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


Nick Thomadis

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8 hours ago, kineuhansen said:

i dont know what trigger the end battle option but i would love to see the end battle i feel like i am wasting time in battle not in my favor and my ships wont sink and i have to waith untill the end battle show up so i would love to see that change

So, you want ability to scuttle the ship?

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For your roadmap I’d ask you to choose one area and focus on it, and contrary to many of the comments here I would not make it the campaign.

I would focus on the in battle experience as that (along with the ship designer) is what makes this game unique. So lean into it.

If this was my roadmap I’d list it out as.

1) Campaign stabilization

-meaning don’t add anything but just keep killing bugs.

2) Battle AI

-work on how the AI maneuvers its ships and selects targets. Do a better job of keeping BBs at distance while TBs and DDs close for torpedo runs then run away. Study the basics of how real naval battle were fought and try to better apply them. Also less fights to the death. Jutland wasn’t fought till there was only 3 DDs left on one side.

3) Targetting/firing system

-Ships should fire a salvo, see where it lands, adjust, fire again, and each time accuracy should improve. Not go straight to max firing rate. Also the player should be able to have more control of when it switches to max rat from aimed and override if they want.

-Manual torpedo firing. I want to be able to fire torpedo salvos so one DD fire ahead of the project course, one on the projected course and and another behind. Also more control around the spread size.

4) new formation and role system

-instead of just ahead and abreast let me create formation and assign ships to different points in the formation and define the distance between the ships. Then give different roles they will have in that formation. Like: flag, battle line, screen, Why can’t I say I want my two BBs in the center, a CA on the left flank, a CL on the right. Two DDs ahead, and one CL behind the BB. And have them maneuver as one formation. Then have another formation of 4 DDs on a flank and a formation of a CA and 2 DDs up ahead to scout. 

5) Battle commands/flag plot

- let me set courses and speeds for each formation, included planned turns. Think of a simplified top down view, honestly kind of like the rule the waves view but let me set waypoints so the formation travels to a at one speed then travels to b at another speed, maybe even changing formation.

6) shorelines, ports, bases and fortifications

-I think this is self explanatory 

 

This is already really long but if you’re interested in discussing what I’m thinking as far as any of these items I’d love to discuss them in more detail. Just reach out. 
 

Thanks

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Recent grumble; good lord the autoresolve system needs refinement/fixing/just being outright removed if the first two options can't be done.

Just had an early game big battle happen, where I had roughly four times the tonnage of my opponent (playing Germany, war with Russia, they sailed a part of their navy into the full might of mine concentrated in the Baltic). I outnumbered them in battleships by a significant margin, I matched them in numbers of hulls in other categories but mine were fully fueled, bigger & more advanced while theirs had just sailed all the way from bothering Austria-Hungary so should be running low etc etc. Should be a cake-walk, right?

Wrong! Despite massively outgunning them, my fleet was terribly mauled, with many ships somehow suffering heavy damage and several being sunk (including a battleship), while the Russians seemingly lost a similar number while suffering nowhere near the same amount of damage. All because I didn't want to spend 15+ minutes manually reshuffling the ships from whatever ludicrous deployment the AI decides to impose on me, followed by a riveting time spent trying to chase down the enemy at maximum time acceleration.

It honestly killed my desire to play that campaign, because I was punished for wanting to have fun.

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@Nick Thomadis

I think a nice compromise for alliances would be an expansion of diplomatic actions to two, one positive and one negative, and mandatory alliances restricted to 66 relation or higher. Or something like that...

That way players could mostly avoid unwanted wars as well as unwanted alliances, but not entirely. Eventually you end up in a war, and eventually you'll have to rescue a dependent friend, at least over the course of 50 years.

It would also make the games basic diplomacy game more important.

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Some adjustments to the mission "creator" would be welcome. Today, in the campaign, it always seems like the game tries to balance the mission so that the player is the underdog, or at best, approximately on a similar level by tonnage.

I think this is very wrong in so many ways, since it is disregarding the strategic picture. For instance, I've basically beaten the British now, and they have only some ships here and there. We are still at war, but even if I have 4 times as many active ships as them, and most of my ships are more advanced then their ships, the missions never seems correspond to that advantage.

And it gets even worse, since I've kept almost my whole Atlantic Fleet at home, having about 200 ships on the East Coast, Caribbean and the Mexico Gulf. The modern ships are on Sea Control, but I do have some older ships, which I've kept for sentimental values, In being in some ports. So when the British sends one 24000 tons BB to the Caribbean, none of my modern ships are "allowed" to attack the old British battleships. It's always my museum ships that have to do the fighting, and they are completely outclassed by the old battleship. Basically, I cannot fight that battleship, leaving the British ship to do what ever it want.

So please make the mission creator represent the strategic map, with the pieces that are on the map, and disregard the balancing thing the creator does now. If I'm outnumbering the enemy, give me a numerical advantage (and not balancing it by tonnage). If I'm outclassing their ships with much more modern ships, let me first use my modern ships first and not the museum pieces. If it's the other way around, let the AI have their benefits. Only when both parties have similarly, but significantly, numbers of ships in an area, there should be some balancing.

And, to avoid the run away problem that has plagued this game for a long time, solve this in the mission window. Don't waste our times by forcing us to enter the tactical battle map. In the mission window, you can already give us the information that the enemy is trying to run away, and we should then get an option if we want to pursuit the enemies or to disengaged. If you chose to pursuit the enemy fleet who tries to run away, and you have ships that are faster then their slowest ship, you would automatically manage to catch them. And only now the tactical battle starts, with your ship almost at engagement range. But you will only be able to attack at first with the ships that are faster then their slowest ship. The rest of your fleet would have to start the battle way back. And it should also be the same thing if they are chasing you. 

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I just wanted to add on in case it wasn't obvious, UNCAP TIME ACCELERATION.  I like that it auto-slows down for close action, but let us speed it back up as we like if we so choose. There's nothing more painful than a 1 knot differential stern chase you have to watch for ages because the game doesn't let you fast forward a foregone conclusion.

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Two things i don't think other people have mentioned:

1) Would be nice to be able to color code the campaign map. Wouldn't have to be anything crazy-fancy like Terra Invicta, but a me = green, neutral = blue, war = red overlay would be nice.

2) Would be cool to have different map projection options. I suspect this would be a lot of work, but we're using a traditional Mecator here, which makes Greenland HUUUUUGE and the southern hemisphere (half of the planet) is only 1/3 of the map. I'd prefer something a little more accurate, mostly for ego - because if I go to the trouble of conquering most of Africa, I want to be able to look at it and see it's actually 2x or whatever the size of North America.

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We need somekind of forced armistice in this game. It's rather annoying, and unrealistic, that months after one years long world wide conflict ended the next one starts. Alternatively, lock the relations at -50 the lowest for a certain amount of time.

Also, does the AI actually follow a strategy on the campaign map? Because frankly, it feels quite schizophrenic to me

Edited by Käptn_Flitschauge
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Hi all I wanted to share my recent story with the game which i think has alot of feedback and needed changes in it.


I started (after long break) game as a china. 1890, historical, legendary. Japan declared war out of the blue (that was predictable) I won. Then i got ultimatum from nearly every other country on earth. So this is ridiculous mainly because of some imaginary slight i caused. I could believe it if the text went - sensing opportunity Italy decided to demand money or declare war.

I mean in theory i can understand nations such as Austro hungary, Italy or Spain deciding to jump on the band wagon with colonial powers such as France and Britain that have possessions near me, USA i can understand too and Japan wanting a rematch.

 

If message went something like that "Italy sensed opportunity in alliance against us" instead of "Italy demands us to pay compensation for our warships near their borders" It would be far better. I mean ffs i have all warships fighting Britain, Japan, USA and France right now, i really have nothing to spare to harass country few thousands miles from me.

Changes as of now that i would love to see

- In battle i can confidently fight outnambured 4 to 1 because AI is incapable of pressing advantage. Please program AI to use TB as suicide bombers because in game terms that is how they should be used with torpedo range of 500-900m and make them act in squadrons of max 2 ships. AI fights with tactics that i would expect from age of sails right now - and this is something i would like to mention btw, this game feels like it would be far better off if it was set in 1800-1850 instead of 1890-1950

- Change text as mention above.

- Torpedo solutions in some battles are bad like really really bad, unacceptably, stupidly bad. 

- Formation need to improve with pre battle set up. It is something mentioned by a alot of people before and after getting back to game after longer break i see why. One of the biggest problem with bigger task force is set up after AI did some interesting things with putting my ships in a stupid pile. Few times i lost battle because of it.

- Why sometimes damaged ships go to the port and sometimes not? I started a battle with a ship that had 0% structure

- Ships surrendered after getting pommelled to death  which is by all means reasonable - but why did not i got it back after victory in battle (i destroyed all enemy ships) 

- There is alot of missing items in research tree - in this case boilers (or rather lack of them) caught my attention

- big qol improvement would be to have a go-too to see province that would be as a reperation. I will be honest i have not really that much of knowladge when it comes to port names of Asia (outside of the few big ones) and it would be nice to see them.

- When i got back ahistorical borders of map were very much noticable it would be awesome to have more period accurate (i mean i do lol a bit seeing Poland with modern day borders)

- We really should be able to just reffit entire class. It is qol improvement but really a big one

- Uncap time acceleration - i know it caused some bugs but this really need to get fixed i had to alt f4 a battle because it took to long to sink my last bb i mean i already spent over a houer in it and it was really time to go sleep

- ability to end battle with resaults you have and auto resault of what is left (if that how that works then sorry for reposting but i thought it is not)


Additions 

Officer system would be awesome

Paint schemes would be great too

More ship hulls in 1890

Better port menagment

 

- Waiting for a 1.3 over all nice job but i think you released the game to early i will be honest there is a lot of promised features missing and to fix. The game is just approaching the state in which i think it would be worthy to call it 1.0.0.



 

 

 

Edited by Grayknight
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On 3/28/2023 at 6:27 AM, killjoy1941 said:

@Nick Thomadis

mandatory alliances restricted to 66 relation or higher. Or something like that...

Something like that would be a very elegant solution to the current problem of unwanted alliances, which currently can happen even with countries you are at war with, and even in the process of invading.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I just recently played this game again after a long time. This time i got hooked more.  I appreciate the work that Mr. @Nick Thomadis has done for the game and i expect more to come.

However, I do observed that there are many potentials that the game hasn't still tapped. Which I hope the developers do sooner as I think they are integral in the mechanics of the game. These are what I am talking about.

1) OFFICER SYSTEM and FLEET  ORGANIZATION SYSTEM:

- I think that this is what's missing since the game's early access. What made me fell inlove with the Ultimate General and Admiral Series (particularly Civil War) was the Ability to Organize the Military Unit that you command. Albeit the mechanics of this feature is simple in UG:CW it made the game feel more authentic and in-depth. The ability to organize your Army into Corps, Divisions, and Brigades is what set its from big games like Total War and made it better. I think that this feature is the trademark of the entire series.

- Sadly, I observed starting from Ultimate Admiral: Age of Sail that this feature becomes less and less. Even in new updates (pictures) in the Ultimate General: American Revolution website there is no Corps or Division System even though in the initial pictures this feature is emphasized.

I hope in the future  Major Updates this feature comes back just as it was in UG:CW, this time the:

Corps becomes Squadrons 

Divisions are still Divisions 

Brigades are the Individual Ships 

2) More HISTORICAL HULLS, HISTORICAL SHIP PARTS, and HISTORICAL ARMAMENTS:

- The time-frame that hooked me into this game was the 1890's - 1900's most commonly known as the Pre-Dreadnought Era. Although there are many hulls in the 1890 as of now, I still think that they lack the feel of the ships of the real-life era. 

- In addition suggest changing the label of the hulls in the design tab. What i meant is:

Hull Type + (Historical Ship Design it is based on)

For Example:

Instead of Coastal Defense Battleship

It will be:

Pre-Dreadnought (Maine)

Other Examples:

Pre-Dreadnought (Majestic)

Pre-Dreadnought (Pelayo)

Armored Cruiser (Garibaldi)

Armored Cruiser (Yakumo)

Protected Cruiser (Esmeralda)

Protected Cruiser (Reina Regente)

Unprotected Cruiser (Brussard)

Unprotected Cruiser (Velasco)

- This shall also apply in the Funnels and Armaments tab. For Example:

Small Funnel (Babcock & Wilcox's)

12-inch (Armstrong & Whitworth)

- Of course this should be for each and every nation. For the U.S. alone there are almost six historical pre-dreadnought Hulls. I do think that the Maine, and the new Texas hulls is a great start in adding more Historical Hulls. I suggest that the developers should aim to gradually replace all Generic hulls into Historical Hulls for each and every nation. In which every hull is based on Historical Designs. for the game's entire time-frame.

3) OTHER SUGGESTIONS:

- Color Schemes for Ships

- Ability to Travel around the Map 

- Make Draught and Beam in Meters (m) instead of Percentage (%)

- If possible add the option to adjust the Freeboard along with Draught and Beam.

- Length should replace Displacement, and should also be in Meters (m)

Edited by Rurōni Jäger
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I would love to see this team design the New Mexico Hull/ship and she has a unique "main tower" that would allow casemates to be built on that instead of the main hull and I did find a few places to use for refrence but this should work just as well, I also believe the team could also build would be the US Clevland, and North Carolina

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/new-mexico-aa722b9ec58940e0b9bb4415557bf24e

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/cleveland-69b67f4c33b34e29b4fba17924bcc97f

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/north-carolina-5c6c88b537da4dd180bec40d86b5be10

these should be helpful to use for refrence

I hope this helps and maybe we can see these ships for even more crazy customazations

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Any chance you're able to give us options to hide individual info in the "log" tab (lower left campaign map).

Such as show/hide
"laid down..."
"commisioned"
"completed repair"
"discovered tech"
"finished construction"
"sold ship"
"event"
"admiral actions" (taunting/praising)

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As a suggestion, some sort of postfx settings menu? Simple sliders that allow things like saturation, brightness, contrast and such would be fantastic, and even some filters to make the game feel more dramatic during combat would be cool. Thanks!

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Are there any plans to add the option of choosing a minor country to attack? There are many strategic reasons for this.

  1. These guys have oil. Oil is good.
  2. I need bases for the navy (Hawaii).
  3. The army needs a land border with a large country. You know, it's funny to watch when Germany and the USSR are not at war on the ground, because there are neutral countries between them.
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add Dropdown menu for turret models in Ship Designer please, certain tech level turret models are oversized or just wrong for assigned calibers which makes designing historically accurate ships very difficult at times.

For example, the mark 4 german sideturrets when designing the "Panzerschiff" class german heavy cruiser.

20230511192532_1.jpg

Edited by musicbox
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On 5/11/2023 at 9:27 AM, musicbox said:

add Dropdown menu for turret models in Ship Designer please, certain tech level turret models are oversized or just wrong for assigned calibers which makes designing historically accurate ships very difficult at times.

For example, the mark 4 german sideturrets when designing the "Panzerschiff" class german heavy cruiser.

20230511192532_1.jpg

I cannot echo this enough. Virtually EVERY other component in the game has a drop down menu to choose the level you want. from level one Iron armor, to level 9 compound Krupp...

... but not guns... 

it is infuriating to upgrade a well balanced ship only to find that half of its guns no longer "fit" because your are forced to upgrade to the most recent gun design. 
please give us control over this to use older gun models! 

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