-=Thank you for the participation in our 6-month Roadmap=-

[Littorio]

If weather is accurately addressed and spotting improved (I won't hold my breath), then that would leave the following things to implement/improve:

1. Intelligence - This is obviously key to naval combat. Knowing what ships a potential adversary had, was making, and might make in the future was vitally important to naval policy. Moreso, knowing where these ships were and where they might head was crucial to planning offensive operations during wartime. We can't have a strategic naval game without intelligence, period.

2. Rendered land - We would need at least some coastline to do many types of missions. From attacking port facilities to blockading a strategic strait, at least some land will have to visible. Obviously this should not be too detailed or graphically intensive, but a certain amount is needed. Bonus points if we can construct and operate shore batteries and monitor our mines from fortifications.

3. Sinking animations/damage models - Having ships capsize, partially roll over, break in two, lose the bow, etc. would greatly enhance accuracy and immersion. I don't think much more needs to be said, other than that the current animations are rather limited and "one-size-fits-all."

[Thramoun]

I will add my 2 cents as well:
Very much looking forward to the weather changes. I won't hope for actual physics, but I do hope the water bobbing of ships will visually match the waves a bit more. Currently it looks slightly comical a lot of the time how the ships are just bobbing back and forth.

We currently have no input for what ships should be built until at war. So it would be good to have a few more opportunities.

• (doesn't have to hugely be in-depth) your government should provide you with reports on other nations ship designs or research breakthroughs (armor, guns, etc.), especially since some of those may be used for propaganda
• UI unfortunately needs some works in a lot of places, there is small text boxes with tons of largely irrelevant text nobody in their right mind will read with a few important things spaced in, the modifier bar can get so big that you can't read the report on the bottom left anymore etc.. Important information should be easier to find in general, as well as some visual improvements. It's looking somewhat placeholder as it is.
• More plausible wars. Currently any war will shortly evolve into a world war that usually doesn't stop until at least one nation crumbles, usually more. There should be more space for smaller wars of conquest or other interests. War also seems to not affect the winning country too much long-term. War-economy should be hurting a lot after a few years, even for the winners.
• Just more interesting things happening. Maybe some kind of newspaper that will semi-regularly report on-goings in the world, like significant battles, war starts/ends, research breakthroughs, state of the economy, etc.. I think there is also a lot more room for events in general. This should probably be options since some may just be there for the battles.

All in all I very much look forward to where the game is headed, a lot of the big problems are solved.

And one more thing: Aircraft. And, I know there won't be any aircraft in the battles. But they can be handled like submarines, but even simpler, and would probably (at least initially) not include any carriers. Idea is this:

Ships get AA components that increase their AA rating. Ships with low or no AA rating may in more modern time increasingly targeted by aircraft. This happens the same as subs/mines. For example you could have certain areas (oceans) appear visually on the map where an enemy country has air superiority. Having ships there will result in aerial attacks that may damage large ships with bad AA rating. This feature would need

• modelling, design and implementation work for the AA components which should be simple as they will only be visual/taking up space and won't be active in naval combat
• a (lot of) balance changes to weights/costs etc. in the later years to accommodate for the new components
• tech tree updates
• some graphical updates to the world map
• no actual implementation of aircraft in the 3d tactical battles

Edited February 12, 2023 by Thramoun

[Zuikaku]

Realism panel! - please implement this as quickly as possibble! These constant buffing and nerfing of gunnery in effort to please both hardcore/historical and casual players is going nowhere. Realism panel with options to switch historical gunnery on and off solves all of these problems! And make everyone happy!

Add late torpedo boats! MAS boats, Schnellboote, PT-boats are sll missing at the moment!!

Edited February 13, 2023 by Zuikaku

[Hibbidyhai]

First off, I appreciate all of the work that your team has put into the game, especially under difficult circumstances. 

Some of these suggestions will be reiterations of what others have posted, but hopefully that is a sign of increased interest. This is in a rough order of importance:

1) A wrap-around feature of some kind for the world map (even if its just an optical illusion). 

2) In the ship builder, the ability to choose if you want to switch to the latest model of a gun, or keep the old version, when you are doing refits. Being able to directly compare the stats would be great. But the most annoying thing is when automatic upgrades means your weapons no longer fit on the ship, or they make it overweight. Weapons of the same size but of different mark could just be assigned to different firing groups, just as guns of different sizes are now. 

3: The ability to re-designate the classification of ships. The most obvious situation in which you would want to do this is when your old BB's are now the same in size or armament (or smaller) than new CA's. Being able to switch those old ship's classification would mean they would no longer get thrown in the battle lines with their modern successors, when they ought to be put in with the cruisers. The same for old CA's that eventually get outsized by CL's. That might make some of the formation headaches at the beginning of battles a little more manageable.

4, a: Better Barbettes: Allow us to adjust the height and size of barbettes. Sometimes you get stuck between ones that are a little too small, or too big, or they aren't tall enough, or the game doesn't allow you enough freedom to put them where you like. This would simplify the number of different barbettes that appear in the builder that are just different sizes of the same thing. 

4, b: More superstructure parts. Right now we have main towers and rear towers, but it would be nice to have other parts with structure to them. Essentially more barbette type structures with some secondary or casemate gun emplacements built-in, and perhaps you can put some of them on the starboard or port sides of a ship, not just on the centerline. There are certain funnels that are already close to this in the game. 

5: More diplomatic options for minor nations. Finding a way to nudge your government into wars with minor nations and take a little of the randomness out of how a player's naval empire expands. The most obvious examples of this would be when you are playing Japan and you would like to directly attack Korea, or the United States attacking Mexico, or Russia attacking the Ottoman Empire. With severe diplomatic consequences for the player, of course.

6: Add camouflage skins to ship models. I don't know how complicated this would be, but it would be nice to have. Ships had them in real life and it would add another layer of customization. Paint jobs wouldn't necessarily have to have any effect combat or ship stats. 

7: Training missions during peacetime. These would just be generated events, but it would a way to maintain relations with major or minor nations, increase tension with a rival, have temporary crew training level bonuses, all at the cost of money and unrest. It would be similar to conquest mechanic where you have to send your ships to a location for a period of turns, but these would be out in the open ocean somewhere. 

8: Corvettes and Frigates: This would be a way of keeping ships the size of small torpedo boats in the game into the more modern decades of the game. You can make small destroyers now, but these ships would have strict speed and armament restrictions. To avoid clogging up the game with thousands of cheap and tiny ships (I can imagine the AI losing its mind and spamming them) they might only be auto-generated in convoy defense/attack missions and you can only build them in a similar manner to how the game handles submarines and transport capacity.

 

[imp44791]

It's a good list. Spotting is the most annoying issue at present, so it's good to see it addressed. Most people have pointed out good and important improvements in addition to your list. For me the three things that would immediately improve the game would be:

1. Pre-battle deployment orders. Not in detail perhaps, but a basic set of options like the ones that Jellicoe had at Jutland "deploy to starboard/port", or setting the direction/distance of destroyer screens, or a break up in divisions.

2. The option to take out the shell contrails. It's the one graphical choice that is unbelievably arcade-y and out of place in a game that makes so much effort at historical accuracy. It looks like the ludicrous depiction of Actium in Cleopatra with ancient wooden ships somehow carrying flammable material on them so that they can lob Hollywood-style flaming balls. Leave the contrails for those who want them, but please let's have the option to eliminate them.

3. Historical battle setups, perhaps with a twist of designing a different ship class for one of the main participants. That's more of a Naval Academy thing, perhaps: e.g. what if instead of the Blucher, the Germans at Dogger Bank were having a different type of capital ship (a pre-dreadnought, a couple more light cruisers etc)? But definitely have the option of refighting these classical engagements from this era: Dogger Bank, (bits of) Jutland, Denmark Strait, Surigao Strait, Java Sea, Tsushima. These are the stories that brought us to this game in the first place.

Edited February 13, 2023 by imp44791

[Hardlec]

(more) things I'd like.

A more comprehensive manual. There are features I have never found. 

A way to reduce the size of pop-up messages. The can sometimes obscure things I'm looking for.

A way to adjust "internal" placements of engines, fuel etc. To better balance the ship.  

Biggie: a library of historical ships that can be used in campaigns.

 

 

[Kane]

A lot of the things I would have suggested are already here.  But a few things I would suggest.

1)  An expansion of colony importance beyond their cash-based economic value.  Gibraltar for example is an incredibly important location from a strategic standpoint.  This should be one of the last things Britain is willing to give up before having to surrender the home islands. 

Meanwhile, oil is the only thing a colony has going for it beyond a simple economic value that matters is any way.  (And even then it remains primarily a simple economic thing.)  Oil is important, its very important.  But so is chromium, rubber, etc.  It would be nice if things like this were accounted for in colonies and gave certain colonies value beyond "X dollars".  If for example a colony was a source of chromium, whoever held it might be able to build a bit cheaper.  Things of that nature.  I understand this could be a big thing to implement so I wouldn't cry if it was not added to the game.  But there really needs to be more than just a dollar value attached to a colony, and the AI needs to understand that some colonies are going to have worth out of proportion to their simple dollar value.  (Again, places like Gibraltar)

2)  We need the ability to order certain types of missions directly.  As an example, I am currently playing as the United States, and am at war with Germany.  Germany has effectively been neutered.  I have a very large, and powerful fleet off their coast and they have very little left to defend it.  It would be very nice if I could manually order my ships to go in and bombard the ports. 

I have no interest in invading Germany.  But if I could raze their ports from the sea, I could not only help dismantle their economy, but would severely inhibit their ability to build new ships after the war.  Thus leaving lasting consequences for the conflict, since they wouldn't be able to just immediately build a dozen more battleships in 2 years.

3)  I would like to see reparations expanded.  It is currently a "cash n' prizes" scenario where you can take either/or/mix of ships or cash.  I would think that if you beat an enemy hard enough, you could force them to give you a % of their GDP for a pre-defined period.  This would not only help give lasting consequence to a war, but would make it harder for a defeated nation to simply tool up and do it again in only 2-3 years.  The nation on the losing end meanwhile could be given the option of breaking the agreement, as the cost of massive hit to relations, and with it the chance of a brand new war.

4)  Though I am trying to stay away from things other people have already listed, I am going to add my voice on this one.  We need more ability to interact with minor nations, and even help incite our nation against them.  As others have stated, it would give the player more agency in expanding their naval empire.

5)  And lastly torpedoes.  While I have a lot of issue with their implementation in game, I would still like to see them fleshed out a bit with options like different explosives (torpex), magnetic / contact, incremental size, etc.

Edit

6)  Almost forgot.  We need the ability to manually choose to spend money and expand ports.  I get that not every port can be a Scapa Flow.  But we lose a lot of our ability to control how we plan, station our ships etc when we can't do this.  Sure, we can just pack our ships into a port and pay out the nose to keep them there.  But especially in my case as the USA with an ungodly naval budget.  If I want to put in money to shore-up the Philippines to be my Pacific base (as opposed to say, Pearl Harbor) I should be able to do that.

Would also be nice if things like shore batteries existed in the game in some form.  Even if only to reduce the odds of "port strike" missions.

Edited February 13, 2023 by Kane

[Schmitty21]

After playing a full campaign as A-H and now starting a new one as IJN, I've got more to say about fleet organization. I'm absolutely tired of my ships just going wherever they want to after missions.

I'd really like to be able to organize my divisions and fleets more. Even a basic improvement would be nice but instead I'll go into my ideal setup.

I want detailed organization on the division through task force level. For example, a division will constitute up to 4 ships, of the player's choosing, and will be nameable. The division will have an assigned homeport. The ships of the division will either repair at that homeport only or will repair at another closer port before returning either to the division or to their homeport automatically. Divisions can have mission types assigned or avoided by them, thus increasing or decreasing the chance of them getting involved in these mission types. They would have flagships and formation types assigned outside of the battle instance in the campaign screen.

Task groups (fleets) would be made up of divisions. When a fleet is created and deployed the divisions assigned to it assemble from their various ports (obviously this would require some sort of geographical distance limitation). Fleets are also nameable and can have selectable mission types. Fleets can stay formed at anchorages for replenishment and repairs or dissolved to return to their homeports (automatically). Fleets would have a UI screen where they can be managed by the player for creation, naming, or deleting.

Without this level of management the game becomes a crapshoot of frustrating random encounters. Why build a fleet of a certain size and composition when the game will disregard all of my planning with random encounters? I understand I can manually group all these ships together and send them to see but they still disperse to random locations after encounters or instantly teleport halfway across the map after taking some damage. Fleet management shouldn't feel like micro-management, it should be organization and assignment of objectives.

Edited February 13, 2023 by Schmitty21

[PhoenixLP44]

A thing I would personally like to see is a tool which allows us to move our guns and torpedo launchers even more accuratly. something like this. simply two arrows which allow us to move the gun with as much precision as possible. might seem useless but it could make a serious difference on some hulls which are difficult to build custom ships on.

Edited February 14, 2023 by PhoenixLP44

[ijp8834]

Something I would like to see in the game is less reused towers, and towers that actually make sense.

Give us proper North Carolina and South Dakota Towers for the "Modern Battleship 1" for the US. Get US Cruisers their proper towers, even if the hulls aren't perfect. 

Make it so US ship main guns can shoot over secondary emplacements on the hull.

Actual Alaska Class towers(Basically larger US treaty Cruiser towers with 5/38 barbettes)

Actual US Dreadnought refit towers with proper placement for the 5/38s

US Cruisers need a full overhaul. I don't think there is a single US Cruiser class that can actually be replicated in the game. No Treaty Cruisers, No Omaha, No Olympia (Olympia Hull might need to be a CA so she can have 8 inch guns)

US Battlecruisers top out at 15 inch guns, a gun size the US never used, and the only battlecruisers the US ever ordered were going to have 16 inch guns.

Early US Dreadnought hulls have been talked about a lot, but we really need a "Standard Battleship" Hull that maybe has 2 sizes, the smaller Nevada sized Standard, and larger "Big 5" sized Standard Hull. The US have Dreadnought I which is fine, but Dreadnought II shouldn't be a bigger Dreadnought I, but a Split Deck, Delaware/Florida hull, while Dreadnought III should be a flush deck Wyoming/New York Hull (which I hear is coming, nice!), Dreadnought IV would be the Standards, and Dreadnought V would be the 1921 SoDaks (maybe with a large tonnage limit so we can do Tillman designs). After that Modern 1 would be NC/SD, and Modern II would be Iowa/Montana, with Super Battleship just being "Big Montana"

Nation Specific Destroyers would be nice. I know I am talking about the US a lot, but I am playing a US campaign. While you can make a "Fletcher", or a "4 Stacker", they don't actually look like a Fletcher or a 4 stacker. Infact, I don't think there are any Flush Deck Destroyers in the game!

To give the Brits some love, they need some "Large Light Cruisers" so we can watch Courageous and Glorious explode.

Light Cruiser Twin and Triple Turrets come too late to be of any real use until the late game. Same with DDs.

"Standard" Gun sizes need to be achievable. An example-

American 12 inch guns should be Base 35 Caliber at MK1, Base 40 Caliber at MKII, Base 45 and MKIII, and Base 50 and MKIV and up.

American 14 inch guns should be 14 inch 45 Caliber at MKI and II and 14 inch 50 at MKIII and up.

American 16 inch should be 16 inch 45 Caliber at MKI, 16 inch 50 at MKII, dropping back to 16 inch 45 ant MKIII, 16 inch 50 at MKIV, and 16 inch 56 caliber at MKV

For American 5 inch guns, at MKIV, you should have 5 inch 38 on everything. DDs have weird gun lengths now.

Reload times need to make sense. A Trained crew should be able to put out 15 rounds of 5 inch 38s a minute, or a bit more than one 16/50 a minute (they could do them in 30 seconds in trials, but in battle that would never happen).

[MDHansen]

a few QOL's from me

-scrap and suspend groups of ships

-(when building) deliver a ship/sub to a port even if its tonnage limit is (or will be) reached

-(when building) deliver ships to any port owned, anywhere

-send any number of subs directly to another port, regardless of group size limit

-be able to dock in minor nation ports, if allied

 

Show outcome when hovering over AI battleresult

Edited February 15, 2023 by MDHansen

[Mr.Wednesday]

Ability to free ocupid nation X when in peace negotiations with occupying country Y

[Kane]

4 hours ago, Mr.Wednesday said:

Ability to free ocupid nation X when in peace negotiations with occupying country Y

Things like this would be a big one.
In my current campaign I'm fighting the new Giga-Rome (ie Italians), with Spain as my ally.  Italy already took everything but northern Spain away from them.  I would invade Italian-occupied Spain by sea, but playing as the US, I really don't want to have to defend territory so far away, and I can't give the territory back to Spain once the war is over.  So, no invade.

Would be really nice to be able to do things like this.

[Senta95]

1. I would like to see that same bugs get fixed, and penetration starts making sense.

2. I would like you to play test in custom battles before rolling out patches.

3. I can do it for you if its hard being sensical. Or no free 5 mins to boot the game.

[Vanhal]

Mod support and workshop. I don't think i ever seen game more suitable for it.

[Zuikaku]

Is it possible to make loading times shorter? Even with game on SSD it takes inexplicably long. You wait for a minute for ship editor, you wait when loading save, you wait when loading mission, you wait when exiting mission, you even wait when returning to main menu. OK, I csn understand waiting time when loading mission and maybe ship editor but exiting to main menu or loading save??! Why?

[Alphaone]

Here are a couple things that I would love to see:

1. Test Battles: in campaign mode it can be hard to tell if its worth investing a massive amount of funds in a new ship that appears to be a major improvement over existing designs when it doesn't always work out. It would be great to be able to take ship designs directly to custom battles against either my own designs (to help decide between 2 BBs or 4 BCs) or an enemy fleet (existing or generated with their current tech). This would be helpful in deciding the best path forward for your navy.
2. logistics management: knowing where my transports are going based on how my fleet is deployed (at see or to captured ports) would really help manage risk. I have found that if I start deploying fleets to the ends of the earth my transports get decimated, but if I ignore distant ports my transports are fine. Currently its possible to fall into a transport collapse where even with more VPs you end up loosing since your transports are dying too fast due to a forgotten submarine group on the other side of the planet. It would be great to be able to visualize the logistic needs of you nation (who do we trade with? How much supply does that invasion need? etc). It would be even better to be able to assign battle groups to specific convoy routes and to control convoy strategies (such as sending few large convoys with a large escort or a lot of small convoys with fewer escorts). Large convoys would mean more un/loading time meaning lower efficiency overall but would mean a bigger fight if a convoy is attached
3. Demands: I find myself starting wars in order to try to capture a specific territory (or at least one with oil). I would like to be able to set that target before war starts as part of increasing tension (same for AI nations). The idea is to set conditions for successful negotiations (to reduce forced war ends where you get nothing) and provides a mechanism to inform users when accepting peace (i.e. tell me if they will meet my demand before I agree to end the war (having often found myself immediately restarting a war after finding out I was a few $ off what was needed for the territory I wanted). This would also provide a mechanism to avoid war without just spending naval funds, instead an option to give them what they want or offer a lesser territory and hope they take it.
4. Dealing with minor powers and ungoverned territories: If a nation collapses or a territory with oil revolts and gains independence that oil (being the games only resource) becomes inaccessible. I want a way to get at those resources (mostly an issue for Japan). Giving me an option to just invade would be ok, but not great. It would be better if I could try to make them a minor ally in order to get favorable trade. If that doesn't work then invasion should be allowed but with some massive tension impact across the globe.

[Suribachi]

7 hours ago, Zuikaku said:

Is it possible to make loading times shorter? Even with game on SSD it takes inexplicably long. You wait for a minute for ship editor, you wait when loading save, you wait when loading mission, you wait when exiting mission, you even wait when returning to main menu. OK, I can understand waiting time when loading mission and maybe ship editor but exiting to main menu or loading save??! Why?

Might be a limitation with the engine unfortunately and how it uses the host computer resources.  If that is the case, the only real way to fix would be to port the game over to a new engine entirely.  Probably not feasible given the time frame of 6 months and the size of their team.

Don't get me wrong, I hope that is not the engine and that they can improve it.  I just don't see too much happening with it based off of what I have seen.

[Vanhal]

Also, i write this again, but it is still needed: option to directly declare a war. I'm sittin on my 4th campaign in a row either without a war whatsoever for 15 years or with some weird war without battles. Increasing tensions don't do much if anything. I didn't even managed to see most of the campaign features because currently i have very boring peace simulator.

At this point i would prefer the very first version of campaign, at least something happened then.

 

Also, make subs optional, they are not adding anything, their only effect is basically random damage for ships offscreen.

Edited February 21, 2023 by Vanhal

[Rina Ravyn]

Quick addendum from my side: id like to vocalize the addition of "Windowed Borderless" mode in graphic settings.

 

Playing the campaign in fullscreen with these kinds of load times (even on an SSD mind you) is absolutely painful, and being able to tab out whilst the game is doing its thing would be VERY MUCH APPRECIATED. 

[StrikerDanger]

One other thing I'd like to see is the ability to tie the reloads of different turrets together (IE 2x2 14" and 2x3 14") instead of having split salvoes from the twins and the triples.

[Mike5556]

On 2/13/2023 at 3:01 AM, Zuikaku said:

Realism panel! - please implement this as quickly as possibble! These constant buffing and nerfing of gunnery in effort to please both hardcore/historical and casual players is going nowhere. Realism panel with options to switch historical gunnery on and off solves all of these problems! And make everyone happy!

Add late torpedo boats! MAS boats, Schnellboote, PT-boats are sll missing at the moment!!

I agree it would be nice to have late torpedo/patrol boats.

Also please let us be able to declare war and invade enemy minors.

Allow Colonial expansion for 1890 to 1914. 

Allow minor clashes over colonies between major powers.

Allow diplomacy on non-aligned countries.

[Vilab]

Give us the option to not have a single AI designed ship in campaign, whether by allowing the player to design the AI's ship, by using a set of historicaly sensible ships, or both.

The AI designer is terrible, it is a fact made worse by the many nonsensical components selection ( BB picking SAP as their AP rounds ), weapons performances going everywhere ( 50kts+ torpedoes in 1915 ) and things such as gun customisation ( insane impact of gun lenght and size, and non linearity of performances between sizes ). You could fix those too, but they haven't change a bit since i bought the game so...

Allow the player to make or use a set of coherent ships where a cruiser doesn't have 8 time the accuracy and 4 time the dps of an other because the AI decided so. This is a single player game, let the player tweak their gaming experience to their will.

 

Make technology predictable, and have increasingly diminishing return of tech investments and specialisation.

The Shared design feature is a great idea made useless by the randomisation and unpredictability of the technology tree which ensure that shared design will very rarely be usable by the AI.

Please have a look at at the technology tree of the game " Automation" ( car making company game ) and convert the technology system to something close to this :

Base technology is the same for everyone ( pre nation specific tweaks ) and advances at the same predictable rate according to "when this technology became widespread IRL" : this means a nation who don't invest in tech will at most lag a few years after the competition instead of becoming completely irelevant.

Extra technology investments are a way to get ahead a few years ahead of baseline tech, it is slow, and quickly turns very expensive thus providing a soft cap on how much technical advantage one nation could have in a type of tech ( one can have a radar 5 years ahead of its base time, but no effective radar in 1900 ) . When investments are reduced, the understanding of that tech no longer advance as fast as the baseline and thus unmaintained advantages start decreasing.

Such a technology system ensure that all nation have a bare minimum quality level of ships, and make sure that the shared designed BB of 1920 using basetech of 1920 will actually be used by the AI from 1920 onward instead of being forever unusable due to using that one technology the AI don't have / is too much ahead on.

 

Edited February 25, 2023 by Vilab

[Käptn_Flitschauge]

!!Allow us to form up our own fleet before the fight!!

 

[Rina Ravyn]

On 2/22/2023 at 11:31 PM, StrikerDanger said:

One other thing I'd like to see is the ability to tie the reloads of different turrets together (IE 2x2 14" and 2x3 14") instead of having split salvoes from the twins and the triples.

i think pulling any reloads together would be fabolous addition. 

Ive been bitching about lack of salvo control for years now, and how the current mechanics actually cause ships with many gun turrets to fire less often than they would with proper firing modes.