>>> Beta 1.06 Feedback<<< (FINAL UPDATE 6th Release Candidate)

[Nick Thomadis]

INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS:

- Find the game on your Steam Game Library and right click on it:

- Click on properties...

- ... and on the opened window, select from the list the "BETAS" option. On the appearing list, select the "beta branch" to switch to the latest beta version of the game.

- If you want to switch back to the stable live version, repeat the procedure and select from the Beta list "None".

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

-=Upcoming v1.06 Changelog (Work in Progress)=-

CONTINUOUS CAMPAIGN
The campaign can now be started at the selected year with no immediate wars happening and will continue until 1950 or until one of the following circumstances are satisfied:

• Low naval prestige: Player is replaced by the current government.
• Revolution and naval prestige is not high: Player is replaced by the new government.
• Total Nation Defeat: 50% or more of the Home Provinces are lost.
• Total Domination: All non-allied enemies have been destroyed (temporary feature, until we add more nations and mechanics).

The AI players will also lose with the same rules and their nations can be obliterated from the map if the home provinces are conquered by another nation. 

During peacetime, the following new mechanics are introduced:

• Random events: Events in which you must take a decision that will affect relations with other nations and other aspects of gameplay. This is a work in progress functionality that will expand further.
• Tension: Tension will be produced mainly between nations with bad relations that have a stronger fleet than necessary in common waters. Tension affects bilateral relations and can slowly bring nations to war.
• Alliances: If two nations have good relations up to +99, then special events can trigger alliance agreements. Nations in an alliance fight their enemies together as it happens in the update v1.05.
• War: If two nations have bad relations up to -99 then special events can trigger a war between them. Other nations will immediately pick a side according to what were their previous relations and modify relations accordingly. This large modification of relations can immediately trigger new alliances and force other nations to enter the war.
• Negotiations for Peace: When eventually a peace agreement is signed and war reparations are shared for the victors, money, ships and provinces are transferred accordingly to the nations (previously the game just ended). While there is no land conquering mechanic yet, the province exchange via war reparations will be somewhat exaggerated. 
• Economic Cycles: During prolonged wars the GDP will suffer greatly and the economic growth accordingly. After the war it will need much time to recover financially, especially if you were defeated and lost provinces.

MAJOR NEW FEATURES
A detailed Citadel functionality, new gun mechanics and Dud Torpedoes enrich the realism factors of the game.

• New detailed Citadel: The damage model becomes upgraded with a far more detailed armoring system. The way you layout out your guns and funnels will affect the length of the citadel (the armored box covered by the main belt and deck) and you will be able to view it in the ship preview during the design process.
  
  So it will be now fully realistic to create Nelson type ships which save weight due to the shortening of the armored citadel. Moreover, the hull weight and strength in each section will be dependent from the way you choose to layout your main guns as well as the center of its mass. For example, the sections in the middle will be significantly stronger and more resistant against damage than the lighter sections at the edges of the ship. Finally, you will be able to add an extra multi-layered armor in the citadel and choose independently its values according to the components enabled "All or Nothing", "Turtleback" etc.
  
  Furthermore, the new calculations for the hull will affect everything about the ship stability and weight allocations. For example, you can enlarge the citadel to reduce the pitch/roll, because by adding weight in the central parts of the ship will significantly increase its stability (Currently this effect is not so strong, because all sections were weighted equally, so adding big guns on the ship would always increase pitch/roll with no way to reduce other than bringing guns closer to the center).
   
• New Special Gun Calibers: A new design panel will allow you to edit the diameter and length of the gun barrels which will affect the gun statistics and their actual size on the ship. So, for example, you will be able to have calibers such as 13.5 inch for your guns before you research the next bigger 14 inch caliber. The variations of designs now will become extremely enriched, as each ship will look different also on the gun scales.
  
  The different guns on diameter and length-caliber will also vary according to the 3D model used for them. Guns of different nations that are large or have a shorter barrel than others of the same caliber and technology, will not be identical as now, but will have different stats accordingly.
   
• Dud Torpedoes: Torpedoes will not be as successful as now but will detonate and damage ships according to their angle of impact and their technology. You may have torpedoes to not explode on impact or explode prematurely with new visual effects. Torpedoes can also deviate from course (extremely rarely in more than 90 degrees).

3x NEW  HULLS

• “French Experimental Battleship” available from 1899 to 1916 with a displacement between 17,700 and 22.500 tons. This hull can recreate the Danton-class Battleship.
• “French Experimental Dreadnought” available from 1905 to 1916 with a displacement between 19,750 and 24.500 tons.
• “French Large Armored Cruiser” available from 1907 to 1921 with a displacement between 14,800 and 16.500 tons.  

NEW  GUNS 

• New late tech 8-inch and 9-inch guns for Japan.
• New late tech 2-inch and 3-inch guns for the USA, Britain, Spain, China.
• New generic Mark 3 Torpedo Tubes for all nations.
• New Mark 1 French Guns from 9-inch to 16-inch caliber, replacing some older variants where applicable.
• New Mark 2/Mark 3 French Guns from 6-inch to 16-inch caliber.

OTHER IMPROVEMENTS

• Improved ship motion at sea: Pitch/Roll and overall ship movement characteristics are updated to support the new hull weight adjustments. Ships will interact with waves more realistically, as a result.
• Improved shell ballistics & mechanics: Following the new gun mechanics, the aiming/targeting/shell dispersion will be improved and will have extensive variability according to the virtually countless combinations of the different gun settings. When guns fully aim they will characteristically speed up their firing rate to destroy the target quicker.
• Over penetration mechanics improvement: Overpenetration will now be depended further from the angle of impact, increasing the chance of striking full penetrations when firing through the bow of a ship.
  Moreover, overpenetration damage will be dependent greatly from the angle of the ship, significantly damaging the hull if a shell passes through the bow and along the length of the ship.
• Torpedo tubes create special detonations: When Torpedo Tubes become hit and destroyed they can cause a special detonation, simulating the damage caused by the destroyed torpedoes (which are removed from ammo).
• New Ship Components:  “Advanced Electrical Turrets”, “Advanced Electro-Hydraulic Turrets”, and “Advanced Gun Reload System” are now included in the available list of ship components.
• Many Ship weight/cost balances: Following up the new Citadel and Gun mechanics, the weight and cost of ship assets have been adjusted accordingly.
• New weapon stats visible in the UI: In weapon stats you can now review the weapon’s rotation speed in deg/sec and what is the exact weight of ammo per turret. 
• Colored weapon availability: During battle, by hovering the mouse on a weapon type all the respective weapons become highlighted and colored according to their status. “Green” is fully operational, “Yellow” is seriously damaged, “Red” is destroyed or out of ammo. Previously you could just view the weapons highlighted yellow with no information if they were working or not.
• All guns of the same caliber become grouped: Guns on the centerline, or side, or with different barrels will aim together in one fire control group, increasing their efficiency.. However, accuracy and reload penalties will apply when guns are not fully uniform (different calibers, barrels, not placed on the centerline etc.)
• Conning Tower and Fire Control become damaged with more accurate system: Damage caused to the Main Tower will properly utilize the armor of the Conning Tower and the Superstructure to protect the Conning Tower and Fire Control.
• Further Auto-Design improvements: AI will design ships even better following the logic of the new mechanics for Citadel and Guns.
• Further Battle AI improvements: Battle AI will operate overall in a more effective way vs the player. 
• Further Division logic improvements: There should be less errors in division auto-management.
• Fixed Window Mode: You can now safely Alt+Tab or play in “Window Mode” and the game will continue to play, it will not be paused.
• Beam/Draught Custom Edit: You can now type the needed values for Beam/Draught.

BUG FIXES

• Fixed bug that made HE penetration to be dependent from the penetration of AP shells. AP and HE shells penetration will now correctly work independently according to the chosen AP and HE shell types.
• Fixed various campaign bugs.

Many more will be added, which we will share as soon as we arrive closer to the release of the next update.

Thank you for reading!
 

The Game - Labs Team

=====

*UPDATE 28/5/2022*
The new beta 1.06 became available. Not all features are ready but the game should be now playable and enjoyable. The campaign needs more work and with your help we are going to finalize it soon. Enjoy!

*HOTFIX UPDATE 1 *
- Some minor tech fixes.
- Fixed mute gun sounds when played on fast forward.
- Increased own fleet funds.
- Fixed an 8-inch gun that did not increase in size according to caliber diameter (If you find again something similar, please report)

*HOTFIX UPDATE 2 * (2/6/2022)

- The campaign has received a lot of bug fixes and the first playable "continuous" functionality. When a peace treaty is signed the campaign should continue. Nations can now become completely destroyed (their provinces become neutral) if they collapse economically or lose a lot of provinces. There is little testing on the new campaign and various bugs are expected, but it should play far better than the previous version.
- Fixed low funds problem when you started the campaign with your own designed fleet.
- The Citadel armor system is now finalized. Fixed issues with sections which were not properly covered causing detonations and several other problems. The damage model is balanced accordingly.
- Balances in cost of engines (they could make a ship too expensive. 
- Increased the cost of the hull, reflecting better the cost of materials to build a ship of large displacement.
- Further improvements on Shell Ballistics. The various gun types fire with very distinctive curved trajectories according to their various attributes.
- Fixed collider bugs which created problems in the Auto-Design processes.
- Improved Auto-Targeting (which also affects positively the Battle AI).
- Fixed ironclad missions which were unplayable due to new caliber features.
- WIP All guns of the same caliber become grouped: Guns on the centerline, or side, or with different barrels will aim together in one fire control group, increasing their efficiency.. However, accuracy and reload penalties will apply when guns are not fully uniform (different calibers, barrels, not placed on the centerline etc.)
- Conning Tower and Fire Control become damaged with more accurate system: Damage caused to the Main Tower will properly utilize the armor of the Conning Tower and the Superstructure to protect the Conning Tower and Fire Control.

*UPDATE 3 * (3/6/2022)

- Various important bug fixes for the campaign, including fix for the crew pool reset bug and the non-ending wars after peace treaties.
- Fix of gun calibers bugs which were affecting various gun stats.
- Further improvement on shell ballistics.
- Targeting signature mechanics improved. Now the Targeting Signature is not producing inflated values creating too large accuracy bonuses vs very large ships or with a lot of parts added on the hull. The gun accuracy has been balanced and improved overall.
- Now gun penetration/accuracy data shows all the possible ranges for the guns (previously there was a limit of 35 km).
- Battle AI improvement, especially on its handling of big formations.
- Citadel size and offset now aids more to stabilize the ship and reduce pitch/roll.
- Detonation/Flash Fire base chances reduced. Note: The Flash Fire chance in the Design phase is indicative. If you have proper armor protection you may never have a Flash Fire even though the chance is high when the Flash Fire conditions are met.
- Some other minor fixes for bugs reported.

*UPDATE 4 * (4/6/2022)

- Various critical bug fixes for the campaign. Saves have been reset so that you can  play without troubles. Long range firing is now again consistent without accuracy being too high.
- Gun Ballistics/Aiming adjustments.
- Nation Initial relations slight balance
- Campaign tech progress is now faster.
- Other minor fixes/improvements.

*HOTFIX UPDATE 5 * (4/6/2022)

- Optimization on: Battle AI, Aiming, Shell Ballistics.
- Fixed German Dual Turrets that did not scale correctly in Length caliber.
- Campaign tech progress adjusted to be a little slower for techs that are too advanced.

*UPDATE 6 * (7/6/2022)

- Fixed issues in UI not showing all the modified data of guns when not yet placed on the ship. Now you can compare gun data before you mount a gun by hovering the cursor on the weapons icons and find a potential problem.
- Finalized the system of new aiming for guns of the same caliber. Now all guns of the same caliber, despite being on the sides or having different barrels, will contribute to the aiming, making it grow faster. Any differences (not centerline guns, different barrels) will make it deviate from an optional aiming solution.
-Fixes on Battle AI and Targeting. The AI should be overall more effective and much less predictable according to the nation.
- Expanded the Division AI logic to use AI personalities, so now the system should be more effective and responsive than before, sending ships in Screen/Scout mode to attack/defend more efficiently. The AI opponent will benefit equally from this improvement.
- Fine tuned the accuracy of big guns as per feedback.
- Further shell ballistic improvements affecting all guns.
- Citadel system adjustments affecting the damage model (you should notice less often small detonations of unprotected small guns, when there is penetration on bigger caliber guns and on their barbettes, the added critical damage will be more profound).
- Campaign: Doubled the potential shipyard size increase.
- Some other minor fixes/improvements.

*UPDATE 7 * (8/6/2022)

- Fixed various bugs of campaign that resulted in Alliances to not follow the events, and then creating a buggy situation with no battles and no activity. This is very roughly tested, so please check if the most critical issues are now fixed.
- Improved the campaign AI to assess better its financial situation and not bankrupt by overbuilding ships.
- Province Population (A stat not yet fully working) now has growth according to GDP and affects the crew pool. The crew pool will be following more naturally the years of development and should be sufficient in late years.
- Fixed War reparations not working for the human player. Now you will be able to receive ships and provinces except from money, after winning a war.
- Campaign Research speed reduced slightly as per feedback.
- Further Battle AI and Auto-Targeting improvements.
- Auto-Design logic further improved to create even more effective ships.
- Barrel length now increases the turret's size and costs much more.
- Fixed bug that made ship to freeze when executing reverse and “Avoid Ships” option was disabled.
- Accuracy formula now converts the size of the enemy ships more accurately in targeting signature. As a result, the smaller ships, especially the torpedo boats can survive more realistically at long ranges and become really threatened only when they approach too much the battleships or other powerful ships.
- Further improvements on the new damage model, addressing issues of too durable ships and creating more events of critical high damage in case of full penetrations.

*UPDATE 8 * (9/6/2022)

- Fixed critical bugs of the campaign related with alliances, which could make alliances/wars to not terminate and the game action to stall. (There are still known issues, please continue to report)
- Repaired the campaign AI to be able to cope with all the financial challenges and not bankrupt so easily.
-  Battle AI/Targeting critical repairs and improvements. The targeting should be now working as it should.
- Length caliber slight balance (low length has even higher fire rate and has slightly less range penalty). It is pending to make it modify the horizontal and vertical penetration accordingly.
- Accuracy fine tuning for all guns to have smoother dissipation at long ranges. This should address the remaining gun issues with the accuracy.
- Mission "Battleship vs Torpedo Boats" has now 6 torpedo boat opponents instead of 4 (to be challenging after latest changes).
- Further Auto-Design improvements to make it faster and more effective.
- Other minor.

*UPDATE 9 * (10/6/2022)

- Fixed the most critical bugs with alliances and war initiation. Please report if you notice any illogical action, for example a nation signing peace treaty and still fighting. These fixes may also affect the known bug of opposite VP.
- Fixed some blockade bugs (still investigating to fix all the remaining).
- Nations should ask for peace now sooner, if they are badly beaten.
-  Caliber length edits now affect the horizontal and vertical penetration. For example, by reducing the length of the barrel you are increasing the deck penetration and decrease the side penetration (and vice versa). The shell ballistics are now  unique and more diverse than ever, utilizing the many different combinations of gun settings.
- Flooding spread now fully stops if there is no active flooding (previously we could get uncontrollable flooding if there were many sections flooded, and there was nothing to do about it).
- Other minor fixes.

*UPDATE 10 * (10/6/2022)

- Remaining alliance issues should be fixed.
- Remaining blockade bugs should be fixed.
- Reverse VP bug should be now fixed (needs testing).
- Fixed bug that caused battle inactivity and Task Forces to not interact.
- Tooltip/Help Update.

*HotFix UPDATE 11 * (11/6/2022)

- Fixed more bugs of blockades that were not initiating promptly.
- Fixed issues that could delay campaign turns when AI designed ships.
- Fixed issue that could cause battles to start too close in campaign (Needs testing).

*UPDATE 12 * (15/6/2022)

- Fixed campaign bugs in alliances which caused endless wars. Now when a war ends, the relations are properly modified. (Wars between AI nations might still continue without ending, we need to check and fix)
- Improved tension mechanics to not be caused in regions where a nation has no ports.
- Fixed war reparation bugs. Now the player will be able to receive ship reparations and money.
- Various balances for the campaign.
-(WIP) *Engine Room sections become detailed:* Following the new detailed citadel, the engine room is now automatically configured in size and position according to the placement of funnels. The sections where engines are added, affect ship stability and when they are damaged during battle the corresponding engines may become damaged and affect the ship speed accordingly (In a next update you will be able to choose how many engine shafts your ship may support, from 2 to 5. Now the engine shafts are by default from 2 to 3).
- Battle AI balance.
- Gun ballistics adjustments.
- Balances related to auto-design.
- Crew surrenders at 45% losses (from 70%) and ship needs at least 70% crew to be functional in campaign (from 50%).
- Ship Maneuverability affects more the accuracy.
- Acceleration adjustment according to ship design.
- Flooding slight balances.
- Dud torpedoes base chance reduced slightly.
- Other minor.

*UPDATE 13 * (17/6/2022)

- Fixed campaign battles inactivity which was happening when Task Forces were trying to retreat from larger forces and eventually became trapped inside the zone of an enemy with no interaction. The stuck Task Force confused the whole battle system and no missions were generated. Now Task Forces that fail to escape will automatically generate a battle for the current turn (you can seriously overwhelm or be overwhelmed by other forces this way).
- Improved campaign events: Now the funds discussed in an event may actually be transferred to the involved nations. Previously any cost was just deducted but the amount was not sent to the mentioned nation.
- Fixed bugs that could cause wrong "Straggle" type of battles, which are continuation battles from a previous engagement.
- Fixed issue with peace treaties not happening in prolonged wars between AI nations. Now if a nation has negative growth and is losing in VP and war has dragged on for more than 2 years, it will ask for a peace treaty.
-  New Mark 1 French Guns from 9-inch to 16-inch caliber, replacing some older variants where applicable.
- New Mark 2/Mark 3 French Guns from 6-inch to 16-inch caliber.
- Further improved shell ballistics.
- Fixed bug of guns not following the current turret caliber size when cloned.
- Fixed major bug which made players overpowered vs the AI, as the ships designed in manual way, did not contain tonnage costs related with the citadel, resulting in thousands of tonnage advantage, allocated in firepower and protection.
- Finalized the new Engine section system inside the citadel and its interaction with the weight system.
- Various other minor fixes/improvements.

*Hotfix UPDATE 14 * (17/6/2022)

- Fixed Crew Pool bug that made it to not update correctly. Adjusted values to be more manageable for the AI too. AI had a big disadvantage in crew generation before, due to this bug.
- AI logic of scrapping ships is improved.
- Improved AI auto-design logic which seeks empty space to place parts (should make it more effective and faster).
- Fixed critical old bug that could make weight offsets, pitch/roll values to inflate for some ships in battles.
- Fixed a minor scale issue for a new French turret.
- Slight adjustments to the instability settings. This can cause saved ships to have some overweight problems.

*Hotfix UPDATE 15 * (18/6/2022)

- Fixed major bugs on the Campaign income mechanics. There was no applied growth, the growth was not used for the crew pool and other unfortunate issues. These fixes should now stabilize the campaign. It will be optimized with your feedback.
- AI Crew pool will now be affected by the Difficulty Level accordingly.

*UPDATE 16 * (20/6/2022)
- Fixed the remaining issues with the GDP growth. Now the money, crew, port capacity should grow at a steady rate, always according to the GDP growth per month.
- Fixed some remaining issues with alliances.
- Fixed ship/province reparations not working for the one who takes them.
- Fixed bugs that caused scrapped/mothballed/low crew ships being used in the mission system wrongly.
- Upgraded the ship hit box mechanics to a new system. This new change affects the shell ballistics, which sections are eligible for becoming hit according to angle, and fixes rare bugs showing different sections becoming hit than those shown on the 3D model.
- Balanced the crew losses according to the new citadel mechanics. Losses should not be so excessive as before.
- Improved the weight offset mechanics affected by the citadel.
- Fixed some other bugs that were reported.

*UPDATE 17 * (23/6/2022)
- Fixed issues in the campaign that made AI task forces to not move and interact or move inside land.
- Fixed bug that could cause AI to overbuild ships.
- Fixed rare bug that caused fast "ping pong" damage to a ship until it got sunk.
- Fixed tooltip buggy offset in 4K resolution monitors.
- Fixed bug in colliders that did not allow guns to fit in some places, especially found in French pre-dreadnought hulls.
- Fixed bug that caused gun length caliber UI indication to not update if you had more than 1 gun of the same caliber.
- Improved further the shell ballistics so that belt hits are more frequent at close range and will more smoothly dissipate as range increases.
- Added hull "center of mass" indication in the design phase and fixed various bugs in the instability mechanics. Now you will be able to design your ship with the help of this accurate indicator and understand how the mass of the hull is centered and why weight offset is created on one side.

*UPDATE 18 * (24/6/2022)
- Fixed bugs of alliances. Some times an alliance did not break as it should, and later it was impossible to go to war with that nation, because it caused errors.
- Fixed old issue that could cause battles to start too near. This fix will affect the campaign and the custom battles.
- Definite fix of the "ping-pong" damage bug rarely caused by engine damage (needs checking by you).
- Battle AI improvements as per some recent feedback.
- Beam/Draught now affect ship's center of gravity and weight offsets more accurately.
- Other minor fixes.

*UPDATE 18 HOTFIX * (25/6/2022)
- Reverted code that improved the battle distance because it caused error when we left a battle that included TR. We will repair as soon as possible.

*UPDATE 19 * (28/6/2022)
- Fixed various bugs of the campaign that were reported recently by you (and thank you).
- Fixed an old and serious bug of the campaign which caused maintenance costs to be higher than they should, and were repaired only when you selected each ship for each turn (needs testing).
- Fixed an old bug that sometimes could produce false-positive errors on ships when you opened them in the design interface (needs testing).
- Fixed various problems caused by the citadel in weight and instability calculations. Now ships with a short citadel should not have so huge pitch/roll and generally the whole system should work as it should.
- Improved further the Auto-Design system. Ships that are auto-designed should be the most efficient ever and they should also be auto-designed faster.
- Fixed collider errors which caused undesirable too strict collision, preventing guns on barbettes to be closed one above the other, plus causing other issues.
- Various other minor fixes as per your feedback.

3x NEW  HULLS

• “French Experimental Battleship” available from 1899 to 1916 with a displacement between 17,700 and 22.500 tons. This hull can recreate the Danton-class Battleship.
• “French Experimental Dreadnought” available from 1905 to 1916 with a displacement between 19,750 and 24.500 tons.
• “French Large Armored Cruiser” available from 1907 to 1921 with a displacement between 14,800 and 16.500 tons.  

*UPDATE 20* (30/6/2022)
- Fixed critical campaign bug which caused wars to be declared multiple times.
- Fixed other bugs which prevented peace treaties to be achieved.
- Various improvements on the campaign AI.
- Battle AI improvement to keep a more effective distance.
- Improved GDP mechanics to affect better the province growth. The growth of each province is saved so that if it changes hands, it will generate the respective income (Due to the new mechanics, if you attempt to load old saves, the growth will be zero for the whole game, so the saves must be reset).
- Fixed bug which prevented you to select your port if an enemy task force was very near to it.
- Fixed other minor bugs related with task force movement.
- Improved tension mechanics so that tension will not be caused if you have good relations with a nation, unless you amass a very large fleet.
- Improved further the instability mechanics for the ship design, based on your feedback.
- Fixed some minor problems reported for the new hulls.
- Fixed issues of ballistics to evaluate angle of hit better, affecting mainly the deck hits which previously could often cause full penetrations or overpenetrations at a small angle of hit.
- Fixed buggy tooltip offset for monitors with uncommon resolution settings.
- Fixed problems that increased a lot the building time of ships.

*UPDATE 21* (30/6/2022)
- Fixed critical bug which caused nations in good relations to fight each other.
- Some fine tunings in shell ballistics.
- Battle AI balance to be overall more effective in all situations.
- Definite fix for "false positive" errors when we view ships in Design interface of the campaign. The Weight Offset, Pitch/Roll stats will now be accurately saved.
- Event balance to have stronger impact on GDP and Naval Budget.
- Minor other fixes.
HOTFIX
- Balances on the Campaign Technology Progress.

*UPDATE 22* (1/7/2022)
- Fixed problems with weight offset/Pitch/Roll values in campaign having differences from the UI. Your saved designs will become modified as a result. UI may still have some differences but the important thing is that the values will be correct in combat.
- Fixed problems which could cause AI Task Forces to not move out from ports and head aggressively to player.
- Fixed problems with campaign events which did not allocate GDP bonuses as they should.
- Some further Technology progress balance.
- Tension reduction for nations at good relations reduced so that wars can be triggered more easily, if large fleets mobilize at sea.
- Campaign AI personalities will invest more in transport capacity.
- Fine tuning of AI auto-design.
HOTFIX

- The new French Armored Cruiser is now available properly in 1914.
- Increased the potential growth/dissipation of Port Capacity / Population growth in Campaign.
- Increased the potential damage to ports in port strike missions.
- Battle AI fine tuning.

HOTFIX II

- Fixed Task Force battles happening all over the place with merged doomstacks, ignoring actual task force zones and distances.
- Reduced effect of events for Naval Funds and GDP.
- Technology progress speed fine tuning.

*UPDATE 23* (5/7/2022)

- Fixed critical bug of gun ranges not being actual in campaign battles.
- Fixed an occasional critical bug causing no maintenance cost when ships were built and entered the sea as Task Forces on the same turn.
- Fixed bug that allowed an ally to deny declaring war against an enemy of the alliance and continue to be an ally.
- Fixed some bugs related with the ship instability calculations.
- Fixed campaign intro text not appearing in 4K monitors.
- Fixed after battle stats showing inaccurate speed status.
- Auto-Design improvement.
- Battle AI improvement.
- Minor shell penetration mechanics adjustments to make AP more worthwhile.
- Fixed collider unwanted interference for guns with other guns on barbettes.

 

*UPDATE FINAL* (5/7/2022)

- Improved Auto-Design speed/memory usage. (Campaign turns will pass faster, in general the auto-design will be faster and equally effective).
- Lessened greatly some penetration randomization factors which could create unfavorable shell hit results.
- Added temporary extra mechanic for Game Over: When all non-allied major nations are totally defeated, then the game ends. (Previously it would continue forever with small chance to break alliance). In the next update we will add more mechanics to prolong the campaign further.
- Crew Pool Reserve cost will become minimized when it reaches a certain ratio vs the amount of crew used in ships. In this way, any excessive crew not used, will act as a cost-effective reserve.
- Increased Port Capacity Growth.
- Crew damage from HE penetrations and Fire lessened.

[Traslo]

A quick instant pickup is that turrets get smaller when you make their diameter bigger. For example, if you add 0.5" diameter to an 8" gun, the gun actually gets smaller in terms of the space it takes up on the ship. Seems to be doing the opposite of what it should.

There was an event where you supposedly visit a weapons exhibition, and if you pick the answer to the event that gives you money, it simply does not give the reward at all.

Starting funds in 1890 felt a little too harsh. AI clearly built almost 10 times the ships I could, and with the new long-term slower income I couldn't even build one new battleship for 7 months after.

I think one issue that becomes obvious with the longer campaign is that the tech system is extremely slow right now. You can sit there with fully funded tech for years and by 1905 you realize you're 10 years behind according to the dates on the actual tech descriptions.

Great patch otherwise thus far! It's been fun to customise the guns to make more historical options or just to maximize our own doctrine of play.

Edited May 28, 2022 by Traslo

[Traslo]

Every single AI seems to have severe spending issues within 3-5 years of a campaign, with every single country getting constant warnings about their overspending. Of course we can help this by increasing difficulty, but the AI already gets infinitely more funds than us at the start which makes it difficult to see it as a good thing.

Actively losing wars because naval blockades seem to continue even after we turn the tide and have much more power projection than our enemies. Lost a campaign to unrest when Germany got to keep infinitely blockading me when I had 11k power projection versus their 5k. Can't even try to emergency fix this through a save-edit as it's all in Chinese atm for some reason?

Edited May 28, 2022 by Traslo

[neph]

Something's a little weird with weights.

 

That torpedo tube's 16t, and that gun can't be more than 3t, but it completely outbalances it. I can even put several more torpedoes on the aft & there's still a 100% fore balance problem. Very strange.

[Werwaz]

1 hour ago, Nick Thomadis said:

INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS:

- Find the game on your Steam Game Library and right click on it:

- Click on properties...

- ... and on the opened window, select from the list the "BETAS" option. On the appearing list, select the "beta branch" to switch to the latest beta version of the game.

- If you want to switch back to the stable live version, repeat the procedure and select from the Beta list "None".

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

-=Upcoming v1.06 Changelog (Work in Progress)=-

CONTINUOUS CAMPAIGN
The campaign can now be started at the selected year with no immediate wars happening and will continue until 1950 or until one of the following circumstances are satisfied:

• Low naval prestige: Player is replaced by the current government.
• Revolution and naval prestige is not high: Player is replaced by the new government.
• Total Nation Defeat: 50% or more of the Home Provinces are lost.

The AI players will also lose with the same rules and their nations can be obliterated from the map if the home provinces are conquered by another nation. 

During peacetime, the following new mechanics are introduced:

• Random events: Events in which you must take a decision that will affect relations with other nations and other aspects of gameplay. This is a work in progress functionality that will expand further.
• Tension: Tension will be produced mainly between nations with bad relations that have a stronger fleet than necessary in common waters. Tension affects bilateral relations and can slowly bring nations to war.
• Alliances: If two nations have good relations up to +99, then special events can trigger alliance agreements. Nations in an alliance fight their enemies together as it happens in the update v1.05.
• War: If two nations have bad relations up to -99 then special events can trigger a war between them. Other nations will immediately pick a side according to what were their previous relations and modify relations accordingly. This large modification of relations can immediately trigger new alliances and force other nations to enter the war.
• Negotiations for Peace: When eventually a peace agreement is signed and war reparations are shared for the victors, money, ships and provinces are transferred accordingly to the nations (previously the game just ended). While there is no land conquering mechanic yet, the province exchange via war reparations will be somewhat exaggerated. 
• Economic Cycles: During prolonged wars the GDP will suffer greatly and the economic growth accordingly. After the war it will need much time to recover financially, especially if you were defeated and lost provinces.

MAJOR NEW FEATURES
A detailed Citadel functionality, new gun mechanics and Dud Torpedoes enrich the realism factors of the game.

• New detailed Citadel: The damage model becomes upgraded with a far more detailed armoring system. The way you layout out your guns and funnels will affect the length of the citadel (the armored box covered by the main belt and deck) and you will be able to view it in the ship preview during the design process.
  
  So it will be now fully realistic to create Nelson type ships which save weight due to the shortening of the armored citadel. Moreover, the hull weight and strength in each section will be dependent from the way you choose to layout your main guns as well as the center of its mass. For example, the sections in the middle will be significantly stronger and more resistant against damage than the lighter sections at the edges of the ship. Finally, you will be able to add an extra multi-layered armor in the citadel and choose independently its values according to the components enabled "All or Nothing", "Turtleback" etc.
  
  Furthermore, the new calculations for the hull will affect everything about the ship stability and weight allocations. For example, you can enlarge the citadel to reduce the pitch/roll, because by adding weight in the central parts of the ship will significantly increase its stability (Currently this effect is not so strong, because all sections were weighted equally, so adding big guns on the ship would always increase pitch/roll with no way to reduce other than bringing guns closer to the center).
   
• New Special Gun Calibers: A new design panel will allow you to edit the diameter and length of the gun barrels which will affect the gun statistics and their actual size on the ship. So, for example, you will be able to have calibers such as 13.5 inch for your guns before you research the next bigger 14 inch caliber. The variations of designs now will become extremely enriched, as each ship will look different also on the gun scales.
  
  The different guns on diameter and length-caliber will also vary according to the 3D model used for them. Guns of different nations that are large or have a shorter barrel than others of the same caliber and technology, will not be identical as now, but will have different stats accordingly.
   
• Dud Torpedoes: Torpedoes will not be as successful as now but will detonate and damage ships according to their angle of impact and their technology. You may have torpedoes to not explode on impact or explode prematurely with new visual effects. Torpedoes can also deviate from course (extremely rarely in more than 90 degrees).

NEW  HULLS & GUNS (WIP)
Up to now we can confirm the addition of the Danton-class battleship for the French Navy along with new French guns and other hull variants for France and other nations. More hulls will be added.

New models you will find now in the current beta are:
  - New late tech 8-inch and 9-inch guns for Japan
  - New late tech 2-inch and 3-inch guns for USA, Britain, Spain, China
  - New generic Mark 3 Torpedo Tubes for all nations.
 

OTHER IMPROVEMENTS

• Improved ship motion at sea: Pitch/Roll and overall ship movement characteristics are updated to support the new hull weight adjustments. Ships will interact with waves more realistically, as a result.
• Improved shell ballistics & mechanics: Following the new gun mechanics, the aiming/targeting/shell dispersion will be improved and will have extensive variability according to the virtually countless combinations of the different gun settings. When guns fully aim they will characteristically speed up their firing rate to destroy the target quicker.
• Over penetration mechanics improvement: Overpenetration will now be depended further from the angle of impact, increasing the chance of striking full penetrations when firing through the bow of a ship.
  Moreover, overpenetration damage will be dependent greatly from the angle of the ship, significantly damaging the hull if a shell passes through the bow and along the length of the ship.
• Torpedo tubes create special detonations: When Torpedo Tubes become hit and destroyed they can cause a special detonation, simulating the damage caused by the destroyed torpedoes (which are removed from ammo).
• New Ship Components:  “Advanced Electrical Turrets”, “Advanced Electro-Hydraulic Turrets”, and “Advanced Gun Reload System” are now included in the available list of ship components.
• Many Ship weight/cost balances: Following up the new Citadel and Gun mechanics, the weight and cost of ship assets have been adjusted accordingly.
• New weapon stats visible in the UI: In weapon stats you can now review the weapon’s rotation speed in deg/sec and what is the exact weight of ammo per turret. 
• Colored weapon availability: During battle, by hovering the mouse on a weapon type all the respective weapons become highlighted and colored according to their status. “Green” is fully operational, “Yellow” is seriously damaged, “Red” is destroyed or out of ammo. Previously you could just view the weapons highlighted yellow with no information if they were working or not.
• Further Auto-Design improvements: AI will design ships even better following the logic of the new mechanics for Citadel and Guns.
• Further Battle AI  improvements: Battle AI will operate overall in a more effective way vs the player. 
• Further Division logic improvements: There should be less errors in division auto-management.
• Fixed Window Mode: You can now safely Alt+Tab or play in “Window Mode” and the game will continue to play, it will not be paused.
• Beam/Draught Custom Edit: You can now type the needed values for Beam/Draught.

BUG FIXES

• Fixed bug that made HE penetration to be dependent from the penetration of AP shells. AP and HE shells penetration will now correctly work independently according to the chosen AP and HE shell types.
• Fixed various campaign bugs.

Many more will be added, which we will share as soon as we arrive closer to the release of the next update.

Thank you for reading!
The Game - Labs Team

=====

*UPDATE 28/5/2022*
The new beta 1.06 became available. Not all features are ready but the game should be now playable and enjoyable. The campaign needs more work and with your help we are going to finalize it soon. Enjoy!

Certainly appears that there is a lot of new stuff to check out. 

Stuff I noticed about the custom battle:

• The Auto-II loading is duplicated
• I see that an overcast skybox has ben added
• large caliber guns (19 and 20 inch) have been given the standard 100 rounds per gun compared to 90 rounds
• 19"/78 caliber guns are extremely fun to use (especially when using APHE)(DOOM music Intensifies)
• ships are getting one-shot too easily since one full pen will basically instakill the ship

Stuff that could be improved:

• I would like to still have the standard and advanced hydraulic turrets in late era ships in order to save weight for other uses though, since the new citadels add additional weight on top of the main armor scheme.
• "Barbette" module probably should be renamed to something more like "Damage Control" now that we have proper barbettes, seeing that it mostly gives survivability buffs against flash fires and ammo detonations.
• the balance point of the ship should be moved back since most of the first 2 sections of bow deck space are unusable. 

Edited May 28, 2022 by Werwaz

[neph]

Task force under attack--started RIGHT on top of each other. I like the idea to jump into the fight faster, but maybe at slightly greater distance?

[SodaBit]

Anyone one else getting unexplainable ammo dets?
I've had one of my BB's blow up in my face from shots that should not have beaten the armor twice now, and I'm not sure what's causing it. Once by a 15" at about 15km, and another time by a 10" at 12km. 15" hit the main deck, which was itself, 15 inches thick. 10" hit the main belt which was 2 feet thick. I'm 95% sure those shells couldn't have gotten through, but they got all the way down into the main mag and detonated it. Is there something I'm missing here? I'm using the additional layer of armor that came with the update, but I'm pretty sure this is a bug

[Werwaz]

12 minutes ago, SodaBit said:

Anyone one else getting unexplainable ammo dets?
I've had one of my BB's blow up in my face from shots that should not have beaten the armor twice now, and I'm not sure what's causing it. Once by a 15" at about 15km, and another time by a 10" at 12km. 15" hit the main deck, which was itself, 15 inches thick. 10" hit the main belt which was 2 feet thick. I'm 95% sure those shells couldn't have gotten through, but they got all the way down into the main mag and detonated it. Is there something I'm missing here? I'm using the additional layer of armor that came with the update, but I'm pretty sure this is a bug

can be explained by super high velocity, large caliber guns, or the new citadel system. I was playing around with 19"/78 caliber guns, and these occur quite frequently, despite my ships having 20" belts and 11" decks, with another 5 inches of armor behind it. I think that the likelihood of a catastrophic explosion is higher if the citadel is penetrated, which is quite easy with the new super-velocity guns.

[Dave P.]

1 hour ago, neph said:

Something's a little weird with weights.

 

That torpedo tube's 16t, and that gun can't be more than 3t, but it completely outbalances it. I can even put several more torpedoes on the aft & there's still a 100% fore balance problem. Very strange.

I ran into this a couple times w/ 1.05 also. Strip and refit the hill and it’s fine.

[SodaBit]

24 minutes ago, Werwaz said:

can be explained by super high velocity, large caliber guns, or the new citadel system. I was playing around with 19"/78 caliber guns, and these occur quite frequently, despite my ships having 20" belts and 11" decks, with another 5 inches of armor behind it. I think that the likelihood of a catastrophic explosion is higher if the citadel is penetrated, which is quite easy with the new super-velocity guns.

While we can be pretty sure this is down to the new Citadel system and the new guns, I don't think this is working as intended.
Case in point: IJN Amagi coming down with a horrific case of British Battlecruiser syndrome.

2 minutes in and she's been destroyed, with a single shell somehow beating the 781mm of effective deck armor. The problem with this is the fact that the shell was only 317mm in caliber, and shouldn't have been able to pull of this kind of shot. That's not me making shit up either based on the caliber of the gun, the game agrees with that assessment.

At this range, the 317mm gun can penetrate up to 665mm of armor, over 100mm less than what it just penetrated. What Just Happened SHOULDN'T BE POSSIBLE According To The Game Itself. 

I've got a theory here. Note the location of the impact, right behind Z turret. That area is outside the citadel, but still within the same hull section on the ship, and only has 25mm of armor. 

This same sort of thing is present on one of my BB's, which has also had impossible ammo dets. The shells that detonated the mags on this ship landed just in front of A turret, outside of the citadel, but in the same hull section as it, an area that only has 25mm of armor. On one occasion with this ship, its mag was detonated by a 10" shell landing in that exact area, which couldn't break through the main protection of the ship, but could easily go through 25mm of armor. My theory is a hit on a hull section that is only partially covered by the main belt and deck armor can score citadel hits by getting though any part of the armor on that hull section, rather than beating the primary armor.

Edited May 28, 2022 by SodaBit

[CenturionsofRome]

Has anyone else noticed that a X+.9" gun weighs more than the gun 1 inch larger?

[AurumCorvus]

One of slightly annoying parts of the ship designer. If you have set your guns longer/bigger (for example, I was placing 20.9 with +20%), when you're placing the part, you're shown the normal gun w/o modifications. But the moment you place it down, the game replaces it with the modified gun. The problem is that a longer gun requires more space for firing. So you'll place a gun with green arcs, but then it'll get replaced w/ the modified gun and it might not be able to fire or it might have severely limited firing arcs.

Basically, give us the modified part while we're placing things so we can use the green arcs.

[Werwaz]

14 minutes ago, SodaBit said:

While we can be pretty sure this is down to the new Citadel system and the new guns, I don't think this is working as intended.
Case in point: IJN Amagi coming down with a horrific case of British Battlecruiser syndrome.

2 minutes in and she's been destroyed, with a single shell somehow beating the 781mm of effective deck armor. The problem with this is the fact that the shell was only 317mm in caliber, and shouldn't have been able to pull of this kind of shot. That's not me making shit up either based on the caliber of the gun, the game agrees with that assessment.

At this range, the 317mm gun can penetrate up to 665mm of armor, over 100mm less than what it just penetrated. What Just Happened SHOULDN'T BE POSSIBLE According To The Game Itself. 

I've got a theory here. Note the location of the impact, right behind Z turret. That area is outside the citadel, but still within the same hull section on the ship, and only has 25mm of armor. 

This same sort of thing is present on one of my BB's, which has also had impossible ammo dets. The shells that detonated the mags on this ship landed just in front of A turret, outside of the citadel, but in the same hull section as it, an area that only has 25mm of armor. On one occasion with this ship, its mag was detonated by a 10" shell landing in that exact area, which couldn't break through the main protection of the ship, but could easily go through 25mm of armor. My theory is a hit on a hull section that is only partially covered by the main belt and deck armor can score citadel hits by getting though the parts of the armor on that hull section, rather than beating the primary armor.

I think it has more  to do with the absolutely busted guns than the citadel, although the overlapping hull sections certainly doesn't help.  It can be mitigated by placing the citadel as close to the section  boundaries as possible without going into a new section. This should definitely be fixed before the update releases on the main build. The busted guns on the other hand...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav

A 19"/78 caliber Super-velocity gun is as big as those, since it had a bigger warhead than the Paris gun, and better muzzle velocity and range the the Gustav gun. 

And it can fire nearly 15 times faster than either.

it has a 67km max range, with a muzzle velocity of 1075 m/s, or 3500 feet per second, or Mach 3, with the ability to penetrate 135 inches of armor at point blank range. 

And a large SHBB can carry 12 of them. Due to the super high range, the guns get 100% hit probability at about 25km. If that isn't broken, I don't know what is.

All I can say is that it's a good thing that this is a single player game and the only one getting memed by these massive guns is our good friend the AI. (revenge for past and present torpedo spam???)

Edited May 28, 2022 by Werwaz

[Candle_86]

Well your still giving us 1870's tech in the 1890 start

Edited May 28, 2022 by Candle_86

[kineuhansen]

anyone else having this issue where game freeze for a time when you click next turn dont know if there is a bug

[Traslo]

The infinite blockade bug from 1.05 is still around and it's making the long campaign pointless. AI starts blockading you, you get 5 times their power projection and it does nothing, they just get to keep increasing your unrest through a magical blockade that can never be stopped.

[SodaBit]

1 hour ago, Werwaz said:

I think it has more  to do with the absolutely busted guns than the citadel, although the overlapping hull sections certainly doesn't help.  It can be mitigated by placing the citadel as close to the section  boundaries as possible without going into a new section. This should definitely be fixed before the update releases on the main build. The busted guns on the other hand...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav

A 19"/78 caliber Super-velocity gun is as big as those, since it had a bigger warhead than the Paris gun, and better muzzle velocity and range the the Gustav gun. 

And it can fire nearly 15 times faster than either.

it has a 67km max range, with a muzzle velocity of 1075 m/s, or 3500 feet per second, or Mach 3, with the ability to penetrate 135 inches of armor at point blank range. 

And a large SHBB can carry 12 of them. Due to the super high range, the guns get 100% hit probability at about 25km. If that isn't broken, I don't know what is.

All I can say is that it's a good thing that this is a single player game and the only one getting memed by these massive guns is our good friend the AI. (revenge for past and present torpedo spam???)

Yeah, we could probably tone down the penetration values on the new guns. Just tried out an H-44 build with 530/75's. Two tapped an enemy BB with HE, the shells went clean though the turret face. An HE shell. Went through the frontal turret armor on a BB. I like it, but holy shit that's the least balanced thing I've seen in a while.

[Fangoriously]

330-250 second reload times on 20.9in/78 guns, that do nothing but overpen unless you use SAP rounds, with near 100% accuracy, is pretty lol.

Seen ships reach 0% structural several times and not sink, mine and ai, flooding seems to rapidly accelerates though and you sink quite soon. Makes sense though, what is a 0% structural sinking supposed to look like? The ship turning to dust? It should probably mean all bulkheads have failed, and it's about to flood out, sort of how this bug? is showing.

Making that citadel as tiny as possible makes such an enourmous difference, I thought ship designing was complex befor, now it's an art form.

[Traslo]

Britain is still unplayable due to being unable to ever go to the med sea. Every time you try to send ships out ,germany intercepts them so you never get out there, then you're losing 6% of your economy a month due to never being able to even contest convoy losses out there.

[Doomed]

I'm noticing that with a 1890 start that flooding seems a bit excessive. I just  had a 4,000 ton CA with standard bulkheads (both in terms of type and quantity) sink from the flooding caused by a partial penetration from a 1.9" gun.

 

[Vato]

it seems player can't alter the class project in the refit mode and save it as a new class, I started as AH in 1890, designed my ships and then tried to change some classes with a refit mode, copied them into new classes and can't build them now. I also tried to change something in copied classes so game could think it's something new, but to no avail. It seems like there is "refit" flag that allows only conversions(?) and not building them according to new projects. 

Edited May 28, 2022 by Vato

[o Barão]

Thank you @Nick Thomadisfor the update. I see new, very good changes. These are only my first impressions.

 

1- The shell dispersion seems to be much better. It feels realistic and natural. Many thanks. This was a terrible game immersion downside, in the previous beta.

2- About the new citadel mechanic. I see this as a great solution to help the AI in designing the ships. In the previous versions, it was very easy to get flash fires by the simple fact the AI didn't know to place the main battery guns inside the citadel box. Now doesn't matter where the AI place the main battery guns, the citadel box will follow their placement. An improvement.

3- In this image, I am using main battery guns with minus -20% barrel length. But the reload time in the stats is telling me I have +92% in the reload time. The time (26.2 seconds, is correct). So I have an improvement in the reload time, but I also have a penalty in the reload time?

4- This was supposed to be a great addition. Well, it is for the light cruisers and DDs I guess. Sadly, this is atm only another way to design OP ships in comparison to the AI. Where the AI feels the need to spend precious weight and cost to have barbette armor for protection. I simply ignore all related to barbettes in game when designing a dreadnought or heavy cruiser and focus in having a citadel impossible to be penetrated. If the citadel can't be penetrated, the barbettes will never going to be used. Some changes are needed in the armor scheme, to force the player in using barbettes imo.

5- I got a torpedo detonation in the AI ship. What makes this situation strange was the fact the only torpedoes in this ship are in the middle and underwater. I was shooting only HE and i didn't have enough pen with HE to defeat the citadel box. Difficult to see how this is possible. Maybe is related to the fires inside the citadel box?

 

Overall, good changes. Just need some tweaks to make them work well.😉✌️

[Nagato]

Pitch - roll system is screwed. Heck i cant make one single BB without having issuses. Also budget for building ships is to small. Chosed Germany 1910 and can built only six ships WTF?

Edited May 28, 2022 by Nagato

[o Barão]

3 hours ago, SodaBit said:

My theory is a hit on a hull section that is only partially covered by the main belt and deck armor can score citadel hits by getting though any part of the armor on that hull section, rather than beating the primary armor.

This is important to test in battle. If it is true, then is a major issue.

[Candle_86]

I will add the dud torpedo mechanic is nice, it's a real shame that the AI's dud rate seems to not exist, but mine bounce off of them. Also the way war happens is just rediculous. It's managed to make the game less fun.