>>> Beta 1.09 Feedback (Released)<<<

[Pappystein]

45 minutes ago, Abuse_Claws said:

Edit (2): Also, can someone please explain to me why Convoy battles end when the last of the escorts is sunk even if I have the transports in range and am in the process of sinking them? If they automatically are considered sunk, that is not shown anywhere in the UI (in the end battle screen only the transports I did actually sink during the battle appear as sunk). If they are not, why are they considered to have escaped even when I see them and am actively firing at them? Right now I usually try to leave one of the escort ships crippled until the end of battle, then come back for it, which is honestly a pain in the ass

I have the same complaint and several people stated that it was "boring" to sink the convoy ships thus we can't.  To me that is a poor design choice given the Convoy ships are the LIFEBLOOD of the enemy

[anonusername]

5 hours ago, o Barão said:

They all share GPS coordinates between them, with real time target solution, bearing and speed 😁

 

It only takes one ship to spot a target for the whole fleet to see. This can work well in a cold war naval game, but is strange for this time period (1890-1940). That being said, I understand why the game works this way. If you go full realism, you would have other big problem:

 

example, and this applies to all ships in your fleet:

Why is not my BB shooting at that target? The player can see the target, but it would not know what ships in his fleet are also seeing the same target.

 

This could work in game yes, but to make it work without any confusion for the player we would need to simplify the spotting mechanic to an arcade style. So we are also losing some realism going down this route anyway. Let me explain:

•  In the current system, it is not only the max spotting value that matters. The ship detectability is also important. That explains why X is spotted and not Y when both are inside the ship spotting radius.
• To work without any issues and to be easier for the player to understand how it works in battle, we need to remove the detectability from the equation.
• Now we are working only with fixed values. As an example: A ship have 15 km spotting range. Any ship that goes inside that radius, will be immediately spotted. (the spotting value can be lower because of weather conditions)
• Make each ship spotting value easy to see in battle for the player. A simple way is when we click on any ship. We will see the guns range circles in the water. Just add a new circle to represent the ship spotting range. To display the spotting value in the ship stats panel is also very important. When we are playing with ships from the 1930-40 we can get a ship with 30km or more spotting value. We are not expecting the player to teleport the camera 30km away from the fleet searching for a damn circle in the water, right? So a simple number in the ship panel stats will work.

And now we have an arcade spotting mechanic, where each ship needs to spot the targets to take action, and easy for the player to understand in battle why X ship is not shooting at one target that he can see in the screen (spotted by other ship)

 

But now we have another problem. As an example: a ship have a 20km spotting value and detects two ships at 20 km distance. One is a huge BB and the other is a small TB. Can we understand why both are spotted at the same time and the same distance when they are so different in size? Of course not. This could be improved by each ship having 3 different spotting values: 1 vs small ships; 1 vs cruisers; 1 vs capital ships. But then some players are going to ask why that small light cruiser is spotting at the same distance in comparison with that huge Heavy cruiser? And we are also adding to many values already. So is never going to be perfect.

So my suggestion solves on issue, but add another one. Is my suggestion better? Maybe. Perfect? Never.

 

 

But about your complains about the current mechanics. One thing is important to remember. They are the same for both the player and the AI. If you understand how it works you can use it against the AI. Usually to use small ships to scout for your fleet will solve 99% of the issues you can have with the mechanic to the point if well executed, now is you that are shooting at targets that can't see you.

And now you become the terror, the worst fear of your enemies. The predator. 😁

 

About recon, is from my understanding that only applies to the strategic map and does nothing in battle.

 

I think the current system already works well, it just needs more visibility in the UI. e.g. when selecting a ship, highlight the ships it can see.

[Pappystein]

36 minutes ago, anonusername said:

I think the current system already works well, it just needs more visibility in the UI. e.g. when selecting a ship, highlight the ships it can see.

well may be an overstatement in my opinion.   Rather I would say it works better than MOST games of this type but no where near GOOD.      That being said, there should be a technology well after many of the advanced radio functions (Forward Observer)   A ship/division in the SCOUT role that is closer to the target than the division they are scouting for give a +10% hit chance ONLY for canceling out negative modifiers due to weather and self motion.

[Eirchirfir]

There seams to exist a bug were changes in divisions (detacing/merging) can cause ships to be stuck at 0 knots. It mostly seams to affect damaged ships which are detached form the division. Most changes with divisions in battle should work fine but it could be something to be mindfull about.

[o Barão]

2 hours ago, anonusername said:

I think the current system already works well, it just needs more visibility in the UI. e.g. when selecting a ship, highlight the ships it can see.

The issue is the game works in the way that it only needs one ship to do the spotting for the whole fleet. So to have a feature to "highlight the ships it can see" seems irrelevant. Will not make any difference if it can see or not. If a "teammate" can spot a target for him, then all can see the target.

[Pappystein]

Ok this is part two of my notes I dropped the other day Formations/Station Keeping.   Note it would be REAL nice to have a Formation editor and assign divisons to sector X Y or Z and they would then attempt to STAY there......   oh well

 

Origional post:

 

Roles and responsibilities in your fleet.

So this is both a Bug-report and a way to explain to those that don’t understand what the various roles in your fleet of divisions are for.

 

Formation Spacing:

Loose:  In the age before Radio (so start of our game) a Loose formation was a formation where the ships were at the maximum distance to clearly see the command flags being used to communicate orders.   

Standard: as above except it is now the range that hand held semaphore flags can be seen at with a viewing glass.

Tight:  This is the range that someone could YELL a command to others  assuming ships were not moving… also semaphore flags can be see unaided at this distance.

 

Formation shape:

Line Astern,  From the division flagship to the last ship in the division, they form a nearly straight line from bow to stern to bow…

Abreast:   With the flagship in the center, the remainder of the division is both left and right of the flagship.   Typically the extra ships in the division are slightly aft of center of the division commander…  However that changes with the advent of radar.   Line Abreast formations seem to be the #1 trigger for collisions currently

Surround:   Missing from UAD.   Division flagship is surrounded by the remainder of the division,  One ship in front, one to each side and any left would be to the rear.  Lead and trail ships would be loose and broadside ships would be standard distance away (to allow for maneuvering.)

 

In terms of Spacing, the in game bugs only really occur with TIGHT formation spacing.  Specifically large fast ships that start at TIGHT will often collide with each other right out of the gate.

In terms of Formation Shape, Abreast seems to trigger the most collisions but I do not know if that is caused by pathfinding or by anti-collision AI not functioning as intended.

Formation Roles:

Battleline:  This is the default player-controlled Formation.   Depending on ship class it will start out either with standard or tight formation spacing and it will always be line astern in formation shape.  No real bugs here other than all the collisions that happen… but that could be several issues of which I address below.

 

SCOUT ROLE:   The buggiest of all the Formation roles.  The AI is supposed to scout ahead of the division you select it to scout for… then why are the scouts behind the division line of travel and going the WRONG WAY?  

Scout role SHOULD, be in a unit faster than the division it is scouting for (ideally)  and should always attempt to be in the front 90 degree arc (45 degrees each side of the line of travel) of the division it is scouting for.  Obviously this won’t be the case if the “commanding” division is violently moving but that should be the first goal.    ONCE a scout force detects the enemy forces it should maintain contact at maximum visual range and not engage unless ordered to do so (a weapons tight button would be nice in conjunction with the scout role)   Or if another enemy surprises (pop up target that was not detected earlier in weapon range)

 

SCREEN role:   Not a Huge amount better than the Scout Role, the Screen role has a lot of bugs.   Priority of screen role should be

1.     1  Stay between protected (screened) division and any known enemy contacts.   With RDF and or Radar this should be automatic

2.    2   Surround the screened division if no targets are discovered (prioritize Front, Side THEN back)  

3.   3    Engage any targets away from your protected division… CHASE any targets between you and your protected division (IE shrink protected zone to stop enemies

Currently the Screen does none of these well.   It is probably best at the first half of priority 3.   It is the worst at Both 1 and 2 (equally bad)  

 

 FOLLOW Role:    Ships follow the division they are tasked with following.  Bugs out quickly if the formation they are to follow is going a different direction than the Division assigned the Follow role.  Also bugs out if you change formation type at the same time as you assign the follow role (eg from Line abreast to line astern)

 

 

 

               

 

Edited October 29, 2022 by Pappystein

[kineuhansen]

please fix the vp bug and here is how you could do it bb=4000vp bc=3000 vp ca=2000 vp cl=1000vp dd=500 vp

[Eirchirfir]

53 minutes ago, kineuhansen said:

please fix the vp bug and here is how you could do it bb=4000vp bc=3000 vp ca=2000 vp cl=1000vp dd=500 vp

VP gain from sinking ships seams to have a relation with the amount and which type of ship the enemy has. This can lead to situations were if the enemy has 2 TB and you sink one of them you could get over 1000+ VP for it. If the enemy has over 20 BB and you sink on then you are not going to get a lot of VP.

The VP system is dynamic and will change so if you do not get a lot of VP then sink more warships until their fleet is almost completly sunk and they you will get a lot of VP.

[Skeksis]

Several times now the game has crashed/frozen on update missions. Almost in all cases it seems it was after when taskforces were split into others or merged (and maybe a mission was trying to be generated around them). 

This should never happen too, battle ends while live enemy transports are still visible. Sorry for the late capture but you can just see the un-sunken transports. 

There are too many things like this above that are unfinished. And as with crashes/freezing, it seems like an unstable version. 

Edited October 30, 2022 by Skeksis

[popcap200]

I'm having an issue where my divisions aren't going max speed.  If I mess with detaching and reattaching I can get up to about half speed.

[Abuse_Claws]

Another apparent bug: the AI somehow designed a ship with 14kn max speed, yet as player (unless something changed lately) I'm only able to design ships with 16kn max speed or higher

Edited October 29, 2022 by Abuse_Claws

[o Barão]

13 hours ago, Pappystein said:

Ok this is part two of my notes I dropped the other day Formations/Station Keeping.   Note it would be REAL nice to have a Formation editor and assign divisons to sector X Y or Z and they would then attempt to STAY there......   oh well

At this point, I would already be very happy if my whole fleet started all battles only in battle lines, sailing at the same bearing, at the same speed. No screen, no scouting, no follow. Nothing. Only simple battle lines.

 

I understand the devs had the best intentions when they made this, but after 2 years playing and testing this options, I must say I already gave up many months ago. In every battle, the first minutes will be always a big headache, trying to fix the mess, with ships bumping against each other until every single division is in a simple straight line. Only then the fun can begin.

The screen formations are a nightmare from the basic concept. I don't remember to ever see a formation in screen duty where the leading ship was in the front. It is always some ship in the back, so the moment you gave the order to change to a battle line, of course you will see the ships in the front doing a 180 turn to rush to the back of the leading ship and create chaos in the process.

The scout duty is nonsense. Here we can see a 5 ship division doing what? Scouting? Scouting what?

• There is only one enemy in battle, and it is on my starboard side. So what are this guys doing on my port side?
• If I have 5 ships on scout mission why are all of them in the same area sailing in a line?
• To make things worse, the moment the leading ship in the supposed "scout" mission touch a perpendicular invisible line at 90 degrees of the leading ship of the division they are supposed to scout, they will do a 360. They will never scout any area ahead of the formation. (as it shows in the image)

The only way to make scout working in this game, is if you detach all ships from the scout division and then gave the order to scout. And they will create what it seems to be a bigger screen formation. (Each ship scouting is 3 km away / in screen formations they will stay 2.1 km away)

Well, almost all of them. One crazy captain took the scout duty to another level and went on alone to search and fight the enemy at 20 km away from me. Why? I have no idea.

For me, scouting is a very different thing.

• If I have a division with only one ship scouting for me, I want to see that damn ship 5 km away ahead of my ship at 00 bearing.
• If I have a division with two ships scouting for me, I want to see one at 45 degrees, port side from my bow at 5 km away and the other, at 45 degrees, starboard side from my bow at 5 km away.
• If I have a division with three scouting for me, I want to see one at 45 degrees, port side from my bow at 5 km away and the other, at 45 degrees, starboard side from my bow at 5 km away and the third one 5 km away ahead of my ship at 00 bearing.
• etc, etc....in other words, to create a semicircle ahead of the division they are supposed to scout.

But hey, at least the follow formation works more or less.😒

 

Edited October 30, 2022 by o Barão

[myrsnipe]

Ive started to notice that by 1910 the ai players have hundreds of ships each, the world wars rages continuously and turn times are starting to take minutes

[Admiral Donuts]

Just loaded campaign from Save. Went to progress to next month, game is hung up for about 10 minutes on Update Ships. I assume it's because the AI is cheating again. Stop it.

[Rui_AD]

The best way to avoid minutes of chaos once the battle has begun is to allow all ships to be placed manually before the battle begins. We do not want battleships to appear in places we did not expect.

One more minor point: the hulls of American destroyers and light cruisers in WW2 should be more modern. We need Fletcher and Cleveland, not A class and Admiral Hipper.

[Cryadis]

So with recent beta patch game seems quite stable.

general feedback is diplomacy causes you end up in a huge world war quite quickly (at least when starting in 1890 especially as Japan).

One small suggestion for refitting, as to overcome flaws refetting a lot became a thing:

Currently it seems the game runs out of names when having a few designs (i.e. in my current game i am at "Niitaka (1890) - 3" and next refit gets the same automatic name). I'd like to suggest a hopfully easy improvement there:

Change the automatic refit naming to: [Name] -[Year].[Month]

Where the timestamp is when the design is concieved.

This should always end up with a unique nameing of designs as long you make not two refit designs in the same month, which is quite unlikely i think.

Uber bonus would be, beeing able to directly build a refit design, but i guess there are reason that this is not that easy to implement currently.

 

[The PC Collector]

1 hour ago, Cryadis said:

but i guess there are reason that this is not that easy to implement currently.

No reason other than the devs not wanting us to, because I have screenshots which prove that the AI is allowed to build refits.

[Admiral Donuts]

I began to notice tonight that the weather in battles is beginning to match what's shown on the screen. That's a great improvement for the quality of the game in my opinion.

I've been facing several enemies now for 10 years. Beaten 2 of them down. The rest are in a bunch of alliance with the Chinese.

Individually, I have a huge VP total to their next to none. But on the whole, I'm losing the war and badly. Why is that? What have I been missing?

edit - more specifically...

My victory point tally on the right screen is 25,368 versus their combined 346.

My victory point tally on the left screen is 155,361 vs their 208,309.

I've never understood why there would be such a disparity between the two totals. Clearly the ones on the right screen are either incorrect, or should be ignored. Their fleets have taken massive damage. They've lost tons more ships than I have - I have lost a total of 5 ships, 4 of them DDs and 1 CA, in 10 years of war. They have lost much more than that simply from the minefields at the Panama Canal. What's more, their losses in battle can only be described as critical.

And yet...

 

Edited October 30, 2022 by Admiral Donuts

[Schmitty21]

Still getting a turn freeze whenever I see "Update Ships" on the UI. The game is responding but it doesn't advance to the next turn. I force quit and reload and its on the next turn. 

Edit: Its now happening constantly and not advancing the turn.

Edited October 30, 2022 by Schmitty21

[Eirchirfir]

5 hours ago, Admiral Donuts said:

I began to notice tonight that the weather in battles is beginning to match what's shown on the screen. That's a great improvement for the quality of the game in my opinion.

I've been facing several enemies now for 10 years. Beaten 2 of them down. The rest are in a bunch of alliance with the Chinese.

Individually, I have a huge VP total to their next to none. But on the whole, I'm losing the war and badly. Why is that? What have I been missing?

edit - more specifically...

My victory point tally on the right screen is 25,368 versus their combined 346.

My victory point tally on the left screen is 155,361 vs their 208,309.

I've never understood why there would be such a disparity between the two totals. Clearly the ones on the right screen are either incorrect, or should be ignored. Their fleets have taken massive damage. They've lost tons more ships than I have - I have lost a total of 5 ships, 4 of them DDs and 1 CA, in 10 years of war. They have lost much more than that simply from the minefields at the Panama Canal. What's more, their losses in battle can only be described as critical.

And yet...

 

You should not trust the VP tally on the left. It keeps all VP from prior wars. So if you gets put on the side which has lost the previuse war then it will start with the VP total of that war and all other wars that have shown up on the left VP tally. The VP tally on the left can even show a diffrent war which you are not involeved with.

The tallies on the right is only for the current wars you are fighting and so sould display VP correctly as it sould affect you during these war and will be the one that affect the peace deals with diffrent nations.

[Knobby]

In my game as Britain, during a war with Austro-Hungary I suddenly got fights with Spanish ships during one turn. I was not at war with Spain. In fact I had 90+ relationship with them. It only happend that one turn but it was really weird.

[Admiral Donuts]

1 hour ago, Eirchirfir said:

You should not trust the VP tally on the left. It keeps all VP from prior wars. So if you gets put on the side which has lost the previuse war then it will start with the VP total of that war and all other wars that have shown up on the left VP tally. The VP tally on the left can even show a diffrent war which you are not involeved with.

The tallies on the right is only for the current wars you are fighting and so sould display VP correctly as it sould affect you during these war and will be the one that affect the peace deals with diffrent nations.

The government keeps begging me to end the war because does not go well.

[Lima]

1 hour ago, Admiral Donuts said:

The government keeps begging me to end the war because does not go well.

Oh no not VP bug again

[Eirchirfir]

34 minutes ago, Admiral Donuts said:

The government keeps begging me to end the war because does not go well.

That were things gets complecated because the tally did not reset after a previuse war. Because the nations which were on the side you currently is on in the tally did so badly that your goverment is reacting to that war which you might not have hade anything to do with. You have been left with a mess caused by the previuse nation.

So your goverment is reacting to both tallies on both right and left but as you are winnig on one and losing on another makes the goverment reacte to the greater VP diffrence which is to the tally in which you are lossing as it currently stand. You have to make up that 50k VP diffrence to get the goverment to stop thinking it is lossing a war in which you are winning.

A thing which should be done is to repport the issue with the ingame bug-repporting system to let the devs know there is an issue with VP tally discrepencys which can make winnig war seams like lossing war to the goverment of your nation.

[Admiral Donuts]

1 hour ago, Eirchirfir said:

That were things gets complecated because the tally did not reset after a previuse war. Because the nations which were on the side you currently is on in the tally did so badly that your goverment is reacting to that war which you might not have hade anything to do with. You have been left with a mess caused by the previuse nation.

So your goverment is reacting to both tallies on both right and left but as you are winnig on one and losing on another makes the goverment reacte to the greater VP diffrence which is to the tally in which you are lossing as it currently stand. You have to make up that 50k VP diffrence to get the goverment to stop thinking it is lossing a war in which you are winning.

A thing which should be done is to repport the issue with the ingame bug-repporting system to let the devs know there is an issue with VP tally discrepencys which can make winnig war seams like lossing war to the goverment of your nation.

It's the only war of which only I am a part. I turned down all alliances. It's just been an ongoing, cyclical war in which the ones I ushered out early are now back.

The VP total is independently broken, therefore. And has been from the start. Including the ones who left the war and returned or never came back, they have amassed a grand total of 346 vps. Yet I have always been, and am still losing.