Campaign feedback and suggestions; change it so research and fleet building actually matters

[Agathos]

TLDR: Currently campaigs are decided the moment you design the ships and build your initial fleet. This renders all development options (research, dockbuilding, fleetbuilding, etc. ) meaningless. Change the dynamics of the campaign so both navys start small and overall pace of campaign is more aimed towards 5-10 years, instead of current month.

 

Testing out the campaign i found that the initial fleet build decision and ship designs are the factors that absolutely dominated the campaign. Using a properly designed fleet and building a large enough fleet i so far beat any campaign no matter the settings after about 5-7 month (rounds). I would rather like the campaign to last longer and the decisions done on research, crew and transport budget actually take effect. Also it would be nice to slowly build up a fleet instead of just starting with a huge one. For this i suggest the following:

- heavily reduce initial navy budget to purchase ships, so that initial fleets starts out way smaller not exceeding 2-4 BBs, 4-6 CA, 4-6 CLs, 4-8 DDs ~ 18 ships average

- slightly increase monthly income

- reduce ship building times 5-25% depending on ship type, where BBs should build way quicker, while CLs and DDs only very slightly if any

- slightly reduce encounter frequency, especially multiple encounters (might not be needed if encounter frequency actually depends on overall fleet size and ships at sea)

- in general add selectable campaign duration in 5 year steps from 10-60.

 

I think these suggestion would make the campaign last longer. Once the campaign actually runs longer, it might be necessary to take a closer look at how research works. As it currently doesn't matter, its hard to judge if research overall takes to long or not and if there are to many research options or not.

[Toby]

as far as im awaree most if not all of these will be redeundat once the cmapaign has additional factions and systems in place. when that happens the game will be much more playable