>>> v1.06-1.08+ Feedback<<<(17/8/2022)

[jw62]

19 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

There was a decision to keep having a major bug or this and to fix in a short time. It is actually something that works realistically but needs a different UI (to not call it "repairing") and less time, that can be done in the next update. Your post needs re-edit to be less offensive.

Yes, the aggravation comes from those of us juggling the whole campaign with each patch. Over the last three patch and fixes I've had to jettison huge chunks of my fleet as maintenance costs rose. Obviously we need to restart the campaigns, but hey, that's a lot of time invested to throw away. cheating? I can't cheat against myself. I'm a Tool user, you give me tools with no manual and of course I'm going to get creative using it, so don't use that word against your paying customers, it's wrong to do so, and counterproductive.

Some heads up warning might have helped with the evolving game-play. I don't monitor the forums that tightly, after all, I'm recovering from covid and two heart surgeries and keeping my two maritime businesses literally afloat, and I just want to play a game in the evenings that totally takes my attention away from all that.

So let's all tone it down. We're all here because of this great new product which promises to entertain and amaze us, while paying the bills and putting cake and gratification for a good job on the table.

It's nice that your customers are so invested in the game, sometimes that can get them a little excited (see:spent a week building up my fleet to take down germans only to be taken down by accountants myself). Take it as the complement it is and in good humor (there really isn't any other good choice)

Thanks for all the work so far. It's really as broad as an ocean and miles deep. I really like the full campaign so far

[Grayknight]

9 hours ago, Urst said:

 

There're too many techs already. These should be rolled into currently existing techs, and make it so that you can get more than one thing per tech level advancement.

I want more tech 😉

[The PC Collector]

4 hours ago, jw62 said:

Yes, the aggravation comes from those of us juggling the whole campaign with each patch. Over the last three patch and fixes I've had to jettison huge chunks of my fleet as maintenance costs rose. Obviously we need to restart the campaigns, but hey, that's a lot of time invested to throw away.

Exactly this. Testing new mechanics is good, but the place for doing so is the beta branch. We are customers, not paid beta testers, @Nick Thomadis. If you deploy a hastily made and poorly implemented new mechanic into the live version which ruins a bunch of campaigns which have taken hours, you can be sure that you're going to have some angry customers complaining.

Edited August 19, 2022 by The PC Collector

[Vinrellren]

I am quite sad that now I cannot build my dream ships in campaign and see how the AI sent it's entire fleet to be killed but well, that's why custom battles are made....

Another campaign I played (This time with focus on CLs and CAs with no BB at all so now the devs cannot blame me for using "Super Battleships" to own the AI so hard that I "won" the campaign)

The AI has soo much weight offset either fore or aft that it isn't worth anything to take AI ships as a war reparation, in addition to the fact that the AI loves to use torpedo spam tactics that it's soo easy to counter by build a ship that either outgunned them or have extensive sonar and impressive turn radius.

Moreover, the latest update feels like the AI use their smaller classes like CLs and DDs more frequent, which left their capital ships/big ships kinda lacking that made the game even easier.

Maintaining tech 100% is a MUST for a certain win in a campaign. Yes you sometimes cannot build the latest tech ships, but the AI is soo poor in tech (or dumb) that you certainly still have a better ships than AIs resulting in almost a guarantee win each encounter.

HE spam is still a big problem (or blessings?). I fit my CAs with Max HE using HEI (Incendiary) and able to burn down every single ships that challenge my CAs with ease due to extensive fire. Sometimes the enemy still has adequate structural intergrity but burnt down due to HE spam from all of my ships.

Maintanance costs are bearable.... sometimes. The change in maintanance cost certainly push me to play aggressively rather than passive aggressive. I could literally on war within the first year of the campaign while usually I stay out of any war in the first 5 years of the campaign. This however also pushed the AI to constant war and usually bleed out of their cash reserves in the process resulting in AI nations collapsed early in the campaign.

Diplomacy still a bit weird. I think we need a cooldown time between wars because the AI loves to constantly threaten/worsen relation with anyone they hate and just back at war again several months after peace treaty which of course made their reserves practically non existence. 

Can we have a spotting rework? Spotting in this game is unquestionably weird, my cheap expendable DDs with tower I can spot the AI modern BB first. It's even crazier when I install RADAR III and now I can see them immedieatly after the battle generates.

[The PC Collector]

Well, unsurprisingly, the constant maintenance cost raising has had an awful side effect: Now that the AI can't have 200+ ships anymore, but they still pull their ships in large fleets, the duration of the average war is 1 turn, 2 tops. Because their fleets last 2 battles, three tops.

If before the taskforce limitation was only a suggestion, now it is a must to keep the campaing playable. Sorry, O Barao and the few others who enjoy decisive battles, but in this condition the campaign is not worth beeing played.

Sorry to say it, devs. But with the latest changes you have managed to turn the campaing from enjoyable to unenjoyable again.

Edited August 19, 2022 by The PC Collector

[Lastreaumont]

I was a great user of the mothballed option to reduce my maintenance costs, so maintenance of my current campaign becomes quite complicated. A smell of scrapping is coming...

With the new update change, my problem is when I go to war, my mothballed ships are ready some months after the end of the war, after all the job was done by some allready ready ships. So, in the future, a button to interrupt the "unmothballetisation" would be great. Maybe... Because if going out of mothballed state is so long, I am not sure I will really use it in the future. 
I thought I found a substitute to the mothballed state by using a very low crew state, but result is the same. I have another idea to experiment but I need to test it before. 

So, if the game for the developpers is to find our cheats, please find mine below:
From the beginning of the campaign, focus research on:
- Rangefinders, to have radar ASAP, to increase precision and engagement distances. (Stop focus when Radar 1 is discovered)
- Big guns, to have 12in Mark V guns ASAP, to increase precision. (I didn't stop this focus, but with the new change about the mothballed state, I think I'll do because I think I don't really need big precise guns bigger than 12in if I can't pay the maintenance of big ships with bigger guns)
- Sonars, to have sonar ASAP, to facilitate torpedo dodges. (Stop focus when Sonar 1 is discovered)
With this I can build ships which becomes quickly more precise than their opponents, that can engage the ennemy without being in range of its guns or its detection and, if the ennemy comes closer, torpedoes are less a problem when you can see them from longer distance. 

So, I have a budget to balance. Bye. :-)
 

Edited August 19, 2022 by Lastreaumont
correction of some mistakes.

[Vinrellren]

I have played 2 campaign today and suprisingly the AI behaves the same (although one historical and one random). AI loves using torpedoes and small ships that researching RADAR, SONAR and Antitorp are a must.

Using large cannon isn't worth the cost so don't even bother to do so (Heavily armored BBs can be destroyed by extensive fire)

Once you done all of that the campaign practically over with the AI sending ships probably no more than 10 at once.

Now one normal battle (10+ vs 10+) is all we need for a peace due to the fact that the AI not having a lot of ships.

Now I can say that I am "exploiting" (or cheating?) the game and the AI just by playing the game like a maniac

 

[SonicB]

21 hours ago, ZorinW said:

Let's face the facts here. We as your beta testers are here to help you with our feedback and our feedback is: You can't teach the AI to build proper ships, to refit ships properly or maintain a sensible decommissioning routine.

The response so far is to shut down the thread where people have been posting bad AI designs.

So.. I mean, at least that's some response. But yes, the AI designer is still not consistently able to



build



competitive



designs.

Edited August 19, 2022 by SonicB
screenshots

[Urst]

12 hours ago, Grayknight said:

I want more tech 😉

Then there needs to be more tech focus points

[Kiknurazz91]

ok ill try that

Edited August 19, 2022 by Kiknurazz91

[AdmiralKirk]

I completed my Germany 1930 campaign last night, capital ships only. Not too much to note, but I do have a few observations:

• It seems too hard (impossible?) to conquer your enemies. I was at war with Britain and France multiple times for years. While I was able to claim Malta, Gibraltar, Corsica, and Tunis, Britain twice refused to cede Cyprus in their peace negotiation, and both nations remained on the map after their fleets had been demolished and their coasts blockaded. I assume the reparations system will be reworked in later versions, but it is extremely frustrating to win a long war decisively and have the AI just decide not to accept my demands. Realistic, maybe, but totally unsatisfying.
• My final war ended with no negotiations; suddenly I just wasn't at war anymore. I assume one of my allies accepted Britain's surrender? It didn't say so in the events window.
• Judging by this thread it's apparently just me, but I was almost never able to keep my tech budget over ~70%. Probably skewed by (a) not knowing how to mothball ships for most of the campaign and (b) only having BBs and BCs in my fleet. But I remained fully competitive on tech for 20 years despite this; in wartime I sometimes dropped research to 0 for budget reasons and that was fine long-term.
• 12" Mark V guns are insane. My smallest ships were a class of battlecruisers on the Large Cruiser hull with 3x3 12", and with a 39 knot top speed those ships were incredibly accurate, virtually impossible to hit except with torpedoes, and had enough punch to reliably kill BBs. I'm so glad the real Kriegsmarine didn't have this ship!
• Late-game Germany is somewhat lacking in tower and gun layout variety. All my ships looked like Bismarck.

[Skeksis]

1 hour ago, AdmiralKirk said:

Late-game Germany is somewhat lacking in tower and gun layout variety. All my ships looked like Bismarck

Yeah we only got 3 new hulls in the last update. v1.05 (Apr 14) we got 58, 3 months later (Jul 7) and we only get 3. Admittedly, modelers probably had to rework all the hulls and gun models for adjustable calibers.

If Dev's worked an extra tower or two per patch, not just hulls or full ships, then they could double the variety per hull. 

Next patch is going to be huge, all nations or most of them, so we could anticipate a massive injection of new hulls anyway. But still extra towers for existing hulls would go along way. 

Edited August 19, 2022 by Skeksis

[Gangut]

Started a new French grand campaign from 1890 and here are my suggestions and feedback

Ship save database - bascially a place to save and load our ship designs to we don't need to constantly have to rebuild them every time.

Austria Hungary cruisers - I think the generic 'light cruiser 1' should be used just to at least give us some veriaty as AH really lacks in flavour early on.

Option to send a peace treaty - Being able to offer the ai a peace treaty instead of waiting for one would help allot, epecially when in the past there have been ocations when the peace treaty was over-rided by a battle notification or just flat out didn't fire. Especially when the enemy only has a few ships left.

 

Edited August 19, 2022 by Gangut

[Lakel]

Finding Austria Hungary really annoying to defeat,  all the other nations  give up  within a reasonable time, ive had AH refuse to surrender while under blockade for 2 years, and only  20 CLs, DD, TBs ships left i was jut auto resolving every contact, which led to them not being sunk because 100 ships cant sink them in autofighting i guess.

Ultimately AH just refuses to actually surrender more than the others in my experience, weird and annoying.

Edited August 19, 2022 by Lakel

[Skeksis]

7 hours ago, Lastreaumont said:

- Rangefinders, to have radar ASAP, to increase precision and engagement distances. (Stop focus when Radar 1 is discovered)
- Big guns, to have 12in Mark V guns ASAP, to increase precision. (I didn't stop this focus, but with the new change about the mothballed state, I think I'll do because I think I don't really need big precise guns bigger than 12in if I can't pay the maintenance of big ships with bigger guns)
- Sonars, to have sonar ASAP, to facilitate torpedo dodges. (Stop focus when Sonar 1 is discovered)

Goodbye priority boost!

[Skeksis]

17 hours ago, The PC Collector said:

Exactly this. Testing new mechanics is good, but the place for doing so is the beta branch. We are customers, not paid beta testers, @Nick Thomadis. If you deploy a hastily made and poorly implemented new mechanic into the live version which ruins a bunch of campaigns which have taken hours, you can be sure that you're going to have some angry customers complaining.

A stab in the dark here, looks like to me Dev's will complete the full map and the 'entirely of the campaign', and patch it. With the 'entirely of the campaign' in place, they can sit back and see what is working and what's not.

So then I foresee a series of re-works and it's done. And naturally with that the end of beta testing anyway.

Edited August 19, 2022 by Skeksis

[jtjohn1]

I am confused about something @Nick Thomadis  This is a game where one of the major features is the player gets to design their own battleships and fight the AI with them (As a fleet or individually) but your replies here about players with super battleships or working on critical updates until you far outpace the AI is for the players to build smaller/less capable ships instead of having the AI build either A LOT more ships or fewer, more capable ones?

When I play a campaign I leave one of the upgrade thingies on "Big guns" I also research the heck out of range finders, control stations etc.  This is my choice (I don't research torps or DDs or Cruisers instead I research on the things that make my ship of choice more effective) and somehow, by doing that, it's my fault the AI can't keep up?

[The PC Collector]

6 hours ago, AdmiralKirk said:

12" Mark V guns are insane.

12" are insane, regardless of the era. The base accuracy is so high compared to any other large gun, that they always outperform any other gun because they can land much more shots than any other gun. It has been reported dozens of times by now. But also part of the problem is that the current HE mechanics which essentially ignore armour means that high RoF guns are favoured, as not being able to pen the armour is not a real problem, because HE can reliably deal damage no matter how much armour a ship has.

[Fangoriously]

The Devs really seam to hate the masculine urge many player have to super battleship rofl stomp, the only good and usable main guns right now are 11in-15in, 16in and up fire blanks ever few minutes that never hit anything, those guns being out damaged by literally any caliber of secondary gun they carry.

12in is of course a standout, but can only really HE a battleships to death, but of course annihilates anything else. 14in and 15in can and will deal penetration damage to as heavily armored ships as you will ever see, and 8-9 barrel 11in gun 'Panzerschiffe' heavy cruisers are, in my opinion, the most cost effective/dangerous/effective to all type of ship you can field.

Ive done well enough in 1930/1940 campaigns with 15 in guns on my capital ships, but i just tried out 14s on the new 1940 campaign i just started, and its a dramatic improvement over even 15s. You can mount a lot of 14 in guns, and the time it takes to kill an enemy ship is usually half that of my 15 in gun designs in my last few campaigns. You used to want 8 or 9 barrels of the largest gun you can fit on your battleship, per historical accuracy, now with how they have things stated you actually want to make turret farms with 12 to 18 barrel broadsides using 12in-14in guns.

[Admiral Donuts]

Completed a French campaign yesterday with my GDP at about $3.5 trillion. Had at least one case of the forever Building New Ships.

Just had a hard crash to desktop in my new campaign started last night. Latest game build. That hasn't happened in a while. Took place while designing a battlecruiser.

[The PC Collector]

51 minutes ago, Fangoriously said:

The Devs really seam to hate the masculine urge many player have to super battleship rofl stomp, the only good and usable main guns right now are 11in-15in, 16in and up fire blanks ever few minutes that never hit anything, those guns being out damaged by literally any caliber of secondary gun they carry.

12in is of course a standout, but can only really HE a battleships to death, but of course annihilates anything else. 14in and 15in can and will deal penetration damage to as heavily armored ships as you will ever see, and 8-9 barrel 11in gun 'Panzerschiffe' heavy cruisers are, in my opinion, the most cost effective/dangerous/effective to all type of ship you can field.

Ive done well enough in 1930/1940 campaigns with 15 in guns on my capital ships, but i just tried out 14s on the new 1940 campaign i just started, and its a dramatic improvement over even 15s. You can mount a lot of 14 in guns, and the time it takes to kill an enemy ship is usually half that of my 15 in gun designs in my last few campaigns. You used to want 8 or 9 barrels of the largest gun you can fit on your battleship, per historical accuracy, now with how they have things stated you actually want to make turret farms with 12 to 18 barrel broadsides using 12in-14in guns.

This. This is exactly why I say that the modrn BB hulls are a downgrade from the late dreadnought hulls. True, the modern hulls allow to build bigger BBs, but since my 55k T super dreadnought can already house 15x380 mm, what's the point on going bigger? The point of going bigger would be using bigger guns, but the reality is that those guns lose too much accuracy anf RoF to be a real improvement, and are routinely outdamaged by lower callibers. Even my 380 mm armed BBs are routinely outdamaged by my much smaller 350 mm armed BCs.

For CAs, I've found that the magic calliber is 240 mm. You lose around 20% of damage and pen, and around 10% of base accuracy compared to 280 mm. But that is more than compensated because of the fact that they fire twice as faster. I discovered that, due to having to fall back to them due to the Mk IV 280 mm no loger fitting, and I was astonished to see how their performance not only didn't turned out to be worse, but in fact improved, and some of the older ones which were ineffective with 280 mm guns, became effective using 240 mm ones.

And now even more, with the maintenance costs skyricketing, it is not worth going bigger once you have BBs big enough to mount 12-15 350 mm guns, BCs capable of mounting 12 or more 305 guns, and CAs capable to house 8-12 240 mm.

[Lakel]

This is getting pretty dumb, at least the fourth peace offer this war, accepted everyone one, my economy is tanking over the years because AH refuses.

Started this campaign this patch at that.

 

Couple turns later it says im at war with Italy, AH not at war anymore, my budget dropped to -31million, and still getting fights with AH,  yup, its  jacked all to hell now.

Edited August 20, 2022 by Lakel
Update

[Vinrellren]

Diplomacy is indeed still broken, AI sue for peace only for them to refuse and the war continues leading to either they collapsing or the player becoming soo bored that we used auto resolve every time.

Scratch that 20 super BBs that the devs complain about because 1 super BBs can tank against the ENTIRE BRITISH FLEET because 12'' and 8'' are so OP that researching any other big/small guns is not worth it at all. (Another exploit, Yipee)

As @The PC Collector stated, this game has soo much to polish or fix because there are a lot of exploit/broken stats that made the game boring and repetitive. (HE, Spotting, 12'' 8'' OP guns, Diplomacy, and Economy) and yet the devs blame the player for any "exploit" that the player uses.

Although praises to the dev because the game has gone a long way since I started playing this game

[o Barão]

1 hour ago, Vinrellren said:

and yet the devs blame the player for any "exploit" that the player uses.

 It seems normal to me for the devs to want to see what exploits the players are using to implement the changes to balance the game.

 I suggest implementing another change to fix another exploit by the players. It seems the devs are aware of this, but until now there were no changes.

From my 1890 campaign experiences, it is easy to get radar technology around 1902. Maybe a penalty in time to research technologies from the future could be implemented to balance this. So instead 1902, if a player really want to focus to get radar as soon as possible, could get that around 1910 +/-? . Still faster in comparison to what happened, but with a BIG trade-off, in time wasted in researching a technology with penalty instead in focus in getting other techs available from the time period.

[Grayknight]

I think next few updates will be another major step in the good direction. Just like with evry other big update be IT controversial or not game gets really better and better. I just really Hope for new hulls after all evryone Has a fav country to Play... 

 

Btw i checked my wishlist and added

 

- playable otoman empire as a super hard mode

- tumblehome versions of some hulls 

- more design options for ships especialy small ones i always repeat request with the sliders for ammount of rangefinders on the ship, i would love if we could chose firefighting equipment inside of the ship for example internal fire protection, external fire protection, damaged Control parties and so on. Aditional fire protection would also solve major problem with he spam

 

- if ship is under 10 percents of structural integrity or float after battle it should be scuttled above those values it up to 20 percents there should be a change. 

- fleet morale and training regimr should be a thing but i assume It is already planed in your secret Dev documents

 

 

 @Nick Thomadiscould you give us a sneak peak into your plans of planed  features?  I would love to see what remains as planed of the main features on the homepage and minor ones that are not yet known

 

 

Edited August 20, 2022 by Grayknight
Lots of granat mistakes