>>>Patch 1.01/1.02 Feedback<<<

[Nick Thomadis]

Hello Admirals,

We are very happy to announce the next large update of Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts! We provide a wide range of new ships for the French fleet of the pre-dreadnought era, a significant AI enhance for the battle and campaign, a new Naval Academy mission, and a large collection of new features, improvements, fixes, things you requested many times, and we tried to offer as many as possible for this update. Please read in detail what you can find in the new patch:

https://www.dreadnoughts.ultimateadmiral.com/post/patch-1-01-released

This was the first major update after releasing the game on Steam Early Access. From now on, we plan to provide at least one large update each month and any needed smaller updates to address urgent issues. We wish a happy and healthy new year for you and your families and hope you will enjoy this update!

HotFix 1.02 [29/12/2021]
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1069660/view/3118178418897076922

[Koogus]

YES!!!!!!

[Littorio]

Ok, so here are my initial observations and feedback on 1.01. Before I get to that however, I would like to post screenshots to back up what I am saying, but it appears the uploader is now limited to 1.44MB? I never had a problem uploading screenshots until now, and never actually checked the size, so I am unsure what if anything has changed. Whether saved by the game, Steam, or myself manually, there shouldn't be a difference in file size. Does anyone else have any issues uploading pictures as of today?

That said, this is for 1890 and here we go:

Pros -

• I LOVE the weight distribution changes added to fore and aft armor as successfully lobbied for by @akd, so thank him for that and the devs for listening. Designs are much more balanced now with superior stability
• I also WHOLEHEARTEDLY LOVE the new friendly fire system! It actually appears to work as advertised very well. Your ships that sail into the line of fire of another aren't getting hit, and the blocked vessel starts opening up again as soon as the blocker gets out of the way. Guns seem to REMAIN TRAINED on hostiles which was a BIG request that I and many others have regularly lobbied for on here
• Starting spawn position does seem improved in some cases
• The AI squadron appears to coordinate reasonably better and I haven't noticed any collisions yet, and their balance between attacking/defending/retreating seems slightly better than before

So overall, bravo @Nick Thomadisand the rest of the team. There are some very welcome things here, and though I really want to see visual changes to weather/night, I am content with this first update. That said...

Cons -

• AI ship design is the worst I have seen yet, and I absolutely DO NOT see a "Significant AI auto-design improvement" as you claim in the patch notes. Again, I would post screenshots but for whatever reason I can't right now. They are atrocious, including:
  • Small main/larger secondary guns in impossible positions (superstructures/towers), blocked by other components, and literally glitching through them
  • Terrible turret placement and field of fire, with turrets crowding out each other so they can barely turn
  • No torpedoes to speak off, such as zero on CLs (which look like gun barges by contrast) and only ONE solitary munition on TORPEDO BOATS (not just one tube)
  • No or almost no armor at all, like 0.5" of Iron Plate on CLs main belts and nothing anywhere else, and woefully bad fore and aft belts on CAs
• Chasing smoke sighted at 10x speed still appears to be a thing. I had hoped that the starting position fix would help more with that, but it is what it is for now...
• Some possibly odd AI battle behavior noticed at certain points in a fight. There was this CA that had no one near her, neither friend nor foe, but just came to a dead stop while under fire by three of my own CAs. She was flooding however, and I am curious if the AI stops now to better pump water? I never really noticed it doing that before so that would be a significant development. She had no engine or rudder damage and I noticed other vessels, TBs and CLs doing it occasionally as well (though I don't think they were flooding). This seems to be for single vessels not in a multi-ship division
• Though they may start in better spots, AI ship handling while under fire could use a little more work. Stalling out seems a little better but this needs to be continuously iterated on

Overall I think besides the AI ship designs, this patch is a win. I look forward to more feedback and observations.

Edited December 29, 2021 by Littorio

[Josh]

First and foremost, Nick and the team, thank you for making such a great game. I look forward to its future development.

One comment on my end. I tried the campaign today. The economy seems to be off now. There is no way to sustain a fleet against the AI. I just lost a campaign to the AI where I destroyed over 20 vessels, and won almost every battle, and didn't lose a warship myself. I lost because I could not keep up with my exponentially diminishing economy, even though I was winning the war. When playing the 1930's campaign, its seems impossible to keep transports up. Also, the pop up for transports lost does not seem to occur any longer. This issue did not seem to affect the AI, because they were able to replenish their fleets appropriately, and maintain them.

Regardless, I am thoroughly looking forward to a further refined campaign. I believe your long term vision is amazing. Again, thanks for all the hard work. 

[Marshall99]

@Cptbarney

Oh my God! Yeeees! Pre-dreadnoughts and ironclads!!! Can't wait to test them today.

Edited December 29, 2021 by Marshall99

[Darth Khyron]

hmm...my battleship just was hit by six torpedoes. Launched by my own escorting destroyer. Immediatly, after the battle started. There seems to be a problem with friendly fire as of lately.

[SiWi]

I think the balance screws destroyers hard in the 1940's.

Ships turn too well for torps to hit, unless really massed and even 10km+ BB#s can annihilate them relative reliable.

[Darth Khyron]

49 minutes ago, SiWi said:

I think the balance screws destroyers hard in the 1940's.

Ships turn too well for torps to hit, unless really massed and even 10km+ BB#s can annihilate them relative reliable.

That is true. But with enemy torpedo boats packing 15 20-inch oxygen torpedoes and a single 102mm cannon, even a maneuverable battleship is hard pressed

[Toby]

while its nice to finally see some more very early period hulls the main thing that the campaign esspecailly needs right now is diplomacy and atleast one more nation. given france just got a major increase to its roster of hulls id suggest france as the campaign as it stands is cool but not a great way of testing new features as they become avaible as the shortness of the campaigns means that any feature you want to test is based on luck of the campaign lasting long enough.

 

[Grayknight]

I started 1890 campaign and:

 

AI built alot of CLs that are gun boats. No torpedoes

AI constantly run from me

AI started few battles in the torpedo distance from me.


 

Once after alt tabing all ships stoped moving another alt tab solved it

Blocade mechanic again roars insults at me, when after one of my BB (this time i built multi class fleet) i am bloced by Germany. Bear in mind that they have about 30 of those CLs mainly due to the fact that AI gets far more funds then me.

It really fells like only correct way to play this game is building BB and maybe CA's only.


We really, really need better speed up option. As it stands chases in x3 are frustrating to the point that I absolut fan of naval games and this game in particular am finding myself not wanting to play
 

Edited December 29, 2021 by Grayknight

[Cptbarney]

5 hours ago, Marshall99 said:

@Cptbarney

Oh my God! Yeeees! Pre-dreadnoughts and ironclads!!! Can't wait to test them today.

Fionally! Now we just need the other nations to get some more as well and then more inbetween 1905 and 1920.

will make early game much more interesting.

[Gangut]

This is looking promising indeed, though I think the campaign needs some balancing as for the past while I've been getting away with just building battleships + heavy cruisers/battlecruisers. The campaign should also allow the player to create fleets and use them to engauge instead of weird 1v1 battleship duels that cause the enemy to run away, weird 1 bb vs 12 destroyers and so on. Personally I would love to see a peace period as I don't see the point in constant warfare the day after a peace treaty has been signed. The financial system also kind of needs a bit of work as for some reason near the end I lose lots of money despite losing few transports and scraping older ships.

[Nick Thomadis]

Admirals, 
A new hotfix has been deployed. Please read the info here:
HotFix 1.02
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1069660/view/3118178418897076922

[T_the_ferret]

Glad to hear about the update pace, i really hope you can keep to it as it would be awesome!

[James Stair]

Ok I can't upload pics...this is posted on steam via me. Big guns mounts in ship build for Brit side are none and you can't mount back but off place of mounts...

[akd]

7 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Admirals, 
A new hotfix has been deployed. Please read the info here:
HotFix 1.02
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1069660/view/3118178418897076922

- Made the AI ships in campaign to not desire to retreat so often. If they desire to engage from too far away, this is something different, that if it is an issue, we will fix it in another update.

Probably flogging a dead horse here, but there is going to be constant friction between the relatively realistic system of gun range and penetration (thus creating realistic immune zones) and the very unrealistic spotting (far more restricted than reality in many circumstances, too influenced by artificial tower tech setting a hard visual range bubble that has nothing to do with reality) and targeting ("borg" targeting where if any ship can see a target, all ships can engage the target without regard to their own visibility).  This creates the impression that ship's are running away out of possible visual range (the only hard limit should be the horizon unless obscurants like precipitation, mist, fog, smoke are present; everything within that should be a probability of spotting based on conditions and target visual signature) when they are in fact seeking effective gun range which often exceeds the artificial visual limits in game.

1. Ships should only be able to target ship's they can themselves see with their eyes.  This would mean that in restricted visual conditions ship's cannot run away out of vision to more effectively use their guns.*

2. In clear conditions, the limit of vision should exceed the possible range where guns can be targeted at all (at least for capital ships), much less targeted effectively.*

*Only second-generation radar overcomes this limitation.  First gen might allow a ship to find a potential target and spot it easier visually once brought within the limit of vision based on conditions, but second-generation fire control radar is required to circumvent the need to see a target to effectively use guns against it.  Note also that under clear conditions finding an enemy by radar and by sight are largely the same since funnel smoke is likely to be visible beyond the visual horizon (which is also the radar horizon in these conditions). To some degree second-gen fire control radar may be able to overcome the need to have a ship within the visual horizon (or range of vision based on obscurants) to effectively target it, as it may be able to range on large shell splashes extending above the horizon, thus being able to judge short and long fall of shot without seeing the ocean surface out to the range of the fall of shot.

Edited December 29, 2021 by akd

[Littorio]

9 minutes ago, akd said:

Probably flogging a dead horse here, but there is going to be constant friction between the relatively realistic system of gun range and penetration (thus creating realistic immune zones) and the very unrealistic spotting (far more restricted than reality in many circumstances, too influenced by artificial tower tech setting a hard visual range bubble that has nothing to do with reality) and targeting ("borg" targeting where if any ship can see a target, all ships can engage the target without regard to their own visibility).  This creates the impression that ship's are running away out of possible visual range (the only hard limit should be the horizon unless obscurants like precipitation, mist, fog, smoke are present; everything within that should be a probability of spotting based on conditions and target visual signature) when they are in fact seeking effective gun range which often exceeds the artificial visual limits in game.

1. Ships should only be able to target ship's they can themselves see with their eyes.  This would mean that in restricted visual conditions ship's cannot run away out of vision to more effectively use their guns.*

2. In clear conditions, the limit of vision should exceed the possible range where guns can be targeted at all (at least for capital ships), much less targeted effectively.*

*Only second-generation radar overcomes this limitation.  First gen might allow a ship to find a potential target and spot it easier visually once brought within the limit of vision based on conditions, but second-generation fire control radar is required to circumvent the need to see a target to effectively use guns against it.  Note also that under clear conditions finding an enemy by radar and by sight are largely the same since funnel smoke is likely to be visible beyond the visual horizon (which is also the radar horizon in these conditions). To a very limited degree second-gen fire control radar may be able to overcome the need to have a ship within the visual horizon to effectively target it, as it may be able to range on large shell splashes extending above the horizon, thus being able to judge short and long fall of shot without seeing the ocean surface out to the range of the fall of shot.

I agree wholeheartedly with all of the above, but I have stopped talking about it mostly of late since we have mentioned it so much before, and as of the December Suggestion thread...

 

...Nick stated they are waiting to finish the "environment graphics" before looking at spotting more, which makes total sense. Since, in an ideal spotting system as we conceive of it, and as was in reality, the only visual impediment short of the horizon will be weather and time of day, we will need actually functional visuals and mechanics of this nature working in tandem in order get this done. I suspect this may take some time to do since anything like rain, lightning, volumetric fog, etc. will add to the horsepower needed to to run the game. Thus they will need to test more to make sure it is stable and continues to perform as well as possible on current hardware requirements.

[akd]

5 minutes ago, Littorio said:

...Nick stated they are waiting to finish the "environment graphics" before looking at spotting more, which makes total sense. Since, in an ideal spotting system as we conceive of it, and as was in reality, the only visual impediment short of the horizon will be weather and time of day, we will need actually functional visuals and mechanics of this nature working in tandem in order get this done. I suspect this may take some time to do since anything like rain, lightning, volumetric fog, etc. will add to the horsepower needed to to run the game. Thus they will need to test more to make sure it is stable and continues to perform as well as possible on current hardware requirements.

I sort of agree, but everything I've said above applies to the current system only looking at the conditions, not the visuals.  The visual discrepancies just reinforce the weirdness of it all.

[SiWi]

11 hours ago, Darth Khyron said:

That is true. But with enemy torpedo boats packing 15 20-inch oxygen torpedoes and a single 102mm cannon, even a maneuverable battleship is hard pressed

true but often you find that you need more torp hits then you can hope for.

[SiWi]

my compliment to the devs: division seem to be viable now since the "avoid trops" seem to work quite good.

[Littorio]

3 hours ago, akd said:

I sort of agree, but everything I've said above applies to the current system only looking at the conditions, not the visuals.  The visual discrepancies just reinforce the weirdness of it all.

True, but I am saying I can understand why they would hold off on touching spotting at all until the accompanying visuals for the conditions would be ready. Might as well do it all at once and focus on other things in the meantime.

[SodaBit]

I am so f***ing tired of making the same bloody post each f***ing patch but here we go again

So about that convoy these guys were "escorting."
It's dead.
Did they do anything to prevent that outcome?
Nope.
Are Germany's finest battleships actually going to contribute to the war effort?
Nah, they don't feel like it.

It's the same problem
again

and again

Every f***ing patch

[Littorio]

1 hour ago, SodaBit said:

I am so f***ing tired of making the same bloody post each f***ing patch but here we go again

So about that convoy these guys were "escorting."
It's dead.
Did they do anything to prevent that outcome?
Nope.
Are Germany's finest battleships actually going to contribute to the war effort?
Nah, they don't feel like it.

It's the same problem
again

and again

Every f***ing patch

 

I must agree and would like to add an addendum onto my above feedback post. After playing a full campaign, I can see that in many cases, often 1v1 duels, many enemies still immediately do a 180 degree turn and flee. How do I know this? Because I go "West" towards smoke sighted on 10x speed and the bearing of the smoke never changes.

If they were trying to intercept me and find my vessel, but because of spotting distance we couldn't see each other, the direction of the sighted smoke would change, gradually through NW/SW to N/S as I moved by them, depending on whether they missed me in the fog to port or starboard respectively. Instead, I keep on a straight course the whole time, and the direction of the sighting never wavers. The only way this would be possible is if the AI enemy cheats.

It must do some form of power calculation prior to visual contact, even though it should be impossible to know my stats, decide to flee, and then somehow know my exact position and bearing through the fog.

I cannot overstate how annoying this is to players. Leaving aside the spotting system as a whole as I said before, this scenario I have described can be mitigated for now by at least having the AI REQUIRE A VISUAL IDENTIFICATION OF MY SHIP BEFORE DECIDING TO FLEE. It should be IMPOSSIBLE for an lone enemy to decide to retreat before even seeing me.

As it stands these situations are just POINTLESS TIME SINKS that drain player patience and goodwill. Now, the game has improved since the first campaign beta, and I have gradually seen less and less of these situations, but they truly should be all gone by now. I can't see a reason why the AI can decide to flee, and know where to too, before even knowing what it is up against and the speed+bearing of my vessel. It is claimed that AI aggressiveness is being continually improved, but this scenario is the opposite of aggression, but gamey, cheating, cowardice that defies logic.

And for the record, these are NOT enemies moving away in order to get into optimal engagement range for their given guns/armor vis-a-vis my own, since the enemy is retreating before even seeing me.

Edited December 30, 2021 by Littorio

[Grayknight]

It is very strange over all.
 

After update i played a battle and as in your case

6 hours ago, Littorio said:

And for the record, these are NOT enemies moving away in order to get into optimal engagement range for their given guns/armor vis-a-vis my own, since the enemy is retreating before even seeing me.

it heapened and since i had slower units i had to wait till the end battle pop up. So i started another game in 1890.

I play as Britan, I built faster ships to make sure i had no more problems. In fact enemies that i fought against acted preatty well, but my expiriance was limited. I build well rounded up fleet and ignored or autoresolved all battles that involved 1vs1 or 2vs2 of the same class (90%) of battles. Even tho i had well rounded fleet. When i first played 1890 i build CA only and had fleet engagment. Big massive battle, since then i played all of the campaigns and never, NEVER again had this kind of enormous battle, why?
 

So anyway first thing i noticed is that VP are broken, it is ok after all it is early in development. RNG battles are broken and some times stupid. Of course i will loose bb in 1890 when i am atacked by 14 torpedo boats, ofcourse i cannot withdrow they are faster,  oh well unleass i autoresolve, then i sunk 4 TB without any damage.

Why 1bb finds another 1 bb? I do not want to look at them slug it out and miss 99% of times to a predictable resault in 3x speed when i close in for torpedo attack. I autoresolved and one of them always  escapes with heavy/medium damage.

So i wait for intresting battle and they are there. Sometimes very fun and you can clearly see a good system and very fun gameplay when you have them. For example
2CL and 3TBs of mine against 2CA 2CL and 1TB + transports - this is beliveble scenario, unleass of course generated near london but hey.... It is alot of fun. my CLs are red from damage, 1 TB sunk 2 holding themsleves with duct tape. Enemy lost 2CA, 1CL and TB - that survived geting pepered with various caliber rounds, torpedo in the midship and being ramed with 30% structure and 30% float. It in certain moment just exploded, not sure why but hey, glad it heapened

Few next turns nothing heapens, and i notice Germany is building enormous fleet, they have 70 ships, note that i have as many capital ships that i belive to be superiour to theirs. I cannot mach their CA and CL numbers in any way shape or form. I am bloced. I press end turn, and i loose naval prestige - which is another broken thing. RNG do not generate any battles for next 3 months or so in something that should be target rich enviroment in fact so rich that all those CAs and CLs should be visable from my shores i put BBs in sea controll - and yet even when faster then some of the CLs (thats another absurd, just to have playable battles we need to design BBs as fast as TBs ) i still cannot find those damned ships

Also AI have this strange obssesion with puting 3x1 5 or 6 inch gun on the bow and aft of CLs and this is something that AI did to my ship when i had autogeneration and enemy ships. Making CL have straight line of turrets that cannot move but hey, when they try to run they all can shoot at enemy that tries to catch them so maybe AI is just genious.

 

In fact i am not even angry about it all becouse it is very funny. I am playing this game now (well i am not, i am waiting for new patch) with a felling that Games lab made AI to good, it knows it cannot outfight player so it atempts to frustrate him into quiting. It will annoy you with bad battles, with constant retreats and then it will bloc you and give you no option to even atempt to lift blocade....

So in certain way this AI is very inteligent i guess... Good job

 

Edited December 30, 2021 by Grayknight

[Marshall99]

Well this flying tower is way advanced technology for 1890.

(French 1890 ironclad hull 3) (after restart it worked fine)

Edited December 30, 2021 by Marshall99