>>>Patch 1.01/1.02 Feedback<<<

[Captain Meow]

akd, actually thanks about the R/T function - finally I figured out & placed that little 102mm turret near the davit!

If, as you say, lifeboats/davits should be removed automatically when overlapping with other part/structure then it's unfortunate to lose some visual detailing in this French Ironclad Battleship III case.  The problem with this hull is that distance between midship big side turret & aft side turrent is shorter than same distance from a midship to forward side turret.  Real ship had big side turret in the center of the length between fore & aft side turrets. This error in this hull causes overlapping of aft upper lifeboat/davit with mounting point for the 102mm side gun which should be there as on real ship. And yes, I selected/positioned the towers correctly.

Also, no flags on these new French ironcalds for some reason.

Edited January 2, 2022 by Captain Meow

[akd]

Tried this battle two ways:

1. Attempted to fight the battle.  Loaded in to daytime, cloudy battle.  Endless chasing of smoke on the horizon.  Apparently enemy CL ran before even seeing what it was against. CTRL-ALT-DEL. (And before someone says "well maybe it saw you before you saw it and ran away," if you can see the smoke of another ship, you will see that ship the moment it is visible over the horizon.  It can't see you without you seeing it in those conditions.)

2. Auto-resolve:

Apparently AI can't run from auto-resolve battles, at least not without fighting first (even though it should clearly run from this encounter, if the logical conditions of knowing what it has encountered are met).  Game design that encourages auto-resolve by providing better outcomes or outcomes that are impossible in actually playing the battle is not good.  Players should not be encouraged to auto-resolve gameplay, but make that choice as a matter of convenience.

Edited January 3, 2022 by akd

[Captain Meow]

Regarding enemy retreating - is it still slightly broken or if it happens then it supposed to be so?

Battle (same year for both sides): my BB vs 1 BB, 1CA, 2CL, 1TB. Enemy didn't retreat in the beginnig but I saw their BB was shooting from far away the whole battle & escaped (full hp), I sank all their ships except that BB which decided to retreat completely. My ship was at like 70%  with destroyed towers & could do 15kn only, I went after that remaining BB - I couldn't see it except from where it fires at me while retreating at 18kn, I left the battle as it was hopeless.

 

Noticed something odd in Shipbuilder (during custom battles):

I was building some ship (or just was viewing some built ship), I clicked on some different new hull at the bottom & got that "You have unsaved chages. Discard this hull?" notification - whether I click "Yes" or "No", I lose the ship I was just viewing/building, as if that design I had was just overwritten with this new hull.  I don't remember something like that earlier. If I was clicking on new hull & got that notification, "No" meant my ship is still there while I see new hull.
Already lost & had to rebuild 2 ships because of this!  Seems like now before clicking on any new hulls while having finished ships for that Country/year, it's better to click on "New design" first.

Edited January 3, 2022 by Captain Meow

[The PC Collector]

I've noticed a historical inconsistence, at least in te custom battles builder: triple gun turrets aren't available for battleships as late as 1915, depite several early 1910s battleships being equipped with them (Dante Alighieri, Tegethoff/Viribus Unitis and Gangut, all launched around 1912-1913 come to mind)

Also, I have noticed significant difficulty to create battleships with diamond arranged guns with the early dreadnought hulls, due to the combination of hulls/towers available. That should be revised, since the diamond arrangement in particular and the echelon guns in general were very common in first and second gen dreadnoughts.

[Adm.Hawklyn]

I would still hearken back to what others have said about the money/economic side as being too little of a budget for navies.

1890 to perhaps the 1910 campaign, the amounts are fine; its the 1920 campaign and on that need tweaking. Now, I'm just going to use thin air here, but military budgets for 1920 and beyond were in the billions. BILLIONS, or at least projected to be such if the WNT hadn't happened. I think one reason for the issues with ship building at the time was that people were generally afraid of that billion number.

My main point here is that by the time of 1930s, assuming no market crash happened [world econ stuff needs added too], the budgets for navies would be in the very high millions to low billions... Say 900 million for a create own fleet start possibly up to 3 billion depending on currency used.

I'm not entirely certain if you're using an inflation rate or not, but I know how rtw2 handles it as a sort of cost of living increase thing. Which perhaps you could do in increments. Yeah, its a suggestion, but as the Jan idea thread is still locked at the time I'm writing this....

 

[akd]

Had an extremely boring battle to end a war that illustrates many issues in current version of game.

Medium encounter, daytime, cloudy.  My 3x BCs and 2x small DDs vs. Brit 1x BB, 2x BC, 1x CL and 3x DD.  Appears that immediately after initial encounter (ships are heading toward each other when spotted at approximately 8km, but Brits appear to almost immediately turn away.  Never saw more of their ships than the 2x BCs.  Possibly the withdrawal was initiated by damage to 1 turret on one of the BCs.  Hard to tell, but absurd.

Battle then turns into an extremely boring game of borg-targeting destruction of helpless enemy.  Tactics consist solely of this: keep my DDs at range where they can see rearmost BC of retreating enemy (approximately 3km) but still can't be seen or hurt by the BC because of magic visibility bubbles, so they are invulnerable yet somehow able to perfectly direct the fire of the entire fleet (just a reminder that remote fire direction by ships not sailing close together in same division against other ships was never a thing in this time period). 

Now my BCs can all sail at long distance and rain shells down on the BC, correct their aim without being able to see their fall of shot, all without the BC ever shooting back.  Continue this for two hours until the "HP" of the hull is stripped away by cumulative hits, finishing it with a long range torpedo shot because I ran out of main gun ammo for BCs and trying to strip the remaining bit of hull away with 6" secondaries from outside of magic visibility bubble was too tedious by far and risked possibly running the clock all the way down. 

Enemy BC only got few shots in at the very end because of closing closer to edge of visibility bubble to use 6" guns and occasionally crossing it.  And yes, the BC was shooting at me even in this state (hull completely red and mostly on fire) because even after all these large caliber hits all of its guns were at 100%! Apparently the gun systems exist in a parallel universe totally separate from the ship itself.  I suspect there is something wonky going on here with the zero damage to main tower and all guns.

I did lose a DD to bad course click under time compression that brought it closer than the "I can see you, but you can't see me, tee-hee-hee" bubble, at which point every ship in the enemy fleet (most of which I had never even caught a glimpse of) opened up instantly together and wiped it from the sea. Oops. But I still had another DD to direct the borg mind.  When all minds are melded into one hive mind, the loss of an individual is meaningless! Long live the borg collective!

Note however that even in this state the BC was able to turn about 90 deg. in it's own length to dodge one of the two torpedoes.  Bow thrusters clearly!

Final outcome, also showing the significant advantage Brits started with:

Killing capital ships without even getting shot at is a certainly an appealing way to end a war, but it is boring and has nothing to do with actual naval tactics.  What's the fun of a naval sandbox that doesn't give you anything close to the world actual naval tactics developed in to play around with the "what ifs" of naval design and compare and test them against the realities?

Now let's consider how this scenario would have worked in reality, setting aside that Brits would never have run and that 8km is probably not a reasonable hard visibility limit for middle of the day cloudy conditions, but it is not totally out of the realm of possibility for the North Sea (although it would likely involve sea level mists / strong haze in addition to cloud cover, i.e. something that directly obscures vision beyond a fixed range for all ships at sea level, not just a reduction in light levels that makes ships somewhat less likely to be seen right away, but not unseeable).

If for whatever reason the enemy fleet decides to withdraw, I only have one option: pursue and engage with enough firepower to force an engagement.  That means my ships both need to be fast enough to catch the enemy, then engage them with enough firepower that they can't be ignored.  If I can bring my firepower to bear, then the enemy can also bring his (if I can see you and shoot you, then you can see me and shoot me, but only on a per ship basis), so they would also need to be sufficiently protected to sustain this engagement long enough for the rest of the fleet to reach a range where they can also see and engage the enemy.  The Brits here likely would have had a significant advantage when attempting to retire with their larger guns.  I could try and close with my destroyers, but they would not likely survive to get into a position to torpedo a capital ship, which is their only hope of forcing an engagement if my capital ships are not in range to see and engage the enemy, and be seen and engaged in turn by most of his firepower.  That would leave me to approach within 8km of the rearmost enemy unit with my foremost BC to gain sight of it and engage.  The 8km hard visibility limit then makes this a 1 vs. 1 until more of my units close to a range where they can also see and shoot, so a very up in the air match-up.  Furthermore, since I am pursuing and the enemy is retiring, all it would take is a turn by the enemy line to have my lead ship pursuing right into a position where multiple enemy ships might gain visibility and engage, while my lagging units are still catching up (and if their rearmost ship is being sacrificed for the rest of the fleet to escape, then it should aggressively fight the foremost pursuers before the rest catch up).  Real tactical decision making would be necessary. But as demonstrated, due to wonky hard visibility bubbles and borg-targeting, no real tactics are necessary.  Tedious micromanagement of visibility bubbles is the sole "tactical" concern.

Edited January 4, 2022 by akd

[Captain Meow]

Suggestion... (since the January suggestions thread is still closed)

Clicking to target single enemy ship among all makes all guns fire at it as long as it's within a reach.
Alt+click on another ship to fire at 2 ships at the same time.
But main guns fire at first selected ship, secondaries at second ship.

Let's say, my battleship has fore & aft turrets & they fire at that first ship, but then that ship is out of reach for one turret & so that turret/gun is sitting idle until the primary target is within it's reach.

So, how about if one turret/gun can't fire at primary target because of arc limit then it automatically switches to fire at second target together with secondary guns while the other turret keeps firing at primary target. Once that primary target is reachable for both turrets then that turret auto-switches back to that target.

 

 

Also, something to be changed regarding AI's behaviour: he's half on hp/float while I'm hopelessly like this (after sinking 5 of his friends) & running out of ammo. He shouldn't be that afraid while still being able to move around & have enough of ammo.

Edited January 4, 2022 by Captain Meow

[The PC Collector]

The campaign is seriously broken right now. No matter how much enemy ships you sink, they seem to have endless funds and ships, so you always end blockaded because their ship output is unlimited. This needs to be taken care of.

[SiWi]

I have notice that the AI fleet are often very unbalance in terms of numbers of ships:

In this example it is the Cruiser especially the light cruiser the enemy spawns, thou I had examples of them having 11+ BB and barley anything else.

Unless this is suppose to be a example of the French naval doctrine of light ships over BB's (the campaign was on Random not historical), it should be twerked.

 

Another problem I find is that the AI builds ships that are too slow. I mean I can accept that they value speed less (in order to go cheap), but there are example of this thats REALLY pushing it.

The enemy BB has 18,4 KN's. In 1920. My BB made 26 or 28 kn (not sure right now). I think that is unacceptable slow.

That thing barley captures Transports. In fact 1 meaning full hit and it probably couldn't even do that. Anything else attacks or flees at its  own leisure.

 

 

 

[Druzki]

Hey, is anyone else experiencing a bug where when you have your formation on avoid torpedo, the ai controled ships just run in circles and they cant be controled?

[Norbert Sattler]

Kind of yes.

I noticed that sometimes ships get stuck in avoidance mode and stay near-enough uncontrollable for the remainder of the mission. Though in my case I only had this happen when ships avoided (or tried to and failed to avoid) colliding, rather than dodging torpedoes.

I already reported it both ingame and in the (now closed) beta feedback thread.

Edited January 4, 2022 by Norbert Sattler

[SodaBit]

3 hours ago, SiWi said:

Another problem I find is that the AI builds ships that are too slow. I mean I can accept that they value speed less (in order to go cheap), but there are example of this thats REALLY pushing it.

The enemy BB has 18,4 KN's. In 1920. My BB made 26 or 28 kn (not sure right now). I think that is unacceptable slow.

That thing barley captures Transports. In fact 1 meaning full hit and it probably couldn't even do that. Anything else attacks or flees at its  own leisure.

^^^ This issue really gets on my nerves. Along with the details of certain designs being rather questionable, (Forward guns only having a 200 degree firing arc over the bow to accommodate for random 2" mounts that are on their own barbettes for some reason) the main design decisions the AI goes with are rather misguided at the best of times and downright insane at worst. I've seen the AI design BB's armed with 12 12" guns in 4 triples, with a 12" belt and a max speed of 26 knots... in the 1940's campaign. That design might have been competitive in 1910, but there's no way in hell it'll stand up to most of the ships designed and built in the 1920's let alone the 40's. This also has a significant impact on the tactics the AI adopts. Generally, you'd want to get to a range where the enemy cannot easily penetrate your armor with their main guns. In 1940, this might mean establishing a position over 15km away, which you cannot do if the enemy is determined to close on you with a 10 knot speed advantage. Even if you got to an immunity zone, your guns still need to be able to penetrate the enemy's armor, which can turn into a pretty big ask if you're using obsolete calibers, that are now more common place on the very niche "large cruiser" ship type.
For example, on a ~50,000 ton BC w/ 1940's tech, you can get a max speed of 35 knots and an armor scheme of 500mm belt, 400mm conning tower and deck, assuming you're going with an all or nothing approach. You'll still have tonnage available for 15" or 16" guns, decent secondaries, and a fair number of bells and whistles. So, when the enemy "battleship" only has 12" guns to hand, they're going to have to get within 1,000 meters in order to penetrate your belt armor, and won't be able to penetrate your deck armor AT ANY RANGE.

With the actual capabilities of the main battery in mind, even if the enemy got within the immunity zone of your guns, the enemy won't be able to significantly damage you. With the actual capabilities of the engines in mind, the chances of current AI ships actually getting to this position are Slim to F***ing None. The only chance an AI ship with the listed characteristics has of beating the player is to close to point blank range, and hope they can get a few lucky shots in before they go down themselves. Of course, the AI doesn't do that, but that's a topic for another day.

[The_Real_Hawkeye]

6 hours ago, Druzki said:

Hey, is anyone else experiencing a bug where when you have your formation on avoid torpedo, the ai controled ships just run in circles and they cant be controled?

I watched Stealth's last video. He put one of his two CA on torpedo-avoidance.....it was hilarious.

 

Edit: Here is a link (hilarity begins at about 27:00)

 

Edited January 4, 2022 by The_Real_Hawkeye

[Grayknight]

3 hours ago, The_Real_Hawkeye said:

Edit: Here is a link (hilarity begins at about 27:00)

This baisicly proves that AI have advantage when it comes to turning! I knew it! I knew it! It seams to be a bug but it is proven! So many times i watched torpedos nearly hiting ship with damage rudder that tunred well and thought to myself well AI seams to be building ships with damn narrow turn rate but it is not the case AI is simply better at turning flat out!

@Nick Thomadis Please see the video

Edited January 4, 2022 by Grayknight

[Captain Meow]

45 minutes ago, Grayknight said:

This baisicly proves that AI have advantage when it comes to turning! I knew it! I knew it! It seams to be a bug but it is proven! So many times i watched torpedos nearly hiting ship with damage rudder that tunred well and thought to myself well AI seams to be building ships with damn narrow turn rate but it is not the case AI is simply better at turning flat out!

@Nick Thomadis Please see the video

Well said, that explains my torpedos miss a lot because AI enemies turn unrealistically quick, much better then if I did hard to port/starboard on that same ship in such conditions. They simply turn like if they have bow/stern thrusters working!

Same when I give command to AI of my ship - in situations when my ship needs to avoid collision with my other ship - it turns so sharply, slows down or accelerates quickly.

Edited January 4, 2022 by Captain Meow

[Phelidai]

Quote

Another problem I find is that the AI builds ships that are too slow. I mean I can accept that they value speed less (in order to go cheap), but there are example of this thats REALLY pushing it.

The enemy BB has 18,4 KN's. In 1920. My BB made 26 or 28 kn (not sure right now). I think that is unacceptable slow.

That thing barley captures Transports. In fact 1 meaning full hit and it probably couldn't even do that. Anything else attacks or flees at its  own leisure.

I definitely see a lot of absurdly slow ships in the campaign. However, on occasion, I also see some absurdly fast ones. Just yesterday, I saw an enemy BC outrunning her own destroyer escorts. She was sailing at over 41 kts, while her escorts barely made 30 kts. The massive amount of speed poured into her by the AI left her struggling with 9 11 in turrets and paper thin armor. She experienced a flash fire after being hit twice, and sank shortly after.

While I understand it's not as simple as "just fixing" the AI, it really does seem like the AI only go for one extreme or another on all their ships.

[The PC Collector]

1 hour ago, Phelidai said:

I definitely see a lot of absurdly slow ships in the campaign. However, on occasion, I also see some absurdly fast ones. Just yesterday, I saw an enemy BC outrunning her own destroyer escorts. She was sailing at over 41 kts, while her escorts barely made 30 kts. The massive amount of speed poured into her by the AI left her struggling with 9 11 in turrets and paper thin armor. She experienced a flash fire after being hit twice, and sank shortly after.

While I understand it's not as simple as "just fixing" the AI, it really does seem like the AI only go for one extreme or another on all their ships.

To be honest, I think this problem could be solved, at least temporarily until the algorythm for the auto build is fixed, giving the AI pre-made templates. Won't be the optimal solution, but would make the game experience better while the auto build is tweaked.

As a more long term solution the AI could be given more strict lower and upper limits to their shipbuilding regarding speed, armour and guns depending on the kind of ship and era.

Edited January 4, 2022 by The PC Collector

[DieHard_BR]

All,

My 2 cents on coding. Put some mandatory on ship creation:

Above 1920

- BB - deck at least 11'', bulkhead cannot be few, speed at least 22 kn

[SodaBit]

Be me:
Start up new campaign as U.K. in 1940
Build 4 British Yamato's
69,000 tons, 9 18" guns, 30 knot top speed, 600mm of belt armor
Very excited to use them in battle
Angry mustache man introduces himself to the Devil before they ever see combat
They will never see combat

Makes me wonder why I even bother playing campaign if the AI isn't going to bother fighting it

[akd]

1 hour ago, DieHard_BR said:

deck at least 11''

If that is a necessary minimum then there is something seriously wrong in the game.  Or did you mean belt?

[DieHard_BR]

54 minutes ago, akd said:

If that is a necessary minimum then there is something seriously wrong in the game.  Or did you mean belt?

Correct.... belt

[rgreat]

I'll only address the simulation part of the game.

1. Close range accuracy is still way too low. At 1 km it must be at least ~25% against slow broadside targets at normal sea state. And much more against capital ship size targets. Close to 100%. You just can not miss a target of that size on that distance. 100m target at 1000m is a freaking 1/10 proportion! (By the way: battleship height is 50+ meters and length is 200+ meters). To miss it from 1 km you should be blind or be a traitor.

2. Acceleration is weird. Ship deceleration is too slow. Cutting power to engines should decelerate pretty quickly to about 50% speed and then process should slow down from that.  For now, it feels like ships have linear value of water friction, and too large inertia. Also, ship accelerate much faster then decelerate. And turning shafts to reverse should not instantly damage all your propulsion. It is not like engaging a transmission of a moving car in to an "R" position.

3. Engine damage is odd. Same like in pt.2: you lose one engine point - you lose like 50% of speed, and on 1/3 of power you just sit in the water like a dead fish. That's totally unrealistic. In real life, more power you add - less speed increase you get. As a result, losing 1/4 of power should only cost you a few knots of speed. And as long as you have at least 1/4 of power you should be able to maintain about 50% of speed.

4. Damage control: flooding is rudimentary and very arcade-ish. Damaged water tight compartments flooded insanely fast, and pumped out insanely fast too. Such fast water fluidity only realistic for smallest row boats or RC models. Field repairs fixing a hole in 1 minute? No fricking way! It takes tenths of minutes, if not hours. The only way DC can save the ship "in minutes" is by closing water tight compartments, pumping out water and counter-flooding.

5. On the other side of the coin: buoyancy of ships is insanely good. Only the lowest "floor" of the ship could be flooded, which is not in any case realistic. And if this is a simplification of game design and the only water displaceable level of the ship is the bottom one, then ships stay afloat with 75% of its compartments flooded. And that is complete nonsense which as a result cause weird effects, like unsinkable ships. You literally should make holes in hull from all directions to sink a ship. 

As a result, the current game flooding model could not be considered adequate for any "simulation" type of game. In fact, it could not be considered good even for naval arcades.

6. Please make time acceleration work all the time. Be it x5 or x10 or x30.

To sweeten a pill a bit: at least in later patch gunnery model (while still a cringe inducing), more or less playable, from a game point of view.

P.S. Developers, please hire an engineer.

Edited January 8, 2022 by rgreat

[MiWe]

Mission Timer!

At the moment we got the coutdown timer to mission end and the eventlog counting up from mission start.

I'd like a timer in sync with mission log to get some time reference, especially in bigger battles.

For example

16:33 CA..... detects torpedoes

Doesnt help much if i dont know if it is now 16:36 and time to avoide or 16:48 and way to late to do any manouvering to avoide.

I have to wait for another logged event to get a time reference.

 

 

[SodaBit]

More AI design feedback:
I don't know how, and I don't know why, but the AI has in fact, missed 100% of the shots it did take.

Or at least the gunners for these guns in particular did. After almost an hour and a half, and now loitering on Death's door, the AI has only managed 6 hits.
I'm not going to post an image of the accuracy table of every gun on this ship, so the list of gun accuracies at 1 kilometer is as follows, with a few notes.
Main Battery:
4x3 14": 59% at 1km - Has been firing for about 75 minutes straight, with mostly just 2 turrets, sometimes 3 or 4. 3 hits out of 645 shots taken.
Secondary Battery
4x2 8": 4% at 1km - Hasn't scored a single hit, because they haven't fired a single shot. All 4 mountings are located in-between turrets A and B, and have horrific firing arcs. The space required between A and B is large enough not only to fit 4 twin 8" guns, but A turret can actually rotate 360 degrees.
2x3 4": 3.2% at 1km
17x3 3": 3.6% at 1km
4x1 3": 3.8% at 1km
6x2 2": 7.1% at 1km - for comparison, my ship's 2": 100% at 1km, 20% at 2.5km, 3% at 5km
I've got no words for how bad this accuracy is. But, here's a list of all components that the AI is using that can modify accuracy:
Shells: Super Heavy, Propellant: Tube Powder II, Shell Charge: Picric Acid III (Might have been great at Tsushima, but in 1940's you should only really be using this on DD's, or if you've got a really, REALLY big gun that doesn't care about how thick the enemy's armor is,) Range Finding: Stereoscopic V, Radar: Gen II
I don't think the AI should just randomly choose these components with out rhyme or reason, it seems to be going for maximum shell weight, with the current modifier for that being at +82%, but I think accuracy might be more important for capital ships that should be able to outrange smaller ships.

[T_the_ferret]

I'm probably gonna write about it in more detail when the january feedback thread opens but i really feel like hull statistics (stability/floatabilit/resistance) really need a rework