>>>Core Patch 1.0 Feedback<<<

[Norbert Sattler]

The academy mission "The Power of Dreadnoughts" is being a "bit" odd at the moment.

The mission is about the player destroying two early Dreadnoughts with a larger number of Pre-Dreadnoughts... only right now you have 15" quad turrets available.

To have a Pre-Dread with 8 15" guns is quite hilarious, but I somehow doubt that was intentional. ^^

[DougToss]

2 hours ago, T_the_ferret said:

Solution isn't making everything terrible, solution is to realize this is a game, there's already way much worse stuff in term of realism, and enjoyment takes precedent over historical data

There’s no reason why gameplay can’t be improved while maintaining historical values. Otherwise it will cause a ripple where there are all sorts of other unintended gameplay problems down the line because the quick fix was to make medium calibre HE shells 300% more effective or something to “balance” against torpedo boats.

 

Duds, shallow and deep running torpedoes - particularly without reloads or with very limited amounts and lengthy times -  add another dimension to decision making, and therefore gameplay. You have to risk your ships coming under fire for an attack that’s not a sure thing. Do you press the attack for a shorter run and better firing solution? Do you conserve precious torpedoes for the right moment? What do you do if you miss or have duds? How do you break off the engagement?

 

 From where I’m sitting, those would all make gameplay with torpedoes more fun, it gives me more to consider and more to risk. 

[T_the_ferret]

Not really talking about torpedoes here, was more mentioning the fact that even at point-blank range you can have only 50-60% chance to hit with secondaries, or that at 1km its around 12%. Even if its accurate nobody really enjoys having your 178mm gun miss a battleship completely at that range five times in a row

[Zuikaku]

2 hours ago, T_the_ferret said:

Solution isn't making everything terrible, solution is to realize this is a game, there's already way much worse stuff in term of realism, and enjoyment takes precedent over historical data.

Or just maybe this isnt the game for you.

The best solution would be realism menu where you can choose between realistic gunnery and torps and arcade mode with gyrostabilised guns supported by laser rangefinders. 

[TAKTCOM]

7 hours ago, The_Real_Hawkeye said:

1x speed during the actual engagement.

I think that's the point. When playing at acceleration 1, the AI usually can't hit the broadside of a barn. But if turning on the acceleration by 3-5, as he immediately begins not only to shoot, but also hit.

I used my TBs at x3 acceleration, as a result, they looked more like Swiss cheese after the attack.

11 hours ago, DougToss said:

Having splinters damage crews and possibly put more equipment out of action and start more small fires I think would be helpful in getting that 1890-1900 era right. I don't expect to sink enemy ships with gunfire, at least not effectively, at the start date - I know a lot of players do - but I would like to see the "hail of fire" cause larger cumulative damage to the crew and unarmored/protected systems.

It's all nice, but for this game needs a better damage model.

3 hours ago, RedParadize said:

One thing worry me allot. To have a meaningful variety (and real design choices) in any era, hundreds of new hulls and bridges will need to be made.

But this is not true. The most advanced, high-tech and original fleet before Dreadnought arrived  had two archetypes of cruisers. Not three, not five, not ten. Just two.

Of course I'm talking about the French navy 😁 The earlier generation looked like it came from science fiction novels by Jules Verne: long battering ram, bizarre shapes, bulky masts, armor and guns everywhere. Some had turrets on all sides

 

Some don't

There were also protected cruisers, not only armored ones.

But overall, they look pretty similar, right?

The second generation of French cruisers looked much more modern. No rams or bulges, long, elongated hulls and a bunch of pipes in two groups. Some carried most of the weapons in the casemates.

Some are in turrets all over the place.

There were also protected cruisers, not only armored ones.

So, in order to completely close the issue of pre-dreadnought cruisers in France, dozens and hundreds of hulls are not needed. You need two original hulls, each with two subtypes - one with on-board turrets, the other with casemates. Protected crescents can use the same models as armored ones. Regular copy-paste.

And I'm talking about the cutting edge of technology. If you look at the more conservative navies (hello Britain) then...

 

... surprise-surprise! From 1890 onwards, until the appearance Duke they all look the same: three or four pipes, a medium-sized ram, six-inch guns in casemates, a pair of turrets, usually with a 9 ”cannon. 

In fact, if the developers had given the opportunity to put six-inch cannons in casemates on armored and protected 6-10k cruisers, this would solve a significant part of the problems. Likewise for eight inches for CA casemates.

Germans really suffer from the lack of proper hulls. You really can't build none of real Germany's 1890-1900 CA, since their armament was casemate 15cm and turrets 21cm.  And game only supports 4-inch for the Germans CA casemate.

Scharnhorst-Klasse even have eight inches casemat guns. So yes. No hundreds of hulls are needed.

3 hours ago, WhoCares said:

Then I hovered my cursor over the icon next to the compass in the top right: night, bad weather, rough sea - well, that explained it.

Good point. But it looked completely unnatural when the AI cruiser appeared at a distance equal to the length of the cruiser itself and disappeared after a few seconds. The guns of my SA did not even have time to target.

2 hours ago, o Barão said:

I thought would be interesting to share this video, since many players are complaining about how terrible is the accuracy and the ranges for the naval battles in the 1890.

Here are four reasons why we have such big problems with accuracy.

While I learned to reduce weight offset influence to zero, I have no idea what to do with the pitch and roll. We need ballast, I'll tell you what.

Edited November 29, 2021 by TAKTCOM
WAR FOR IMPROVEMENT

[ColonelHenry]

2 hours ago, o Barão said:

I thought would be interesting to share this video, since many players are complaining about how terrible is the accuracy and the ranges for the naval battles in the 1890.

Drachinifel, explains at 9:00 , how terrible was the accuracy and the short ranges for the naval engagements in this time period. And watching this and looking to what we have in game i must say i am very pleased in general to how is this simulated in UA:D.

I'm sure Drachinifel is way more knowledgeable in terms of naval history than I (talk about an understatement) so I can't really offer anything BUT... considering that using simple logic and info from the same video, combat range outside of 1000 yards is abysmal during this period... But what about below 1000 yards? Are there any statistic on this? Say for Battle of Manila Bay, the engagement range was what? 2000 yards? And turns out accuracy was terrible for a 2 hour battle. But I haven't heard of an engagement that is say 500 yards and both sides misses with huge battleship grade guns. And that's what we are discussing here : instances where 2 battleships (11 inch, 10 inch what-have-you), firing at basically 500m in game, miss and only have an accuracy of 23-30%; where torpedo boats go way below 1000 yards to drop torpedoes and either little hits where achieved with minimal damage... or nothing at all! If we do not have any info from the time period... then we'd have to work something out ourselves.

[Zuikaku]

8 minutes ago, T_the_ferret said:

Not really talking about torpedoes here, was more mentioning the fact that even at point-blank range you can have only 50-60% chance to hit with secondaries, or that at 1km its around 12%. Even if its accurate nobody really enjoys having your 178mm gun miss a battleship completely at that range five times in a row

I enjoy historical gameplay. Yes, this is boring to the most. Realism panel would make everybody happy, right?

[T_the_ferret]

1 minute ago, Zuikaku said:

I enjoy historical gameplay. Yes, this is boring to the most. Realism panel would make everybody happy, right?

I think the main thing here, we may disagree to what extent it needs to be changed, but i think we can all agree that no matter the approach, gameplay or historical, veteran crew with rangefinder sights wouldn't only have a 50% chance to hit a battleship at 200m range. There's clearly something wrong with gunnery data

[ColonelHenry]

23 minutes ago, DougToss said:

Duds, shallow and deep running torpedoes - particularly without reloads or with very limited amounts and lengthy times -  add another dimension to decision making, and therefore gameplay. You have to risk your ships coming under fire for an attack that’s not a sure thing. Do you press the attack for a shorter run and better firing solution? Do you conserve precious torpedoes for the right moment? What do you do if you miss or have duds? How do you break off the engagement?

As much as I am for torpedoes failure, I do hope we have more control over our torpedoes... because really... a ship circling in place is going to stop a guy 300m away from understanding basic logic is quite... something.

[Zuikaku]

1 minute ago, T_the_ferret said:

I think the main thing here, we may disagree to what extent it needs to be changed, but i think we can all agree that no matter the approach, gameplay or historical, veteran crew with rangefinder sights wouldn't only have a 50% chance to hit a battleship at 200m range. There's clearly something wrong with gunnery data

Dont know. Ships tend to roll. Dependd heavily on sea state, ship stability/vibrations, wind...

[T_the_ferret]

Stable ship (battleship), calm sea, little to no wind, extremely advantageous position and experienced gunnery crew. Your best chance to hit with all conditions reunited shouldn't be only 50%

[o Barão]

"I have no idea what to do with the pitch and roll."

Is related to the components weight and ship hull ( stability value or maybe lenght and hull tonnage? ). The game give you the option, to use bigger caliber guns , bigger towers. Pick that same ship, but now replace all the components for the smaller ones and check pitch value again. Will be much lower.

" But what about below 1000 yards? "

Drachinifel mentions that in the video if you didn't noticed, and same thing. The interesting part about the 1890 campaign starts at 9:00, the guns accuracy at ranges below 1000 yards, starts at 9:30. So 30 seconds later. Difficult to miss really unless for someone that don't want to watch the video.

@TAKTCOM@ColonelHenry

[o Barão]

@TAKTCOM i also researched about the germans ships , and you are right. Most of the armored cruisers, protected cruisers could be replicated with a few hulls. What is sad to see in game is the german CA hull for the 1890 campaign.

That is the Kaiser Friedrich III-class battleship, 11k tons displacement, the sucessor to the Brandenburg-class battleship, that we have in game.😕

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiser_Friedrich_III-class_battleship

 

German armored cruisers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_Fürst_Bismarck

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_Prinz_Heinrich

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prinz_Adalbert-class_cruiser

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roon-class_cruiser

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scharnhorst-class_cruiser

So we can see this 5 armored cruisers, are very similar in design . Could all be replicated with only one hull design. Some different towers designs, guns caliber, funnel placements , tonnage/lenght sizes and all could be in game.

Only the Blutcher class in 1912 we a see major design change to the german CA cruiser lines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_Blücher

The german protected cruisers:

Similar to what we have in game, so no new hull needed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene-class_cruiser

Again same thing. Hull similar to what we have in game.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_Kaiserin_Augusta

or this version? Refit maybe?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Louise-class_cruiser

So in conclusion only 2 new hulls are needed to have all the germans protected and armored cruisers in game until 1912.

[WiselessOwl]

2 hours ago, T_the_ferret said:

I think the main thing here, we may disagree to what extent it needs to be changed, but i think we can all agree that no matter the approach, gameplay or historical, veteran crew with rangefinder sights wouldn't only have a 50% chance to hit a battleship at 200m range. There's clearly something wrong with gunnery data

Frankly on the 200m they won't even need rangefinders at all. Being this close, you can basically eyeball it, and still score hits  - unless the difference in speed is too high

[Nick Thomadis]

Admirals,

an important hotfix has just become available.

Hotfix Update v94 (29/11/2021) READ HERE
- Added movement of ships between ports. You can now select ships from each port and move them to other friendly ports (Work in Progress).
- Added mouse sensitivity options in the controls. Players who had issues scrolling the map can adjust this new setting to suit their needs.
- Improved Auto-Design to not accept ships with side instability. 
- Adjusted further the aiming of ships to be more consistent when focusing on a target persistently, especially at close range.
- You can now unlock the initial campaign years up to 1930 (fixed also a bug which caused the campaign years to unlock without winning).
- Increased AI aggressiveness in battle.
- Decreased average ship distance in divisions with Loose Spread (ships could have a very stretched out formation, reducing the cohesion needed for effective formations).
- Increased Germany Base income (often Germany started too weak).
- Slightly increased crew regeneration capacity, to support the construction of new ships for both player and AI.
- Slightly increased the XP bonus from ship combat performance.
- Power projection calculations improved so that the stronger fleet properly triggers a blockade.

[akd]

8 hours ago, Kane said:

Tried posting once already then decided to delete it and better formulate what I want to say.

1)  Accuracy at low tech eras in particular is stupidly bad.  Playing through campaign there were numerous occasions where I'd sail to within 1/2 a kilometer of an enemy ship, and miss every single shot.  Torpedo boat, light cruiser, destroyer, cruiser, battleship, didn't matter.  Accuracy never went above 1.5% or so w/ Mk-II guns and coincidence-I range finder.

This is bad.  Number one if guns were this stupidly inaccurate IRL, no one would have bothered with them.  Tactics would have focused on torpedoes (we'll get to that), as well as ramming and boarding like the good ole' Greek days.  Seriously, when I'm as close as ships of sail and I still can't hit the target with a turreted gun something is very wrong. 

Its one thing to miss torpedo boats at this range.  But let me be clear, this is missing cruisers and battleships at less than 1/2 kilometer.

Yes, it was with trainee crews.  But again.  Half a kilometer or less.  One of two things needs to happen.  Either a serious look needs to be given on how accuracy and range scale with each other.  Or the bonus/penalties of crew training need to be rebalanced with trainees giving a +0, and better trained crew going up from there.

Even if it were realistic to fire hundreds of rounds and run the magazines empty at a target 1/2 a kilometer away.  Draining your magazines and missing EVERY SINGLE SHOT (insert censored swearing here) is frustrating in the most un-fun way possible and makes for terrible game play.

This was not my experience in my first 1890 campaign battle with cadet crews (my 3x CA vs. Brit 1x CA, 2x CL, 10x TR).  Destroyed all the enemy ships in less than an hour, only using torpedoes on 5 of the TRs.  Average gunnery distance was probably around 1000-500m with a few very close passes on TRs and one close pass on the CA to finish it after it was already crippled (rather hilariously the CA blew up after a 2" penetration of the main belt).

Edited November 29, 2021 by akd

[AurumCorvus]

1930s here we go! Now we start getting into the fun stuff, with mixes of dreads and modern BBs. This is going to be fun!

Also, nice that we can control where our ships are going. And the other improvements as well.

[Iuvenalis]

2 hours ago, ColonelHenry said:

And that's what we are discussing here : instances where 2 battleships (11 inch, 10 inch what-have-you), firing at basically 500m in game, miss and only have an accuracy of 23-30%; where torpedo boats go way below 1000 yards to drop torpedoes and either little hits where achieved with minimal damage... or nothing at all!

It is more than just the range to the target, it is the target itself and how it is behaving. Large calibre guns train and elevate very, very slowly in the pre-dreadnought period and with a relatively poor amount of precision. Meanwhile, torpedo boats of the period were very small and for the period very fast at 24ish kts. They also would have a nasty habit of not simply motoring along in a straight line while you try to blow them up. Combine that with anything but flat seas and you can begin to see how aiming and hitting a target, even at close range, becomes very difficult. In fact, the close range may actually make it MORE difficult at a certain point. Your target may only occupy a fraction of a degree of your field of view because of its size, yet because of its speed it may move faster through your field of view (in degrees/sec) than your guns can accurately train and elevate. This actually isn't that surprising since the guns you're talking about were never designed to be used against these targets anyway.

Think of those crane arcade games where you try to line up the claw to get the prize. (It's right there! You can see it. Oop, nope to far to the right, oh, no too far to the left now, try going back, oh, no now I think you're too far forward. Aannnd you missed...) Now image the prize is moving around and very small. That's what it is like trying to aim a pre-dreadnought large calibre battleship gun at tiny, torpedo boat.

If you're finding yourself frustrated by torpedo boats charging up against your helpless BBs, then you probably need better secondary batteries and even more importantly a better fleet screen of cruisers to detect the TBs and allow you to evade and destroy them. Also, if you have fleet screens engaging them they probably will dump their torpedoes at them who should stand a much better change of taking evasion actions.

For reference, here is the US TB-1 (USS Cushing). Now image trying to hit it in the sea state of the second picture of a German torpedo boat in 1915. In anything but clam seas your target is going to be disappearing behind swells while bobbing and weaving. Hitting it with a big calibre gun is no easy task!

[akd]

2 hours ago, Iuvenalis said:

It is more than just the range to the target, it is the target itself and how it is behaving. Large calibre guns train and elevate very, very slowly in the pre-dreadnought period and with a relatively poor amount of precision. Meanwhile, torpedo boats of the period were very small and for the period very fast at 24ish kts. They also would have a nasty habit of not simply motoring along in a straight line while you try to blow them up. Combine that with anything but flat seas and you can begin to see how aiming and hitting a target, even at close range, becomes very difficult. In fact, the close range may actually make it MORE difficult at a certain point. Your target may only occupy a fraction of a degree of your field of view because of its size, yet because of its speed it may move faster through your field of view (in degrees/sec) than your guns can accurately train and elevate. This actually isn't that surprising since the guns you're talking about were never designed to be used against these targets anyway.

This was the whole motivation for mounting large numbers of very short range, rapid-fire, small-caliber guns like Nordenfelt guns up through the 1890s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-inch_Nordenfelt_gun

It was generally assumed that TBs would only attack in conditions where they could approach to close range without being detected (e.g. night port attacks) and that once detected they would have to be very rapidly engaged to have any chance of stopping or disrupting the torpedo attack (against your likely immobile ship).

Another piece of evidence of this mindset was the tertiary battery guns mounted directly on the tops of main gun turrets for a time: these could not be manned and operated while the main guns were firing, but were there because it was assumed that they would in use defending against TBs in circumstances where the main guns would not be in action.

Edited November 29, 2021 by akd

[baatsman]

I know WIP is stated, but I believe pointing to balancing out the massive advantage tech "maneuver warfare", have vs actual combat experience, would help alot of frustraded captains here.

As of now, combat xp dont give you shite, when you compare it vs maneuver warfare, which levle up your entire fleet, even just slacking in port. Btw, the AI do not have the "trained" cap for the tech atm. As stated in the tool tip, player is limited to that level, but AI seem to launch new ships at regular and seasoned. And even without a single fight in the belt, enters the ring with veteran crews. At that level, no one will ever claim torps being op, as the AI seemingly sport Kashtans, AK630s and phalanx systems if small arms are present

[DougToss]

It seems strange to us, looking back from the advanced edge of the missile age, but hitting anything was a pretty big achievement before the British Mediterranean Squadron developed the continuous aim technique. Machinery vibrations, pitch, roll, and of course the state of gunnery and fire control meant that there were misses that would seem to us just about a sure thing.

[Iuvenalis]

7 minutes ago, DougToss said:

, but hitting anything was a pretty big achievement

I remember playing Silent Hunter 3, 4 and 5 on full realism and feeling like a big shot, manually calculating my shooting solutions with a high degree of accuracy with my paper and pen.

Then I read about the insane calculations that go into naval gunnery and realized I was playing in the junior leagues...

[DieHard_BR]

All,

Good afternoon

Are we planning to address the repair costs? In 1910 campaing it is very expensive

[Commander Reed]

1 hour ago, Iuvenalis said:

I remember playing Silent Hunter 3, 4 and 5 on full realism and feeling like a big shot, manually calculating my shooting solutions with a high degree of accuracy with my paper and pen.

Then I read about the insane calculations that go into naval gunnery and realized I was playing in the junior leagues...

Hats off to you, I don't have the patience to do something like that. Which is why I would never be a Submarine Commander XD

[o Barão]

@Nick Thomadis campaign bug in the new update.

Won the 1910 campaign with the british but unlocked instead the 1920 german campaign.