Upcoming v1.10 news (Update: 20/12/2022)

[Jakebob]

1 hour ago, Zuikaku said:

Why are ironclad hulls (Monitor and Virginia) not available in the campaign? They are akready done and woul'd made a nice addition. They can be coastal ship class.

Probably just because of the timeframe.  The first campaign start point is quite a few years after those designs were badly obsolete and headed for the scrapyard.  If you want to start in 1860, you'd need to add mechanics for wooden ships and such.  (I wonder if some of that could be adapted and brought in from Ultimate Admiral: Age of Sail).

[Zuikaku]

Not today. Some other day.

[Werwaz]

@Nick Thomadis

is the beta still coming today?

[Mike5556]

6 hours ago, Zuikaku said:

Why are ironclad hulls (Monitor and Virginia) not available in the campaign? They are akready done and woul'd made a nice addition. They can be coastal ship class.

I didn't realize till I was looking at predreadnaughts that ironclads were used in the 1890s. But yes use them for costal and harbor defense. Okay devs what about this? I am glad you brought this up. Even Austria and other nations used them.

[Grizli60rus]

Not today, anyway. It's better to let the developers finish and already provide us with a playable version. Tomorrow, or in two weeks, it doesn't matter.

Edited December 20, 2022 by Grizli60rus

[Mike5556]

Question USS Georgia 1905, turret layout. It seemed to have secondary 5 or 6 in, on top of moan guns. So are we going to be able to do this? BB 15 look and let us know.😐😉

[Suribachi]

If I had to hazard a guess with zero information that is not provided on this forum, I would not be surprised if the devs found something that was grounds to stop the patch from going out.  If that was the case, GOOD.  Let them fix it first.  Stability is more important than it being shiny right now.

If not, let's just hope it was not something that affects the safety of the team.

[Suribachi]

29 minutes ago, Mike5556 said:

Question USS Georgia 1905, turret layout. It seemed to have secondary 5 or 6 in, on top of moan guns. So are we going to be able to do this? BB 15 look and let us know.😐😉

I know it can be done certain main guns and 2" secondaries.  I do not know what the specific combo is off the top of my head but it is at least mark "whatever it is when you get the beige/brown square on top" (3?).

[Mike5556]

12 minutes ago, Suribachi said:

I know it can be done certain main guns and 2" secondaries.  I do not know what the specific combo is off the top of my head but it is at least mark "whatever it is when you get the beige/brown square on top" (3?).

I just stumbled on these, it would be interesting though. Along with the ironclad harbor monitors the US Navy produced. Looking forward to update.

[Jakebob]

1 hour ago, Mike5556 said:

Question USS Georgia 1905, turret layout. It seemed to have secondary 5 or 6 in, on top of moan guns. So are we going to be able to do this? BB 15 look and let us know.😐😉

It would be a neat option, but in reality those turrets didn't work well at all, which is why they weren't repeated on later classes.

[o Barão]

8 hours ago, Jakebob said:

Coal is a pretty abundant resource.  Any nation that was building major warships in the late 19th / early 20th centuries was industrialized at least to some extent and would have ready access to coal, at least in their home ports.

Oil on the other hand...

The issue is the coal quality, something the Germans lacked.

[Nick Thomadis]

Hello again all,

There has been a great effort to make available the beta today, but there is a persistent critical bug of the campaign that must be fixed first, before providing the beta build. We are sorry for this short delay, but it seems we will only be able to fix tomorrow. 

Thank you for your patience,

The Game-Labs Team

[Zuikaku]

Is this some earlier known bug?

[Stephensan]

3 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Hello again all,

There has been a great effort to make available the beta today, but there is a persistent critical bug of the campaign that must be fixed first, before providing the beta build. We are sorry for this short delay, but it seems we will only be able to fix tomorrow. 

Thank you for your patience,

The Game-Labs Team

sheesh

 

 

[Danz_Von_Luck]

3 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Hello again all,

There has been a great effort to make available the beta today, but there is a persistent critical bug of the campaign that must be fixed first, before providing the beta build. We are sorry for this short delay, but it seems we will only be able to fix tomorrow. 

Thank you for your patience,

The Game-Labs Team

No rush, better a delay than a big bug 

[Candle_86]

5 hours ago, Jakebob said:

It would be a neat option, but in reality those turrets didn't work well at all, which is why they weren't repeated on later classes.

Well they didn't work well on Virginia because by then the RoF of the 12in guns meant that the 8in guns interfered so you couldn't load both, on the Kearsarge class it worked fine because the 8in fired so much faster than the 12in that it actually worked.

[Stephensan]

6 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Hello again all,

There has been a great effort to make available the beta today, but there is a persistent critical bug of the campaign that must be fixed first, before providing the beta build. We are sorry for this short delay, but it seems we will only be able to fix tomorrow. 

Thank you for your patience,

The Game-Labs Team

i kinda what to know what kind of bug is it, i love seeing what can cause problems and what needs delays, instead of just saying "its a bug"

[Nick Thomadis]

3 hours ago, Stephensan said:

i kinda what to know what kind of bug is it, i love seeing what can cause problems and what needs delays, instead of just saying "its a bug"

Due to new shared designs logic in the campaign it was created an error, the submarines built would not be stored on the save, so when you loaded the save, the submarines would disappear for all nations...

[Stephensan]

23 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Due to new shared designs logic in the campaign it was created an error, the submarines built would not be stored on the save, so when you loaded the save, the submarines would disappear for all nations...

oh wow, that would have been a huge mess to find out later

[Lima]

33 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Due to new shared designs logic in the campaign it was created an error, the submarines built would not be stored on the save, so when you loaded the save, the submarines would disappear for all nations...

Best world. Feature not a bug.

[Alnitak]

But that doesn't sound bad if SM function is temporarily unavailable(

Edited December 21, 2022 by Alnitak

[Lima]

What are the problems with submarines (if it's so not obvious)

1. The production of submarines cost _nothing_.

I saw someone raise this problem in steam, @Nick Thomadis replied that the mechanics of submarines are similar to the mechanics of ships and there can be no such problem. Okay. As always, I'll show you everything in detail.

Control screenshot

Order for the construction 3D-printing submarines

Nothing has changed, it's free

Yes, the maintenance of submarines costs money. But AI will lose them quickly anyway, and AI will be able to build a large number of submarines again.

Also, IRL the crew problem for submarines was very significant. In the game, it doesn't matter at all.

2. Ships get stuck in battles with submarines.

Why does my group of 10 fast warships stay in place for years because there are some submarines there. Why?Obviously, this is also a problem with conventional ships, which I'm already tired of talking about, but submarines are much better at generating battles.

3. _Enemy_ submarines take too little damage. 

If a group of ships is standing still, it means they want to destroy the submarines. Submarines don't stand a chance against a dozen modern destroyers. During the war with Japan, in the campaign screenshots from which above I positioned four anti-submarine groups of 4 CAs and 8 DDs against Japan. At best, they sank 3 submarines out of 4, but this was very rare. Basically, they sank 1-2 and at the same time some destroyer received damage. I can't take these ships to repair, because the ASW TF is stuck in an eternal battle with submarines. With free-to-build, with endless submarines.

At the same time, my submarines _generally_ receive damage normally, that is, a pair of destroyers with ASW2/HydroIII is enough for the whole group to go to the bottom. Sometimes there are exceptions when hundreds of ships can't do anything to my submarines.

4. Destroying a submarine gives very little VP

You are given some simply ridiculous value of VP for the suffering of your ASW TF. Dozens of VP. It's just ridiculous. 

5. Submarines are not fulfilling their purpose

I believe that the main purpose of submarines is to hunt for merchant ships. And they are very bad at it. I tried to place dozens of submarines in the maritime region when my opponent had practically no ships, but still had a merchant fleet. Battles were generated very rarely. When the battle finally happened, my submarines very rarely sank all the ships. 4 submarines cannot sink 5 unprotected transports.

What we have in the end

AI throws endless free hordes of submarines at the player. The player gets crumbs of VP for them. At the same time, the player's ships stand still and get damaged.

If the player wants to use submarines, the player must put up with huge losses. For me, even the loss of these completely free ships, which are no more than a line in the tooltip, is unacceptable. I can't send them to death. I want them to hunt merchant ships when I have already defeated the enemy fleet. They can't do that.

So we have on the one hand a terribly toxic, on the other hand an almost useless feature.

Edited December 21, 2022 by Lima
I love typo

[Aldaris]

To add to all that - Submarines provide no gameplay that ships which can actually participate in real time battles (arguably the heart of the game) cannot provide as well.

IRL submarines were most famously used in contested sea regions to attack merchant shipping. They were mostly too slow to engage major surface warship fleets, unless they started the engagement in a favourable position, ahead of the enemy, and they had to be very careful indeed around enemy destroyers - being detected meant trying to sneak away, not going to periscope depth to heroically duel ASW ships.

So if they actually played like that - park submarines in contested waters, sink merchant ships, and get the occasional pot shot at a surface fleet if you're lucky - I'd be fine with it. That is not how they work however.

As Lima above me noted, they can keep a surface fleet engaged for months on end and prevent it from moving, and they'll go toe to toe with ASW destroyers and consistently come out on top. One other thing - how are those subs even fighting for more than one or two major engagements? Do they have unlimited torps? Sure feels that way. When I keep losing ships and getting others damaged month after month from the same group of subs, I ask myself: how do they do that? Boarding actions? Taking pick axes to my BBs hulls?

In their current state submarines are actively detrimental to the campaign experience, and it would be better if they'd be disabled until they work as they should - as an addendum that mostly impacts economy, not as a frustration generator.

[Lima]

Suggestions for submarines

I have to say, and I think the developers understand this, there is no easy solution (except removing this unfinished feature from the game for now). Everything related to submarines requires a careful balance. For example, if you make submarine attacks on merchant ships more frequent and at the same time leave the damage as it is now, the player will drown in tanky AI submarines.

So far, the best solution for the player is this Adv. mines V module, which weighs nothing and is undoubtedly sent by the God Himself. Only this thing allowed me to sink more submarines than the Japanese built (yes, to use one unfinished feature against another).

1. Orders for auto-resolve

Let's start with the fact that the player should be able to give orders on how to conduct this battle (this is also necessary in collisions of surface ships, however, there the player can manually solve it).

"Keep moving". For example, my strike TF of BB with sufficient escorts is being ambushed by submarines. I want them to keep moving. In this case, they do not lose much movement, but also do not cause much damage to submarines. Obviously, the final damage depends on the balance of attackers and defenders.

"Attack submarines". My ASW TF meets with submarines and has to hunt them specifically. With proper equipment and numbers, it should be death for submarines in the absolute majority of cases.

"Run". The ships are not trying to continue moving, they are trying to save their lives. Perhaps they will return to the nearest port. Difference from "Withdraw" is the fact that the submarines came to the attack range and attacked, and for example, a lone battleship is likely to be sunk.

It is also worth making an "Do not engage warships" order for submarines on the global map, so that they generate battles only with merchant ships. If such a group is attacked by the enemy, then they could be detected and they have problems.

2. Damage rebalance. This is absolutely necessary. Now you are using ASW groups (with the exception of aviation of course) like the Allies in 1943, but you get the result as in 1941.

3. More attacks on the merchant fleet. This is a very difficult moment. On the one hand, it is necessary, because now submarines are practically useless for hunting merchant ships, but with an incorrect balance it can be very painful. There is no aviation in the game, and this greatly complicates the matter. The order "Protect" for ships in ports should effectively direct destroyers to protect convoys if there are enough destroyers.

As you see, rebalancing submarines will require a very careful adjustment of the relative damage and a lot of time. So I suggest making it possible to disable this feature for those players who are not ready to test it.

[Aldaris]

It's a beta, so I'm fine with testing it. I hope it's obvious from the run of 1.09 though that the feature is borked as hell at the moment, and that some serious changes to the mechanic need to make it into 1.10. If not, there's nothing new to test really, and in that case I'd want the buggers gone until there are some meaningful changes.

Edited December 21, 2022 by Aldaris