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Tactical Map View & Ocean Physics Interaction With The Vessels DEVS PLS RESPONDDDD!!!!


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We have all played alot of hours and so far a minmap (a.k.a tactical map) has not been missed. Because all the ships have large icons, including menu selection, and you can click on any one of them and the camera will fly to wherever.

Firstly, by clicking icons you can see where your ships are from a given lead, this gives the player perspective and 360 orientation, just a few clicks here and there, a little zooming out and you pretty much know where you are and everything else.  

Secondly, the camera's gives a ground level feel to the game, a bridge level of command, which is very nice, a minmap would dilute that somewhat (by not forcing a 3D perspective). 

Thirdly, unlocking the camera into free mode and zooming right out gives a birds eye view anyway, better than a 2D minmap because it's still in 3D and you can keep rotating, just way better.

Is it really needed? Or is this more to do with some one else's game hype, a knee jerk reaction and hey lets copy it.

Edited by BuckleUpBones
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19 hours ago, BuckleUpBones said:

We have all played alot of hours and so far a minmap (a.k.a tactical map) has not been missed. Because all the ships have large icons, including menu selection, and you can click on any one of them and the camera will fly to wherever.

Firstly, by clicking icons you can see where your ships are from a given lead, this gives the player perspective and 360 orientation, just a few clicks here and there, a little zooming out and you pretty much know where you are and everything else.  

Secondly, the camera's gives a ground level feel to the game, a bridge level of command, which is very nice, a minmap would dilute that somewhat (by not forcing a 3D perspective). 

Thirdly, unlocking the camera into free mode and zooming right out gives a birds eye view anyway, better than a 2D minmap because it's still in 3D and you can keep rotating, just way better.

Is it really needed? Or is this more to do with some one else's game hype, a knee jerk reaction and hey lets copy it.

Youre correct on large icons etc but its not enough flying place to place is not an issue for dedicated screen like tactical map view i cant even zoom out enough on the 3dmap view, a map view will help streamline the expereince and have very visible markers of the ships and what direction they are going and zooming out will show more of the formations.
No it doesnt really give you a sense of a bridge level command, spectating like a ghost everywhere on the map isnt. If they wanted to do that they couldve have a 1st person perspective for each respective vessel you view from to give orders or they can limit the distance your camera can pan out from. im not saying to get rid of that 3d ordering experience but to give another streamline alternative way of doing so. other naval games has this feature and it is allot more streamline because of it.

no the 3d map camera isnt good and it is less effecient of ordering units and having a sense of awareness of your fleet than a dedicated 2d map screen of everything. you can plot pathways clearly and everything is illustrated as icons.

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I could understand it if the combat zone was a few hundred kilometers but it's not. Thanks to @werwaz post we now know that UAD combat zone is about 25km plus combat range and there's skybox and limitless boundaries issues. 

Without boundaries and a failing skybox, a minmap is going to be very problematic. 

The small combat zone isn't big enough, at 25km there's no need for a greater interface.


@werwaz post:

 

 

Edited by BuckleUpBones
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^^ that only means "combat zone" must (and likely will) be improved.
You can have ships much more than 25km apart now, just some graphical effects glitch out in this case. They'll fix this issue.
In perfect campaign-ready state, the "battle zone" will be the entire campaign map, or at least a whole region of it (aka North sea etc), and your tactical map is not going to be a WoWS-type smol square in the corner, but a separate screen view with naval map of entire region and positions of active ships wherever they are, or where was their last known location, something along these lines.
See maps of *insert almost any other naval game* here, and go poke one of them to get the understanding of what a tactical map improves over current clumsy attempt of control from spectator cam.

That said, If this project won't drown in unfulfilled ambitions, i'm sure they'll have a map and everything else necessary, so i'm not worried about that.

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They should increase the distance to about 40km, for more modern engagements as guns could reach pretty far by then, plus we wouldn't need some guns to have their ranges artificially reduced as well.

If they are going to do a tactical map, going for the supreme commander route would in my opinion be the best way to do it really.

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Lets keep in mind that:

  1. The current game map is very much something you can throw together in 5 minutes in Unity just to give yourself something to work with.  I very much doubt it's the absolute final design.
  2. That 25km number is the maximum distance a ship can spawn from the "center" of the map. So, if you spawn two ships as far from center as possible they can be up to 50km from each other... not exactly convenient visual range. And that's assuming they don't move further from each other at any point.
  3. Once you get more than a handful of ships in an engagement, it becomes a tremendous pain to try and keep track of how all of the ships are moving in relation to each other.  Yes, you can see a ship's bearing to your camera position, but what you really need to know to make any sort of informed decision is its course and speed, and even if you move your camera over to try and estimate its course you've now lost your initial frame of reference so you have to then look around to find your own ship and the whole thing takes way longer than it needs to be. Extrapolate that out to a major fleet engagement and you're looking at hours spent just figuring out what a top-down plot could tell in you seconds. This is, of course, one of the reasons a real life admiral would have a fairly significant number of staff whose job was to collect all the various contact reports and create a nice overhead map of the engagement. 
Edited by DeadlyWalrus
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I have a question. Where this number of 25 kilometers comes from and why you all so ensured it's some sort of hard limit?
One of academy missions literally has an allied whip around 90km apart from the rest of the fleet, and it happily exists there, only problem being glithy lighting.

Water physics currently does not exist, i'm sure.

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Yea... a Minimap. 
 

Reasonably easy to do... but by far not the most pressing issue.

 

I would call that feature a “nice to have” but there are certainly bigger fish to fry!

Without substantial improvements to the ship designer and meaningful game modes (I.e. a campaign) you won’t need such things as a minimap

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17 hours ago, Danvanthevacuumman said:

What do you guys think of the sea water physics on how it interacts with the boat

 

I would really like this!

Given that this game is designed as a 3D naval battle game, I would like for that aspect to be polished as much as it is possible, to give it a more authentic feeling.

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6 hours ago, 1MajorKoenig said:

Yea... a Minimap. 
 

Reasonably easy to do... but by far not the most pressing issue.

 

I would call that feature a “nice to have” but there are certainly bigger fish to fry!

Without substantial improvements to the ship designer and meaningful game modes (I.e. a campaign) you won’t need such things as a minimap

Who said anything about minimap im talking about tactical map a dedicated map screen

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1 hour ago, Danvanthevacuumman said:

Who said anything about minimap im talking about tactical map a dedicated map screen

Well yes - my bad. I understand what you want but I don’t agree on that being a priority at this stage. 
 

I am sure the game will get a map screen later on. It isn’t really hard to do 

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On 2/20/2021 at 1:45 AM, Danvanthevacuumman said:

Tactical map view is crucial very important to this game when are you planning to implant this?
Also how water interacts with the vessel needs an overhaul its like the ships are just flying through the water instead of actually being affacted by the mass of the ocean.

Tactical map view is currently not considered at all. Ocean visuals and mechanics are already in rework as we upgrade the new Unity Engine for future patches.

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1 hour ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Tactical map view is currently not considered at all. Ocean visuals and mechanics are already in rework as we upgrade the new Unity Engine for future patches.

That's legitimately disappointing. We can't zoom out enough to get a solid view of a large sprawling battle, and they do happen. Consider a large fleet battle with the main lines engaging. There are likely to be scouts engaging far off and destroyer fights can often devolve into a circling mess. Any escort/light forces/scouts engaging run into the danger of getting left behind relative to the main line, this has happened to me already in custom battles. I really dislike having to jump back and forth between lots of different ships in different spots on the map just to see what's happening, not even to control them or give them orders. I've seen this happen on youtube videos made by alekius as well. There's basically no downside to a map view, no one has to use it and it would come in handy

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I'm assuming something I don't have knowledge about here, but wouldn't the admiral of a fleet have some kind of map in the bridge where current dispositions would be marked? Either on a table or on a wall?

In which case some kind of 'mini map' or 'tactical map' would be very much in keeping with 'realism'. 

 

 

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14 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Tactical map view is currently not considered at all.

I'm very sorry to read this. Other similar games like War on the Sea, Battlestations Pacific and World of Warships all benefit greatly from a top-down map. More to the point, actual fleet commanders would have had access to this information via a tactical plot on the bridge and the plotting rooms of the ship's fire control system.

I had hoped that this feature would be added further down the line and I still hope you reconsider.

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14 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Tactical map view is currently not considered at all. Ocean visuals and mechanics are already in rework as we upgrade the new Unity Engine for future patches.

How about a zoom out option like used in the Supreme Commander series. Essentially at high levels of zoom, instead of the actual ship models you see simple icons. The rest of the interface remains functional and displays as normal. 

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23 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Tactical map view is currently not considered at all. Ocean visuals and mechanics are already in rework as we upgrade the new Unity Engine for future patches.

I see, very sad to hear. However the reason I want map view is for a streamline experience if you can do that for the battle map screen then its alright, I'm thinking something like wargames where you can zoom out very far and have icons etc on the screen. Pretty much a 3d battlemap. But, I also want you to reconsider your decision, please.

Edited by Danvanthevacuumman
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I have to echo the concerns of other players here too. You're dodging torpedoes with your battle line, forget about the DD you sent to catch enemies unaware with a salvo and.... Suddenly the ship is 50km away from any enemy ship.

Being able to go with greater zoom levels, slightly longer render ranges and the pseudo-minimap view (showing individual squadrons) would be a great benefit.

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i am still new to the game but do find moving around in combat to be rather clunky, to be honest I would rather use a tactical map for orders and then the 3d to watch the battle unfold.

In combat i find myself zoomed way out so i can view what is actually happening.  Heh and I have barely scratched the surface and haven't made it to fleet engagements yet... i can't imagine what that will be like to distribute orders... amongst multiple ships/divisions...

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