>>>Alpha-12 Feedback (v86 3/6/2021)<<<

[Darth Khyron]

No, I do not remember it, but I will try to look after it in the future and will submit a report if this happens again. It was not too far, but I cannot give you numbers. Many thanks to you for caring

There is another thing that bothers me a bit more, however : Often, guns mounted on the starboard side of a ship will not turn or fire. This often happens on many ship-classes, like on that battleship below. The forward 152mm triple gun does not turn nor engage. The portside equivalent is fine, though.

 

[Nick Thomadis]

47 minutes ago, Darth Khyron said:

No, I do not remember it, but I will try to look after it in the future and will submit a report if this happens again. It was not too far, but I cannot give you numbers. Many thanks to you for caring

There is another thing that bothers me a bit more, however : Often, guns mounted on the starboard side of a ship will not turn or fire. This often happens on many ship-classes, like on that battleship below. The forward 152mm triple gun does not turn nor engage. The portside equivalent is fine, though.

 

Two reasons can cause this issue:

1) Obstruction by towers or smaller guns

2)  Slow turret rotation 

In your image it appears to be the first reason. The upcoming patch will address the small gun interference radius (allowing small guns less close), so it can be a more rare problem.

[Darth Khyron]

Very nice, thanks for the answer

[Nick Thomadis]

Hello again all,

The hotfix update has just been deployed. The update improves several aspects of the game according to your feedback. Here is what it includes:

v86 Hotfix

• AI targeting improved further (It could not always switch to targets of higher priority).
• AI aggressiveness balance (AI should adapt more rapidly to situations).
• Targeting sensitivity adjusted better. This should fix issues of guns that could not acquire a target for a large period of time.
• Fixed metric system indications which could not become rounded.
• Fire damage slightly increased (it could still be rather low in very big ships).
• Flooding protection slightly rebalanced (Small ships could sink too fast, due to latest weight balances, even with max. bulkheads).
• Armor weights adjustment (In some cases the armor weight could be too low).
• Fixes of various reported bugs related to hulls and guns.
• Collision avoidance between friendly ships is further improved.
• Optimized further the AI Auto-Design.
• Fixed Armored Cruisers not being available for Germany and Austro-Hungary between years 1909-1911.

Thank you for reading,

The Game-Labs Team

[Darth Khyron]

Thanks for the update. The "Too many threads"-bug still persists, however.

[killjoy1941]

Just tested free rotating turrets and target lock. Maneuvers no longer cause the lock to be lost, but an occluded turret does, so we're halfway there.

This type of design will cause repeated lock loss if the rear turret is obstructed by the superstructure. It's 100% guaranteed and repeatable:

 

[Darth Khyron]

Hello again,

unfortunately, the problem with guns not moving or firing also persists. This only occurs with starboard-mounted guns, port-mounted are absolutely fine, so it should not have anything to do with obstructing superstructure.
As you can see, this Austrian-Hungarian battlecruiser uses three twin 152mm guns per side. All three port guns DO move and fire. The foremost of the starboard guns is stuck in place. While the barrels elevate, it does not turn or fire.
This problem persists with many guns mounted starboard and on many ship-types.
Am I doing anything wrong?

[Nick Thomadis]

13 hours ago, killjoy1941 said:

Just tested free rotating turrets and target lock. Maneuvers no longer cause the lock to be lost, but an occluded turret does, so we're halfway there.

This type of design will cause repeated lock loss if the rear turret is obstructed by the superstructure. It's 100% guaranteed and repeatable:

 

The game reflects the necessity of using your broadside and large number of main guns to acquire a target at long range. The aiming process needs at least two turrets to function properly. A single turret may never find optimally the range of the target, if the target is at a large range and moves very fast. The turret may fire but with large error margins and its accuracy is expected to be the lowest possible. 

If you move your ship at a broadside position, with a slight angle for more protection, so that the range between the ships does not change very fast, you should notice that the target locking will remain constant and the aim progress will be steady.

2 hours ago, Darth Khyron said:

Hello again,

unfortunately, the problem with guns not moving or firing also persists. This only occurs with starboard-mounted guns, port-mounted are absolutely fine, so it should not have anything to do with obstructing superstructure.
As you can see, this Austrian-Hungarian battlecruiser uses three twin 152mm guns per side. All three port guns DO move and fire. The foremost of the starboard guns is stuck in place. While the barrels elevate, it does not turn or fire.
This problem persists with many guns mounted starboard and on many ship-types.
Am I doing anything wrong?

The guns that do not fire seem to be of smaller caliber than those that fire. A reason that this will happen is expected, because the target may still not be in range (or within range but still too far so they save ammo, in the non-aggressive firing mode).

[Nick Thomadis]

15 hours ago, Darth Khyron said:

Thanks for the update. The "Too many threads"-bug still persists, however.

Can you please share what is your system cpu? 

[madham82]

1 hour ago, Nick Thomadis said:

The game reflects the necessity of using your broadside and large number of main guns to acquire a target at long range. The aiming process needs at least two turrets to function properly. A single turret may never find optimally the range of the target, if the target is at a large range and moves very fast. The turret may fire but with large error margins and its accuracy is expected to be the lowest possible. 

If you move your ship at a broadside position, with a slight angle for more protection, so that the range between the ships does not change very fast, you should notice that the target locking will remain constant and the aim progress will be steady.

Maybe it is just me, but that doesn't seem to match with real world. There are two directors (aside from local range finders on each turret). They can each provide sufficient ranging and engage separate targets reliably. In fact the ship in that post (Deutschland class) at the Battle of the River Plate was engaging separate targets reliably with each turret. The main disadvantage is fewer barrels on target of course, but it doesn't mean the unobstructed turret should have any loss of target lock. 

I get your explanation of why it happens, but there needs to be a better way to implement. You should suffer no accuracy loss just because one of the turrets is masked (once it has been locked to begin with). If anything it should just take longer to get target lock with a single turret.  

[CapnAvont1015]

Ok I don't know if this just my game and I just need to repair it but is anyone else having this problem where Yamato's four and five inch guns are not fitting properly on the super-structure? I can place three on the lowest level of the super-structure but apparently that blocks the top ones and vice-versa. Though now that I look at them the gun models look slightly bigger than they are suppose to be. But that could just be me.

Edited June 4, 2021 by CapnAvont1015

[Nick Thomadis]

1 hour ago, madham82 said:

In fact the ship in that post (Deutschland class) at the Battle of the River Plate was engaging separate targets reliably with each turret.

We do not have separate director for main guns (maybe we can improve this later) but you can still fight effectively separate targets with different gun groups, and they can lock to targets too, but it depends from ship characteristics.

A single turret aiming will always be less effective than a multi-turret aiming procedure.

[Nick Thomadis]

42 minutes ago, CapnAvont1015 said:

Ok I don't know if this just my game and I just need to repair it but is anyone else having this problem where Yamato's four and five inch guns are not fitting properly on the super-structure? I can place three on the lowest level of the super-structure but apparently that blocks the top ones and vice-versa. Though now that I look at them the gun models look slightly bigger than they are suppose to be. But that could just be me.

Can you post an image of the problem?

[SonicB]

1 minute ago, Nick Thomadis said:

We do not have separate director for main guns (maybe we can improve this later) but you can still fight effectively separate targets with different gun groups, and they can lock to targets too, but it depends from ship characteristics.

A single turret aiming will always be less effective than a multi-turret aiming procedure.

This would definitely be a good feature to have! Especially with secondary armament on larger ships, which can run between 2" and 8" and which can only now be directed at a single target. Some finer control over gun targeting would be most appreciated - ideally by a) having separate targeting for each calibre of gun, and b) the ability to set primary and secondary targets, or allow turrets which have no line-of-sight to the primary target to fire 'under local control' at targets of opportunity.

[Mutsu]

Thank you for the mini fixing the metric numbers.

I have my nice clean numbers once more xD

[CapnAvont1015]

3 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Can you post an image of the problem?

Sorry it took so long to send this I had to do things. Anyway here's a link to the picture.  

file:///C:/Games/Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts/Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts/default/game/screenshots/screen_1920x1080_2021-06-04_12-53-43.png

Now I show this but when I try to put turrets down on the bottom they turn red. (do not look at this. It's worthless)

Edited June 4, 2021 by CapnAvont1015

[CapnAvont1015]

3 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Can you post an image of the problem?

Sorry I can't send a picture here, but I did send one in the bug reports from the game so you may see it there.

[Nick Thomadis]

12 minutes ago, CapnAvont1015 said:

Sorry I can't send a picture here, but I did send one in the bug reports from the game so you may see it there.

Ok thank you, we will check it out.

[Darth Khyron]

All right, here we go:

My CPU is a 3600 6-Core 3.59 Ghz regarding the too many threads.

As for the guns not firing.

The ones on the first image are the ones on starboard. The target was a light cruiser within range. Two of the guns, those with green arrows, are firing as they should. The red-arrowed one does not turn or fire, though the turret elevates the barrels.
The other picture shows the guns on the port side, after I turned the ship around. Being mounted on the exact opposite of the hull, all three are turning and firing. So it should not be a problem of obstructing superstructure or smaller guns (the next guns were 127mm in the superstructure, far away).

So...why? This problem repeats on smaller vessels, most common on light cruisers, but also on german battleships with some frequency, though by far not always.
 

[madham82]

4 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

We do not have separate director for main guns (maybe we can improve this later) but you can still fight effectively separate targets with different gun groups, and they can lock to targets too, but it depends from ship characteristics.

A single turret aiming will always be less effective than a multi-turret aiming procedure.

Well unless the guns are different calibers or number of barrels, they will be in the same group. So that doesn't work for most setups, but that's a separate issue. This I know is on the list to look into, so no worries. 

Back to the original issue, why would a ship lose target lock from 1 turret being unable to fire due to interference? We aren't talking about it taking longer to gain a lock with 1 (which is reasonable). The ship had lock, maneuvered in a way to mask one of the turrets, but now you have lost target lock. Just doesn't make sense since that has nothing to do with what the actual target is doing. If the target is sailing on the same course and speed, then there's no change in the firing solution so to speak. The firing ship itself knows how it changed course/speed, so that wouldn't really impact it either. 

My guess is you are trying to simulate an increasing error probability because you have fewer guns firing on the target. In that case I would suggest Target Lock have a decay period where the longer you are firing with a single turret, the less the accuracy will be from that point on. Or maybe just it some time value that if the masked turret is not returned to firing, target lock is dropped. 

Just to confirm Nick, does Target Lock drop if not all turrets are able to fire, or do you need at least 2 turrets firing to keep lock?

Edited June 4, 2021 by madham82

[disc]

8 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

The game reflects the necessity of using your broadside and large number of main guns to acquire a target at long range. The aiming process needs at least two turrets to function properly. A single turret may never find optimally the range of the target, if the target is at a large range and moves very fast. The turret may fire but with large error margins and its accuracy is expected to be the lowest possible. 

For what it is worth, a quad turret can successfully bracket a target by itself.

The idea is that the next salvo is aimed by checking the farthest and nearest shell splashes from the last salvo. The splashes should surround the target. If the most distant shot in the salvo is on the near side of the target, then the salvo was short and the next one needs to fire at a longer distance. If the closest shot is on the far side of the target, then the salvo was long and the next one needs to fire at a shorter distance. When the extremes are on either side of the target, then probably the shooter is dead-on. The shots between these extremes should thus have a high chance to hit the target (hits may or may not be visible).

This technique ("gun ranging") would be used in conjunction with optical rangefinders. Fire-control radar usually would be able to pick up splashes, too, so this would be used in that manner too.

A three gun salvo will probably work too, as the "middle" shot should have a decent chance to hit, but four was generally the minimum desired. At short ranges, of course, range brackets are not nearly so important, so (partially for this reason) earlier battleships often had mixed batteries and fewer big guns.

The classic 8-gun broadside could be fired in half-salvoes, giving two smaller but more frequent 4-splash brackets. This was the British approach in WWI. Of course, this could be scaled up if the ship had more guns (9, 10, 12, etc), with proportionally more shells in each half salvo. The US WWI approach was to always fire full salvoes, evidently to get a solid spread.

[killjoy1941]

9 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

The game reflects the necessity of using your broadside and large number of main guns to acquire a target at long range. The aiming process needs at least two turrets to function properly. A single turret may never find optimally the range of the target, if the target is at a large range and moves very fast. The turret may fire but with large error margins and its accuracy is expected to be the lowest possible. 

If you move your ship at a broadside position, with a slight angle for more protection, so that the range between the ships does not change very fast, you should notice that the target locking will remain constant and the aim progress will be steady.

Ah, that explains it. However, using the example design I posted, even if you unmask the rear turret you won't get a target lock unless you manually retarget. If you don't, both turrets will fire independently with no lock benefits until the AI picks a new target.

It's easy enough to confirm: Custom battle, 1 v 1 CA, give yours just two turrets, turn broadside after engagement and don't manually target anything. Your turrets will engage individually forever until you manually retarget the enemy ship.

[Evil4Zerggin]

There's a discrepancy in the new fuels: Oil I reduces boiler weight by 10%, but Oil II and III do not.

[Darth Khyron]

As for the placement of secondaries, here are a few pictures of the problem. I think, that secondary turrets are now (or were before Alpha 12) too big, sometimes. Hm...I wanted to upload more, but an unknown error keeps occuring. Anyway, often you cannot place a secondary or larger torpedo tubes on the side of a ship. This is especially true with vessels which mount large superstructures like german or british cruisers (you cannot place 5' secondaries). Torpedo tubes are now scales, which is good. But you cannot really mount larger tubes on the side of many vessels, especially japanese large oxygen-type tubes, they are simply too big, even for heavy cruisers (on a side note, japanese and german-style tubes seem to have switched places with one another).

On the picture with the japanese battleship, I tried to mount 102mm guns on the superstructure. Before Patch Alpha 12 that was possible on all fixture points. Now, only four out of six can mount the guns. 127mm guns will only be accepted on the lower three hardpoints. On smaller vessels, like heavy cruisers, you can only mount 76mm-type guns on the superstructure. However, these often come into conflict with forward-mounted main guns, causing them to go "red".

 

[Nick Thomadis]

3 hours ago, Darth Khyron said:

As for the placement of secondaries, here are a few pictures of the problem. I think, that secondary turrets are now (or were before Alpha 12) too big, sometimes. Hm...I wanted to upload more, but an unknown error keeps occuring. Anyway, often you cannot place a secondary or larger torpedo tubes on the side of a ship. This is especially true with vessels which mount large superstructures like german or british cruisers (you cannot place 5' secondaries). Torpedo tubes are now scales, which is good. But you cannot really mount larger tubes on the side of many vessels, especially japanese large oxygen-type tubes, they are simply too big, even for heavy cruisers (on a side note, japanese and german-style tubes seem to have switched places with one another).

On the picture with the japanese battleship, I tried to mount 102mm guns on the superstructure. Before Patch Alpha 12 that was possible on all fixture points. Now, only four out of six can mount the guns. 127mm guns will only be accepted on the lower three hardpoints. On smaller vessels, like heavy cruisers, you can only mount 76mm-type guns on the superstructure. However, these often come into conflict with forward-mounted main guns, causing them to go "red".

 

The Alpha-12 collision detection is more accurate to prevent unrealistic and ugly overlaps of ship parts. If they do not fit, it means that they directly clip with other parts, or their rotation is obstructed. We will look to optimize in next patches, but this should be better than being able to mount huge guns very close to each other and get overlaps.