited by Cpt.Hissy
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I can't help but feel like 

1 hour ago, Cpt.Hissy said:

Thanks for putting this all together and in order. Perhaps this will be noticed and taken into account? Just looked over my own posts on this question and they're such a mess.

Can't resist adding another wall of text here x) Some additions / corrections to this, maybe a bit excessive at times, you've been warned.
 

H4. Freeboard - not a slider but a set of fixed options, for ease of player understanding and dev implementation. Yes i'm clearly inspired by some other game.
Options would be: high freeboard, medium/normal freeboard, low freeboard and monitor type. With each having some flat modifiers for overall stats. Maybe?

H8. Forecastle. - all of mentioned can be just grouped as Forecastle option, with adjustable length and two types: narrow (as on Dreadnought herself, leaving stripes of main deck on both sides for whatever use) or hull-wide (what you call a step deck). None would mean flush deck.
Something like Iowa is no forecastle, high freeboard. Hood is very long hull-wide forecastle, low freeboard. Dreadnought is long narrow forecastle, medium freeboard. German WW1 designs leave questions though.
Option for a stern cut-off (lowered deck part) could be useful for ships with two deck steps (also making Hood a no forecastle, stern cut-off, medium freeboard ship), but not that necessary.
Forecastle counts towards seakeeping, roughly as if the ship had higher freeboard, multiplied by forecastle length fraction. Narrow forecastle works worse that hull-wide.

I feel like these could do without the simplification. After all, doing this would completely discount things like the Japanese undulating sheer flush decks (which had no continuous level of freeboard, being entirely determined by seaworthiness at the point in question) and their unique style of undulating clipper bow.

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11 minutes ago, Shiki said:

I can't help but feel like 

I feel like these could do without the simplification. After all, doing this would completely discount things like the Japanese undulating sheer flush decks (which had no continuous level of freeboard, being entirely determined by seaworthiness at the point in question) and their unique style of undulating clipper bow.

This stuff goes under hull and bow/stern types, not here. And not all hulls and bows can have all features obviously.
(also, making entire feature just for one single rare thing isn't wise)

Edited by Cpt.Hissy
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Unfortunately none of this will happen. Both of those lists of ideas would greatly improve the game and wouldnt be that hard to understand for new players if there are proper tooltips. But I have a feeling the devs are mostly done with the ship designer beyond reworking armor a little. They'll shoot both lists down with the "it'd be too complex for the AI/new player" argument. Both are false as you can have a more restricted system for the AI, plus templates can be a thing for it to use. And legit this stuff isn't that hard to understand for new players. I like the first list better, for the devs, as it's more simple and it would be easy to learn. A certain kind of bow does this, a certain kind of stern does that. Changing the freeboard does this or that. Easy to learn. 

Another argument for the devs ignoring this excellent advice would be that it would invalidate a lot of their work. They've seemingly ignored so much good advice,  good imo anyways, that I'm sure they're not gonna just do a 180 even though they probably should. 

Spotting is such a stupid thing in this game right now. The only thing that changes it is weather, mast height, and time. And radar. But like turrets increase spotting and it makes no sense. In the day you're gonna see the masts and funnels of a ship first and you're also going to see all the ships within visual range. Unless they're blocked by other smoke or other ships. The fact that destroyers can sneak up real close in some cases and then just pop up is stupid as hell. There's a horizon and unless weather changes things you're gonna be able to see anything up to the horizon. The only change is where the horizon is for you which depends on mast height. CptHissy put stuff about searchlights for spotting at night which would be really nice cuz right now that's got like no love. But yeah each ship should have a visual range, day and night, based off mast height, or currently main tower height, and spotlights or whatever for night time spotting. Then weather can impact that and radar allows detection, but not identification, of ships beyond the visual range. Anything inside that range should be detected at least. That's a rant just cuz I noticed spotlights in the post. Spotting mechanic is stupid, identification time is stupid too.

Hard to code IDing a ship realistically probably. Ideally it would be easy and quick unless you have a lot of similar ships. Maybe it could be based off of how many turrets and funnels you have? Like there's a flat ID time, which would be lower than it is now, and the number of classes you have with the same number of turrets and funnels in that type adds a modifier to that time. Camo paint would decrease it. I think I could code something like that and I suck at coding. Simple IF statements would be all thats needed. Add a chance to falsely ID a ship, tied to the same counter increasing the chance the more similar classes you build. Camo paint would also increase the chance. Minor details like that would be very cool

Edited by Jatzi
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^^ on this
Mast height is not everything for spotting. Theoretically you can see over 20km away from a battleship's mast, but at 20 km even a battleship will appear so small you can easily just not notice it, even if it was presented in perfect weather, side on with contrast background - what is never the case in open sea.
Betted equipment, wisely placed platforms and even just having a lot of guys with binoculars does work against that, increasing the chances to spot something early.
This is what all those spotting modifiers are supposed to represent.
You can't that easily say which ship you see at such distances either, especially if it's not side on, from sharp angles they all are kinda same.

That said, current implementation of those factors seem to be... oversimplified, let's say, in same way as most other unsatisfactory details.

Edited by Cpt.Hissy
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19 hours ago, 1MajorKoenig said:

M5. Funnel Module (UPDATED)
We certainly need more funnely, bigger funnels and so on! But most importantly I want to place funnels ANYWHERE over the machinery spaces and on the superstructure and casemate deck over machinery spaces. And we need these thick trunked funnels and such 🙂

 

Edit: after thinking about it again and reading the comments I think every machinery section should have their own funnels. So the program should allow for placing funnels anywhere over the machinery spaces. Funnels should „cut“ through casemate decks and bridge structures if possible — with some exceptions like the coming tower part.

I changed slightly the funnel part. I think ideally every section of machinery gets their own funnels. If two machinery spaces are directly side by side one trunknes funnel would be ok.

 

11 hours ago, Cpt.Hissy said:

M5 Funnels. - Always go onto the main deck and can be intersected with casemate and forecastle (so to not be limited in position by those), but cannot be intersected with towers, masts, guns etc.

Basically like that 😁

 

11 hours ago, Cpt.Hissy said:

M1. Casemate deck. - Predefined models could more or less work,

Updated the opening post — agree 

 

11 hours ago, Cpt.Hissy said:

can be done simplified - Auto place machinery as a block in the middle, then allow placement of guns/magazines everywhere, but if some of them go over machinery - account for this by increasing machinery size by some value depending on gun size.
For "realism" it should somehow differentiate fore and aft guns from midships guns, with only latter able to go over machinery. It is technically possible to fit machinery parts everywhere around and past the guns, but it was never actually done for good reasons, so probably shouldn't be allowed.

On that part I would prefer a simplistic volume thing. I would like to see more detail but I don’t think it’s needed. However being able to decide on the overall layout would still be desirable, also if you think to building strange designs like a Nelson and such. 
 

At the end there is a balance to be found between effort to program all that, ease of use for the player and freedom to create great ships. 
 

I would therefore stick to the simple space boxes as on the sketches in yellow. One could say one box goes up to a certain HP output or so. Once your ship needs more the program adds a second machinery box. For a Dreadnought I would prefer to see something between two to three spaces depending on the ship.

 

Btw: thanks for typing this very detailed response!

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On 1/6/2021 at 2:38 PM, 1MajorKoenig said:

M1. Casemate Deck (UPDATED)

 

Possibility to add an additional deck below the actual superstructure. As mentioned by @Cpt.Hissy a few predefined models would most likely suffice here. It would be great though if the length of the deck could be changed to create longer or shorter ones and if Barbettes could „snap“ into the very ends of the deck (same for the step in the deck btw).

Ouch, that was exactly not the point ,i said predefined models would most likely NOT suffice. For same reasons why current superstructures and built-in-hull casemates don't.

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53 minutes ago, Cpt.Hissy said:

Ouch, that was exactly not the point ,i said predefined models would most likely NOT suffice. For same reasons why current superstructures and built-in-hull casemates don't.

😞 

 

Damn I misread you then. Although a deck is admittedly much simpler than a superstructure which is currently an combination of decks, bridge, conning tower, masts, etc.

 

A deck is just that - a deck. What if you make a couple of basic forms and a simple mechanism to scale it in length?

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On 1/6/2021 at 1:38 PM, 1MajorKoenig said:

Hi all!

After leaving my feedback regarding the Ship Designer - in my opinion the most interesting and unique selling proposition of the game - in multiple threads I decided to write up a summary of what I would like to see. The whole thing is aiming to improve flexibility and create more interesting (and less repetitive 😞  ) Designs!

 

As a Start I would expand on what we can do on the Hull! These steps are marked as H1 to H11:

 

H1. Hull Selection
Fewer hulls needed as the hull itself becomes part of the design process. Example: tumblehome, pre-dreadnought, dreadnought, fast battleship. Each hull comes with a tonnage restriction (eg. something like 20.000 - 50.000 t for dreadnoughts, 30.000 - 100.000 t for fast BBs, etc.).


H2. Tonnage Slider
As today but instead of simply lengthening the hull it would make the hull bigger in the whole (lenght, beam and draft) -> scale in all dimensions instead of just lengthening


H3. Lenght-to-Beam Slider
Change the hull form within the tonnage. Has impact on seakeeping, speed, turning, accelaration, stability, etc.


H4. Freeboard Slider (UPDATED)
Has an influence on stability, buoyoncy and target size (hit propbability of the enemy). Alternatively a simple high / medium / low option as proposed by @Cpt.Hissy . For me it is important that this is represented in 3d meaning a „low“ freeboard ship would sit deep in the water.


H5. Speed Slider
Desired top speed as today. Determines needed power output.


H6. Selection Bow-Section 
The bow has influence on seakeeping, speed, stability, etc. and is visually represented in the 3d model.
- Ram pronounced
- dreadnought bow
- straight bow
- slight positive
- pronounced positive / clipper bow

744065641_Bow1.jpg.c27e7b6ff1c8089dd1d9e40ffc96bb9a.jpg


H7. Selection Stern-Section
The stern has influence on seakeeping, speed, stability, etc. and is visually represented in the 3d model.
- cruiser
- round
- transom


H8. Selection Flush deck or step? (UPDATED)
Possibility to add:
- Forecastle 
- step 
- or flush deck

As @Cpt.Hissy mentioned, maybe there are better ways to achieve that. But in general iT would be good to shape generally the form, and decide if you want a step in the deck, a forecastle or just a flush deck. 


H9. Selection Propulsion
As today (triple expansion, turbines, diesel, etc.). 


H10. Place machinery Spaces 
Machinery space volume required based on all above criteria is calculated and represented as a couple of slices of the hull which can be moved fore / aft to be placed within the ship. These could be split up or placed next to each other, eg. in the center. Machinery spaces will not allow centreline primary guns over them. I would suggest to allow "side" primary gun turrets over machinery space though. Funnels can only be placed over machinery spaces. There should be a couple of seperate sections of these to be placed, eg. three. Machinery Space Section marked yellow (red means no placement of primary guns at the very ends of the ship).

2A94FFE5-EA86-4167-8E47-E66F33148DBD.jpeg.ae2915d800a665e145bd88a5aaf8d5f9.jpeg


 

H11. The osther selection boxes could mostly remain as they are in my opinion. However - I don't like the "Bulkheads" Slider at all! It is simply a matter of "the-more-the-merrier" thing. I would replace it with some selection box potentially like the one for double bottom.

 


General remark to the Armor: I am one of the few who don't mind the armnor settings through thickness on certain parst. However there is currently an issue how the program determines "main belt" - it is the center three sections of the ship regardless of what's inside. I would propose a dynamic "main belt" calculation based on the first main gun or main gun barbette and the last one and including all the machinery spaces. 

 

 

Once the hull is defined we can come to the modules which are currently added in the center section in the lower part of the designer. To give the player the possibility to create much more diverse designs the current modules are split up into more granular categories - named M1 to M7:

 

M1. Casemate Deck (UPDATED)
Possibility to add an additional deck below the actual superstructure. As mentioned by @Cpt.Hissy a few predefined models would most likely suffice here. It would be great though if the length of the deck could be changed to create longer or shorter ones and if Barbettes could „snap“ into the very ends of the deck (same for the step in the deck btw).


M2. Bridge Module
Lower half of the current "main tower" module. This module includes basic fire control, damage control, spotting, etc. values


M3. Mast Module
On top of the bridge we would put a mast which provides different bonuses to the bridge base values
- Spotting top (mostly spotting bonusses)
- Tripod Mast (spotting and long range accuracy)
- Pole mast (spotting and long range accuracy)
- plus some more modern masts, such as the thick Bismarck mast, the Dunkerque mast, etc. as stylish elements (spotting and long range accuracy)

B58349A6-F90D-4687-B8FD-15EA3C07CB06.thumb.jpeg.8ef933496e06fba63eda36350788197c.jpeg



M4. Rear Tower Module
Mostly like today but it must be easier to combine them with other modules, eg. smaller modules


M5. Funnel Module (UPDATED)
We certainly need more funnely, bigger funnels and so on! But most importantly I want to place funnels ANYWHERE over the machinery spaces and on the superstructure and casemate deck over machinery spaces. And we need these thick trunked funnels and such 🙂

 

Edit: after thinking about it again and reading the comments I think every machinery section should have their own funnels. So the program should allow for placing funnels anywhere over the machinery spaces. Funnels should „cut“ through casemate decks and bridge structures if possible — with some exceptions like the coming tower part.


M6. Main Guns and Barbettes
With all of the above it become easy: you can place main guns and mnain gun barbettes ANYWHERE on the ship - safe bow and stern and machinery spaces for centerline armament. I would propose to allow side mounted main guns over machinery spaces to simulate that they sit to the side of the engines, boilers and such.


M7. Secondary guns and Barbettes
Secondary Guns should be able to be places ANYWHERE safe the very bow and stern section. It would be awesome if placing such guns could "CUT" into the casemate deck if placed there. No idea how difficult that would be to do.

 


AI Designs: we discussed multiple times that the AI needs support to avoid these "Clown Car" Designs - well for them just put a couple of hardpoints and presets in the background - but leave the players the freedom!

 

Thanks all for reading and hope you like it!
 

Great idea. Ge is too far in development to make it happen tho. Imo we just need to settle for what we have now and just ask for guns and barbettes beeing more flexible in thier placement.

And btw I said in some post that machinery space does not exist currently in the game, and proof for that is that you can place guns before you place anything else and thry can run the entire lenght of the ship, so putting amidship barbette is all the more reasonable since it elevates the gun so it does not cut into the engines. My 2 cents here, your idea is great for UAD 2 if the 1st one isna success. 

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32 minutes ago, DerRichtigeArzt said:

Great idea. Ge is too far in development to make it happen tho. Imo we just need to settle for what we have now and just ask for guns and barbettes beeing more flexible in thier placement.

And btw I said in some post that machinery space does not exist currently in the game, and proof for that is that you can place guns before you place anything else and thry can run the entire lenght of the ship, so putting amidship barbette is all the more reasonable since it elevates the gun so it does not cut into the engines. My 2 cents here, your idea is great for UAD 2 if the 1st one isna success. 

You are correct that machinery space doesn’t exist today — and so doesn’t hull design or any other of the suggested improvements.  I hope though that you are wrong about your opening statement that the current designer is what the game will get once it is ready. Because quite frankly that would not be enough by any means 

 

My impression is more that the current version is a simplistic first quick and dirty version to get the show going but it is far far from being in a final state?

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1 hour ago, DerRichtigeArzt said:

Great idea. Ge is too far in development to make it happen tho. Imo we just need to settle for what we have now and just ask for guns and barbettes beeing more flexible in thier placement.

And btw I said in some post that machinery space does not exist currently in the game, and proof for that is that you can place guns before you place anything else and thry can run the entire lenght of the ship, so putting amidship barbette is all the more reasonable since it elevates the gun so it does not cut into the engines. My 2 cents here, your idea is great for UAD 2 if the 1st one isna success. 

Sorry for being rude, but people like you is how greed wins and projects fail. "I'll eat whatever they shove at me obediently, and throw more money at them if they ask". You are paying them, you should at least ask for a product you've paid for - a product that was and still is advertised as something that current iteration of this game is so far from being yet.

First of all... let's be honest, currently game is not far in development. It's almost just a tech demo rather, they might be too early with releasing it to public. Many parts of it clearly aren't meant to be final, or at least they do look like placeholder parts of in-dev game (even if compared to their other games), if my little experience means something.

Next, if this one is going to be "released" in state of a mess it is today only to be sold again in more finished state later (maybe even multiple times, some other dev team did just that), i won't be buying anything else from them. It's not a new trick, and I can hope that i'm not alone in understanding it. And I hope dev team also understands it.

All that said, apparently proper development of this may take many many years for this small team, i should be more patient with complains and wait what they'll come with.

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On 1/6/2021 at 10:40 PM, Jatzi said:

The fact that destroyers can sneak up real close in some cases and then just pop up is stupid as hell.

This bothers me a huge amount, especially in early/mid time period. In WW1 a lot of battles and strategy hinged on comparative ranges - staying out of range of your opponent while continuing to fire, or otherwise trying to close the distance to bring a more numerous but smaller calibre battery into action. This was important precisely because both ships could usually see each other outside the effective range of their weapons.

The default in this game right now is that before radar, even large ships usually 'pop up' within range of heavy secondary or lighter main battery weapons. It's completely unrealistic, as well as immersion-breakingly poor gameplay.

 

On 1/6/2021 at 8:22 PM, Cpt.Hissy said:

add. Main Barbette Height. - No more variety of sizes of barbettes. Have built in barbette coming with the main gun turrets, and a setting of barbette height. It can be a slider with some small increments, or have just a couple of predefined positions, like Deck level, +1 superfiring, +2 superfiring. Barbette itself is always mounted onto main deck, regardless of superstructures, and you must lift it up with height setting to get above those.

This x100000. There is no need for ugly, often oversized separate barbettes which don't match the turrets or even fit the deck width - British Dreadnought I, looking at you. Just making a raised barbette an option when placing a turret is an elegant solution from a more civilised age.

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6 hours ago, SonicB said:

This x100000. There is no need for ugly, often oversized separate barbettes which don't match the turrets or even fit the deck width - British Dreadnought I, looking at you. Just making a raised barbette an option when placing a turret is an elegant solution from a more civilised age.

Thanks I added this point. Can’t be super hard to do actually but agree that it can look somewhat stupid to have a huge barbette with a tiny turret on it currently 

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This is not a realistic request if you ever want the campaign mode.
and I want the campaign mode.

The Campaign is what will make this game playable and fun, not a designer overhaul.

Think on this- any change to the designer means a change to the AI design programming, UI design, Modeling, game stats and balance, and subsequently Combat AI.
It isn't feasible. The Designer is what everything else is built of of.

If you want to design realistic ships of your own absolute design, I might suggest a 3D modelling program and perhaps an engineering degree.
Its unrealistic to expect an indie game dev to produce these tools for you, and indeed if they did, it might take an extra year, and would come with its own compromises.

When dealing with an indie company, everything is some sort of compromise.

I'd like my Campaign please.
 

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19 minutes ago, Faolind said:

This is not a realistic request if you ever want the campaign mode.
and I want the campaign mode.

The Campaign is what will make this game playable and fun, not a designer overhaul.

Think on this- any change to the designer means a change to the AI design programming, UI design, Modeling, game stats and balance, and subsequently Combat AI.
It isn't feasible. The Designer is what everything else is built of of.

If you want to design realistic ships of your own absolute design, I might suggest a 3D modelling program and perhaps an engineering degree.
Its unrealistic to expect an indie game dev to produce these tools for you, and indeed if they did, it might take an extra year, and would come with its own compromises.

When dealing with an indie company, everything is some sort of compromise.

I'd like my Campaign please.
 

I see your point but completely disagree. The current designer is very very basic - more a rapid prototype.
 

Each suggestion here is “just” an extension or improvement of the existing logic - and none of it is really complicated.

 

Your suggestions on modelling ships has nothing to do with the game. But such a game needs a solid design fun to not be to shallow. 

 

And that we will get a campaign is out of question. Essentially the ship designer together with the campaign is the heart of the game. These two define the game and will decide on its success 

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13 hours ago, Cpt.Hissy said:

Sorry for being rude, but people like you is how greed wins and projects fail. "I'll eat whatever they shove at me obediently, and throw more money at them if they ask". You are paying them, you should at least ask for a product you've paid for - a product that was and still is advertised as something that current iteration of this game is so far from being yet.

First of all... let's be honest, currently game is not far in development. It's almost just a tech demo rather, they might be too early with releasing it to public. Many parts of it clearly aren't meant to be final, or at least they do look like placeholder parts of in-dev game (even if compared to their other games), if my little experience means something.

Next, if this one is going to be "released" in state of a mess it is today only to be sold again in more finished state later (maybe even multiple times, some other dev team did just that), i won't be buying anything else from them. It's not a new trick, and I can hope that i'm not alone in understanding it. And I hope dev team also understands it.

All that said, apparently proper development of this may take many many years for this small team, i should be more patient with complains and wait what they'll come with.

Im just beeing realistic here, game labs is stretched too thin, game may not be far in development, but some of the current systems are probably already hardcoded. I would love to have a game that @1MajorKoenighas envisioned, but unless they drop some of the other projects or hire more peeps we wont get it. Modding support is needed if they want the game to be alive. 

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5 hours ago, Faolind said:

The Designer is what everything else is built of of.

 

And this is EXACTLY the reason why it MUST be improved.
No campaign will save a construct based on faulty foundation.

I'd say either improve the designer drastically, or omit the designer alltogether for a variety of recreated historical ships and make just another history based strategy (i'll be sad and likely won't play that, but it actually will be a solid game anyway)
 

As for mods, many may disagree, but i prefer my games to actually include a game, and not just be an empty barebone with mod support - "pay us to make your game yourself"

Edited by Cpt.Hissy
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23 minutes ago, Cpt.Hissy said:



I'd say either improve the designer drastically, or omit the designer alltogether for a variety of recreated historical ships and make just another history based strategy (i'll be sad and likely won't play that, but it actually will be a solid game anyway)
 

Uh no. Right now there are so many things completely non-historic or unrealistic, the designer is the key lynch pin of the game. That is what makes this game different from any other out there including RTW. 

The devs have acknowledged improvements to the designer are planned. The question is how much are they willing or can do to improve it. 

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