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

[popcap200]

I definitely feel as though the ballistics have felt super weird this update.  Currently I am running a 1910 Italian campaign, but have run several others this whole beta.  I have had an easier time penning enemies from the fore and aft belts with HE Ballistic Capped than AP Ballistic Capped rounds into the broadside.

Currently I am using dual Mark 3 13.9"/77 Italian guns with heavy rounds and can't get a shell through their Krupp II 16" main belt, 3.4" 1st deck at under 5,000 meters.  My ships should have ~60" of pen. I get that there's more going on than just (16"+3.4")+((16"+3.4")*.5 extra strength)=29.1" but man, I am having trouble accepting the balancing as is.

[SodaBit]

Sorry for the doubletake here, but I've got some more diplomacy feedback.

These Little Shits Have Been Generating 10 Tension Every Month For The Past Year And A Half
Why would the German people care about this
They're in British territorial waters, in what seems to be an attempt to intimidate them
Despite the fact that Britain and France are allied.
Why.
These 4 ships are going to cause a f***ing world war just by hanging around off the coast of Britain

[Norbert Sattler]

The entire north sea is a single zone. It doesn't matter if the ships hang off the coast of Britain, hugging the German coast or are well to the northwest of Scappa Flow... for the game right now it's all a single zone.

[AdmiralObvious]

Can I suggest a setting in the future to limit the number of ships in a fight? It tanks the performance of the game to have two fleets of over 80 ships fighting in one gigantic battle, as much fun as that is.

[Skeksis]

And Kiel port tension shouldn't be assigned to the North Sea, should be Baltic only.   

[CenturionsofRome]

Can we please get rid of the hello kittyING INVISIBILITY FIELDS!?

At the VERY least make it so that if a ship fires they are automatically spotted! 

I'm hello kittying fed up with being constantly shot at by invisible ships!

[o Barão]

12 minutes ago, CenturionsofRome said:

Can we please get rid of the hello kittyING INVISIBILITY FIELDS!?

At the VERY least make it so that if a ship fires they are automatically spotted! 

I'm hello kittying fed up with being constantly shot at by invisible ships!

This is not wows, so don't expect BS mechanics like that. Use scouts, or improve your detection range with components.

Your real issue is not being shot by invisible ships. The issue is the moment your ship is spotted by one ship, all the enemy ships will target your ship, having a line of sight or not. This is the real issue here.

[CenturionsofRome]

7 minutes ago, o Barão said:

This is not wows, so don't expect BS mechanics like that. Use scouts, or improve your detection range with components.

I have BEEN on ships. At deck level - two meters above the waves - I can EASILY spot a modern yacht -which are roughly the same size as TBs and DDs - at 10km without binocs. And that is WITHOUT a giant ass plume of coal smoke coming from a funnel sticking up several stories. 

Being unable to spot a tb at 5k after it has stealth launched torps is a BS mechanic. Being shot at by an invisible 10kt CA at 10km is a BS mechanic. Being shot at by an invisible 15kt BB at 12km is a BS mechanic. 

It is one thing if there is a storm or if it's night. But in that case NO ONE should be able to spot the other except at point blank range, and it would be a mutual spot. 

People have been calling for Spotting mechanics to be overhauled or removed for YEARS now, with math, charts, diagrams, personal, and historical testimony proving that the spotting mechanics are unrealistic - and the game markets itself as realistic -, ahistorical, and unfun.

[havaduck]

4 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Have you tried reducing your own Task Forces at Sea or splitting them? If you mass your fleet to destroy the AI, it must respond to this. If you want to have less action, keep most of your fleet in your ports at In Being or Sea Control status, to get more balanced battles.

 

 

I have to pick this one in particullary because I have been there MANY MANY times and franky battle creation is one of the very sore points of this game. I dont know what design work has yet put into this, but its probably still early wip, and as such I can understand is. Howevery it can get REGURLALY most infuriating. 

 

Have an example of the actual game experiences: It took me ages to finally finding this shitship that has no chance of outrunning my DD on THE BEST WEATHER IMMAGINABLE  just because the spotting distance is fúcking 4,4 km!

Like, this game has so many behaviour switches that I, generally speaking, just want turned the hell off by default, but what it doesnt have is a "I-dont-care-WHERE-the-smoke-that-I-cant-see-in-the-skybox-is-just-put-you-fúcking-bow-in-its-direction"-button. Like what the hell, the smoke is north? compared to what? the flagship (which is which ship again?) the ship most north? the ship closes to the enemy (which I wont know ofc). Here in this example the DD went right past the cruiser. NO WONDER with 4,4 km spotting on something that is probably between 120-150 meters long.

 

So yes, smaller task forces DO increase the chances the AI actually coming out to fight. Otherwise at best it intercepting one the gazillion shitt 1-3 ship task forces the AI send around with absolutely no thought put into. If the battlemaker puts together a convoy raid with 1 cl and 3 dds against 2 cl or something, this is fine. I like those. It doesnt always have to be a BB-wankfest.

 

But comming back to this:

4 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

If you mass your fleet to destroy the AI, it must respond to this.

 

In my current AH campaign I have been unable to bring GB to a fight despite being at war with them. The best I had was 2 GB ships (1 cl, 1 dd) with a lot more french against a taskforce of mine. The battle was statet as being against the UK which is strange but lets just say the Admiral in charge was GB, whatever.  Als this while fúcking 250k tons of shipping sat in scapa flow allone and wouldnt come out against not even a 1/3 of that tonnage.

However I did sent a fleet of 5 Battleships with an apropriate cruiser excort and some DDs recently north. Usually they dont get very far because they ran into a lone shitship of the french and get teleported home straight away after.

I do have lots of smaller faskforces sitting in the mediterranean with about 2-3 ships battleships and some smaller escorts, around 5-8 ships usually in total. This in the hope of drawing the french with their like 11 CAs 14 CLs and gazilion shit-TB out of their ports.

 

And then the GB AI does this:

Completely ignored the taskforce that at least could put up a fight. Instead they magically teleported a mediterranean task force to a different ocean  and then decided to also magically teleport their fleet on top of it. What a load of random BS.  

Ah and I fogort, naturally.

So no,  as long the AI can magic carpet my forces onto their doorsteps and then teleport to have their grand fleet take a dump onto it, smaller task forces are only an option if you are ready to take the loss. Thankfully I can.

If the AI doesnt fúck me over with the spawning, it might even turn into a slaughter for GB. Still I am not looking forward to 2 hours on 15 frames just because the AI felt like it.

 

I would have traded this whole task force feature in an instant for a battle generator that ofc does generate uneven fights every so often, but within reasonable frames. Also with an adjustable slider of, for example, 25 ships maximum on both sides. 10? Whatever   I   feel like.

 

Bonus: I did hit this BB point blanc with 2 torps. It responded by angrily firing a torp of its own into the OPPOSITE direction. So thats not fixed yet.

Edited July 2, 2022 by havaduck

[Norbert Sattler]

1 hour ago, Skeksis said:

And Kiel port tension shouldn't be assigned to the North Sea, should be Baltic only.   

The Kiel Canal was finished in 1895, so from that point on at least it makes sense that ships in Kiel would be able to threaten the Atlantic too. And if they can't switch that around five years into the earliest start, then just having it enabled all the time is probably the better choice, since it's just 5 out of 60 potential years of campaign.

[kjg000]

9 minutes ago, Norbert Sattler said:

The Kiel Canal was finished in 1895, so from that point on at least it makes sense that ships in Kiel would be able to threaten the Atlantic too. And if they can't switch that around five years into the earliest start, then just having it enabled all the time is probably the better choice, since it's just 5 out of 60 potential years of campaign.

Agreed, but I haven't played the Germans in 1.06.22 and the last time I did play them there was no direct access to the North Sea from Kiel. If Kiel contributes to North sea tension then it should have direct access enabled. 

[o Barão]

59 minutes ago, CenturionsofRome said:

I have BEEN on ships. At deck level - two meters above the waves - I can EASILY spot a modern yacht -which are roughly the same size as TBs and DDs - at 10km without binocs. And that is WITHOUT a giant ass plume of coal smoke coming from a funnel sticking up several stories. 

Being unable to spot a tb at 5k after it has stealth launched torps is a BS mechanic. Being shot at by an invisible 10kt CA at 10km is a BS mechanic. Being shot at by an invisible 15kt BB at 12km is a BS mechanic. 

It is one thing if there is a storm or if it's night. But in that case NO ONE should be able to spot the other except at point blank range, and it would be a mutual spot. 

People have been calling for Spotting mechanics to be overhauled or removed for YEARS now, with math, charts, diagrams, personal, and historical testimony proving that the spotting mechanics are unrealistic - and the game markets itself as realistic -, ahistorical, and unfun.

You are still missing the point. I agree with you the spotting ranges should be increase, but that will not solve anything. I will explain again.

Let's imagine the spotting ranges are increase, what will happen?

Well, the ship that spotted you first, will again spot you first. The difference is that now will spot your ship first at longer ranges. And the moment your ship is spotted the real issue will happen. Your ship will be spotted by all enemy ships in the fleet.

And because your ship is spotted is going to be target and shot by all the ships in the enemy fleet.

 

You understand now what is the real issue with spotting? Is not the spotting range values. This values can always be tweaked. The issue is the GPS sharing data, target coordination technology from late XX century to all ships in the same fleet, in a game that ends in 1950.

 

Edited July 2, 2022 by o Barão

[Carl_Bar]

6 hours ago, SodaBit said:

Some very quick weight issue feedback here.
While this issue has been the subject of detailed discussion since the opening of 1.06 beta and has improved quite a bit, there's still a bit of work to be done with it.
Pitch and roll seem to be working as intended, but longitudinal offset continues to be an issue. I believe this remaining issue to be caused by the location of secondary weapons.
E.G.
SMS Bayern as of update 22:

SMS Bayern with the forward most 5.9 casemate guns removed:

Now, it's fair to argue that removing ~180t of weight off the front would have that sort of effect on a 34,000t BB, but I'm still not convinced this is working as intended because of what happens when we do the same sort of thing with Yamato:

When we remove 2 of the rear 40mm mounts and this is what we get:

We only removed 14 tons, and the ship's stability has increased by a significant margin.
I'm not an engineer, but I'm not sure this is how it works. On the real Yamato design, this section of the ship was utilized for aircraft facilities, with those aircraft being stored under the deck, next to the barbette for X turret, meaning that even more weight was present on this part of the ship IRL. Yet, this didn't have a massive impact on the ship's overall stability, if anything, it seemed to balance out the weight of A turret and Yamato's rather long bow.

TL:DR, secondary guns need to have less influence on the weight offset of the ship. If this change is implemented, then it might prove the final change we need to resolve the weight issue that has plagued us for the past few weeks.

 

You can see that adding the guns at the back is extending the citadel rearwards so the main belt is going further back which will be a factor. But also as has been noted previously the game doesn't seem to model centre of buoyancy. In the real world stability is strongly affected by centre of mass vs centre of buoyancy factors. In game only the centre of mass matters and thats going to make things very weird somtimes.

[admiralsnackbar]

Just now, o Barão said:

You are still missing the point. I agree with you the spotting ranges should be increase, but that will not solve anything. I will explain again.

Let's imagine the spotting ranges are increase, what will happen?

Well, the ship that spotted you first, will again spot you first. The difference is that now will spot your ship first at longer ranges. And the moment your ship is spotted the real issue will happen. Your ship will be spotted by all enemy ships in the fleet.

And because your ship is spotted is going to be target and shot by all the ship in the enemy fleet.

 

You understand now what is the real issue with spotting? Is not the spotting range values. This values can always be tweaked. The issue is the GPS sharing data, target coordination technology from late XX century to all ships in the same fleet, in a game that ends in 1950.

 

Neither of you are wrong, but to call something a 'real issue' is a bit subjective. I can say that the period of time i most hated this game was when i was doing the jutland admiral mission where destroyers were appearing at 5km with 9 tubes of 6km torpedoes a piece. I did win that engagement [after many tries] but only by micromanaging individual destroyers to bait and thread torpedo salvos. 

Whereas I have never really been severely inconvenienced by concentrated enemy fire because I usually armor my ships well enough to deal with that. [though if they make fire damage any more effective that might change] 

So I suspect a buyer of this game will be more tilted by stealth warships than what you describe even if both are unrealistic in their own way, and a more realistic option would be preferable. 

[o Barão]

5 minutes ago, admiralsnackbar said:

appearing at 5km with 9 tubes of 6km torpedoes a piece. I did win that engagement [after many tries] but only by micromanaging individual destroyers to bait and thread torpedo salvos.

Yes, stealth torpedo run can be annoying. I agree with you on that. But is very easy to dodge. 

[Urst]

It is now 1910, I have a fleet 28 of 13,500 ton Von der Tan cruisers with 6x 7.5"/49 caliber guns, the British are broke and I've sunk literally all of their ships, they've fallen behind dramatically on tech, and Italy has collapsed without me touching it.

The British were using Guncotton and Brown Powder on 4,400 ton cruisers and 11,500 ton pre-dreadnoughts.

Give the British more hello kittying money. If I'm to live out my dreams of crushing the Royal Navy then I want it to at least be fun! It's not any fun if they collapse economically despite having their entire over-sea empire to draw money from.

[kineuhansen]

you need to fix the way the torpedo angle is i have seen ships fire a torpedo from front of a ship with a 90 degrees and if you place a launcher next to the bridge of a ship they  can fire  toward the rear of a ship also i think i have seen torpedoes crossfire i had a light cruiser with 2 trible launcher one on each side of the ship and i saw there was 4 torpedoes on right side in the water 

[M3rky1]

It would be nice if the AI would go for quality over quantity of ships. It seems the AI just builds as many ships as possible and doesn't care about the tech or design. Another thing that needs to be fixed is how the AI just plasters secondaries all over a ship. I regularly run into CA with probably 30+ secondary turrets. They just put them wherever they will fit on the deck. They often sacrifice lots of armor for this. A possibile fix for this would be to limit the amount of secondary guns the AI can place. Also where they place them needs to be worked on. I had an AI BB class with their barbets in the front of their non super firing turrets limiting their fire arcs for no reason.  Also it would be nice if they Balanced armor and tech a bit more over guns. For example they don't need all the best torpedo protection and anti flood and such but they do need the best range finders and turret mechanism. It doesn't do you any good to have 100 barrels if they can't hit anything. Pretty much any battle can be won in the campaign by sitting at like 7-10km and just burning them down with HE. I won several wars doing this when all I had was 2 BBs and about 8 CA and the AI had 80+ ships

Another problem with the quantity of ships is the AI seems to have no concept of budget. It seems they are constantly getting fired every couple of months because their going into debt. The AI needs to have some buffer in their budget for building, repairs, and refits. Something like Budget = all ship maintenance + 50% total ships repair costs, and will not construct new ship/refit unless above budget is met plus the cost of building said ship will not put monthly balance at a negative (or their current savings balance will not go negative before ship is finished construction). There could be some plus or minus whether a specific AI likes to build up some savings or likes to push the boundaries of their budget. 

[havaduck]

Id thought I uses this battle to test the new fleet cohesion. Its defintily improved.

 

The battle has at this point progresses a good while. I did both lure and push the BBs with the TB because as a TB its both "must kill" and "scary, have to run away to 8 km from 0,9 km torps" for the AI. Unfortunately against this much firepower even the quantum waveform of a destroyer collapses and our brave ship sinks. However 3 of the 6 bbs are moving in the wrong direction and are far away. I call that acceptable.

 

Farther into the game, the 3 BBs are out of position BUT they are realising this and trying to correct it/pursue my ships. 2 (cant see missing 6th) are still with their fleet, posing a signifikant threat. The rest still presents and innepennetrable battle  line   ..... formation. Let call it Morining Star formation because I cant really aproach it without getting clubbed. Which is as it should be.

You can also see performance. Its not good, but also not as bad as I feared. Maybe because it was 50+ instead of 100+ ships in total? These sort of Jutland battles gave me performance ptsd as well as hello kittyatitis from axiety to avoid them.

 

Even got my ships out of there. I tried to confuse the formation futher and then when their BBs were the farthest away and/or at least their bows pointing away for the closest ones, I tried to escape. Game is to generous. Hull were als blackend and smoking. No serious pens but the fleet was pretty shot up. I was already prepared to sacrifice the Prinz Eugen to cover the retreat.

 

However the poor AI just trying to match our task forces? That a fairy tale, at least at the moment, complete with magic carpet rides and teleports.

[admiralsnackbar]

So i won a war against britain and part of the peace agreement was ownership of cyprus. looks like the ships in the dock at cyprus were somehow registered as mine and were generating tension in the eastern  med until i moved them out and they went back to UK control. 

 

[o Barão]

24 minutes ago, havaduck said:

You can also see performance. Its not good, but also not as bad as I feared. Maybe because it was 50+ instead of 100+ ships in total?

If strugling with FPS in large battles, you can always disable/enable the reshade with the "END" key.

[Carl_Bar]

39 minutes ago, M3rky1 said:

It would be nice if the AI would go for quality over quantity of ships. It seems the AI just builds as many ships as possible and doesn't care about the tech or design. Another thing that needs to be fixed is how the AI just plasters secondaries all over a ship. I regularly run into CA with probably 30+ secondary turrets. They just put them wherever they will fit on the deck. They often sacrifice lots of armor for this. A possibile fix for this would be to limit the amount of secondary guns the AI can place. Also where they place them needs to be worked on. I had an AI BB class with their barbets in the front of their non super firing turrets limiting their fire arcs for no reason.  Also it would be nice if they Balanced armor and tech a bit more over guns. For example they don't need all the best torpedo protection and anti flood and such but they do need the best range finders and turret mechanism. It doesn't do you any good to have 100 barrels if they can't hit anything. Pretty much any battle can be won in the campaign by sitting at like 7-10km and just burning them down with HE. I won several wars doing this when all I had was 2 BBs and about 8 CA and the AI had 80+ ships

Another problem with the quantity of ships is the AI seems to have no concept of budget. It seems they are constantly getting fired every couple of months because their going into debt. The AI needs to have some buffer in their budget for building, repairs, and refits. Something like Budget = all ship maintenance + 50% total ships repair costs, and will not construct new ship/refit unless above budget is met plus the cost of building said ship will not put monthly balance at a negative (or their current savings balance will not go negative before ship is finished construction). There could be some plus or minus whether a specific AI likes to build up some savings or likes to push the boundaries of their budget. 

 

Honestly there hardest part about critiquing the AI atm is that whilst we can see whats happening in broad terms where often missing many of the details which makes it hard to figure out why the AI is doing somthing silly.

 

I did consider previously writing out a complete decision tree, but i suck at doing those freehand and i can't find any free no sign up tools online. Suffice to say i strongly suspect the AI isn't doing great at making decisions.

[Skeksis]

1 hour ago, Norbert Sattler said:

The Kiel Canal was finished in 1895, so from that point on at least it makes sense that ships in Kiel would be able to threaten the Atlantic too. And if they can't switch that around five years into the earliest start, then just having it enabled all the time is probably the better choice, since it's just 5 out of 60 potential years of campaign.

1 hour ago, kjg000 said:

Agreed, but I haven't played the Germans in 1.06.22 and the last time I did play them there was no direct access to the North Sea from Kiel. If Kiel contributes to North sea tension then it should have direct access enabled. 

Ships now move properly by designed speed and distances, the canal route would take one month off travelling time (early era).

Dev's should decide whether to disable the canal and have Kiel tension limited to the Baltic or enable the canal for direct access to the North Sea, to save one month of travelling (e.g. sending ships to the Mediterranean) and keep tension.

The map can't have it both ways. 

Edited July 2, 2022 by Skeksis

[havaduck]

Here the AI wasnt really acting smart.

The have massive numeric advantage and torpdo advantage. Those Cls in the back should be either disengaging using the cover of teh CA sacrifice or charge me in an all out brawl.

Whats going to happen next that is first the fire will be concentrated on less and less CA and once they are gone I will just cause a little damage to individual CLs, enough to slow them down for the 2 CAs to catch up and mop us while the bulk of the fleet is chasing any light cruiser trying to escape. I expect a massacre since the AI chose to act like this.

 

Complete Slaughter. Even their last DD choose to attack. Now I know the AI is capable of making the decision of running away, it does that often enough. Previously I thought units I couldnt find had disengaged. Now I think the AI only makes the decision of fight or flight at the BEGINNING of a battle. After it commits, it stays that way troughout the battle.

 

2 minutes ago, o Barão said:

30 minutes ago, havaduck said:

You can also see performance. Its not good, but also not as bad as I feared. Maybe because it was 50+ instead of 100+ ships in total?

If strugling with FPS in large battles, you can always disable/enable the reshade with the "END" key.

 

Thanks mate, I like the reshade and before disabling that I would just lower the overall quality. Thing is, I can get pretty stable 30 fps with the software gsync enabled wich is due to the rediculous 4k resolution coupled with 8x msaa. I normally have it lower on 4x but last  time the game forced a jutland battle and I got shit 12 fps, I tried to lower the quality. The problem is, its not a problem with available recources, its a problem with the engine being unable to handle these big battles and utalization dropping. I would see my CPU largely empty and the GPU even enganging a lower power saving state but I would still enjoy stop motion film of 12 fps. Then I cranked it up to max and while GPU utelization increased, it still had plenty reserves and FPS didnt change. So I largely leave it at max and try to avoid these rediculous battles ....

 

Frankly, I FULLY endorse this reshade.

I am a dumbass and didnt properly pause it, but the performance hit, if any is very low on the order of 10 %. The immage however, well I let you decide:

With:

Without:

I do recognise its a matter of taste, but I am won over by this already.

[o Barão]

20 minutes ago, havaduck said:

but the performance hit, if any is very low on the order of 10 %.

You are right. Minimal difference. Very different from my testing result last year. I am not complaining, of course.😉✌️