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

[admiralsnackbar]

1 hour ago, Norbert Sattler said:

I repeat my earlier question: How do I get peace negotiations?

If I get the box that asks if I want to accept peace and agree, the war just ends without even a further notification (unless it doesn't work and the war goes on despite my decision). And if I "Fight to the end" the war goes on until there's a revolution in the enemy country or they go bankrupt... in neither case do I get a peace negotion screen either.

Not WAD

[Makko]

For some reason replacing this fore 28 ton gun with a 128 ton torpedo launcher makes the back of the ship heavier?

[Draco]

12 hours ago, Plazma said:

Because of propellant. When you have longer barrel you can put more powder(to shoot the projectile) to achieve biggest muzzle velocity and because of that accuracy(short time of fly, etc. and more flatter way of fly.). Sorry for my English, but I can't describe it accuracy, below photo of ammo, shell hit the enemy ship and this white (propellant) is that what give you speed and power for shell. Ofc. if you put longest barrels you don't need put more propellant, but this is much less effective. I think we have some gold proportions propellant : length of barrel. 

Incorrect. A longer barrel allows the same amount of propellant to push a projectile for longer, transferring more velocity because it has more time to push the projectile before it leaves the barrel and begins to decelerate. If you are also increasing the propellant then you have to make the barrel thicker to resist the increase in shock, in which case your barrel is going to be exponentially more than just 100% heavier.
If you increase the propellant as well you defeat the point of making the barrel longer, because you are using two different techniques to achieve the same result, in other words double-work, except increased calibers don't have the same downsides as increased propellant (barrel wear & excessive expenditure of propellant pr. shot).

[neph]

@Nick ThomadisCould we please get this easy QOL fix?? Thank you!

[Makko]

Speaking of QOL fixes, something I would really love is if we could remove the three decimal places in damage numbers

 

When it takes thousands of damage to sink a ship, seeing a 4.562 figure appear mid battle is just needless visual clutter and can confuse the player if they misread the period as a comma 

[neph]

I figured out why torpedo boats are so hard to balance & why small guns seem so heavy on small ships. It's because it drags the citadel out. The heavy thing is the citadel on this unarmored ship. Try balancing a TB, it's almost impossible without having a gun on either end. https://imgur.com/AnfaMAU.png

[Draco]

25 minutes ago, neph said:

@Nick ThomadisCould we please get this easy QOL fix?? Thank you!

Why not just read it on the right hand tooltip though? honestly this clutter is getting on my nerve, pitch and roll should probably be replaced by long and base accuracy since these are more important this patch, and engine efficiency was never really important enough to be in the middle there in the first place... why do we need stats that won't be important in two patches time to be highlighted like this? It's not like any stat of a ship is NOT important in some way, this just fools the player into thinking they can ignore the rest of their ship's stats, then go on to wine about why their ships get sunk all the time, even though these particular 4-5 stats seemed well balanced.

If you're having trouble with flash fires you're better off armouring your turrets more anyway. There will, and should, always be some flash fire chance, but if no shell penetrates then the dice never gets cast.

Edited June 6, 2022 by Draco

[neph]

48 minutes ago, Draco said:

Why not just read it on the right hand tooltip though? honestly this clutter is getting on my nerve, pitch and roll should probably be replaced by long and base accuracy since these are more important this patch, and engine efficiency was never really important enough to be in the middle there in the first place... why do we need stats that won't be important in two patches time to be highlighted like this? It's not like any stat of a ship is NOT important in some way, this just fools the player into thinking they can ignore the rest of their ship's stats, then go on to wine about why their ships get sunk all the time, even though these particular 4-5 stats seemed well balanced.

If you're having trouble with flash fires you're better off armouring your turrets more anyway. There will, and should, always be some flash fire chance, but if no shell penetrates then the dice never gets cast.

same reason I was delighted to see engine efficiency & pitch & roll on the HUD--it's way faster to find & you can actually use the sidebar for other things besides always having it on the numbers you've got to keep track of.

Agreed about flash fires, but for some things (modern light cruisers, for example) it matters a TON

[LoSboccacc]

That is assuming everyone is stupid and it's producing barrels longer and stronger than needed or undercharging shells for shit and giggles

[Draco]

25 minutes ago, neph said:

same reason I was delighted to see engine efficiency & pitch & roll on the HUD--it's way faster to find & you can actually use the sidebar for other things besides always having it on the numbers you've got to keep track of.

Fair point.

[Norbert Sattler]

11 hours ago, admiralsnackbar said:

Not WAD

I have no idea what you are trying to say.

[admiralsnackbar]

12 minutes ago, Norbert Sattler said:

I have no idea what you are trying to say.

In other words you dont' *ever* get peace negotiatons even when the AI offers it to you in the campaign UI because it's not working as designed. 

[Norbert Sattler]

But other people in this very thread have said they had  peace negotiation screens in their campaign... so it must work somehow.

Is it random whether it works or not?

[admiralsnackbar]

6 minutes ago, Norbert Sattler said:

But other people in this very thread have said they had  peace negotiation screens in their campaign... so it must work somehow.

Is it random whether it works or not?

I have not been able to get peace negotiations as of this most recent patch. I was able to get negotiations from the previous patches but thus far i have not gotten any reparations as a result. 

[Hemidal]

First of all I am impressed by amount and rapid deployment of hotfixes. Shows real commitment when a hotfix drops on weekends. Now some feed back on campaign:

 

Citadel

works as intended i can keep my BBs around 19% pitch. One thing bugs me tho - citadel on DDs is there one? Designer shows that there is but should it?

 

Diplomacy

While tension system works and you can prolong (or shorten) peace time before first war for the life of me I can't get AI to peace out. None of victory conditions seem to be working - I've never seen a war summary screen in 1.06. Revolutions come and go, blockades are lasting for years AI sends peace offers I accept and nothing happens.

 

AI designed ships

The biggest problem I have with AI designer is underpowered ships (compared to players). In current  and previous campaigns I tend to design capital  ships to be as good as possible which is reflected in their price - current BB is 200M. AI spams BBs worth 40M. 30k displacement, 17knt with 10 11.1 inch guns and really bad armour vs 44k displacement, 31knt 9 15 inch guns decent armour (i can't say if its good or bad never lost one). I think that AI should build ships after player designed their and try to match player's creation or at least try to get their ships in similar displacement and price brackets (like +/-10% on both stats). Reasoning is quite simple - ships were not designed in vacuum. Nations always tired to counter each other. That also solves problems with beginners - they would meet ships that are comparable  to theirs.

 

Tech tree

Research speed is well adjusted my only concern would be  researching techs that are barley used by player - I've never ever used 9 or 10 inch guns but i am forced to get them to mark 4 before i get first 16 or 15 inch. Somewhat same with range finders.

 

Bugs and tid bits:

VP bug, damaged ships turning on dime (essentiality spinning in same spot), travel times - it took 15 days to do transatlantic cruise  in 1830 but it takes 3 months to get from Mediterranean to North Sea. at 18 knots 4000 km journey should take like 5 days.

 

Other than that perhaps I would put the gun adjustment system in tech tree (replace couple techs) to give fighting chance to DDs and TDs. Perhaps gun layout tech for side guns could be fused with centreline and in that place you could insert +/-5% and +/-0.25 inch tech?

 

Keep up the good work! I really like how the game is evolving!

 

Edit: Just got first peace deal. it turns out all 3 alliance members have to agree for peace before they start a war again.

 

Edited June 6, 2022 by Hemidal
update

[Traslo]

AI wars seem to be infinite, though it appears (at least on the surface to me) that this is because when AI peaces out it only ever does it with one person rather than with a side. E.g. France will peace out Italy but Austria-hungary stays at war. Italy still joins the battles but france and italy now keep generating tension and Italy just officially re-enters the war 12 months later.

The player seems to get not even a tenth of the events the AI gets. I can see a single AI get 15 events in the time it takes me to get 2.

Would be nice if dockyard construction in 1890 was increased to the speed of 1900+ start, as otherwise you can never have dockyards big enough for later battleships and dreadnoughts when you unlock them.

Also is it just me or is our GDP artificially capped quite aggressively? I could not get British GDP to go past 12.5 Billion no matter what I did in the 1890 start.

Edited June 6, 2022 by Traslo

[Norbert Sattler]

I have wondered why the AI doesn't seem to build any BBs and I guess I know now.

Despite having my shipyards building at all times from the start of the 1890 campaign to the current year of 1926, my shipyards are only at 42k tonns, while the smallest BB I can design has a minimum weight 46k t, which will be obsoleted in another 6 month at which point my shipyards need to be at 64k minimum to build a BB... which will only take me about 14 or so years at maximum build speed....

But this 64k minimum hull is the modernized Dreadnought.

So not only is the research speed a bit too fast right now, the shipyard build speed is also too slow with pretty much fixed 1k per year if you start in 1890. I think having the amount you can build up per tick should tied to the current year and not the starting year and increase either with a technology or alternatively just go up every 10 years to what it would be if you started in that decade to begin with.

Edited June 6, 2022 by Norbert Sattler

[TiagoStein]

7 hours ago, Draco said:

Incorrect. A longer barrel allows the same amount of propellant to push a projectile for longer, transferring more velocity because it has more time to push the projectile before it leaves the barrel and begins to decelerate. If you are also increasing the propellant then you have to make the barrel thicker to resist the increase in shock, in which case your barrel is going to be exponentially more than just 100% heavier.
If you increase the propellant as well you defeat the point of making the barrel longer, because you are using two different techniques to achieve the same result, in other words double-work, except increased calibers don't have the same downsides as increased propellant (barrel wear & excessive expenditure of propellant pr. shot).

That is true (in general terms).

 

Longer barrels fire longer because you cannot lower and raise them as fast. They present a MUCH MUCH  higher torque force from their mass and length. both the mechanism and the material cannot keep a 1 meter  and a 10 meters barrels moving at same rate.

[Draco]

53 minutes ago, TiagoStein said:

Longer barrels fire longer because you cannot lower and raise them as fast. They present a MUCH MUCH  higher torque force from their mass and length. both the mechanism and the material cannot keep a 1 meter  and a 10 meters barrels moving at same rate.

I assume you mean fire slower?
That's fair, but there is no way to mitigate it like with turret rotation, meaning something that could easily be fixed with better hydralics IRL now becomes an unfixable issue IG. Iowa had the heaviest and longest guns in the US navy, but her power train still allowed her to train at 12 degrees pr second, which is faster than most cruiser armaments, nevermind most other battleships, so this obviously wasn't a problem that was hard to fix IRL.
As I said, if you want to artificially make these guns worse than they are IRL, then do it by having this already modelled. The +20% caliber gun should weigh and cost more than current, because the heavier hydraulics should be assumed to be included with the longer barrels (unless the developers want to add yet another turret module just for gun train, which I wouldn't recommend) on the general principle that naval architects aren't complete arsehats who won't fix problems that have readily available solutions.
All BB caliber guns should be able to be upgraded to two rounds pr minute RoF, because that's how real life guns worked, regardless of shell diameter or caliber.
The costs in weight and $ should be the only limiting factor here, as is the case IRL.

Edited June 6, 2022 by Draco

[Nick Thomadis]

9 hours ago, Makko said:

For some reason replacing this fore 28 ton gun with a 128 ton torpedo launcher makes the back of the ship heavier?

This happens because torpedo launchers are not considered for lengthening the reinforced hull zone. We will improve to be considered.

[TiagoStein]

22 minutes ago, Draco said:

I assume you mean fire slower?
That's fair, but there is no way to mitigate it like with turret rotation, meaning something that could easily be fixed with better hydralics IRL now becomes an unfixable issue IG. Iowa had the heaviest and longest guns in the US navy, but her power train still allowed her to train at 12 degrees pr second, which is faster than most cruiser armaments, nevermind most other battleships, so this obviously wasn't a problem that was hard to fix IRL.
As I said, if you want to artificially make these guns worse than they are IRL, then do it by having this already modelled. The +20% caliber gun should weigh and cost more than current, because the heavier hydraulics should be assumed to be included with the longer barrels (unless the developers want to add yet another turret module just for gun train, which I wouldn't recommend) on the general principle that naval architects aren't complete arsehats who won't fix problems that have readily available solutions.
All BB caliber guns should be able to be upgraded to two rounds pr minute RoF, because that's how real life guns worked, regardless of shell diameter or caliber.
The costs in weight and $ should be the only limiting factor here, as is the case IRL.

 

 

But with everything else equals (same hydraulics) a shorter  barrel  will still be possible to lower and raise faster. 

 

Longer barrels also have another issue in real ships, they put more strain in the hydraulics when the ship is rocking , that can increase the occurrence of problems and even affect accuracy on those scenarios, but that is very hard to present in a game.

[Nick Thomadis]

Regarding some concerns about 20-inch guns accuracy and reload reduction for long barrels.

First of all you should not compare 20-inch guns of Mark 1 with 14-inch guns of Mark 5. Technology and muzzle velocity has a huge physics effect on the applied accuracy. Having 20-inch guns of low muzzle velocity should be still a considerable advantage at very large ranges where the 14-inch guns cannot even fire, but at medium to short distance, the rate of fire, technology aspects of the smaller guns take effect in a more pronounced way.

There should be always a trade off when we compare gun aspects of so many variables, and it is understandable that it can get complex for someone to assess all of this, but the game tries to simulate realism and not "gamey" rock-paper-scissors mechanics = bigger is always better.

Regarding the reload penalty on longer rifles, it simulates the longer time needed to de-elevate the guns in order to reload, enable bigger and thus a little slower mechanisms, and also apply a mechanized delay to reduce the "droop" effect of the barrels, which due to heating can literally destroy guns after a few salvoes, if it is not considered.
You can read about very big guns of world war I and II would take many minutes to reload, not because it took so much time to place a shell into the reload mechanism, but because the gun had to cool down due to safety reasons between each shot.

PS. Please do not use as reference other naval games, where naval guns reload like machine guns. You are not going to find this here.

[captinjoehenry]

37 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Regarding some concerns about 20-inch guns accuracy and reload reduction for long barrels.

First of all you should not compare 20-inch guns of Mark 1 with 14-inch guns of Mark 5. Technology and muzzle velocity has a huge physics effect on the applied accuracy. Having 20-inch guns of low muzzle velocity should be still a considerable advantage at very large ranges where the 14-inch guns cannot even fire, but at medium to short distance, the rate of fire, technology aspects of the smaller guns take effect in a more pronounced way.

There should be always a trade off when we compare gun aspects of so many variables, and it is understandable that it can get complex for someone to assess all of this, but the game tries to simulate realism and not "gamey" rock-paper-scissors mechanics = bigger is always better.

Regarding the reload penalty on longer rifles, it simulates the longer time needed to de-elevate the guns in order to reload, enable bigger and thus a little slower mechanisms, and also apply a mechanized delay to reduce the "droop" effect of the barrels, which due to heating can literally destroy guns after a few salvoes, if it is not considered.
You can read about very big guns of world war I and II would take many minutes to reload, not because it took so much time to place a shell into the reload mechanism, but because the gun had to cool down due to safety reasons between each shot.

PS. Please do not use as reference other naval games, where naval guns reload like machine guns. You are not going to find this here.

This all sounds good to me.  But the issue with big gun accuracy is not that simple.  In all the cases I've been reporting have been in custom battles set in 1940.  In that setting all big guns from 16" to 20" are mk 3 weapons.  Which should imply most other factors are equal.  I'm not at my PC right now but with those settings guns from 16" to 20" have roughly comparable muzzle velocity with otherwise identical techs.  

Given the way gun physics work that means the 20" should be the most accurate of the 16" to 20" guns in the 1940 custom battle setting.  Which has been the case in all previous versions of this game until 1.06 patch 3.

14" and 15" guns are mk 4 in custom battle 1940 and that has largely worked out in a reasonable way in previous game versions where the Mk4 15" gun was more accurate and capable than the mk3 16" gun and comparable to the mk3 17" gun.  It required going up to 18" mk3 in order to fully surpass the Mk4 15" gun in a major fashion.  This makes sense by and large.  But now that the guns straight up get less accurate as size increases when the guns tech level remain the same and the components on the ship they are mounted on also remain the same that is no longer the case 

 

As for gun reload time as the barrel length goes up that seems spot on the money to me.  Longer guns take notably longer to train and elevate and longer guns probably are going to be using at least some additional gun powder as they now have a longer barrel that can take advantage of it.

 

As far as bigger is always better that really hasn't been the case for quite a while.  And even more so in recent patches.  Frankly before 1.06 I never really used any gun over 18" as the 18" already had plenty of penetration and damage and mounting more 18" guns gave you a notable advantage than a lesser number of bigger guns.  And in 1.06 that's even more the case.  Even before patch 3 I found that 15" guns almost always dealt the most damage in a battle.  As they had good penetration and excellent rate of fire plus low weight given their smaller size.  The only reason I've started to use 20" guns are because of the introduction of the citadel mechanics.  Which now allows using 2 quad 20" turrets to overall save weight due to the shorter citadel.  But even with that the BC that mount 15" guns still tended to deal more damage before patch 3.

[Draco]

56 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

You can read about very big guns of world war I and II would take many minutes to reload, not because it took so much time to place a shell into the reload mechanism, but because the gun had to cool down due to safety reasons between each shot.

I know you have better things to do, but if you ever get the time Nick (or someone else for that matter), could you provide a link? because all i Can find is Mikasa and other pre-ww1 ships having a minute or longer. Doesn't seem to really happen after the invention of the quick fire (QF) method, which for this game, would be anything above Mk.I.
Navweaps also lists littorio's guns as having a 45sec RoF, but it seems to be the exception rather than the norm, with all other capital ship guns listed as 30 sec, or sometimes less (Bismarck).

Plus every single capital ship at Jutland had 30sec reload, so it's not like it's a 1940s thing either.

1 hour ago, TiagoStein said:

But with everything else equals (same hydraulics) a shorter  barrel  will still be possible to lower and raise faster.

Off course, not trying to argue against that, just trying to argue "why would you ever not just use better hydraulics?"

Hell, Bismarck had an above average length 47cal gun, plus extremely heavy guns for their size because of the german breech block mechanisms, and yet her shells pr. minute rate was faster than all the others, while Yamato's guns had the same average 30sec reload as the vast majority of her peers, in spite of her guns being the heaviest guns ever mounted on any ship ever, so clearly, better hydraulics were practically universal IRL.
I just think there are better ways to represent this, like with extra weight to the guns by default to compensate, or buffing the reload modules, allowing them to compensate (and yes, make them heavier than they are, heavier but better), or to at least allow max turret rotation modules to mitigate the malus like they do IRL.

[Draco]

45 minutes ago, captinjoehenry said:

Longer guns take notably longer to train and elevate

As long as you don't compensate with better hydraulics, which IRL literally everyone except the Italians did.

46 minutes ago, captinjoehenry said:

and longer guns probably are going to be using at least some additional gun powder as they now have a longer barrel that can take advantage of it.

That never happened IRL. It defeats the purpose of increasing barrel length. Longer calibers have higher muzzle velocity because the expanding gas has more time to tranfer kinetic energy to the projectile before it leaves the barrel and begins to decelerate.
It allows you to go further with the same propellant, which is the entire, and only, point.
If you then also increase propellant charge you achieve the same benefits, but gain the malluses of increased barrel wear, less accuracy (read up on italian shell quality & the effects of unusually high propellant charges which they eventually abandoned) and excess expenditure of propellant.
The malluses of longer calibers obviously being: you need better hydraulics, it takes longer to produce and is more expensive, weighs more (especially with the better hydraulics factored in), and if you ask a certain circle of american admirals in the 1930-40s, the potential for plunging fire is reduced.
The only time you'd increase propellant was with german and british "supercharges" which were only used because it was a cheaper alternative to replacing the guns with a longer caliber in the british case, and in the german case to provide shore based installations with a means to outrange ship mounted guns without the trouble of actually making a whole new gun, so IRL you could have one or the other, but never both, because both gives you all the disadvantages of both, where one or the other could achieve all the advantages on it's own.