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PROPSAL: Ship Designer 2.0


1MajorKoenig

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2 hours ago, madham82 said:

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. 

Agree that the designer is the central selling point. Without it the decades old “Jutland” is probably not worse. At least it has reasonable mechanics and a very good campaign. 
 

Making your own ships though will bring this game into a different league!

 

Yes I think I also remember that devs wanted to improve the designer. It would be fantastic if they’d let us know what their current view on possible scope is! I mean - certainly the list of improvements can be brought into priority sequence 

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8 minutes ago, 1MajorKoenig said:

Yes I think I also remember that devs wanted to improve the designer. It would be fantastic if they’d let us know what their current view on possible scope is! I mean - certainly the list of improvements can be brought into priority sequence 

Therein lies the central problem many have commented on, lack of communication. They seem to not want to tell us what "will not" change and just leave it with a vague statement of "we are looking into it". I'm not saying they should tell us everything. However, if the community keeps asking for X, and it is simply not possible or the direction they want to take...say so. That way people won't spend loads of time writing/debating threads like this, only to never see any of it come into being. 

I for one would love to hear them ask more closed ended questions about fix/changes instead of "what is needs to be improved, what is broke, what new ship hull to add, etc..."

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3 hours ago, madham82 said:

Therein lies the central problem many have commented on, lack of communication. They seem to not want to tell us what "will not" change and just leave it with a vague statement of "we are looking into it". I'm not saying they should tell us everything. However, if the community keeps asking for X, and it is simply not possible or the direction they want to take...say so. That way people won't spend loads of time writing/debating threads like this, only to never see any of it come into being. 

I for one would love to hear them ask more closed ended questions about fix/changes instead of "what is needs to be improved, what is broke, what new ship hull to add, etc..."

Valid question. @Nick Thomadis - are you able and allowed to give us your view on the ship designer and what you plan to achieve or even what direction you have in mind?

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I have been summoned, thank you. I've sat and chewed on this topic for a little while trying to figure out what to say. 

First off, I fully agree. The ship designer needs a heavy duty overhaul, and I really like a lot of what @1MajorKoenigand @Cpt.Hissyhave purposed. I have several of my own ideas but they coincide with a lot of what's already been said. I'd be so happy if they really overhauled and redesigned the ship designer, as its just really clunky right now, though the issues with it have been so frequently aired that they don't really need to be gone over again. 

Despite that, I uh.. well, I'll be a downer here and I'm sorry, but I just am not convinced that the devs will actually give the ship designer the overhaul we wish they would. I see their lack of communication on the matter being indicative of an "ignore the problem and it will go away" mindset. The problem being the communities views on the ship designer. 

To me, it looks like the devs top priority as of right now is the naval combat aspect of the game. That's really the only part they seem to tweak and modify and bug fix with any regularity which only proves to me that the vast amount of their energy and assets are dedicated to those mechanics. While I don't like the ship designer (and am in no means defending it with this following statement) it's functional. I really think that's whats important to the dev team at this point.  

 

Here's where I'm going to diverge for a moment and go on a bit of a ramble and it might seem like I'm going off into the deep end so feel free to ignore this part if you want.

I don't know anything about coding or game design but I do know a few things about construction and home remodeling. Try and stick with me and I'll do my best to have it all make sense.

Its reasonable enough to look at the two, making a video game and building a house, and see the similarities. Both are at their core an investment of money, work and resources into a project to deliver a product to the customer in a set amount of time. They both have a budget, they both have a time line that they need to meet, they both involve a large amount of work, and they both have the goal of making money. 

So effectively that means that the dev team assigned to UA:D were given X amount of money by game labs to build UA:D in Y man hours with the hope that it would make at least X profit upon release.  

If you do any digging on their company, as I have, you can find a few things available to the public. inb4 I get banned for this info.

They have released 5 games, they have four games under development including UA:D.

They've got between 11 and 50 employees according to what I've found. Maksim Zasov is the companies CEO, our friend Nick is the lead games designer at Game Labs.

We know from the credits that UA:D has 3 people working on it full time, 3 people working on it part time, and 4 people in project support roles (QA, consulting, etc). There is only 1 full time programmer and 1 part time programmer from that handful of people. We can assume that the 3 part time developers and 4 project supporters are also involved in at least one of their three other projects. I've played mods for HoI4 that have had larger teams working on them. 

So we know how many people are working on UA:D but we don't know the budget that they've been allocated, and we don't know what time line they were given to get this project done. We do know that things are already running behind scheduled, eg the steam release from this prior August, and unfortunately delays tend to result in content getting cut. I'm not saying that's going to happen here, but that it's something that frequently happens in any project that over runs it's time line.

We also don't know how much of that starting budget they've already spent. We do have a rough idea on how long they've been working on this project though. The earliest blog posts for UA:D are april 2019. So we can extrapolate that they've been working on the game for at least 2 years as of now assuming that they were working on it before making news public. So that's like, 3 guys who've been working on this project full time for at apx 2 years. It's been in early access since october 2019. How much more time do they have left to work on it? When do they expect to release it? It can't linger under construction for ever.. Sure you can say it's still in early access, but a quick google research says that games only typically stay in early access for about one year. Take that for what it's worth to you.

To assume they'll work on it "until it's done" is unrealistic and doesn't typically happen unless the company working on the project has unlimited money or a very generous investor. At the end of the day Game Lab's primary goal is to make money. Any project has to maintain time lines to a reasonable degree in order to stay profitable and make money and not become too top heavy in development/build costs. You end up with the sunk cost dilemma. The devs time costs money, making games costs money, it boils down to money for man hours and there will come a time where it will be more profitable for game labs to reassign devs to new titles that could make new money, than to keep working on existing titles that may have gotten the majority of their profits in already. I'm not saying that's happening here, either. I'm just saying this is how this kinda thing works.

What's the point of looking at all this? Of me bringing any of this up? We're asking the devs, or rather one dude whose the programmer to scrap what work hes been paid to do and invested time and resources on for the past two years and rebuild it more or less completely or effectively completely overhaul it. We're asking them this regardless of what ever their time line or scheduled dictates, or how much money and resources that they've already invested. I just don't think that's realistic. There comes a time in any long term project like this when "good enough" will do. And unfortunately, given the manpower and time invested into the game in it's current state I'm completely of the opinion that we're getting a "good enough its functional" ship designer.  We don't have enough clout to really dictate too much change and while we might be dissatisfied with the ship designer, there's very few of us in the grand scheme of things. What do you think the % of the mass market who buy the game will be just fine with it is? Who are the devs building the game for? You can't please everyone all the time. 

I invite the devs to prove me wrong, I'll happily eat my hat, but as it stands I don't think we'll get any major ship designer tweaks, I think the devs are over stretched and what we're getting is the best that they can offer, and I think that's also why there's so little communication from them. Some times it's best to keep your customers in the dark, than to give them bad news, or tell them no. 

I love this game, but I don't play it much anymore. I've really mostly given up on it and am only waiting to see what happens out of curiosity more than dedication. I'd like to be able to change that but as it stands I don't have much reason to. I'm just trying to step back and take a look at the whole project from different perspective. Sorry if I've been too much a downer with this post. 

But hey, I could be completely wrong. I'm just a fish after all. 

 

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1 hour ago, Fishyfish said:

I have been summoned, thank you. I've sat and chewed on this topic for a little while trying to figure out what to say. 

First off, I fully agree. The ship designer needs a heavy duty overhaul, and I really like a lot of what @1MajorKoenigand @Cpt.Hissyhave purposed. I have several of my own ideas but they coincide with a lot of what's already been said. I'd be so happy if they really overhauled and redesigned the ship designer, as its just really clunky right now, though the issues with it have been so frequently aired that they don't really need to be gone over again. 

Despite that, I uh.. well, I'll be a downer here and I'm sorry, but I just am not convinced that the devs will actually give the ship designer the overhaul we wish they would. I see their lack of communication on the matter being indicative of an "ignore the problem and it will go away" mindset. The problem being the communities views on the ship designer. 

To me, it looks like the devs top priority as of right now is the naval combat aspect of the game. That's really the only part they seem to tweak and modify and bug fix with any regularity which only proves to me that the vast amount of their energy and assets are dedicated to those mechanics. While I don't like the ship designer (and am in no means defending it with this following statement) it's functional. I really think that's whats important to the dev team at this point.  

 

Here's where I'm going to diverge for a moment and go on a bit of a ramble and it might seem like I'm going off into the deep end so feel free to ignore this part if you want.

I don't know anything about coding or game design but I do know a few things about construction and home remodeling. Try and stick with me and I'll do my best to have it all make sense.

Its reasonable enough to look at the two, making a video game and building a house, and see the similarities. Both are at their core an investment of money, work and resources into a project to deliver a product to the customer in a set amount of time. They both have a budget, they both have a time line that they need to meet, they both involve a large amount of work, and they both have the goal of making money. 

So effectively that means that the dev team assigned to UA:D were given X amount of money by game labs to build UA:D in Y man hours with the hope that it would make at least X profit upon release.  

If you do any digging on their company, as I have, you can find a few things available to the public. inb4 I get banned for this info.

They have released 5 games, they have four games under development including UA:D.

They've got between 11 and 50 employees according to what I've found. Maksim Zasov is the companies CEO, our friend Nick is the lead games designer at Game Labs.

We know from the credits that UA:D has 3 people working on it full time, 3 people working on it part time, and 4 people in project support roles (QA, consulting, etc). There is only 1 full time programmer and 1 part time programmer from that handful of people. We can assume that the 3 part time developers and 4 project supporters are also involved in at least one of their three other projects. I've played mods for HoI4 that have had larger teams working on them. 

So we know how many people are working on UA:D but we don't know the budget that they've been allocated, and we don't know what time line they were given to get this project done. We do know that things are already running behind scheduled, eg the steam release from this prior August, and unfortunately delays tend to result in content getting cut. I'm not saying that's going to happen here, but that it's something that frequently happens in any project that over runs it's time line.

We also don't know how much of that starting budget they've already spent. We do have a rough idea on how long they've been working on this project though. The earliest blog posts for UA:D are april 2019. So we can extrapolate that they've been working on the game for at least 2 years as of now assuming that they were working on it before making news public. So that's like, 3 guys who've been working on this project full time for at apx 2 years. It's been in early access since october 2019. How much more time do they have left to work on it? When do they expect to release it? It can't linger under construction for ever.. Sure you can say it's still in early access, but a quick google research says that games only typically stay in early access for about one year. Take that for what it's worth to you.

To assume they'll work on it "until it's done" is unrealistic and doesn't typically happen unless the company working on the project has unlimited money or a very generous investor. At the end of the day Game Lab's primary goal is to make money. Any project has to maintain time lines to a reasonable degree in order to stay profitable and make money and not become too top heavy in development/build costs. You end up with the sunk cost dilemma. The devs time costs money, making games costs money, it boils down to money for man hours and there will come a time where it will be more profitable for game labs to reassign devs to new titles that could make new money, than to keep working on existing titles that may have gotten the majority of their profits in already. I'm not saying that's happening here, either. I'm just saying this is how this kinda thing works.

What's the point of looking at all this? Of me bringing any of this up? We're asking the devs, or rather one dude whose the programmer to scrap what work hes been paid to do and invested time and resources on for the past two years and rebuild it more or less completely or effectively completely overhaul it. We're asking them this regardless of what ever their time line or scheduled dictates, or how much money and resources that they've already invested. I just don't think that's realistic. There comes a time in any long term project like this when "good enough" will do. And unfortunately, given the manpower and time invested into the game in it's current state I'm completely of the opinion that we're getting a "good enough its functional" ship designer.  We don't have enough clout to really dictate too much change and while we might be dissatisfied with the ship designer, there's very few of us in the grand scheme of things. What do you think the % of the mass market who buy the game will be just fine with it is? Who are the devs building the game for? You can't please everyone all the time. 

I invite the devs to prove me wrong, I'll happily eat my hat, but as it stands I don't think we'll get any major ship designer tweaks, I think the devs are over stretched and what we're getting is the best that they can offer, and I think that's also why there's so little communication from them. Some times it's best to keep your customers in the dark, than to give them bad news, or tell them no. 

I love this game, but I don't play it much anymore. I've really mostly given up on it and am only waiting to see what happens out of curiosity more than dedication. I'd like to be able to change that but as it stands I don't have much reason to. I'm just trying to step back and take a look at the whole project from different perspective. Sorry if I've been too much a downer with this post. 

But hey, I could be completely wrong. I'm just a fish after all. 

 

A lot of this was going through my mind as well. I have seen projects go south - big projects.

 

Regardless there are two - in my opinion huge - factors to keep in mind in this case though:

 

1) the game has great potential. It fills a niche a lot of players would like to see filled. 
 

2) 2020 is a complete write off for the game. I joined a year ago and within this time literally ZERO substantial happened. 
 

Going off the trailer of the ship designer it gives us an idea what they had in mind but apparently they did not manage to get it to work. Now combine it with replacing the main developer and zero progress - one can only suspect that the team isn’t entirely satisfied with the progress either. 
 

Yes at some point the budget is gone. So what do you do? Either: 

 

a) release the game in a dire state, have it dead on arrival and let it die in piece. “Don’t throw good money after the bad money”

 

b) you come the the conclusion that the project didn’t go to plan but has the potential to still win. You formalize a change which outlines what needs to be done to save the project and what it will cost. You release the game later and at higher costs but you could still win if you do the right things

 

I have no Idea how the devs see the state of the project but I am still hoping that they go for b)

 

And btw I also struggle to play the game as is and I do so much less than I would like to. But that is because it is simply not in a state it offers what is needed.


The proposal I made outlines basically the way I would envision such a designer but realistically I would go for the following priorities to improve the current version to something “functional” as you say (which in my view it is not as of today - it is a prototype in my view):

 

1) split up the main tower in at least bridge and mast 

2) add different bow and stern forms to select for the hull 

3) make the placement (hard points) more flexible 

 

These would be an absolute MUST in my view and would already greatly improve the designer although the others would also be important. But one could at least include substantial improvements to have something to work with for now 

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4 minutes ago, Zuikaku said:

You all talk about placing machinery spaces. And what about boiler rooms?

For the sake of simplicity I would summarize boilers, engines and everything in simple “machinery” space boxes. You can go as granular as you want but I tried to hit a balance between needed detail, ease of use and effort to program 

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That is fair point Mr. Fishy. I think we all more or less see it. But one can dream?
As this is exactly what it could be for many, a dream game coming real.

I still have hopes. I know some games that were sitting in EA for nearly a decade before they left it with a success, and i know some games that looked worthless at start, and now i love them.
Last year haven't seen any significant updates here, but it was a mess for whole world, and double mess for UA:D team in particular. This year in fact isn't much better for now. So let's keep our whatever crossed for this project to stay alive.

I would also add, I've got an impression that devs themselves didn't realise what they are getting into by announcing this project as "realistic", and now may be sitting there in confusion.
To me it looks like original design of this was based not on history and reality, but on other games. And amongst those RTW might be the most "realistic" one. And they prepared to satisfy those other games fans, or i don't even know who, but not the naval geeks they got.
So in my sillyness I also hope that posts and discussions like this may help them understand what their players actually want, and maybe even inspire on how it can be done.

Though how many of us concerned ones there is, and how many players are actually just happy with what they have?

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3 hours ago, Fishyfish said:

". . . Sorry if I've been too much a downer with this post."

Oh, no need to be sorry Fishy. I'd say your post is quite diplomatic.

Over the last 4-5 months or so, I've gone back and forth contemplating whether or not to post (an essay's worth of) my thoughts and experience having followed this project since October last year [2019].
I haven't due to:

  1. Getting easily fatigued.
  2. Most likely the post won't "resonate" with the majority of people on these forums.
  3. Why would anyone waste time reading about my opinions anyway?
  4. What's the point, really? It wouldn't change anything.[1]

 Kinda like how "99%" of the excellent and detailed feedback, suggestions and write-ups seemingly haven't.

Makes me wonder how an "open-source" naval game would pan out.

Edited by Mindstrip
Posted prematurely. Accidentally "fat-fingered" key combo..
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Gents,

I don’t think we should make it a binary discussion. This is not “my way or highway”.

 

I have still somehow great hopes for the game as I absolutely love the basic idea. I wanted to summarize in this thread what I would like to see to give the devs an idea of what I think - as a feedback or as a wish. And I wanted to collect some opinions from others who care about this project.

 

In my view the three mentioned improvements out of the full list would make it a “minimum viable product” - not great but functional:

2 hours ago, 1MajorKoenig said:

1) split up the main tower in at least bridge and mast 

2) add different bow and stern forms to select for the hull 

3) make the placement (hard points) more flexible 


And I hope we will see these (smallish) improvements at the very least.

 

The other question on the budget - I mean the devs could at some point say “here is what we can and will do” - and such a small company could even be more creative about things. 
For example: they could deliver said MVP within the project and set up a “crowdfunding” for additional features. If there are enough people willing to invest something on them - do them. And give these guys cosmetic rewards such as camo patterns and alternative 3d models for bridges, masts, etc.

You just need to be creative 

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3 hours ago, 1MajorKoenig said:

1) split up the main tower in at least bridge and mast 

2) add different bow and stern forms to select for the hull 

3) make the placement (hard points) more flexible

I think these are a very good start.  The biggest issues I run into are lack of options on where to place the towers which then leads to a lack of options on where to emplace the main guns because of point three.  Its almost impossible on many hull forms to have a turret layout of 2 forward and 2 rear with super firing turrets because most designs don't have many hardpoints to the rear and often you can't put in a superimposed structure at all to the real.  I should be able to build something along the lines of the USS Tennessee but I never can, look at how close the rear turrets are to one another.

SD Model Makers > Battleship Models > Tennessee Class Battleship Models

The one other thing I would say really needs to be added as a vital feature is a variable main belt length.  You need to be penalized for non-compact designs and turret farms.  The computer seems to have a love for 5 main turrets running from bow to stern.  Somehow the system has to account for this by making you expend more weight on armor to cover all of that up.  Because it seems like almost all my ships only have hardpoints for rear main guns overhanging the stern right now the belt should be absurdly long but it doesn't seem to make any difference.

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I would also add speed needs to cost more at the higher end of the spectrum in terms of tonnage.

See the following classes that are close contemporaries.

Queen Elizabeth

32,590 long tons (26 knots)

Revenge Class

29,590 long tons (21 knots)

Hood Class

45,470 long tons (32 knots)

So when I do a quick a dirty approximation of these ships I get the following.

QE:  35,750 tons

Revenge:  34,728 tons

Hood:  41,421 tons

Keep in mind I am building the Hood on the exact same hull.  All I am changing is the speed on a ship with 8 main guns (actually 14 instead of 15 inch because in 1916 the RN doesn't have 15 inch guns in the builder), 10 single 6 inch secondary guns and the exact same amount of armor on all three.  Speed is way, way, way too cheap in terms of tonnage in the designer and we end up with too many fast ships, particularly in the early period.  The tonnage cost from Revenge to QE in the game was about 1/3rd of what it should be.  The tonnage cost of QE to Hood for speed was again roughly 1/3rd of what it should be and this was without using an actual battlecruiser hull which would be more lightly built, longer in width to beam and suited to speed.  The cost of speed varies on the cube of the speed in terms of SHP installed.  In general the system appears to calculate SHP roughly accurately but does not allocate enough weight to the engines.

Iowa Class and South Dakota Class are the same story.  It cost 13,000 tons or so to pickup 6 knots of speed on pretty similar armor and guns.  Its actually shockingly similar to the difference in weight between the QE and the Hood (Hood being a very different hull form that was a true Battlecruiser).

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On 1/6/2021 at 4:18 PM, 1MajorKoenig said:

Let's ping some dudes to see what they do:

Mostly waiting for devs to say something - lack of communication is not very inspirational for writing yet another wishlist [turns the page] - and not just for me, it seems.

Anyway. I think Torpedo protection should have type+thickness mechanics similar to armor. And be destructible, of course, instead of permanent fixed % damage reduction.

 

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@Fishyfish

Well said. However, I think the studio is a particularly bad position atm and whatever they choose to do, they wont win. So most obvious is it's a steam early access release that alone it an uphill battle and they have to attempt and counter the reputation from a poor release game of Naval Action and ok release of Age of Sail. Their other projects are mostly ok as well. I would say the only good standing release would be the Ultimate General games. Overall most of their games go under the radar in most cases, which doesn't help with funding. Now consider this game's early release. They've already stated the campaign isn't going to be a final release, only 2 nations at first I believe. That's going to be rough. Now stack that with an incomplete sim model, incomplete ship editor (That doesn't even look like the trailer that's still on steam), incomplete AI, etc. The future of this game is looking bleak, particularly if the early access on steam performs or is perceived poorly.

I can say, personally, that after dealing with Ultimate General, Naval Action and viewing how this game is progressing and what was advertised on the steam trailer (which is what made me buy into it). This will probably be the last game I buy from these guys. They always have great ideas but poor implementation. Maybe that's from attempting to build so many games with such a small studio? I don't know.

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What was wrong with the Age of Sail release? I like that game. I dont know how much replayability it has but I like it. They at least delivered what they promised with that game and out of all the sailing combat games it's probably the best one out there.

Yeah I've lost most of my hope for this game. I still have enough hope to stick around and keep the game on my laptop but I'm fairly pessimistic about things. If they'd just say what was up, where they want to go and explain some stuff then that'd be great. What are you wanting to do with this game? More arcadey? More realistic? Why will the campaign release be so limited? Where is the campaign? Clear and concise thoughts on the ship designer. 

What's funny to me is if they heavily invested in this game and made it fairly realistic and then cranked up the price people would buy it. I'd buy it and I know others that would too

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While the proposed changes are a good idea, I do not think they will happen. The devs have a sunk cost that they are reluctant to throw away because they have already delayed the game's Steam release. They're likely pressured for time and will have to release a product that retains the original core mechanics, for better or for worse.

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While i like the ideas proposed by @1MajorKoenig in the OP. I have to say that it is way to ambitious to expect the devs to overhaul the game mechanics in such a way that is needed to make those ideas into reality. there are several reasons for this. and those are:

-A severe lack of manpower working on the game which makes implementing a large overhaul extremely exhausting for the one full time programmer who needs to do it

- With small manpower logically follows a small budget. Even if they did the overhaul that could mean other parts of the game like the campaign simply don't have any funding left to complete them.

- Like others have mentioned. they have to finish the game to make money off it. This is not cyberpunk where the developers had years to work out the concept and a large amount of investors to keep the money flowing in. What we are dealing with here is an Indie developer with an extremely limited pool to draw money from.


The best we can hope for is smaller scale improvements to the mechanics we currently have in game. Something like deciding the width and length of your ship more accurately when you increase tonnage, and allowing more freedom to place turrets,barbettes,towers and other modules where you want them instead of having to place them in predetermined positions like we have now. Those two things i just mentioned are realistic to expect. because they require small adjustments to the code to implement. And are rational changes to see in the future.

However when we go to things like deciding internals like engine rooms.ammo racks etc, Deciding which part of the belt has what thickness and fully customizable belt length etc. Too many variables are needed to be coded in which will be unrealistic to expect from a single programmer. And not only does that single programmer need to code it, he also has to bugtest it so that all those variables interact properly with eachother. this will take alot of time. It already takes a huge amount of time for triple A developers which have entire teams of programmers to bugtest their games . now imagine a single programmer with extremely limited funding needing to do the same. this will ether  end up with the new mechanics being introduced extremely buggy(which makes the effort infested into them for nothing). Or take so much time to implement properly that it will never see the light of day because the men hours that are required to be put in cannot be funded because of limited budget. 


In a perfect world we could have all those mechanics implemented perfectly and this game would be  the dream naval game everyone wants it to be. But  the reality of game development  tells us that  expecting such a dream game from a developer that has such limited resources is nothing but wishfull thinking.

So tone down your expectations to a rational level and hope the devs can make, not a perfect, but a good game. Or be the creator of your own dissapointment with the game.



 



 

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4 hours ago, ReefKip said:

While i like the ideas proposed by @1MajorKoenig in the OP. I have to say that it is way to ambitious to expect the devs to overhaul the game mechanics in such a way that is needed to make those ideas into reality. there are several reasons for this. and those are:

-A severe lack of manpower working on the game which makes implementing a large overhaul extremely exhausting for the one full time programmer who needs to do it

- With small manpower logically follows a small budget. Even if they did the overhaul that could mean other parts of the game like the campaign simply don't have any funding left to complete them.

- Like others have mentioned. they have to finish the game to make money off it. This is not cyberpunk where the developers had years to work out the concept and a large amount of investors to keep the money flowing in. What we are dealing with here is an Indie developer with an extremely limited pool to draw money from.


The best we can hope for is smaller scale improvements to the mechanics we currently have in game. Something like deciding the width and length of your ship more accurately when you increase tonnage, and allowing more freedom to place turrets,barbettes,towers and other modules where you want them instead of having to place them in predetermined positions like we have now. Those two things i just mentioned are realistic to expect. because they require small adjustments to the code to implement. And are rational changes to see in the future.

However when we go to things like deciding internals like engine rooms.ammo racks etc, Deciding which part of the belt has what thickness and fully customizable belt length etc. Too many variables are needed to be coded in which will be unrealistic to expect from a single programmer. And not only does that single programmer need to code it, he also has to bugtest it so that all those variables interact properly with eachother. this will take alot of time. It already takes a huge amount of time for triple A developers which have entire teams of programmers to bugtest their games . now imagine a single programmer with extremely limited funding needing to do the same. this will ether  end up with the new mechanics being introduced extremely buggy(which makes the effort infested into them for nothing). Or take so much time to implement properly that it will never see the light of day because the men hours that are required to be put in cannot be funded because of limited budget. 


In a perfect world we could have all those mechanics implemented perfectly and this game would be  the dream naval game everyone wants it to be. But  the reality of game development  tells us that  expecting such a dream game from a developer that has such limited resources is nothing but wishfull thinking.

So tone down your expectations to a rational level and hope the devs can make, not a perfect, but a good game. Or be the creator of your own dissapointment with the game.



 



 

Why not let Nick speak for himself? I read nothing but assumptions. 
 

If the devs tell us “the designer is final - all you may or may not get are a few additional parts” - fine that would be a decision. For me that would probably mean that the game will not live up to the hopes I had for it and probably I wouldn’t play it much - just like over the past year. But that would be my individual decision.

 

And Btw I have seen great projects with very small crews. Comes down to several aspects but small teams doesn’t mean bad results at all. I still play for example Stormeagles Jutland - a game basically made by two dudes and still a fantastic little game. Absolutely adequate mechanics, great campaign and player freedom, reasonable 3d world and representation of the ships - straight up an excellent project.

 

So let the devs speak for themselves - they are very well able to do that 

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15 hours ago, Jatzi said:

What was wrong with the Age of Sail release? I like that game. I dont know how much replayability it has but I like it. They at least delivered what they promised with that game and out of all the sailing combat games it's probably the best one out there.

Yeah I've lost most of my hope for this game. I still have enough hope to stick around and keep the game on my laptop but I'm fairly pessimistic about things. If they'd just say what was up, where they want to go and explain some stuff then that'd be great. What are you wanting to do with this game? More arcadey? More realistic? Why will the campaign release be so limited? Where is the campaign? Clear and concise thoughts on the ship designer. 

What's funny to me is if they heavily invested in this game and made it fairly realistic and then cranked up the price people would buy it. I'd buy it and I know others that would too

That's what I've been saying. If they increased the team and focused on aspects of the game that the current community is most focused on and aspects that the simulator community considers high priority. They could probably sell more copies and maintain a longer life span of the game.

There was nothing wrong with Age of Sail release. It was just an ok release. Looking at steam charts, it sold maybe 500-600 copies between steam and other sources after refunds. With 442 top playing in the last 10 months and roughly 200 current players. Compare that to something like 2k peak watching on twitch. That's a pretty low sale rate vs exposure. I know these are pretty weak numbers but it's something I can see and use.

That's the problem I've seen with most of their games. Kind of under the radar release and quick drop off. How many people play RTW2? If I was building Ultimate Admiral I would at the very least match that or focus a huge amount of time on improving the weakest point of my direct competitor. In this case the Ship editor and Campaign map/Mechanics.

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14 hours ago, 1MajorKoenig said:

Why not let Nick speak for himself? I read nothing but assumptions. 
 

If the devs tell us “the designer is final - all you may or may not get are a few additional parts” - fine that would be a decision. For me that would probably mean that the game will not live up to the hopes I had for it and probably I wouldn’t play it much - just like over the past year. But that would be my individual decision.

 

And Btw I have seen great projects with very small crews. Comes down to several aspects but small teams doesn’t mean bad results at all. I still play for example Stormeagles Jutland - a game basically made by two dudes and still a fantastic little game. Absolutely adequate mechanics, great campaign and player freedom, reasonable 3d world and representation of the ships - straight up an excellent project.

 

So let the devs speak for themselves - they are very well able to do that 

And i read nothing but wishfull thinking from your side. What you are asking for is an enourmous amount of work to be put into the designer aspect that the Devs have not even put in to  the ENTIRE game in the past 1,5 years of development. How you even could think that what you are asking for is rational is a mystery. But keep building to your own disappointment. who am i to deny you that?

If you call the fact that what you are asking for requires a huge amount of effort from the limited resources the devs have an assumption . Then you know nothing about even the basics of gamedesign and the effort that is needed behind it. No wonder is it then that what you are asking for is so far removed from reality. everyone can write down what they like to see in the game. If those things are actually feasable is an entirely different matter.

Sure there are great projects by small crews. but there is a greater amount of small crews that fail massively. Just look at the Steam early access and what a clustermess  that is. So your point? that there are a couple of small crews that made great games does not refute any of the points i made on what to expect for this game on what we have seen so far.


 

Edited by ReefKip
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6 hours ago, ReefKip said:

And i read nothing but wishfull thinking from your side. What you are asking for is an enourmous amount of work to be put into the designer aspect that the Devs have not even put in to  the ENTIRE game in the past 1,5 years of development. How you even could think that what you are asking for is rational is a mystery. But keep building to your own disappointment. who am i to deny you that?

If you call the fact that what you are asking for requires a huge amount of effort from the limited resources the devs have an assumption . Then you know nothing about even the basics of gamedesign and the effort that is needed behind it. No wonder is it then that what you are asking for is so far removed from reality. everyone can write down what they like to see in the game. If those things are actually feasable is an entirely different matter.

Sure there are great projects by small crews. but there is a greater amount of small crews that fail massively. Just look at the Steam early access and what a clustermess  that is. So your point? that there are a couple of small crews that made great games does not refute any of the points i made on what to expect for this game on what we have seen so far.


 

I am sorry but I have to disagree with you. We all know that developing a game is not easy. It is obviously very hard and taks a lot of time. But we all know that this current ship designer is very basic and has a lot of restriction. I played this game lot and I feel like when I design a battleship, I am just doing the same things again and again. Why? Because I can't place the barabettes, the towers, the turrets, the secondaries wherever I want. And I know that in real life I couldn t place the turrets over machinery, but IRL the enginiers could compromise. But in this game we can't, because we can't decide where to put the machinery, and the barabetts are also limited, the tower placement is limited. When I purchased this game I wanted a shipdesigner like in the trailer. 

The campaign is important, but there are so many things that the devs have to improve. And the ship designer is the heart of the game. At least for me. I can't design many important historycal ships. Like the Fuso, the Wyoming, etc... I can't see the armour layouts in the designer. Where is the citadel? Is it waterline? Underwater? Above waterline? This is important! Extended armour belt? Where and what size?

So, I know that this will be hard, but the designer have to be improved!

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9 hours ago, ReefKip said:

And i read nothing but wishfull thinking from your side. What you are asking for is an enourmous amount of work to be put into the designer aspect that the Devs have not even put in to  the ENTIRE game in the past 1,5 years of development. How you even could think that what you are asking for is rational is a mystery. But keep building to your own disappointment. who am i to deny you that?

If you call the fact that what you are asking for requires a huge amount of effort from the limited resources the devs have an assumption . Then you know nothing about even the basics of gamedesign and the effort that is needed behind it. No wonder is it then that what you are asking for is so far removed from reality. everyone can write down what they like to see in the game. If those things are actually feasable is an entirely different matter.

Sure there are great projects by small crews. but there is a greater amount of small crews that fail massively. Just look at the Steam early access and what a clustermess  that is. So your point? that there are a couple of small crews that made great games does not refute any of the points i made on what to expect for this game on what we have seen so far.


 

 

2 hours ago, Marshall99 said:

I am sorry but I have to disagree with you. We all know that developing a game is not easy. It is obviously very hard and taks a lot of time. But we all know that this current ship designer is very basic and has a lot of restriction. I played this game lot and I feel like when I design a battleship, I am just doing the same things again and again. Why? Because I can't place the barabettes, the towers, the turrets, the secondaries wherever I want. And I know that in real life I couldn t place the turrets over machinery, but IRL the enginiers could compromise. But in this game we can't, because we can't decide where to put the machinery, and the barabetts are also limited, the tower placement is limited. When I purchased this game I wanted a shipdesigner like in the trailer. 

The campaign is important, but there are so many things that the devs have to improve. And the ship designer is the heart of the game. At least for me. I can't design many important historycal ships. Like the Fuso, the Wyoming, etc... I can't see the armour layouts in the designer. Where is the citadel? Is it waterline? Underwater? Above waterline? This is important! Extended armour belt? Where and what size?

So, I know that this will be hard, but the designer have to be improved!

Agree with Marshall99.

 

Of course making a game or any other piece of software can be a challenge. Reefkip is stating the obvious.

 

And we can easily deduct from the complete absence of progress this year and the replacement of the key programmer that something went pretty horribly wrong. Watch the trailer for the ship designer and see what is in the alpha-prototype in game - it’s a huge gap between those two. Either the ambitions have been unrealistic from the get go or the project went the wrong way at some point.

 

Now as Reef started the speculation - it can mean that the project is in budgetary trouble. Time isn’t critical by itself - what counts is what is delivered against what budget. And here I also assume that things didn’t go to plan. But even if that would be the case the devs could be creative and say “you get X” and if we want it achieve “Y” we have to croudfound it with you. Or whatever ways to generate additional budget to make up for the loss of 2020 and most likely already prior. Because replacing the key programmer can also mean that you foundation could be foul already - and then you need some effort to recover.

 

Although the alternative isn’t much better: if you release it half-arsed it won’t be financially successful. THAT part you can indeed see all the time on Steam - all this unfinished junk nobody will ever buy and where you will read 3 negative feedbacks if any at all. 
 

I can say that I find the project unique enough so I would be open to additional ways to generate budget to continue development rather than launch&bury. But that is my opinion. 
 

Plus: I can say I enjoy the game itself. Graphics are basic but adequate for the purpose, mechanics are simple but mostly sufficient (although spotting needs a little work I’m afraid). What is missing is a fantastic campaign and an overhaul of the designer to create immersion in my view 

For such a project immersion is more important than technical perfection 

Edited by 1MajorKoenig
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Too be fair most of the stuff in the first post can be done, atm im guessing the devs are focusing on the campaign atm. Frankly the first rule of games design is to not put yourself in a position where you can't go back, otherwise your stuck with releasing a poor iteration of whatever it was going to be.

Frankly, if they want to beat RTW2 they have no choice but to improve it really, and as well improving the other game mechanics its actually vital that they do so. And yes i know games design is hardwork but frankly you never put yourself in a position where you can't go back and change things otherwise r.i.p or you have to work within a more limited system.

Plus when that stuff is done this will need to be marketed well too. Although seems like we might have too do dat for free (which if the game is gud i dont mind really).

But i suspect the above too be fair.

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On 1/11/2021 at 10:27 AM, Marshall99 said:

I am sorry but I have to disagree with you. We all know that developing a game is not easy. It is obviously very hard and taks a lot of time. But we all know that this current ship designer is very basic and has a lot of restriction. I played this game lot and I feel like when I design a battleship, I am just doing the same things again and again. Why? Because I can't place the barabettes, the towers, the turrets, the secondaries wherever I want. And I know that in real life I couldn t place the turrets over machinery, but IRL the enginiers could compromise. But in this game we can't, because we can't decide where to put the machinery, and the barabetts are also limited, the tower placement is limited. When I purchased this game I wanted a shipdesigner like in the trailer. 

The campaign is important, but there are so many things that the devs have to improve. And the ship designer is the heart of the game. At least for me. I can't design many important historycal ships. Like the Fuso, the Wyoming, etc... I can't see the armour layouts in the designer. Where is the citadel? Is it waterline? Underwater? Above waterline? This is important! Extended armour belt? Where and what size?

So, I know that this will be hard, but the designer have to be improved!

I am not saying the designer should not be improved. what i am saying is that we should be conservative with our expectations on what will realisticly be improved by the developers. never did i state that the current designer is alright. i also think improvements are needed. 

the reason why  i think that we should not expect much  is the evidence from what they have added to the game  in the past year of development. which is not much. so i think what they will improve about the designer will result in small improvements at best. not an entire overhaul which is needed if you want things like machinery spaces and an extremely in depth armour system to be added. being able to place turrets and other modules wherever you want would already be a massive improvement. 

we can dream up all kind of things they should add to the designer. but you have to ask yourself if the things that you are asking for are realistic. from the arguments i have presented and the evidence i have seen i have to say that most things written up in the OP by @1MajorKoenig are just not rational to expect. i hate to be the party pooper here. but it,s just what i think. 

 

 

On 1/11/2021 at 12:56 PM, 1MajorKoenig said:

 

Agree with Marshall99.

 

Of course making a game or any other piece of software can be a challenge. Reefkip is stating the obvious.

 

And we can easily deduct from the complete absence of progress this year and the replacement of the key programmer that something went pretty horribly wrong. Watch the trailer for the ship designer and see what is in the alpha-prototype in game - it’s a huge gap between those two. Either the ambitions have been unrealistic from the get go or the project went the wrong way at some point.

 

Now as Reef started the speculation - it can mean that the project is in budgetary trouble. Time isn’t critical by itself - what counts is what is delivered against what budget. And here I also assume that things didn’t go to plan. But even if that would be the case the devs could be creative and say “you get X” and if we want it achieve “Y” we have to croudfound it with you. Or whatever ways to generate additional budget to make up for the loss of 2020 and most likely already prior. Because replacing the key programmer can also mean that you foundation could be foul already - and then you need some effort to recover.

 

Although the alternative isn’t much better: if you release it half-arsed it won’t be financially successful. THAT part you can indeed see all the time on Steam - all this unfinished junk nobody will ever buy and where you will read 3 negative feedbacks if any at all. 
 

I can say that I find the project unique enough so I would be open to additional ways to generate budget to continue development rather than launch&bury. But that is my opinion. 
 

Plus: I can say I enjoy the game itself. Graphics are basic but adequate for the purpose, mechanics are simple but mostly sufficient (although spotting needs a little work I’m afraid). What is missing is a fantastic campaign and an overhaul of the designer to create immersion in my view 

For such a project immersion is more important than technical perfection 


The best thing we can hope for is that they manage to hire more Developers to their team which makes what you have written in the OP much more easier to archieve. the first way to accomplish this is to make the game more accesable by putting it on steam early access and using the money from that to hire more people. 

BUT seeing that the gameplay at the moment is very limited i hope they add the campaign before they put it into early access on steam. otherwise this game,s reputation will be destroyed on arrival by the utter lack of gameplay. so i rather see a campaign in some form getting added before they switch the focus on the designer. you can have an awesome designer but if the things you can do with the ships you have designed are extremely limited just ends up being counterproductive.
 

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