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

[SodaBit]

Some things I'd like to see in no particular order, except the first one which I think could work out pretty well.
1: Miniature "Theater of War" Campaigns
Pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. These campaigns would focus on a single area of the map, similar to the first iteration of the campaign in the North Sea. I know that this might sound like something of a downgrade, but realistically, it would probably work for most players. If you're playing as Japan, you couldn't care less about a war between Italy and Austria-Hungary, as this is completely outside your sphere of influence. It might become something to consider depending on who's allied to who, but otherwise, it won't effect you in the slightest. You're more concerned with the powers in your area of the world, such as America, China, Russia, and Britain if they still have some holdings left. You can essentially cut down the map, and remove some of the powers, or add a few new ones based on the area you find yourself in. Some examples are as follows:
North Sea: We've seen this before, Britain versus Germany, with France tagging along for the ride if you want. Netherlands and Denmark can be added as playable "Regional Powers," taking the place of powers who have no influence over the North Sea, and would thus be excluded from this campaign.
Mediterranean Sea: A 5 way free-for-all between Spain, France, Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Britain, based out of Alexandria. Greece and Turkey can be added as regional powers, using Italian and German equipment respectively.
North Atlantic: A massive theater by comparison, mainly focused on a war between the United States and Britain, with Spain and France again featured. Regional powers could include the Dutch and Portuguese, though I'm sure nobody would mind if a few Brazilians showed up at some point.
Pacific: Stretching from the Straights of Malacca to the American West Coast, and primarily focused on a conflict between the United States and Japan, with China, Russia, and the colonial powers making contributions as well, including the Dutch as one regional power, with Australia and New Zealand being the other. Using British equipment, they start off allied to their mother country, but can break that alliance and take matters into their own hands if they so choose.

These campaigns would be available along side the main Global campaign, and the war between the main powers wouldn't stop until one is eliminated, with the exception of the Mediterranean Sea, which goes until there's only one power left standing.

2: Obligatory "Please Add More Hulls" Section
While it's well and good and all to focus on the big capital ships, we need more options for cruisers, lights in particular. Atlanta, Cleveland, and Helena are already planned, which is good, but I'd also like to see the Omahas make an appearance, casemate main battery guns included, as well as the post-war Worchester class. The Towns/Country/Crown Colony class should also be on the list, as well as the D/Dido class. Basically a British Atlanta, but don't tell the Brits I said that. This format of "AA-cruiser" should be made available for all countries as well, since it can be rather fun to pour an un-ending torrent of small-caliber shells into an enemy formation, even if it is somewhat ineffective at times. As for the powers on the European mainland, I'd say we need something to represent the treaty era German cruisers, such as Nurnberg and Koln, as well as a hull for the M class. I'm not sure how similar the two would be, but if they can both be covered with one hull, that's great. I'd also like a better hull for the Hippers, as the current one is too wide, and doesn't really get the superstructure right. The French cruisers also need some work, I know that Algerie and the rest of the treaty era cruisers have been mentioned before, but I'd also like to see some of the 1940's designs represented, as cruisers that were actually built in real life don't cover the whole spectrum of what the French had planned for their cruiser force, thanks to the minor issue of the country being completely overrun by Nazi forces before they could build anything new and shiny. As for the Russians, I'd say that Kirov and the Project 26 variants are a good addition, as well as the Chapayevs and Sverdlovs. I've also got something of a soft spot for the Project 66 design, so I'll throw that in as well. Moving even further east, the Japanese cruisers are in a good spot but could still use a bit of a touch up, mainly with regards to the Myoko and Takao class cruisers, which don't really work on any of the hulls implemented thus far, as there's not really enough space up front to mount 3 8" turrets. Cutting back the raised portion of the hull on CA3/4 would be a great fix for this. That's it for cruisers, but I'd like to make a mention on some of the capital ships as well. There is still no hull for the Amagis/Kiis, which is something of a disappointment. Also, the Tillman family should be added as sort of a meme for late game USN, with these ships being absolutely massive, but extremely slow.

3: Designated Large Cruiser Class
I've been saying this for a while, and I think the argument still holds water. Large cruisers/Panzerschiffe are in a pretty weird spot right now, and can be classed as either a CA or a BC depending on nation you're playing. With many of the late game CA hulls, you can quite conceivably get a Large Cruiser out of the max 23,000 tons you have for the class. When matched against actual enemy heavy cruisers, it will proceed to kick the crap out of them in any perspective gun fight, and cannot easily be stopped from doing so. The last iteration of Panzerschiff I made came in at exactly 23,000 tons, had 280mm/150mm of belt/deck armor, and was armed with 9 283mm guns, with a top speed of 32 knots. That's not a heavy cruiser by any definition of the term. Meanwhile, if you tried to build this sort of ship on one of the "Large Cruiser" battlecruiser hulls, which all tend to weigh between 30,000 and 40,000 tons, you'd get a ship that couldn't really go toe to toe with contemporary battlecruisers. The German variant of this hull weighs 37,000 tons, and can reasonably mount guns of a caliber up to 14 inches, iirc. Meanwhile, across the North Sea, Great Britain is capable of building the "Super Battlecruiser," which can weigh more than a Yamato class battleship, and is based on a design that called for 6 20" guns. This ship may very well have up to 15" of belt armor, with a 6" deck, and would be a significant challenge to take down for a ship that is usually armed with 12" guns, but can go up to 14". Unless you're Japan, then feel free to mount 46cm. guns on a 35,000 ton ship, nobody's stopping you.

4: More Freedom with Regards to Gun Caliber
This point is pretty basic. There are certain calibers of weapons, such as the 100mm, 380mm, 150mm, that saw a fair bit of service during their time, but are not available in game. While you can get close enough for government work, it's not really the same. Also, like I mentioned earlier, the Japanese can mount 46cm. guns on a 35,000 ton ship, but the Americans, for some reason, can't mount 16" guns on a ship of 50,000 tons. Back when this was possible, my go to BC design for the USN was basically USS Iowa. The same thing happened with the German "Modern Battlecruiser" hull, weighing 49,000 tons. This is only 1,000 tons shy of Bismarck's weight of 50,000 tons, so it made a lot of sense that you could mount 15" guns on it. You can't do that anymore. In fact, the largest weapon you can mount on the ship's main tower is a 36cm gun. Another example is the secondary battery of the Yamato's main tower. You can place 5" guns on the bottom row of mounts, but not the top row. In order to have both rows of secondaries at the same caliber, and thus able to share ammo, I have to use 120mm guns. All of these changes seem small, and to be honest, are small, but I'd still like to see them implemented, along with other examples I probably haven't mentioned.

5: Designated Nomenclature for Classes and Authentic Names for Minor Powers
Again, this is one of those small things that I'd like to see implemented. When building large classes of ships, I like the names to be somewhat consistent, i.e. don't throw in a Kearsarge into a class that has Pennsylvania, Ohio, Vermont, and Montana as its other members, nor a Bonhomme Richard into a class that has Cleveland, Biloxi, Montpelier, and Denver as its other members. Also, ORP Jean Bart doesn't make a whole lot of sense, nor does HMAS Vittorio Veneto. Again, this shouldn't take priority over other features, like the ones listed above, or over fixing bugs, but I still think it should be added at some point.

Edited February 4, 2023 by SodaBit

[kjg000]

Many excellent suggestions from the community, sadly I don't currently have time to read them all.

The devs are clearly working hard to improve the game but I wonder if they actually PLAY the game? Devs, please take time to play the game because, to me, some of Nick's comments seem to indicate that they haven't tried to play, for example, Japan or the USA. Perhaps at least an afternoon a week playing testing the game, then compare notes afterwards?

On 2/3/2023 at 9:11 AM, Nick Thomadis said:

       ...

1. Map graphics finalization: ... A lot of players would like the map to have a horizontal “looping” but that would be only aesthetic as the main functionality is already implemented. ...

Please try playing Japan or the USA! I think you will soon see why this not just aesthetics.

In general, as already mentioned , directly or indirectly, by many players above, the UI needs a lot of attention. The current UI was good enough to suffer through during EA but for a full release it needs a lot of attention. A good UI can make a poor game BUT a poor UI can kill a good game! Currently I think we have a mediocre UI severely hampering a great game. This thread already contains many great suggestions to accomplish a better UI. Generally the game should be challenging but rewarding, not frustrating. The UI should facilitate enjoyment rather than be one of the challenges. BTW time spent getting this correct here will pay you back many times over in future games (or any other software).

Please ask yourself "Why am I playing the campaign". If the campaign is dominated by RNGs and positioning of fleets has little impact, why would I bother. If I position my TF on top of an enemy TF something should happen!

Why am I placing ships in a TF, or designing support ships,  if they will be separated and thrown into battle randomly, or even ignored just so some support ship in a remote port can be required to sail past them to engage an enemy it is not equipped for! Strange as it may seem, my dedicated mine layers are NOT convoy raiders. They should never be so AWOL that they even see an enemy convoy. BTW please let me design dedicated mine layers! Just drop the requirement for TBs and DDs to have a torpedo. If I want them to fill a role requiring them to have a torpedo I will give them some torpedoes. The other option is to provide dedicated service ship hulls, but I think the already high workload for new hulls indicates this is not required for minor ships when such a simple change would suffice.

My TFs attempting to blockade (I.e. deny the use of) say, the Straight of Gibraltar should NOT be engaging enemy forces in the Adriatic! So OK, perhaps we need some additional orders such as "Deny", for hold position (and TF composition) and only engage enemy ships in your ZoC, and "Dominate", for "if it floats and doesn't quack kill it" (quote, or misquote, from an old game Imperialism II).

The devs are clearly working hard and that may contribute to the miscommunication issues between both players and the devs. The devs may simply be too close to the code to see the problems. A very common problem in all software development.

[kjg000]

21 hours ago, Zuikaku said:

So captains and admirals are definitively dropped?

I asked about this in a separate thread several months ago but no one replied. At the moment I'm not keen on the idea but I could be persuaded, which is why I asked. I'd need to see how you wanted this to work.

[kjg000]

14 hours ago, Essaldk said:

Why must the game end after 60 years of gameplay, really really annoying. Cant see any reason for it?  I know the history stuff wont compute, but i should be the players who choose how to play. Its not satisfying when it stops half way in myworld conquering.

Let the player set start and end dates. Also introduce some smaller campaigns, Pacific, Atlantic, Mediterranean, Americas, East Asia etc. Sometimes the world is just too much! (Mr. Bond)

[Dave P.]

I'm noticing that the game really only loads a single core, and that the AIs in their wars execute quite a few battles every turn, each one after the next.

Any chance some of that could be multithreaded to make the new turn delay a bit shorter? (I know this is typically easier said than done, but it does seem like an ideal situation for that - you have a bunch of processing to do, each battle is its own chunk of data to deal with, the outcomes of one battle don't really have to effect the others, provided you add guardrails, etc.)

Same with AIs generating new designs.

Edited February 4, 2023 by Dave P.

[smsvu]

Better explainations of the mechanics - the current help pages are little more than a nice overview for the most part.

The game has a lot of complex and interconnected mechanics, so just trial and error are neighter really fun nor really a good way to learn how they actually work. What's good or bad: Are x barrels of oil per capita good bad ? How's my navies fleetstrenght actually derived - it's used to define my logistics strenght (disregarding it's seemingly a bad estimate)

[Schmitty21]

7 hours ago, Dave P. said:

You can very easily make small destroyer/minelayers that accomplish that goal. The issue is keeping them separate from the others, as you wouldn't necessarily want them showing up in fleet battles.

You have to arm DD's with torpedo launchers. I don't want that. And late game the tonnage slider can't be pulled down very far anymore. Also, these types of vessels were historically very different from warships. For example the Flower Corvette which was based off a whaling ship. 

Edited February 4, 2023 by Schmitty21

[Eisenfeld]

Hi,

The roadmap is looking great and I can't wait to see what the devs do with it!

Here are some improvements that can be made:

Shared Designer:

• Add the button to delete shared designs. The trash can button is grayed out when I load a shared design I already made. (Not being able to delete shared designs is a bug, I made an in-game bug report)
• Allow the player to overwrite a shared design with the same name if they want to keep working on it (add a confirmation prompt) instead of saving it to a new .design file. (Not being able to overwrite a shared design with the same name is also a bug)

Custom Battles

• Allow the player to control which shared designs go into combat if there are multiple shared designs for a certain ship class and year.
• There is a bug where sometimes, shared designs from different years spawn in the same battle. I had one battle where I had a 1915 BB design fight a 1917 BB design.

Edited February 5, 2023 by Eisenfeld
Clarified that Shared Designer improvements are bug fixes.

[liaxelot]

something very important to me

but can be too hard to finalize and do is to represent the coasts

it would add a huge strategic dimension to the game with fortress bastions and casemates in defense

port battles could even take place and the straits and other natural canals would then take on their full meaning

like gibraltar, bosphore, marmara sea, channel and many others in the world

many coastal battles have had a lasting influence on many world conflicts.

examples of coastal battles and I don't know everything: dardanelles (bosphorus), tsushima, port arthur, mers el kebirs, the preparation of the d-day (without planes.... yes..) and plenty other !

 

it coulded be a rel advantage to the game,

the sea without coast... is not normal... but i can understand difficult to realize in good condition (without fall of FPS !!)

 

and please more and earliest cargo ship

only one and a very late design.... for the period in game

but  very good job    and congrat !

[anonusername]

Multiple campaign types, coastal battles, etc. probably fall under new features that are too complex to develop and bugfix in 6 months. I wouldn't mind seeing DLC offering some of those proposed features though. 

[Falconette]

The game looks nice at the moment, keep up the good work! The current roadmap also looks very good

I'd like to share one big and one small (cosmetic) suggestion.

The big one concerns the addition of new main playable countries, maybe even without any unique hulls at the moment, just for the sake of gameplay and plausibility of the campaign. At the moment, the game absolutely needs the Ottoman Empire, and optionally it would also be great to see the Netherlands, Portugal and Belgium, since we already have Spain and Austria-Hungary. I would give a slightly lower priority to Latin America, but historically Brazil, Argentina and Chile had quite serious fleets as well, it would be great to see them in the game one day.

A small suggestion concerns the reworking of the flag system. At the moment, unfortunately, it leaves much to be desired. Many countries have the wrong flags (the Habsburg bicolour flag for Austria-Hungary — so it's basically just Austria, the Spanish republican flag used for the monarchy, the flag of the 17th century Muscovite Tsardom for the Russian Empire, the combination of Beiyang government flag and Guomindang/Nanjing government naval ensign for democratic China and so on), a number of countries that arise during the game do not have a flag at all — and all minor nations don't have naval ensigns, thus their ships wear generic gray flags in battle, which also hits the visual side of the game. Also, I'm sure it had been already written here many times that there is a strange representation of flags in the game (the naval ensign on the bow and stern and the national flag on the masts, in the complete absence of jacks). In my opinion, this is a big blow to the naval flavour, and one day it will definitely need to be reworked — naval flags and jacks for warships, and national/government ones only for civilian transports. Although this is pure cosmetics, but in my opinion, it would greatly improve the visual component of the game.

I wish you great success in the further development of an excellent game!

[Suribachi]

Small suggestion this time.  

The game already keeps track of if your research progress as a whole is Behind, Average, or Advanced.

I would like to see in the Research screen if a particular tree is Behind, Average, or Advanced compared to everyone else.  For example, am I advanced in Cruiser Design but behind in Torpedo Propulsion?

[Dave P.]

I would also like to add a vote in favor of each ship having a battle history and a list of enemy ships sunk.

[SMS]

More modern destroyers and cruisers:Gearing-class,Fletcher-class,Z destroyers,Town-class and Battle-class,Baltimore-class.The point is that most ships of this class have similar superstructures to help save work.And I want to reproduce the North Carolina class in the game.Thanks for your efforts.

[Nick Thomadis]

Hello guys,

Your participation is truly motivating! We consider your criticism and feedback very important and we will do our best to use them in order to make the game even better. However, there are very few bugs mentioned. 

There were some posters lately speaking about "many bugs" that make the game unplayable for them and those have reviewed the game badly. We invite these players to write them down here, if they have the time. We need to know those  bugs, if they are still present, to focus on fixing them.

Thank you.

[madham82]

Not unplayable, but very annoying. 

Bug: Convoy attack missions ending as soon as last enemy warship is sunk, giving no opportunity to sink transports. 

Edited February 5, 2023 by madham82

[Schmitty21]

46 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Hello guys,

Your participation is truly motivating! We consider your criticism and feedback very important and we will do our best to use them in order to make the game even better. However, there are very few bugs mentioned. 

There were some posters lately speaking about "many bugs" that make the game unplayable for them and those have reviewed the game badly. We invite these players to write them down here, if they have the time. We need to know those  bugs, if they are still present, to focus on fixing them.

Thank you.

Here's some things I mentioned in the other thread...

On 2/2/2023 at 9:33 AM, Schmitty21 said:

I finally gave the full release a go and I'm really enjoying the stability. It is a much better game then the previous betas. That said, I've been jotting down notes as I play. Here's a summary of what I've come up with so far;

QoL Changes

• It would be nice to see the number of each type of ship I have in service on the design page.
• I'd like to be able to create and save task forces so they're always the same grouping. This could even be extended to allow task forces to assemble from nearby ports like they did in real life. Naming of task forces would also be nice.
• Wrap around map is sorely needed.
• A check box on the design page or shipyard to indicate if a particular design is available for sale. Same for ships in mothball status if selling those is ever fixed.
• On the build request pop up from a minor nation it would be nice to see what my current ship building capacity is.
• On the reparations screen I'd like to see info on ships/territories when I mouse over then to help me decide.
• When in battle there should be a verification popup before changing fleet groupings. I keep accidently dragging goups together when just trying to click on them.

Fixes

• AI when running away do this very strange slow turn. The fact that every AI does it every time feels very artificial. Like a constant reminder I'm fighting a computer. In real life a ship would set a course and then maneuver later onto another course, etc.
• AI ship building is out of control. Most major nations had over 200-300 ships within 10 years. Seems like there's too much money available. 
• AI still seem to have too much rudder authority at slow speeds when damaged.
• The battle camera losing focus every time a player ship sinks is annoying.
• There needs to be some more limitation on task forces. The AI build hundreds of ships and create tons of task forces out of them. There should be some tech limitations here. 
• AH is still missing its destroyer hull when DD unlocks at 1000 or 1100 tons.

 

[Durham Dave]

There is one area when the non-wrap around map is a bug and not just aesthetics: submarine movement. You can't move them across the Pacific due to being out of range of the bases, because it doesn't apply the route calculation to the range circle.

[madham82]

42 minutes ago, Durham Dave said:

There is one area when the non-wrap around map is a bug and not just aesthetics: submarine movement. You can't move them across the Pacific due to being out of range of the bases, because it doesn't apply the route calculation to the range circle.

Need to see or explain this one a bit more. I have moved the bigger ocean going subs across before (have to island hop). 

[Durham Dave]

17 minutes ago, madham82 said:

Need to see or explain this one a bit more. I have moved the bigger ocean going subs across before (have to island hop). 

I can't move my subs from the west coast unless I move them to a port, plus there's no operating range. I can move my subs from Seattle to Vladivostock, but not to directly operating in the Sea of Japan. This is despite the fact I could have them operating in the Western Mediterranean direct from Seattle if I wished.

[madham82]

33 minutes ago, Durham Dave said:

I can't move my subs from the west coast unless I move them to a port, plus there's no operating range. I can move my subs from Seattle to Vladivostock, but not to directly operating in the Sea of Japan. This is despite the fact I could have them operating in the Western Mediterranean direct from Seattle if I wished.

So no red circle on the west coast but you can see it on east coast subs in port?

Also not sure if it is still present, but I had issues in 1.09 with not being able to send any TF if I happened to click on the sea region name specifically. Would have to click around the text or zoom in enough that the point I was trying to go to wasn't in the text. Have not checked if this bug is still present in latest fix. 

[Durham Dave]

2 minutes ago, madham82 said:

So no red circle on the west coast but you can see it on east coast subs in port?

Also not sure if it is still present, but I had issues in 1.09 with not being able to send any TF if I happened to click on the sea region name specifically. Would have to click around the text or zoom in enough that the point I was trying to go to wasn't in the text. Have not checked if this bug is still present in latest fix. 

Standard surface task forces work fine.

[SirTrafalgar]

Bugs List, watch for Edits for additional Bugs. Edited 18 and beyond

Note: none of these are in any particular order of importance

1. Naval Jacks on minors are greyed out as if they were ungoverned territory. 

2. Not all minors have flags or naval jacks.

3. In battle, ships falling out of formation move to the enemy rather than away as if they were retreating and rejoining the line. 

4. Ungoverned territory doesn't revolt as often as the Ottoman territory, which suggests their unrest is lower.

5.  Minors cannot shut down canals for their allies. So If say the controller of the Saini canal was allied with Britain and Britain was at war with Germany, German ships can still pass through the canal. 

6. Movement bug on the campaign map. Click a task force for movement, slide the ships over to move and despite being under the tonnage limit the ships may not move because the button is greyed out. Repeat click same spot on map ships may or may not be able to move there. 

7.  I get the complexities of creating a wrap around map. But what if the edges of the map didn't have to be straight you could cut the Americas in half with bi directional arrows? The arrows suggest movement through the Straight of Magellan and also snap your camera to the other side of the map where the arrow is. Once the Canal zone you can do the same thing. This way the ocean isn't bisected its a landmass. 

8. San Juan being part of the US before 1898.

9. Damage not being consistent between battles. Ship gets torpedoed and has a flash fire taking out X turret, an engine and has 95% of structure left then takes no further damage in that battle, but gets intercepted by a new fleet or has the straggle mission. That same ship is now down to 10% of its structure and has all its turrets working but all of its engines out. 

10. Victory Points for damage not received in battle. Using the same example above the ship with 10% counts as taking all of that damage in that battle despite never engaging the enemy in the straggle battle. String several battles along like this and its possible to stack VP achieving victory and never engage the enemy. 

11. Ships in battle that have been previously damaged have no aiming penalties and speed penalties until they take damage. 

12. Mines appearing in ports without minelayers.

13. Mines persist in ports after they change hands. 

14. Modern national boundaries that have no bearing in the game appearing on the map rather than adjusting dynamically to show new conquests and in game situations. 

15. Minor nations that are allied aren't subject to invasion but their ships appear in our battles? 

16. Missions can stack on top of one another so they aren't selectable. 

17. Taskforces can be on top of one another but only one task force is selectable. 

18. Wars can break out for no reason. In an AH campaign France collapsed because Germany wiped them out then Germany declared war on me despite not being allied to any of my enemies and having a +56 relationship boost. 

19. Not exactly a bug but balance, countries snowball way to quickly in Europe France and Italy are very much subject to early elimination. 

20. Sometimes Wars don't merge properly when new alliances are forged during a war leading to the victory points screen on the left  being out of date. 

21. Austria-Hungry Dreadnought research says it gets the Small Battleship I, Small Battleship II, Semi-Dreadnaught, and the Dreadnaught Hull I. Only the Small Battleship I and Dreadnaught I appear. 

Edited February 5, 2023 by SirTrafalgar
Adding new bugs.

[Gangut]

I'd like to see Austria Hungary recieve an update as it needs new ships at the 1890 start. Even the generic "Light cruiser 1" would add more flavour. It maybe also nice to see some more specialised ship designs for the nation.

I'm also totally behind optimisations as 10 years into the campaign it takes forever to move between ticks, other than that it's nice to see the game taking shape 3 years after I purchased it.

[vonPeretz]

First of all, many thanks for the game. Very interesting gameplay. In particular, your desire for historicity.

In my humble opinion, I would like the following:

1. Global map

1.1. Eliminate the inability to manage a task force if an alien is visible on the map above it.

1.2. Scrolling the entire globe in a circle.

1.3. Joint action with an ally.

2. Finance

2.1. Greatly reduce funds and reparations for the legendary level.

2.2. The ability to transfer your funds to the army.

3. Shipyard

3.1. Bow torpedo tube for torpedo boats, especially since it is in the design of boats.

3.2. Do not exclude old models of guns when new ones appear

3.3. Do not exclude old ship models when new ones appear.

4. Battle mode.

4.1. Possibility to stop shooting from small guns.

4.2. The ability to open ship cards by right-clicking not only one division, but all that I need at the same time.

5. Logs.

5.1. The ability to view a short track record of any ship, in which battles it participated, whom it drowned, etc. Probably on the global map or in the fleet list.

 

 

Edited February 5, 2023 by vonPeretz