My proposed Steam Review: for comments

[kjg000]

Hi All

Just back as I’ve seen UA:D is now in full release.

I’m about to post the following review on Steam but would like the communities views before I do. Caveat: I have not played the game between 1.03.20(ish) Beta to 1.1.3 Live.

 

This review pertains to 1.1.4 Live, after the game came out of early access.

Score 2.4/5 (2.5/5 needed to recommend, Steam really needs a better ranking system)

synopsis:

Not recommended unless you have a high tolerance for buggy and frustrating game play. This game can be enjoyable but only if approached a suitable mindset at the moment. I think the dev’s passed up several opportunities to (mostly) pause feature development, fix bugs, improve the AI, UI and other QoL improvements, optimise the code and still release a truly outstanding game. For me the current offering is subpar and a lamentably missed opportunity and has probably baked in many bugs and faults.

I would suggest shifting through other reviews and discussions to find those that present reasoned, reasonably detailed arguments, good and bad, before buying. Definitely a case of “Buyer Beware”.

 

The following is not a complete list and in no particular order.

Shipbuilder:

From Steam store page “Design warships the way you want them,...”

Well kinda, but only true if you accept a lot of arbitrary limitations that have nothing to do with what is possible but every thing to do with the dev’s dogma. More accurately “Design warships the way the dev’s want them”.

Many arbitrary limitations on the placements of weapons and structures. For example, barbettes are limited to only locations with a historical precedent, whether or not is is a valid location, and funnels are limited to fixed positions when placed on on superstructures, even those with a large area allowed specifically for the funnels.

The size of casement guns also seems to be largely arbitrary and doesn't allow for historical mains casement guns.

Meanwhile it is still possible to mount a torpedo launcher midships on the centreline of a BB, where it should be impossible to launch, being both too high above the waterline and too far from the edge of the ship.

Ships are always limited to which components they can mount, even when choosing “Unlock:On” from the “Custom Battles” menu. How would HMS Dreadnought fared with US style cage masts, we will never know!

There are many other irritants in the designer, however at least some of these, but not all, are slowly getting to be addressed.

Campaign:

Transports get a free pass if their escorts are destroyed, even if your ships are within 100’s of meters of the nearest transports and all transports are spotted. This is a very old and common complaint. It is either a bug the dev’s are ignoring or very poor game play.

Transports should not be harder to spot than cruisers.

The world map is a rectangle without “infinite scrolling”. This means when operating near the pacific ocean it is often required to drag the map back and forth across the screen. This also seems to affect some game calculations such as a fully fuelled fleet being unable to sail from Fiji to the Solomon Islands as it is falsely reported as out of range or incorrectly arriving with low fuel.

Trying to select a port is often frustrated if another port, territory or other feature is nearby. This can sometimes be resolved by closing in to maximum zoom, then selecting the port. Although it can take several tries and does not always work. Trying to select a Taskforce if another TF is on top is still impossible. Detaching ships from a TF places the detached TF on top of the original TF, preventing further selection.

TF composition and positioning is not a strong influence on missions generated.

Ships used in missions is still too random so it is nearly useless designing complimentary or speciality ships, composing TFs of complimentary ships or trying to deploy specialists ships with a specific mission in mind. Missions are still populated based on arbitrary random considerations. Hence the strategic element of the game is heavily restricted.

Too much is simply random, land battles, politics, which ships are used in missions, auto-resolve for battles, these are all nearly entirely random. Whatever the dev’s concept is, it makes for poor game play.

The default map zoom should be over the players nation, instead it is usually somewhere in the North Atlantic requiring the player to constantly drag the map to their nation.

Research continues to be problematic. Many players will take an “It is what it is” philosophy but generally it is clunky in both concept and implementation. I’m tending to the conclusion that the game would be better off with research removed and hard wired as it is in Custom Battles.

Mines, Subs and Ship defects are unnecessary features which more often than not detract from game play. I’m agnostic about them but they all need to be greatly improved and ideally should be selectable as options. I can see no justification for having these features without also having air power (land and sea), at the appropriate times, probably dealt with in a similar abstract way as subs. This is particularly relevant in the latter decades as ship design was heavily influenced by the need for air defences.

Fog of war should be selectable as an option for the campaign map.

The current campaign map is unwieldy and clumsy. The campaign needs to have selections available to limit it to regions (World, Mediterranean, Atlantic, Pacific etc), time span (Jan 1938 to Dec 1946 or Feb 1890 to Jun 1920 for example) and possibly nations.

The player has almost no control over their ships. If ships are sent a port it is not possible to set their orders on arrival. This often means that before the player can set new orders for the ship, it will be grabbed for a random mission along with other randomly selected ships. After completing the mission these ships will be distributed randomly to other ports, as any ships involved in a player controlled battle, as opposed to auto-resolve, have to immediately rush of to a random port to have a nice lie down. Even if no enemy were sighted and no shots fired. The player then has to search for the missing ships in every possible port.

Battles:

Much has been written on the problems with armour, armour penetration and accuracy. Frankly, these seem to be going around in circles.

I think the removal of the manual rudder was a mistake. Game play has suffered because of this, although it is noted that some players report they did not use it.

Spotting is still unrealistic. I have no problem with small fast ships being difficult to hit, but large ships have high towers and trained spotters for a reason.

Chasing unseen ships for an hour or more IRL as enemy ships initiate an engagement then immediately run away, taking hours to close with even though they are slower than my slowest ship, is not good game play.

Weather needs to be better represented. Ideally fog banks and rain squalls should be represented but at the very least players should be able to tell the current weather conditions with a glance at the screen.

General User interface and Quality of Life issues.

The UI is a mixed bag.

Splash screens often obscure whatever it is that you are trying to look at.

Information is often buried in long lists while also being redundantly repeated. i.e. Engine Efficiency, Pitch, Roll, weight offset are all presented on the design screen but you need to hunt them down in the “Ship Details” menu to get any further information. Armaments are presented in the “Overview” menu but you need to hunt for the “Ship Details/Weapons” menu to get details.

On the “Politics” screen the players nation is often buried low on the nations list and needs to be scrolled down to.

On the “Research” screen the current item being researched under any category is often off screen and needs to be hunted for. Many Beta players have suggested good solutions to this but the problem persists. This is also an indication that some of the research categories are too long.

General Principle:-The AI does not care so the players information should always be presented first and be easily found.

 

I have been playing this game on and off since Alpha 2 (2018 or 2017, I cant find the receipt to confirm, well before the first campaign anyway). I have persevered with it when changes tended to remove any enjoyment from the game in the hopes the game would eventually fulfill a substantial part of its promise. I have participated in the Games Labs forum in the hope that I could assist in generating an enjoyable, profitable and frankly awesome game. Many times I thought the dev’s should have stopped adding features and consolidated the game. Around the time we had the Mediterranean map the dev’s could have stopped, consolidated and released an amazing game. Of course there would have been pressure to add the USA, Japan and China to the campaign but these could have been added to a more robust and polished game and still been available in Custom Battles and Naval Academy. They could have initially been incorporated as a second campaign. The UK, Germany, Austria-Hungary, France, Spain and Russia as the first campaign as that map already existed, USA, Japan, Russia and China, possibly with other nations as colonies, as the second campaign based on a Pacific map. Fill in the rest of the world later.

The war in Ukraine clearly impacted the game and will continue to do so for some time yet as the Ukrainians defend themselves from Putin's aggression. However it was the dev’s decision to push for more content rather than consolidating and polishing what they had, when they already had the basics of a superior game.

On the whole I’m dissatisfied with the direction the game has taken and reluctantly cannot recommend it at this time.

While this has been a long review, it is by no means complete. Reading other detailed reviews, hopefully unbiased and certainly more than just a few, sometimes meaningless words, and also the Steam Community Discussion page will give a more complete picture as to weather this a game you would enjoy despite its current failings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 30, 2023 by kjg000
point about player ships being randomly distributed after a battle.

[o Barão]

"...and doesn't allow for historical mains casement guns."

This is one of my biggest complaints. Would make protected and armored cruisers much more interesting to play.

 

"Transports get a free pass if their escorts are destroyed, even if your ships are within 100’s of meters of the nearest transports and all transports are spotted. This is a very old and common complaint. It is either a bug the dev’s are ignoring or very poor game play."

+1

 

"Mines, Subs and Ship defects are unnecessary features which more often than not detract from game play. "

This is where I disagree with you. Mines and subs are very important for the campaign. These are the mechanics that made the design and construction of destroyers and light cruisers important. Without these mechanics, you don't have any reason to build them.

[kjg000]

7 minutes ago, o Barão said:

"Mines, Subs and Ship defects are unnecessary features which more often than not detract from game play. "

This is where I disagree with you. Mines and subs are very important for the campaign. These are the mechanics that made the design and construction of destroyers and light cruisers important. Without these mechanics, you don't have any reason to build them.

Thanks for the feedback, this is precisely why I posted here first.

I kinda agree, but as I went on to say, if you use that argument for mines and subs how can you ignore the massive influence air power had on designs starting in the 1930s?

Edited January 30, 2023 by kjg000

[o Barão]

10 minutes ago, kjg000 said:

.... if you use that argument for mines and subs how can you ignore the massive influence air power had on designs starting in the 1930s?

In the 30s or the 40s? It seems to me is more in the 40s, but that is a minor detail. Just to make it clear. You are suggesting that the game should have carriers and planes in general?

[kjg000]

2 minutes ago, o Barão said:

In the 30s or the 40s? It seems to me is more in the 40s, but that is a minor detail. Just to make it clear. You are suggesting that the game should have carriers and planes in general?

Yes, though abstracted in a similar way to subs. A zone of control on the campaign map, possibly 2 zones, attack(smaller) and spot(larger), radiating out from a port (for convenience) or from a TF with CVs. No actual air combat, zones visible to all as enemy capabilities would be more or less known. CVs treated more or less as transports if caught up in naval battles which should be unlikely during flying weather. The point is to approximate the historical "no-go" or at least high risk zones for ships and subs as well as justifying the preponderance of AA defenses and dual purpose guns of the later era while introducing a minimum of new features or dev resources.

As for the era, I think air power should grow in importance from about 1920 (very weak) to significant in 1940s.over this period secondaries and tertiary guns evolved from a priority of close in anti ship defense to AA or dual purpose. No need for yet another research option, make the development fixed.

Oh yess, zones should be in the form of a selectable overlay.

[o Barão]

48 minutes ago, kjg000 said:

Yes, though abstracted in a similar way to subs. A zone of control on the campaign map, possibly 2 zones, attack(smaller) and spot(larger), radiating out from a port (for convenience) or from a TF with CVs. No actual air combat, zones visible to all as enemy capabilities would be more or less known. CVs treated more or less as transports if caught up in naval battles which should be unlikely during flying weather. The point is to approximate the historical "no-go" or at least high risk zones for ships and subs as well as justifying the preponderance of AA defenses and dual purpose guns of the later era while introducing a minimum of new features or dev resources.

As for the era, I think air power should grow in importance from about 1920 (very weak) to significant in 1940s.over this period secondaries and tertiary guns evolved from a priority of close in anti ship defense to AA or dual purpose. No need for yet another research option, make the development fixed.

Oh yess, zones should be in the form of a selectable overlay.

You are suggesting to place in game the weapon that made dreadnoughts obsolete. And to make ships being sunk by another RNG mechanic. Which is strange coming from you. So you are saying that mines and subs "...are unnecessary features which more often than not detract from game play." But you don't have any issues with carriers? Anyway, many players like to see carriers and planes. I don't and have my reasons to believe they will never work. But is a common request.

[kjg000]

1 hour ago, o Barão said:

You are suggesting to place in game the weapon that made dreadnoughts obsolete. And to make ships being sunk by another RNG mechanic. Which is strange coming from you. So you are saying that mines and subs "...are unnecessary features which more often than not detract from game play." But you don't have any issues with carriers? Anyway, many players like to see carriers and planes. I don't and have my reasons to believe they will never work. But is a common request.

Not so much that I'm advocating for aircraft, more that I can't see the rational for including subs but not aircraft. I agree with the RNG comment, far far too much RNG ingame, as mentioned in my review. However IF subs are kept, as I'm sure they will be, I think this would be a reasonable, minimalist, way to implement aircraft. Although I also see it as a way of countering subs, which airpower did historically. Also, as mentioned, it would force ships either to have strong AA and/or an AA escort. Again this is historically relevant. Anyway, I'd like Subs, Mines, Defects and, if implemented, airpower, all to be optional.

I was surprised, but not displeased, when the Alpha campaigns grew out to 1950, but if the game goes that far, the end of the era, it should probably include the reason the era ended. It becomes a balance issue as to weather it would work or not. It should not prevent capital ship battles, as an a-historical tweak, but should introduce new considerations when positioning fleets.

[Skeksis]

Where are all the pros? Your review is all cons, you don't want to offer any pros?

9 hours ago, kjg000 said:

but would like the communities views

Edited January 30, 2023 by Skeksis

[kjg000]

On 1/31/2023 at 3:48 AM, Skeksis said:

Where are all the pros? Your review is all cons, you don't want to offer any pros?

Yes, fair call. Thanks.

I have recommended the reader seek out other meaningful reviews, both pro and con, but, yes I probably should review this with your comment in mind. The problem of course, is time.

[kjg000]

Ok, this is what I posted based on the comments above and Steams char limit. I had expected to be above the char limits but wasn't sure by how much as I've never posted a review this long before. Comments, good or bad, are still welcome.

This review pertains to 1.1.4 Live,
Score 2.4/5 (2.5/5 needed to recommend)
[b]synopsis:[/b]
Not recommended unless you have a high tolerance for buggy and frustrating game play. This game can be enjoyable but only if approached a suitable mindset at the moment. I think the dev’s passed up several opportunities to (mostly) pause feature development, fix bugs, improve the AI, UI and other QoL improvements, optimise the code and still release a truly outstanding game. For me the current offering is subpar and a lamentably missed opportunity and has probably baked in many bugs and faults. The game IS slowly improving, but for me it is not improving in the ways I would like.
It has been pointed out to me that this review is mostly cons with little pros. I would suggest shifting through other reviews and discussions to find those that present reasoned, reasonably detailed arguments, pros and cons, before buying. Definitely a case of “Buyer Beware”.

The following is far from a complete list and in no particular order.
[b]Shipbuilder:[/b]
From Steam store page “Design warships the way you want them,...”
Well kinda, but only true if you accept a lot of arbitrary limitations that have nothing to do with what is possible but every thing to do with the dev’s dogma. More accurately “Design warships the way the dev’s want them”.
Many arbitrary limitations on the placements of weapons and structures.
The size of casement guns seems to be largely arbitrary and doesn't allow for historical mains casement guns.
It is  possible to mount a torpedo launcher midships on the centreline of a BB, where it should be impossible to launch.
Ships are always limited to which components they can mount, even when choosing “Unlock:On” from the “Custom Battles” menu. How would HMS Dreadnought fared with US style cage masts, we will never know!
There are many other irritants in the designer, however at least some of these, but not all, are slowly getting to be addressed.
[b]Campaign:[/b]
Transports get a free pass if their escorts are destroyed, even if your ships are within 100’s of meters of the nearest transports. This is a very old and common complaint. It is either a bug the dev’s are ignoring or very poor game play.
Transports should not be harder to spot than cruisers.
The world map is a rectangle without “infinite scrolling”. This means it is often required to drag the map back and forth across the screen. This also seems to affect some game calculations such as a fully fuelled fleet being unable to sail from Fiji to the Solomon Islands as it is falsely reported as out of range.
Trying to select a port is often frustrated if another port, territory or other feature is nearby.
Trying to select a Taskforce if another TF is on top is still impossible. Detaching ships from a TF places the detached TF on top of the original TF, preventing further selection.
TF composition and positioning is not a strong influence on missions generated.
Ships used in missions is too random so it is nearly useless designing complimentary or speciality ships or trying to deploy specialists ships with a specific mission in mind. Missions are still populated based on random factors and ships placed virtually on top of an enemy TF are often ignored. So the strategic element of the game is heavily restricted.
Too much is  random, land battles, politics, which ships are used in missions, auto-resolve for battles, these are all nearly entirely random. Whatever the dev’s concept is, for me it makes for poor game play.
The default map zoom should be over the players nation, instead it is usually somewhere in the North Atlantic.
Research continues to be problematic. Many players will take an “It is what it is” philosophy but generally it is clunky in both concept and implementation. I’m tending to the conclusion that the game would be better off with research removed and hard wired as it is in custom games.
Mines, Subs and Ship defects are unnecessary features which more often than not detract from game play. I’m agnostic about them but they all need to be greatly improved and ideally should be selectable as options. I can see no justification for having these features without also having air power (land and sea), at the appropriate times, probably dealt with in a similar abstract way as subs. This is particularly relevant in the latter decades as ship design was heavily influenced by the need for air defences and air power was a major reason the age of Dreadnoughts came to an end.
Fog of war should be selectable as an option for the campaign map.
The current campaign map is unwieldy and clumsy. The campaign needs to have selections available to limit it to regions (World, Mediterranean, Atlantic, Pacific etc), time span (Jan 1938 to Dec 1946 or Feb 1890 to Jun 1920 for example) and possibly nations.
The player has almost no control over their ships. If ships are sent a port it is not possible to set their orders on arrival. This often means that before the player can set new orders for the ship, it will be grabbed for a random mission along with other randomly selected ships. After completing the mission these ships will be distributed randomly to other ports, as any ships involved in a player controlled battle, as opposed to auto-resolve, have to immediately rush of to a random port to have a nice lie down. Even if no enemy were sighted and no shots fired. The player then has to search for the missing ships in every possible port.
[b]Battles:[/b]
Much has been written on the problems with armor, armor penetration and accuracy. Frankly, these seem to be going around in circles.
I think the removal of the manual rudder was a mistake. Game play has suffered because of this, although it is noted that some players report they did not use it.
Spotting is still unrealistic. I have no problem with small fast ships being difficult to hit, but large ships have high towers and trained spotters for a reason.
Chasing unseen ships for an hour or more IRL as enemy ships initiate an engagement then immediately run away, taking hours to close with even though they are slower than my slowest ship, is not good game play.
Weather needs to be better represented. Ideally fog banks and rain squalls should be represented but at the very least players should be able to tell the current weather conditions with a just glance at the screen.
[b]General User interface and Quality of Life issues.[b/]
The UI is a mixed bag.
Splash screens often obscure whatever it is that you are trying to look at.
Information is often buried in long lists while also being redundantly repeated. i.e. Engine Efficiency, Pitch, Roll, weight offset are all presented on the design screen but you need to hunt them down in the “Ship Details” menu to get any further information. Armaments are presented in the “Overview” menu but you need to hunt for the “Ship Details/Weapons” menu to get details.
On the “Politics” screen the players nation is often buried low on the nations list and needs to be scrolled down to.
On the “Research” screen the current item being researched under any category is often off screen and needs to be hunted for. Many Beta players have suggested good solutions to this but the problem persists. This is also an indication that some of the research categories are too long.

I have been playing this game on and off since Alpha 2 (2018 or 2017, I cant find the receipt to confirm, well before the first campaign anyway). I have persevered with it when changes tended to remove any enjoyment from the game in the hopes the game would eventually fulfil a substantial part of its considerable promise. Many times I thought the dev’s should have stopped adding features and consolidated the game. Around the time we had the Mediterranean map the dev’s could have stopped, consolidated and released an amazing game. On the whole I’m dissatisfied with the direction the game has taken and reluctantly cannot recommend it at this time.

Edited February 1, 2023 by kjg000
wrong cut-and-paste