>>>Core Patch 1.0 Feedback<<<

[T_the_ferret]

Lots of stuff needs to be redone right now...

[akd]

There doesn't seem to be a way to undo ship building when you are building a starting fleet.  Just had to abandon a new game after a few hours designing because I accidentally built 6 Bs when I meant to build 6 cruisers.  I tried scrapping, but this did not seem to return the starting funds, instead only a fraction (as if I were scrapping existing ships before the game has even begun).  I would suggest that scrapping ships when building a legacy fleet simply return the spent funds in full.

[Littorio]

1 hour ago, akd said:

There doesn't seem to be a way to undo ship building when you are building a starting fleet.  Just had to abandon a new game after a few hours designing because I accidentally built 6 Bs when I meant to build 6 cruisers.  I tried scrapping, but this did not seem to return the starting funds, instead only a fraction (as if I were scrapping existing ships before the game has even begun).  I would suggest that scrapping ships when building a legacy fleet simply return the spent funds in full.

Can confirm. The same thing happened to me as well. Once you click "build" there is no going back, which is very annoying because I would like to "build" (even though nothing is actually produced yet) multiple variations of the fleet roster before deciding what I want. 5BB or 7CA? 15CLs or 20? It doesn't matter right now, you need to plan it all out on paper first. It's bad UX.

[Skeksis]

'Fleet Tab' and 'Design Tab' don't show ship range's, also ranges are missing from the detailed info in the 'Design Tab', you have to go into 'Ship View' to see ship's range, that's one thing.

Also missing. There's nothing on the map to connect ship ranges to the 'battle engage radius', we're totally blind to its application, that's the other.

Both are needed for all of it to work together, QOL. I guess the map reference is a WIP but I think for the 'Fleet Tab' and detailed info, range should be showing.

Edited December 8, 2021 by Skeksis

[Mandric]

I don't usually get active in game forums but this game has struck a chord with me and I thought I say a little about my experience so far. So, I have played both campaigns all the way through 1930, on normal and hard. I have also did it with auto generated fleets and custom fleets. Understanding that this first iteration of the campaign is just a barebones starting point I don't have too much to complain about knowing that or its already been mentioned(wonky ai). But I do wish for ongoing war, im sure you already know that 1920,1930 campaigns still end quite quickly which makes research feel next to useless to fund. I think the option to continue the campaign with Periods of peace time so the AI can regroup and Tech can actually be developed. Obviously there would be a lot of balance issues, for example, I'm sure removing the option to take land would be necessary to not permanently gimp the AI or give them a boost in research to help keep up. sometimes TR losses feel a bit aggressive also I do think TR losses should be in more of the players control with the convoy missions and I also agree that if AI is going to run they shouldn't engage to begin with, unless being ambushed which should then start at a closer range. last thing for now, the 1920,1930 should have battles spaced out a bit more with time or give the option to withdrawal if possible sometimes the economy gets absolutely wrecked because there was 6 battles in 2 months and half my fleet is in repairs. and even with minor damage the repair cost still seems a bit much.

Welp off to work. kind of rushed the whole thing but hoping my input helps at all.

[Thundergaming1]

There needs to be a way to delete designs after you scrap all of the ships of that class. Right now there is no way to delete old and obsolete designs and it clutters up the design page. As well can you give the option to alter current designs and bring in ships to be rebuilt? And one last thing. Will you be implementing Fleets that you can move around the map to certain grid locations or just so they stay together?

[DougToss]

Refits make all the sense in the world, and are a need at this point, not a want IMO.

Related to that, and in light of the comments about basing, sorties, flotillas, squadrons - I think Fleet Management needs a lot of attention. This would be the Operational layer between the Tactics of combat and the Strategy of diplomacy, tech and fleet building.

Organizing, supplying, basing a fleet is a key component in naval war. Building ships is one thing, but getting them into combat is what turns those guns and armours into tactical, and therefore strategic results.

I think this would also give the player something to do in peacetime, as they confront strategic problems. Consider the construction of Scapa Flow, or the creation of the Battlecruiser Force to prevent German commerce raiders from breaking into open ocean from the North Sea. Balancing ships scattered on patrol with those concentrated ready to sail out from port is a major consideration. So is balancing keeping them updated versus available - a refit may increase the combat effectiveness of a ship, but it also means that it’s not available for operations.

What kind of fleet management would you guys like to see?

 

 

[RedParadize]

1 hour ago, DougToss said:

What kind of fleet management would you guys like to see?

On the strategic level I would like to be able to form the squadron/task force myself, and assign them to specific task. I would like it to be more meaningful than just being a factor in what gets into battle. I think it should directly influence the course of the war.

On the tactical level I would like to have better fleet formation, with decent semi autonomous units that follow a sets of order.

[SodaBit]

33 minutes ago, RedParadize said:

On the strategic level I would like to be able to form the squadron/task force myself, and assign them to specific task. I would like it to be more meaningful than just being a factor in what gets into battle. I think it should directly influence the course of the war.

On the tactical level I would like to have better fleet formation, with decent semi autonomous units that follow a sets of order.

I second this. Kinda weird to set the ports for all ships at the beginning of the campaign as if you're making formations of ships or battle squadrons only for them to split up

[Littorio]

1 hour ago, Thundergaming1 said:

There needs to be a way to delete designs after you scrap all of the ships of that class. Right now there is no way to delete old and obsolete designs and it clutters up the design page. As well can you give the option to alter current designs and bring in ships to be rebuilt? And one last thing. Will you be implementing Fleets that you can move around the map to certain grid locations or just so they stay together?

 

Uhhh, I believe you can? I am able to delete plans both from the ship designer, as well as on the tab in the campaign where you build ships from. If you delete it from both places, I believe it's gone for good.

 

1 hour ago, DougToss said:

Refits make all the sense in the world, and are a need at this point, not a want IMO.

Related to that, and in light of the comments about basing, sorties, flotillas, squadrons - I think Fleet Management needs a lot of attention. This would be the Operational layer between the Tactics of combat and the Strategy of diplomacy, tech and fleet building.

Organizing, supplying, basing a fleet is a key component in naval war. Building ships is one thing, but getting them into combat is what turns those guns and armours into tactical, and therefore strategic results.

I think this would also give the player something to do in peacetime, as they confront strategic problems. Consider the construction of Scapa Flow, or the creation of the Battlecruiser Force to prevent German commerce raiders from breaking into open ocean from the North Sea. Balancing ships scattered on patrol with those concentrated ready to sail out from port is a major consideration. So is balancing keeping them updated versus available - a refit may increase the combat effectiveness of a ship, but it also means that it’s not available for operations.

What kind of fleet management would you guys like to see?

 

 

 

Very true, all good points. Too many people, especially in games, just think in terms of "strategy and tactics" and forget the other layers holding everything together. At the risk of reiterating you, strategy is the big picture: top down, overarching goals, what you want to do on the big map and the broad plan to achieve it.

In contrast, tactics are what you practice on the battlefield itself, all well and good but not much use if you can't turn your victories into something more cohesive in the long run (see Hannibal Barca for details).

Moving out a layer in between the prior two, you reach the operational level. This is what brings you to the field of battle to use your tactics in the first place, and at the same time what allows your strategy to actually progress should you be successful.

Here you will worry about the condition and composition of your forces, as well as their training, supplying, arming (though some could argue that logistics is something that even supersedes strategy, but I digress). Once taking into account all these readiness factors, you must choose where and how to deploy your available forces, as you say, the domain of fleet management.

In terms of specifics I would like to see here, I think you touched on most of them nicely. Organization is influenced by supplies, which would be determined by base infrastructure (and what your national logistics system can get to said bases to be stored there). You can't have twenty ships in a port that can only support ten. As things stand, we at least have the beginnings of that with the tonnage limit, though I'm not sure that's the most accurate way to go about limiting ship overcrowding. Refitting would be dependent on all of the above. Does a given port have the right facilities, materials, and workers to overhaul a certain ship?

I know it would take some work, but someday I would like to see more detailed logistical nuance in the form of fuel and munitions. This was obviously key to real life naval engagements and would add much more meaning to each engagement, however seemingly inconsequential. "Should I use up all my ammo on those transports? What if I have to fight on the way home? Well my speed should be enough to outrun them...unless I use up too much fuel fighting to be able to afford said speed..."

Some people would complain of "too much micromanagement" I'm sure, but look, this is already a game with 100 stats and factors; just look at all the numbers in the designer. Proper fuel and munitions mechanics would enhance the designer because now you can take those very real and important factors into account when making ships. One that is armed to teeth with thick defenses is no use if it only has a handful of shells and just enough fuel to putt around the bay lol.

[slayer6]

Here's a question to the devs:  Why in the blue **** would you add the Transports mechanic with no way to actually manage it?  2 months ago I just lost 63 Transports, last month I lost 68 transports, and this month I lost 81 transports...  Furthermore Britain only had 1BB and 13DDs remaining, versus my 6BBs and 13CAs...

[akd]

I thought it was a bug that would have been fixed by now, but still seems baked into the shipbuilder: why are we not able to mount 6" (152mm) secondary guns or casemate guns on armoured cruisers?  All the British and German armoured cruisers and first-class protected cruisers (can't really build the latter in game, even though it was the primary large cruiser type in 1890-1900) had either secondary batteries of 6" guns (5.8" / 149mm for Germans) or a unified batter of 6" in guns, in either case with most of the 6" guns usually mounted in casemates.

Just look at Navypedia listings:

British armoured cruisers and 1st class protected cruisers from Imperieuse (1886) through Duke of Edinburgh (1906): https://navypedia.org/ships/uk/uk_cruisers.htm

All German armoured cruisers (and one large protected cruiser): https://navypedia.org/ships/germany/ger_cruisers.htm

It's literally every ship! (I think, might have skimmed over some odd man out).

Edited December 9, 2021 by akd

[ColonelHenry]

2 hours ago, akd said:

I thought it was a bug that would have been fixed by now, but still seems baked into the shipbuilder: why are we not able to mount 6" (152mm) secondary guns or casemate guns on armoured cruisers?  All the British and German armoured cruisers and first-class protected cruisers (can't really build the latter in game, even though it was the primary large cruiser type in 1890-1900) had either secondary batteries of 6" guns (5.8" / 149mm for Germans) or a unified batter of 6" in guns, in either case with most of the 6" guns usually mounted in casemates.

Just look at Navypedia listings:

British armoured cruisers and 1st class protected cruisers from Imperieuse (1886) through Duke of Edinburgh (1906): https://navypedia.org/ships/uk/uk_cruisers.htm

All German armoured cruisers (and one large protected cruiser): https://navypedia.org/ships/germany/ger_cruisers.htm

It's literally every ship! (I think, might have skimmed over some odd man out).

We should be able to put heavier guns on smaller vessels in general. Stuffs like single 12 inch guns on coastal defense ships should be a possibility in a ship designing game.

[DougToss]

10 hours ago, Littorio said:

I know it would take some work, but someday I would like to see more detailed logistical nuance in the form of fuel and munitions. This was obviously key to real life naval engagements and would add much more meaning to each engagement, however seemingly inconsequential. "Should I use up all my ammo on those transports? What if I have to fight on the way home? Well my speed should be enough to outrun them...unless I use up too much fuel fighting to be able to afford said speed..."

You know what's funny? I had written out a whole section on the naval war in 1914 that touched on all that. My concern was that people would find it too boring, when I find it the opposite - far more interesting than waiting at anchor in the North Sea for Trafalgar to present itself. 

 

 Von Spee's death ride is a great case study that showcases how important stocks of coal were, how vulnerable transports could be, how hard to find merchantmen and cruisers were on the open ocean before air reconnaissance,  as well as the operational challenge for both the attacker and defender. The world's largest navy couldn't be everywhere at once, and the biggest and best ships were not present on distant stations. Economy of force is something missing from the game at the moment - the incentive is always to build the biggest and best warship possible, but in reality the Royal Navy's cruiser force was always about making due. 

 

Cruiser Warfare and commerce raiding is all about conducting operations with very limited resources, making the best use of them, and the "key terrain" - telegraph and coaling stations - very much centres around that. Trying to plot the enemy's movement from reports from neutral ships, agents in neutral ports, and of course trying to map their movements from their raids on friendly merchants, telegraph and coal stations is really interesting in gameplay terms as well.

The beauty of the 1914 campaign is that you really could make that its own game, which of course, people have in a variety of formats. So far as I know, iit's only been tried once in 3D though.

 

Something to think about. Everybody remembers Jutland, but the cruiser warfare on the far flung edges of the world is more interesting to me - a much larger operational challenge for sure. 

e: It seems like Cruiser Warfare has received some renewed attention from Avalanche Press. Some great articles posted in the past month that I think are relevant to campaign design, more armoured, protected and light cruiser hulls worthy of addition, and of course useful resources on their design and use for players:

 

August 1914

1915 Part 1

1915 Part 2

Germany's Cruiser Squadron

Redesigning Blücher

Japanese Armoured Cruisers

Edited December 9, 2021 by DougToss

[Littorio]

12 hours ago, DougToss said:

You know what's funny? I had written out a whole section on the naval war in 1914 that touched on all that. My concern was that people would find it too boring, when I find it the opposite - far more interesting than waiting at anchor in the North Sea for Trafalgar to present itself. 

 

 Von Spee's death ride is a great case study that showcases how important stocks of coal were, how vulnerable transports could be, how hard to find merchantmen and cruisers were on the open ocean before air reconnaissance,  as well as the operational challenge for both the attacker and defender. The world's largest navy couldn't be everywhere at once, and the biggest and best ships were not present on distant stations. Economy of force is something missing from the game at the moment - the incentive is always to build the biggest and best warship possible, but in reality the Royal Navy's cruiser force was always about making due. 

 

Cruiser Warfare and commerce raiding is all about conducting operations with very limited resources, making the best use of them, and the "key terrain" - telegraph and coaling stations - very much centres around that. Trying to plot the enemy's movement from reports from neutral ships, agents in neutral ports, and of course trying to map their movements from their raids on friendly merchants, telegraph and coal stations is really interesting in gameplay terms as well.

The beauty of the 1914 campaign is that you really could make that its own game, which of course, people have in a variety of formats. So far as I know, iit's only been tried once in 3D though.

 

Something to think about. Everybody remembers Jutland, but the cruiser warfare on the far flung edges of the world is more interesting to me - a much larger operational challenge for sure. 

e: It seems like Cruiser Warfare has received some renewed attention from Avalanche Press. Some great articles posted in the past month that I think are relevant to campaign design, more armoured, protected and light cruiser hulls worthy of addition, and of course useful resources on their design and use for players:

 

August 1914

1915 Part 1

1915 Part 2

Germany's Cruiser Squadron

Redesigning Blücher

Japanese Armoured Cruisers

 

Good point on the coaling and telegraph stations. It would certainly add some much needed depth to the campaign map. I don't know if they have plans to add anything else to it right now except for more ports, but either way it would enhance the gameplay.

[Nick Thomadis]

Hello Admirals, 

Another important hotfix has just become available. Please restart your game clients to receive it.

Hotfix Update v98 9/12/2021
- Improvements in the Mission Generator to not generate defensive missions near enemy waters.
- Mission Generator system will now create new special missions, depending on the fleet composure of Attacker or Defender.
- Auto-Design Optimizations.
- Fixed Anti-Aliasing resetting after each game restart.
- Improved early battleships of Britain to have more funnels in the middle section.

[Littorio]

43 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Hello Admirals, 

Another important hotfix has just become available. Please restart your game clients to receive it.

Hotfix Update v98 9/12/2021
- Improvements in the Mission Generator to not generate defensive missions near enemy waters.
- Mission Generator system will now create new special missions, depending on the fleet composure of Attacker or Defender.
- Auto-Design Optimizations.
- Fixed Anti-Aliasing resetting after each game restart.
- Improved early battleships of Britain to have more funnels in the middle section.

Thank you I look forward to testing these out. I thought I was doing crazy with the anti-aliasing lol. Good to see it's fixed!

[o Barão]

"Fixed Anti-Aliasing resetting after each game restart."

Many thx

"Improved early battleships of Britain to have more funnels in the middle section."

Could be possible to do the same thing with the British CAs?

Maybe if adding the possibility to use the "standard funnel" version would be possible to place two in the middle?

@Nick Thomadis

Edited December 9, 2021 by o Barão

[Nick Thomadis]

19 minutes ago, o Barão said:

Could be possible to do the same thing with the British CAs?

Changelog does not mention it but actually this change will affect a broader range of ships, including the CA.

[Gangut]

So I've managed to complete my first campaign and so far the strategy as Germany is to use a mix of heavy cruisers and battleships. Both with rapid fire primaries, torpedoes and a good secondary battery, plus bb's with a max speed of 22 knots. In effect I was able to bring the uk to its knees in 6 years with only a battleship remaining, a few heavy cruisers and a few light cruiser + torpedo boats. So a reverse Jeune Ecole fleet build seems to be the best build so far.

[Littorio]

So my first campaign as 1890 Germany is done after almost 8 years of conflict. I'm curious if this screen has done anything for anyone, but it doesn't seem to be implemented yet. I checked HMS Resolution (my eternal foe who nonetheless survived the war, one of their last three BBs), assuming it would transfer her to me as a war reparation. This would be a really cool feature.

 

[CapnAvont1015]

BOIS! I HAVE RETURNED FROM THE HELLPIT THAT IS COLLEGE EXAMS! What did I miss?

[o Barão]

14 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Changelog does not mention it but actually this change will affect a broader range of ships, including the CA.

Ok so if i understand correctly, this is something planned for the next updates?

Because atm, the only way to add enough funnels for the  British cruiser to work properly is to make some strange design choices.

The middle area is so small that not even the largest option available can be used.

But the real issue is, why are the CAs hulls so limited in size in comparison to the BBs when it was normal for the time period to see Cruisers with a similar displacement as the Battleships?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cruiser_Rurik_(1892)

11k tons.

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

This was the british answer to the Rurik. 14k tons in a cruiser, and we are limited to 3.5k tons.

Those are specific examples,  and i am not saying if the player should build this ships with this size without researching upgrades in the tech tree, but if was possible to increase the limit to something around 6.5k or 7k tons for the CAs, all the funnel issues would be solved for the 1890 campaign and the ships tonnage would be more realistic to what was being built in that time period.

[Airzerg]

О, как это ограничение меня злит! Это просто невыносимо! Вы даете мне крейсера-монстры!

[Steveh11]

Can anyone explain the logic behind the decision to keep starting dates behind a "play the game and win campaigns" gate?  I'm far more interested in playing games around the 19-teens and twenties than I am 1890.  Why can't I?