>>> Update v1.05 Feedback<<<

[Skeksis]

11 hours ago, o Barão said:

"Maybe a little query: The max tonnage for below CA is 14000 but... actual tonnage is 13945, technically the ship is under 14000tt. Shouldn't the tonnage limit be based on the actual tonnage rather than the 'designing' limit?..."

I had the same question a few months ago. Another player from this forum gave me an explanation that made sense, well for me at least.

You can not use all the hull available displacement in your design but the hull will need to have that displacement for normal sailing conditions. 

Let’s say as an extreme example that you are designing a 5k ton ship in a 10k ton hull. The hull volume will need that weight to maintain a normal condition in the water. If using only half the weight, the hull would go up and roll, probably. So to maintain the hull stability, the weight difference would need to be compensated with ballast.

In your example, the difference is so small that would not be an issue, but the game engine doesn't allow. You could fine tune the beam and draught sliders to reach a 14k ton hull or below?

I was more querying the warning or the failure condition of being overweight. Or which value it should be based on.

E.g. if you set the slider to 15000tt but your actual weight is 13945tt (13945/15000), then the ship is still under the maximin 14000tt CA limit, it should pass. Even if the slider was way into the red, then so long as your ship is still underweight it should pass.

I.e. the weight failure warning and/or the class max should be based on the ship actual tonnage. Not the designing tonnage.

But you’re right, when adjusting more beam, the ballast increases, the weight increases, so player then has to adjust designing tonnage, if needed.

Edited May 24, 2022 by Skeksis

[SodaBit]

I've got some more Auto-designer feedback here.
It would seem as though the AI's tendency to overload their ships with as many weapon systems as possible might have something of a drawback due to the target signature mechanic.

I managed to achieve 100% Main Gun Accuracy at over 16 kilometers away. Yamato's gunners were pretty good historically, but this level of accuracy is pretty insane. 6" guns opened up at 15.9km, and had 72% accuracy for the first salvo. I'm 95% sure this is down to the target signature mechanic, as the target I was shooting at looked something like this: 

While the ship is rather large at ~85,000 tons, the issue comes from the fact that it's signature is being massively inflated by the hilarious amount of secondaries it carries. All of the smallest turrets are triple 4" guns, with larger guns up to 7" in caliber also present. There's also 4 torpedo launchers on the deck, adding even more to the signature, in addition to the massive superstructure, and 3 19" twins, one of which has a barbette exclusively to fire over even more secondary guns. The excessive target signature stat was enough of a hinderance to the ship that the majority of her secondaries didn't even get the chance to fire before being sunk. 
This was a 2v1, so I had another target to engage for comparison, and this problem did not occur. Whilst accuracy was still good, ~50% at 12km, it wasn't completely over the top, like with the first target, as this ship had a more rational amount of secondaries.
There's other issues with this ship, namely the poor main battery firepower for her weight, and the amount of different calibers for her secondaries, but iirc those issues have already been brought up in this thread, so I won't go into them here.


Quick update/edit because apparently, not only did this issue make it into 1.06, It's Somehow Gotten Worse.

Edited May 28, 2022 by SodaBit
Update for 1.06 beta

[Skeksis]

I’m not sure what’s going on with some of the Custom Battles hulls? This hull is even 'Invalid' without anything added. There seems to be quite a few across the whole database.

Custom Battles, 1910 Germany.

 

PS/Update, as annoying as this can be, I found that after every ship was deleted, subsequence designs passed. Therefore, or most likely, the 'invalid' message was associate with an unselected design, so that must be where the issue lies.

Edited May 27, 2022 by Skeksis

[Trygvasson]

Hi Devs,

My main reason for buying this was to fulfill my dream of designing the optimal ship with the technology available at any one time, and fighting historical enemy designs with it. Old naval warfare buff, so probably not alone but probably on the upper age/historical knowledge side of the player base.

I'm having fun enough to care about how you proceed, so here's my feedback:

DESIGN

While you've done a great job of creating a procession of modules, gun types, and other technologies, the more artificial limitations are just annoying; hull type and layout place severe restrictions on how I get to set up the modules of a given ship(especially early era), making the design part of the game more a matter of tweaking to see where I can squeeze out a few percentages - so I end up sort of hunting for hidden bonuses on every new version you release. You could argue that the hull types are part of a historical limitation, but given the level of experimentation going on historically, and the fact that a key feature of the game is 'build your own stuff within these limitations' you need to be careful about restricting things artificially - for me, this subtracts directly from the 'fun' column and adds tedium and frustration. I realize you will always need to work with abstractions at some level - hence 'hull types' with ready-made stats -  but please leave it up to the players to decide if they want to limit the number of main guns on an 1890s battleship or create a cruiser with a single tower.

Ability to choose ammo layout and shell design? LOVE it. Shell designs should be researched/era dependent though, forgive me if they already are.

 

FORMATIONS

Ship formations still suck. Come on guys, I start combat with two BB's sailing in a straight line and touch nothing, and the trailing ship immediately starts wobbling from side to side. It's a far cry from anything resembling a simultaneous turn or even a simple turn-in-succession. Line ahead? If I'm lucky I'll eventually see something like a wedge. IMHO this part is screaming for improvement - I'd suggest going for 'perfect formation behavior' first and add in crew skill/weather/signals stuff later. Wishlist:

- simultaneous turn

- actual line ahead

- all ships in formation come to heading X

 

COMBAT

It's getting better I guess... As long as you don't move to a ballistic shell modelling and use dice rolls, I'll never be happy. In my current campaign I can guess how many hits a salvo will do as soon as the shells leave the tubes, by seeing which shell is going towards the target and seeing the rest of the shells miss by a mile.

 

CAMPAIGN

WIP, yeah.... I'm still stomping everything AI throws at me with BB-only fleets. Sorry, the more ships I have in combat the more frustrating the ship formations part becomes, so 'jeune ecole' strategies are on indefinite hold.

Task Forces are a good start to giving the player some more decision on fleet composition, excellent addition!

 

Best regards from Norwegian Old Salt

[Littorio]

On 5/25/2022 at 5:37 AM, SodaBit said:

I've got some more Auto-designer feedback here.
It would seem as though the AI's tendency to overload their ships with as many weapon systems as possible might have something of a drawback due to the target signature mechanic.

I managed to achieve 100% Main Gun Accuracy at over 16 kilometers away. Yamato's gunners were pretty good historically, but this level of accuracy is pretty insane. 6" guns opened up at 15.9km, and had 72% accuracy for the first salvo. I'm 95% sure this is down to the target signature mechanic, as the target I was shooting at looked something like this: 

While the ship is rather large at ~85,000 tons, the issue comes from the fact that it's signature is being massively inflated by the hilarious amount of secondaries it carries. All of the smallest turrets are triple 4" guns, with larger guns up to 7" in caliber also present. There's also 4 torpedo launchers on the deck, adding even more to the signature, in addition to the massive superstructure, and 3 19" twins, one of which has a barbette exclusively to fire over even more secondary guns. The excessive target signature stat was enough of a hinderance to the ship that the majority of her secondaries didn't even get the chance to fire before being sunk. 
This was a 2v1, so I had another target to engage for comparison, and this problem did not occur. Whilst accuracy was still good, ~50% at 12km, it wasn't completely over the top, like with the first target, as this ship had a more rational amount of secondaries.
There's other issues with this ship, namely the poor main battery firepower for her weight, and the amount of different calibers for her secondaries, but iirc those issues have already been brought up in this thread, so I won't go into them here.

Seems to me then that the real issue is the gamification of spotting and correcting gunfire. This "target signature" being automatically inflated simply because more little secondary guns are placed along the flanks is idiotic. Your guns would not be able to hit them more reliably or not just due to a few more guns on the enemy vessel. They would do nothing to increase the visual profile beyond the main turrets, superstructure, and funnels. This game is too tied to arbitrary mechanics based on stats that would have no bearing in reality.

[Hardlec]

1: I have stopped bothering with the "Naval Academy."  The overall AI just erases my victories and expects me to start over. I'm not. Save my victories. At the very least, unlock them forever. The Academy was fun when it was a winnable challenge, but it just gets harder.  My ships won't hit anything.  The AI Always hits first. The designers were going to put in difficulty levels.  It was fun in the older versions.

2:  In campaign mode, the Overall AI has decided to outnumber me 5 to 1.  I just quit the campaign.  My goal is to have fun.  

3:  I used to be able to put my display in a "window" where I could do other things while waiting for lengthy start up processes to run.  My version will only function on full screen mode, I can either have the game on and it occupies every square millimeter of my screen, or off. 

4: There is a nice section of documentation, but there is no search function. I'm not sure if that's Ultimate Admiral or Steam. A search function is needed.  

5: I was supposed to be able to save my ship designs independently of Campaign, Custom battle or Academy mode.  I wanted to refine designs for the Campaign mode by putting them in a custom battle.  Designing ships is fun.  Copying designs is a mind-numbing task. 

6. I'd really like to see a tutorial on how to adjust pitch and roll.

7.  There is still no way to design a "legal" ship with en echelon turrets or stacked turrets.

8.  How do I unlock the hull selections?  There are lots of hulls, I'd like to use them.

[havaduck]

Not gonna adress everything because things like fun are subjective hoever .......

21 hours ago, Hardlec said:

7.  There is still no way to design a "legal" ship with en echelon turrets or stacked turrets.

 

Might be the language barrier here for I am no native speaker anyway but whats a "legal" ship?

En echelon has been possible for a long as I play this (1.04 I think).  Field of fire is exactly as you would expect, and ofc its your job to make the rest of the design viable or desirable with that much weight causing problems just like an oversized battery of oversized cassemate guns.

What are "stacked" turrets? Do you mean superposed turrets? This?

They are afaik not in the game and were the grand motherload of shit. I hate to see them in the game considering just how niche this is; but on the other hand what a BLATENTLY disastrous trap this would be for the AI autodesigner to fall into an create abominations.

The other things that resembles this where AA guns on the turrets, which indeed was a thing but could only be used when the ship wasnt using its main battery. Considering there is no Skycancer in this game and during missions ships are using their main battery, that kinda narrows down their usuage scenarios ...

 

21 hours ago, Hardlec said:

8.  How do I unlock the hull selections?  There are lots of hulls, I'd like to use them.

 

Reaseach. Hull Streanghtening gives Battleship, Dreadnought and so on hulls. Cruiser designs is for BCs, heavy and light cruisers and Destroyer designs covers everything from DD leaders that try to be light cruisers over normal DDs down to the lowly torpedo boat that you can cut down in size even more to built actual E-boats.

Edited June 2, 2022 by havaduck

[Hardlec]

If I try to place guns en echelon, I have never been able to balance the ship and the design won't save.  It is illegal per design parameters.  I started at the very beginning.  Pre-steam. Ive seen the published designs, watched the tutorials.  

Unlocking Hulls, maybe I was unclear.  I don't bother with the smaller governments; The AI just outnumbers me 5 or more to one.  Someone might explain to me how I have a group of raiders, 4 DDs, 32 knots and can't get away from two CAs with top speeds of 24 knots in the Withdraw selection.  I would like to use the hulls of the Italian, Austrian and German hulls as well as my own (French.)