Pre Battle Deployment mode for the fleet like Total War games

[Koalabaer]

Hello,

this is my first post here and from all what i can gather in the internet not everyone here is happy about the automatic placement of ships pre-Battle.

And my suggestion is that you can place your ships before the battle starts just like the TW games create groups for them, maybe assign a cours while you are at it.

If someone here is not aware how it works in TW, just imagine you starting a battle and you are free to place your units/ships where you want them and then start the battle.

Empire Total War had a good system for it they even had working battle lines and so on maybe you all could write your feedback for this suggestion and own ideas how something similar could be created in UAD.

 

I´m looking forward to hear your thoughs about this and wouldlike to see a productive discussion below

 

-Patrick/Koalabaer

[ETF]

+1

JUTLAND (Storm Studios) had a great scenario editor and you could place and change almost anything.....weather ship placements etc. Mind you, you had only WW1 ships (all of them :)) to choose from.

[Danvanthevacuumman]

yes

[HailCOBRALA]

Agree with this. PLEASE get this ingame! 

[Commander Reed]

YES! But I feel like that should be optional. Like a submarine encountering another ship during their patrol, they aren't expecting to see them, right? So they're probably out positioned and have to work with that. This would likely be the same with surface warships, unless it is a planned assault/attack. 

[The_Real_Hawkeye]

On 8/24/2021 at 7:40 PM, Commander-Alexander-Reed said:

YES! But I feel like that should be optional. Like a submarine encountering another ship during their patrol, they aren't expecting to see them, right? So they're probably out positioned and have to work with that. This would likely be the same with surface warships, unless it is a planned assault/attack. 

The thing is, if I'm supposed to be the fleet/task force commander, then I sure as hell am the deciding voice in how my fleet is dispositioned on the march.

I am the one deciding which DDs, CLs, CAs, BCs and BBs are grouped up in a single division.

I am the one deciding that 6th DesDiv is screening on the port and 5th DesRon on the starbord side.

I am the one deciding that 3rd CruDiv is scouting ahead, not 2nd CruDiv.

 

Besides, my battlefleet is at sea? I _always_ expect to meet the enemy - that's the whole point of my fleet being out there to begin with.

As an example, yes, the Grand Fleet closed with the High Seas Fleet in moving formation at the early stages of the Battle of Jutland but Jellicoe sure as hell expected to meet the High Seas Fleet - that's why the Grand Fleet was at sea in the first place and as soon as something like combat range was approached, he had the fleet deployed accordingly. 

So, if a battle starts at maximum range, you could be limited in the deployment of your fleet according to established "marching_order_doctrines" (composition of individual divisions still determined by me, the commander of the bloody fleet) but if an engagement starts inside combat range (as in, shots are fired the second the engagement starts), then give me the ability to deploy the fleet as I see fit, because there has obviously been at least an hour where both sides knew of the other side's presence and had the time to sort themselves out.

Now, a raiding cruiser/AMC stumbling upon an enemy warships, that's a different story. But then, with only a single raider in the engagement there wouldn't be any ships to organize anyway .

[SPANISH_AVENGER]

I 100% agree. It's very annoying when ships are put in strange positions, specially when you try to group some ships and they start sailing in circles around instead of simply adopting the desired formation because of the weird automatic priority things. I would rather just be able where I want each ship in the formation...

Edited August 26, 2021 by SPANISH_AVENGER

[Tousansons]

I want one thing in a naval game of these periods. Uncertainty. You know something is out there. You dont know what, how and when.

Let s see how well the campaign handle that. But if I just move a big blob of ships against another one i will be disappointed, regardless of deployment restrictions.

 

Edited August 26, 2021 by Tousansons

[DiggerZor1]

Yes, I agree with you, but our posts here won't solve anything, and the developers won't change this system. That's why I'm skeptical of the new Total War installments. They no longer listen to players and make easy to learn games for kids because that's how they'll make more money. This problem has been discussed on this site, zumroad.com, where there is regular news about the gaming industry. And it seems to me that there are fewer and fewer good games every year, and I don't know why, because technology makes it possible to make beautiful and interesting games.

Edited September 18, 2022 by DiggerZor1

[o Barão]

1 hour ago, DiggerZor1 said:

Yes, I agree with you, but our posts here won't solve anything, and the developers won't change this system. That's why I'm skeptical of the new Total War installments. They no longer listen to players and make easy to learn games for kids because that's how they'll make more money.

[Hardlec]

The abilities of the player to decide which ships go where are way to limited in the current game.

One thing is that the player seldom choses where ships return from time at sea.  
 I also remain annoyed when the computer decides to "force" a battle where I have a damaged battleship that can only make 15 knots and my mission is to chase a division of destroyers with 30 knot speed.  When I can't catch the enemy, I forfiet all the victory points for the damage that happened to my ships before I started the scenario.

 

[UnleashtheKraken]

21 hours ago, o Barão said:

Well, yes, but the request and idea are valid and, honestly, I'm not sure why pre-battle player set deployment is not ALREADY a part of the game.  This would be a serious improvement.  There's a lot of 'player hands off' decisions about this game that are frustrating.  It's not immersive, it's just '*EYEROLL* here I go having to undo the tangle the computer has put my fleet into for the hundredth time.  Why in hell do I have 4 destroyers in one division and then 1 on it's own following, or screening.  At the VERY least I want to determine how many ships are in each division, what role they're fulfilling.  Setting the position, division composition, and role of my fleet pre-battle would be the ideal.

[o Barão]

23 minutes ago, UnleashtheKraken said:

Well, yes, but the request and idea are valid and, honestly, I'm not sure why pre-battle player set deployment is not ALREADY a part of the game.  This would be a serious improvement.  There's a lot of 'player hands off' decisions about this game that are frustrating.  It's not immersive, it's just '*EYEROLL* here I go having to undo the tangle the computer has put my fleet into for the hundredth time.  Why in hell do I have 4 destroyers in one division and then 1 on it's own following, or screening.  At the VERY least I want to determine how many ships are in each division, what role they're fulfilling.  Setting the position, division composition, and role of my fleet pre-battle would be the ideal.

Yes, it is a popular request. You have the answer at 35:52

 

[UnleashtheKraken]

23 minutes ago, o Barão said:

Yes, it is a popular request. You have the answer at 35:52

 

Yes, I watched that.  'We will see what we can do about it in the next updates.'  I'm not holding my breath, that's too damned weasel-wordy.  A popular player request?  There's already SOME system for pre-battle deployment being handled by game logic.  This doesn't seem like it's a huge ask and with a 'popular player request' one would really think an answer more like, 'We have heard the community and will add it to our plans for upcoming patches'.

I'm frankly shocked that the devs didn't already have some plan for this.  This seems very out of touch and speaks to the 'player hands off' to a lot of aspects of this game, of which I personally am not a fan.  The only thing saving the game is the real time battles, commanding multi-unit fleets.  The moment a naval ship design/ship combat game that is more player friendly (I do not mean hand-holdy or casual) comes along, I might be dropping this.  The ship designer is very limited and weirdly arbitrary, secondaries seem stupidly effective against large ships.  And the complete lack of multiplayer in a game that is BEGGING for multiplayer is frankly a massive disappointment.  Co-op modes, and team PvP using some sort of points system, could be amazing.  I'm willing to bet they could triple sales or even more if the game had multiplayer.  I have several friends who expressed interest until I told them 'single player only, just AI opponents' and they were like 'I was interested but hard nope without multi'.

Right now this (definitely not a beta lmao) game has weird design focus and priorities, but sometimes that can come out great.  I'm just feeling hope fade.

[Hardlec]

The first thing I do is make a full pause and re-organize my fleet.  

Put all the same classes of BB, or at least the same speed, in one division, etc.

[FidelBrut]

I don’t really like this system, even though I’m a fan of the Heroes of Might and Magic 5 game, where you can also place units manually before each battle where it’s convenient for you and in such a quantity that you want. I still think there should be stricter restrictions on the placement of units. Otherwise, the game will be too unpredictable, and no premeditated tactics will make sense. Plus, Total War lacks army skins, weapons, and maps. Could do like in Cs go. I sell and buy skins on SkinCashier, thereby either improving the look of the game or getting paid for unwanted skins.

Edited September 29, 2022 by FidelBrut

[Käptn_Flitschauge]

I'd love to see a system like War on the Sea as well, where you set the formation of your taskforce on the campaign map, but can reform it as you require at sea

[kjg000]

On 8/25/2021 at 3:10 AM, Commander Reed said:

YES! But I feel like that should be optional. Like a submarine encountering another ship during their patrol, they aren't expecting to see them, right? So they're probably out positioned and have to work with that. This would likely be the same with surface warships, unless it is a planned assault/attack. 

Well ... no. We don't get that type of encounter. Sure some ships may be slightly out of formation IRL but what we have are mismatched divisions intermixed with each other. Even if we just had the ability to assign ships to divisions (just like a real Admiral!), we would be a lot better off.  Being able place these divisions in relation to each other would be even better. A full fledged placing of ships, Total War style would be best. Remember you won't know the placement of the enemy until battle commences.

This is quite likely an easier solution than getting the program to intelligently, or even adequately, assign and place divisions.

[kjg000]

On 8/26/2021 at 8:35 PM, Tousansons said:

I want one thing in a naval game of these periods. Uncertainty. You know something is out there. You dont know what, how and when.

Let s see how well the campaign handle that. But if I just move a big blob of ships against another one i will be disappointed, regardless of deployment restrictions.

 

Yes,the Dev's drive to force their 'type' of encounter, regardless of positioning  is frustrating. Sometimes too much information, down to the exact specifications of each opposing ship. Other times teleporting the entire Russian fleet from the Baltic to the Sea of Japan, no need to do all that pesky sailing through Suez or around the Cape of Good Hope like they had to do in 1905.