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>>>Core Patch 1.0 Feedback<<<


Nick Thomadis

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1 minute ago, Danelin Aruna said:

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.

In "Fleet" window you can enable the option "Add Crew" and it is going to be auto-managed from the next turn and onwards.

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1 minute ago, Nick Thomadis said:

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

I mean enemy ships. I'm pretty sure that I leave to few survivors (insert evil laugh) for the enemy fleet to have veteran crews. Yet they always have, after a certain time, veteran crews on all ships including some I never spotted.

Same that some of my ships who barley saw action have veteran crews.

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3 minutes ago, SiWi said:

I mean enemy ships. I'm pretty sure that I leave to few survivors (insert evil laugh) for the enemy fleet to have veteran crews. Yet they always have, after a certain time, veteran crews on all ships including some I never spotted.

Same that some of my ships who barley saw action have veteran crews.

Ive also noticed this as well.

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Hi all!

New forumite here who has been playing this game for quite a while now but only recently dabbled with the campaign mode.
Given that I really like this game, I thought I'd share my feedback here. I'm sure quite a few things I mention here will have been discussed in one of the many topics on this forum...I haven't read all threads yet, apologies for that. ;) Please note that I am very much aware that this is a very early version of the campaign and that it is work in progress.

Anyway, to the wall of text!

Note: this is mostly based of v97. Haven't been able to play v98 that much yet.


GAMEPLAY
- The transport mechanic: In essence I like the transport mechanic and how you can actively invest into your own economy. However, due to it not being explained how you actually protect your transports (as in: how do you decrease the chance of losing them) it can be somewhat game breaking when you suddenly start losing 10+ transport per turn and actually go bankrupt even though you are winning all battles thrown at you. Please let the player know WHY they are losing the transports so you can respond to it before some politician throws a hissy fit and decides you lost the war. (For example a warning that not enough ships are available to protect trade lanes or something)
- Spotting is weird: this has ofcourse been discussed to death in other threads, but right now it's just weird how ships can suddenly pop into existance right next to you. I know this is due to a lack of visible clues regarding the weather effects, but if you didn't know this (like your random Steam early access purchaser) it would be frustrating and more or less "unfair and game breaking".
- The AI bravely runs away: another thing that has multiple topics on this forum. Like the brave Sir Robin, the AI seemingly decides that bravely running aways it the best course of action. Always. Even when it has a numerical advantage. (I especially found this to be the case in the 1890 and 1900 campaigns. It becomes less of an issue in the later campaigns)
- Convoy Missions: I really like the idea of convoy missions, but so far they seem to have little actual effect. If you only kill the transport ships, you don't get any victory points. So right now it's not clear to me, as a player, why I should focus on these missions. For example, skipping a convoy defence mission doesn't always result in me losing transports.
- Already visible Work in Progress stuff: I really like that we're already able to see stuff that doesn't yet work, but gives us an idea of what is coming. Gives me something to look forward to. :)


UI
- In general: the UI is nice and clean and overall is easy to understand. Nice work!
- Mechanics need more info: This game has quite a few underwater mechanics which aren't really explained ingame. For example the option to have ships "In Being" or out at sea. Now I get the gist of what it means...but what does it mean in game terms? Like, which option is better for the protection of transports? Having popups with a short explanation would be nice.
- Need weather info before entering combat: What I would really like to see (or maybe I'm blind and missed it completely?) is having weather info before you go into battle. I really like pre-dreadnought era ships but entering a battle where you suddenly find out that your commander Hanz forgot that it's nighttime...and it's storming with a seastate that would make a hardened sailor cry...not much sense even going into that battle, right? But hey! At least they can see smoke on the horizon!
- Speaking of smoke: While I really like the "Smoke on the horizon" mechanic, it's also a bit frustrating. Especially in the pre-dreadnought era where spotting distances are low and speeds are even lower, it's kind of annoying to just sail around and not finding your foe. (especially now with the AI's tendency to run away without even spotting you) It would be nice to have an (optional?) indicator of some kind showing you exactly on what bearing the smoke was spotted instead of just "East"...no make that North-East...no, East!...or maybe West?


SOUND
I can be brief about this. Both the effects and the music is GLORIOUS really well done!


OTHER SUGGESTIONS
- Wars between AI's: One of the things I really disliked from Rule the Waves 2 (sorry, had to make the comparison once) was that it was always you vs the AI. The AI nations never had wars between themselves and alliances didn't mean that much excepty for some extra ships during battles. So I really hope that in this game the other AI nations will get into wars with eachother to keep things in balance. (with balance I mean nations which just have their fleets grown and grow because they never suffer any losses...and then declare war on you with a massive numerical superiority)
- Moddable nations: While I really like the ten nations we have so far, I'm sure everyone can think of other countries they'd like to add. I'd love to see us having the ability to add nations via mods. I mean...who wouldn't want to rule the seven seas with the dreaded Swiss war canoes? Seriously though, I think being able to add not just equipment and 3D models to this game would greatly expand the replayability value.


All in all, I really like what I see in this first version! Sure, it needs polish and more stuff to be added. And I'm not sure if it would be wise to put it on Steam in its current state given how some aspects of the game can easily be seen as "broken"...but it really has a lot of potential and I cannot wait for the stuff to come!

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29 minutes 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?

As of now, I have not had major crew issues. I always fund them adequately though. It's possible if I made a huge fleet later in the game that might change. I have only done 1890s scenarios, so smaller tonnage vessels overall. I would ask the people who have played more late starts.

Edited by Littorio
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51 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

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 haven't played the campaign in a week or maybe two, so my experience may be dated following some small patches. In my experience as UK (only campaigns I was able to beat) I was usually fine, sometimes it got difficult if I had a few bad turns with heavy casualties but otherwise it wasn't a huge issue. When I had lots of money and few combat losses, I'd always try to build up a good supply of crew in case things got bad in the future. I remember it being more difficult as Germany, though I suppose that's the point and makes sense, especially since, historically, German naval infrastructure and general capabilities weren't anywhere close to Britain's in 1890.

Edited by Speglord
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1 hour 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?

As Germany its fine, for England it isn't enough for sure. One thing that bug me a bit is that training quality and quantity are not dissociated. It should be really.

If I may suggest, why having a slider with limited value? On the long run you may want to add buildable training facility, but in the main time both player and AI should be able to decide how much is invested in training, transport and research. Slider value could percentage of total budget. Doing so, the deciding factor would be budget alone.

While at it, you may want to add slider for repair and building. That way both Player and AI would not go bankrupt after two hard battle.
 

Edited by RedParadize
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I have now played the campaign for some time and it is overall nice.

But I have a complaint, aside from the stern chases and enemy ships seeing you and firing torpedoes without
being seen.

That is the ambush situation. Now, more than once, enemy destroyers start RIGHT BESIDE my battleships. There is no
escape. Five minutes ago, the first battle of a new compaing, I lost a battleship in the first 30 seconds of combat, because six enemy destroyers started the scenario less than a kilometer away. My hapless battleship went down with fifteen hits.

Sorry, that is insane, especially when being equipped with Radar II.

On a side note : When I am the ambusher, my destroyers start much, much farther away.

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1 hour ago, JeeWeeJ said:

Especially in the pre-dreadnought era where spotting distances are low

The idea that spotting distances were lower in the pre-dreadnought era vs. later is bonkers and the real problem.  Human eyes and binoculars did not "upgrade" and battleship ship spotters were able to observe roughly the same distances in 1890 and 1930.  Only radar changed things significantly (and radar is not visual observation).

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38 minutes ago, Darth Khyron said:

I have now played the campaign for some time and it is overall nice.

But I have a complaint, aside from the stern chases and enemy ships seeing you and firing torpedoes without
being seen.

That is the ambush situation. Now, more than once, enemy destroyers start RIGHT BESIDE my battleships. There is no
escape. Five minutes ago, the first battle of a new compaing, I lost a battleship in the first 30 seconds of combat, because six enemy destroyers started the scenario less than a kilometer away. My hapless battleship went down with fifteen hits.

Sorry, that is insane, especially when being equipped with Radar II.

On a side note : When I am the ambusher, my destroyers start much, much farther away.

If the AI can know its in inferiority right as the battle start, it should be possible to calculate that before the battle start. If the AI decide to flee and has faster ship, then you get a message saying they slipped away. If player have faster ship, then he get to chose if he chase or not. Note that there is no point fleeing when your foe is faster, it would make sense if bellow a certain range AI in inferiority would decide to fight instead of just helplessly try to run while it cant. This would prevent the scenario where a AI BB that still can win just turn way, preventing its front turret from firing.

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3 minutes ago, akd said:

The idea that spotting distances were lower in the pre-dreadnought era vs. later is bonkers and the real problem.  Human eyes and binoculars did not "upgrade" and battleship ship spotters were able to observe roughly the same distances in 1890 and 1930.  Only radar changed things significantly (and radar is not visual observation).

Ya tell me about spotting is broken... badly.

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14 minutes ago, akd said:

The idea that spotting distances were lower in the pre-dreadnought era vs. later is bonkers and the real problem.  Human eyes and binoculars did not "upgrade" and battleship ship spotters were able to observe roughly the same distances in 1890 and 1930.  Only radar changed things significantly (and radar is not visual observation).

Arguably, the only improvement was that there was more people on the taller tower of later ships. More eyeballs helps.

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9 minutes ago, akd said:

Possibly more spotters on average, but also less funnel smoke, so probably works out about the same, at least for conditions where you can see to the horizon.

All other things being equal, more eyes matter allot. I remember being at the bar of a small sailboat on the st-lawrence river. Me and the other guys on the deck were having a chat and we did not notice that the tanker we saw behind, what seemed a moment ago, had almost catched us. At sea, there is long period where nothings happen, its really easy to get distracted. I can easily imagine the same being true on a warship.

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4 minutes ago, RedParadize said:

All other things being equal, more eyes matter allot. I remember being at the bar of a small sailboat on the st-lawrence river. Me and the other guys on the deck were having a chat and we did not notice that the tanker we saw behind, what seemed a moment ago, had almost catched us. At sea, there is long period where nothings happen, its really easy to get distracted. I can easily imagine the same being true on a warship.

Of course, but these are warships with dedicated crews allocated to the task and in sufficient numbers to ensure coverage.  At least in clear daylight, the idea that it would be the difference of seeing something 5-10k yards sooner is absurd.  Even the smallest TB is still a relatively large object (generating even larger clouds of black smoke) relative to the visual horizon and should be seen just as readily by an 1890s B as by a 1930s BB.

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3 minutes ago, akd said:

Of course, but these are warships with dedicated crews allocated to the task and in sufficient numbers to ensure coverage.  At least in clear daylight, the idea that it would be the difference of seeing something 5-10k yards sooner is absurd.  Even the smallest TB is still a relatively large object (generating even larger clouds of black smoke) relative to the visual horizon and should be seen just as readily by an 1890s B as by a 1930s BB.

talking about daylight, one of the main issue is that night is not displayed as so atm. You have to look at the stats on the left to see the time and weather, both of these factor influence spotting distance.

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11 minutes ago, RedParadize said:

talking about daylight, one of the main issue is that night is not displayed as so atm. You have to look at the stats on the left to see the time and weather, both of these factor influence spotting distance.

Yes, and this is no doubt doubly confusing for new players, but even with the correct visuals in place it would still be a baffling system.  If a ship can see my ship at night and fire on it, then the moment it fires it should also be seen.  The visible horizon doesn't change at night, just the light levels, and a firing ship is generating its own impossible to miss light.  If it is hull up above the visual horizon, it will be seen.  If some sort of visual obscurant is present (rain, fog, etc.) then if ship A cannot see ship B, Ship B cannot see ship A.  If ship A spots ship B sooner because it can discern objects at that range and ship B is a larger, easier to spot object amidst the obscuration, then again the moment Ship A starts firing it is again equalized.  If Ship A can visually discern Ship B to fire on it, then Ship B will see Ship A firing.  If neither ship can see because obscuration has completely limited the potential range of vision (think a fog bank), then neither ship should have any chance to see the other until both are within some limit of maximum vision (and only then should relative size modifiers come into play, and only for ships that are not firing).

Edited by akd
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The way I understand it, for the dev combat mechanics are 'good enough' for now. I have no doubt that they wish to improve it, but they would ratter work on other aspect of the game for now. Such as the campaign. As someone that that have worked for a short period in the gaming industry I can understand that. My real field of expertise is movie Fx, as a Layout artist. A rough pass of everything is needed before getting into details, otherwise you will lose focus, time and money. As a layout artist, this is exactly my job.

There is many aspect that I really want to see improvement. Historical accuracy and spotting mechanism are somewhere on that list, but not at the top.

Edited by RedParadize
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^

This matter of the vision system is a continuation of the issue of Borg sighting, too, as far as I'm concerned.

We've been saying for a long time the vision system has some major issues. If you shoot at me, there's no way I don't see you, for example. Maybe all I get is an idea of your bearing and range, but it's immediately a huge "look somewhere over here" sign. Yet that's not what happens because the system runs on a lazy Borg sighting system, something that has no business being in a game in 2021.

You'd think you'd have a test system with a whole bunch of scenarios mapped out. You'd run your designed game system through those scenarios to see that it generates the result that's expected. If it doesn't, it's a fail.

That's basic User Acceptance Testing in a nutshell, isn't it?

Granted, I've only ever done it in situations like banking and insurance companies' systems, so maybe I don't understand it properly.

On top of that, as I've said many times, you ALSO ought to have a "must NOT" list, too.

'Must NOT have 6 DDs spawn within 1km of enemy BB' would seem potentially to be one of them. If the visibility is so poor that the BB can't see the DDs, the DDs almost certainly would never have spotted the BB from range to close on it. That leaves both forces happening to be on converging courses at exactly the correct distance and speed to come within 1km of each other.

I don't think I need to comment on the statistical likelihood of that happening, especially if it's in open seas.

That absence of the "must not" list is one I've seen cause all sorts of mayhem (a bank ended up fined ~$1.6 billion because of what I'm sure was a failure to have that check in place with a change made to their ATM network; considering they were technically liable for something like a fine of $50 billion due to the number of breaches through the network, they got off lightly).

It's simple yet so often seems to be neglected, with predictable consequences.

Edited by Steeltrap
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3 hours ago, Steeltrap said:

'Must NOT have 6 DDs spawn within 1km of enemy BB'

A nation must expect losses. 

Take the most unfortunate lost of HMS Vanguard (1909), sunk by internal explosion at Scapa Flow. I'm not saying this should happen in game but DDs appearing at point blank range can be a way the AI/game could make campaigns challenging and simulate unfortunate losses. 

Maybe the player should endure unfortunate losses? like lets make it a very interesting UAD campaign to play? And then the player endures the struggle to right himself. 

I wouldn't like it myself and I don't play hard-mode either, not yet, but just because I wouldn't like it (or any one else) doesn't mean hard-mode events shouldn't happen, well at least rarely.
 

Edited by Skeksis
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Regarding crew question:

I've never ever had a problem with crew available but on the other hand i think i've found the reason why - last couple campaigns i tried to challenge myself and i build only CAs. They decimated everything that AI could muster taking very little damage in return. So where was problem? Most of battles were against similar number of ships but mine were heavier. Out of 5 BBs and 4 BCs I've only once met a BB (19 knots in 1930 but that is a designer problem) which gave me any sort of problems - i had to close the distance to about 200 meters and double team it. The problem is mission generator tends to put same ships vs same ships and player designed ships are usually better for brawling (yea i am looking at you torpedo spamming, running away in every situation AI) therefore the manpower pool is never strained.

 

Also i don't think crew system works - i had like 5 BBs 10 CLs mothballed and i could bring them to service without any issues. I will put my crew fund to 0 and will see if i can replenish crew manually.

Regarding designer problem in 1930 start AI on both sides doesn't usually exceed 32 knots especially UK - i've seen 26 knots destroyers...

Edited by Hemidal
forgot to add the precieved problem
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I am not adverse to unexpected losses and historically, destroyers were able to sneak up to the enemy, happened.
And of course I play on, despite this. But one enemy destroyer literally touched my vessel, it's division mates were not far away astern and ahead and the others extremely close.

While I understand the element of surprise and terrain like islands or adverse weather conditions or nighttime,
this close is a bit harsh, I think, as it suggests that neither the radar works properly (okay, it is a new technology in the 30s) and the lookouts are all drunk.

So. If this is an intended thing, okay. But I feel that this is not really intended and it would be nice if there could be a comment from the devs about this.

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4 hours ago, Skeksis said:

A nation must expect losses. 

Take the most unfortunate lost of HMS Vanguard (1909), sunk by internal explosion at Scapa Flow. I'm not saying this should happen in game but DDs appearing at point blank range can be a way the AI/game could make campaigns challenging and simulate unfortunate losses. 

Maybe the player should endure unfortunate losses? like lets make it a very interesting UAD campaign to play? And then the player endures the struggle to right himself. 

I wouldn't like it myself and I don't play hard-mode either, not yet, but just because I wouldn't like it (or any one else) doesn't mean hard-mode events shouldn't happen, well at least rarely.
 

Yes what happened to Scapa Flow can happen. Accidents do happen after all. And the only way i could see the DD's getting to with a Kilometer is if its night time. But i doubt they'd be able to do that in the 1900's As you would have spotted them long before you could close. Mainly do to funnel smoke on the horizon. No commander wants to engage at a disadvantage, the devs really need to overhaul the spotting mechanic and make it realistic as it stands it is beyond the suspension of disbelief. I've seen several places were people want it to be more transparent and go into the realm of RTW's spotting mechanics I think this would help a lot of people.

 

Make it sensible, as it is it just appears stupid and annoying to players. Ships do not have cloaking devices. If its light out for the most part you can see the enemy out to at least the horizon, even at night you should still be able to see them from fairly far off, unless your the Americans at Savo Island apparently.

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13 hours ago, akd said:

The idea that spotting distances were lower in the pre-dreadnought era vs. later is bonkers and the real problem.  Human eyes and binoculars did not "upgrade" and battleship ship spotters were able to observe roughly the same distances in 1890 and 1930.  Only radar changed things significantly (and radar is not visual observation).

I was talking about in game terms, not real life. The pre-dreadnought equipment has much lower spotting range than stuff you get later. Just compare the stuff you get at the start of the 1890 campaign vs the 1920 campaign. This just makes the the impact of the spotting issue worse, especially for new players who do not realize that there is stuff like weather etc (which they cannot see ingame yet unless they know what button to click).

I found that for more modern equipment spotting becomes less of an issue.

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