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>>>Core Patch 1.0 Feedback<<<


Nick Thomadis

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Okay, replaying the campaigns to see what's changed over the last few patches and MOTHER OF GOD, PLEASE STOP THE STERN CHASING. Every single one on one encounter the AI always decides to run. This tactic hardly ever works for them, as all you have to do is give chase, and after a few good hits they won't have the speed to outrun you, due to flooding, dead engines, or structural damage. When the AI does this, it's basically a free kill which is the last thing that anyone wants to have to say about their tactics. However, there is one major problem with this free win.

ZmCQA0A.png

It Takes F***ing Forever. This is probably the worst gameplay I've ever seen in a naval combat game to date. The only alternatives are to let the auto-resolve do the battle for you (good luck with that one) or skip the battle. So if you want to actually win, you pretty much need to sit here and hold your ship's hand while the enemy runs for dear life and doesn't really even fight back. It just this same bloody screenshot, for however long the battle takes. Please, fix this. I never want to do this again.

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33 minutes ago, SodaBit said:

Okay, replaying the campaigns to see what's changed over the last few patches and MOTHER OF GOD, PLEASE STOP THE STERN CHASING. Every single one on one encounter the AI always decides to run. This tactic hardly ever works for them, as all you have to do is give chase, and after a few good hits they won't have the speed to outrun you, due to flooding, dead engines, or structural damage. When the AI does this, it's basically a free kill which is the last thing that anyone wants to have to say about their tactics. However, there is one major problem with this free win.

ZmCQA0A.png

It Takes F***ing Forever. This is probably the worst gameplay I've ever seen in a naval combat game to date. The only alternatives are to let the auto-resolve do the battle for you (good luck with that one) or skip the battle. So if you want to actually win, you pretty much need to sit here and hold your ship's hand while the enemy runs for dear life and doesn't really even fight back. It just this same bloody screenshot, for however long the battle takes. Please, fix this. I never want to do this again.

Proof that this tactic doesn't work:
RGbQSsF.png

cbDgtHH.png
I'll provide more proof if asked to, but this is a pretty good example of how ineffective the AI's tactics are in one on one engagements.

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I don’t want the “solution” for this to be the AI never breaks contact or retreats and instead fights to the death. Please @Nick Thomadis, I’m begging you on this one!

 

Instead, I can see this two ways. First as a battle generation problem - battles are being commenced where the weaker side would have disengaged immediately upon contact if possible. For this, it simply has to be a pop-up on the campaign screen:

 

”Enemy sighted at XXX YYY. Enemy broke contact heading (Bearing)”

there can be a variety like

”Enemy sortied from (Port). Turned for home upon sighting  friendly forces” 

There’s a variety of situations where you’d want to break contact, I think it’s reasonable that these wouldn’t be worth entering the battle screen, but instead provide some information on enemy movements and intentions. For a distant blockade of the North Sea, there are lots of times where distant pickets would sight each other, investigate smoke on the horizon, stop to search neutral ships etc. 
 

For instances where one side does want to enter battle, I think the battle screen should only be entered if there is a notable speed advantage. This allows for the classic Cruiser action of a Bow-Stern chase. In this instance, finding an enemy trying to evade you, and pursuing as they try to break contact is the nature of Cruiser Warfare.  
 

Unlike scenarios where you could simply return to port upon sighting a superior enemy force, cruisers caught on distant stations did have to run, and would have no reason to stay and fight. As I mentioned upthread, this characterized the naval war in 1914. It would have been suicidal insanity for the Germans to stand and fight - but - I also think the Royal Navy player should have the option to try to pursue the enemy in the battle screen, even if they are unlikely to catch them, off Tsingtao or the Falklands. The reason being if you decline the battle screen, which you could do of course, the next time that ship “appears” it may be attacking a merchant.

 

tl;dr - Commerce Raiders and Cruiser Warfare should be in the battle screen even if it will be a search and chase with slim chance of contact with a fleeing enemy, other fleet units should be a pop up on the campaign screen.

 

Thoughts?

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On 12/8/2021 at 11:24 AM, Littorio said:

 

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.

 

 

 

I cannot in the campaign. in either the build screen or the Tab screen where you build the ships. It is only optional right after you create a build but before you actually build a ship of that class. Even when I scrap all of the ship from a class it is still greyed out.

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5 hours ago, DougToss said:

I don’t want the “solution” for this to be the AI never breaks contact or retreats and instead fights to the death. Please @Nick Thomadis, I’m begging you on this one!

 

Instead, I can see this two ways. First as a battle generation problem - battles are being commenced where the weaker side would have disengaged immediately upon contact if possible. For this, it simply has to be a pop-up on the campaign screen:

 

”Enemy sighted at XXX YYY. Enemy broke contact heading (Bearing)”

there can be a variety like

”Enemy sortied from (Port). Turned for home upon sighting  friendly forces” 

There’s a variety of situations where you’d want to break contact, I think it’s reasonable that these wouldn’t be worth entering the battle screen, but instead provide some information on enemy movements and intentions. For a distant blockade of the North Sea, there are lots of times where distant pickets would sight each other, investigate smoke on the horizon, stop to search neutral ships etc. 
 

For instances where one side does want to enter battle, I think the battle screen should only be entered if there is a notable speed advantage. This allows for the classic Cruiser action of a Bow-Stern chase. In this instance, finding an enemy trying to evade you, and pursuing as they try to break contact is the nature of Cruiser Warfare.  
 

Unlike scenarios where you could simply return to port upon sighting a superior enemy force, cruisers caught on distant stations did have to run, and would have no reason to stay and fight. As I mentioned upthread, this characterized the naval war in 1914. It would have been suicidal insanity for the Germans to stand and fight - but - I also think the Royal Navy player should have the option to try to pursue the enemy in the battle screen, even if they are unlikely to catch them, off Tsingtao or the Falklands. The reason being if you decline the battle screen, which you could do of course, the next time that ship “appears” it may be attacking a merchant.

 

tl;dr - Commerce Raiders and Cruiser Warfare should be in the battle screen even if it will be a search and chase with slim chance of contact with a fleeing enemy, other fleet units should be a pop up on the campaign screen.

 

Thoughts?

 

Excellent overview. I agree that the "fix," assuming one is coming, shouldn't be to eliminate ships fleeing and breaking contact. We just need a balance. I think it is getting better over time. Before you couldn't even get into a stern chase because you never saw the enemy at all! Now, it appears sometimes the enemy isn't actually fleeing. When they flee they usually seem to head directly away...just look at merchant behavior.

Instead, as said elsewhere on this forum, it appears to be the AI heading away at an angle to reach optimum range for their respective guns/armor, possibly vis-a-vis your own. The issue of course, circles back to our beloved spotting system which means that at the range the AI considers appropriate to engage, we often can't see each other. Thus, we close, then they turn around back to reach their proper range, disappear once more, and on and on and on...

 

4 hours ago, Thundergaming1 said:

I cannot in the campaign. in either the build screen or the Tab screen where you build the ships. It is only optional right after you create a build but before you actually build a ship of that class. Even when I scrap all of the ship from a class it is still greyed out.

 

Try repairing your files from the launcher? This doesn't sound right and I haven't heard anyone else mention this issue that I know of.

 

2 hours ago, RedParadize said:

Whats that???
CtpCTJS.png?1

 

A ship you haven't seen yet and/or spotted. They saw your BBs first, then you spotted one of them.

Edited by Littorio
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Started the game in 1920. Apparently you can keep going for more than 10 years as it is now 1935. I play as the German, as you probably could have guessed:
CAyUn4h.png

British did design and build ships. But either they did not chose any of the newer hull or they never got crewed. I am still facing outdated pre-ww1 hulls...

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19 minutes ago, Toby said:

so at the moment the biggest issue i have is that the campaign is still so short that i really cant get used to upgrading deisgns and caring at research. the game really really needs a few more countries asap

 

more countries would be one way.

But easier to do would be "eternal war" where one war doesn't end the campaign but after 12 months of peace a new war automatically starts between UK and Germany. Granted the balance would be favor who ever wins the first war and I don't think the AI could bounce back.

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On 12/5/2021 at 5:12 PM, akd said:

Increasing fore deck / belt armor values is decreasing fore weight offset % (but bizarrely it will also decrease an aft weight offset %).  The opposite is also true, i.e. increasing aft deck / belt armor is decreasing aft weight offset %.  Finally, if you have the ship set up with no offset % fore or aft, you can increase fore/aft belt/deck armor to any value without affecting weight offset.  Something is either broken or communicated very counter-intuitively.

@Nick Thomadis the above appears to be a fairly significant error in the ship builder. Is it being looked into? 

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Thoughts so far

Really like the base format. I like that technology is something you influence, not something you control directly. I like the building mechanisms, and I don't mind the lack of autonomy and mission generation as much as I thought I would.

Only real criticism for now is screens need to be more necessary than they are right now.

Yesterday I won the 1890-1910 campaigns in an afternoon by just building fast battleships in all three time periods.

AI didn't try to rush me with his screens to overwhelm me with torpedoes in fights, nor were my merchant fleet particularly penalized, as power projection wise I had the bigger fleet and I still outran most of their ships which might have tipped calculations in my favour... but I think IRL the massive fuel consumption and having significantly fewer hulls to fulfill the same number of roles would have made such strategies unfeasible.

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LiLoE2x.png
This German campaign was started in 1910 and is now 14 years in. Some odd stuff happened, look at the British fleet. It had 10 BBs and two BC at start. I sunk only two, the rest got scraped before any replacement got built.

As you can see on the log. AI do build ships, but they never get fielded. I suspect that AI do not have enough crew. I think that it is due to how the "add crew" work. It only add when the crew fall below 50%, if a ship get built but do not have enough crew they end up mothballed and forgotten... end eventually scrapped.

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26years in, I edited my save to see what the AI was up to. Looks like I was right:
OFjvKpA.png
There is 41 Battleships, 34 Battlecruisers and countless of smaller warships mothballed.

If I look at what is currently producing, something stand out:
GbpCm09.png?1
In 1935, it still produce design form 1906. The reasons why I only see very old design in combat is most likely because they are more likely to get crewed as they are smaller.


On the design side,the IA do have upgraded BB/BC hulls, but no modern CA/CL. They all are of pre-dreadnough era. It doesn't have the tech (in 1936!!) to build them.

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1 hour ago, RedParadize said:

26years in, I edited my save to see what the AI was up to. Looks like I was right:
OFjvKpA.png
There is 41 Battleships, 34 Battlecruisers and countless of smaller warships mothballed.

If I look at what is currently producing, something stand out:
GbpCm09.png?1
In 1935, it still produce design form 1906. The reasons why I only see very old design in combat is most likely because they are more likely to get crewed as they are smaller.


On the design side,the IA do have upgraded BB/BC hulls, but no modern CA/CL. They all are of pre-dreadnough era. It doesn't have the tech (in 1936!!) to build them.

 

Wow this is huge. Thank you for uncovering this. I hope this is addressed soon by the devs as far as AI optimization goes...

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36 minutes ago, Littorio said:

 

Wow this is huge. Thank you for uncovering this. I hope this is addressed soon by the devs as far as AI optimization goes...

We will fix that, thank you.

Regarding the crew pool, there is a critical question for all players. Do you find it enough for your own needs, or it depletes too fast due to battle losses?

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1 minute ago, Nick Thomadis said:

We will fix that, thank you.

Regarding the crew pool, there is a critical question for all players. Do you find it enough for your own needs, or it depletes too fast due to battle losses?

I do not remember that being an issue, but I also always put 100% into training because veteran crews are so much stronger (weren't they suppose to be lock behind combat experience?) and I barley build new ships.

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Just now, SiWi said:

I do not remember that being an issue, but I also always put 100% into training because veteran crews are so much stronger (weren't they suppose to be lock behind combat experience?) and I barley build new ships.

Are your ships not seeing any combat to gain the "veteran" status? The max.rating they can get from the training is "Trained".

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1 minute ago, Nick Thomadis said:

We will fix that, thank you.

Regarding the crew pool, there is a critical question for all players. Do you find it enough for your own needs, or it depletes too fast due to battle losses?

I had problems once, but after that i just kept training at 100% and haven't run into a problem, but i rarely loose ships. Ive never lost a capital ship. I think I've lost like 4 cruisers through 15 playthroughs. Light cruisers and destroyers are also very rarely lost.

I just wish that there was the option to auto replace lost crew instead of having to manually do it. Its so annoying to go through each ship. Unless im an idiot and it is an option I didn't see.

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