Core Patch 1.0 News *The upcoming changelog*

[madham82]

2 minutes ago, Skeksis said:

I especially like how the AI emulates admirals, very humanlike e.g. maintaining optimal range, fighting in formation, retreating when it thinks it’s done for. 

^^ This is another one of those humanlike AIs, since this is what players actually do, wait for the enemy to expend all their torp’s, then move in for the kill.

But I would suggest making the AI active on 5-15% remaining torps, fleet-wide. Even randomize this figure between 1-15%, or set to national trait.

This might have the following effects:

• Player won’t know exactly when the enemy will attack.
• Negate unused torps sitting on ships in the rear or retreating ships, etc.
• General unpredictability.
• To emulate mistakes, the admiral (AI) thought his opponent had no torps and mistakenly attacked.   

Yep good suggestion. It was and should be a game of guessing what the opposing side's status is and what they may be planning. 

[Tousansons]

7 minutes ago, Skeksis said:

I especially like how the AI emulates admirals, very humanlike e.g. maintaining optimal range, fighting in formation, retreating when it thinks it’s done for. 

I really like when all the smoke ship of the humanlike admiral activate their smoke at the same time. It really show that human coordination is incredible.

I will not even comment on the torpedo divination part, Sonic was too fast for me.

Edited November 14, 2021 by Tousansons

[1MajorKoenig]

4 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

Mandatory people calling:

@Stormnet @Aceituna @CapnAvont1015 @1MajorKoenig @Skeksis @DougToss @Airzerg @Bluishdoor76 @HusariuS @Marshall99 @Steeltrap @Commander Reed @Redletter45 @Cpt.Hissy @AdmER @Davy_Jones @Gangut @IronKaputt @Koogus @T_the_ferret @BuckleUpBones @o Barão @Schirüno 

Also soz if i forget anyone, but im not sure whos even still going to the forum at this point so eh.

Also noice too see this, peeps were and myself going mad in the forums as you probs have noticed lol.

cheers! 'w'/

Thanks Barney!

 

I for one will play the campaign and hope it offers a reason/story to play the game and all the great designs we come up with.

 

I appreciate the update and I am indeed looking forward to play it.

 

Still need my DERFFLINGER though 💪

[davidt_man]

4 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

 

Nick, thank you for your hard work. I do have a question though. If the first version of the campaign is going to feature only Germany and Britain, then why are you releasing so many new Japanese ships. Why not focus on completing the ships for Germany and Britain first? There are so many hull types missing for both countries, particularly light cruisers.

[lordcmdr]

Nick, thanks for the update. However, as discussed many times toxicity in the community builds more from the lack of any communication on game status. If you just checked in once a week with how the team is progressing or just, “how is everyone today?” It would smooth things over.

[Himbeereule]

I'm as annoyed as anyone about the lack of communication between patch announcements (and the vagueness in regards to when the patch will actually arrive in every patch announcement), but I don't understand how you can criticize the announced contents of this patch. It's all we were promised from core patches 1, 2 and 3 (minus officers if I read that right), which is a lot considering core patch 1 was a faint hope to see anytime soon at this point and the only feature from the others we got so far were crew mechanics.

The campaign is exactly what it was announced to be. You can't complain about the devs not over-delivering in an unreleased game. We also get a bunch of cruisers, light cruisers etc. with every new patch, it's never "just more lategame superbattleships". Nick even wrote in this exact announcement that they were working on more pre-dreadnought battleships and cruisers.

Scrollable windows in the ship designer are a very major improvement imo.

So don't just complain for the sake of complaining.

[T_the_ferret]

We complain because nothing that we actually talked about was addressed 

[brucesim2003]

6 hours ago, HistoricalAccuracyMan said:

... the Pacific War is much better known/more famous.

Only in an American-centric world.

[Shiki]

For the moment, I'll choose to leave aside my so-called "toxicity, drama, and aggressiveness" - to use such grand words of wisdom from the mouth of one more than a year behind their own schedule, charitably. Instead, I'll focus on a realistic assessment of this update.

Let's see...

Campaign

Yay!... I guess. Six months is quite a long time to rip apart an old campaign with bare-bones functionality and put together... another one with bare-bones functionality. My only positive to this is that it's stable. Probably.

Hulls

One - probably butchered - Japanese 'large light cruiser'. Mogami seems to be the posterchild of Japanese construction when it comes to portrayals, despite the majority (2/3rds) of Japanese 8in-gun cruiser types having a much different (and, as borne out by wartime service, more successful) arrangement of their topsides. One wonders why you would do this- reusing assets is more y'all's style and both preceding types (Myōkō and Takao) are practically identical in hullform characteristics. Oh well... at least it's not a baby Hood hull, I guess.

One... two... three... eight copy-pasted hulls. Until I see it, I won't choose to doubt my conviction that the so-called "California" (why does everyone choose California and not Idaho?) is simply a rescaled version of the Standard type already present in game with some resized Iowa structures to go with it, not to mention the new French battleship. One wonders why you have a warship photos thread when you seem content to reuse the same assets.

Mechanics, Graphics, and other Misc.

Progress! Actual... progress! Crossdeck firing is now maybe, possibly, just slightly possible. The AI, in its infinite wisdom, can apparently tell when our destroyers have run out of torpedoes, but hopefully they're not quite as wise as Gamelabs or they'd forgive us for being toxic while they blow them out of the water. Everything else is probably needed.

Future Developments

I guess it'll be nice to have a few hotels and maybe Courbet. But then again, Courbet misses that strike zone by being a product of the 1910s, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Analysis

Nothing's really changed. My unmitigated pedantry of your life choices and game decisions will continue, since you evidently have no PR or Community Management personnel to... well, interact with your community. If you do, you should fire them, because they aren't doing their job. Do a monthly devblog. Open a thread where you post a picture of an incomplete model once every few weeks. Do something to hold people's attention in a good way. Because all your silence is breeding is resentment and mistrust.

I refuse to shill for you. If you expect a smile and a pat on the back for a job well done, you may as well look elsewhere, because I - and all those other "toxic, dramatic, and aggressive" players - constitute the majority opinion.

[DougToss]

I’m happy with the patch notes, and particularly the write up. It’s appreciated, and I’m looking forward to seeing how that North Sea campaign comes together.

 

e: Though if @Shiki is right, a lot of the underlying systems might remain flawed. I’ll test this build and check in when I have a feel for it.

I want to reiterate that the firm and vocal feedback from the community comes from a place of seeing what’s possible, and I don’t think should be taken as discouragement, but rather encouragement to pay attention to neglected areas.

I know it’s hard to balance praise and criticism, but I also think there are many things - communication being the key one IMO - that can be improved regardless of progress on the patch.

Still, this shot in the arm was needed for sure.

 

ee: I think the 1.0 version number may be unearned, or at least premature. I don’t know how these things usually work, but would it be amiss to say that the game systems so far remain in need of work? An updated roadmap would go a long way towards identifying what feedback has been received and how recurring concerns are being addressed. 
 

eee: The toxicity thing bothers me. 
 

This board has no moderation - we had someone singing the praises of Croatian Fascism until they got bored and moved along with no mod action.

There is no engagement with the board from Devs. Without Devs steering or participating in discussion, it’s impossible for anyone posting to know what, if anything, is being addressed. I don’t see how the tone could be better in the absence of any response to feedback. If people feel heard they speak less forcefully.

That overlaps with ad hominem toxicity towards “The Devs”. When the developers are silent and invisible, their feelings and perspectives can’t be taken into account because they aren’t known. Someone who just started following the game couldn’t moderate their feedback by what they know of @Nick Thomadis, and give a more charitable interpretation of events, because they don’t know him from Adam. They can’t say or think “I know Nick takes our concerns seriously, let’s not assume he’s ignoring us or acting in bad faith”. How could they?

 

Saying that neglected community forums are toxic *and therefore feedback has been dismissed* gets the causal relationship backwards, and is only salting the wound. I worry it won’t help repair the rift forming here.
 

I don’t know, I suppose my larger point is that none of this is happening in a vacuum, and  engaging with the community is probably the best way for future development to be well received. 
 

@Nick Thomadis please consider taking on @Cptbarney as community manager or something, as he’s the only reason I come back here. I can’t think of a better person to act as a go-between here, and on Steam, to start rebuilding a positive relationship with the community - and if he had mod privileges - a less toxic community as well. 
 

It’s something your team badly needs, and he’s already been doing it while in the dark, for free. Just saying.

Edited November 15, 2021 by DougToss

[BuckleUpBones]

14 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

New After-Battle Statistics: Now you are able to examine detailed battle statistics for any ship that participated in a battle.

Custom Battles too?

[TAKTCOM]

16 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

• More engine components enriching the available technology tree: ...Gas Turbines are the new engine types.

Wow, 1960s technology. Exactly what you need in a game about the First World War.

[Faolind]

8 hours ago, Shiki said:

I refuse to shill for you. If you expect a smile and a pat on the back for a job well done, you may as well look elsewhere, because I - and all those other "toxic, dramatic, and aggressive" players - constitute the majority opinion.

You don't. You constitute the loudest. There's a large variety of comments here, in style and form, and the majority of negative ones are being spammed by a single person (not you). You are loud, yes. Your posts are numerous. But the number of people posting optimistic messages is greater.

-------------------------------------
I for one am happy to see what this campaign looks and feels like, and I wish the developers the best.  I concur with the randomization idea on torpedo-tracking mentioned earlier, it will add a guessing element both to gameplay and also visibly the the character of the AI, making it seem less robotic.

I also recommend to the developers that they focus more on campaign mechanics than on battle mechanics, ship design, or playable nation expansion with the next 6 moths of update. The campaign must be alive and playable in a real form before anything else can be built upon it, and now that it is here, this campaign is what people will mentally build their impression of the game from.

[Tycondero]

4 hours ago, DougToss said:

This board has no moderation - we had someone singing the praises of Croatian Fascism until they got bored and moved along with no mod action.

Very true. Luckily he seems to be gone for now.

Though I wouldn't start to put fascism stickers on people (very cheap way to dismiss someone). The guy was clearly out of the line in how someone should behave as a person in life. He behaved as a first class troll what would have been banned on any other forum. 

 

4 hours ago, DougToss said:

Nick Thomadis please consider taking on @Cptbarney as community manager or something, as he’s the only reason I come back here. I can’t think of a better person to act as a go-between here, and on Steam, to start rebuilding a positive relationship with the community - and if he had mod privileges - a less toxic community as well. 

I agree. This forum needs more active community managers and dev interaction. Look at Paradox Interactive! They have weekly dev posts. Okay they are much larger as a company and have a very money grabbing DLC attitude, but their communication is rather good.

I am always a bit on the fence regarding devs spending much time of the forums, as time spend there can be wasteful, however considering the ever growing criticism for years now regarding communication. Perhaps this should be improved and require more effort from Gamelabs. 

Just my two cents. Cheers all!

[Mr Vidicord]

16 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

It might have been a neglected process from our side to update the plan which we have announced here:

But if you notice what we promised and what is going to be given within the year is literally 3 core patches into one. If we had delivered Core Patch 1 in September/October it would be having unwanted bugs and you would all argue about the game's stability and quality. Instead, we decided to give a large update with Custom Battles Saves and a whole lot of new features so that you have a good working game, until we finalize the campaign with as many features as possible and without the stress of providing patch after patch to fix all the minor bugs.

The occasional toxicity, drama and aggressiveness of some forum members, including you now, is forgiven, because it is a thing nowadays to be negative publicly. There is a lot of stress and negativity spreading globally due to the pandemic and its side effects. 

I suggest you and others calm down and keep your strength for any future criticism until we release the patch. Then you can review what we will give and maybe aid us with your critique to improve further. 

hear hear, or as MPs say ereereerrreerrerr

[Tousansons]

8 hours ago, Shiki said:

Mogami seems to be the posterchild of Japanese construction when it comes to portrayals

I'm under the impression that Myoko/Takao are much more represented due to their turret setup, the busty waifus of the mobile/browser games and their overall efficiency as you mentionned.

 

38 minutes ago, Faolind said:

I also recommend to the developers that they focus more on campaign mechanics than on battle mechanics, ship design, or playable nation expansion with the next 6 moths of update.

Battles and ship designs are in dire need of quality of life, UI update, AI improvement and of course some more "realism". Is it really a good idea to focus X months on a campaign which is just a way to combine both in a more narrative environnement? I doubt it.

 

Edited November 15, 2021 by Tousansons

[T_the_ferret]

Its incredible how we get called toxic, how people dismiss us, how the Administrator treats us with disrespect and over what?

Because we ask you to talk to us once a week or once a month with info.

Can the dev team not handle five minutes of work every week? Can they not hire unpaid people that have already proven themselves to be a positive impact on the community to do it for them? Are people thinking that this is so beyond them, so impossible, so absurd a request, that we must be dismissed and shouted out by numbers of comments? What even is all this

[Shiki]

16 minutes ago, Tousansons said:

I'm under the impression that Myoko/Takao are much more represented due to their turret setup, the busty waifus of the mobile/browser games and their overall efficiency as you mentionned.

Unfortunately, outside of games like [insert anthropomorphized warship fighting game here, take your pick] - and even in those games - neither of those types receive much, if any recognition. Outside of Azur Lane's Atago, I don't think there are most people who could get beyond the Takao class's one-line description in Wikipedia, for example. Mogami is generally treated with a fair bit of (undeserved) recognition due to her 'breaking' the London Naval Treaty (she didn't, not really, and even if she did, the Americans are just as guilty with the up-gunning of the North Carolinas) as well as her perceived 'superiority' as the last of the 10-gun cruiser types completed for the Imperial Japanese Navy before the outbreak of the Pacific War (she wasn't, Takao and Co. take that prize).

This is even more apparent when we take a look at competing games to UA:D, like World of Warships and War Thunder: Naval Forces, where the former treats Mogami as a god amongst mortals and the latter has consistently only added the Mogami class for modern Japanese cruisers... Incidentally, the parallels also draw a line between development of those games and Ultimate Admiral's choices of ships to be added. stares at specifically California, for one blatantly obvious example

It's an interesting thought line to go down.

The unmitigated pedantry will continue until my criticisms about this game development's total blackout on communications has been addressed. There is no Iron Curtain to hide behind and we're not here to eat you alive. All we want is someone to talk to us occasionally. Not just "here's a new patch that we spent months doing nothing about and then hastily added everything in the last two weeks of crunch time", but some evidence even that you're just alive and well. People will be slightly more understanding of your circumstances if you talk about them.

[Shiki]

1 hour ago, Faolind said:

You don't. You constitute the loudest. There's a large variety of comments here, in style and form, and the majority of negative ones are being spammed by a single person (not you). You are loud, yes. Your posts are numerous. But the number of people posting optimistic messages is greater.

-------------------------------------
I for one am happy to see what this campaign looks and feels like, and I wish the developers the best.  I concur with the randomization idea on torpedo-tracking mentioned earlier, it will add a guessing element both to gameplay and also visibly the the character of the AI, making it seem less robotic.

I also recommend to the developers that they focus more on campaign mechanics than on battle mechanics, ship design, or playable nation expansion with the next 6 moths of update. The campaign must be alive and playable in a real form before anything else can be built upon it, and now that it is here, this campaign is what people will mentally build their impression of the game from.

Frankly, I don't see any reason to be optimistic in the slightest. The reality of the situation is that barely anything has changed content-wise and nothing has changed communication wise- the latter of which being the sore point with those people you deride as loud. Yes, we are loud. We're loud because of the human tendency to shout when they're not being heard.

I wish the developers the best of health, I really do. COVID has been difficult on everyone. But no amount of COVID can excuse the lack of regard for the concerns being pointed out regarding their radio silence. They're game developers- it's not as if they don't have access to the internet, or this forum. Five minutes a week- hell, five minutes a month of their time is what we're asking for. Five minutes of writing a brief "this is what we've been doing this month, please make sure to support us as we progress through future development" wouldn't be so hard, would it?

To restate: I refuse to shill for people who demand to be patted on the back for a good job that hasn't been done yet. I especially refuse to shill for people who can't even take the time to shill for themselves.

[Masonator]

 Everyone mad that there isn't a lot of new content this version needs to re-read the OP again.  Not only are we finally getting the first iteration of the campaign, but they essentially had to completely remake this build from scratch to do it.  That's 100% a justified reason to delay a patch in my book - y'all need to chill out a little.

 Thanks, Nick.  New hulls are always appreciated and I can't fkin wait for the new French components.  This kind of post is exactly what I'm personally looking for, just a little more frequently - that's all.

Edited November 15, 2021 by Masonator

[TAKTCOM]

1 hour ago, Shiki said:

competing games to UA:D, like World of Warships and War Thunder: Naval Forces...

Online shooters is a competitor to mix turn-based strategy and real time tactics game. Well...wow 😂 I love internet for things like this🥰

[Shiki]

24 minutes ago, TAKTCOM said:

Online shooters is a competitor to mix turn-based strategy and real time tactics game. Well...wow 😂 I love internet for things like this🥰

In the sense that they attempt to cater to the same base of "naval history enthusiasts", yes, they are competitors.

[ColonelHenry]

7 hours ago, DougToss said:

That overlaps with ad hominem toxicity towards “The Devs”. When the developers are silent and invisible, their feelings and perspectives can’t be taken into account because they aren’t known. Someone who just started following the game couldn’t moderate their feedback by what they know of @Nick Thomadis, and give a more charitable interpretation of events, because they don’t know him from Adam. They can’t say or think “I know Nick takes our concerns seriously, let’s not assume he’s ignoring us or acting in bad faith”. How could they?

 

Saying that neglected community forums are toxic *and therefore feedback has been dismissed* gets the causal relationship backwards, and is only salting the wound. I worry it won’t help repair the rift forming here.

What made me engage with this forum in the first place was the fact that many of your (AND MANY OTHERS) feedback regarding:

1. Realism

2. Lack of content for the advertised era (literally in the name, imagine playing Rome Total War and the real game is set in Eastern Roman Empire in 1400s)

3. Lack of update from the team.

was all disregarded by the devs. And now they call us "toxic" because we paid for a product and we expected them to keep their words. Ridiculous.

And now, after TWO YEARS, they turn around and say they acknowledge that people wanted content for pre-dreadnought. What an insult to people intelligence.
 

[Commander Reed]

10 hours ago, DougToss said:

@Nick Thomadis please consider taking on @Cptbarney as community manager or something, as he’s the only reason I come back here. I can’t think of a better person to act as a go-between here, and on Steam, to start rebuilding a positive relationship with the community - and if he had mod privileges - a less toxic community as well. 
 

It’s something your team badly needs, and he’s already been doing it while in the dark, for free. Just saying.

YES! Mr. Barney is no doubt one of the best members in this community, and I'd love to see him achieve such a position. He'd do a great job.

[Commander Reed]

As for the people complaining about the devs ways - I agree, don't get me wrong, but let's appreciate that we're actually getting this patch relatively soon. For all we know it could easily have been a lot longer.

Let's just put aside all of that and appreciate what we're getting.