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

[The PC Collector]

2 hours ago, o Barão said:

I like to have hardcore, realistic simulations where the AI can challenge me. Other players prefer to have arcade, simple mechanics just to play and relax.

And a well designed game is a game which have options to please a playerbase as wide as possible. Do you want to have a decissive battle each turn? Very well, the truth is that, if the comments and the reactions to the proposals made here have shown something, is that most people don't. So, the adequate option would be to resolve it. Your ideas aren't bad. But meanwhile, what should the big part of the player base which don't find them that fun, or even worse, whose machines can't even move them? Resignate and play something which is not fun for them? Simply give up and stop playing until something is done? An unhappy customer is the worst advertisement for a product.

The reality is that the majority of the playerbase isn't happy with the doomstacks. And we need the best possible solution. But until then, the customers need to be kept happy. And the fastest, easiest way to solve the problem, until a better solution is provided, I am afraid that is not other than hard capping task forces. It's like those super thin, nearly useless spare tires some cars have. Yes, nobody likes them. But if your tire burst, you have to use it until you get a new one. This is one of those cases, in which we have to choose between the lesser of two evils.

[The PC Collector]

Okay, bug report: My campaign apparently went crazy... Suddenly out of the blue apparenlty I'm fighting the italians and the french


However, I'm not at war with them. The Italians should indeed be my fwends.


The main screen also went nuts...




Edit: It apparently only laste one turn, and went back to normal on the next turn, but it was still indeed very strange.

Edited August 1, 2022 by The PC Collector

[Skeksis]

7 hours ago, Werwaz said:

when will it hit 2k?

7 hours ago!

[Urst]

3 hours ago, The PC Collector said:

And a well designed game is a game which have options to please a playerbase as wide as possible.

False. A well designed game will do everything that it does do well.

[Lakel]

7 hours ago, o Barão said:

You are not making things easier. What would you expect to happen when you sail with a 200 fleet? The AI will react to this. 

I have literally used fleets no bigger than 30 ships. regularly run into  200 ship fleets. Has nothing to do with the player fleet, and everything to do with the task  force system and battle generation as a result. That and the AI cheaping on ships for mass spam.

Still, if im willing to slog through 90 minutes of 5 fps at best, I can slaughter their fleet, will it work? sure. Did I have fun? Hell no.

Course on the otherside I my most recent campaign I was having to deal with a France that had its 200 cruisers all scattered into 1-2 ship TFs and never engaged more than a few at a  time. Won that through just auto-resolving probably 100 tiny pointless battles and blockading them.

Edited August 1, 2022 by Lakel

[ZorinW]

When I encounter these massive 100+ ships battles I usually do this:

Set all of my ships that are neither battleships nor battlecruisers to retreat.

The rest are then made into a battle line set on a course to encircle the enemy fleet, which in 99% of cases is a big pile of mismanaged ships crashing into eachother.

-> TAB OUT OF THE GAME AND DO SOMETHING ELSE

 

Eventually I return to the post battle screen showing me 100+ sunk enemy ships and minimal damage to my ships. So yes, these battles are VERY boring. They are a lagfest and the AI is too dumb to pose a threat.

 

[o Barão]

6 hours ago, The PC Collector said:

Do you want to have a decissive battle each turn?

Did I say that in any moment? You are not paying attention.

Going to repeat the same thing.

"If you had instead advocated for better AI task forces managements,..."

Remember? Do you understand what this means?

• There is no need for any hard cap.
• The solution is to improve the algorithm to better adapt to the player forces.
• This is much better that any artificial hard cap because it still lets the game to surprise the player (random factor) with reasonable size forces.
• Remove from the game the pointless battles. Where your 15 ships fleet is fighting a lonely torpedo boat, as an example.

 

Possible examples:

• Player mini fleets (1-5 ships)  AI fleet size in battle: 1-15 ships
• Player small fleets (6-15 ships) AI fleet size in battle: 3-30 ships
• Player medium fleets (16-30 ships) AI fleet size in battle: 7-60 ships
• Player huge fleets (Anything above 30 ships) AI fleet size in battle: 15-no maximum limit

The algorithm will always adapt to the player size fleet. Will not waste the player time with battles chasing one small ship. If the player is playing on a potato pc, just sail with small fleets. If the player want to provoke a decisive battle, just sail in a huge fleet and maybe the algorithm will give what he wants, or maybe not (random factor).

 

Understand why this is a much better solution now?

[Skeksis]

10 hours ago, o Barão said:

• Player mini fleets (1-5 ships)  AI fleet size in battle: 1-15 ships
• Player small fleets (6-15 ships) AI fleet size in battle: 3-30 ships
• Player medium fleets (16-30 ships) AI fleet size in battle: 7-60 ships
• Player huge fleets (Anything above 30 ships) AI fleet size in battle: 15-no maximum limit

The algorithm will always adapt to the player size fleet.

This isn't a bad idea. If the player fails to build an adequate fleet then the game can still max against the player. 

But still, the game has got to be able to destroy the player because of a lack of ship building and/or deployments, i.e. campaign failure must still be a thing, including financial or otherwise, there can't be an easy out.

Edited August 1, 2022 by Skeksis

[Grayknight]

So i managed to provoke RN into war and well... they over reacted i think. That is the first battle. Their main strategy was to burn my computer, after which they atemtped to burn my fleet. Fact that most of their ships were terribly obsolete did not help them tho....

BTW i had few taksforces and this was the biggest one

[The PC Collector]

1 hour ago, o Barão said:

Understand why this is a much better solution now?

I understand this from the first second. And in fact I really like it. But you understand that this can take months to code and we need a solution NOW?

[torpedoBoatAddict]

@Nick Thomadis

Please consider adding this feature of a turret bearing lock to the game., as this will greatly improve the aiming of both guns and torpedos for players willing to invest time into micromanagement and reduce the amount of people who complain about gun not firing or torpedo not launching.

I noticed that most of the time, the gun or torpedo doesn't fire because the turrets are still turning, and because turrets will not turn to track the enemy when fire is turned off or when the enemy is not spotted yet, it makes pre-aiming the armaments impossible. This is especially true for torpedos because we will often turn it off due to the long reload following a premature launch. But turning torpedo launchers off makes it simultaneously lose the ability to turn towards the target and we often find ourselves in situations that, after maneuvering the ship to the ideal position (like 1km diagonally ahead of the target) to fire a volley of short range torps that will surely kill the target, the torpedo turrets are still taking a million years to turn to the required bearing to actually fire off the torps, such that you end up losing that golden opportunity and usually die as a result of getting so close to a capital ship.

I would envision the feature to play out like this:

Player can toggle a button and enter the turret bearing lock mode whenever they wish. Then, they can specify a general direction to lock the bearings of the ships turrets on (so all turrets will be turning in that direction), much similar to how the waypoint mechanic is used when steering (where the player right click to specify the direction they want their ship to move in). Then, they can unlock the turret bearing to let the weapons aim in using the fantastic current autoaim system right before they shoot.

A simple feature like this will make the gameplay much more tactical, as the ability to turn turrets in the direction players wish and pre-aim targets (locking the turrets to aim at the area right before the target enters and hold off a salvo till the prime moment when the target sails into the kill zone) can allow for a much wider range of close combat and torpedo tactics that can exponentially increase the fun of this game with very little extra code to implement.

Edited August 1, 2022 by torpedoBoatAddict

[The PC Collector]

Bug/issue report: On the DD tech research with Germany, when I unlock DDs I unlock a 900 t hull, and as I have no displacement cap, I can build a 953 t DD by maximizing beam. However, the next tech unlock is 900t DD, which not only is not an improvement (what sense does make waiting nearly one year for a tech which gives nothing?) but, as now my original DDs are over the limit I can't build them anymore.

[The PC Collector]

And THIS is exactly why we need a solution, and we need it now. This can't continue anymore.



Also, @o Barão I think your idea for deciding how big the AI task forces might be depending on the ones the player has deployed... has a serious flaw. How it is decided if the player decides to not deploy any taskforce? They don't deploy any task force? They deply random? I see a few holes there. Not wanting to shut it down, only mentioning some possible flaws I've noticed.

[o Barão]

15 minutes ago, The PC Collector said:

And THIS is exactly why we need a solution, and we need it now. This can't continue anymore.



Also, @o Barão I think your idea for deciding how big the AI task forces might be depending on the ones the player has deployed... has a serious flaw. How it is decided if the player decides to not deploy any taskforce? They don't deploy any task force? They deply random? I see a few holes there. Not wanting to shut it down, only mentioning some possible flaws I've noticed.

If the player don't deploy any TF, then they are docked in a port.

If they are in port, sooner or later, the AI will attack the port.

A naval battle will happen, and the same rules will apply.

[Urst]

5 hours ago, o Barão said:

Did I say that in any moment? You are not paying attention.

Going to repeat the same thing.

"If you had instead advocated for better AI task forces managements,..."

Remember? Do you understand what this means?

• There is no need for any hard cap.
• The solution is to improve the algorithm to better adapt to the player forces.
• This is much better that any artificial hard cap because it still lets the game to surprise the player (random factor) with reasonable size forces.
• Remove from the game the pointless battles. Where your 15 ships fleet is fighting a lonely torpedo boat, as an example.

 

Possible examples:

• Player mini fleets (1-5 ships)  AI fleet size in battle: 1-15 ships
• Player small fleets (6-15 ships) AI fleet size in battle: 3-30 ships
• Player medium fleets (16-30 ships) AI fleet size in battle: 7-60 ships
• Player huge fleets (Anything above 30 ships) AI fleet size in battle: 15-no maximum limit

The algorithm will always adapt to the player size fleet. Will not waste the player time with battles chasing one small ship. If the player is playing on a potato pc, just sail with small fleets. If the player want to provoke a decisive battle, just sail in a huge fleet and maybe the algorithm will give what he wants, or maybe not (random factor).

 

Understand why this is a much better solution now?

I think it would need to account for WHAT the ships are. 30 DDs shouldn't be attacking a formation of more than *maybe* 5 BB at absolute most

[LeoA]

I played Italy again in 1.08.6 and saw a lot of improvement over my last campaign. Namely, the AI and myself appear to have significantly less ships (because of pricing increases) and I've been nearly 20 years into the campaign without steamrolling the AI in the tech department. However:

• The Focus Research option is still too strong, I believe it wasn't changed and it still makes any research that would complete in 20-something months complete in 4 or 5. My understanding is that the AI does not use this feature, and consequently you'll be fielding absurdly overpowered designs for the time period if you abuse the research system, or even if you use it intelligently at all. It's 1906 and I can produce Dreadnought IIIs, without focusing the BB hull line of research for more than a year or so. I can see the drawbacks on using the feature, as my DD line is some 5-10 years behind in tech, but the behavior still seems oddly exaggerated for both cases. I think this feature should be a smaller nudge AND a smaller detriment to whatever isn't being focused. If you truly play to win and focus the right stuff you'll destroy the AI because you'll tremendously outpace them in at least three fields of your choosing - you can have an overpowered BB hull, AND guns, AND control stations, and just demolish anything the AI can throw at you. Sure, you'll have extremely outdated DDs and stuff, but it hardly matters. I think skimming both bonuses and maluses would be good for overall balance. And I'll suggest once more that the AI should get a research boost instead of money boost in higher difficulties.
• Wars happen too often, I think a simple fix would be a truce of 10-15 years between warring nations. For instance I had war with France on 1901, beat them by 1903, had terrible relations and war again on 1904. It's 1906 and war is about to happen again. Realistically speaking a defeat is usually disastrous for the losing nation and no country would be ready for war again in a few years; from a gameplay perspective it's just boring and makes wars feel meaningless. Same goes for AI, it's always war war war war. 
• The AI appears to sack their outdated designs more often, but they still field some weird stuff that's 5, sometimes 10 years old. This is particularly bad in the early years of campaign, where a single hull change is very significant (on my first war with France I had 18,000 ton BB vs their 12,000 ton BB, hadn't focused BB line yet). A shift from quantity to quality would both reduce doomstacks (which are useless against fewer but more advanced ships) and make battles more challenging overall. 
• Early BBs and CAs are still blind, I had a France BB from 189X fight one of my BBs and they hit about 1 to 2% of their main battery AND secondary salvos at 2k range. This isn't bad, it's terrible. Early battles are bad because of this, you just hit 3x-5x and wait a while until something hits. A buff in base accuracy is probably for the best, I think you should expect AT LEAST 5% hit chance in 2k range. 2k range is nothing for main caliber BB guns, and 5% is still very little imo (but over double what we currently have). 
• Despite the changes to money and ship costs, I'm still yet to be constrained by lack of funds. I felt the changes in the previous patches, and had a turn in which I had -200k in income when I turned everything in the finance screen to max, but next turn this -200k became +400k. Then +800k. It's 1906 and I can field whatever I could possibly want without thinking about money. It's less bad than it was before, but still bad. I think BBs should be expensive, as in you should be actively concerned about losing your BBs because it shouldn't be easy to replace them. That's how all (modern) navies felt during all wars and for good reason. This can be achieved by either further increasing ship costs, or if those costs already match history, then by decreasing income. Obviously goes for both players and AI, and further naturally reduces doomstacks and fodder spam. 
• Dreadnought III unlocked before Dreadnought II for me as Italy. That's it. On that note, the research screen and UI could use some love in the sense that many things say (todo), but seem to actually work, and others do not list what they actually unlock. Often times control station research will list <?> as unlocked, but will actually unlock something. It's a minor issue compared to everything else though.

[o Barão]

1 hour ago, Urst said:

I think it would need to account for WHAT the ships are. 30 DDs shouldn't be attacking a formation of more than *maybe* 5 BB at absolute most

If the player fleet is only 5 BBs then it is a mini fleet. The maximum AI fleet size in this situation would be 15 ships (anything between 1-15). Of course, these are only my recommendation values.

And yes, ship type should be considered, but not with strict rules. A little freedom can be good for the game.

As an example. Let's say my lonely BC is raiding merchant ships in the Indian Ocean and is intercepted by a 7 ship fleet. If we are playing with strict rules, we would see something like 1 BB, 1 CA, 1 CL, 4 DDs. All fine, but all the time? Maybe they could be 7 CLs patrolling. A little randomness is good. Now if those 7 ships are all BBs then it is silly. Why are 7 BBs sailing without an escort? Why are 7 BBs sailing in the Indian Ocean far away from the major conflicts? Needs some rules, but not too many.

[o Barão]

Funny magnet bug.

2 ships not detected are being hit because they're attracting the shells coming towards the light cruiser.

Report log:

?? rudder damage

?? lost 1 crew

?? is flooding

?? etc...

?? etc...

[Urst]

2 hours ago, o Barão said:

If the player fleet is only 5 BBs then it is a mini fleet. The maximum AI fleet size in this situation would be 15 ships (anything between 1-15). Of course, these are only my recommendation values.

And yes, ship type should be considered, but not with strict rules. A little freedom can be good for the game.

As an example. Let's say my lonely BC is raiding merchant ships in the Indian Ocean and is intercepted by a 7 ship fleet. If we are playing with strict rules, we would see something like 1 BB, 1 CA, 1 CL, 4 DDs. All fine, but all the time? Maybe they could be 7 CLs patrolling. A little randomness is good. Now if those 7 ships are all BBs then it is silly. Why are 7 BBs sailing without an escort? Why are 7 BBs sailing in the Indian Ocean far away from the major conflicts? Needs some rules, but not too many.

I was making the assumption of 30 PC controlled DDs patrolling around their ports and all converging on a sighting of enemy ships.

[Kiknurazz91]

Not sure why but my relations with the British seem to be decreasing because of the Irish sea even though i have no ships or anything out.

Edited August 1, 2022 by Kiknurazz91

[mikekervin]

I'm surprised to see many complaints about PC performance on high end computers. My PC is entry level (core i3 and RX 580) and I get around 30fps in >100 ship battles. What are you guys using?

[Lakel]

10 minutes ago, mikekervin said:

I'm surprised to see many complaints about PC performance on high end computers. My PC is entry level (core i3 and RX 580) and I get around 30fps in >100 ship battles. What are you guys using?

100 ships definitely slows it down, but its the 200+ ship battles that murder it.

ryzen 3 4 core 3.5, with a Radeon 570,  hardly top of the line but it runs t he 100 ship battles fine enough.               

Edited August 1, 2022 by Lakel

[Urst]

46 minutes ago, mikekervin said:

I'm surprised to see many complaints about PC performance on high end computers. My PC is entry level (core i3 and RX 580) and I get around 30fps in >100 ship battles. What are you guys using?

Something can be poorly optimized for newer machines but well optimized for older ones, leading to the older machines having better performance.

[DieHard_BR]

All 

Sorry if already mentioned but the game is lagging bad with fleet battles.

Note that I am running in an Alienware, so I am assuming is not the hardware.

[admiralsnackbar]

what is with the odd naming convention of ships now...

CL CL 2275 
BB BB 1956

Are there not enough ship names that we get these odd things?