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

[ZorinW]

17 minutes ago, o Barão said:

New campaign feedback (the latest update). Small tension issue

The French keeps raising tension towards me in the North Atlantic, but...

• I don't have any fleet in the North Atlantic
• I do have fleets in the North Sea, but they do nothing to increase tension towards the British.

Same for me. I am supposed to create tension in the Med, but I have no ships there.

[LeoA]

Here are some things I noticed while playing the current branch:

•           Research speed is broken for both players and AI, moreso for players. I didn't go out of my way to certify that the AI was indeed behind, but I recall that by 1920s the AI was employing early 1900s designs. Likewise, I could build ships to match 1930-1940 models by the same date, since the research 'focus' thing is too big to be even remotely balanced. I think focuses should give a 100% bonus at most, meaning techs would complete twice as fast. Right now the bonus is close to 500% or something (I don't have the game open to check), but it's just too much. Any player will eventually outpace the AI and therefore the AI is only really challenging, if at all, during early years of any campaign. Maybe higher difficulties should give the AI more research speed instead of absurd amounts of money.
•           Money is also broken. I played several campaigns, and not once did I feel constrained by lack of funds. I believe costs for ships in general should be increased, or general income decreased; Battleships should be expensive, perhaps prohibitively so, and sinking one (or more) should be more meaningful for both player and AI. This would also naturally prevent doomstacks and reduce battle lag from said doomstacks. If CVs aren't planned to be introduced, and even if they are, until so, I think it would be nice for BBs to fill their role in importance when sunk. I feel like sinking even one BB should be somewhat impactful, and this doesn't happen right now because money is abundant. I build my BBs five at a time, and if I really wanted to, I could build them by the tens. No biggie.
•           Early accuracy of ships is terrible, and early game in a 1890 is a grind to get somewhat accurate control stations/stable hulls. They can hardly hit anything even in the limited range they're usually operating, and battles with 1890-1900 designs can be very boring for this reason. I understand they're meant to be bad, but I think this is overdoing it a little. Maybe buffing the base accuracy of said ships, either by stability or control station numbers, or both, and reducing their 'scaling' into late-game techs would be nice. 
•           Ships are too tanky in general. This has already been mentioned, but a durability nerf across the board might be in order. Hits by big guns should be scary, and in my experience I didn't feel as they were as devastating as they should be. Battles felt more like a death by a thousand cuts sort of thing, even with abundant 'penetrations', which I assume to be citadel pens, and should therefore hurt a little (a lot?) more. 

[Norbert Sattler]

17 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

• Fixed  British "Battlecruiser VI" which did not have non-researchable sec towers.

Wait... that's considered a bug?

Because the same thing is the case for Austria-Hungarys Modernized Dreadnought hull... or at least it was prior to this hotfix. I haven't been able to check with it yet.

Edited July 15, 2022 by Norbert Sattler

[Norbert Sattler]

I just started a French campaign and something's wrong with my income.

I am not building any ships, my GDP and number of transports is increasing and yet my income keeps going down. Why?

Nobody is at war with anyone. Shouldn't my naval budget be a percentage of the GDP and thus go up instead of down?

Same for the transports. If I am getting more transports, shouldn't they earn me more money rather than less?

Edit: Okay, now the issue is gone. I don't know if it's due to winning a war against Germany and taking Helgoland from them or just reaching some kind of internal break-even point, but now my income does increase a bit every month, where before it kept shrinking for no apparent reason. It's 1896

Edited July 15, 2022 by Norbert Sattler

[Norbert Sattler]

The crew training still does not work as intended.

Without seeing any combat some of my ships advanced to regular and every single German ship I've seen so far is veteran. I can't believe they got every single one of their ships to veteran from fighting the British for 4 month prior to me joining in...

Yep, as I thought. Now all my ships have reached veteran, including the ones that never once saw combat.

Edited July 15, 2022 by Norbert Sattler

[The PC Collector]

I've come across and odd bug with A-H armoured cruisers: I can't retrofit any of my old CAs with 8" mk II. I've had no problem with any other class swapping guns with more modern ones. I can without any problem build a new ship from scratch with the new guns however.

Also, with Armoured Cruiser 2, the front gun placement doesn't allow anything bigger than 8", suddenly. Which is odd because I have a design with 9" guns with the same hull.

[The PC Collector]

7 hours ago, ZorinW said:

That is intentional.

Thank you!

And well, that might be unfortunate for my allies... if under normal circunmstances I usually don't give a frick about my TBs/DDs getting slaughtered, you can guess how little I'm going to care if those aren't even mine... XD

[ZorinW]

Can we all agree that the tech research should work the following way?

With the slider dead center you will research each tech so it becomes available at the year given in game. With the slider set fruther to the right, you will get techs earlier with +100 giving you a 50% bonus. So a tech that would take 4 years now only takes 2 years to research. Same would apply for the slider set to the left, slowing down research though by up to 100%, because you won't research anything if you don't spend a single $ on research.

Later on, the whole research tree needs to be reworked completely, but to get this into the right direction for now this feels like a easy to implement solution. 

[Pizzafighter]

Is it possible that the AI likes big fleets since the patch? I mean, they sometimes put their whole navy in one fleet wich results in extremly laggy matches even on highend PCs. Maybe there could be some kind of limiter for the size of the fleet or just the AI making more reasonable fleets. Because putting the whole navy into one fleet is kind of bullshit in my opinion. Also the micromanagement of such huge fights is a nightmare.

[Vanhal]

"Building ships" freeze is occuring again, every round.

Edited July 15, 2022 by Vanhal

[o Barão]

5 hours ago, Norbert Sattler said:

The crew training still does not work as intended.

Without seeing any combat some of my ships advanced to regular and every single German ship I've seen so far is veteran. I can't believe they got every single one of their ships to veteran from fighting the British for 4 month prior to me joining in...

Yep, as I thought. Now all my ships have reached veteran, including the ones that never once saw combat.

Is a new campaign?

[Sacro321]

5 hours ago, Norbert Sattler said:

I am not building any ships, my GDP and number of transports is increasing and yet my income keeps going down. Why?

I'm guessing that it's because of crew upkeep. If you maxed out your crew slider, your crew pool will grow to its limit (from population) relatively quickly, thus your upkeep costs for the crew go up. Later on your crew pool stagnates (especiially if you don't use it) because of the limit tied to population, so your upkeep costs for crew stay relatively the same instead of increasing.

At least that would be my theory.

[Norbert Sattler]

@o BarãoYes started today with the latest hotfix.

@Sacro321I doubt it, since I was so low on income that I put the crew training to just 4% and then had to cut into my transport construction budget too, only keeping research on 100% . I can't imagine that on 4% crew training that'd add more than 30k cost each month.

[Nick Thomadis]

Hello Admirals,

Another update probably finalizes the necessary fixes of the last major update:

*v1.08.2 Hotfix* [16/7/2022]

• Fixed remaining crew training bug (Now also the crew on ships has maximum “trained” level if they do not combat). Previously only the “Crew Pool” was working as intended.
• Fixed fully the bug that could cause zero crew ships or ships under repair to enter combat in the campaign.
• Fixed probably the last bugs of alliances. Any current issue in your play session should become resolved with an internal validity check on the next turn.
• Fixed bugs in campaign events which did not deduct the funds from the player (although the respective amounts were sent).
• Fixed problem in the Refit interface which allowed you to browse normal designs and click “New Design” which eventually could cause bugs.
• Removed the “Copy” button from refit as it was never meant to work for refit and it was buggy.
• Fixed bug which did not allow you to switch to “Sea Control” role.
• Fixed issues in citadel weight mechanics that could cause over-weight on one side too much.
• Adjusted better the auto-design so that the system is more efficient, speeding up the process and making campaign turns faster.

Enjoy!
The Game Labs Team

[PainKiller]

7 hours ago, ZorinW said:

Can we all agree that the tech research should work the following way?

With the slider dead center you will research each tech so it becomes available at the year given in game. With the slider set fruther to the right, you will get techs earlier with +100 giving you a 50% bonus. So a tech that would take 4 years now only takes 2 years to research. Same would apply for the slider set to the left, slowing down research though by up to 100%, because you won't research anything if you don't spend a single $ on research.

Later on, the whole research tree needs to be reworked completely, but to get this into the right direction for now this feels like a easy to implement solution. 

While i do agree, that the slider in the middle position should make your tech available at the year given in game. But if we move it to the maximum right, halfing the research time would be too much right now. (OR it can be balanced out with exponential budget increase.) Just imageine you are going for a radar1, of which you usually reach in 1930ish years, with maximum research budget you would get it in 1910? No way that's balanced. But getting it 3-5 years earlier seems much more fair i think, than the AI would get it on normal research speed.

Other balancing factor can be that your budget + crew + transport uses some kind of shared economy, of which you have limited points to use. Let's imagine you can put 10 points to research, 10 to crew, 10 to transports maximum. And the game gives you 16points to freely use inbetween these 3 categories. With this, you can put 10 in research sure, but  only 6 points left to put in crew or transport ship building, so you are sacrificing thiese two for prioritizing research. 

10/10 research -> research speed +30%-ish

3/10 crew -> you are getting very few people each month, and not enough money to train them to "trained" level

3/10 transport -> you are losing transport capacity overall -> lower GDP 

This would mean that you can't put 100% to the research in the long run, but forced to balance it out. Maybe you can get points by having big GDP, or winnig war.....yes. This can be an event, that when you win a war, you take away scientist from the other nation, which gives you a permanent point to research. Some kind of events. If it's broken that you get permanent points, than have them for 2-4 years, so you are forced to go to war.

I don't know what can work. I do know that somerthing has to change in the future. 

[The PC Collector]

For once, I've managed to get dreadnoughts while playing from 1890... but by now, I essentially have nobody to test them agaisnt, as the only country with a powerful navy loves me...

Would it be that hard to add, as a temporary feature until the campaign is full fledged, an "I hate you because reasons" button which allows you to change your relations with a country to -100 instantly? It would greatly improve the campaign experience in the late game.

Edited July 16, 2022 by The PC Collector
fixing typos

[The PC Collector]

I've found a minor bug: If you use captured ships, they display the flag of their former owners, not yours.

[Norbert Sattler]

I never read the flavour text of the hull plating before and now I just noticed somethiing... odd in the compound armour discription.

"The front layer is a hard but brittle iron plate which is made of high-carbon steel"

What? Iron plate made FROM steel? oO
I'm pretty sure that compound armour was done prior to the use of steel to begin with, but why would anyone for any reason turn steel back into iron? That makes no sense.

And while I'm at text-related stuff: Why is the Austro-Hungarian naval base called Pula with a 'u'? Isn't it Pola? The ship-name is also Pola.

Edited July 16, 2022 by Norbert Sattler

[Narbar]

Really enjoying the update, good job! My main request would be that defeated nations maybe return after 10 years? This is due to me starting a 1900 campaign, I'm currently in 1910 and Italy and the UK have been permanently defeated due to economic collapse 

[The PC Collector]

9 minutes ago, Narbar said:

This is due to me starting a 1900 campaign, I'm currently in 1910 and Italy and the UK have been permanently defeated due to economic collapse

I have yet to see the UK last more than 3 years. And I agree, they should add that feature ASAP.

[Sacro321]

11 hours ago, Norbert Sattler said:

I doubt it, since I was so low on income that I put the crew training to just 4% and then had to cut into my transport construction budget too, only keeping research on 100% . I can't imagine that on 4% crew training that'd add more than 30k cost each month.

Hmm I guess the only real way to know would be if we got a more detailed breakdown of the upkeep costs that we have. Right now we basically don't know anything about the upkeep costs that are non-ship related, since they're literally not shown at all except under "Total Expenses".

[The PC Collector]

Found another bug on the AH campaign: The tech "1100 tons Destroyer" which was supposed to unlock the Destroyer II hull, unlocks nothing. Which is annoying because I'm stuck with a garbage 794 tons destroyer since forever.

[DableUTeeF]

This "Ladder Aiming" at 1.9km is just ridiculous I don't know what to describe it.

The dumbest thing in this situation is that the 4.5" secondary guns have been hitting the target since 8km.

This feels like someone tried to implement realistic range measurement but forget about the spotting range bullshitary.

[brothermunro]

41 minutes ago, DableUTeeF said:

This "Ladder Aiming" at 1.9km is just ridiculous I don't know what to describe it.

The dumbest thing in this situation is that the 4.5" secondary guns have been hitting the target since 8km.

This feels like someone tried to implement realistic range measurement but forget about the spotting range bullshitary.

What you have there is what I call “The Target Lock Bug”. It used to be a huge problem, then it got fixed, and then reappeared during the 1.06 beta. As far as I can tell what happens is a ship makes a turn and one of your gun turrets loses line of sight. The game then applies a massive negative modifier to the aiming progress and it ends up at -40,000% or some similar ludicrous figure. That number isn’t really supposed to go negative so the game gets confused and the progress gets stuck at zero. If you manually retarget the enemy ship it will fix the problem (but that is annoying to do).

[Plazma]

13 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Fixed issues in citadel weight mechanics that could cause over-weight on one side too much.

Amazing! One of the most important bug fixed! 
Now I waiting for:

-gun adjust fix (example 8.9 long barrel gun and general balance long barrel guns). Right now we can have faster more accurate guns for little price compared to lethality of these guns (~4x more accuracy, more dmg/s, much longer range). Penetration is not that good as high caliber guns, but we have HE. Because of that DD can shoot very accurate in the BB and keep a long distance! 

-gun fire fix (that we can manually click on the enemy ships to fire guns) 

-Ai making competitive ships, no practice targets for player. 

Any progress in these fields @Nick Thomadis?

Let's see if after 1 week we will have improvement and I will be able go back to the newest version of the game, 1.05 is painful and pointless  because of torps spam and short campaign.