Player Suggestions - December

[midge]

To reiterate what i outlined in this topic

1. Reclassify the Torpedo Boat Destroyer as a Destroyer.
2. Optional: Reclassify the Large Torpedo Boats as Torpedo Boats as per their doctrinal use.
3. Increase maximum Torpedo Boat tonnage from techs from 600t. (Ideally to the maximum displacement of the largest torpedo boat)
4. Add more late Torpedo Boats, such as the German Type 23 through Type 39, (possibly as small destroyers) as these cannot be recreated with current Hulls. (Minimum Tonnage of period appropriate DD's is too large)

Edited December 19, 2021 by midge
Formatting Error

[Grayknight]

Not really a gameplay balance or anything like that but

 

- I would really love way to export ship models for 3d printing

[Faolind]

I think the most unique suggestion I can offer is to add Camoflage/paint  options when building ships. Visual differentiation would make the visuals a lot more appealing. You can make them period accurate of course, and perhaps allow repaints with (perhaps) refits.

I have previously made suggestions in the core patch feedback post, which I don't want to go to the labor of reiterating here. I do hope you read all of those that were made before you made this post. They are less likely to be repeated.

[Speglord]

3 hours ago, Faolind said:

I think the most unique suggestion I can offer is to add Camoflage/paint  options when building ships. Visual differentiation would make the visuals a lot more appealing. You can make them period accurate of course, and perhaps allow repaints with (perhaps) refits.

I have previously made suggestions in the core patch feedback post, which I don't want to go to the labor of reiterating here. I do hope you read all of those that were made before you made this post. They are less likely to be repeated.

I'd like to second this. I remember posting this a few months back and think it would really refresh a lot of the ship designing aspects and fleet management.

[MFARR001]

So I finished the Campaigns. All of them British and Germany 1890-1930. Some were easy some were hard. Old tech makes a campaign harder and longer and the game AI is always better then when I do it. I make better ships overall just less of them and that's the only reason I can ever win. The UK always seems to have more money then Germany but for some reason whoever the enemy is they always have more ships like 2 to 1 some times. If I couldn't sink 5 to 7 of their ships losing maybe one in a few key battles I'd be blockaded forever. I also don't get how always moving ships from port to port every turn gives me more free money not the opposite. I'd never have any money for crew, transports or tech otherwise. Campaigns are too short over all especially in later decades. About to try British 1930 for the third time after wining a second go in less then a year even after refusing to make peace. That's the real issue it seems I can always get a few tech upgrades but I'll never have a ship larger then 50k or 16in guns unless I sacrifice just for it with a mediocre ship. Maybe 1940 will allow for more massive ships but at the current rate 1890 can go on for a decade but 1930 its hard pressed to get to 1933. Maybe ship dockyard size should start out 10k larger for each decade even if not historical. I push to get a dock big enough to get a new class of ship design and start building and next month I won its over.

[Adm.Hawklyn]

Political side such as treaties and government changes that should not necessarily effect the military branch. Indeed, one should have the option to side with the revolutionaries. 

Upon the action of being kicked out, the wording could be something like the following:

Sadly, due to pressure from [x or y events], the government has requested your resignation from overseeing Naval affairs...

Something similar to that, where x and y events simply mean anywhere from not enough victories at sea to vast over extensions of the budget. Again, just some suggestions...

[Warbie]

My suggestion list for the BETA Campaign is; 

1) For the legacy fleet, having the option to designate a Homeport, allowing you to build bigger ships with larger displacements for your initial legacy fleet.

2) Admiralty doctrines/focuses which give slight advantages. For example;

Jeune Ecole: faster destroyer/torpedo boat building,

Convoy focus : better cruiser/anti submarine tech

Trade interdiction: higher chance of convoy raiding missions

Decisive battle doctrine: bigger budget when building Battleships

3) For the campaign, if you reach a certain amount of Victory Points, you can have unique optional missions such as port raids, blockade, all out "Jutland" style fleet battles.

 

 

[Quigglebert]

Not sure I'd it's been mentioned in my long hiatus from the forums, but for the campaign I would love to see an option for refit/rebuilding preexisting ships, some of the AI designs are not awful and just require a basic rework where as others need a full redesign, yes we can just build new ships and copy and paste old designs, you have no recourse to improve designs in a time frame that a new class cannot react to (worse for larger classes obviously)

[Littorio]

10 hours ago, Quigglebert said:

Not sure I'd it's been mentioned in my long hiatus from the forums, but for the campaign I would love to see an option for refit/rebuilding preexisting ships, some of the AI designs are not awful and just require a basic rework where as others need a full redesign, yes we can just build new ships and copy and paste old designs, you have no recourse to improve designs in a time frame that a new class cannot react to (worse for larger classes obviously)

This is coming imminently I believe, or so it seems.

[Grayknight]

- There need to be catastrophic failure moment in which ship after sustaining allot of special type of damage such as flash fire or torpedoes goes dead. It can break in to 2 pices, it can go into ball of flames but over all it is just dead!

 

- hits to the same comparment should stack more, damaging superstructure for example, over all they should be more then mild annoyance

 

This picture shows CL that lost all but one guns (mix of 7, 6, 5 inch guns) and is still in good enaugh shape to limp back to home while it should in case of chain reaction like this end in ball of flames and sink in few moments with 100% lose of life.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2691957277 

 

I make my ships wery resiliant, in fact i give them best anti torp upgreads there can be. But ability for CL to tank torpedoes in this case is amusing. 8 hits and it is still floating. Ofcourse it has float at 1 % but it dosent change the fact that it should be in 2 pices when the 3rd or 4th torpedo hit her.

 

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2691956885

 

- we need POW, evry time when we win battle we should get some silors of ouer enemy that survived, so should ouer enemy. They could then after war is over count towards victory points and we could exchange them with ouer enemy as a way to not loose ships with all hands constantly especialy in situations in which those sailors would be saved.

Edited December 24, 2021 by Grayknight

[Littorio]

6 hours ago, Grayknight said:

- There need to be catastrophic failure moment in which ship after sustaining allot of special type of damage such as flash fire or torpedoes goes dead. It can break in to 2 pices, it can go into ball of flames but over all it is just dead!

 

- hits to the same comparment should stack more, damaging superstructure for example, over all they should be more then mild annoyance

 

This picture shows CL that lost all but one guns (mix of 7, 6, 5 inch guns) and is still in good enaugh shape to limp back to home while it should in case of chain reaction like this end in ball of flames and sink in few moments with 100% lose of life.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2691957277 

 

I make my ships wery resiliant, in fact i give them best anti torp upgreads there can be. But ability for CL to tank torpedoes in this case is amusing. 8 hits and it is still floating. Ofcourse it has float at 1 % but it dosent change the fact that it should be in 2 pices when the 3rd or 4th torpedo hit her.

 

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2691956885

 

- we need POW, evry time when we win battle we should get some silors of ouer enemy that survived, so should ouer enemy. They could then after war is over count towards victory points and we could exchange them with ouer enemy as a way to not loose ships with all hands constantly especialy in situations in which those sailors would be saved.

I agree on both counts. Catastrophic damage as it stands just doesn't seem quite catastrophic enough. Also POW's would be interesting.That system might need more work to prevent unforseen bugs, but eventually I could see it having a place. i would all though that perhaps they could add to your overall victory points during the war, because more men in your prison camps means less available to fight against you and/or run their economy. More fathers, sons, and husbands in camps means more war weariness and a desire for peace.

Edited December 24, 2021 by Littorio

[akd]

One ship designer item that desperately needs a rework is the boiler draft selection and tech development.  This makes no sense at all currently, as both induced and forced draft were already developed before 1890 (and balanced also, since it was simply a combo of the two), and forcing was more a choice in engine operation not design (using forced draft to achieve maximum power and thus maximum speed had limits).  You couldn't have the top trial speeds listed for warships of this era without forcing, and in fact speeds for ships from the start of this era are often listed as both max speed with natural draft and max speed with forcing.  Draft as the sole choice of boiler design also provides a rather limited selection of possible developments and tends to tie them to somewhat fake stat items (e.g. smoke production / interference would be a product of using forced draft to push speed, as well as wind direction in relation to the target, not to the design of the boiler to be able to use forced draft).  Rather than selecting draft type, we should be selecting boiler type / design (which might have some elements of the draft / draught system in it).

I’ve been reading Norman Friedman’s British Cruisers of the Victorian Era recently, and the intro includes a nice overview of early developments in warship boiler design, which were central to the pursuit of more power (and thus more speed) in cruiser development (I will underline and bold some key developments and their time frames):

Quote

Through the nineteenth century merchant ships, particularly the large Atlantic liners, led in engine and boiler development. The Admiralty naturally took a conservative point of view: it could not afford the consequences of large-scale failure. However, it did pioneer important improvements. In 1860 Engineer-in-Chief Thomas Lloyd told a Parliamentary Committee on marine engines that the Admiralty had led in the shift from flue to fire-tube boilers; the direct-acting instead of the beam engine; the screw propeller in place of paddles; and fast-running engines instead of slow-acting geared-up engines.35

The ships in this book burned coal. Each furnace was fed by hand, and a stoker could move only so much coal per hour. Boiler arrangements had to allow not only for stokers standing in front of them, but also for access to the mass of coal that each stoker used. Boiler spaces had to be massive, and high-powered ships needed large numbers of boilers. Coal was also an essential part of the protection of many British cruisers. Oil, whose advantages included ease of handling and a much higher energy content, was proposed as early as 1865, but was not adopted until after the turn of the twentieth century, mainly because coal was so much less expensive, and because large supplies of the best steaming coal were available in Wales.

As might be imagined, engines came in a bewildering variety of forms, which are not described in any detail in this book. Through the 1870s warship engines typically let into one or more cylinders (in parallel) and then condensed. Low-pressure steam did not have enough residual energy after the first expansion to be worth re-using. Some engines had double-acting cylinders, steam being let in alternately to one and then the other side of the single piston.

The associated boilers were, in effect, oversized teapots, vessels (often called boxes) filled with water and heated externally from below. Hot gas passed through flues below and around the mass of water and then up the funnel. Steam was drawn off at the top. These boilers could not withstand pressures much beyond 20lb/sq in (pounds per square inch, or psi); the boilers of the 1830s and 1840s operated at about 5psi. At such low pressures, engines operated by having their pistons driven by atmospheric pressure against a vacuum created when steam on the other side of a piston condensed. Boilers used sea water, which left a salt scale in them; it protected some iron parts (not the steam spaces, which pitted due to oxygen liberated from the water surface as it boiled) but also reduced heat transfer from flues to the water inside.

It seems to have been understood by the mid-1850s that a boiler working at high enough pressure could leave considerable energy in the steam exhausted from a cylinder.36 That turned out to be the key to greater efficiency. A double-expansion or compound engine exhausted the steam from its high-pressure cylinder into a low-pressure cylinder. The first practical double-expansion engine in the Royal Navy was installed in the steam frigate Constance, launched in 1862. She successfully raced her sister ships Arethusa and Octavia between Plymouth and Madeira in 1865. Compound engines first went to sea in the 1830s and were introduced in merchant ships in 1853. The French preceded the Royal Navy by ordering such an engine from its British inventors, Charles Randolph and John Elder, for the sloop Actif (which ran trials in 1862). Constance had an alternative type of compound engine, on ‘Woolf’s Principle’. The 1872 Committee on Designs strongly favoured compound engines for all future British warships.

Compounding became worthwhile for pressures above about 40psi. That in turn required stronger boilers and a more efficient way of turning heat into steam. By the 1850s a solution had been conceived in the form of a tubular or fire-tube boiler.37 Hot gas passed through fire-tubes inside the mass of water, sucked up by a funnel or smokestack. The area of boiler water touched by hot gas was far greater than in a kettle boiler. Flat-sided box boilers could not take the higher pressure, so from the 1860s on boilers were being made oval or cylindrical. Oval boilers could handle pressures up to about 75psi; above that boilers had to be cylindrical. Designers resisted this change because the new cylindrical (Scotch) boilers wasted considerable space in a flat-sided stokehold.

By about 1890, most battleships and large cruisers typically had single-ended return-tube boilers with four furnaces each (some earlier cruisers had double-ended boilers). Second-class cruisers typically had three-furnace boilers, some with single and some with double ends. All had one combustion chamber per furnace. Single-ended boilers made it easier to subdivide power, but were heavier. Return-tubes meant that the nested fire-tubes passed back and forth through the water volume before exhausting. A typical fire-tube might be 2½ins in outside diameter, with a 7in water space down the middle of each nest of tubes. The grate area on which coal was burned was about 3 per cent of total heating area (i.e., the area of the fire-tubes), the latter typically amounting to 2.5 square feet per IHP at natural draught.

To generate more heat, hence more steam, boilers needed more air. Fans were used to build up air pressure and hence air volume in a closed stokehold. In mid-century advocates of such forced draught claimed that they could increase steam output by 30 or 40 per cent, even with low-quality coal. Greater temperatures in turn increased stress on the boiler itself. Typical British (and, presumably, foreign) naval practice limited machinery weight by using thinner boiler plating than in commercial practice. Boilers had to be rigid, to contain steam pressure, but they also had to expand at high temperatures (typically they were corrugated, to allow for expansion). This was not a good combination. To avoid bursting boilers, the Admiralty typically limited forced draught runs to a few hours, and it distinguished between a ship’s performance using forced versus natural draught. During the 1880s and 1890s DNC Sir William White often claimed that foreign cruisers reached high speeds by using high rates of forcing which could never be repeated in service; the rated speeds of the cruisers he had designed for the Royal Navy were far more realistic because they reflected much more realistic conditions. In its 1892 report the Boiler Committee recommended that specified forced draught be limited to 25 per cent beyond specified natural draught power for standard navy boilers, and 45 per cent for torpedo gunboats (presumably meaning for locomotive boilers).

With high enough steam pressure, enough was left at the outlet of the second cylinder to make a third or even a fourth cylinder worth while: triple or quadruple expansion. Higher pressure and more cylinders meant greater efficiency and thus longer range. Each boost in steam pressure bought greater economy.38 Because triple expansion increased the number of cylinders, it made crankshafts easier to balance and thus reduced vibration.

The most extreme fire-tube boilers were the locomotive boilers installed on board small fast ships from the 1870s on. In the Royal Navy, the first such boiler was on board the prototype torpedo boat Lightning (1879), and these boilers were later tried on board small cruisers. There was no pretension to efficiency; the object was to generate as much steam as possible in the smallest possible dimensions. Cylindrical boilers used relatively large-diameter fire-tubes, which could not easily be blocked by cinders from the coal fire. Locomotive boilers used the smallest possible tube diameters, for maximum heating area inside a cylinder filled with water. The tubes were straight, from firebox to smoke box (leading to funnel). Tubes could easily be blocked (and burst) by unwanted grease or cinders, but in the 1880s there seemed to be no other way to produce enough steam within small dimensions.

The alternative to fire-tube boilers was conceived (and used in a few cases) as early as the 1850s: the water-tube or tubulous boiler.39 The relationship between water and hot gas was reversed. Feed water was led through tubes passing through the furnace. Much greater water surface could be exposed to heat. Limited diameter tubes could withstand greater pressure than a large cylindrical boiler. The outer skin of the furnace did not have to withstand steam pressure. Water-tube boilers could generate higher-pressure steam, which was exactly what high-powered warships needed. As early as 1873 some liners were operating at 100psi. Proponents argued further that because the mass of water in them was relatively small, it took less heat to start them: they could start much more quickly, and they could more quickly answer demands for more steam. They were also expected to be more durable, capable of longer runs at high power. The British found themselves unable to get enough power from the available heating space, using conventional boilers.40 In 1892 the Boiler Committee recommended installing tubulous boilers in two ships for trials (Thornycroft on board the torpedo gunboat Speedy, Belleville on board the torpedo gunboat Sharpshooter), and that one at least of the new cruisers be so fitted if the trials proved successful. A third torpedo gunboat, Spanker, was fitted with French du Temple boilers. Bellevilles were chosen for the cruisers Powerful and Terrible before the Sharpshooter trials were complete because they needed so much power. The only ones considered should have relatively large-diameter straight tubes which could easily be cleaned and examined. It happened that the French Belleville fitted this description.

When the Royal Navy adopted water-tube boilers, the great advantage cited was that it was no longer necessary to force boilers to reach and maintain high power (the Germans, however, wrote that water-tube boilers were more heavily forced than cylindrical ones). The 1902 report of the Boiler Committee explained that there was greater fire-grate area for the same floor space, hence less forcing to reach full power. There would be less damage if the boiler were struck by a projectile, since there would not be a large pressurized vessel to burst. A water-tube boiler could also carry a higher steam pressure, and it was lighter for the power it generated. However, it took relatively little scale or corrosion to ruin a water-tube boiler. The Royal Navy adopted fresh water as boiler feed and its ships had to carry stocks of reserve feed water for the first time.41 With so little water in the boiler, there was no reserve to make up for slight irregularities in feed, so the rate of feeding had to be automatically controlled, and very quickly altered when more steam was demanded. Similarly, a water-tube boiler would react more sensitively to irregular stoking, and the type of fire used had to be changed. The boilers had to be fed more continuously, and with greater care than before. Water-tube boilers were not necessarily more efficient than their cylindrical predecessors – and cruisers needed efficiency as well as compact high power: the boilers worked best at a high fraction of their designed output. The solution to economical cruising was to have a large number of such boilers, only a few of which were lit off for cruising. Unfortunately, a ship in a combat zone would want most of her boilers lit all the time, so she would be quite uneconomical. Some British armoured cruisers designed about 1902 had a combination of cylindrical and water-tube boilers, the cylindrical boilers acting as, in effect, the ship’s cruising power plant.42 The agonizing period during which the Royal Navy decided both to adopt water-tube boilers and which boilers to adopt became the storied ‘battle of the boilers’.43

The first practical water-tube boiler was the Belleville, invented in France in the 1850s and first adopted by the French Navy in the 1880s. Its water-tubes formed a series of flattened spirals built up of straight tubes with cast-iron junction boxes connecting them. They rose from a feed box in front of the boiler to a cylindrical steam drum at the top. Most ships had economizers, which preheated the feed water and controlled steam output when it had to be changed suddenly, for example to increase speed. Pressure inside the boiler was typically 350psi, reduced to 250 for the engine (the greater pressure inside the boiler was later considered a serious defect, though it came to be commonly accepted). Observation of Bellevilles on board the French mail steamer Laos prompted the Royal Navy to try it on board the torpedo gunboat Sharpshooter and then to adopt it for numerous large cruisers, such as the Powerful class. The Belleville used large water-tubes, and it was attractive because it appeared to be sturdy, and because it was already in successful service. It offered more fire grate area (for overall size) than any other boiler then known, and its small elements did not require a large opening in a ship’s armour deck. The Admiralty did not appreciate that Bellevilles, introduced at the same time as much higher steam pressure (300psi or more instead of 160), were a considerable technological leap. There were serious breakdowns in service; HMS Hermes had to come home after only a year in commission. Europa showed extravagant fuel consumption on passage from Portsmouth to Sydney: of eighty-eight days she had to spend thirty coaling (partly due to leaky condensers and leaky steam joints). The big cruiser Terrible burned 200 tons a day on a 1902 voyage to China at an average of 11.8kts, but two years later she burned only half as much at an average of 12.6kts.

Early problems with the Bellevilles were critical because it was adopted so quickly for so many important ships. By 1900 there were calls for a Committee of Enquiry, one engineer calling the Belleville ‘the worst boiler in existence’. In September 1900 the Admiralty formed a Boiler Committee under Admiral Sir Compton Domville.44 All but one member (Chief Inspector of Machinery J A Smith) were associated with either the merchant fleet or with Lloyd’s. The first interim report was issued in 1901 and the final one in 1904. In 1904 Domville was flying his flag in the Belleville-boilered battleship Bulwark; he considered her boilers entirely satisfactory. Many of the problems attributed to the Bellevilles turned out to be due to other changes, including machinery packed too tightly together because with higher pressure it could be made more compact.

The interim report recommended fitting both cylindrical and water-tube boilers and abandonment of the Belleville as it seemed to have no particular advantages over other types. The committee listed thirty-six other water-tube boilers, of which it favoured four, already being fitted on a large scale in foreign navies: the Babcock & Wilcox, the French Niclausse, the German Dürr, and the Yarrow large-tube boiler. Of these the first two had already been tested satisfactorily in the Royal Navy, and were being adopted on a limited basis – two sloops (Espiegle and Odin) and a second-class cruiser (Challenger) were receiving Babcocks, and one sloop (Fantome) and a first-class cruiser (Devonshire) were receiving Niclausse boilers. The Babcock & Wilcox was already being tested on board the torpedo gunboat Sheldrake, but the type now contemplated was different. At the committee’s suggestion, the cruisers Medea and Medusa were reboilered with, respectively, Yarrow and Dürr boilers, as it was difficult to draw conclusions fully applicable to larger ships from torpedo gunboat trials. In addition, in 1897 and in 1899 the small cruisers Barham and Bellona were both reboilered with Thornycroft water-tube (small-tube) boilers (not as part of the Boiler Committee program). Similarly, in 1900 and in 1901 Blanche and Blonde were reboilered with Normand small-tube water-tube boilers.

That only really takes us through 1900 plus or minus a few years with the cylindrical fire-tube boiler as the 1890 baseline, and already there are several important developments that could serve as authentic design decisions in game, replacing the fake boiler draft choice that is inherently limited and requires somewhat made-up stat bonuses / maluses.  Developments from there would continue in pursuit of higher and higher pressure with new boiler technology, culminating for the game’s era in the U.S./German-type very high pressure systems.  @Nick Thomadis, any chance we could see this replaced and improved?

Drachinifel also has a compact overview on the subject:

We could start to put together a basic tech progression for boiler design:

1. Cylindrical Fire-Tube Boiler (lightweight Locomotive Boilers should also be an option, but impractical for large ships or long range due poor efficiency and reliability at sea)

2. Water-Tube Boiler

3. Three-Cylinder (or "Three-Drum") Water-Tube Boiler

4. Small-Tube Water-Tube Boiler

5. High Pressure Small-Tube Water-Tube Boiler

 

Edited December 26, 2021 by akd

[Captain Basilone]

Night battles! Link the spotlights to the guns in use. (or if equip with radar, a green outline)

[Speglord]

I'm not sure if Nick/the dev team want us to keep all of our suggestions in one post; if so, I can edit this into my first post.

This is relatively minor, but: for early battleships, the option to go below 16 knot max speed. Some of the earliest "modern ironclads" of the 1870s and 1880s only had top speeds of around 14 knots, some even slower. So maybe for Battleship I (for some countries) or Ironclad Battleship hulls, allow us to go below 16 knots for a top speed, if possible. This also lets players trade off speed for thicker (iron) armor, since armor advances in game are lighter but more expensive. Maybe this could be best implement only for legacy fleets to improve immersion and add some diversity to starter fleets.

Edited December 25, 2021 by Speglord

[Ribba]

9 hours ago, Littorio said:

Catastrophic damage as it stands just doesn't seem quite catastrophic enough. 

First, my suggestions to the game are far, far down the text.

 

I don't know if I do agree completely with this. Yeah, I know what you and Grayknight implies, but my impression is that you get what you design. If you design a robust ship, there is less chance for catastrophic damage to occur. And if it does happen, the consequence is usually of a lesser degree then in a more fragile designed ship, maybe helping the ship to survive such an event. 

I had a bad CL design during my 1900 or 1910 German campaign. I believe I used the CL III or CL IV. Offensively, the ships were very good, and had excellent manoeuvrability and very good speed. And even if they weren't the most robust ships, they could withstand some damage without affecting them too much. But they had a fatal flaw in the design. I don't know what it was, since we haven't any "CSI" capabilities in the game so that we can review how our ships fared in a battle. But from memory, my CL's were extremely susceptible to incoming fire from rear quarter. Bear in mind, the doctrine for those ships were supporting fire and long distance torpedo, so they didn't were rarely prioritized targets.  

But in one battle, where I was close to an excellent victory, barely haven taken any damage on any of my ships, and had only two enemy ships left, with one badly damaged cruiser or destroyer with very little fire power left and barely any propulsion. So I wanted to finish it off quickly with a torpedo strike from close distance so I could give chase to the last enemy ship. So I sent in my CL, which hadn't received any hits at all during the battle. But since I only had side facing torpedoes. I had to expose my side. So on the incoming run, I sailed directly at him, only exposing my bow. I received no hit. I turned and exposed my side for a short time to launch the torpedo, which hit and sunk him shortly after, and then turn away so I would only expose my stern. But during the turn, one single low calibre round, 76 mm I believe, hit my ship, setting of flash fire. Which set off another flash fire. And then another flash fire. And before my torpedo had sunk the enemy ship, my ship was lost. From one single low calibre round.

And I experienced two other cases with the same class of ships. At least one of them was from a low calibre rounds from either a merchant ship or a destroyer, setting of flash fire on barely/no damaged ships. Luckily both those ships survived, because those ship were very, very expensive designs. But also very flawed. After that experience, my designs now sacrifices speed in favour of protection to make my designs more robust. 

So, if you design solid ships, they can take a beating and rarely experience any catastrophic events.

But regarding Grayknighs point, where Grayknight points out that areas on a ships that get several hits, should result in a catastrophic event, like breaking the ship in two, I do agree with. But I do believe that these events are intended to be covered by the "Structure integrity" indicator. I don't know how it currently calculates damage here, but as Grayknight implies, there should be some modifiers here, which accelerating the damage to the structure integrity if an area of the ship is hit multiply times. Made there already are such modifiers, but if it isn't any, it should be implemented. 

 

But over to the thread itself.

1. I would love to have a more structural hierarchy to the fleet. Where you can create squadrons, divisions, flotillas and fleets, and assign home bases to those. When a battle is started, ships are automatically placed according to their organization, meaning ships belonging to the same squadron, will be placed accordingly on the map. 
2. I would also love if the ships had a history log in the campaign window, where you could see when it was constructed, how many battles it has participated in, how much damaged it has taken during those battle, how much damaged it has dealt, to which ships it has damaged and so on.
3. If the second point is implemented, battle stars should be implemented to a ship, where the ships are awarded start for having participated in battles and their performance within the battles. 
4. Captains. Every ships should have it captain. There could be two kinds of captains, one generic and one non-generic. The generic one is just your ordinary, faceless captain without any history or what so ever. But if you have a ship with a good/bad history, one of these generic captains can morph into a non-generic captain, which the does keep a track on his history. These non-generic captains could have different bonuses effects or negative effects, which increase/decreases the performance of the ship/squadrons/divisions/fleets he commands. While the generic captains should not be able to be transferred from his ship, the non-generic captains should be able to so, and be transferred to other ships. And of course, the possibility that the could be severely injured or even killed in a battle should be a real possibility. 
5. "Pride of the fleet". Every nation should have one ship that is the pride of the fleet. This ship should give you more victory points, national moral points and so on then your other ships when dealing out victories and stuff like that. But on the other hand, if your "Pride of the fleet" take a humiliation defeat, or even worse, is sunk, the consequences for the moral should be much higher then if you have lost "just another ship". How a ship should become "Pride of the fleet" should depend on several factors. Being the biggest, baddest ship in your fleet should be important factors, but also things like battle performance (battle stars) and longevity should be factored in the equation.
6. Museum ships. When the longer campaigns arrives, we will have the sad/fun experience to letting go of some of our older and obsolete ships. For most of those ships, it will be good to get rid off. But some ships have sentimental value. For instance if it was a former "Pride of the fleet", a ship that gained a lot of battle star or some old faithfull, workhorse of a ships that maybe never experienced those big headline news events during their life, but did their job, day in and day out, for a long, long time. What ever the reason is, we should be able to make some of our ships to museums ships. For instance, every port could facilitate one single museum ship. Those ships would require a small budged for maintenance and such things, but if it was a famous ship, the cost would be lower because of visitors fee and such. Yeah, maybe even the could provide income for your budget if the ship was famous enough. 
7. If museum ships are implemented, you should be able to visit that ship in 3D view, where you, compared to the normal ships which you see in the dockyard, you will see the museum ships in more photogenic environments. Maybe were you see your active ships in the back ground, in the given port the museum ship is anchored at. Also, if the museum ships are well maintained, the ships looks stunning. But if you lower the budget for the museum ship maintenance, the ship will deteriorate, and it would be visually represented in the 3D view. For instance, more and more rust could appears around the hull and so on. And the ship may even get a listing if the has deteriorated too much.   

Many of my suggestions have probably been suggested before, but I new to this forum, so I haven't had the time to read through too many suggestion other some in this thread.

[The PC Collector]

1- Add Ironclad battleships/cruisers/frigates to the campaign. Since all metal ships were introduced in the mid/late 1880s, reallistically by 1890 a significant part of the fleets, if not most, would still be Ironclad era ships

2- A lot of calibers widely used like are missing. Making the gun sizes scale by half inches rather than full inches would solve most of this.

3- Spain should be able to build destroyers from the start, since their first destroyer (the Destructor, which would end naming the whole ship type) was launched in 1887.

Edited December 25, 2021 by The PC Collector

[Cptbarney]

A new tech that allows you to push your ships engines beyond what they are capable for a set period of time, however risk of damage also increases the longer you leave it on and takes awhile to get back up for safety reasons.

Also pre-dreads going above 18.5knots is strange, only until dreadnought arrives should pre-dreads be allowed to be refitted and then go above 20knots which would make more sense (if you wanted to keep the old ships).

More ambient noises. Crew noises and different noises for ships depending on how they are constructed etc.

Oh and quality for ship components, so you don't just build the perfect ship each time which means you will have to play your cards right better, this can be effected by material shortages, lack of funds, sabotage, political setbacks, global crisis's and natural disasters.

[Phelidai]

1 hour ago, Cptbarney said:

Oh and quality for ship components, so you don't just build the perfect ship each time which means you will have to play your cards right better, this can be effected by material shortages, lack of funds, sabotage, political setbacks, global crisis's and natural disasters.

This would be a very welcome additon. Having scenarios such as natural disasters wiping out a shipyard, or an error during construction leading to delays or a loss of the ship would really add a lot more to shipbuilding and strategy than saving up some funds and watching a number tick down while the ship is built.

[Norbert Sattler]

It would be nice if we could either delete or archive ship templates once none of the ships of that type are left in service.

[akd]

12 hours ago, The PC Collector said:

3- Spain should be able to build destroyers from the start, since their first destroyer (the Destructor, which would end naming the whole ship type) was launched in 1887.

This was not a destroyer in the form of the torpedo boat destroyer / destroyer hulls in game, but something more in line with a Torpedo Gunboat.  However, torpedo gunboats were important in the 1890 timeframe and are a good suggestion for an addition to the game.  

Also probably reading too much into Destructor’s name as the originator of the concept.  There were quite a few different concepts being tried out at the same time to serve the purpose of destroying torpedo boats and the term “torpedo boat destroyer” was in use before Destructor was laid down.

[Captain Meow]

Ahoy everyone!

I could suggest a lot... too much that some of it was either already suggested or impossible/unnecessary to implement in this game. However, there's this little thing I really want to be implemented in the game:

During the battle in that window of ship's ammo regarding torpedos: instead of just an amount of topedos on board, there should be something like which tube has torpedo & which doesn't.

For example, I have a 1890s battle ship with 4 tubes (front, left, righ, aft) & a reduced amount of torpedos on board - that's 4 already in their tubes. So in the ammo info window it should show like: (number of tubes) (where) x (number of torpedos). 

1Fx1
1Lx1
1Rx1
1Ax1
amount: 4

Because if my ship fired, say, from left side then it would indicate 1Lx0 (during it's reaload or if there's nothing to load in that certain tube) & I will know I can't fire a torpedo from that side.

Quite often either I launched a torpedo from a certain tube & soon forgot, or my ship did while I wasn't aware as I was focused on a different ship, then after some time I try to launch a torpedo from this position but nothing happens because I didn't know in that certain tube the amount is now 0 even though it shows I still have 1-3 on board somewhere.

 

Another suggestion would be changing the ship's speed with up/down arrow keys (reverse is still by clicking on reverse) & steering with left/right arrow keys (with 0 on the num pad to reset the rudder).

 

Kind regards! 

Edited December 26, 2021 by Captain Meow

[Admiral Lütjens]

new hulls moltke , derfflinder and mybe others(Zıeten)   and scharnhorst hull and high caliber guns , guns and water vfx need improve fire's

 

[Littorio]

8 hours ago, Admiral Lütjens said:

new hulls moltke , derfflinder and mybe others(Zıeten)   and scharnhorst hull and high caliber guns , guns and water vfx need improve fire's

 

You know, that's something that always bugged me almost subconsciously but I have never mentioned on here, and I haven't seen discussed much: the water vfx. Frankly, after the weather, that would be my #2 graphical improvement, though I understand it might require tweaking the game physics engine as well. I recognize that liquid water is (or was) one of the hardest things to do on computers as far as modeling accurately, but we've come a long way since Empire Total War and their nice (for '09) sea battles, let alone something like, say 2002's Destroyer Command.

I don't expect a super hi-fidelity ocean, but seeing it sort of move up and down swamping my ship in ostensibly "calm" conditions and such is always a bit annoying. A little refinement on the visual and physical implementation of the sea in this game would go a long way towards making it better and more enjoyable for me, but then again, perhaps I am nitpicking lol. I doubt this would happen right away, but I think it should be a large point on the WIP list. Feel free to agree or disagree.

[SMS Wespe]

Great game. A few suggestions for future expansions, at the risk of being mentioned elsewhere:

For a campaign in the early years starting in 1890, a way to include Ironclads in the fleets would be interesting, even if they were already obsolete by then.  Also optional color schemes for ships in black-yellow or white-yellow would be nice in this respect.

Important would be the possibility to save campaigns and their fleets independently. For example, I went to a lot of trouble to build a historical fleet for 1890, only to find out afterwards that it was lost at the end of the campaign.

Multilateral diplomatic elements in a campaign would also be interesting. The end of a campaign should be reached with a personal dismissal, but not with a favorable or unfavorable peace treaty. 

Also, a dynamic raider campaign in the Southern Hemisphere with coal supply problems and the ability to attack and occupy ports, telegraph stations, and islands would also be interesting in the long run.

[Norbert Sattler]

Please also make quad-gun turret for the guns that do not have them yet.

It makes little sense to have quads for small secondaries, then have a couple of inches where there are only trippled and then start again with quads at 13 or 14 inches.