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

[ZorinW]

1 hour ago, Zuikaku said:

Would be a good thing to know a roadmap for the next updates so that we know which issues are going to be fixed and how campaign gameplay is going to improve/change.

 

 

 

 

It would be EPIC if the devs would share their list of bugs they acknowledge and are actually working on.

They should spend 0 time on adding anything new for the next 6 months and only fix the massive amount of bugs currently in the game. 

[Thramoun]

In this update after a battle the game will get stuck on "...Battles..." in the loading screen, can't do anything except ALT+F4. If you reload from the previous save, every battle that is not auto-resolved will get stuck this way.

Only in the next turn the bug disappears, so you have to autoresolve every battle for that turn that you can't avoid.

[aradragoon]

16 hours ago, Skeksis said:

Take the overweight flaw. The very main control factor in designing ships, weight, every single component you add to the weight is carefully considered to optimize your design, right down to a single ton, BANG it's now overweight by 7%: 

• Increased costs.
• Requires more engine power.
• Decreases maneuverability. 
• Increases target signature. 

Damn me now why bother designing best optimal. That's just one of them.

@Baboulinet @Pappystein @PalaiologosTheGreat, a robust debate best serves the Dev's.

Just to be fair
You are designing but the shipyard can cause issues. Thus when you design it to be 100 tons under weight the shipyard could make mistakes. I was going address a better way to do flaws but I will make a separate post with some issues.
 

[kineuhansen]

so in my test campaign as the british i sunk like 2 enemy battleship from to nations but i only got like 200 victory point also after like 5 turns the enemy nation had like 6000 vp i asume its a bug and need to be fixed in a hot fix also cant move the submarines

[Suts]

For the love of all that is good stop with the bloated feature creep. Fix and refine what you currently have and then drip-feed in new features that are actually meaningful and engaging. There are still plenty of issues with balancing of certain hull types, gun calibres etc in the ship designer that have been around for ages and don't seem to being addressed. Why are the Refitted Dreadnought hulls so ridiculously heavy? Why am I able to have 5,000 tonne light cruisers with good speed, heavy torpedo armament, guns and covered all over in 6 inches of armour plate? Why do ships magically teleport to random ports? Why are 12" guns laser accurate and why are guns in excess of 16" completely useless? Why are guns just not to scale between different turret models? Seriously look at the insane size of French guns compared to say German styled turrets, it's absurd.

These are issues that have been present in previous versions and haven't been addressed and I doubt they will at the current rate.

Now we have to worry about the asinine """realistic""" fuel system, flaws in construction that are so hilariously disparaging I'm surprised all big gun battleships were able to set to sea in the first place, AI that doesn't want to engage at all. There are still plenty of systems in the campaign that need fixing and refining from 1.08 such as the questionable Fleet Tension mechanics, Diplomacy feeling absolutely useless, the AI just being braindead. The UK has this nasty habit of putting it's entire fleet in Cyprus for no good reason in 1.08, I shudder to imagine what ridiculous fleet manoeuvres the AI will pull with the entire Globe at it's disposal.

Please stop slapping on more features that inevitably cause more issues and make previous flaws even worse and work with what you have first.

 

[aradragoon]

Enjoying the new features honestly but some feedback currently.

Problems with the current version:

1. As mentioned before campaign map not allowing direct movement across the pacific. Not only movement but having the east and west ends of the map stitched together for easy map movement. Alternatively or in addition you could add a globe mode (probably low priority.)
2. Range on ships seems a bit messed up. My 1900's battleships I could make around almost 20,000 km while my 1912 BC was capped at around 13,000km. I understand how the techs play in but it seems like the hull may also have values that don't add up. This could fall under balance, though, so I understand if this tweaking waits until later.
3. Research speed - Research doesn't seem to be quite right. Playing as the US my research, while more advanced than almost every nation, was lagging far behind the dates for tech. I.E. I started in 1900 and by 1915 I was just finishing mark 3 guns, the 1912 BC, and almost every other tech I was getting to was 1904 to 1912. This was with 100% into technology. The fact that I was "very advanced" concerns me that by 1930 or 1940 I won't be able to get to the top tech currently if I start at the beginning of the campaign. While this may  also come down to balance it makes it more difficult to test everything in long campaign.
4. Subs - It seems subs have a cost per month but no cost to build? Not sure if that is intended but something I wanted to point out.
5. With the full game map will we at some point get standard convoy routes we can have expressed on the map? I think it would be more helpful to have convoys to certain countries expressed on common routes, not that other routes couldn't be used, in order to allow the player more control on having shipping interdicted or sending fleets to support certain routes. (Might be something further away but still.)
6. This might just be tying in to the research but it almost feels like the finance screen could be worked on. As an example perhaps instead of sliders with a max we could allocate the full budget. I.E. If a player wants to get, based on current values, 120% into research (which could have diminishing returns over 100%) instead of stocking up on cash or building ships.
7. Ships teleporting back to port after being damaged. Ships should travel back and also present good targets as they limp home.
8. Options to have refueling at sea via tankers to increase range at the expense of a turn and also being vulnerable and possibly also floating docks later in tech to repair at sea.
9. Flaws - This is a big topic and I don't think flaws are implemented well currently but I know this is the first iterations so:

I think a better way to resolve this would be to have the flaws start as unknowns. Given this is a game it could still show how many just with ? similar to how when you go into combat the enemy ship class isn't identified. I.E. You design a new BB and build the first of the class. This ship shows something like "BB Montana - flaw (?), flaw (?), flaw (?)" This could lead to the second portion.

With this change we could then have the player offered sea trials and potentially a shakedown cruise. These could have controls, as well, added to duration and/or funding. It could then play in to a tech to determine how many flaws are determined. (Like say max time/money gives a base 90% chance to find and in addition with tech you can get over 100% in order to lower time. Numbers could be tweaked or potentially new tech makes it harder to find all the flaws without the tech, it could even be the same one to reduce flaws during construction.) This allows that with more time and funding you could determine all the flaws.

From this I would say would come the most important portion of this new systems. The ability to assign time and funding to resolve these flaws. Perhaps similar to research but without impacting the current research times. (Such as you have a timer and have to allocate some much total funding/funding per month) which results in a refit of sorts.

This would allow the player the control to determine if the flaws in the ship needs to be fixed and if the flaws need to be fixed a way to resolve them. Of course this would require flaws to be for a class and less per ship.

Just throwing out ideas on how to have flaws, which I do think are needed, without making it completely problematic or honestly just too annoying to play with.

Final comment but its 100% balance:
Deck pen on standard guns is just not close to balanced. Looking at I think it was a 12in or 13in AP mark 2 or 3 it had 4in of deck pen at 1,000m which just seems over the top since the drop angle would be so minimal. (Around 1912 with capped AP just for reference)

Edited October 16, 2022 by aradragoon

[UncleAi]

Flaws

At that age they don't have ISO or CAD. Every ship in same "class" will have slight difference. Some because different manufacturers. Some because improvement from previous ship(different batch). Some because special design (like the No.1 ship is designed as fleet ship so it will has extra room for commanding). Ships in same class might have 1 or even 2 knots speed difference in test. 

 But as a game, please don't against players. Flaws can be a very annoying feature. My suggestion is make it optional. And provide enough methods to overcome it(tech, extra cost, extra construction time etc.).

[aradragoon]

Also I have started having some issues recently where when I end the battle it never loads back to the campaign.

[Nick Thomadis]

12 hours ago, SMS said:

The Philippines should belong to the U.S. instead of Spain, which is more prone to conflict with Japan and more in line with history.

The map borders (which are incomplete) are based on 1890. Later we will offer different starting conditions according to campaign's year start.

[Nick Thomadis]

On 10/15/2022 at 1:38 AM, o Barão said:

Ok this can be a critical gameplay issue.

TBs division can only go to 9knots? Low fuel or engine efficiency issues?

If the ship is detach from the division now can go to 21 knots? Why?

The TB Tomozuru don't have any issues in sailing in at almost 30 knots. They are all the same design. This one is rushing the enemy, from a screen division. The fuel is also low so what is happening here?

My CA division can only go at 3 knots? Again why? Do I need to detach all the ships?

What  can be derived from the images (thank you) are the following:

- Your torpedo boat is out of fuel so it has 2/3 of its max. speed. This is an expected behavior, we will fine tune so that smaller ships do not have so fast fuel consumption during battle.
- About the CA having only 3 knots, seems that you have put them in tight formation and this conflicts with their avoid mechanism, that slows them down. We will try to address this.

[Tycondero]

The other great powers in the campaign are still too aggressive. In my first game a chinese-japanese war erupted that ended up involving all great nations. Especially some events that lower relations by huge amounts (up to -50) cause a lot of tension that easily leads to war too quickly imo. As a result Great Britain already broke up by 1896 due to economical collapse. This really feels a bit anti-climactic for it to happen so quickly in the game, especially considering the nation cannot recover. 

Also, it would be better if said collapse would result in new minor nations (e.g. England, Scotland, India etc from a Great Britain collapse).

 

[Mandric]

 Something that seemed to got more out of hand with the addition of all nations is the complete collapse of any political peace for any long periods of time. maybe I'm not effective at ending wars quickly or it just not a fully fleshed out political system but it seems like going to war with 5-7 nations is inevitable. what country wants that? how many fronts does my poor nation of japan have to fight. 

Edited October 16, 2022 by Mandric

[ZorinW]

Just to highlight how bad the state of the tech research is lets look at the new submarine research.

Starting a campaign in 1890 and with a constant tech budget of 100% and with the only research boost on submarine tech you will get to the point of actually being able to research submarines hulls and improvements in January 1902 - the tool tip says the tech SHOULD be availabe in 1904. So a massive investment only gives you an advantage of a litte under two years. All other techs will have suffered due to the applied tech boost. 

All other techs are also, on average, at least 5 years behind when playing with a 100% tech budget without any boosts applied. So the devs did do absolutely nothing to fix this very basic issue.

 

It's so frustrating that old bugs don't get fixed and that stuff that at least used to work is now broken due to new features nobody asked for.

Edited October 16, 2022 by ZorinW

[Tycondero]

24 minutes ago, Mandric said:

 Something that seemed to got more out of hand with the addition of all nations is the complete collapse of any political peace for any long periods of time. maybe I'm not effective at ending wars quickly or it just not a fully fleshed out political system but it seems like going to war with 5-7 nations is inevitable. what country wants that? how many fronts does my poor nation of japan have to fight. 

Encountered the same issue. Wars are happening too quickly and escalate involving all nations due to breaking down of relations because of conflicts between nations and events that cause rapid increases in tension. It seems that once a war between two countries break out, eventuality everyone gets involved. The AI should try to also stay out of conflict if there is nothing to gain. 

[Cryadis]

In manual Battle a few things are Buggy not fine tuned yet imo, i try to list them here:

. Mainguns and also torpedos (fixed mounts not deck torpedos that need to turn in) have a tendancy to sometimes not fire at all. target is locked, can do damage, stance set to agressive, but they crew just does not pull the trigger. This issue can aso be observed in 1.08 already, maybe even earlier version and is quite annoying (the Ai does not seem to have that issue btw)

. in current 1.09 beta the AI definatly has an issue on deciding when to retreat: currently (i start at 1890) it quite often happens that the AI will straigt out retreat. This is easily reproducible for the player as well: just start a battle you get in the campaign and activate the AI and there is a good chance you ship will go into retreat mode. Personalyl i am not even sure if there is a point for the Player activated AI even be able to retreat (i could set that manually and i play a fleet admiral giving the relevant comands after all)

- Diplomacy / tension needs some love as well: with Europe only it was kinda ok, but now with many nations this cascades out of hand quite fast. Example i started AH in 1890, played a bit and eventually a cascade started so i ended up in war with Japan (5 years after i have never seen a ship fromt hem). part of that seems to be that if a war breaks out between A and B, and there is nation C that likes nation B, nation C wil get a -50 point "love debuff" towards A. So one war starts and of we go to worldwar quite fast.

Tensions themselves are not a bad idea i think, but it is hard for the player where to put ships to avoid causing tension or to purposefully create some. Also I have a feeling that AI taskfoces also can cause tensions to the player.

- Fuel usage in combat: already mentioned, but considering a battle last for let say 3 in game hours, or lets say 6 or even 9 it seems quite unrealistic that a ship is using up its entire fuel storage, or even a relevant amount.. unless your storage gets hit and you start leaking. Currently 1890 ships seem to run out after 1 to 1.5 hours at the latest

- Flaws: its not a bad addition, but from a game point of view they seem to be waaay too frequent and from a technical standpoint it should always be possible to fix them once identified (of course it might be not economical or whatever reason, but for a game there should be the option at least)

- research: some techs in the 1980 start seem to be super expensive (hull construcation and first armor construction tech at least, the later took me between 60 or 50 months to research wth a focus on it and 100% tech budget)

- also small bug in Tech: i tend to use "mm" instead of inch for gun calibers, but small guns research seems always to be displayed in inch regardless of the setting in game options. It works for big guns however.

- not new but it is still super annoying that you cannot build a refit of a ship directly (if i am not wrong you can also build the base ship and then refit that right away, if you copy the design the new techs seem to be not available in the copied design)

- Battlegeneration: As in 1.08 it still seems to happen that battles are generated in a way that almost the entire enemy fleet is involved and as far as i know a good deal on the enemy ships was not even in range. Likewise you can end up in a battle with a taskforce in west mediteranian while your taskforce in question was in the eastern mediteranian.

- SImilar to the point above AI taskfoces seem to be able to pass right through where a player taskfoces is stationed without engaging at all (this exists at least since 1.06: place a taskfoce in gibraltar and watch how enemy taskfoces can happily pass through there). This one hurts the tactical aspect imo.

In the end i see a lot of work was put into the game so far, please take my feedback as source for improve it more.

 

Edited October 16, 2022 by Cryadis

[TAKTCOM]

Oh my God, here we go again. Another Cyprus, except with Russians instead of the British.

Also, I've had one (1) battle in a few years of war, missions just don't show up. The Russians are running around in circles, but that's all. Our economies are slowly dying, meanwhile.

[Skeksis]

3 hours ago, aradragoon said:

8. Options to have refueling at sea via tankers to increase range at the expense of a turn and also being vulnerable and possibly also floating docks later in tech to repair at sea.

It seems that if you park your taskforce outside (or within fueling range) of an allied port, your taskforce refuels. An option. Kinda representing oilers.

I don't know what the fueling range is yet or how to view it.

[Skeksis]

38 minutes ago, Cryadis said:

- Fuel usage in combat: already mentioned, but considering a battle last for let say 3 in game hours, or lets say 6 or even 9 it seems quite unrealistic that a ship is using up its entire fuel storage, or even a relevant amount.. unless your storage gets hit and you start leaking. Currently 1890 ships seem to run out after 1 to 1.5 hours at the latest

Now we have to consider fuel and range when designing ships, i.e. will you have enough fuel for the patrol and for 'combat'. Same for combat speed, fuel consumption, max out and you'll run out of fuel very quickly. 

Edited October 16, 2022 by Skeksis

[Thramoun]

Regarding fuel, it appears that in combat, each ship at "low fuel" in a division will apply 1/3rd modifier. Meaning 2 ships in a division with low fuell with apply 2/3 x 2/3 and so on. You can improve your speed at low fuel by seperating all your divisions into single-ship ones.

As far as realism go, I love the new fuel mechanics on the strategic level as finally range is actually relevant, but... I think in combat the fuel usage should be lowered drastically, so that only when you start a battle at below 20% fuel available it starts to become an issue. It's neither realistic nor fun to drain the fuel of every ship in an hour of combat. The same amount of fuel they could use to cross all the 7 seas twice over if they have enough funnels.

[Skeksis]

4 hours ago, aradragoon said:

Just to be fair
You are designing but the shipyard can cause issues. Thus when you design it to be 100 tons under weight the shipyard could make mistakes. I was going address a better way to do flaws but I will make a separate post with some issues.
 

There’s another logic, the contest, or lack of.

AI designs are much better now but to add flaws into them is going reduce the contest. This must be a big worry for Dev’s, making sure the AI can challenge the player without hidden advantages (which there are none yet). Humans can make judgment calls on how debilitating flaws are and scrap/replace if needed, can the AI do this too?

Flaws in AI ships is another very bad idea.

Edited October 16, 2022 by Skeksis

[ZorinW]

24 minutes ago, Skeksis said:

Now we have to consider fuel and range when designing ships, i.e. will you have enough fuel for the patrol and for 'combat'. Same for combat speed, fuel consumption, max out and you'll run out of fuel very quickly. 

That would require the devs to actually provide information on the world map that would allow us to KNOW what we need to build. Let us plan routes and then build the ships that can sail such routes...

[Skeksis]

6 minutes ago, ZorinW said:

That would require the devs to actually provide information on the world map that would allow us to KNOW what we need to build. Let us plan routes and then build the ships that can sail such routes...

Effects all nations with distance ports too. Hopefully some map tools are planned but all trial and error for now.

[Thramoun]

Also apparently the AI just chooses to ignore the "Low Fuel" speed modifier. The player can ignore it as well if they just never change the division speed setting.

[jtjohn1]

I have seen it many times before over the years.  Game designers have a great idea.  They then decide to overcomplicate things.  

This isn't Ultimate Admirals the World At War.  This is Ultimate Admirals Dreadnoughts. 

Nix the sub mechanics.   

Nix the smaller nations such as Spain and China etc

If you must have these in the game wait until you have the "Dreadnought" portion mostly debugged.  

Trying to force these things into the game takes resources away from your core audience and game play experience and will, inevitably, lead to failure.

Things like my 12000+ KM range destroyers running out of fuel before they make it from New York to London?  That's a ~5800KM trip..

Things like "Look this battleship you designed and built is 4000 tons over the designed displacement...  That's TWO DESTROYERS WORTH of added displacement!
 

Get the core product right.  Nix the bells and whistles until you do.  You will be much more successful

 

[jtjohn1]

TBH I don't know how anybody plays it right now.  I went from having a surplus of 11M to having a 174M deficit and the only thing I did was return my ships to port.  NOTE:  My monthly naval budget is ~260M.  My total budget for Tech/Crew and Transport is ~176M  Fleet Maintenance and shipyard development adds in another 68M.  I have a 140M fuel cost for 16 ships in 1920 (8 of them Destroyers) which is absurd.

Just going based off TODAY'S prices (Based off Bunkerfuel C which is more expensive than what was used) to fully fuel an Iowa class battleship (If I am doing the conversions correctly) in 1920 should cost ~$641,000)  (That's converting ton register to gallons to barrels and then multiplying that by $~3 per a barrel) or roughly 10 million of today's dollars.

I am fairly sure I am erroring on the HIGH side here. 

I reiterate from my previous post.  Don't start injecting new technology/game play/features into the game until you take care of your core game.  These are EASY things to figure out.  The total cost to fuel my fleet in 1920 should be roughly 10Million (Not a month just to refuel from scratch)

Oh and my entire 16 ship fleet in New York Harbor took more than 2 months to fuel...