>>>Core Patch 1.0 Feedback<<<

[Cptbarney]

5 minutes ago, Fishyfish said:

We desperately need some of them, ahem, "old boaghts" if that's how you pronounce it. 😉

I have multiple resources availed if you ever need them, Janes books and the like. Just give me a ping or a DM or what ever and I'll photo or scan pages for you. 

If you can somehow coerce the devs to give me some goddang hulls like the USS Maine AC1 I will eat my fin. 

Well, we will all have to do it. I don't get special favours at all and it took ages for them to announce that they would focus on something other than modern bb hulls (also we need more actual hulls rather than copy and paste). I want miss texas, and even though i wanted California in this game, i only got the hull, but not superstructure for her (i think the modern one is missing).

Surprised you dont remember that thread i opened up a while ago, maybe i should bump it up so that more peeps can add more old ships in.

Also im focusing on other things, so play testing the game isn't my highest priority atm. Plus lack of motivation to do so.

[Fishyfish]

1 minute ago, Cptbarney said:

Well, we will all have to do it. I don't get special favours at all and it took ages for them to announce that they would focus on something other than modern bb hulls (also we need more actual hulls rather than copy and paste). I want miss texas, and even though i wanted California in this game, i only got the hull, but not superstructure for her (i think the modern one is missing).

Surprised you dont remember that thread i opened up a while ago, maybe i should bump it up so that more peeps can add more old ships in.

Also im focusing on other things, so play testing the game isn't my highest priority atm. Plus lack of motivation to do so.

I so rarely peek into these forums these days, I wouldn't doubt that I forget threads. That and too many bonks on the head. 

I can dig it though, I really can. I'm finally getting around to fixing my desktop, so I'll actually get a chance to play again and see what the last.. 2? 3? patches brought with my own eyes. 

[Cptbarney]

2 minutes ago, Fishyfish said:

I so rarely peek into these forums these days, I wouldn't doubt that I forget threads. That and too many bonks on the head. 

I can dig it though, I really can. I'm finally getting around to fixing my desktop, so I'll actually get a chance to play again and see what the last.. 2? 3? patches brought with my own eyes. 

Well i just updated it so, its back up. Kept the old title so that people can still request weird ships for april fools if they want too or just added into the game regardless. 

As for me, i just need the motivation lol. Plus IRL has been busy for me as well.

[T_the_ferret]

Problem is we don't know whats taken into account or what isn't. Would help if devs would have a small list of feedback they've taken and are working on but in the meantime we just sort of keep banging our heads against a wall hopping the guy on the other side opens the door asking what the heck is happening

[Cptbarney]

Just now, T_the_ferret said:

Problem is we don't know whats taken into account or what isn't. Would help if devs would have a small list of feedback they've taken and are working on but in the meantime we just sort of keep banging our heads against a wall hopping the guy on the other side opens the door asking what the heck is happening

Pretty much, what we've been asking for ages now. Either a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly (rather the first two), updates about what they are doing a few screenshots and then where they plan to go next. Also what's on their list of the most important features to get done, and what's on the bucket list.

Although Nick has been, pretty active recently. We haven't gotten anything concrete about certain things and the last Q&A needs an update with a new one next year (I seriously doubt we will get another before Christmas).

So we need more communication, but it needs to be precise and accurate (Doug's diagram reminds me of one i saw on the world of warships forums quite sometime ago).

Plus us lot need to be more unified on certain things as well.

[T_the_ferret]

I don't think we can ever be unified, but there's a lot of comments that keep popping out no matter what you think, so those should be the things the devs focus on. However, we don't have any idea if they do or not

[Skeksis]

I would like to see tonnage of ships when selecting them for moving, it would help when managing port limits (small ports).

Button to randomize class name. And ability to rename ships.

Repair port/base. Ships should return to their base port, if in range, it should be less than 25% chance to end up at another port. At very least a message to say a ship has changed port of operations. Maybe repair at the closest and largest port in the area, which is usually the base of operations anyway.

Not enough battleship battles, we need to fight with dreadnoughts at some stage (often).

Enemy runaways., some suggestions for the algorithm or conditions of retreat.

• For all player defensive battles the enemy should not consider retreat until they have received 25% battle damage, they are the ones attacking!
• For all 1v1 battles or equal* amount of ships, the enemy shouldn't retreat until they have at least received 25% battle damage.
  •  *Equal or if both fleet tonnages are within 10-15% of each other.
• All convoy escorts should not retreat until 25% of transports (and/or combat ships) have been destroyed and/or received 25% total battle damage. It's their duty to project the convoy, even if it means their destruction.

Maybe 25% is alot of damage to receive before retreating but we need the enemy to be alittle bit more on the aggressive side, there is too many ships just running away. Could even randomize this figure between 10% and 25%.

Tonnage required. There is no way to counter the enemy logically or based on info/intelligence, atm a player just guesses where to deploy ships. It is unknown on how many ships to place 'in being' or 'in control' or in the 'north sea' or 'north atlantic', etc. If this is because it's not implemented yet (intelligence) then no matter but otherwise tonnage required per area (and eventually per region) should be known to the player, so as to play out the campaign strategically. At least in normal mode.

Edited December 3, 2021 by Skeksis

[Cptbarney]

Just now, T_the_ferret said:

I don't think we can ever be unified, but there's a lot of comments that keep popping out no matter what you think, so those should be the things the devs focus on. However, we don't have any idea if they do or not

True, although us lot will have to attempt it anyways if we want something to stick really. Also we don't know how the rest of the core patches will come along as well (I'm assuming more, because we got half a core patch, which threw previous info out of the window really.)

I think they released this game too early for public testing really, should of been kept in closed testing for a lot longer and slowly built up the number of testers along with starting from 1875-1906 to 1907-1927 and so on, as that means they can do each period in chunks rather than do what i do and try to tackle a stupid amount of projects at once.

[T_the_ferret]

Honestly this game has been in a "closed alpha" (read just a really high price and not available on steam) for an incredibly long time with no much integrated from feedbacks of the community, so i think not releasing until now for example would have just sank the whole thing with how long they took without revenue

[Skeksis]

27 minutes ago, T_the_ferret said:

incredibly long time with no much integrated from feedbacks of the community

I've been saying this all along, Dev's always follow there plan...... but with tweaks (our feedback).

But also take in account that we been involved in the game development from the very start (I mean the whole development process). This doesn't happen often, especially for one that aligns with your/ours interest.

So for our involvement in the 'entire' development process, it's not actually that long. If you consider how long it actually takes to make a game, like years.
 

Edited December 2, 2021 by Skeksis

[T_the_ferret]

Two years is nothing to scoff at in term of videogame development, but i get your point. Its just a lot of things make it through and its quite frustrating. Ever since day one of the test i've been bringing up the huge problem of AI just running away and making battles incredibly long but i don't think that ever got ackowledged.

[Cptbarney]

18 minutes ago, T_the_ferret said:

Honestly this game has been in a "closed alpha" (read just a really high price and not available on steam) for an incredibly long time with no much integrated from feedbacks of the community, so i think not releasing until now for example would have just sank the whole thing with how long they took without revenue

Yeah i guess, but i think they should of focused on certain era first. Atm they are trying to plug all the gaps at once, which will mess with any development really.

They did get acquired by stillfront this year, plus my land is my land and age of sail both got put on to steam as released games. Atm they are working on this, naval action to some degree, sea legends and the next ultimate generals game. So from the looks of it, they have too many projects going on and some of them have very big scopes as well (this one included).

[T_the_ferret]

Main problem here is they've mostly been focusing on late age naval warfare (even though the game is called Dreadnought) but have put the campaign start at one of the least interesting and least fun period to have it be set in, namely 1890. Another thing i told them would be that simply having it start in at least 1895 or 1900 would help a lot as its much more enjoyable once you have more options from these ages such as rangefinders, double guns in turrets for some ship classes and more shell choices.

[Skeksis]

6 minutes ago, T_the_ferret said:

but i don't think that ever got ackowledged.

I think it has, it's more likely Dev's are running with the current AI for a certain time frame/period, then asses the results/feedback, then make changes after if needed. 

Edited December 2, 2021 by Skeksis

[T_the_ferret]

Well that's why i said ackowledged. For all i know both the things i've talked about were taken into account, are being looked at and in the process of being fixed, but if they are i have not a clue about it

[ColonelHenry]

8 hours ago, o Barão said:

nteresting, because i was using my knowledge about naval warfare to state that you were wrong from the beginning. And it was you that were being sttuborn to admit that you where wrong from the beginning and being disrecpectful with others that didn't think the same way , without any proof to support your claim. In other words, an asshole. Well i think even assholes can learn something sometimes. Or maybe it is a christmas miracle. 😁

I will say one last time, maybe your "naval warfare" knowledge is better than mine. But your reading comprehension skill is of a first grader who looks at familiar words to bark on command.

You cannot even understand the basis of my argument, yet you act like you're professor know-all. You do not argue with fact, you mention facts, and then piss off to fantasy land afterwards.

It has been proven again and again. But you do not listen. Your stupid ego prevents your brain from reading better than a first grader.

What started this argument was that I was asking for accuracy below 1000m. And all that the video you sent said about that was all about above 1000m. Everything else in the video about accuracy below 1000m is that it is easy to aim with the eye. That's it. Nothing else. So I asked the question what happens when the engagement gets below 1000m? Should the game have higher accuracy under these circumstances for 1890s tech?

So perhaps now you understand the argument, you can argue like a normal person. And stop straw manning.

There baby brain, can you read now?

Edited December 2, 2021 by ColonelHenry

[ColonelHenry]

2 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

Well, guess we just got to make sure it does. We managed to get the devs to prioritise now (i assume) the old ships from 1890-1920 as the campaign has shown the severe lack of ship variety and also how imbalanced it is down there with torp boats reigning supreme (also the fact, that you can cheese the campaign with those dd's and auto-resolve which is a huge issue).

Idk if you are a closed tester but seriously, the torpedo boat tanking multiple BB grade shells should be fixed ASAP. Torpedo boats now are too good at fixing flooding. How the hell are you going to fix multiple 11 inch holes for such a small vessel? They shouldn't sink on sight, but they shouldn't be flying around with holes on their hull while still aiming torpedo at 100% accuracy.

[Commander Reed]

Sometimes I regret opening this forum and reading it. Might only come on to check for updates from now on. The community here is painful. Have fun, guys.

[Gamebook]

I've been playing around with the campaign game since it was released and have come to some conclusions:

1. Anything before 1910 is impossible, don't even bother. The ships are rubbish. This game is called UA: Dreadnoughts , so let's get to the dreadnoughts. 1910 is the point at which the game gets fun as the ships have a decent number of options and can start to hit the broad side of a barn.

2. If it's not a battleship, don't even bother. All other ships are totally useless. I find that battleships sink TB, DD, CL and CA with negligent ease, a couple of main battery hits and they're on their way to the bottom. BC's are also no match for them, taking only a little longer.

3. Secondary guns are totally useless. Never hit, never do damage. All they do is take up precious ship tonnage. I don't fit any of them.

4. Hull torps are useful adjuncts, particularly for finishing off stubborn enemy BB's that won't sink. Take reduced torps to save weight.

5. Go big or go home with the main guns. Fit the best guns you can, though not necessarily the biggest as there can be a big dropoff in efficiency with mark 1 guns. Take the heavy or superheavy shells then save weight by taking reduced ammo, you won't need all that much shot.

6. Two-gun turrets are by far the best balance of weight and space. Three or four gun turrets lose a lot of firepower because they fire so slowly. You can do the math of how much tonnage is required to achieve one shot a minute and the more guns in the turret the worse it is. One gun turrets are most efficient weight wise but take up too much space. I favour the good old layout of a pair of two-gun turrets fore and aft.

7. Get all the best tech in every category. There's no point fitting obsolete tech to your brand new ship, always go first class.

8. Speed and agility are essential to dodge torps, the one real danger to a player's BB's. A good turn of speed is also useful for running down fleeing enemy capital ships.

9. The computer seems to select at random from your available ships so build nothing but BB's and you'll go in with the heavy mob each time. Hilarious to have five BB's escorting a convoy that then quintuple curb stomp the AI ships.

10. Armour like a tank, with strong armour on the mid and forward hull and on the turrets. Save weight on the rear of the ship. You should always be driving towards the enemy, not fleeing like some coward.

 

With these points applied I find that I can beat the AI in a campaign in 1-2 months. I build all BB's according to my murderous efficiency schema, then sink nearly every AI ship in every encounter and they just collapse.

[Zuikaku]

I see lots of people still think that hitting bus sized, fast moving target at 500m distance while moving itself and rolling left and right is easy task to do. Do you even know what the bus looks like at 500m distance? Do you know that most 1900 era 5" guns and smaller didn't have any kind of optics at all?

Edited December 2, 2021 by Zuikaku

[UnleashtheKraken]

On 11/25/2021 at 8:01 AM, Gangut said:

So far what I've learned in my limited time playing, is that playing as Germany using the Jeune Ecole method early on is great for getting a leg up over Britian, as in one mission I sunk a battleship + heavy cruiser with like a single torpedo boat that had like only 4 torpedoes, and with a mission where I had 4 heavy cruisers vs 4 heavy cruisers, gunnery only vessels really did not cut it. Though I'll see later on when I start a new campaign and go full on Jeune Ecole.

Playing as Britain, I built an initial swarm of 25 TBs, not knowing a thing about how campaign would play out.  I would get missions of 4 TBs vs. a cruiser, or lone BB.  I was, for about a year in campaign, getting in, taking light damage, and landing 3-4 torps by closing to .4-.2 km, suddenly setting torps from 'off' to 'aggressive', and doing a drive by knife attack.  Launching from further would almost always result in misses, as the AI seems to gain current day bow thrusters in their ability to turn away from torps.  My design was 2 tubes on the aft, bridge and funnel pushed as far forward as could be for balance, and a single 4" on the bow which largely never was useful.  Shooting a freighter broadside at 1 km, even slowing to match speed, and watching shot after shot go over, short, and then shoot past the bow or stern.  The way aiming works is really, really weird, especially when you see the 'misses' at close range that are so wildly off target.

[DougToss]

4 hours ago, Commander Reed said:

Sometimes I regret opening this forum and reading it. Might only come on to check for updates from now on. The community here is painful. Have fun, guys.

Things had just gotten better too.

[eraserr83]

'Laid down', instead of 'layed down' when referring to ship keels.

https://imgur.com/mJiSQoi

Edited December 3, 2021 by eraserr83

[admiralsnackbar]

4 hours ago, Gamebook said:

I've been playing around with the campaign game since it was released and have come to some conclusions:

1. Anything before 1910 is impossible, don't even bother. The ships are rubbish. This game is called UA: Dreadnoughts , so let's get to the dreadnoughts. 1910 is the point at which the game gets fun as the ships have a decent number of options and can start to hit the broad side of a barn.

2. If it's not a battleship, don't even bother. All other ships are totally useless. I find that battleships sink TB, DD, CL and CA with negligent ease, a couple of main battery hits and they're on their way to the bottom. BC's are also no match for them, taking only a little longer.

3. Secondary guns are totally useless. Never hit, never do damage. All they do is take up precious ship tonnage. I don't fit any of them.

4. Hull torps are useful adjuncts, particularly for finishing off stubborn enemy BB's that won't sink. Take reduced torps to save weight.

5. Go big or go home with the main guns. Fit the best guns you can, though not necessarily the biggest as there can be a big dropoff in efficiency with mark 1 guns. Take the heavy or superheavy shells then save weight by taking reduced ammo, you won't need all that much shot.

6. Two-gun turrets are by far the best balance of weight and space. Three or four gun turrets lose a lot of firepower because they fire so slowly. You can do the math of how much tonnage is required to achieve one shot a minute and the more guns in the turret the worse it is. One gun turrets are most efficient weight wise but take up too much space. I favour the good old layout of a pair of two-gun turrets fore and aft.

7. Get all the best tech in every category. There's no point fitting obsolete tech to your brand new ship, always go first class.

8. Speed and agility are essential to dodge torps, the one real danger to a player's BB's. A good turn of speed is also useful for running down fleeing enemy capital ships.

9. The computer seems to select at random from your available ships so build nothing but BB's and you'll go in with the heavy mob each time. Hilarious to have five BB's escorting a convoy that then quintuple curb stomp the AI ships.

10. Armour like a tank, with strong armour on the mid and forward hull and on the turrets. Save weight on the rear of the ship. You should always be driving towards the enemy, not fleeing like some coward.

 

With these points applied I find that I can beat the AI in a campaign in 1-2 months. I build all BB's according to my murderous efficiency schema, then sink nearly every AI ship in every encounter and they just collapse.

1. I assume by impossible you mean tedious and boring, not difficult. 1890 and 1900 wasn't difficult for me as Germany. the 1920 and 1930 camaigns ended for me after 3 turns or so because UK had a revolution after losing like 1 battleship and a few destroyers. 

2. The campaign doesn't really have the mechanical sophistication to penalize players who don't have the operational flexibility of escort ships. IRL you wouldn't be able to build enough of them to guard all of your convoys. Scouting, minelaying and minesweeping are not things at the moment. 

3. I found secondaries absolutely essential on my armored cruisers in the early campaigns (because the main guns aren't accurate or fast enough) -- The british cruisers and even some battleships were not well armored enough on the bow and stern belt to stop 4 inch guns from causing enough flooding/rudder/engine damage to slow the ships enough that they could be hit at point blank range with the heavy guns or torpedoed. (pretty much all my ships had those 1km torpedoes for this purpose) I used the lightest guns my cruisers could carry as their main battery to allow weight savings for the best armor possible, and a 1 knot advantage on my counterparts.  

Later campaigns Secondaries are only useful if they can outrange the torpedoes on the enemy's escorts. I would rather have my main guns focusing on the battleships that have a much higher hit chance then using them against destroyers. 

8 inch casemate guns in the dreadnaught era will wreck destroyers and most cruisers, but once you get to modern battleships turreted secondaries aren't useful, and you'd be better off tricking the AI into keeping distance by arming your BB's with torpedoes [if anything] 

4. I agree, at least 1890-1910, it's also good at discouraging the enemy from rushing your BBs. 

5. I did notice that I didn't need that much ammo. 

6. I'd like to see that dynamic shift between 1920-1930 (presumably through the 'mark' system), IIRC triple/quad turrets had reliability issues early on but most capital ships and cruisers in the later periods used them. 

7. Some Tech isn't worth the cost. You don't necessarily need your ship to accelerate the fastest or to have the best torpedo defense system, and citadels are a huge financial and displacement sink. If UAD penalizes midship penetrations more severely, and perhaps has an actual citadel that you actually allocate inches of armor to protect, that might change. In theory late game battleships would probably have a meta that favors an all or nothing armor scheme but right now it's just better investment to increase armor. 

I found in 1920-30 campaigns that, for example, using the more modern engine systems made my ships far more expensive then the british ships and so I had maybe half as many ships in the fleet. I was still able to win because the campaign rewards decisive battles.

9. This is a serious problem with the current campaign. It seems to be just pulling ships out of a hat to do set piece battles and in that case the battleships win. If you're going to do a turnbased system and not have fleets manually controlled in real time, then UAD should seriously consider using the fleet missions system from hearts of iron 4:

I. Assign a given number of ships to a task force
II. Assign a mission to the task force: Convoy Escort, Convoy Raiding, Patrol, Decisive engagement, Minelay/Sweep and a given naval zone to complete that mission. 
III. Speed and range of the task force corresponds to the ship with the lowest value, at least at the division level (divisions will be set within the taskforce outside of combat)
IV. Likelihood of detecting enemy ships or convoys depends upon the speed, range, number of divisions/ships in the zone, etc. 

This matters because forcing your opponent to use battleships to guard their convoys should impose significant costs on said enemy. 

Knowing UAD and it's love of having things decided with dicerolls and not player inputs this will probably never happen. 

 

[Cptbarney]

8 hours ago, ColonelHenry said:

Idk if you are a closed tester but seriously, the torpedo boat tanking multiple BB grade shells should be fixed ASAP. Torpedo boats now are too good at fixing flooding. How the hell are you going to fix multiple 11 inch holes for such a small vessel? They shouldn't sink on sight, but they shouldn't be flying around with holes on their hull while still aiming torpedo at 100% accuracy.

Too be fair an HE 11 inch shell should just outright delete a torpedo boat, not sure why they can take multiple hits from large and very large calibre weaponry. Thats more of an issue with either the hitboxes, damage models and whatever formulas the devs use to calculate damage and hits. 

Also we have no torp degeneration from aiming, nor does the sea physically interact with the ship models (as in if there is a hole thats around sea level height and the ship goes up and down, some water should flood into the hull and whatever compartment is there.

Plus with the campaign being done and dusted pretty quickly at higher years and also some tech being useless or less than useful to use, the devs a stupid amount of work to do and i dont envy them really.