>>>Beta v1.1 Feedback<<< [RC 6]

[SirTrafalgar]

"Drunken" driving happens as the ships accelerate to their full design speed. Once a ship hits its full design speed it stops swerving back n forth and moves in a straight line until its speed changes. Its a huge problem because the game reads the ships as maneuvering at any speed other than the full design speed. We loose the cruising bonus and if we change speed from the max, or take damage preventing us from reaching max speed we are stuck in this state of constantly steering back and forth. It happened in 1.09 with ships in the rear formation and only was effected by the maximum set speed but now happens with all ships regardless of their position in the formation and requires reaching the maximum designed speed to straighten out.  When you use manual rudder control the drunken movement of ships is corrected so removing that feature before this bug is fixed would be catastrophic to gameplay. 

[admiralsnackbar]

1 hour ago, Nick Thomadis said:

We cannot add more features to support manual rudder in order to fix its potential bugs. For example, a few players use it and order their ships to join a formation or screen or do something else, but manual rudder controls are preserved and so ships spin, and chaos happens. Do players want better formations? Then we have to cut features that do not contribute on this.

Automatically deactivating manual rudder when a ships division [joins or drops out] or when its formation status [screen, follow, retreat], in the same way that 'Avoid' is automatically selected when division status happens seems reasonable.

Removing it entirely seems pretty drastic. 

I was in-game playing around with a group of 5 heavy cruisers going at around 32 knots. Executing a 90 degree turn to starboard will cause the stern to swing out and the bow of the ship to be oriented such that the ship is now going to continue turning. (See auroras vids, I can't post anything less than 7kb) 

As far as the physics are concerned this seems completely realistic. 

When I manual-rudder a single ship or the head of a division, where I make a turn X right, and then when I've gotten 50% of the way to the angle I want I basically straighten the rudder at roughly the same rate that I turned it [but backwards] the game gives you relatively smooth curve. There is *some* drift, it's not zero, but it looks much closer to what players expect the turn to look like. 

Now It may be that manual rudder has the problem that the rudder shift is instantaneous, which is unrealistic. 

With rudder shift time being a thing the ship would need to know how quickly it can get from forward rudder to right or left and back, and needs to know how soon before the desired angle of turn is achieved it should be back at forward rudder. 

Looking at the vids it seems like forward rudder is not achieved soon enough. There's clearly still too much drift and too much oversteering. So right angle turns become closer to a U turn.


If I was programming this, my first attempt at a "tight turn" would be: 
1) Define the angle of the initial and desired heading as "A"
2) Attempt to shift rudder to the largest extent possible
3) As the ship shifts, the angle between the current and desired heading decreases, define the angle formed at any point by the current and desired heading as B
4) When B = A/2, shift the rudder back to forward rudder at the exact same rate that it was shifted initially. 
5) It follows that by the time B = 0 (no difference between current and desired heading) the rudder should be forward. 

It's possible that the ship still wants to keep turning, but when I try to perform the same procedure above using manual rudder, the ship doesn't drift so heavily as to make that an issue. 

If the above doesn't stop the overturning, then you might need to have the ship initiate a correction of the rudder SOONER than the midpoint B = A/2 (Maybe 33-45% instead of half)

Lastly, turning of vessels that are following or in a division should involve executing the same rudder maneuvers at roughly the same point in space (like cars on a road)

 

Edited January 3, 2023 by admiralsnackbar

[kjg000]

44 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

We cannot add more features to support manual rudder in order to fix its potential bugs. For example, a few players use it and order their ships to join a formation or screen or do something else, but manual rudder controls are preserved and so ships spin, and chaos happens. Do players want better formations? Then we have to cut features that do not contribute on this.

I am not sure what your point is here. Ships are nearly uncontrollable without the manual rudder ever being touched as it is. Ships in formation have never behaved realistically and need attention, but disabling an important feature is only going to make the game worse.

Yes, ships in formation should have the manual rudder disabled while a part of a formation, except for the lead ship. However the manual rudder is an important means of controlling individual ships (not in formation) and formations (via the lead ship).

Removing manual rudder will severely impact the play-ability of the game and players frustration with the game.

[Lima]

Total War rudder. I don't remember much anymore, I haven't played Total War for a long time, but the last game I played was Empire with DarthMod (thank you, Nick). There was a rudder, at least for a single ship. I don't remember if it worked for the flagship in the formation. This thing is extremely necessary for micromanagement, especially considering torpedoes.

[PainKiller]

 

54 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

You can check the previous version 1.09.3 in fast moving ships that the movement line has the exact same behavior, following the ship's motion.

Okay, is this the misunderstanding here? Movement line? The Green line on the sea where the ship will go? No, we were not talking about the green line doing tiny little zig zags. We are talking about the whole ship doing Biiiig zig-zags, as Aurora showed earlier. 

 

1 hour ago, Nick Thomadis said:

So all this recent overdramatization

We are trying to help, but when we are talking to a wall, it's hard. We are giving so clear explanation of what we see and what supposed to happen i have no idea what to do. As a boat driver i can confirm you have to do this big manuvers on purpose. 

Is this the same misunderstanding about our report on the big guns not shooting when smaller guns are active? Your answer was that it was fixed with some kind of target solution. But that was a completly different bug, where ships was choosing different targets frequently, and we couldn't manually aim. THAT was fixed / improved with the target solution thing. Not what me and others are talking about for months now. 

[kjg000]

34 minutes ago, admiralsnackbar said:

Automatically deactivating manual rudder when a ships division [joins or drops out] or when its formation status [screen, follow, retreat], in the same way that 'Avoid' is automatically selected when division status happens seems reasonable.

Removing it entirely seems pretty drastic. 

I was in-game playing around with a group of 5 heavy cruisers going at around 32 knots. Executing a 90 degree turn to starboard will cause the stern to swing out and the bow of the ship to be oriented such that the ship is now going to continue turning. (See auroras vids, I can't post anything less than 7kb) 

As far as the physics are concerned this seems completely realistic. 

When I manual-rudder a single ship or the head of a division, where I make a turn X right, and then when I've gotten 50% of the way to the angle I want I basically straighten the rudder at roughly the same rate that I turned it [but backwards] the game gives you relatively smooth curve. There is *some* drift, it's not zero, but it looks much closer to what players expect the turn to look like. 

Now It may be that manual rudder has the problem that the rudder shift is instantaneous, which is unrealistic. 

With rudder shift time being a thing the ship would need to know how quickly it can get from forward rudder to right or left and back, and needs to know how soon before the desired angle of turn is achieved it should be back at forward rudder. 

Looking at the vids it seems like forward rudder is not achieved soon enough. There's clearly still too much drift and too much oversteering. So right angle turns become closer to a U turn.


 

Yes, when using the manual rudder improperly the ship should be difficult to control and possibly even capsize. Just as when sailing a recreational boat, IRB etc. However this problem exists when redirecting a ship or formation via the mouse and with ships trying to keep formation.

I’m not too concerned with the behavior of ships or formations when using the manual rudder, that is a part of learning the game. However I am concerned with the behavior when redirecting ships or formations via clicking the mouse.

Actually the problem is a common one in control systems whether it be air conditioning, automated vehicle steering, antenna positioning or whatever and the solution can be found in just about any engineering text. Put simply, as you near the intended target (in this case ships direction) you continually adjust the rate of change (rate of turn) until you achieve the desired result with no, or minimal, overshoot. In ships of this period that is what the helm is for and the crew is trained accordingly.

The manual rudder is important when trying to avoid torpedoes, for example, and there are ample examples of dreadnought era ships maneuvering violently in this way.

[kjg000]

1 hour ago, Kevin Alexander said:

Thank you for making me regret my purchase of this game. Totally professional response.

Waste of my money.

Can I suggest taking some time away from the game and the forum?

I too get frustrated with Nick's responses, especially when they come off as "it can't be us, it must be you".

I myself intend to peruse other projects, indeed I only intended to take a quick glance at the "state of play" today. After this I probably won't be back for a few months. it helps when the frustration levels get too high.

[DieselPower]

I've been trying to stay positive, and appreciate the devs constantly pushing updates, however, I think what we have here is a failure to communicate.

 

When we are saying the ships are "drunk" , what we mean is exactly what Aurora displayed.

The ships should not fishtail or have to overcorrect for oversteering. Now it seems like they are a car on ice going through a sharp turn, even at the slightest of heading changes.

 

If I order a ship to turn 2 degrees to port, it should not have to make any adjustments starboard, at all.

 

The reason we are using manual rudder is because it is the only reliable way to get ships to go where they should. It's also the only way to reliably avoid torpedoes, which Is something the AI is able to do with relative ease.

 

You can't accuse players of abusing something when the AI can do it. They literally can drift sideways with CLs and DDs

 

Controlling a ship should be as simple as indicating which heading you want it to go to, and seeing it make a gradual, controlled turn, like it was several patches ago.

 

As for adding more features?  I'm going to say this as nicely as possible, and I think the majority here shares the same opinion, but please fix what you have first before adding anything more. I'd be ok with the next 10 updates adjusting and polishing what is here.

 

At it's core, all we want to do is design ships and go shoot things with them.

[Nick Thomadis]

The problem of path oscillation is very old, now shown evidently with the UI and has minimal effect in the gameplay This is why there is no need for overexcitement. We already look to fix everything that you, the players report, but overexcitement and drama adds nothing to the result you, the players, seek. We will fix everything according to what is possible.
Regarding the rudder, we remove until it can be stable, not causing any bugs. That is all there is to it.  

[Spitfire_97]

Just now, Nick Thomadis said:

has minimal effect in the gameplay

Gotta love it. "It's not that bad calm down"

[Kevin Alexander]

5 minutes ago, kjg000 said:

Can I suggest taking some time away from the game and the forum?

I too get frustrated with Nick's responses, especially when they come off as "it can't be us, it must be you".

I myself intend to peruse other projects, indeed I only intended to take a quick glance at the "state of play" today. After this I probably won't be back for a few months. it helps when the frustration levels get too high.

Oh I will, don't worry. I just joined the forums today to post my grievances, but I can obviously see it was a bad idea based on the replies I got from Nick, so I won't bother with the forum or the game any time soon.

[Kevin Alexander]

 

2 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

The problem of path oscillation is very old, now shown evidently with the UI and has minimal effect in the gameplay This is why there is no need for overexcitement. We already look to fix everything that you, the players report, but overexcitement and drama adds nothing to the result you, the players, seek. We will fix everything according to what is possible.
Regarding the rudder, we remove until it can be stable, not causing any bugs. That is all there is to it.  

Right, so what we claim affects and impacts our gameplay is actually nothing. Incredible, why have I never thought of this?All my problems are now fixed.

[Knobby]

3 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

The problem of path oscillation is very old, now shown evidently with the UI and has minimal effect in the gameplay This is why there is no need for overexcitement. We already look to fix everything that you, the players report, but overexcitement and drama adds nothing to the result you, the players, seek. We will fix everything according to what is possible.
Regarding the rudder, we remove until it can be stable, not causing any bugs. That is all there is to it.  

I'm sorry nick, but it is a big problem, as your playtesters have repeatedly been saying. The only reason it is now overly dramatic, is you have first been ignoring us, and no are belittling us.  

[admiralsnackbar]

13 minutes ago, Knobby said:

I'm sorry nick, but it is a big problem, as your playtesters have repeatedly been saying. The only reason it is now overly dramatic, is you have first been ignoring us, and no are belittling us.  

What I think nick is saying is that the 'drunken sailor' / 'fishtail' / 'oscilations' were in the game prior to 1.10 and the only reason we notice them is because they are visible on the 'green line' [UI] which is also wiggling to show what the real path will look like. 

I don't remember oscillations [being this pronounced]. I can only check 1.09, will do that now.  

**Update**

So I tried executing tight turns without manual rudder for single ships in 1.09, there is no observed fish-tailing. 

HOWEVER: There is a lot of fish tailing of the trailing vessels. 

It seems like 1.09, if you order the lead ship to turn, it will turn in a predictable and smooth way, but the vessels behind it will bob back and forth quite wildly. 

Now I want to go back to 1.10 and see if maybe the reverse has happened, the lead ship bobs around but the rear ones are smooth. 



 

Edited January 3, 2023 by admiralsnackbar

[DieselPower]

3 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

The problem of path oscillation is very old, now shown evidently with the UI and has minimal effect in the gameplay This is why there is no need for overexcitement. We already look to fix everything that you, the players report, but overexcitement and drama adds nothing to the result you, the players, seek. We will fix everything according to what is possible.
Regarding the rudder, we remove until it can be stable, not causing any bugs. That is all there is to it.  

Will you remove the accuracy penalties of the players ship when it's performing said maneuvers?

As far was what is and isn't "overexcitement and drama", you have to remember you're selling a product, and customer satisfaction is what determines how well your product does.

We're your testers, and a lot of us have paid for the privilege to do that. Our opinion is a fairly accurate indicator of what the public at large will think when you do decide to release the game.

We are honestly trying to help you because we see the awesome potential of this game.

[AdmiralBert]

4 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

The problem of path oscillation is very old, now shown evidently with the UI and has minimal effect in the gameplay This is why there is no need for overexcitement. We already look to fix everything that you, the players report, but overexcitement and drama adds nothing to the result you, the players, seek. We will fix everything according to what is possible.
Regarding the rudder, we remove until it can be stable, not causing any bugs. That is all there is to it.  

We appear to disagree on 'minimal effect in the gameplay'. I can only speak anecdotally, but the lead ship in a division will swing back and forth, with the motion being amplified for each following ship, meaning I either need to space my formations much farther apart or I risk two divisions effectively zipping themselves together because the lines interweave and then get stuck.

A division which hasn't suffered damage should be able to turn without wobbling back and forth, and we shouldn't be seeing vessels flinging themselves out of line to port/starboard for no good reason.

[Nick Thomadis]

Guys, as I said, we already look to it, and as you have seen in the beta, we already have offered formation improvements/adjustments and we will continue to do so until the result is satisfying. So why all this negativity?

[popcap200]

Yeah, for me the issue isn't the small oscillation while moving in a straight line, I actually like that feature as it's more realistic imo.  For me the problem is the oscillation coming out of a turn.  It really does make torpedo dodging, and positioning your ships in knife fights incredibly challenging.

 

Also, idk if anyone else has had this issue, but the avoid ships button is completely broken for me for light cruisers and I believe other classes as well.  They'll just ram stuff when in formations and sink.

 

Edit: Nick, I understand the frustration from your end on our negativity.  We are all here commenting, advising, and playing the game because we enjoy it.  I think people are just frustrated by your phrasing this as having a minimal impact on gameplay.

Edited January 3, 2023 by popcap200
Respond to dev

[Kevin Alexander]

1 minute ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Guys, as I said, we already look to it, and as you have seen in the beta, we already have offered formation improvements/adjustments and we will continue to do so until the result is satisfying. So why all this negativity?

Why the negativity? Because you attempt to downplay this issue that we all clearly are very frustrated about. It feels that whatever argument we bring it doesn't matter, because it's still our fault.

How can you say it does not affect gameplay when we're all so upset about it? Does our opinion, as playtesters, mean absolutely nothing? 

I am not the only one who explained this problem dozens of times and now you try to gaslight us to feel bad that we are being negative..why was the sailing so good in 1.08 and now so bad in 1.10? Of course we are unhappy when we see a product that we paid a good deal of money for simply degrade from one update to another.

Perhaps now you understand. We want our opinions taken seriously, because as customers we have that right. And we also have a right to be dissatisfied with changes that do not improve the game.

[AdmiralBert]

3 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Guys, as I said, we already look to it, and as you have seen in the beta, we already have offered formation improvements/adjustments and we will continue to do so until the result is satisfying. So why all this negativity?

Best guess? Your post announcing the last hotfix talked of it being close to a release candidate, which given some of the issues people are experiencing/perceiving has alarmed us. Talking about removing the manual rudder also doesn't help, as some people have been using it to offset other issues with steering.

[popcap200]

10 minutes ago, AdmiralBert said:

Best guess? Your post announcing the last hotfix talked of it being close to a release candidate, which given some of the issues people are experiencing/perceiving has alarmed us. Talking about removing the manual rudder also doesn't help, as some people have been using it to offset other issues with steering.

I 100% agree that removing the manual rudder will only worsen the situation.

 

You can correct the bad steering by clicking small amounts at a time, but just setting the rudder to a 5 degree turn or whatever is a lot easier.

[Lima]

20 minutes ago, admiralsnackbar said:

What I think nick is saying is that the 'drunken sailor' / 'fishtail' / 'oscilations' were in the game prior to 1.10 and the only reason we notice them is because they are visible on the 'green line' [UI] which is also wiggling to show what the real path will look like. 

I don't remember oscillations [being this pronounced]. I can only check 1.09, will do that now.  

**Update**

So I tried executing tight turns without manual rudder for single ships in 1.09, there is no observed fish-tailing. 

HOWEVER: There is a lot of fish tailing of the trailing vessels. 

It seems like 1.09, if you order the lead ship to turn, it will turn in a predictable and smooth way, but the vessels behind it will bob back and forth quite wildly. 

Now I want to go back to 1.10 and see if maybe the reverse has happened, the lead ship bobs around but the rear ones are smooth. 



 

According to my observations, at 1.10 the flagship is drunk, but all the other ships behave much better.

[admiralsnackbar]

17 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Guys, as I said, we already look to it, and as you have seen in the beta, we already have offered formation improvements/adjustments and we will continue to do so until the result is satisfying. So why all this negativity?

Gonna go to bat for Nick here. 

In 1.09 if you take 5 ships and order the one at the head to make a sharp turn [say a right angle], it will turn in a smooth curve but the ships behind will swing back and forth, making the whole line look like a moving snake. This happens even if you lock the rudder after executing the turn. 

in 1.10 the lead ship is oscillating back and forth but the ships following in the division are not bobbing around; they are actually more stable than the lead ship. 

If and when the lead ship can be made to turn the way it did in 1.09, but the following vessels continue to work as they do in 1.10, you'll get the best of both worlds. 

I have not tested 'follow' or 'screens' yet.

Nick and others were pumping out patches for game breaking bugs, in real time, around Christmas and new years. English is not the first language of most [if any] of the developers and there are obvious 2 way communication problems. So don't assume malice if someone says one thing and Nick insists something else. 

People are getting mad for a legitimate reason though; the game is generally bad at automatically evading torpedoes, and players have gotten used to manually issuing heading directions to single ships in order to thread the torpedoes. 

You generally need to tell a single ship to execute a sharp turn that has your ship facing a certain way and stays there without continuing. 1.10 has made single-ship sharp turns very uncontrollable.
 

[Norbert Sattler]

4 hours ago, KAIKAI said:

3 new save file (1890) crash at around turn 16 . 

Reinstalled the game before the third try . ( I did verify the file ) 

During the turn it became so laggy it almost froze , i need to cut the computer power to shut it down . And yes , all three times end up need to cut the power to shut the game .

In my case the game usually closes fine with Alt + F4. And in the rare cases when it does not, clicking a couple of times with the mouse makes the screen go white and windows pops up a box with the decision to wait for the game to react or force-close it.

[PoB]

14 minutes ago, admiralsnackbar said:

Gonna go to bat for Nick here. 

In 1.09 if you take 5 ships and order the one at the head to make a sharp turn [say a right angle], it will turn in a smooth curve but the ships behind will swing back and forth, making the whole line look like a moving snake. This happens even if you lock the rudder after executing the turn. 

in 1.10 the lead ship is oscillating back and forth but the ships following in the division are not bobbing around; they are actually more stable than the lead ship. 

If and when the lead ship can be made to turn the way it did in 1.09, but the following vessels continue to work as they do in 1.10, you'll get the best of both worlds. 

I have not tested 'follow' or 'screens' yet.

Nick and others were pumping out patches for game breaking bugs, in real time, around Christmas and new years. English is not the first language of most [if any] of the developers and there are obvious 2 way communication problems. So don't assume malice if someone says one thing and Nick insists something else. 

People are getting mad for a legitimate reason though; the game is generally bad at automatically evading torpedoes, and players have gotten used to manually issuing heading directions to single ships in order to thread the torpedoes. 

You generally need to tell a single ship to execute a sharp turn that has your ship facing a certain way and stays there without continuing. 1.10 has made single-ship sharp turns very uncontrollable.
 

I would tend to agree....it may not be specifcally worse now than it was before but the UI change makes it -feel- much worse. And given that if I right click a direction and a whacky waving arm inflatable tube man line is drawn indiicating, it makes it enormously hard to tell if my input "took". The tipsy snake may be, in fact, more accurate of a representation than the straight line but causes the issue to appear more pronounced at minimum. 

I'm also not sure if this is demonstrative or just observation on my part but I feel like the squiggles now impact the "maneuvering" debuff far more than I recall in the past. In particular for very slight court adjustments, say, when bow chasing and you're just inputting very slight course changes that "before" wouldn't throw off the a accuracy that now create can create havoc until the squiggle stops.