Player Suggestions - December

[The_Real_Hawkeye]

1. Spotting system needs, I don't want to say complete rework, but a _lot_ of adjustment at the very least. RTW is supposedly the inspiration for UAD, so making it similar to how it's done there wouldn't be a bad idea (you don't have to re-invent the wheel here, if it works somewhere else, use it!)

2. Refits, nuff said.

3. Weapons (turrets and torpedo launchers) should track a target, even if you have "don't shoot" enabled, so they can open up the second you order them to instead of only start turning towards the enemy at that point.

4. Increase research speed. I get that the current campaigns are way too short for research to play a huge role, but the current research speed is too slow, even for the future, full campaign. For example, in the 1920 campaign, there are already 37 techs researched in the Cruiser Design branch. Researching the 15,000 ton CA from 84% takes 4 months at 100% research funding, so from 0% it should take around 25 months, let's call it two years per tech. So in a full campaign, starting in 1890 and ending in 1940, I should be able to research 25 techs, which would roughly translate to the 9,000t light and  13,000 ton heavy cruiser (12 techs for each one) - in 1940 - IF I can keep research funding at 100% all the time, which I'm pretty sure I won't.

5. Research priority system is completely useless. Being able to prioritize certain areas is good. Having a penalty for every other tech, including the other prioritized, that is so huge that it makes prioritizing nonsensical is bad.

6. Themes for ship-classes. Simply a ton of lists like rivers, mountains, English cities, US Generals, tribes, Begins with A, and so on, that can be chosen in the design-screen, so if I design the Tribal class DD, it will be named after, well, tribes and my Staaten class BB will be named after German states. Note: Preferably in the form of a txt file or something similar easy (json?), so people can make their own lists - this would also save you some work, just provide a few lists and let the community have a go at it.

7. Changing/choosing ship names. Yes, even if point 6 is in.

[AurumCorvus]

Repeating from others:

1. Spotting Mechanics need a huge rework, as stated by others.

2. Day/Night indicator - Tying into the above, we need some indicator of day/night so that we can judge our visibility. One of the times I was about to curse the game for a DD appeared *literally* right next to me ended up being a stormy night in 1890s where visibility would have been (rightfully) shot to hell and back. Before it appeared and sunk my BB, I had no idea that I would be facing such a visibility penalty.

3. Research priorities - I really, really agree that priorities need not to leech everything off of the others. We have too many areas to make that viable. Also, I would be fine with decreasing the speed bonus if they no longer leech off the others (maybe a better chance to skip a tech? Something to consider perhaps.)

4. Tracking of targets even when set to 'off' - This is especially applicable to torpedoes and also somewhat to main turrets. Sometimes I want to wait until I hit an excellent firing position (especially for torpedoes or extremely big calibers which have small ammo amounts), but right now there is no way to do so very well because turrets have to turn to track after I give them permission to fire

Major things:

5. Torpedoes are wonky - Honestly speaking, I just ran a 1930 CL-only campaign where I was firing multiple broadsides of sixteen torpedoes to annihilate enemy ships every battle. While this is everything torpedo enthusiasts ever dreamed of, it simply did not materialize in real life. While the obvious answer to fix this is "duds", I do agree that's not the best idea. Maybe easier to destroy above-deck torpedoes, with flash-fire chances for any "normal" or "increased" torpedo launchers? Otherwise, significantly bumping up sonar/hydrophone tech, or much better screening mechanics. I'm not exactly sure here, but torpedoes are not right. Or, as a repeat suggestion, torpedo reloads should not be a common thing. Make the "reduced" tech the new "normal" and make the two above it "Single reloads" or "Double reloads" and greatly, greatly make the penalties worse.

6. Radio Weight - While this an okay penalty for small ships, this gets absolutely ridiculous on large super BBs with their huge towers. Flat weight penalties.

7. Going back to short, medium, long, extreme ranges - While I liked the idea of certain km ranges, the campaign map does not play nice with this, since there is almost no indicator of just how many km range there is. Rather, unify the system back and let us have clear expectations. For example, let short ranges be limited to adjacent sea areas from the port, while medium ranges get access to the theater, and long/extreme ranges get access multiple theaters. Doesn't need to be exactly, but generally and in summary: Because there is no km on the campaign map, shift the range away from that.

Minor things for the future:

8. A modding system framework - Doesn't need to be complete, but the ability to add new techs/new hulls/new components would be awesome. This is especially relevant now that we have access to Steam Workshop.

9. More ship designer freedom - Mainly this is related to those pesky mount 2 errors that crop up, but more options to customize the ships will always be welcomed, especially related to hulls.

10. Torpedo bulges - as above, also a way to get just a tad bit more space at a speed penalty

11. Touch up on old hull components - Most of the newer models have those automatically removed wooden lifeboats; quite a few of the old components do not. It'd be nice if they get a pass later on and get updated to match.

12. More campaign determining setup - Mainly, this is related to boosting AI nations in general, certain AI nations in particular, or the player (also granularity as to the type of boost as well). Also, maybe tech speed changes for certain scenarios, etc. Also, the ability to pick a certain AI style other than "Historical" or "Random", so we could choose the particular styles of enemies we face (like Big-Gun enthusiast, Speed enthusiast, Torpedo enthusiasts, or other nations like Japan, America, etc.) 

[Danelin Aruna]

1. As others have pointed out Spotting. right now its so wonky...

2. Flat weight penalties for Radio's, Radar, Fire Control.

3. Definitely more freedom with ship designer especially when placing secondary's

4. Rework of modern CA and LC hulls, as they cant carry the historical secondary armament 

5. weather effects.

[SiWi]

5) tactical map during battle

6) on said map, lines that indicated the direction of spotted Torpedos, including those shot by my ships (there are no friendly torps once they are in the water...)

7) "Orders/Strategies" an option to increase or decrease likenesses of certain mission types. Like "convoy offence" would mean the own ships are more likely to raid enemy TR while "convoy defense" would mean your ship more likely defend convoy. Or "search major battle" to provoke big battles and so on.

8 )  allow us to create groups of ships, which are more likely end up in battle (to allow a "Romeo" and a "Julia" class to work together reliable.  

[catloverjerrygarcia]

13 minutes ago, SiWi said:

(there are no friendly torps once they are in the water...)

This was such a problem in WoWS because new players didn't understand that torps of this era didn't have actual guidance systems like we think of today that they removed team  damage.  The term dumb fire applies here, once they've been loosed there's no stopping them until they hit something or run dry and sink.

[Sir Guppy]

Been following the game for a while, and just picked it up on Steam. Solid core mechanics, but a little hollow at times.

Suggestions in no particular order.

1. More micro actions - sometimes there isn't much to do, ships just sail and fire at each other and I just get the watch it. Be good if there was something I could interact with, like with smoke screens, for example: assigning crew allocations to various duties, firing flares (at night), or salvo settings. I end up playing the entire game at 3x/5x speed to skip the tedium.

2. Levels of information - the game shows far too much information for new players. It needs to graduate the levels of detail it presents, for example: a game setting to show "detailed information", or an click to expand further information after an initial summary. Using detailed percentages is useful for an experienced player, but hard to grasp for a more casual one. Furthermore, percentages are difficult, as they are proportional to some other value I don't always know, why not just summarise it rather than making me do the math? For example "-2.5% Acceleration" could be "Makes the ship accelerate a little slower", or "+1.3% Hull Weight" could be "Weighs 1 ton".

Some examples. In the ship designer:

In battle: shoot info shows an absurd level of information, which only works if I manage to read it whilst hovering over the enemy as everything is moving. It could just give me a colour coding, or a simple good/bad/poor indicator. The detail is interesting, but hard to fathom for a beginner, feels a lot like a debug log.

3. Campaign: missions - the campaign feels a lot like a random mission generator. I don't have enough agency over what happens. I've not idea what "sea control" or "fleet in being" means as its not explained. I've no idea where one of my ships will appear or what it will be trying to do.  I would like to be able to create task forces and assign them to missions and areas, Hearts and Iron 4 does this well. For example: destroyers scout for the enemy, which then triggers a task force to engage, in battle this is represented by reinforcements joining mid battle, providing both sides with additional options.

4. Campaign: convoy - convoys have always been a significant part of naval conflict, I should be able to set their routes, assign patrol vessels, and assign raiders.

5. Campaign: intel, on enemy ships - the intel system works fine in custom battles. However, in the campaign I would like the gradually gain information regarding the enemy fleet (with varying degrees of detail based on research/rng/encounters/scouts/etc), this feels like a more organic and interesting system, e.g. the enemy launches a new battleship - I wonder have scary it will be, how could I best counter it, I'll have to send some scouts, run away when I see it, build my own battleship killer.

6. Campaign: ship design comparisons - when I design a new ship I should be able to easily compare it to my own ships, and enemy ships (based on available intel), e.g. if I want to build something better than the enemy, what would that need to be?

7. Campaign: intel, on enemy missions - I should gain access (with varying degrees of detail based on research/rng/encounters/scouts/etc) to enemy mission assignments, so I can assign my ships to counter.

8. Campaign: start date - the ability to change the campaign start date.

9. Campaign: repairs - when ships get repaired they go to a different port, and don't return to the port I originally set them to. This creates boring busy work to send them back later.

10. Campaign: fleet - the current fleet tab is painful to use, needs to group by port at least, or preferrable is shown visually on the map. I want the experience of an admiral shuffling wooden toys around a giant map, not someone working in a spreadsheet.

11. Campaign: technology - I appear to have won the campaign on my first attempt by 1890, this hasn't given me much scope or variety to play with different technologies. Technology needs to come faster and in greater variety, or campaign needs to advance through time more quickly.

12. Campaign: time, weather, and season - I imagine these were important factors in naval warfare, but it's hard to understand how these impact the campaign.

13. Battle: player division selector - the division selector isn't at all helpful in helping me play the game. Why have divisions of 1 ship? How do I know what is in each division?

14. Battle: AI division selector: I noticed the division selector allows me to jump to the location of ships I haven't spotted, if I have spotted at least some of the division. Assuming this is a bug.

15. Battle: dropping out of line - the movement orders need some greater control particularly when ships drop out of line (I'm assuming that's what is happening). For example when I have CAs in a line and one slows down so drops to the back it makes sense. When I'm suicide charging a load of torpedo boats I just want them to keep going.

16. Battle: changing division formation - this happens in a very inefficient manner, when I go from ahead to abrest, it appears the lead ships becomes the middle ship, so one ship has to overtake the lead (which in ahead is a long way away). They should just attempt to form abrest in the same order, with an option for abrest right or left, (e.g. all trailing ships moving to the left/right). This means if a formation change is paired with a 90 degree turn the division would reform far more quickly (which is usually when I want to do it). This should work the same way vice versa from abrest to ahead.

17. Battle: target assignment - assigning a ship multiple targets is very clunky, why all the weird key combinations? Pair this with divisions where is it very easy to accidently assign the entire division instead of just the ship I clicked. A nice left click and menu option would be appreciated. Also, standing orders, e.g. always fire secondaries at closest light craft, or division CAs should split fire on enemy division of CAs.

18. Battle: AI - I've found the AI in general to be okay, few odd moments though. In the first naval academy ironclad missions the AI just ran away from me. In some battles the enemy charged my fleet me with its battleship, once that was sunk, the torpedo boats appeared sometime later, didn't appear to be moving in a coherent manner (e.g. I would have expected the torpedo boats first as scouts).

19. Battle: deployment phase - battles need a deployment phase where I can organise my ships position and divisions. I don't like the way the AI lays my fleet out (e.g. I want by torpedo boats out in front charging abrest). I've tried reorganising in battle but its chaos and on the enemy is upon me before they form up in new positions. Alternatively the map should be much larger, to allow for reposition and scouting, effectively becoming an extension of the world map.

20. Battle: wave height - I see a lot that ships appear to be underwater at times, I've seen guns fire from underwater, it seems the waves are far to high/large on average.

21. Battle: movement orders - it's a nice idea but I'm not really sure why the point of movement orders is given the overall size of the maps, e.g. having my CL scout, sort of makes sense, but the scouting phase of the battle ends in pretty much the first 30 seconds.

22. Battle: group selection movement - this might be a bug. I select all ships by dragging a box, and then order a new direction, they all form up ahead, instead of just each adjusting their individual division direction.

23. Battle: report and log info - these only show the most recent events, they should show all events, and the filters should only filter what is displayed, not what is captured.

24. Battle: suicide torpedo boat charge - the tactic of charging torpedo boats seems unreasonably effective. They just close the distance too quickly, and the much larger ships can't sink them quickly enough. The AI should target rapidly closing torpedo craft more quickly. This should still be an effective tactic but I feel a much larger number of TB should be required to pull it off.

25. User interface - in general the UI feels clunky, and needs an overhaul.

26. Tutorials/knowledge base - the game doesn't do a very good job of explaining it's concepts, and there doesnt appear to be any tutorial. I basically I have no idea how most of the game mechanics work, what's things I really need to worry about, what things are minor min/maxes. I don't understand the basic options, e.g. is it always better to have more and bigger guns? If the naval academy is the tutorial, it isn't clear what the lesson is. I recommend having a look at Crusader Kings 3, another game with a lot of concepts - their tooltips, have tooltips!

27. Naval academy - I don't get it, the missions I found a bore, stopped playing after 5 missions. In the ironclad missions the AI just kept running away if it was faster, or would just remain stationary if it was slower. Also watching two ironclads fire 1/2 cannons at each other for 20 minutes was tedious. Ended up just ramming everything to sink them.

28. Visuals cues - Show me, don't tell me. The game appears to model behaviours, but it's not apparent it's actually there. For example, time and weather varies, but every battle looks the same. Furthermore, I have never once seen smoke on the horizon even though the game tells me it's there.

29. Quick mission settings - ability to control time and weather.

30. Ship designer: visual highlights - when I'm designing a ship its hard to see already placed components, a visual highlight (like in battles when hovering over weapons) would be useful.

[TBRSIM]

GET RID OF AHISTORIC ARCADEY WOWS MECHANICS!

1. Priority one needs to be fixing spotting. This means "copying" the RTW approach with separate optical and radar detection. Needs adding a set of "smoke columns", "radar contact" and "unidentified ship" graphics that would gradually resolve into the 3D ship when in visual range and identified. Combat Mission has been doing this quite well with tanks for decades. One thing in spotting you are already doing better than RTW is tactical RF-DF, so there is some innovation there.

2. Revamp ballistics. You have already done most of what is needed with the first major ballistics revamp. The remaining thing to be done is to separate accuracy (aimpoint precision, i.e. does the ship aim at the correct and point measured in distance to the current "true" predicted position after shell time of flight) and precision (the width and length individual spread pattern ellipse around the aimpoint). And do this for every "battery" seprately of course. Aim progress (depending on tech in range finders, directors, predictors and doctrine) would improve accuracy but not presision (that would depend mostly on turret/gun technology, gun control technology like central electrical firing, stable elements etc, and,  of cource, the distance to the aim point). Ideally, very early on with primitive tech this should be done (with really bad results for any longer distance) individually for every gun, this would remain so within the game's timeframe for certain small gun installations and would look very much like early "gun farm" designs in the game currently do anyways.

[captinjoehenry]

1. Fixed weight components.  Radios in real life only weigh a few tons total with most radio components weighing quite a bit less than one ton.  While currently adding radios to high displacement battleships adds 1000s of tons which is wildly out of whack with reality.  The same can be applied to range finders, radars and sonars among a few other components.  All of these systems broadly have fixed weight based off the tech.  There should be some weight increase based off of ship class as DDs might only mount one radio while a BB might mount 4 or so.  

2. Choosable enemy ships in custom battles.  It would be extremely nice to be able to design enemy ships for custom battles or at least be able to choose the enemy displacement and weapon sizes.  As when I'm using custom battles I want to be able to consistently test my own designs vs the same enemy ships.  Or at least more comparable enemy ships as right now I pretty much need to restart custom battles until the enemy RNG picks a ship design that at least somewhat matches mine as taking 3 x 4 20" 100,000 ton BBs up against dinky 50,000 ton sub 15" armed battleships is just a waste of time other than just stomping defenseless and harmless AI

3. Choosable starting campaign tech. For most of the campaigns this isn't too much of an issue but for the 1930 campaign it can be entirely dessive.  The difference between having and not having Radar II is massive and the same to a lesser extent with oxygen torpedos and Tube Powder 

[AurumCorvus]

1 hour ago, SiWi said:

5) tactical map during battle

6) on said map, lines that indicated the direction of spotted Torpedos, including those shot by my ships (there are no friendly torps once they are in the water...)

7) "Orders/Strategies" an option to increase or decrease likenesses of certain mission types. Like "convoy offence" would mean the own ships are more likely to raid enemy TR while "convoy defense" would mean your ship more likely defend convoy. Or "search major battle" to provoke big battles and so on.

8 )  allow us to create groups of ships, which are more likely end up in battle (to allow a "Romeo" and a "Julia" class to work together reliable.  

All of this is my wishes as well.

1. I know #5 has been denied before, however I would like to make a case for it nonetheless. Namely, the game does not hide the information that would be presented on the map already. This is just a matter of summarizing this in a nice, clean way. We already see all of our ships, and we can calculate how far away they are with extreme unrealistic precision (through the left-hand targeting panel). It does not fundamentally change gameplay to merely add a map. If this is an extreme realism issue, then certainly you can add a "hard mode" or "deprived UI mode" as suggested previously.

2. Again with #5, it would also be a very nice depiction/summary of the "smoke spotted" mechanic and greatly enhance it as well. Give us a vector or general area where the smoke was spotted (maybe a cone that narrows depending on how close you are to the smoke?)

3. Specifically expanding on #7, as well (and this is in addition to it, I firmly agree with basic concept with it), I would like the ability to proactively prepare certain types of operations as a part of the orders. For example, a port assault, or a raid on high value targets, like the Germans executed multiple times in WWI where they constantly attempted to bait out the Grand Fleet. Or the trap set in the Battle of Heligoland Bight where a known concentration of enemy cruisers was attacked. Or, in the style of the Convoy PQ16-PQ18 or Operation Pedestal, high value convoys that deliver necessary supplies, guarded by abnormally high escorts.

3, continued (for readability) The ability to force high value convoys might also be a legitimate blockade breaking. If we're getting blockaded, we might try to force open a blockade. This is like Operation Pedestal, or the promises given to von Spee if he managed to reach European waters. Though the area is blockaded, the prize is worth enough that they attempt to force it anyways.

4, expanding on #8: There is so much tactical and historical advantages to this (and greater pre-battle fleet management in general) that I almost consider this necessary. And though I don't want to focus too much on other games, both RTW2's new expansion and current dev news in TFA shows that these are high priorities. UAD will be at a disadvantage without solid fleet management.  

[DougToss]

9 hours ago, T_the_ferret said:

Please please please please PLEASE  I AM BEGGING YOU  hire a community manager or someone able to dedicate time to the community. I cannot with any amount of words overstate how much it would improve its health and attitude as well as promote constructive discussion and help the game.

Honestly this would likely make the biggest difference both here and on Steam.

[monbvol]

5 hours ago, The_Real_Hawkeye said:

6. Themes for ship-classes. Simply a ton of lists like rivers, mountains, English cities, US Generals, tribes, Begins with A, and so on, that can be chosen in the design-screen, so if I design the Tribal class DD, it will be named after, well, tribes and my Staaten class BB will be named after German states. Note: Preferably in the form of a txt file or something similar easy (json?), so people can make their own lists - this would also save you some work, just provide a few lists and let the community have a go at it.

Yes, some sort of system where we can set a class name then the game populates ships of that class from an easily edited file of some sort.  There are lots of options that should work easily with Unity.  XML, json, txt, csv, and probably some others that I'm not able to remember at the moment.

I'd also say for the crew system how many you have available and how many you gain per month is rather low.

Another I would like to see is not only setting up task forces/fleets is the ability to set roles/missions beyond Sea Control/In Being.  Like if I have a cruiser design that I'd like to dedicate to either convoy escort or convoy raiding, it'd be nice to be able to set that and have it matter for campaign mission generation.

[Masonator]

 Personally, I'd love to see the "target area" system from Age of Sail.  It's not the most realistic thing for 1930s treaty battleships, but makes total sense for the dreadnought and pre-dreadnought era.

[Afghanicus]

When the enemy is fleeing and you destroy their rudder they shouldn't be able to keep turning unless they're locked in a turn, it seems they still have full control.

[KV128]

Blockade to Contested Ocean Regions

Please replace blockade mechanic with contested ocean regions or routes. The map either need to be redrawn to show nation control over ocean regions or show trade routes. For example, the North Sea can be divided into smaller regions that connect to the Norwegian sea and out into the North Atlantic. 

How many regions or trade routes a nation can control is based on the following: Task Force/Ship Division, Range and Port (neutral and friendly). 

Convoy Interception mission chance is base on the following: Spotting, Speed, training, (and maybe spotting airplane and other equipment like Radio and Radar.)

This also lead to port blockade as port or ports are part of a region and can be bombarded to reduce the nation efficiency to deploy ships and convoy and building them. Hopefully we will need to build costal defense gun/boat/mines and invest more money into upgrading port.

Would love to see a sea land battle against a well defended port.

[o Barão]

19 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

"1. Dud torpedoes..."

I completely forgot to mention this since it is in my top priority list. 😕

 

2) How to balance torpedoes? Possible solution: 3 new techs that needs to be researched to solve the torpedoes issues. If a nation really wants to have powerful deadly torpedoes will need to invest time in researching technologies. This could be applied to the default japanese nation AI behavior as a priority.

 

A : Impact pistols to lower the dud rate % value.  1890 torpedoes could start with a 50% dud rate. Higher impact pistols will lower this value to a minimum 5% dud rate.

B : Gyro mechanics to improve accuracy. 1890 torpedoes will start with a big penalty to accuracy. Higher gyro mechanics will improve the accuracy.

C : Torpedo reload for DDs tech only available to research from 1920 and forward. All DDs and Torpedo boats will be using only reduced torpedo ammo. Around 1920 a new tech with 2 levels is available to research torpedo reloads for DDs.

Edited December 14, 2021 by o Barão

[o Barão]

I spend more time thinking about how should improve the barbette and citadel issue in game. I also added a coal improvement. This is an update.

 

5) Barbettes and citadel components doesn't make any sense and need to be replaced or reworked.

The issue: Barbettes and citadel components are irrelevant to be used in capital ships and to an extent also to CAs. The reason is if the player invest in having the best armor thickness values in the belt and deck armor, completely ignore the bow and stern and make sure the main guns are inside the main belt, then is easy to get a situation where it can't be pen. If the player ship can't be pen then the barbettes and citadel components will not work. So why is the player going to invest money and tonnage to two components that we can completely ignore? This creates a BIG imbalance in ship designing that favors the player that follows this method.

A: Barbette solution.

- All guns that are in another level above the deck, will need to have a barbette armor to protect the connection between the gun to the belt/deck armor.

- Barbette component replaced by armor sliders. For each gun caliber that is above the deck a level a new armor slider will be available.

- The damage model needs to be updated to identify there are barbettes inside the superstructure.

- For DDs, the barbettes will go all the way to the water level and is applied to all guns (deck level or above)

 

B: Citadel solution.

Replace the citadel variables to have an impact to the armor thickness values. This solve important issues with citadel components we have atm.

A  : They will always have an impact in the battlefield, and not only if the ship armor is penetrated.

B  : Will better represent why there was different armor schemes in different time periods.

C :This will solve the issue in using All-or-nothing armor scheme and then place huge armor values in the bow and ship stern which doens't make any sense.

Short summary about different armor schemes:

Turtleback armor was an armor scheme used since the protected cruisers where invented. The reason why it was so effective and used by many nations it was simple because that increased the protection at close ranges. However the penalty is because the slope angle it makes the deck armor more vulnerable at long distances.

All or nothing. Not only a solution about armor weight issue to focus only in the vital areas, also featured a slight belt angle inwards in many ships to increase the belt thickness.

So my suggestion about citadels would be something like this:

1. Turtleback at close ranges: maximum 10% bonus to belt armor thickness
2. Turtleback at long ranges: maximum 10% penalty to deck armor thickness
3. All-or-nothing at close ranges:  maximum 2% bonus to belt armor thickness
4. All-or-nothing at long ranges:  maximum 6% bonus to belt armor thickness
5. All-or-nothing penalty: The Bow and Stern armor values will be limited to low values.

The values to armor thickness are dynamic and will change according to the distance the shells are coming.

And then it would be possible to add more variants. As an example:

Dreadnought armor. Not effective in providing any armour thickness bonus but because it was used to protect different parts in a ship could give bonus to flash fires & fires.

1.  Dreadnought armor, 10% fire bonus resistance.
2.  Dreadnought armor, -10% flash fire.
3.  Dreadnought armor penalty, +5% armor weight.

Dreadnought armor plus turtleback armor. Combining the values between dreadnought and turtleback armor plus a big penalty in armor weight.

1. Dreadnought & Turtleback at close ranges: maximum 10% bonus to belt armor thickness
2. Dreadnought & Turtleback at long ranges: maximum 10% penalty to deck armor thickness
3. Dreadnought & Turtleback armor, 10% fire bonus resistance.
4. Dreadnought & Turtleback armor, -10% flash fire.
5. Dreadnought & Turtleback penalty, +15% armor weight.

 

NOTE: The dreadnought armor layout ( component ) is exclusive to BBs, BCs and CAs. The turtleback and all-or-nothing can also be used in CLs.

This is important to simulate the armor layout used since the protected cruisers appearance to the late all-or-nothing used in many light cruisers in the 1920 and forward,

 

6 ) Coal should give a 10% bonus to the belt armor thickness to simulate the use to increase the ship protection. Only in the middle section.

Edited December 14, 2021 by o Barão

[GeneralVikus]

1. A graphical mode which clearly shows armor in the ship designer by color coding.

2. After the implementation of the above, make the armor zone adjustable to allow for more freedom in design, perhaps by expanding one compartment and shrinking another.  

[Proteus]

19 hours ago, o Barão said:

 1 ) An Hardcore/Realism setting:

- No intel about the weapons being reloaded in the enemy ships.

- No intel about how much ammo the enemy is carrying.

- No intel about the enemy weapons range until the target is identified.

- No teleporting the camera to an enemy ship until the target is identified.

- No X-Ray damage report on the enemy ships. Replaced by a simplified damage report. light, medium, heavy damage & light, medium, heavy flooding.

 

 

- I would also like to see longer repair times so as to make you protect your most valuable ships better.

- Realistic weather

- Coaling stations for far flung empires

- Shadowing enemy fleets while you put together your own interception fleet

- Remove the AI from taking over my ships wheel when close together

[Afk my Ship is on Fire]

I agree with most of the suggestions already made especially the spotting,  more assets sounds and cosmetic improvements.

 

1. The ability to pre deploy your fleet before a battle so that the individual squadrons of ships arend spread across the fleet and then crash into eachother if you want to change the formation.

 

2. On that note, improvements to the pathfinding for AI for both your and the enemies fleets. It was already mentioned about the AI taking over your ship if it gets near a torpedo or another ship ( or at least have the option to turn this feature off?) 

 

3. I know this is a bit of a push but other playable nations? In particular the Ottoman Empire and other dreadnought-capable nations like Argentina, Chile or Brazil and maybe even Greece? Playing a minor nations  would offer fun gameplay options with alliances and budgets to take down the bigger nations.

 

4. Interms of the camaign the ability to sell ships you don't want or even build ships for other nations (the UK and the South American Dreadnought race springs to mind?) On that note potentially limit dockyard space unless you build more Dock yards.  So this brings in a balancing act between building for your fleet and getting money from other nations who could be potential enemies down the line (and you've accidently armed them for a quick buck)

 

This just me spit-balling and if some of these ideas not really feasible I understand!

 

Thanks for the option for us to say our two pennies Nick!

[DougToss]

First and foremost, Spotting, as others have said. Height-based spotting to the horizon, that is then reduced by time of day and weather.

Gunnery - as others have said, more closely match historical data, separate precision from accuracy. 

Fire Control - More errors of the type we would expect to see: Miscalculating range, error in range rate etc. rather than target speed influencing gunnery. Even the best fire control in 1890 was very, very poor beyond 1000m.

Ballistics - Ideally more realistic dispersion due to spin drift, atmospheric conditions etc. This would be nice, but it's not as essential as above. 

Damage - I'm going to limit this to floatation for the moment: Flooding and capsize as major factors, as well as stability changes from taking on water and so on. Warships sank from cumulative damage, so it would be good to see how each shell further reduces the fighting ability of a ship - in more ways than a simple health bar. 

 

[Toby]

the key ones for me are and in order

1. more european nations and the basics of diplomacy so we can have actual campaigns and not single couple year wars
2. more early pre dreadnought hulls
3. the begginings of the terrain system that was talked about in the past for battles
 

[Nick Thomadis]

Thank you guys for all the suggestions. They are really helpful!

Regarding the spotting mechanics, we need to wait for the new environment graphics for different weathers. The current weather modifiers which affect spotting distances, were perceptually working without the issues you are having. For example, when the weather had heavy fog on a stormy sea (in our internal testing with multiple weather types) it worked fine. Ships were not appearing so suddenly as now in clear weather situations. We need some time to perfect this mechanic according to weather differentiation.

[Shaftoe]

New unique destroyer hulls and components for Britain, Germany and the United States for a historical period appropriate for the campaign. 

[akd]

45 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Thank you guys for all the suggestions. They are really helpful!

Regarding the spotting mechanics, we need to wait for the new environment graphics for different weathers. The current weather modifiers which affect spotting distances, were perceptually working without the issues you are having. For example, when the weather had heavy fog on a stormy sea (in our internal testing with multiple weather types) it worked fine. Ships were not appearing so suddenly as now in clear weather situations. We need some time to perfect this mechanic according to weather differentiation.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide feedback. The problem with spotting is not simply that the visuals don’t correspond to the outcomes (but this of course adds an extra layer of confusion), but that it tries to oversimplify spotting down to a simple calculation where each object has a visible “horizon” for a given spotter, rather than the spotter having a visible horizon and then the visual signature of the object (based on conditions, behavior, etc.) being checked for chance of spotting once within that visual horizon.  This completely misses things like the visible horizon for a ship on a clear night being the same horizon distance it has on a clear day, but the probability of spotting an object that remains dark (not firing, not throwing huge bow wave, not burning, etc.) is very low (and lower the smaller it is) within this potential range of vision under those conditions.  It grossly oversimplifies visual spotting to the point of diverging completely from reality in ways that are very confusing (and that further amplify the problems inherent to the hive mind targeting currently in the game).  I outlined problem and possible solution (at least conceptually) in post below. My first suggestion for this thread!:

 

Edited December 14, 2021 by akd

[RedParadize]

43 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Thank you guys for all the suggestions. They are really helpful!

Regarding the spotting mechanics, we need to wait for the new environment graphics for different weathers. The current weather modifiers which affect spotting distances, were perceptually working without the issues you are having. For example, when the weather had heavy fog on a stormy sea (in our internal testing with multiple weather types) it worked fine. Ships were not appearing so suddenly as now in clear weather situations. We need some time to perfect this mechanic according to weather differentiation.

Talking about weather, I really want to see storms, rain, gun flash in the night! It would be a great for the game steam page image gallery too. Nice picture sells!