Some Thoughts and Suggestions

[brothermunro]

I’ve been thinking a bit about the game post CP0.5 and I have some thoughts and suggestions for consideration.

 

Components

I’d like to see a new component - fire control computers/tables. These were a key item in naval artillery development and it would be nice to have some granular control over them (perhaps by moving some of the accuracy stats from the towers to the new components).

I’d like to see a bit of a change to shells. Currently the only reason to go with smaller shells is to lower the chance of your ship exploding. I think larger shells should have less penetration due to their lower muzzle velocity (the idea behind them as I understand it was to smash down through the deck of a ship) than smaller shells. You should also get fewer (super)heavy shells than you do standard ones.

To balance this out a bit, and to give players another interesting option, I’d like to see a new component for the charges used. Similar to shells they could be standard, lower, increased and super. More charges means higher muzzle velocity, range, and penetration, but slower reload and higher explosion risk.

 

Torpedoes

The purpose of these changes are to make torpedoes more balanced between player and AI use.

Reducing the range at which torpedoes are fired by the AI more than the devs have already.

Reducing the detection range of all torpedoes.

Adding some sort of delay for AI ships starting avoidance measures if they aren’t the ones spotting the torpedoes (so a DD basically shouts ‘torpedo!!!’ and starts dodging then there’s a delay before other ships in the formation start to move and they might not move in the optimal fashion).

Your formations and ships should have a button (next to or metered with the AI button perhaps) that allows your own ships to use the same torp dodging method as the AI. Currently the most effective way to deal with torpedo attacks is to completely dissolve your formations and micro each ship individually. 

An increase in torpedo damage, especially to ships with no torpedo belt and a single bottomed hull.

An effect of crew on torpedo ability - speed of aiming, likelihood of firing in the right direction, spread, range etc would all be good. Currently there’s no real reason to have good crews on torpedo boats.

I’d also like to see torpedoes being slightly ‘wobbly’ and have a tendency to go off course - especially the earlier ones - though that’s much harder to pull off.

 

Formations 

I would like the ability to disable the AI anti collision behaviour - perhaps merged with the AI control button (none, avoid torps, avoid torps and ships, full control as options for example).

I can see how the formations should work, so I’m not going to complain about how they currently operate, I’m sure improvements are on the way.

I still find the way the unit cards work counter intuitive - I keep expecting them to work like ships do in Empire Total War (select ships, press g to group as an example). I know I’m likely in the minority here but I’d like it to be clearer how the cards work.

It would also be fantastic if there was a way to set up formations, or even ship positions, before the battle starts for real. Either a ‘deployment mode’ like E:TW or Battlefleet Gothic or perhaps a set of standing orders you can chose in advance in the campaign - perhaps using the paper map graphical style we saw in some of the dev diaries about formations.

Anyway just some thoughts - I’d be interested to know what the rest of the community thinks could be good improvements (or what you think of my suggestions).

[Stealth17]

Amen on the collision behavior! It's so annoying to have formations just go completely awry as they're trying to jocky for positions.

[madham82]

4 hours ago, Stealth17 said:

Amen on the collision behavior! It's so annoying to have formations just go completely awry as they're trying to jocky for positions.

Welcome Stealth17! Really enjoy your all your gaming videos. One of the reasons I picked this game up. 

[Commander Reed]

2 hours ago, madham82 said:

Welcome Stealth17! Really enjoy your all your gaming videos. One of the reasons I picked this game up. 

Same. Once I saw the game, I knew I had to get it. It looked good, and I was right - for the most part. 🤣