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

[AdmiralKirk]

On 6/3/2022 at 7:28 AM, Nick Thomadis said:

What exactly happens here? It is not shown very clearly. It would help to see the space behind the turret. If the turret has very little space behind it to rotate, then it cannot rotate fully.

Casemate guns do not seem to obstruct, although if this is the case, then we will check it out.

(Apologies if this is moot since the most recent hotfix)

When I built that ship, I installed the 10" main gun with plenty of clearance to rotate (as shown in the first image). Then later I added the secondary weapons in casemate mountings. When I was finished laying out the weapons I checked all their firing arcs and found that the forward main gun had an extremely narrow firing arc (as shown in the second image). Moving the gun didn't help and there was nothing obstructing it on the deck, so out of curiosity I removed the forward casemate and that restored the original firing arc. Concluding that the casemate was obstructing the main gun, I took a screenshot of the original firing arc then added the casemates again and took a second screenshot; only the casemate mounting differs between the two images. 

On 6/5/2022 at 4:32 AM, Nagato said:

Question, why AI now do not use standard caliber guns, i mean 14 inch, 15, inch, 16, its always, 14.2, 14.5, 15.1, even for smaller caliber guns?

I have also noticed that the AI likes to use odd calibers, which is natural if there's a factor in ship design that adds randomly to the gun caliber. Might it be possible to weight the RNG so that the AI is biased toward calibers in whole numbers of inches (as most nations seemed to do in real life)?

And this may have already been addressed in one of the hotfixes, but I think the AI really ought to have a design check that prevents multiple weapons within one inch of each other in caliber on the same ship—good luck trying to interpret shell splashes!

(Maybe make an exception for the French 😁)

 

Edited June 6, 2022 by AdmiralKirk

[Hemidal]

14 minutes ago, Draco said:

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

Yeah theoretical ROF was ~3 RPM but that was for certain elevation. Even that website states what were conditions to achieve that kind of rate of fire and it comes with a lot of assumptions, also if you read further it even states what was practical ROF 91 shells in 13 minutes and using theory it should be 312.

 

And surprisingly enough other example when battleship tried to dump their load right quick and in hurry is Kirishima vs Washington. US BB fired 75 shells in 7 minutes giving us 1.19 RPM compared to Bismarck's 0.875 RPM.

 

And regarding Jutland crews were training a lot to get that sort of ROF and also when they were on limit they started removing flash protection from hoists.

[Iuvenalis]

I can't seem to figure out why my naval budget keeps shrinking every month. Any ideas? I'm not at war. The numbers don't seem to make sense. See two screen shots below from one month to the next.

[DerRichtigeArzt]

I can't follow the forum like I used to so I dont know if this topic was raised, but large battles are unplayable as of right now, and I think as develpoers have delivered on many promised features of "fun" matter(new guns, new hulls, more depth in ship building etc.) I think they should look into battles themlelves. My biggest gripes are:

1. Fleets spawn too close to eachother. Sometimes on top of eachother

2. AI is still abismal

3. The real time needed to win a battle of 60+ ships is just ridicolous. 

Possible solutions:

1. Increase the distance between fleets, create more speedup times for convinience

2. No easy fix for that, AI is a bitch to develop

3. Alow us to speed up beyond 5, Unfortunately you guys might have to shift from your original goal for this game and make it a map game like RTW2, with an option to zoom in for cinematic effect. 

 

Hope you guys are all ok and I wish you the best of luck. 

[Candle_86]

53 minutes ago, Draco said:

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.

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.

Well the BL 18in Mk1 has a ROF 1perMinute given, it wasn't in wide use and might have improved by WW2, but this is the gun the Nelson's would have had, so they'd have had a 1 round per minute fire rate in theory. The ROF only really applies to ready use ammunition, so once the shells staged for ready use and they start sending them up from the main magazine, expect it to take longer even under perfect circumstances

Edited June 6, 2022 by Candle_86

[Candle_86]

4 hours ago, Norbert Sattler said:

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.

thats maximum size, modernized dreadnought scales down to 32, 35, or 38k depending on country of origin, now Modern Battleship 2 and Super Battleship 1 and 2 are limited to much higher dockyards but you can always build modernized dreadnoughts 

[jkl]

24 minutes ago, Iuvenalis said:

Any ideas?

Look at crew and research expenses.

[Werwaz]

2 hours 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.

While I certainly agree with the longer reloads and aim time, we definitely have a problem when a 20" mk3 gun from 1940 has worse accuracy than a 12" mk.1 gun from 1890. 

[Norbert Sattler]

52 minutes ago, Candle_86 said:

thats maximum size, modernized dreadnought scales down to 32, 35, or 38k depending on country of origin, now Modern Battleship 2 and Super Battleship 1 and 2 are limited to much higher dockyards but you can always build modernized dreadnoughts 

For Austria-Hungery, which I was playing at the time, modernized dreadnought goes from 64k to 90.5k. You can easily check by starting a custom game as AH in 1927 or later.

Edited June 6, 2022 by Norbert Sattler

[Makko]

Balancing the big guns is definitely a tricky issue if we don't want it to be simply "go as big and long as you can" because that is always best

 

Something that might help is adding independent length limitations, so that if you have a gun barrel that's a maximum of 15m long you can have a 20cm L/75 or you could have a 30cm L/50. That would give a reason for the smaller gun to be more accurate.

 

Right now the situation is rather silly because you end up with ~14 inch guns being massively more accurate which has no historical basis whatsoever. 

 

If we need to make the bigger end of the scale have lower rate of fire or increased weight for balance that's IMO a better decision than juts giving them inexplicably horrible accuracy 

[Iuvenalis]

Just wanted to report that I'm having massively stability issues (program, not the ships lol). It locks up on "building new ships" after every turn. I have to restart the game and reload the campaign. The turn actually advances, it just locks up.

Also, everytime I load or if I go into the ship designer, all my upkeep costs go up. I then have to click each ship in the fleet screen to make it go back down. Weird.

[Cryadis]

5 minutes ago, Iuvenalis said:

Just wanted to report that I'm having massively stability issues (program, not the ships lol). It locks up on "building new ships" after every turn. I have to restart the game and reload the campaign. The turn actually advances, it just locks up.

On that i am guessing but i am also quite confident that this occurs when the AI is retrofitting / designing new ships. It depends a lot on your actual hardware on how long it takes, but i guess letting it run for a while (for testing i'd say 30 mins max) you should be able to determinate if it actually locks or if it just takes a while.

 

I am aware that for a player a turn of 30 mins, or 15 is not really playable, but working in SW development myself it is a vast differance if you have to hunt for a performance (thus user feedback) issue or if you are trying to reproduce an actual deadlock.

Also adding your Pc specs including CPU speed might be quite useful.

[captinjoehenry]

4 minutes ago, Makko said:

Balancing the big guns is definitely a tricky issue if we don't want it to be simply "go as big and long as you can" because that is always best

 

Something that might help is adding independent length limitations, so that if you have a gun barrel that's a maximum of 15m long you can have a 20cm L/75 or you could have a 30cm L/50. That would give a reason for the smaller gun to be more accurate.

 

Right now the situation is rather silly because you end up with ~14 inch guns being massively more accurate which has no historical basis whatsoever. 

 

If we need to make the bigger end of the scale have lower rate of fire or increased weight for balance that's IMO a better decision than juts giving them inexplicably horrible accuracy 

I do agree but honestly as things stand right now the massive weight and loss of fire rate from the really big guns is already really noticable and has serious impacts.  To the point where I've used designs with lots of 15" guns or a couple of 18" guns instead of 20" guns.  As 20" guns are so heavy it's hard to mount more than two 20" turrets even on a SBB without some notable compromises.  And their seriously reduced fire rate compared to other guns is already really noticable.  As things stand 20" guns already take nearly 50% longer to reload than a 18" gun and you end up only mounting about half as many 20" guns as 18" guns while the 20" guns only deal less than 50% more damage.  And not even 25% more pen.  Mean while if you go for 15" guns you can mount quite a lot more of them than 18" guns and get almost as much range and pen.  And this was back at the start of 1.06.  there already was a lot of really valid reasons to not want to use 20" guns or even 18" guns.  Now though with the unrealistic massive loss of accuracy there's straight up no reason at all to use the 20" guns.  They'll almost never hit the target and even with their massive amount of pen you can still just ricochet or overpen or otherwise fail to deal any real damage.  And in the time it takes you to land that single 20" hit a 15" gun would have landed probably multiple full salvos worth of shots dealing vastly more damage and still with high enough pen to get through virtually any armor you can come across.

[Makko]

I agree with this, I currently just put on whatever is the most accurate (usually long 15s) and laugh as the AI flails around with .3% accuracy 18 inchers while I have like 8%

[Candle_86]

39 minutes ago, Norbert Sattler said:

For Austria-Hungery, which I was playing at the time, modernized dreadnought goes from 64k to 90.5k. You can easily check by starting a custom game as AH in 1927 or later.

sent you some info in a private message to help you

[Skeksis]

"Gamey" solution/counter to "always bigger best”.

If caliber and barrel length from 1.1” to 20.9” could be linear over gun mark specs, to calc damage, accuracy and range.

Then it’s the ‘gun mark’ that can be the difference between caliber adjustments, e.g. 12.0 to 12.9.

Say: if the research for 13” is at mark I and 12” is mark III, then adjusting 12” gun caliber up could scale mark III specs down to mark I specs. Vice versa for calibering down guns, 12" to 11.1". 

Therefore, only if the next caliber gun has a decent mark, will it be worth calibering up the guns. Or for the player to find their best medium.

So not "always bigger best".

Edited June 6, 2022 by Skeksis

[AdmiralKirk]

30 minutes ago, Skeksis said:

Say: if the research for 13” is at mark I and 12” is mark III, then adjusting 12” gun caliber up could scale mark III specs down to mark I specs. Vice versa for calibering down guns, 12" to 11.1". 

Therefore, only if the next caliber gun has a decent mark, will it be worth calibering up the guns. Or for the player to find their best medium. 

This is a really good idea. It seems a little silly that if I have, say, mark III 15" guns and mark II 16" guns, I can mount a 15.9" gun with mark III stats or a 16.0" gun with mark II stats.

The only issue with this that I see is that the tech tree sometimes "skips" a caliber, so that I might have mark III 13" and 15" guns but mark II 14" and 16" guns. So by this system I suppose as you scaled from 13" up to 14" you would lose quality, but then as you scaled from 14" to 15" you would gain quality.

I began writing the above description on the assumption that would be a problem to solve but in hindsight I actually really like that situation. It would make for interesting design choices—there's a limit to how big I can practically go on a given hull, so can I really afford to go all the way up to the 15" and get the good guns, or is it better to stay with the high-quality 13" guns and rely on the faster rate of fire? Or do I accept some tradeoff in quality in order to go a little higher in caliber and benefit from increased damage? Could I maybe accomplish the same thing by switching to heavy shells or a more powerful bursting charge? Can I abide a more dangerous flash fire chance? This sort of optimization problem is what makes a game like this fun for me.

[Nagato]

Somehow AI is worse then before.

Not only they spam quite close (in every second battle) but it seems less aggressive. It still send destroyers and light cruisers but most of formation holds back and try to get as far as possible from you instead faceing you. It is good thing that AI ships were generally slower so i can catch with them.

Odd calibers are still in for AI.

AI have smaller fleets, at least small number of battleships and battlecruisers but it has ton of destroyers.

It would be good if reparation system is added, where you receive ships from defeated nation, and use them as your own to fight other nations. Renaiming system would aslo be welcomed so that you can name your ships not having auto names.

Also, shells seems to do less damage they did before. I mean i still sink enemy but i need much more to fire and spend more ammo on them.

[admiralsnackbar]

20 minutes ago, Nagato said:

Somehow AI is worse then before.

Not only they spam quite close (in every second battle) but it seems less aggressive. It still send destroyers and light cruisers but most of formation holds back and try to get as far as possible from you instead faceing you. It is good thing that AI ships were generally slower so i can catch with them.

Odd calibers are still in for AI.

AI have smaller fleets, at least small number of battleships and battlecruisers but it has ton of destroyers.

It would be good if reparation system is added, where you receive ships from defeated nation, and use them as your own to fight other nations. Renaiming system would aslo be welcomed so that you can name your ships not having auto names.

Also, shells seems to do less damage they did before. I mean i still sink enemy but i need much more to fire and spend more ammo on them.

I think the AI is being given an instruction to the effect of:  if enemy has more big guns then you, throw your screens forward and try to torpedo them.

The problem with this strategy is that the AI doesn't know about the insanely powerful 2.9 inch secondary gun that can melt torpedo boats and destroyers. 

 

[Skeksis]

Issue, battle ended while attacking transports.

Battle mission included “destroy all transports”.

Had DDs sinking transports and BC killing last CA, when CA sunk the battle ended, still had more transports to sink, all were in sight.

I did lose sight of enemy transports at one stage but by luck, the CA/CL battle had circle back around onto the transports again, haha.

Anyway battle should not have ended. Sorry no screenshot for proof, was in dismay before realizing to quickly get screenshot before ending screen.

Edited June 6, 2022 by Skeksis

[Candle_86]

I wish we could calier down also, what I mean by that is well I guess a late 40's tech but sabot rounds, this was investigated in the late 40's, but by then the battleship age was over, but it would be kinda cool to see, you could shrink a 14 into a 12 but have higher muzzle velocity than a normal 12 for increased damage and range even over a normal 16

[Draco]

5 hours ago, Candle_86 said:

Well the BL 18in Mk1 has a ROF 1perMinute given, it wasn't in wide use and might have improved by WW2, but this is the gun the Nelson's would have had, so they'd have had a 1 round per minute fire rate in theory. The ROF only really applies to ready use ammunition, so once the shells staged for ready use and they start sending them up from the main magazine, expect it to take longer even under perfect circumstances

You guys are right. I watched some footage of actual loading drills and timed it. 15" and 16" guns definitely do not have a 2 RPM RoF under non-perfect conditions. Thank you for making me check my bias.

[Draco]

6 hours ago, AdmiralKirk said:

I have also noticed that the AI likes to use odd calibers, which is natural if there's a factor in ship design that adds randomly to the gun caliber. Might it be possible to weight the RNG so that the AI is biased toward calibers in whole numbers of inches (as most nations seemed to do in real life)?

Very much a fan of this idea!

 

3 hours ago, Skeksis said:

"Gamey" solution/counter to "always bigger best”.

If caliber and barrel length from 1.1” to 20.9” could be linear over gun mark specs, to calc damage, accuracy and range.

Then it’s the ‘gun mark’ that can be the difference between caliber adjustments, e.g. 12.0 to 12.9.

Say: if the research for 13” is at mark I and 12” is mark III, then adjusting 12” gun caliber up could scale mark III specs down to mark I specs. Vice versa for calibering down guns, 12" to 11.1". 

Therefore, only if the next caliber gun has a decent mark, will it be worth calibering up the guns. Or for the player to find their best medium.

So not "always bigger best".

For once we agree, very good idea Skeg, hope it is included

[Nick Thomadis]

3 hours ago, Draco said:

If caliber and barrel length from 1.1” to 20.9” could be linear over gun mark specs, to calc damage, accuracy and range.

It already works this way. You keep comparing data that is not yet updated due to UI. Fix is on the way.

[Nick Thomadis]

*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.

Please restart Steam to download (no save reset was needed)