Player Suggestions - December

[niels95]

Just bought the game after the steam release, really enjoyable so far. Had been on the fence for a long time but glad to be on board!

A point that has really bugged me is the campaign map, it seems to use modern day coastlines, especially the Netherlands that is in the middle of the action has changed quite a bit in the last 100 years. I'd love to see it adjusted so it fits the time period better. See attached image and link to an 1899 map.

I assume you're using shapefiles for the coastlines, got quite some experience working with GIS data, if i can help with editing these files let me know.

https://objects.library.uu.nl/reader/index.php?obj=1874-348500&lan=en#page//88/37/35/8837359033486196518115187799474059578.jpg/mode/1up

Edited December 15, 2021 by niels95

[Rak1445]

A fog of war option to the campaign. Prior to a battle, have the enemy strength hidden from the player. "Is this convoy guarded? Is it a few cruisers? What if there's a battleship lurking about? Does the enemy have destroyers?" This will force player to behave more cautiously, take risks - like in real life. You wouldn't have a perfect overview of enemy strength beforehand. This change would add real meaning to spotting.

[Rak1445]

Also while it's not an extreme priority during alpha, please don't forget to give some love to the UI and HUD. Currently it's sometimes a bit wonky and looks like a mobile game... Would be nice to have it be more immersive.

[Shaftoe]

7 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

I have said it in other posts, I need to clarify again. The AI has NO bonuses. If the AI achieves better targeting is because it can achieve a steadier course. If AI dodges torpedoes, it is because the AI observes them faster than the player who can usually lose a lot of seconds by observing the sea or by fast forwarding. If there is any other problem, it can be a bug, but certainly there is no intention to make AI cheat against the player. There is NO such cheap mechanic in the game.

How about making the AI penalties to reaction times to make it less artificially perfect? After all, superhuman reaction IS an artificial advantage, and therefore it could be considered cheating. 

[SiWi]

2 minutes ago, Shaftoe said:

How about making the AI penalties to reaction times to make it less artificially perfect? After all, superhuman reaction IS an artificial advantage, and therefore it could be considered cheating. 

is having better human judgment then also "cheating"?

[tinytiger115]

How bout adding “blast bags” to turrets so that they look protected from the elements and blasts of the guns. Would look nice to already nice ship models.

[KV128]

Battle Speed

Instead of disabling the x5, x10, x30, please pause the game instead. Or simply not do anything as it is the player choice to speed up the battle.

Edited December 15, 2021 by KV128

[Waruiko]

I would like to be able to set my main guns to AP and my secondary guns to HE at the same time

[SmallSoldier]

Hi guys,

so far Ive played the first 12 "Tutorial" missions, made about 8 random encounters and finished one campaign as the germans lasting for 36 months in which i played - i would say - around 90% of the battles and auto-resolved 10%.
the random encounters I played all pre-1920s era.
steam says i have 22,2 hours on record. as of writing this my game tells me I have version Core Path 1.0 v99; I played the game mostly the last two weeks I think pretty close to when it hit steam.  

Here is my feedback so far:

1.
Designer: My biggest wish is that in the Designer if I hover over an armor part (to reinforce or decrease it) it would HIGHLIGHT me on the ship WHERE that armor part exaclty is. I think this would be especially useful for non-native english speakers (and the game might not be translated to a player's language)

2. 
Battle: I wish there was a tooltip or some easy way to tell how fast an enemy ship is currently cruising (I am missing where i can see her exact speed)

3. 
Campaign: I wish in the CAMPAIGN a tooltip would tell me what "In being" and "Sea control" does so one does not need to hit the forums.

4. 
Campaign: Likewise, as a player I do not understand if it makes a difference in what port my ship is located

5. 
Campaign: When Britain begged for peace and I finally agreed and the war ended I had not earned enough war score to annex/liberate Ireland. When the game asks me if I would like to go into peace negotiations I would like to know if my war score would be high enough to annex/liberate something. And I would like the game to tell me if there is a benefit for NOT taking everything the enemy has to offer. (Like if there will be a prestige boost)

6. 
Battle: I was surprised that even at point blank (e.g.: One ship-length apart) my CL was missing so many shots on an enemy CA. But I however understand i was playing in 1890 and my crew was "green"

7. 
Battle: BUG: Clicking the gun ranges on and off did not really seem to change much. He still showed me the torpedo range-circle on the battle map even though I would have imagined if i toggle that button that he would NOT show me those ranges.

8. 
Campaign: Haven't tried this but: I wonder if I choose to DESIGN my starting ships instead of auto-generating: Will I have ALL the technologies available that I have researched in my starting year to create my initial fleet? If so, that does not make sense: Because realistically the ships I start with will be at least a "bit" older. EG: if i start in 1900 and I design all my ships, will I insta-start with BBs in place that are 1900 technology state.

9.
Campaign: Random Mission Generator: I quite often found myself in the mission that one of my BBs was caught by surprise by a squadron of enemy Torpedo Boats. I found that somehow frustrating and it happened too often in my opinion: It can happen once or twice but no admiral (also at that time period of 1890-1900) would have let his BB out on a mission unguarded? I didnt count but I think that mission happened like 6 or 7 times with either one of my BB caught by surprise or one of the British BBs. 

10. 
Campaign: BUG: I later on in the campaign "found" the "Crew" checkbox in the "Fleet" screen. I checked that and left it checked for the rest of the campaign. During the course of the campaign when I expanded my fleet I found a few of my cruisers set to "mothballed". I then thought maybe I have too few sailors available as replacement. So I increased recruitment budget. A few rounds later i definetely had ENOUGH manpower but they were still mothballed. I needed to click on the ships indiviually and change their crew size. Then their "mothballed" state went away

11.
Campaign: As a new player I wish a tooltip would tell me what "mothballed" means and why my ship is currently mothballed. 

12.
Battle: Damage: I would like to know if a certain part that is damaged is really destroyed or damaged and is currently being repaired. Maybe fade-in - fade-out the engine symbol if its currently being repaired? 

13.
Battle: I never experienced a torpedo dud except when I was at REALLY close range. As said I played in 1890 era. Shouldnt there be more duds? Is this a bug? If not, then torpedos seem a bit OP especially (At least in the era i played). Also because the AI cannot handle it that well in comparison to a human. 

14.
Battle: It seems to make no difference which side of my ship is facing the enemy. So lets say my BB got pounded for half an hour on the left side. I would expect a difference in damage when i then turn to face with my right side. Is the game modeled that there should be a difference? 

15.
Battle: Damage: I would like to (more clearly?) see what parts are damaged. So for example, if my ship has 4 9" guns: how can I see that ONE of the guns is destroyed? Likewise it seems if ALL my guns of one caliber are destroyed, then still the status on the right side of the screen will tell me the gun is fully loaded and ready to fire. That looks confusing. 

15.
Battle: Visuals: To me it seems ships lay quite low in the water even more so when they are flooding of course. But this sometimes will result in a scenario where the ships deck is 3/4 underwater but still it is burning like a campfire. a) that looks a bit weird, b) i would expect if there is high flooding and the ship is already really that deep that the damage model cannot have it in state "burning" that much.

16. 
Battle: Engagement Start Distance: Most of the time I found the engagement distance quite far but once on a "Torpedo Boat Flotilla against single BB mission" suddenly they spawned REALLY close which of course put the BB at a bigger disatvantage. I wonder why that happened?

17.
Battle: I would enjoy to see nightfall and morning in the game; because this would effectively dictate the end of a battle, right?

18. 
Designer: I was unable to figure out how to Barbettes work. I could never place them. I guess my current ship design did not support them anyway. But if so, then I would expect that I cannot select them anyway

19.
Battle: I sometimes wish I could speed up the battle even more in some situations (like often in the heat of battle it is capped to 3x time acceleration) but I understand that this is probably an engine limitation for doing all physics calculations. 

20. 
Battle: Sometimes I wish I could zoom in even more on the damaged ships. 
 

I think this about sums it up for the moment. 
I want to add that I enjoy SO MANY aspects of this game already. I am looking forward to the final product. 

I will probably leave the game for the time being and re-visit it as soon as austria-hungary is playable in the campaign. As I side-note: I highly recommend the book "A sailor of Austria". Entertaining and informative. 

 

[BobRoss0902]

On 12/13/2021 at 10:36 AM, Nick Thomadis said:

Hello Admirals,

This topic will help to prioritize feedback and get it all in one place
Please post your suggestions on improving the game in this thread.

Rules:
- 1x suggestion per post (or a clear numbered list of suggestions)
- Repeats of other player suggestions are allowed

We will collect suggestions and feedback and tell you which we will add to the development list for next stages at the end of the month.

============

December currently requested features that will get done as hotfixes or as part of major patches:

- Key bindings for AZERTY keyboards and various control options
- AI Aggressiveness improvements
- Various bug fixes as per your feedback
- Design the enemy ships in custom battle

Not development related but extremely important:
- Backers steam key distribution

More towers by FAR are needed, otherwise you're going to have very very bad same ship syndrome. While to most people unfamiliar with ships the number of towers/superstructures is ok, anyone with any sort of knowledge on ships is going to be able to tell

The best way to go about alleviating this problem (in my opinion) is to have your different tiers of superstructure and then have a submenu for each tier where you can pick out of a set of superstructure based on its individual advantages and disadvantages.

The biggest and easiest step you could currently take that I can think of is the option to include or remove the pre-built barbettes on certain superstructure, however I think this should eventually expand into certian things like "long, mid sized and small" as well as "tall, medium, and short" superstructures. With the tall superstructures perhaps decreasing gun accuracy to an extent due to shifting the center of balance higher on the ship.

 

I also think the hulls should also be divvied up in this way as well, for example you could have in pre-ww1 two folders like "slab side, and tumblehome" designs of hulls, with the respective advantages and disadvantages of those types of hulls. Now with the inclusion of this system I think what could be done is a "historical design" check box in the settings where it weights the AI's shipbuilding in the direction their countries took historically, such as France and Russia building more tumblehome designs with long superstructures, and Germany, Great Britain, and Japan building more slab sided designs.

Of course those AI suggestions are getting more into the territory of "2nd suggestion" so I'll leave it at that. The unfortunate thing about this is that in this game due to the hulls being pre-built it cant be like Rule The Waves where say some weird ahistorical anomaly happens and some new type of ship becomes the "in" thing then you wont be able to have the same flexibility and will be relatively forced to take a similar path to what was taken IRL.

For example in RTW2 I built 2 heavy cruisers with 8in guns that had the armor and tonnage of a battleship, but the speed of a cruiser in the pre-dreadnought era (these were to replace what would have been 2 other battleships as I think battleships are too slow). This kind of resulted in an arms race with Russia over heavy cruisers, with at one point my heavy cruisers actually being bigger than my battleships by several thousand tons, but because you'll inherently be funneled into historical designs with the current system there isn't a way to have these types of fun events happen.

Edited December 16, 2021 by BobRoss0902

[Fangoriously]

The more I find out about naval artillery, the more unsatisfied by the in game gun selection I am. Guns didn't come in uniform per inch/centimeter diameters, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_naval_guns_by_caliber and nearly as important is the caliber of the barrel (basically how many shell diameters long the barrel is).

When you add a gun to a ship, sliders for armor thickness for that gun appear on the side UI box for 'armor', I propose having an 'armament' UI box appear for every gun type you use as well. But, also add new sliders to it that can adjust some new things.

Slider for diameter from X.0 to X.9 inch, and whatever appropriate for centimeter. This could have a corresponding impact on weight/damage/range/penetration/etc

Slider for barrel caliber from say 25 to 75. A visual change of the barrel even if for only every 10 units would be plenty. Having a corresponding impact on weight/muzzle velocity/long range accuracy/range/etc.

Slider for shell amount from -50% to +150% current standard, in increments of 10%

A new equipment category for 'secondary on turret range finders' that can mitigate the loss of central fire control or conning tower damage, both a -30% penalty if i recall correctly. If those are lost, this gives the individual gun a small accuracy bonus to compensate. In effect, the ship would stop salvo firing completely,each gun just doing its best on its own, maybe never having the "aimed" status. You can already see these on most of the in game gun models.

an 'electromechanical analog computer' equipment category, ether for each gun type or for the whole ship, introduced some time in the 30s for unlock, essentially one of these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_I_Fire_Control_Computer Also by the time you can slot one of these, no one is using the conning tower anymore anyway, armoring it should not be especially necessary, and losing it shouldn't cause much of a penalty, just like the penalty for number of barrels lessens over time.

 

Now each gun type can have its own stats, reloading procedure/shell weight/propellant/charge/rotation mechanism/Barbette thickness if 5"+/, its not a blanket setting for all types of guns, which is silly. I don't need 5000 rounds of secondary ammo when i just want a standard+ amount of main gun shells, i might not care to waste tonnage on an automatic reloader for my secondaries, and they don't need to be firing super heavy shells optimized to penetrate, I just want them firing picric acid, exploding on impact, and starting fires.

 

Also a pass on "secondary guns" acting as "main guns" for heavy cruisers especially, ammo pools, etc. From 11" to 9", the stodgy rules apply for number of guns on centerline or side but not for 8" to 6". Centerline and side gun being different things at all on any ship is annoying, that whole thing with side and centerline 9"-20" guns not having the same ammo pool, or guns of the same diameter but different number of barrels having different ammo pools, but in the armor section at least, a X" gun is a X' gun.

 

 

[Norbert Sattler]

10 hours ago, SmallSoldier said:

2. 
Battle: I wish there was a tooltip or some easy way to tell how fast an enemy ship is currently cruising (I am missing where i can see her exact speed)

If you hit the small > arrow next to the enemy groups at the top of your screen, you do get the current speed of the ships of that group in the mouse-over tooltip.

[Norbert Sattler]

There should be some absolute minimum requirements for a naval blockade, not just relative strength of the two factions.

Right now a single ship, even as little as a single torpedo boat, can start and sustain a naval blockade, if the enemy is just weak enough. A single ship blockading an entire country is just ridiculous.

[qzwww123]

As I have said already in steam forum.More Ammo types. Now in the game there are different type of armors. but for ammo is too easy to face these hard guys and dont have much fun about it.so maybe you could add some more different types of ammos, for old ironclad they use balls and very early AP without charge. then common AP,after faceharded armor come out,people also create APC(soft or hard cap)and blunt head AP to help.And for ships with armor but not so thick,there are also SAP to solve the problem. It means more ammo Types，more options to solve different situations in the game.

[Norbert Sattler]

While I agree, I'd still like to point out that some of those are currently treated as passive modifiers that enhance your ammo, rather than become a new selectable type.

For example the armour-piercing caps. When you research them, your shells (or the one of newly designed ships at any rate) get a percentage bonus to their penetration values. So once you have that tech you effectively have only the choice between HE and APC.

[Toby]

i dont know how many times i have to say this but i shall keep repeating it.
We cannot test many of the features of the campaign without the abbility for wars to either continue indefiently and this is trhe lesser preffered of the options or

we need more nations of europe and the basics of the diplomacy mechnanic. many of the campaigns mechanics and the planned mechnaics like crew pool and technologie tree are in effect un testable properly at the moment as the shortness of each campaign makes the mechanics either redundant or of little concern. the planned features like ship refits and updates are also redundant until the cmapaign is mjuch much longer as tech updates are not needed on the majority of vessels due to the little technologie that would be created.

the reality is that the campaign as it is right now is great fun dont get me wrong but im only using half the deatures it feels like as their is no incentive to invest in technology. i put all my budget into keeping the economy open and making sure my ships can recrew when they take damage barring that their is no incentive to upgrade my shipyards or reserch new tech and thats in all the cmapigns era due to the shrotness of them

[Mr Vidicord]

One thing I would like is quad guns for small caliber guns.

 

[filmaty98]

Greetings. I'm very happy to see such a thread. I've created already two separate threads, purely about improvements, and therefore I will just copy many of suggestions which I've placed in these (since they've might already been lost in the crowd of many other threads):
 

1. Combat:
   • it should be possibility to see current ships' speeds somewhere close to them, even (or rather especially) foe's ones (after some time, let's say after ~30% indentifying progress, approximate speed, and after 100% more correct speed, but still approximate
   • it should be possibility to turn every single ship in the line at once (to avoid torpedoes) without diversing them into smaller divisions
   • multiple ships firing to one target (especially if they are using multiple different caliber guns) should suffer severe penalty, because of difficulties in correct identification from which ship and which gun came from water splash .
   • it should be possibility to set multiple targets for same type of armament (for ex: casemate guns on both broadsides should be able to fire to two different targets, one for each broadside) 
   • for artillery armament it should be able to set "fire mode": salvo, split salvo, half salvo, free (others not mentioned if they exist, and for torpedoes too), and it should greatly affect the accuracy 
   • "Ladder aiming" should be fixed, and should work as "ladder aiming" - it should take some salvos to fire to properly finish aiming process, and set correct ranges, and not like it works now - "ladder aiming" finished, after one turret's guns fired.
   • It should be possible to "jump" to ship during battle not only by clicking on she (which is rather difficult to precisely click on ship which is 10 km away), but also by clicking on she's name displayed above her
   • it should be possible to save the game during battle, to continue it some other time
2. Shipyard (and "Random Battle" preparations):
   • player should be able to design every single ship which will take part in battle, for himself and for foe too, and not only one class for each type of ships, but multiple classes for each type of ships
   • It should be "library" to save and later use of designs
   • At the very beginning of the battle it should be "deployment phase" (just like in Total War games) when player would be able to deploy his forces in OOB he would like
   • it should be possibility to set percentage "retreat point" for enemy
   • it should be possible to place more than 6 centerline turrets, it should be at least 7. For now it is impossible to recreate ship "HMS Agincourt" for example.
   • upper decks with casemates should be placeable parts in ship designer, just like superstructures, because for now for ex. it is impossible to recreate ships like HMS Orion or HMS Iron Duke. Upper decks as seperate parts will obviously give greater number of possible varieties of ships to create.
   • main hull casemates should also be a placeable parts
   • there should be also mid-deck superstructures/towers available (but optional, not obligatory) to place on ships, because for now ships sometimes may look quite empty
   • artillery unification in auto-ship-designer for ships of dreadnoughts and post-dreadnoughts era since it was one of the main distinguishing feature of dreadnoughts and post-dreadnoughts ships. Unification of the artillery. Usually 2, sometimes, very rarerly more calibers. But always only one caliber, for the main battery, auto-ship-designer still does not understand this principle
   • Allowance of usage of the currently created ships designs for the AI
   • setable weather and day-night conditions
3. Cosmetic:
   • There should be a portholes in hulls, because some ships especially from 1890s-1930s era really lack this important visual detail
   • There should ba a possibility to place anti-torpedo nets on boards of hull (useless in battle, but cool looking)
   • addition of prefixes, and possibilty to name every single ship would be nice
   • shipyard should be finally enriched with more buildings, maybe some city in the background, some port installations etc. 
   • ships scaling in shipyard should be finally done properly, not just to let the hull "fit the dry-dock", but also to keep correct size scale between them, because for now, destroyer may takes the same amount of space in the dry-dock as cruiser or even battleship
4. In-battle interface:
   • current interface is to my mind absolutely awful, and should be redesigned. My main accuse is towards "ship groups cards", it is virtually impossible to have all groups' cards expanded. When you are expanding one card, the other one almost always and immediatelly collapses, therefore having only one (sometimes two) cards expanded, which is really annoying, and unabling to have correct view on the whole of your forces. Maybe I'm doing here sth wrong, if so please tag me, and correct me, and explain how to have all cards expanded
   • minimap would be extremely useful.

I will also write a few words about campaign later. Hopefully, my suggestions will help to make the game better. Thanks again for creation of this thread. I hope, that after some time you will publish on this forum your thoughts on our suggestions, with informations about which ones will be implemented (with roadmap with at least rough estimates about time of theirs implementation), and which ones will be rejected.

Edited December 17, 2021 by filmaty98

[Shiki]

Alright, I'll bite. Why this thread wasn't created six months ago, when we were in closed testing, I don't know. Your Steam reviews must be more important to you than the initial playerbase... which is, by and large, the body making the Steam reviews. I wonder about the foresight afforded to this game.

On to the suggestions.

• 1 — As I've mentioned before, we are in need of particularly the following:

  • A — Better divisional organization—if we are not allowed to pre-determine the divisions and their heading prior to entry into combat, then precious time is wasted assembling that fleet in a fit-to-fight formation (not precisely optimal for what are mostly randomized missions which have some sort of time limitation added, whether that be the enemy escaping your superior force or theirs running to engage yours while you attempt to sink transports). The ideal solution for the long term would be a 'pre-battle' phase (perhaps a naval chart aesthetic, as mentioned before). Simple slide-and-drop controls would be all that's needed to make sure that each ship is in its proper division and set to screening, line, or escorting roles—fleets always broke up from cruising into battle formations before accepting battle, whenever possible.

    • Addendum: the ability to select more than one ship and/or do block selection in the Fleet tab of the campaign when setting ships to Sea Control or In Being. It is extremely tedious, time-consuming, and irritating to manually select over one hundred and eighty torpedo boats and destroyers individually. A simple checkbox beside each name will do.

  • B — Guns of the same calibre should lock to the slowest loading cycle among them once the range has been found on an enemy: if you have two quads and a twin turret for 14"/356 mm artillery, the twin should fire at the same rate as the quads (done historically to improve salvo patterns, though oftentimes they couldn't fire faster anyways due to errors in drill or mechanisms). Compensation might be that loading cycle differences are less noticeable. Ideally, of course, all main battery turrets should be treated as such, rather than continuing to treat wing mounts and/or turrets with different numbers of guns as a secondary battery.

  • C — Failure-to-fire: a low-priority event which will cause any number of guns and/or turrets to salvo improperly or fail in some manner. Errors in drill and errors in machinery were the most common cause of failure-to-fire and this happened frighteningly often during real naval battles: note Prince of Wales's (admittedly, not a wholly typical example) abysmal performance at Denmark Strait, where just one gun was in action at times. This will not affect any other guns or turrets, and chances of errors should decrease with each Mark obtained and additionally scaling to the training level of the crew.

  • D — Casemate animations. It is exceedingly jarring from the visual perspective to have all turrets and open mounts elevating and depressing to their loading angles with each salvo while casemates remain at a flat 0-degree elevation, no matter the range. 

• 2 — Again, as I've mentioned before, we are in need of specifically more cruiser hulls: they are the most common type of large auxiliary surface combatant that you will build in a campaign, they represent the majority of your fleet's offensive ability against enemy shipping and warships, and it is exceedingly hard to immerse (and enjoy) the game when all of the campaign's cruisers are either pre-1919 German or downscaled pre-dreadnought & Bismarck hulls with Trento's towers. At the very least, the following are needed (prioritized over my more extensive list):

  • Britain — 'C' (Caroline, Calliope, Cambrian, etc.) classes, Town class (1930s). The former will give ample ability to branch out into a variety of early period British styles—the 'C's can be variously rebuilt to be earlier types (of which they are a culmination) or some later types depending on how liberal the number of towers can be, while an enlarged hull—and we all know how much the 3D modelers like rescaling their hulls—works for many of the 'Atlantic cruiser' concepts. The latter gives Britain a viable CA/CL hull to work off of for both historical classes and also create things like the 'Admirals' (15,500-ton CA, really a Town trading 12x 6in for 9x 8in) and smaller cruiser studies.

    • As an aside, while I would love to request the County class for British CAs in the 1920s onwards until replacement by an enlarged 'Gloucester' or 'Southampton' (personally I prefer Birmingham and Sheffield), for the sake of brevity I'm not going to include them. Their aesthetically pleasing funnels, on the other hand, are an absolute must. 

  • United States — Pensacola class, Brooklyn class. While the former will give us a viable early-style hull for various smaller cruisers of both the light and heavy variety, the latter is where the sun really begins to shine: Brooklyn is the basis for every American cruiser after her until the Des Moines class, the last U.S. heavy gun cruisers. With differently modeled towers, one can recreate Brooklyn (CL), St. Louis (CL), Wichita (CA), Cleveland (CL), Baltimore (CA), Fargo (CL) or Oregon City (CA)—without taking into account imagination or any number of historical plans.

  • Japan — Takao class, Yūbari. Yūbari—a hull actually modeled after her, not just a short Sendai hull—forms the basis of every single Japanese warship after her. Moreover, her design can be flexible enough to use for any number of small CL hulls if a modern arrangement is wished for. Takao, of course, is the CA that one needs—Mogami aside, an earlier hull which is capable of reproducing more closely a larger variety of designs for a greater number of eras is better for current needs.

  • Germany — Emden (1920s), Leipzig (1930s), Type 1936A (1930s). We currently possess a dearth of German light cruisers: adding the post-WWI Emden and the modern light cruiser Leipzig would go a long way towards bridging the gap between the enlarged Emden (WWI) hull we currently possess up until the modified and downscaled Bismarck hull we currently have. One could also enlarge the Leipzig hull and towers in order to simulate things such as Motorkreuzer 1938. Aside from these, we can also include the Type 1936A cruiser-destroyers, which were armed with between four and five 15 cm guns depending upon the year and configuration, and can serve as the 'Small Light Cruiser' hull.

  • France — Lamotte-Picquet / Duguay-Trouin, Algérie, La Galissonnière, Le Fantasque. France needs a lot of work in the cruiser and 'large destroyer' departments: fortunately, derivatives to make other (larger and heavier) designs can be done on their hulls, particularly with their modern light cruisers. Lamotte-Picquet (of the pre-WWI design) and Duguay Trouin would certainly serve to fill the roles of the French light cruiser class for WWI, with the latter serving as interwar until being supplanted and replaced by La Gal and derivatives in the 1930s onward. Le Fantasque - or Mogador - can take over the 'Small Light Cruiser' role.

  • Italy — Duca d'Aosta, Capitani Romani, Comandanti Medaglie d'Oro. Italy doesn't actually need too much in the way of cruiser hulls: just Duca d'Aosta to simulate post-war and interwar designs up to Abruzzi (which ought to also be added), and Capitani Romani to simulate the most famous class of small cruisers. Comandanti Medaglie d'Oro isn't a cruiser—it actually falls outside of the purview of this discussion, being a destroyer— but deserves addition nonetheless thanks to its easily changeable configurations. It would easily fill the gap for Italian destroyers until further additions can be made.

  • Russian Empire / Soviet Russia — Svetlana, Kirov, Sverdlov. Svetlana represents the 'typical' Imperial Russian light cruiser design (technically the only?) and therefore fills the role from pre-WWI onwards into the 1920s with modernizations, soldiering on despite age. Kirov is, of course, the most famous period gun cruiser of the Russian fleet and therefore cannot be omitted: aside from that, it provides an excellent balance between Svetlana's archaic mix of open mounts and casemates and the high-efficiency layout of later ships. Lastly, from the 1930s onward, we have Sverdlov: I am definitely not biased here (but Sverdlov is definitely one of my top three cutest cruisers of all time) when I say that she is an absolute must for post-1930 Russian cruiser hulls, particularly since you could upscale the hull and towers for any of the larger heavy cruiser designs the Soviets considered in the 40s and 50s.

  • Spain — I don't actually have anything to include for Spain. All of their post-1890s designs were heavily influenced by British and/or Italian practice—there was even a Spanish 'Littorio' design, pitched by Ansaldo, along with multiple cruisers armed variously with 203 mm and 152 mm guns.

  • China — Ning Hai and Ping Hai. China's only new-build cruisers of this era. Not including them is a no.

• 3 — I will restate the link's purpose: Gun Designer. It would infinitely expand the playability of this game and the possibilities, as well as allow us to more closely recreate historical designs (or even just do our own personal—or French—wacky gun calibres). It is extremely limiting to play with only whole inches when not one nation did so. Examples abound: British 4.5" (114 mm), 4.7" (120 mm—an extremely common calibre), 5.25" (133 mm), 7.5" (190 mm) and 9.4" (234 mm) are a brief overview of these non-rounded calibres for just one nation. It would require slightly more effort to code a gun designer but the tradeoffs would be more than worth the cost.

Aside from these, which I cannot state enough, most of my points have already been made in the above posts. I do hope you will take them into serious consideration—I have made them with your well-being in mind. Replayability is the crux upon which single-player games rest and these have all been calculated with that in mind. By giving the game options to be more in-depth and to actively engage the player more, we can avoid burnout and also help along those more hardcore players who wish to be able to fully customize their ships as has been advertised.

[Grayknight]

- Torpedo dud chance

- Torpedo trajectory changing as a possible failure

- Torpedo "design" in ship designer just like shells

- Torpedo launcher exploding chance after being hit

- Seperate torpedo and ammo storage options in ship designer

- Forbiding AI from using few bulkheads after 1910

- Money amount is to small in 1920 onward, not just for me AI is runing out as well and that is without anyones port being blocked.

- Ability to invest in civilian infrastructure and fleet suport ships.

- Flags would be nice.

- Ability to see enemy designs based on level of intel we have on them.

- Sometimes it feels that damage from large size guns is not calculated properly when shells hit smaller target. It is for sure true on TB, maybe? on DD and probably on CL. Those things, when unarmored shouldent even be able to survive salvo of 13-16 inch high explosives, atleast i do not belive they would.

- Hit chance should go dramaticly up when first shells start to hit target, unleass target makes dramatic turn or other manuver that would set off target sollution.

- Please check the AI torpedo reload speed it seams sometimes strangly fast

Edited December 18, 2021 by Grayknight

[Draco]

2 hours ago, Grayknight said:

- Torpedo launcher exploding chance after being hit

THIS!

[DeadlyWalrus]

Armor

1. Main belt should cover the area between the fore and aft main gun barbettes or a set distance past the furthest funnel on all-forward designs. Armor weight would be calculated based on the length of the belt. This would naturally benefit compact multi-gun turret and all-forward designs happened historically.
2. Move barbette armor in with the rest of the armor so we can choose it's thickness like everything else.
3. Replace the "citadel" selector (which doesn't really make sense) with an armor design selector. This is where your sloped armor, turtle back, deck armor only (i.e. protected cruiser), etc. will go (All-or-Nothing can be removed as an option entirely, the player should be able to create an AoN system naturally just be selecting appropriate armor thicknesses).

Damage

1. Rebalance effects of damage on citadel versus non-citadel compartments. It should be very difficult to actually sink a ship without penetrating the citadel (armored-raft design concept and all), however, non-citadel damage should be able to significantly impair a ship's speed, maneuverability, accuracy, rate-of-fire, etc. This is one of the main criteria for making historical pre-dreadnaught designs viable.
2. Add the ability to select different levels of damage resistance. This would simulate the presence of things like damage control gear and redundant systems to reduce the chance of systems being disabled, fire spreading, etc. at the cost of money and weight. Increasing tech levels could reduce these costs.

Gunnery

1. Rebalance differences in accuracy between large and small guns. Larger guns have a definite advantage in longer range engagements, however, once the range closes to the point where smaller guns can fire on a relatively flat trajectory with short flight times for their shells the difference between the should be negligible. The inability of smaller guns to deliver (relatively) accurate fire even at short range is the other primary reason pre-dreadnaughts really don't work in-game.

Command and Control

1. Add the option to order ships under fire to take evasive maneuvers within their formation. Sailing on a constant course and speed makes you a relatively easy target so ships generally avoided doing so when under fire. This can work either as actual AI maneuvers within the formation making use of the existing accuracy debuffs on ships that are turning, or simulated with it's own debuff. Historically formations would generally try and engage the entire enemy formation to prevent enemy ships from being able to sail a constant course and provide a nice, stable platform for their own guns. This change should encourage similar tactics in game.
2. Provide more and less information about the enemy ships. The player really shouldn't have any way to know about the loading status of the enemy's guns, but your own fire control needs to have an estimate of the enemy's course and speed to have any chance of ever hitting their target so they can probably relay that to the bridge too. Assuming some sort of intelligence system is implemented in the campaign (it should be) things like maximum speed and armor thicknesses would be reported (potentially inaccurately) if they have been discovered.
3. Give a couple guys a map and some grease pencils so they can keep a plot of the engagement. It doesn't have to be perfectly accurate, but some sort of plot seems much more realistic than figuring out what the enemy fleet is doing using your magical floating eye.

Campaign (still exploring the campaign so just some smaller things)

1. Add ability to assign ships to formations. Ships shouldn't always deploy in their exact assigned formation (exigencies of war and all), but the battle generator should tend towards creating engagements with existing formations.
2. Add various "no show" events such as attacks on unescorted convoys or invasions that aren't intercepted for when not enough formations are assigned to an area (basically an expansion of the current freighter sinking system). This should be harsh enough to prevent just massing the entire navy into one giant doom-stack.
3. Add the ability to specify your combat doctrine for the war. Are you going to group up your ships and blockade the enemy coast? Disperse them and raid enemy shipping on the open sea? These decisions (and the decisions of your opponent will strongly influence what kind of battles are generated.
4. Tie ability to decline battles in campaign map to the actual speeds of the ships involved. Currently you can "fail" to withdraw from a battle but then just turn around and leave if your ships are faster.
5. Make mission success objectives more reasonable and somewhat related to the mission briefing. While sinking all (or at least a large percentage) of an enemy transport force might be a sensible objective if you're intercepting an enemy invasion fleet, a hit-and-run raid on an enemy convoy before superior enemy forces arrive is not a failure because all of the cargo ships weren't sunk.

 

[Kane]

1)  Ship design.
I'm going to link this thread...

And continue harping on the fact that in that late eras on large ships, a battleship's radios should not weigh more in tons than an entire destroyer.  Along with all the other issues about many systems that are way over weight, which makes historic designs impossible.  Meanwhile if someone manages to get to later eras in the campaign designing large ships is going to become very frustrating.  A baseline battleship turret should not weigh more with no loading equipment, etc than did real-life comparable turrets that included all of these furnishings.

I understand that most of the game will not be played in the late eras.  But getting to the late eras and finding a myriad of problems is like enjoying a story that defecates the sleep area in the climax.  It can turn an otherwise enjoyable experience into a frustrating disappointment.  The simple solution of having things like radios, radar, and sonar simply scale as a portion of the tower's weight is problematic, and its problems increase steadily as the size of the ship grows.

2)  Ship Design
More tower designs are needed.  Particularly in certain cases where some towers are simply mirror images of other existing towers, and often do not scale properly with whatever tower they are mated with.  I like Picasso as much as the next guy, but I don't want him designing my battleship.

3)  Ship Design
Ship-design AI has a borderline fetishistic preference for minimum bulkheads and spacious crew quarters.

4)  Ship Design
Ship-design AI has a borderline fetishistic love of secondary guns, to the point that the AI often compromises what could have been a worthwhile design by adding excessive secondary batteries.  This problem becomes more apparent in later eras.  But the AI might actually be able to afford some bulkheads once in awhile if it wasn't trying to be the H.M.S. Gun Factory.   AA isn't a thing in the game, but the AI is putting secondaries on its ships like its trying to survive Ten-Go.

5)  Ship Design
Ship-design AI has no concept of trying to armor itself against guns of its own caliber.  Though not surprising, as again toward late eras as armor weight is vastly out of proportion to its effectiveness.  Also, might be able to afford some armor if it wasn't trying to pack enough secondaries to make Burt Gummer envious of its gun collection.  2" of mid-deck armor on a battleship packing 16" guns just doesn't cut it.

I have tested points 8 and 9 multiple times by allowing the AI to design a ship, then seeing what I could do with the weight by removing the excess secondaries.  AI-designed ships could be a much greater threat to player-designed ships if said AI went to counseling about its compulsions.

6)  Battle
If there's been a change in AI behavior, I'm not seeing it.  In campaign the AI still routinely runs from fights it has fair odds of winning.  (As of December 19, 2021)  This turns way too many battles into long, tedious chases, this is particularly rage-inducing in early tech eras where ships are not only slower than Christmas, but guns have such ridiculous accuracy you'll spend an hour or more of real game time chasing someone and never hitting them.

In before someone reignites the gun accuracy vs historical accuracy argument.


7)  Battle
A partial redesign of the time-compression system should be seriously considered.  It would be very nice if higher rates of compression could be used such as in the stern-chase situation above.  Issues like not having time to react torpedoes could be dealt with by encoding an event flag to lower the time compression if a torpedo is detected.


8.) Battle
The ability to capture enemy transports in campaign missions.  This is a feature that seems oddly missing, but if I manage to wipe out all of the escorts there should be some kind of option to capture the transports.  An option to try to capture damaged warships as prizes would be nice, but probably too much to ask for.  Inability to capture transports on the other hand, is very disappointing.

9)  Battle
Explosive ammunition, particularly for low-caliber guns (2", 3", 4") has excessive penetration.

10)  Battle
There really, really, really needs to be an option to scuttle a crippled ship so as to end scenarios that have already played themselves out.

All I have for now.

11)  Battle
The oracles on enemy ships that keep predicting torpedo launch need to be shot and thrown overboard.  If prescient crewmen are not responsible for the AI's ability to detect and immediately take evasive action from torpedoes in an era with no hydrophone or sonar technology, then the true culprit for this behavior needs to be found and dealt with.  Indeed crippled transport ships dodge torpedoes from less than a kilometer away, and enemy warships begin their dodge maneuvers before I can see my own torpedo wakes.

Addendum
How is a fight where I take fewer casualties and accrue more victory points a defeat?  Coming after a tedious stern chase, this is insult added to injury.

Edited December 19, 2021 by Kane

[Norbert Sattler]

Speaking of victory points:

1. Please make it so that sinking transports in a convoy mission adds victory points. Right now you can sink an entire convoy and still "lose" the mission and get fewer VP than the enemy if your ships took more damage than the enemy combat ships. But sinking the convoy was the actual mission, not sinking the escort, so the transports should not solely give a modifier that increases the VP you get for damaging and/or sinking the escorts by a percentage.
2. The reverse would also be true for convoy defense, where the goal is to protect the transports and chasing away the attackers is a clear victory, but right now feels more like a regular fleet clash with extra baggage present.
3. Transports sunk in missions should also be counted on the end-of-round messages and have an effect on the economy (if that isn't the case yet), same as those sunk at the end of rounds via whatever calculations are going on.

Edited December 19, 2021 by Norbert Sattler

[Norbert Sattler]

Make a clear differentiation in the log between the hits that destroyed something and hits that hit something that was already destroyed. It's getting quite annoying to read "Main Gun destroyed" 5 times and see that out of all the enemy's guns only one is inoperational.