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

[Littorio]

On 6/20/2022 at 9:43 AM, ZorinW said:

Must have been... 

While we are on the point of AH: FINALLY STOP THEM HAVING TONNAGE DOUBLE OR TRIPPLE THEIR PORT CAPACITY! (same for the rest of the AI nations)

The funny thing is they have been saying this was fixed for months...

23 hours ago, AdmiralKirk said:

I've had this bug for a while, but it's still there in update 15. The fleet screen reports different monthly costs for my ships before I click on them than it does afterward, and the updated value after I click seems to persist and be reflected in my monthly costs, so it's not just a visual bug (I've saved millions per month by clicking on each ship in my fleet and updating its running cost). Usually the new cost is lower but not always.

Related to this update in particular, I got into a war with Austria-Hungary as France and was unable to change my ships' status to Sea Control; only In Being and Limited were allowed as options (even at sea) and I don't think Limited is supposed to be possible in wartime.

On the plus side, I was able to actually complete a war finally! I won against Austria and forced them to cede their remaining battleships and a bunch of armored cruisers to me, which then appeared in my fleet screen. I couldn't take their ports (or provinces?), but I assume it wasn't a decisive enough victory to allow that. Now I'm fighting the Italians with my next generation of battleships (proper Dreadnoughts this time!) and thoroughly enjoying myself.

As a side note, the new French guns look very nice on their early dreadnought hull, and I was able to comfortably arm that hull with 13" mark II twins even on the wing turrets. Nice work with those!

I have noticed this same issue in the UI

20 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

The new save clean up should take care of this problem

Why can we not simply have a normal save system like every other game by this point? We have a save button. We click it. We name a save, and that is it. If someone wants to keep old saves and use broken ones, that is their prerogative, but I dislike this current system of only having one save that overwrites itself every turn.

19 hours ago, Sturmalex said:

What needs to be adressed is the possibility to bring crew up to veteran with the crew training slider.

You could in the last 15 update, at least that I experienced. My ships entering the war all had veteran crews from peacetime training.

11 hours ago, ShakenU said:

My update 16 Feedback:

Ship balance and weight offset is very difficult to get balanced right now. A gravity ball would be great, honestly.

Still can't build ships directly to a refit class. That's a big QOL. At the very least, add a row to the refit window that shows location.

Gravity ball idea +1

Building to refit is obviously needed. Why on Earth do I need to build an outdated model of ship, get it out of drydock, and into the water, only to need to haul it out again to put on it what should have been there during construction? For that matter, refits themselves and what they allow are pretty lenient. Main battery guns and armor were not usually touched much (especially guns). I think refitting needs some balancing and time/cost adjustments perhaps.

6 hours ago, o Barão said:

"you have also moved the center of the citadel."

Ok, I understood what you are saying. But what happens if I remove all the armor? Now would be irrelevant the size of the citadel, right?

Still very difficult to see the logic here. Let's try a new approach. Taking the first image, let's add a tiny gun in the stern and another one in the bow. Still no armor in the ship, but now I stretched the citadel to cover the maximum length. So I added the same small weight in both ends. What we get?

A difference from 99% aft weight offset to only 12.4% aft weight offset. Still no armor. And this is tiny, single barrel 2 inches. The ship displacement is a maximum 2,886 tons and each tiny 2-inch gun weights 2.7 tons in total.

Very difficult for me, at least, to see a reason here.

UPDATE:

You are right.

I placed only the 2 tiny guns, and then move them to close to the center to see if there is a change in the ship displacement.

And there is a big change. So now we are getting a good reason why it works this way.

However, now there is another question.

If I am not using any armor, why should the citadel size have any impact on the ship weight?🤔

Thank you for your work examining this. This is a vital question. Nick, why would a "citadel" of non-existent armor affect balance so much???

6 hours ago, ZorinW said:

Even in Update 16 Alliances and wars are still pretty much broken.

Wars are not displyed correctly, alliances switch from one turn to the next, battles vs. our Allies are created etc....

 

Don't see this going into release any time soon.

Thanks for this info. The wars being incorrectly displayed is something I saw on my attempt at a Beta 15 playthrough, and yet no one seemed to mention it except you.

[Zombie1914]

15 minutes ago, Littorio said:

You could in the last 15 update, at least that I experienced. My ships entering the war all had veteran crews from peacetime training.

True but you still increased the number of reserves and essentially also increased the crew training cost to ridiculus amouts.

If this is working as intended i would rather have basic crew training without the cost increase.

[JeeWeeJ]

This was interesting, a GLORIOUS™ battle on the plains of Germany with...land battleships? 🤔

 

One of the funnier bugs I've encountered so far imho. 😄(and reported ofcourse)

[Fangoriously]

My compliments to the AI for this extremely well designed, sturdy, and balanced destroyer

the accuracy penalties for shooting at destroyers and light cruisers seems a bit absurd right now, they have plot armor levels of evasion, and even when you do hit them I've seen light cruisers tank 10k damage, and more often than not surrender from crew loss instead of sink any other way. Destroyers have the decency to pop satisfactorily when a 13in+ main gun shell hit them center mass at least.

[Zombie1914]

2 hours ago, JeeWeeJ said:

This was interesting, a GLORIOUS™ battle on the plains of Germany with...land battleships? 🤔

 

One of the funnier bugs I've encountered so far imho. 😄(and reported ofcourse)

Considering that Hamburg is still located with a baltic sea access i am not really surprised. 😑

[Littorio]

Tried to play update 16 today, and I immediately noticed that the main factor affecting fore/aft weight offset now is secondary gun placement. This seems very odd given the caliber and positioning within certain hulls. I cannot speak for later dates, but I am seeing widely divergent offsets in 1890 given just a pair or two of small caliber casemates.

How these weapons are having such an extreme effect compared to armor, engines, etc, I don't know. They seem to have a vastly more important role in balance than the main caliber battery. This has to be bugged...

Edited June 21, 2022 by Littorio

[admiralsnackbar]

3 hours ago, Fangoriously said:

My compliments to the AI for this extremely well designed, sturdy, and balanced destroyer

the accuracy penalties for shooting at destroyers and light cruisers seems a bit absurd right now, they have plot armor levels of evasion, and even when you do hit them I've seen light cruisers tank 10k damage, and more often than not surrender from crew loss instead of sink any other way. Destroyers have the decency to pop satisfactorily when a 13in+ main gun shell hit them center mass at least.

I agree, I think the accuracy of guns in the 3-6 inch range need hit chance buffs that scale to higher levels from continuous fire. 2 inch guns are super accurate right now at the ranges they can actually hit anything. From like 1890 to 1915 they will end up doing significantly greater amounts of damage than any gun lighter than 8 inches, but eventually they become obsolete when torpedo ranges increase. 

[jejones19]

Has anyone else noticed that angles of impact for shells are too steep compared to their velocity. Been getting a load of deck hits against enemy ships with high velocity guns. At one point, I saw an angle of impact of 89 degrees with a 855m/s gun @ 20km. Too make things worst my ship wasn't able to hit the belt of the enemy ship until 4 to 2km out. This was with a mark 3 410 +20% length in custom battles with 1940 tech. 

[PalaiologosTheGreat]

Light Cruiser IV has problems when fitting anything on the back bc the boats aren't moving lol 

[Speglord]

I lost 4 torpedo boats and sank 1 plus 2 battleships, and the VP split 2100-1500? doesn't seem right imo

[PalaiologosTheGreat]

6 hours ago, Fangoriously said:

My compliments to the AI for this extremely well designed, sturdy, and balanced destroyer

the accuracy penalties for shooting at destroyers and light cruisers seems a bit absurd right now, they have plot armor levels of evasion, and even when you do hit them I've seen light cruisers tank 10k damage, and more often than not surrender from crew loss instead of sink any other way. Destroyers have the decency to pop satisfactorily when a 13in+ main gun shell hit them center mass at least.

You can honestly make a CL that's nearly as armoured as a BB in the 1920's+ scenarios... I've definitely done a lot of CLs which maxed out both citadel and regular armour

[admiralsnackbar]

36 minutes ago, PalaiologosTheGreat said:

You can honestly make a CL that's nearly as armoured as a BB in the 1920's+ scenarios... I've definitely done a lot of CLs which maxed out both citadel and regular armour

Yes I found that a bit odd. a 6 inch belt is the same kind of armor featured on the USS Des Moines is it not? And you can put 6 inches on the bow and stern. Seems like destroyer armor is closer to light cruiser armor and light cruiser armor closer to ww2 heavy cruiser armor. A protected cruiser would only have armor on the gun shields and a citadel deck, but you would be crazy to use that as your standard light cruiser design even early game. 

Right now I find it's relatively easy to create a 5000 ton light cruiser with 6 inches of belt armor and 1 inch of deck armor all around armed mostly with 2.9" guns that will obliterate smaller ships. I had liked to put 5-7 5" guns on the front and sides but 80% of the damage comes from the 2.9" guns. 

Without the very high base accuracy on the 2 inch guns that eventually increases to 100% [With 1 shot every 2.5 seconds or so]  when you stack the gun caliber and skill buffs, I don't think that escorts would be able to effectively deal with destroyers and TBs. The other guns simply don't do enough damage quickly enough to keep even a single  TB or destroyer from getting a torpedo attack off. 

______________________________

Before i forget, has anyone gotten an issue where italy's navy is reduced to zero but it remains at war?

Edited June 22, 2022 by admiralsnackbar

[Dave P.]

Not beta-specific, but IMHO the tech tree could use some greater flexibility, or at least a different structure for the tech topics with very, very long lists of topics to get (particularly guns.)

For instance, it kind of sucks that I have to research all the guns, in a specific order, to get larger guns to higher marks. If I have Mk4 9" guns, and Mk1 16" guns, why do I have to research all my 10-15" guns up to Mk4 before I can unlock 16" Mk4? My engineers obviously know how Mk4 guns work, and how 16" guns work - why can't they combine the two without taking a multiple-year detour to design/build intermediate calibers?

I'd honestly like something more akin to how the torpedo tech is laid out - with launcher tech, torp size, and propulsion/range as separate techs that I can focus on individually.

This is pie-in-the-sky, but if the entire research system were thrown out and done over, I'd like to be able to adjust individual spending amounts for each tech, rather than have just the three "priority" options and then the remaining resources split evenly. If I'm trying to rush a new DD design out the door before an impending war, money spent on researching armor is money wasted.

[Dave P.]

Is anybody else having issues w/ torpedo launcher throwing off the fore/aft weight calculations a LOT? I added a pair of fantail quad launchers to a 70k ton battleship and it went from 4% fore to 40% aft. Seems impossible on a ship that large.

The diagram on the right didn't show the citadel being extended aft, either.

[Sturmalex]

 

12 hours ago, Littorio said:

You could in the last 15 update, at least that I experienced. My ships entering the war all had veteran crews from peacetime training.

yes, and thats fine, but according to the tooltip you should not be able to train your crew further than trained with crew training. Right now in 1890 Campaigns battleships snipe TBs when they are approaching at 32kt lol. In the end it happens to AI and to the player but its still subpar. it makes 800m TBs unuseable.

[Littorio]

11 minutes ago, Sturmalex said:

 

yes, and thats fine, but according to the tooltip you should not be able to train your crew further than trained with crew training. Right now in 1890 Campaigns battleships snipe TBs when they are approaching at 32kt lol. In the end it happens to AI and to the player but its still subpar. it makes 800m TBs unuseable.

I just don't think they updated the tooltip to fit their latest changes. The UI is outdated in many areas. It doesn't even list government type properly in the diplomatic relations tab...

[imp44791]

Having come to the game late, I am still working through the naval academy missions and haven't dabbled at all in the campaign. A couple of bugs I saw are:

1. I saved a battle right at the beginning (I like to do this to experiment with tactics). I then proceeded to play but started to run out of ammo. I therefore loaded up the mission again with my save game (which to remind you, was made right at the start before a shot had been fired) but the ammo counters were not reset, i.e. I started the same scenario with the used up stocks from before. No matter how many reloads I made the ammo counter kept running down from the previous level reached. Obviously some variable doesn't get properly reset on reload. This should be easy to catch.

EDIT: For what it's worth, this was on the "Sink the Raiders" scenario.

2. Very often when I first design a ship to start a mission and launch it, the game seems to experience some sort of memory leak because it gets stuck very badly on the "loading mission" stage of the scenario creation with the hard disk light on my machine going almost permanently on and about 80% of my physical memory being in use by the game. No matter how long I wait (well, I give up after 10 minutes) the scenario won't finish loading. Killing the process and reloading the game fixes this, as the scenario will subsequently launch reasonably promptly (thankfully ship designs are retained). This leads me to suspect a memory leak, as I said.

EDIT: Latest example of this in the "Modern battleship" scenario, but it has happened in others including the target practice one at the beginning. I haven't found an obvious correlation with the type of scenario, it just tends to happen some times.

3. In general, the scenario launch is oddly programmed to say the least. If you alt-tab out e.g. to use a second monitor while you wait for the mission to load, well, the mission will apparently stop loading - especially when the AI is on the ship design stage. I.e. you need to keep the game in the foreground for the process to complete. Again, I haven't left it for hours alt-tabbed away to see if it eventually completes, but it is a very clunky process. You can't expect the user to give up the use of his machine for long stretches (and this is necessary when the fleets become large) with the game in the foreground while nothing is happening.

The game is extremely fun as a conception, even  without the campaign (which judging by the bug reports here, still has a long way to go).

Edited June 22, 2022 by imp44791

[neph]

2 hours ago, Dave P. said:

Not beta-specific, but IMHO the tech tree could use some greater flexibility, or at least a different structure for the tech topics with very, very long lists of topics to get (particularly guns.)

For instance, it kind of sucks that I have to research all the guns, in a specific order, to get larger guns to higher marks. If I have Mk4 9" guns, and Mk1 16" guns, why do I have to research all my 10-15" guns up to Mk4 before I can unlock 16" Mk4? My engineers obviously know how Mk4 guns work, and how 16" guns work - why can't they combine the two without taking a multiple-year detour to design/build intermediate calibers?

I'd honestly like something more akin to how the torpedo tech is laid out - with launcher tech, torp size, and propulsion/range as separate techs that I can focus on individually.

This is pie-in-the-sky, but if the entire research system were thrown out and done over, I'd like to be able to adjust individual spending amounts for each tech, rather than have just the three "priority" options and then the remaining resources split evenly. If I'm trying to rush a new DD design out the door before an impending war, money spent on researching armor is money wasted.

I'm pretty happy with the tech system. Realistically, you can't just instantly stop research in a field nor can you immediately start it. Even if you were to instantly demand to pull all funding & liquidate all resources related to a field of research, it's not like it'd be immediately transferrable to other fields, and it'd cause long-lasting and irreparable damage to research in the defunded field.

 

Money takes time to have effect on research.

[Carl_Bar]

57 minutes ago, Littorio said:

Building to refit is obviously needed. Why on Earth do I need to build an outdated model of ship, get it out of drydock, and into the water, only to need to haul it out again to put on it what should have been there during construction? For that matter, refits themselves and what they allow are pretty lenient. Main battery guns and armor were not usually touched much (especially guns). I think refitting needs some balancing and time/cost adjustments perhaps.

 

Main battery was somtimes touched, but it varied wildly from case to case what was and was not touched. Currently it's fairly unclear what determines refit time and cost. Pulling out and changing the existing main caliber guns is a pretty big deal, and if your change the number of guns or caliber it gets significantly more intensive.

 

17 hours ago, Scoundrel said:

1. Gun Barrels: I am unsure how realistic the game is supposed to be, but "accuracy" (technically it should be precision) should drop off with longer barrel length, not increase. This is a multivariant issue: comp8unding machining tolerances in the gun drives (referred to as mount lash or pivot lash to engineers) coupled with muzzle inertia (due to ship movement) and vibrational nodes (which increase with shell mass and is the primary loss of precision) are the main factors in reducing precision in long barrel guns. The sole reasons to increase barrel length is to increase velocity (for penetration) and lengthen the maximum point blank range of the guns for direct fire. Also, for those who are curious, rate of fire is determined almost solely by heat as it directly affects barrel longevity. I could write a paper on this subject (based on 5" guns as that is my area of expertise) if I had the time.

 

 

Yes and no on the RoF, thats certainly true for more modern systems, but the game covers  a pretty long chunk of time where actual practical limits on loading speed where the primary issue, not the cooling rate. Once truly fully automatic systems came in that changed, but for a long time the barrels could stand a higher RoF without excessive wear than the crews could actually achieve.

 

From a pure realism standpoint somthing similar applies with the accuracy. A few particularly inaccurate mountings/guns aside the majority of the time the fire control was a bigger limitation that the guns, parallax error was a particular problem until digital fire control came in way later on.

 

Of course i don't think the devs are trying to be hyper realistic anyway and as i've reiterated before i'm not necessarily sure that would be the right tack to take from a enjoyable game-play perspective, though the current system severely disfavours smaller gun calibers.

[Zombie1914]

5 hours ago, neph said:

Money takes time to have effect on research.

I agree with this and therefore i suggest to change the research into a progressiv systerm like the transport capacity with quite a bit more impact on the total research speed as long term investment in research should deliver considerable better results.

 

Considering the quite rediculus tech budget in the late game of the campaings that would make more sense.

And with a tech budget of almost a billon dollars i would expect an actual army of research providing new technologies.

 

PS: I just finished a 1900 German campaing with 100% research budget and always focusing on large gun research. Here is the status on Nov. 1949:

Working as intended or not?

Edited June 22, 2022 by Zombie1914
PS added

[Carl_Bar]

4 hours ago, neph said:

I'm pretty happy with the tech system. Realistically, you can't just instantly stop research in a field nor can you immediately start it. Even if you were to instantly demand to pull all funding & liquidate all resources related to a field of research, it's not like it'd be immediately transferrable to other fields, and it'd cause long-lasting and irreparable damage to research in the defunded field.

 

Money takes time to have effect on research.

 

Whilst thats true the current tech system somtimes produces the opposite issues where it feels like time and money don't produce meaningful results.

 

Which leads in nicely to my own detailed writeup of what i consider the biggest issues with research and a bit of touching on the economy in general and how it feeds into these issues.

 

First things first. In my latest campaign i set the research slider to max right at the start. My focuses were Boilers, Armour Quality, and Towers. I quickly and easily got well ahead in armour quality, from which i then switched to Turret systems with that focus, after getting well ahead there, (i was after the various double turret techs), i swapped to cruiser hulls where it's been for about 5 in game years.

 

Despite a maxed research slider and this application of focuses the only techs i'm ahead of the timeline curve on, (using the on tooltip dates to judge, i haven't checked every single branch as it's hard to keep track of that much), is Armour Quality,  and Turret Mechanisms. I'm slightly ahead on control towers and i'm behind to varying degrees on all gun techs, (Big and Small) engine techs, boilers techs, and all hull techs.

 

Having to have a maxed research slider to not quite keep up with the natural progression is on it's own a noticeable issue, at the same time, whilst maxing out the research slider should be nowhere near required to follow a historical timeline, it's also true that maxing out the slider should be a lot harder than it is now. This actually goes for the rest of the slider IMO.

 

There's a few interconnected issues at work here.

 

1. It's too easy to max out the sliders ATM but also feels kind of necessary. 

 

2. Some tech folders have very few items to research and as a result it's fairly easy to get significantly ahead of the curve there.

 

3. Some tech folders are absolutely clogged with masses of entries that have to be gone through.

 

 

This brings me to my thoughts on how to fix things.

 

A ) The recent economic reworks have been behind the ease of maxing the sliders. but at the same time those reworks where needed, maintaining a fleet is rather expensive as is the necessary refitting and new builds. The issue is a combination o too low a cap on the sliders, and also the baseline effects having gotten tuned down too far because where so readily maxing sliders.

 

At the same time i think it would be wise if the sliders where adjusted to move their current maxed costs and effects to around the 50% mark, (transports aside). But also to make the costs follow a logarithmic scale rather than a linear one. This would make large shifts in the slider position have much larger effects on your overall economics, making going extremly high or low on the sliders a deliberate choice with significant positives and negatives.

 

B ) there needs in some cases, (Engines, Armour Quality and Rangfinders being the most notable), to be some redistribution of tech items from elsewhere. As things are whilst you could rebalance these in simple time taken terms, it would rapidly lead to many of these branches going an unreasonably long time between upgrades. A redistribution of a few techs or additions of some new ones would solve the issues whilst still leaving a feel of actual progress occurring.

 

A few obvious moves would be to moves the various fire control type accuracy buffs from control towers to rangfinders, and move the fuel type techs and various weight reductions from boilers to engines. Armour quality i'm less sure on how to fix. Maybe combined that with the armour weight folder and move Internals Protection and Hull Protection into the same row and rename the row Survivability?

 

I'd also look at some of the overstuffed tech branches and see if you can't either combine some researches, (for example small guns could combine 2", 3", & 4" nto a single item for each Mk numbers and ditto for 5" & 6", with 7" and 8" remaining discrete), or split them out into extra folders, (Light Cruisers vs Heavy Cruisers would be a good choice here).

[ZorinW]

I just came across an error in the gun dmg reduction calculation.

The modern light cruiser has a base gun damage taken modifier of +33%. Due to the way I outfitted the ship, under the resistance tab, I get a -13% gun damage bonus, also due to increased beam a further -9,5 % reduction. For my decreased draught I get a malus of +7,2 %. That would result in a total of +17,7 % gun damage. Yet the game gives out a final modifier of +21 %.

How is that possible?

[itolan1752]

12 minutes ago, Zombie1914 said:

I agree with this and therefore i suggest to change the research into a progressiv systerm like the transport capacity with quite a bit more impact on the total research speed as long term investment in research should deliver considerable better results.

 

Considering the quite rediculus tech budget in the late game of the campaings that would make more sense.

And with a tech budget of almost a billon dollars i would expect an actual army of research providing new technologies.

not only Tech Budget but also Crew Training.

I don't really need so many crew but I still want to keep they "trained".

After watch other player's thoughts, I have 2 opinions to solve it.

1. Make crew pool have Upper limit like Transport Capacity (200%). once crew pool reach the limit number (for exmple,50000 people). funds will be saved and just need a little money to train the crew.

2. Make crew trained become 2 slider, first slider is crew recruit,second slider is crew trained.

I think first idea is better. because second opinion have a big problem, how to let AI know how many crew they need?

[Darth Khyron]

Many things have been said already, overall the new update is a step in the right direction.

I still find formations still broken. Various ships of different properties are mixed together needlessly.
For example, eight battleships are on the board, four heavier with a speed of twenty knots, four light with a speed of 26 knots. The AI mixes three of the former with one of the latter. The second formation consists of two fast and one slower BB and a single fast BB is grouped as a seperate formation.

Same is true for other ships. Grouping them before the contact with the enemy is nearly impossible, especially when "Evade Ships" is active.
This feature is also a bit problematic. When I sink an enemy vessel, it is seemingly removed as an obstacle. I have formations sail past, the first ship, which I can control, evades, but the following ships blissfully ram the sinking wreck, often sustaining serious damage in the process.

The enemy does not spam torpedoes anymore. Yeah! BUUUUT. It spams torpedo carriers. In the current campaign, I had a battle agains the french (4BB, 4 CA, 4 CL and 4 TBs on my side against 4 BB, 26 CLs, 13 DDs and 88 TBs on the other and against the italians (8 BB, 4 CA, 4 CL, 4DD and 8 TBs on my, 3 BB, 7 CA, 13 CL, 4 DD and 64 TBs on the other).
It is...hard...to deflect the tsunami of torpedo boats. Challenging, three hour (real time) battles are cool, make no mistake, but the AI is seemingly still very much in love with torpedoes

Another note : Recently, ships on "Escort" order tend to flee from the enemy, leaving their charges to fend for their own. The escorts stay at range and fire on enemies, regardless of the disposition of the units they escort.
 

Edited June 22, 2022 by Darth Khyron

[CenturionsofRome]

@Nick Thomadis

French BB 5 hull has a new bug. It's not possible to fit two 8in turrets in the foremost slot of any of the sponsons, despite that they fit in the other two slots. 

Edit: looks like that slot is invalid for all guns. Just tried to put a 2in there and it's invalid.

Edited June 22, 2022 by CenturionsofRome