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

[Lima]

Finally managed to bring the game to peace agreement (usually the war continues after pressing "Agree"). As a result, I received neither money, nor ships, nor provinces. Can you tell if it hasn't been implemented yet or is it a bug?

Edited June 9, 2022 by Lima

[Lima]

8 inch (203mm) guns are incredibly strong when they are improved in size and length as much as possible. I apologize for using millimeters everywhere, they are much closer to me than an inch.

So, if you maximize 203mm guns, they get an absolutely incredible bonus compared to other guns. They are more accurate than the most improved 229mm and 254mm guns.

The further in time, the less noticeable it is, but in the 1890/1900, 203mm guns destroy absolutely everything, and in the 1910-1940 they are very good as minor caliber.

Edited June 9, 2022 by Lima

[Phelidai]

Perhaps the shipyard size increase should be tied to a research technology or your country's GDP?

[Candle_86]

12 minutes ago, Phelidai said:

Perhaps the shipyard size increase should be tied to a research technology or your country's GDP?

no this is the change we needed as best as we can get, historically a navy that wanted to build a bigger ship than they had shipyard slip that would fit it, would expand that slip until it was big enough, see the Iowa class for examples of them purposefully expanding the slips to build them, historically this was a block but for a year or two, and more related to length and not raw weight. Right now at least we will have the shipyard size in a useable state, as it was Great Brittian would in 1950 be able to have a 72,500 shipyard if they built the maximum size every time without any misses, now it should make it possible from 1890 to 1950 to reach 132,500 by 1950 which is perfectly usable, and more interestingly by 1910 GB before was limited to 32500 and now they can do 52,500, so shipyard size will always outpace tech at a reasonable pace until super battleships and let's be honest, super's are fun but they cost 3x a modernized dreadnought, and I'd rather have 3 battleships than some 130k monster anyway.

[SpecTRe_X]

13 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

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.

The only issues I've ever read about that regarded hot barrels was in mortars where in the tube gets hot enough to "cook off" the mortar itself. Land based artillery functions the same as naval artillery and while barrel wear increases as the barrel gets hotter it takes a long time for the barrel to get hot enough to begin to deform. Look at how many rounds land based artillery sent on fire missions during WW2, Korea, and Vietnam in a given time window. Or, RoF for 40mm AA. Barrel mass and time to heat are probably fairly proportional.

I suspect that you're mistakenly combining barrel sag, which was an inherent condition in all barrels, with misreading  of a reload time-clock illustration.

11 hours ago, Hemidal said:

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.

Theoretical RoF assumes a gun is both stationary itself and firing at another stationary object. It does not deal with the effort of trying to land that fired shell on a target.

Practical RoF doesn't deal with the machinery of the gun or gun platform as much as it does how all of those aspects culminate in the effort of hitting the target that's sighted. Just because you can fire a round every 20 or 30 seconds doesn't mean it will land anywhere near where you're aiming, which defeats the point of firing.

It also seems like people are conceptualizing gun elevation hydraulics as being piston based when it actually works more like the oil pump in your car or the hydraulic drive on construction machinery. The part that gets substantially more powerful/larger/heavier is the pump motor.

[Phelidai]

Not sure if this has been brought up already or not, but the tech researching could use some attention in future updates. Been playing a campaign as Germany starting in 1890. It's now mid 1902, and I've unlocked nearly all early-mid tech dreadnought hulls, mark 3 guns from 9-13in, mark 3 guns from 2-6in, all standard rangefinders. This felt more than a bit off while I was playing, but I figured I'd had 100% research budget for most of the time so it couldn't be too crazy. Then I unlocked marine diesel engines... that run on coal... in 1902. I never proritized engines after I got turbines, and yet, here we are. Hell, I'm even getting close to unlocking radar.

In terms of bugs, one that I've found is prevalent is the game getting mixed up with who is at war with who, and who is allied with who. This seems to happen after two AI countries get into a war or alliance. For example, Austia-Hunary and France began a war. A few months later, I ended up fighting the British and the French. However, the top left UI shows all nations against Britain, while the right side UI shows the proper war against Britain and the war against France. This notably resulted in a strange situation where a French ship joined one of my heavy cruisers in a fight against the British... whom they are allied with.

That being said, I'm still really thankful to have this update. Hope to see more campaign work in future updates, no matter where it goes.

Edited June 7, 2022 by Phelidai

[SodaBit]

I've got some custom battle feedback here.
Overall, update 6's balance changes feel pretty good. Heavy guns (17" and up) feel much more balanced than they were in update 5, with these weapons being better suited for taking on other capital ships, while mid caliber guns (14-16") are more flexible than their larger counterparts, making both sets of guns valuable on their own, without one set being outright better. The AI has also seen a decent improvement with regards to tactics, with light forces actually taking independent actions rather than loitering around embattled capital ships. This is a change I've wanted to see for a very long time, and I'm glad it's finally been implemented. There's still some issues with the AI's division of labor, namely some units seemingly having no orders and sitting around waiting to get shot.

Wuhu here has been on lunch break since the battle started. Pretty decent CL, but it literally hasn't moved this entire time.
I still prefer this over previous versions, I'd rather it be blatantly obvious when a unit isn't going to contribute to a battle rather than having to guess if the units assigned to useless tasks are a threat or not.
As for this battle, both enemy CA and DD charged my BB and BC as soon as they realized I had no fleet screen, and I'm guessing this CL was supposed to be assigned to screen the enemy capital units? Wuhu should have been deployed with the rest of the light forces in their attack on my battle line, but fact that said attack happened at all is a massive improvement.

I'm still waiting for the victory points bug to be fixed before I get into campaign, so I'll probably only provide custom battles feedback for the time being.

[Grandpa Canuck]

LOOOOVing this Update 6-----

• 

 

"-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."

 

These 2 items are wonderful (I got my a s s kicked), the first couple of battles I realized I had to think to win, GREAT WORK! I saw no dumb AI suicide charges or waste of ships. If saving one was possible the AI made an attempt. Also as AI running my screen ships, also great! Felt a lot more natural and representative of possible real engagements.

[o Barão]

6 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

 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.

Would be possible to add rotation speed modifiers when modifying the gun caliber or barrel length? The gun weight changes, but atm, this doesn't make any impact to the rotation speed.

 

My feedback about the current barrel length mechanic.

 

The accuracy

Now, about the guns. I can't stress enough the issue with the unrealistic accuracy modifiers. I am no naval gun designer, but if these values are true, then all of us could ask why all navies simple didn't designed guns with crazy long barrels? If it was because of weight issues, then we could ask why we didn't see secondaries with insane long barrels. But we don't see that. The designers of the time were not smart enough to see how good it was to hit targets by simply having a crazy long barrel? Or maybe, they already knew, that increasing the barrel length would not give an improvement to accuracy, enough that could justify the downsides by going that route in the designing process? I prefer to believe, the persons at the time, knew what they are doing for the most part, and I almost 100% sure, that they run several tests, with different barrel lengths to reach the conclusion that it wasn't worth it. But what we have in game is a complete different story...

At, 10000 m we have these values:

L51: 2.1%

L63: 7.9%

L76: 19%

So we have a 9x multiplier!!!! accuracy improvement, when going from the L51 to the L76 barrel length. A night and day difference. I understand the longer the barrel, the higher the shell velocity. The higher the shell velocity, the less travel time to reach the destination, making it easier to hit a moving target. But to have a x9 modifier is just a crazy number to believe for a shell that is travelling, what? 2x or 3x times faster?

 

The deck pen.

With the barrel length increase. We have a higher potential distance to target. Sure, makes sense. But if the propellant is always the same, then at mid ranges the shell trajectory should be more "flat" when in comparison to similar gun, but with a smaller gun barrel, right?

So how can this is possible?

At, 10000 m the deck pen values are:

L51: 7.1cm

L63: 8.1cm

L76: 9.2cm

So how is it possible, the L76 is better at plunging fire at this mid-ranges, if the shell trajectory is more "flat"?

Edited June 7, 2022 by o Barão

[Traslo]

update 6 has a lot of nice needed tidbits. Could we perhaps see GDP cap increase as time goes on? In 1890 start it's hard-capped at $12.5Billion and it's surprisingly easy to reach it as Germany and Britain. You get to like 1905/1910 and affording advanced designs becomes impractical

[SpecTRe_X]

Has anyone seen a second war in the campaign after a country collapses from revolt?

I just played a campaign where France collapsed and now I can't produce tension with anyone. I didn't even fight the first war because I was playing a pacifist Germany hording naval tech.

[Traslo]

11 minutes ago, SpecTRe_X said:

Has anyone seen a second war in the campaign after a country collapses from revolt?

I just played a campaign where France collapsed and now I can't produce tension with anyone. I didn't even fight the first war because I was playing a pacifist Germany hording naval tech.

Right now the game doesn't seem to cope with ending wars properly at all, primarily because everyone peaces out individually and AI doesn't seem to peace out between one another at all

[Nagato]

There is one problem that still remains at large, and that is turn change. Sometimes it is fast but sometimes it is forever and sometimes after long wait it end in crash. This should be fixed by now already. Speeding turn change.

[Gibbel]

24 minutes ago, SpecTRe_X said:

Has anyone seen a second war in the campaign after a country collapses from revolt?

I just played a campaign where France collapsed and now I can't produce tension with anyone. I didn't even fight the first war because I was playing a pacifist Germany hording naval tech.

I've noticed that after a peace the tensions between the countries previously at war goes down. In my case I was playing Germany. I defeated the British and after the peace treaty my tension with them seems to decreasing every turn. To me, this makes sense as it represents a peace treaty. So far so good. Now let's come to the part that is probably not working as intended.

I've also noticed that my tensions with France are decreasing when I send task forces to the Channel or the North Atlantic. When I send them home, there is no change in tensions. So, I think the modifiert that decreases tensions is erroneously applied to your relations with all nations instead of just with those you signed a peace treaty with. I'm going to continue the campaign to see if this is temporary or not.

I've also noticed that the center of gravity calculation seems to be off, at least for this torpedo boat I was trying to build. According to the weight list, most of the mass is in the rear half of the ship. The forward gun is the only component forward of the ship's center with a significant lever arm. Despite this the ship still has a massive for weight offset.

[admiralsnackbar]

2 hours ago, Traslo said:

update 6 has a lot of nice needed tidbits. Could we perhaps see GDP cap increase as time goes on? In 1890 start it's hard-capped at $12.5Billion and it's surprisingly easy to reach it as Germany and Britain. You get to like 1905/1910 and affording advanced designs becomes impractical

I didn't know that, intersesting. Growth rates always seemed random to me, even when I tried to keep my country at peace and just build transports my growth rate would just fall. 

I had thought that the whole point was to try to design the campaign so that you could play through one end of history to the other.

Fixing this and the tech line should pretty much have the same solution:

1. The devs ought to know roughly large a GDP each country should have by each point in the game
2. "Base growth rates" are set so that those GDP levels are achieved.
3.  "Time Ahead" penalties if you're already ahead of where you should be and "Catch up" bonuses if you are behind (which is actually somewhat realistic)

Also:

1.  this game isn't like Victoria II so if the GDP growth is expressed in absolute dollars rather than a growth rate that's not really a problem. 
2. Some transparency about what is causing the growth to be what it is would be very helpful
 

[Traslo]

3 minutes ago, admiralsnackbar said:

I didn't know that, intersesting. Growth rates always seemed random to me, even when I tried to keep my country at peace and just build transports my growth rate would just fall. 

I had thought that the whole point was to try to design the campaign so that you could play through one end of history to the other.

Fixing this and the tech line should pretty much have the same solution:

1. The devs ought to know roughly large a GDP each country should have by each point in the game
2. "Base growth rates" are set so that those GDP levels are achieved.
3.  "Time Ahead" penalties if you're already ahead of where you should be and "Catch up" bonuses if you are behind (which is actually somewhat realistic)

Also:

1.  this game isn't like Victoria II so if the GDP growth is expressed in absolute dollars rather than a growth rate that's not really a problem. 
2. Some transparency about what is causing the growth to be what it is would be very helpful
 

As far as I can tell, the growth rates do randomly vary. It's actually really hard to get an AI economy to shrink from blockades now in terms of the actual growth percentage. Right now the AI seems better at self-bankruptcy from overspending and the penalty to GDP slowly kills them off more than I can do with actual blockades.

Transport capacity seems a lot less important now. The buff from 200% seems to be much much less on 1.06 (and is nearly impossible to get on later starts which now slow down the Transport capacity growth more).

[Nagato]

There is also interesting thing happen in  last campaign. I played with Germany and i am in alliance with Italy and Austro-Hungary, now i was in war with UK but now uk flags in cities are grey??, when i click on their ports, they have far far more ships then what is in in upper left screen showed. Over 30-40 light cruisers and bunch of ships and in upper main screen shows 1bb, 1 bc, 1 heavy cruiser, 1 light cruiser, 30 destroyers, clearly they have more in ports.  Not only that there is no more ships at seas, UK do nothing??

France is also finished but France and every other nations have more ships then its shown, ???

[Iuvenalis]

So I'm still having the error where when I end turn it gets stuck on "building new ships". Its actually not locked up as I previously thought. I can still hit escape and and access the menu. The help, bug and setting icons are also clickable. I don't think this is actually due to the AI building ships as I can esc, quit to menu and then load campaign and it will have advanced to the next turn. I think it may be a GUI issue where its overlaying the building ships screen as I see it flash twice. This consistently happens every turn. Additionally, when I continue campaign and I'm on the loading screen with the historical photo and info, the "tension" update dialog for the new turn appears over the loading screen and I must click it before I can "click to continue".

[Plazma]

12 hours ago, Lima said:

8 inch (203mm) guns are incredibly strong when they are improved in size and length as much as possible. I apologize for using millimeters everywhere, they are much closer to me than an inch.

I don't know what is the inch, but when I start played this game I found that the inch are more better, than the metric system. Try it!

 

I have battle 12.1/39 Mark I gun vs fight vs 12,5/55 Mar I. The result is 0,2% vs 15,1%. So one side need nearly 70 ships with 12.1/39 Mark I to have this same output of dmg like ship with 12,5/55 Mar I. I am not expert, but this looks little no historical accurate. 

Also when AI making ships they could chose 12,5/55 Mar I or 12.1/39 Mark I like in this case (both BB constructed by AI). I have no idea how nation with BB what have 12.1/39 Mark I can win vs 12,5/55 Mar I. Scrap all BB and make a new one? Also the campaign is very boring when you made your ships (because AI can have this kind of trash guns...) 

 

vs

 

I know is not Aimed, but 12.1/39 Mark I can be aimed only when is much closer to the enemy or have all the time this same distance on this range normal behavior is not shooting, because accuracy is too low. 

Also why 2.9" gun have 1.4% like 10.6" inch? 

Both ships are AI designed, the difference is 0.8 mln and 700t in weight, but compared to the fight ability is like 70 vs 1. RL? If the length of guns are that good, please delete short and vanilla guns for the AI, I will also don't use short barrels, but the fight will be much better(joke ofc.)!

 

Also I noticed that the 9" gun could have lenght up to 45, but the 6" casemate gun have up to 58, this make 6 much better for using vs soft targets up to CA. Ok, penetration is around 30% less for 6" but, chose better ammo and you have batter gun in probably every aspect. Only penetration could be not enough or the chance of ricochet can big, but this is small issue. Especially, when you can buy 3x6" vs 9". When we compared the dmg per penetration the 6" has 2 less damage, but the accuracy and speed make them much more superior. This is nice touch for casemate guns, but is it okay? 

 

 

[TiagoStein]

8 hours ago, o Barão said:

Would be possible to add rotation speed modifiers when modifying the gun caliber or barrel length? The gun weight changes, but atm, this doesn't make any impact to the rotation speed.

 

My feedback about the current barrel length mechanic.

 

The accuracy

Now, about the guns. I can't stress enough the issue with the unrealistic accuracy modifiers. I am no naval gun designer, but if these values are true, then all of us could ask why all navies simple didn't designed guns with crazy long barrels? If it was because of weight issues, then we could ask why we didn't see secondaries with insane long barrels. But we don't see that. The designers of the time were not smart enough to see how good it was to hit targets by simply having a crazy long barrel? Or maybe, they already knew, that increasing the barrel length would not give an improvement to accuracy, enough that could justify the downsides by going that route in the designing process? I prefer to believe, the persons at the time, knew what they are doing for the most part, and I almost 100% sure, that they run several tests, with different barrel lengths to reach the conclusion that it wasn't worth it. But what we have in game is a complete different story...

At, 10000 m we have these values:

L51: 2.1%

L63: 7.9%

L76: 19%

So we have a 9x multiplier!!!! accuracy improvement, when going from the L51 to the L76 barrel length. A night and day difference. I understand the longer the barrel, the higher the shell velocity. The higher the shell velocity, the less travel time to reach the destination, making it easier to hit a moving target. But to have a x9 modifier is just a crazy number to believe for a shell that is travelling, what? 2x or 3x times faster?

 

The deck pen.

With the barrel length increase. We have a higher potential distance to target. Sure, makes sense. But if the propellant is always the same, then at mid ranges the shell trajectory should be more "flat" when in comparison to similar gun, but with a smaller gun barrel, right?

So how can this is possible?

At, 10000 m the deck pen values are:

L51: 7.1cm

L63: 8.1cm

L76: 9.2cm

So how is it possible, the L76 is better at plunging fire at this mid-ranges, if the shell trajectory is more "flat"?

Super long barrels were not made because  building a long barrel of a high caliber super high pressure gun is almost a miracle in metallurgic work 

 

Weapon COSTS  shoudl skyrocket when you  try to make longer barrels.

[TiagoStein]

On 6/6/2022 at 12:38 PM, 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, 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.

 

I need to try to find the reference, But I remember to read somewhere that Bismarck guns could be loaded at a higher elevation angle than most others of same size (saving time on long range fire exchange reload).  How much I have no idea, the reference had no numbers about it.

[o Barão]

8 minutes ago, TiagoStein said:

I need to try to find the reference, But I remember to read somewhere that Bismarck guns could be loaded at a higher elevation angle than most others of same size (saving time on long range fire exchange reload).  How much I have no idea, the reference had no numbers about it.

The only two mentions I found from navweaps.

"Many references claim that this was the fastest firing large caliber gun ever built. The ROF figures listed above represent generally published data that would support that claim. However, Krupp official documents cite the ROF as being 26 seconds at a four degree elevation, not notably faster than that of other nations' large-caliber weapons. Note that at this elevation the range would be considerably less than 10,000 meters. It is possible that well trained gun crews would reduce this time to the 20 seconds necessary to meet a ROF of 3 times per minute."

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNGER_15-52_skc34.php

Loading Angle	+2.5 degrees

[Iuvenalis]

I keep running into this issue. During the design phase, it shows there is enough room for the turrets to have a normal arc of fire. Then once they are built, I get this, a turret than can traverse a couple of degrees. I think it has to do with the fraction of an inch increases in size not entering into the designers calculation to check firing arcs. (These are 12.9/89 guns)

[Gibbel]

I've got another example of the weight offset calculation being very sensitive to minimal changes. I've tried to find out what exactly is causing it but I couldn't really figure it out. I observed that the guns, which supposedly weigh only 12 t, have a huge impact on the weight offset, so I think the center of mass calculation might be using a much higher mass for those guns.

 

[Sturmalex]

For the love of god, please turn down the accuracy of longer barrels/ inaccuracy of shorter barrels. The AI just build a battleship with 301mm guns (279mm + max). That thing just sniped everything. In 1890...