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Core Patch 1: "Arriving"


Nick Thomadis

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On 8/25/2021 at 8:05 AM, Fishyfish said:

What players say: "we want old boats, new towers, retrofits, new features, fixes of old features, XYZ, ABC, 123, and some coffee" 

What devs read: "we want more super battleships"

And most of the “new hulls” are just resized versions of existing ones just with different components, not helping to diversify the game at all.

julian.thumb.jpg.a5ea3a115ce19ce68dc35d70055bbce1.jpg

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9 hours ago, Schirno said:

And most of the “new hulls” are just resized versions of existing ones just with different components, not helping to diversify the game at all.

julian.thumb.jpg.a5ea3a115ce19ce68dc35d70055bbce1.jpg

As far as I can tell, battleship wise, there are only about 8 unique hulls per style of battleship. 24 to 26 unique hulls total.

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22 hours ago, IsmaelMolina2021 said:

When I checked Task Force Admiral, it's still working in progress

And I agree, that means aircraft carriers would be added in the game as DLC

Indeed, but at least they update their community on a weekly basis 😂

Edited by Draco
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I'm not taking a position on "old" vs "new" other than to observe there appear to be constant new versions of later tech ships and virtually none of earlier ones, at least that was the case when I used to bother checking, lol.

I AM worried by the whole bottleneck aspect of putting hulls into the game.

Beyond technical and design questions, my other point of interest is the decisions that result in a hull being one thing or another are absolutely crucial to what I would have thought the general idea of the game might want to be.

There are, after all, reasons ships look as they do and have certain speeds, armaments and armour schemes. I'd argue those reasons are rather important and not things that ought to be kept from player involvement.

Hulls are NOT punched out independently of what their intended design is. No, even considerations such as required endurance (range) will affect designs, and not only of BBs. Just ask the Royal Navy about that with respect to their cruiser designs; having bases all over the world is great when it comes to the ability to shift forces across whole oceans. At the same time, however, you likely pay a price if a potential local rival can take some of their displacement you have had to use for fuel and put it into armour etc. Pretty sure that's one reason why the UK was so keen to play games with the accounting of fuel/water on board vis a vis what counted as displacement under the London/Washington treaties, for example.

"Here are some hulls you have no say in, nor do you get to change them in any meaningful way once they've arrived" isn't to my mind a great approach. "Magic stats" such as 'resistance' that reduces damage from ALL hits is just one very glaring issue that results, even IF they may be a perfectly reasonable design choice for differentiating between a DD and a BB for the ability to take hits and still function (not how I'd do it, but that's hardly the point).

What IS the point IMO is it leads to questions such as "how is that number arrived at? Why can't I choose to pay a price in other respects if I want higher 'resistance' than the cookie cutter hull gives me?" and so on.

I'm all in favour of there being loads of what I consider rather silly, dull mega-ships if that is what others will enjoy. There's no reason for there not to be UNLESS in doing so other aspects/eras are given short shrift. Plenty of people may well play random battles and not have much interest in the campaign, for example. I don't expect all of us to play the same way nor have the same interests, so I don't expect the game to cater solely to any one style.

As things stand, however, I believe the "late tech" has been disproportionately represented and that bothers me mainly because, as I pointed out earlier, people playing a "full" campaign won't reach those things for likely 30+ YEARS of in-game time. Plus one might argue it IS catering far more to one style than another, and I'd say the same had the situation been reversed.

It's also why I'd have looked into a mechanic that takes a variety of inputs to suggest various hull designs where the player is constrained by available tech and cost but otherwise can choose to play around with the broader issues of total displacement (you need the infrastructure to manage bigger and bigger ships, and those take plenty of time and money themselves plus affect the ability to use ships constrained by those factors), intended speed, armour and firepower. As has been said, there's little reason not to jam the hull with as much armour and mega guns as possible yet I'd suggest that's generally NOT what happened historically.

It's that last bit that troubles me, and I hope might at least have us wondering why the designs we're encouraged by the game to make don't seem to reflect what really did occur. Sort of important in a world-spanning naval tech and design game I'd think. That's not to say there ought not be plenty of scope for "what if?" elements, rather it's to say I happen to think those elements ought to come AFTER the "it's easy to see why the historical ships tended to develop as they did" elements.

Cheers

Edited by Steeltrap
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My two cents on the super battleship thing: Given that this campaign will include the 1940s, the necessity of super battleships is really a balance problem instead of just ignoring the earlier hulls. Otherwise, the 1940 campaign will be dominated by the factions that have a Super Battleship (esp without the 'equalizer' of CVs and airplanes). It will become a legitimate strategy to just wait out the opposing faction until you finally unlock the super battleship, bolt on multiple 18s/19s/20s, and then sink the much weaker "Modern Battleships" with the decisive range and firepower advantage of the higher guns. At least with every faction getting a theoretical super battleship (even with the differing tonnage), every faction will have a somewhat even playing field in the late game without a super decisive advantage.

 

On the other hand, yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! Campaign is (almost) here! So excited! 😄

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4 hours ago, ThatZenoGuy said:

Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of the game is the total and utter lack of carriers/aircraft.

A huge aspect of WW2 was the race for AA vs Carriers. A modern battleship statistically could fight off a single fleet carrier, something people forget.

It's still not supposed to be a WW2 simulator, even though devs themselves seem to forgot it.

It's 1890 to 1940, not 1940 to 2000. Until they change this of course.

Edited by Cpt.Hissy
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55 minutes ago, Cpt.Hissy said:

It's still not supposed to be a WW2 simulator, even though devs themselves seem to forgot it.

It's 1890 to 1940, not 1940 to 2000. Until they change this of course.

WW2 started in the mid 30's, ending in the mid 40's.

We get advanced fire control radar sets which sets the end-date from 45 to the 50's.

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6 hours ago, Cpt.Hissy said:

It's still not supposed to be a WW2 simulator, even though devs themselves seem to forgot it.

It's 1890 to 1940, not 1940 to 2000. Until they change this of course.

So I am supposed to unlock a bismarck, build it for like 3 years and use it for one bc game is ending at 1940s? Its obviously gonna drag on untill the 1950s at least so we can explore alternate scenarios and use our behemothsm

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10 minutes ago, DerRichtigeArzt said:

So I am supposed to unlock a bismarck, build it for like 3 years and use it for one bc game is ending at 1940s? Its obviously gonna drag on untill the 1950s at least so we can explore alternate scenarios and use our behemothsm

You're supposed to MAYBE build a Bismarck or two, if you're lucky and successful enough during the main part of the game, and go roflstomp those who didn't. Or be bismarck'ed yourself in other case.
 

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1 hour ago, Cpt.Hissy said:

Its obviously gonna drag on untill the 1950s

Hopefully not because as you say, it will drag. There's not enough diversity in gameplay with the whole technology>shipdesign/build>battle to keep it engaging for more than 40 years. Unless we have some real surprises with the unknown factors like politics or some quircks in how technologies are unlocked.

And why build a Bismarck when you can build better alternatives in a game about alt history? Don't repeat mistakes because they look somewhat "cool". And seriously it's not, Bismarck is just an oversized and undergunned ugly duck è_é 

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1 hour ago, Evil4Zerggin said:

I hope there will be a difficulty option to give the AI an increased budget multiplier. This will at least give a simple brute-force way of compensating for any AI weaknesses, even if not ideal.

Great, I'd love to see 10 battleships equipped with 1000ft long 17inch armor belt in 1895, I'd HECKING love to fight those with my 4 11inch battleship by cheesing the AI into torpedoing each other or whatever. I HECKING LOVE cheesing AI in a historical game. I HECKING LOVE TOTAL WAR LEGENDARY "DIFFICULTY".

Thanks bro haHAA

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1 hour ago, ColonelHenry said:

Great, I'd love to see 10 battleships equipped with 1000ft long 17inch armor belt in 1895, I'd HECKING love to fight those with my 4 11inch battleship by cheesing the AI into torpedoing each other or whatever. I HECKING LOVE cheesing AI in a historical game. I HECKING LOVE TOTAL WAR LEGENDARY "DIFFICULTY".

Thanks bro haHAA

Like I said, not ideal. But do you really believe that even 10% of the other suggestions here are within the devs' observed development capacity?

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