Alpha-12 en route!

[Nick Thomadis]

Hello Admirals,

We hope you had splendid Easter Holidays and you still enjoy Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts. The work on the campaign is in progress but it needs more time to become public in our planned “Core Patch 1”. Therefore, we decided to offer a new major update with stable features you are surely going to like. Here is what we confirm so far for the next patch.

*==============================*
ALPHA-12
*==============================*

NEW HULLS & MODELS
18 new hulls offer countless different new designs. In particular, the new hulls are the following:

• New model that can recreate the German “Deutschland-class” cruisers such as the “Graf Spee”. In-game it can be used with the name “Advanced Armored Cruiser Ι” after year 1921, as a hull between 14,900 and 18,900 tons with special hull resistance characteristics making it especially durable even against battleships.
• New model that can recreate the Japanese battleship “Fuso” after its reconstruction. The new hull is available after the year 1924 with a displacement between 36,000 and 69,000 tons and code name “Modernized Dreadnought III”.
• New Japanese “Dreadnought IV” variant available between the years 1914 and 1927 and with displacement of 26,000 - 46,000 tons.
• New Italian “Dreadnought I” variant available between the years 1906 and 1918 and with displacement of 18,000 - 26,000 tons.
• New German “Advanced Armored Cruiser II” variant which is a speculative continuation of the Deutschland-class and can be found in years after 1927. Its displacement is between 17,900 and 22,900 tons.
• New Japanese “Heavy Cruiser II” variant with a displacement of 13,400-15,600 tons that can be found after the year 1922. It has a flat light hull and a selection of towers that can make it good at firing from long distances.
• New Japanese “Experimental Heavy Cruiser” variant with a displacement of 15,900-22,100 tons that can replicate ships similar to the Japanese “Tone-class” and can host a large amount of torpedo tubes. It is available after the year 1934.
• New “Fast Battleship” variant a special Battlecruiser hull available for Russia, Spain, Italy, Austro-Hungary, China after the year 1935. It has a displacement between 45,000 and 75,000 tons and can be a good compromise between firepower and protection.
• New Austro-Hungarian ”Modern Battleship” variant with displacement between 51,000 and 81,000 tons available after the year 1929.
• New Chinese “Experimental Battleship” variant available after 1929. It is a hull of 42,500 - 55,000 tons which can offer unusual battleship designs with all-forward gun mounts.
• New Chinese “Modern Battleship I” variant available after 1936 and with displacement between 50,500 and 60,500 tons.
• New Spanish “Modern Battleship II” variant with displacement between 61,500 and 71,500 tons available after 1929.
• New Italian “Modern Battleship II” variant with displacement between 60,500 and 70,500 tons available after 1929.
• New Japanese “Experimental Battleship” variant available after 1929 with displacement between 47,000 and 72,000 tons. This hull can produce designs resembling early unofficial Japanese battleship designs that had all the main guns forward.
• New Russian “Modern Battleship II” variant which is available after 1936 and has displacement between 65,000 and 79,000, offers a very robust hull especially optimized for protection.
• New Russian “Super Battleship” variant available after 1936 and with displacement between 75,000 and 99,000 is an enlarged version of the new Russian battleship line and is a hull of very thick and robust construction.
• New Russian “Modern Battlecruiser” variant available after 1929 with displacement between 33,000 and 47,000.
• New Russian “Large Cruiser” variant available after 1929 with displacement between 28,000 and 39,000.

NEW GUNS

• New special looking German guns available in middle-late technology levels spanning between Mark 3 and Mark 5 and covering calibers from 4-inch to 12-inch guns.
• New special looking Japanese guns covering the Mark-3 big guns from 9-inch to 16-inch caliber and the Mark-1 guns of 17-inch to 20-inch caliber.

SHIP DESIGN IMPROVEMENTS/FIXES

• All Ship components are now logically enabled: Previously there were various issues, such as Diesel engines working with coal fuel and boilers, or torpedo components increasing detonation chances and affecting weights in a ship that did not have any torpedoes. Now everything that is selected in the ship component list is affecting properly and fully the ship statistics. Diesel engines have been fully rebalanced to work with the new feature.
• Major improvement in Ship Design controls: Ship part selection is now more accurate and sharp. Previously the mouse cursor would highlight/select a very large area resulting in unwanted changes during ship design processes.
• Minimum Tonnage step reduced from 5 tons to 1 tons, so you can build ships with more precision.
• Various small fixes and improvements in many hulls. New towers and parts became available to older models.

AI IMPROVEMENT

• The AI opponent has been significantly improved to be more aggressive and approach nearer to the player when it has the advantage.
• AI controlled ships in screen/scout/follow formation should now interact nearer to threats.
• AI ship evasion has been improved further.
• AI auto-design became more effective overall.

BUG FIXES

• Fixed bug that was caused when duplicating a ship design in Naval Academy.
• Fixed bug that could cause guns to become badly placed when mounting submerged torpedoes.
• Fixed bug that caused extreme delay to auto-design AI ships in mission “Pre-Dreadnought conflict”. This mission has also received new hulls available for design.

BALANCES

• Fire damage has been balanced to affect more significantly all ship types. In addition, the fire damage is added into statistics (you can now observe what is the sustained damage for friendly and enemy ships). This new statistic should help players to understand why their ship may have less structural integrity with less hits than the AI opponent, because now the received fire damage can be measured as well.

OTHER

• All the game's text has been reviewed/proofed for minor errors.
• Flash fire effect is more properly scaled (It could become too large for big ships, or too small for small ships).
• Obsolete Dreadnought hulls no longer available in late techs (we have now many new hulls to replace them).

The patch is not yet finalized and will receive further improvements such as the following:
- At least 4 new Naval Academy missions.
- Major Improvements in weight offset/Stability calculations so that you can build perfectly working ships with cross-deck guns.
- Major torpedo tubes overhaul, allowing different torpedo visuals according to torpedo size and technology.

We will soon let you know when the patch is going to be released. Thank you for reading!

The Game Labs Team

 

[Cptbarney]

Ayy thanks for the heads up nick, will inform the lads.

@HusariuS @Koogus @Bluishdoor76 @IronKaputt@Tousansons(For the sake of it lol). @Airzerg @disc @Marshall99 @Gangut @Fishyfish @1MajorKoenig @Skeksis @madham82 @Stormnet And any else i forgot too.

Mind this is news not the actual release of the patch.

Either way cheers.

[Cptbarney]

Oh and shiki for the japanese boags @Shiki

[Tousansons]

Fuso, "not exactly" Tone and fires.

Some things to check while waiting. I'll be ready :D.

 

Edited May 5, 2021 by Tousansons

[Cptbarney]

Are Japanese “Heavy Cruiser II” and Italian “Modern Battleship II” Tone and littorio by any chance?

[Shiki]

In summation:

• Deutschland (or from the previous teaser, "close enough to Deutschland").
• Fusō after her first modernization.
• Sixteen (16) new reskinned and resized hulls. My Tone is more than likely going to be another Italian cruiser, or a resized Hood.
• New gun models for Deutschland & Scharnhorst artillery, as well as new gun models for Japanese artillery.
• You can now build 13,001-ton CAs, as opposed to 13,005-ton CAs.
• Torpedo equipment finally doesn't affect ships that don't have any torpedoes.
• AI is back to charging to point-blank and still won't be able to design a normal-looking ship.
• Fixed game text.
• Actually important, requested items:
  • Cross-deck firing fixes.
  • Torpedo tube visual changes and scaling.

Not terrible, but not exactly the changes I was hoping for.

[Nick Thomadis]

12 minutes ago, Cptbarney said:

Are Japanese “Heavy Cruiser II” and Italian “Modern Battleship II” Tone and littorio by any chance?

No, not exact models, but they look alike. Littorio is a model we plan to add, as a special new hull for Italy, later.

[Zuikaku]

Nice changes. 

Sad that old ladies didn't made it again..

[Fishyfish]

Sounds pretty good to this fish.  

[Aceituna]

My disappointment is immeasurable. Just another update in the long line of insignificant updates...

I hope you realise that the whole freaking community awaits campaing so would you be so damn kind and tell us approximate dat... no, sorry I know you won't. After all this time I am not that naive anymore. So just have the decency to tell us (paying customers): Is it gonna be till Christmas (I mean Christmas of this year)?

Edited May 5, 2021 by Aceituna

[Skeksis]

4 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

OTHER

• All the game's text has been reviewed/proofed for minor errors.

This is interesting, while is not 'localization' nonetheless I think it’s a good hint to where the campaign might be, it's so close now, testers are probably doing campaign playthroughs already.

Edited May 5, 2021 by Skeksis

[Airzerg]

And again, not a single corps of old ironclads. Are we going to sail 2-3 types of ships for half of the company?

[Shneemaster]

Finally, some love for cruisers. I was getting tired of that one Italian superstructure being used for literally everything.

[Fishyfish]

I'd love to see some ironclads, specifically some en enchelon ironclads. The USS Maine.. the Dingyuan.. HMS Inflexible..

[1MajorKoenig]

3 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Major Improvements in weight offset/Stability calculations so that you can build perfectly working ships with cross-deck guns.

Sweeeeeeeet 🙂

[Gangut]

This update is looking very nice, love the new ship hulls which add more variety and the new general improvements, especially since currently in the cruiser area it's very barren. Would be cool to get more cruisers, especially Russian protected cruisers like Varyag and Aurora. To be honest I'm fine with waiting however long it takes for the core patch given the circumstances on a "certain grand strategy game". Plus it's nice to see the game progressing allot since i first bought it over a year ago.

[Stormnet]

On 5/5/2021 at 4:55 PM, Nick Thomadis said:

Hello Admirals,

We hope you had splendid Easter Holidays and you still enjoy Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts. The work on the campaign is in progress but it needs more time to become public in our planned “Core Patch 1”. Therefore, we decided to offer a new major update with stable features you are surely going to like. Here is what we confirm so far for the next patch.

*==============================*
ALPHA-12
*==============================*

NEW HULLS & MODELS
18 new hulls offer countless different new designs. In particular, the new hulls are the following:

• New model that can recreate the German “Deutschland-class” cruisers such as the “Graf Spee”. In-game it can be used with the name “Advanced Armored Cruiser Ι” after year 1921, as a hull between 14,900 and 18,900 tons with special hull resistance characteristics making it especially durable even against battleships.
• New model that can recreate the Japanese battleship “Fuso” after its reconstruction. The new hull is available after the year 1924 with a displacement between 36,000 and 69,000 tons and code name “Modernized Dreadnought III”.
• New Japanese “Dreadnought IV” variant available between the years 1914 and 1927 and with displacement of 26,000 - 46,000 tons.
• New Italian “Dreadnought I” variant available between the years 1906 and 1918 and with displacement of 18,000 - 26,000 tons.
• New German “Advanced Armored Cruiser II” variant which is a speculative continuation of the Deutschland-class and can be found in years after 1927. Its displacement is between 17,900 and 22,900 tons.
• New Japanese “Heavy Cruiser II” variant with a displacement of 13,400-15,600 tons that can be found after the year 1922. It has a flat light hull and a selection of towers that can make it good at firing from long distances.
  New Japanese “Experimental Heavy Cruiser” variant with a displacement of 15,900-22,100 tons that can replicate ships similar to the Japanese “Tone-class” and can host a large amount of torpedo tubes. It is available after the year 1934.
• New “Fast Battleship” variant a special Battlecruiser hull available for Russia, Spain, Italy, Austro-Hungary, China after the year 1935. It has a displacement between 45,000 and 75,000 tons and can be a good compromise between firepower and protection.
• New Austro-Hungarian ”Modern Battleship” variant with displacement between 51,000 and 81,000 tons available after the year 1929.
• New Chinese “Experimental Battleship” variant available after 1929. It is a hull of 42,500 - 55,000 tons which can offer unusual battleship designs with all-forward gun mounts.
• New Chinese “Modern Battleship I” variant available after 1936 and with displacement between 50,500 and 60,500 tons.
• New Spanish “Modern Battleship II” variant with displacement between 61,500 and 71,500 tons available after 1929.
• New Italian “Modern Battleship II” variant with displacement between 60,500 and 70,500 tons available after 1929.
• New Japanese “Experimental Battleship” variant available after 1929 with displacement between 47,000 and 72,000 tons. This hull can produce designs resembling early unofficial Japanese battleship designs that had all the main guns forward.
• New Russian “Modern Battleship II” variant which is available after 1936 and has displacement between 65,000 and 79,000, offers a very robust hull especially optimized for protection.
• New Russian “Super Battleship” variant available after 1936 and with displacement between 75,000 and 99,000 is an enlarged version of the new Russian battleship line and is a hull of very thick and robust construction.
• New Russian “Modern Battlecruiser” variant available after 1929 with displacement between 33,000 and 47,000.
• New Russian “Large Cruiser” variant available after 1929 with displacement between 28,000 and 39,000.

NEW GUNS

• New special looking German guns available in middle-late technology levels spanning between Mark 3 and Mark 5 and covering calibers from 4-inch to 12-inch guns.
• New special looking Japanese guns covering the Mark-3 big guns from 9-inch to 16-inch caliber and the Mark-1 guns of 17-inch to 20-inch caliber.

SHIP DESIGN IMPROVEMENTS/FIXES

• All Ship components are now logically enabled: Previously there were various issues, such as Diesel engines working with coal fuel and boilers, or torpedo components increasing detonation chances and affecting weights in a ship that did not have any torpedoes. Now everything that is selected in the ship component list is affecting properly and fully the ship statistics. Diesel engines have been fully rebalanced to work with the new feature.
• Major improvement in Ship Design controls: Ship part selection is now more accurate and sharp. Previously the mouse cursor would highlight/select a very large area resulting in unwanted changes during ship design processes.
• Minimum Tonnage step reduced from 5 tons to 1 tons, so you can build ships with more precision.
• Various small fixes and improvements in many hulls. New towers and parts became available to older models.

AI IMPROVEMENT

• The AI opponent has been significantly improved to be more aggressive and approach nearer to the player when it has the advantage.
• AI controlled ships in screen/scout/follow formation should now interact nearer to threats.
• AI ship evasion has been improved further.
• AI auto-design became more effective overall.

BUG FIXES

• Fixed bug that was caused when duplicating a ship design in Naval Academy.
• Fixed bug that could cause guns to become badly placed when mounting submerged torpedoes.
• Fixed bug that caused extreme delay to auto-design AI ships in mission “Pre-Dreadnought conflict”. This mission has also received new hulls available for design.

BALANCES

• Fire damage has been balanced to affect more significantly all ship types. In addition, the fire damage is added into statistics (you can now observe what is the sustained damage for friendly and enemy ships). This new statistic should help players to understand why their ship may have less structural integrity with less hits than the AI opponent, because now the received fire damage can be measured as well.

OTHER

• All the game's text has been reviewed/proofed for minor errors.
• Flash fire effect is more properly scaled (It could become too large for big ships, or too small for small ships).
• Obsolete Dreadnought hulls no longer available in late techs (we have now many new hulls to replace them).

The patch is not yet finalized and will receive further improvements such as the following:
- At least 4 new Naval Academy missions.
- Major Improvements in weight offset/Stability calculations so that you can build perfectly working ships with cross-deck guns.
- Major torpedo tubes overhaul, allowing different torpedo visuals according to torpedo size and technology.

We will soon let you know when the patch is going to be released. Thank you for reading!

The Game Labs Team

 

The new turrets and some fixes are a step in the right direction. And the new weight calculations. I also like the ammount of new models (I just hope they aren't just resized ones from other factions). We need more variety thought, germans high calliber guns in the 1940s are still just british/murica's models, same/other stuff for other factions.

I am althought forced to point the fact that as said above, people are getting annoyed (especially in the discord) about how long the development is taking. We are waiting really hard for a peak on the campaign. The more players wait, the more we will demand from core patch.

Also, there are quite some systems (especially gunnery, AI designer and AI tactics) that need to be remade from scratch or seriously changed because, right now, they just aren't working. Any attempt of balancing without major changes just causes a flow of new issues. These systems are fundamentally flawed and simply patching them wont work.

And btw, while people are getting a little annoyed about the long development time, more communication on the behalf of the devs would be nice. Right now the only info on development we get is just before patches. While making a fullblown devblog isnt needed, I think just making a weekly post with max 2-3 lines of text saying what is being developed at the moment, tested, modeled, or what issues have you run into/are still struggling to fix, and whatever more. I dont need timelines or what is coming. I just want to know what is being made right. Since we have practically idea on how finished the campaign is as of this moment, making your clients wait months with next to no info on the current status of the project is gonna cause some unhappiness. If you do this, at least some players will be more understanding of your situation.

 

EDIT: Gunnery might not be that broken, but a more simulated model would be nice.

 

Thanks for reading this

Edited May 6, 2021 by Stormnet

[disc]

We'll have to see how this current patch pans out. I am especially hopeful that the AI and fire changes will be useful. I'd rather development be slow than half-baked.

I strongly suspect this patch focuses more on models because of division of labor. IE the programmer(s) is/are doing a ton of campaign stuff, where perhaps the modeler(s) don't. That said, I would like to see more pre-Dreadnought hulls. They are a bit restricted right now, both in number and customizability.

 

8 minutes ago, Stormnet said:

Also, there are quite some systems (especially gunnery, AI designer and AI tactics) that need to be remade from scratch or seriously changed because, right now, they just aren't working. Any attempt of balancing without major changes just causes a flow of new issues. These systems are fundamentally flawed and simply patching them wont work.

I am not sure gunnery is that flawed. The armor and damage model certainly is, but the statistical approach for shells seems reasonable enough.

The AI designer is not perfect, but I don't mind it. I do like seeing the bizarre ships it cooks up. Maybe that will change.

 The AI tactics certainly need a lot of work, based on the 11 patch.

[Skeksis]

6 hours ago, Aceituna said:

My disappointment is immeasurable. Just another update in the long line of insignificant updates...

I hope you realise that the whole freaking community awaits campaing so would you be so damn kind and tell us approximate dat... no, sorry I know you won't. After all this time I am not that naive anymore. So just have the decency to tell us (paying customers): Is it gonna be till Christmas (I mean Christmas of this year)?

You do realize that you’re even going to have to wait for this update! 🙂

But I don’t think the team is going to rush anything anymore either, the campaign will come out when it’s ready….... just like a baby.

The last update was a full complement of British hulls, this update has not just got German additions but nearly every other nation got something too, this is an excellent update, for everybody, CCs are going to have a field-day with this content, aren't you?

Edited May 6, 2021 by Skeksis

[DerRichtigeArzt]

6 hours ago, Aceituna said:

My disappointment is immeasurable. Just another update in the long line of insignificant updates...

I hope you realise that the whole freaking community awaits campaing so would you be so damn kind and tell us approximate dat... no, sorry I know you won't. After all this time I am not that naive anymore. So just have the decency to tell us (paying customers): Is it gonna be till Christmas (I mean Christmas of this year)?

Its gonne be here before the end of summer I can bet on it. The problem with features like campaign is that you can't just make all the devs work on it. Visual artists have no idea about coding, coders probably only focus on this thing working and the ui is probably placeholder,there are facts you have to include in a historically accurate campaign that if done wrong may offend many people. Since campaign is a very important feature that will probably bring the game to steam, it has to work on the 1st try, because there are no second chances on steam reviews. If they hello kitty up the steam ea release, the game will probably die. 

[AdmER]

I am totally disappointed with this game so far. I am here since alpha 4, and I got hooked by the promo video with the idea to build ships ( as on the video with modular design etc) and manage a fleet from the 1870 and more.

So far, this game, in theory is called UA Dreadnought not UA Battleship or  UA always bigger then ever ship. Buts ince alpha 6, all the focus is on battleship, quad or 20 inch gun and again WW2 naval sim. No dreadnought, nothing for the beginning of the naval arm-race of the 1880 -1920 as the game advertise is focus will be. The ship designer is repetitive and boring and there is style way to much major flaw un - address (like the magic reviving ship at 1 % damaged and the stupidly un - precise gun a short rage etc).

Yes. at this time, campain should have been a must. All I see in this alpha is more ships from the 20th and up and nothing to keep the game active.

It is very sad but I am passing way more time reading this forum than playing the game.

[SPANISH_AVENGER]

Very cool! I am looking forward to this patch, specially all the fixes, improvements, and that new Spanish Modern Battleship II variant hull!

[Fishyfish]

2 hours ago, Skeksis said:

 The last update was a full complement of British hulls, this update has not just got German additions but nearly every other nation got something too, this is an excellent update, for everybody, CCs are going to have a field-day with this content, aren't you?

While this quote wasn't even aimed at me, Ill say this: no. 

 

I know personally, Ill update, check out the new hulls, (I am excited to see a fuso and tone hulls) but realistically Ill say "neat" futz around for about 30 minutes and then hang the game up again because, while this is a nice looking patch on paper and I'm grateful for the new content, it's more of the same. 

You build one super Battleship you build them all. 

I'm pretty bored at this point playing the same custom battle editor and academy missions. 

There's nothing here that shakes me by the fins and makes me want to play the same old same old Ive been playing since October 2019. 

[Skeksis]

2 hours ago, Fishyfish said:

While this quote wasn't even aimed at me, Ill say this: no. 

 

I know personally, Ill update, check out the new hulls, (I am excited to see a fuso and tone hulls) but realistically Ill say "neat" futz around for about 30 minutes and then hang the game up again because, while this is a nice looking patch on paper and I'm grateful for the new content, it's more of the same. 

You build one super Battleship you build them all. 

I'm pretty bored at this point playing the same custom battle editor and academy missions. 

There's nothing here that shakes me by the fins and makes me want to play the same old same old Ive been playing since October 2019. 

There are some bugs that have been reported recently that are fixes in this update (thought they could have been listed already), but nonetheless active alpha players are seeing some real progress.

Things are looking really good.

Edited May 6, 2021 by Skeksis

[Tousansons]

2 hours ago, Skeksis said:

but nonetheless active alpha players are seeing some real progress.

Enthusiasm is nice and all but is there really some progress in visible development lately? It is basically the same patch note as the previous alpha: new hulls, some fixes, some "balancing", change in AI behavior and auto-build...

Perhaps some small bits of informations about what is being worked on in parallel of these filler patches could make us players a bit more interested in them?