>>>Beta v1.3 Feedback<<<(Released)

[Zuikaku]

33 minutes ago, ZorinW said:

Also you either do something about the negative effects of the weather on accuracy or don't bother players with any bad weather battles. As you can see these ships are about to ram eachother and the hit chance is still zero.

 

Unfortunately, in its current state the weather is an extremely pointless game mechanic.

Why don't you just use torpedoes? Night is a great time for torpedo runs in 1890s as gunnery is inaccurate. 

Also, while hit chance for guns in storms or nights shoul'd be very, very low, in extreme close distances (as shown above) there shoul'd be no problem in riddling enemy ship. So I propose hit chances to rise exponentially starting from 400m and to be as close as 100% at 50m and bellow.

Edited April 17, 2023 by Zuikaku

[AdmiralObvious]

Fighting in the worst possible circumstances frankly isn't very fun for the player, and now we also encounter the issue where torpedoes are weirdly powerful again, partially because the waves don't affect the accuracy of their launch and partially because they're invisible in heavy sea conditions. I feel like some mechanic should be in play to reduce the efficacy of that kind of strategy. Currently it seems like the optimal strategy is to just fill your battleships with torpedoes since they're now much more reliable than guns in poor weather.

 

Additionally, it doesn't seem like sea state has much of any effect on smaller ship classes. Torpedo boats in a near hurricane/typhoon really shouldn't even be able to participate in battles let alone score accurate shots on larger ships.

[Grizli60rus]

Support. Maybe, depending on the weather, add a coefficient of the chance of triggering a torpedo? And in a storm, it is not possible to make their launch at all? 

And at the same time, that the speed of especially small ships would fall in a storm and bad weather.

[ZorinW]

Also setting ships to dodge torpedos is inconsequential now. So far they always got hit...

[SodaBit]

I've got some feed back here about rump-states, or former "Great Powers" who have been reduced to a single colonial holding, with no hope of ever retaking their homeland. Currently there are two in my campaign, Italy and Spain. Both have been pushed off of Europe and are continuing their shenanigans overseas, with little regard to their reduced influence in the world. So much so, that Italy, despite having no army, has launched an invasion of Ethiopia. 

Apparently, they seem to think this is going to work somehow. The only way for them to conquer Ethiopia would be for someone else to come along and do it for them.
There's also the small factor of these nation's GDP, and their ability to produce and pay for warships. Somali isn't exactly the richest country in the world circa 1913, and even today many of its people live in abject poverty. As of 2021, it's total GDP was about ~$7.6B. The Italian government in this campaign however, can call on over $17B GDP.

They are by no means the worst offender here though, Spain, with a GDP of over $20B, is somehow raising all their money from...

Just the Northern Marianas. A region with a population of only 20,000. 
When I annexed the European territories of Italy and Spain, I was kind of expecting to be able to integrate their economies into my own. Instead, they seem to have dumped everything of value into a portal to some random colony overseas, and are continuing on as if nothing happened.

[o Barão]

6 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Hmm, shadows should be editable. Did you try to delete settings and launch the game to generate a new file?

I mentioned this in January, and I can explain again.

The moment a player choose any of this shadow details in game, it will lose the long range shadows.

 

In this image above we can see in the ship in the right, with the camera far away we can still see the shadows in the ship deck (from the turrets, superstructure, etc). This only happens if we don't choose any shadow detail option. If we choose, we lose this.

 

In January, I found that we could edit the settings.json file to manually edit the quality of shadows in game. This method allow us to have long range shadows again in game. I was hoping from the moment I mention this, the devs could find a solution to this.

Instead, we have the update 1.3 with a new settings in binary format with default values that can't be manually edited outside the game. If the settings were working fine inside the game, this would not be a problem, but that is not the case here. And of course, I can't use the old .json format anymore.

 

So that is the first big issue with 1.3 update. At least for the players that know about this issue.

--------------------------------------------//---------------------------------------------------

 

Now about other matter related to the update 1.3

 

I was working in a project for the game.

The big problem I have with this update is there were major changes to how some files work. Maybe to increase performance? I know the devs never mention that we would have any support to the modding community, but I need to ask if it is possible to give us the option to edit techs and components as we could in the previous patches?

An example of my work.

 

Or maybe I am missing something, and is it possible to tell me what to do with the new changes? I hope there is a solution for this.

[o Barão]

I made a short video to make it easier for anyone to understand the issue with the long shadows in UAD.

• The video start with no shadows details enabled.
• We can see I can move the camera far away from the model and I can still see the shadows from the turrets, superstructure, etc.
• In the middle of the video, I open the game settings menu and I choose the shadows details highest quality. The moment the player do this will lose the long shadows.

 

The only way for a player to revert this situation is to delete the setting.json file or to manually edit that same file. And to never again choose any "shadow detail" option from the game menu.

With beta 1.3 we don't have this option anymore. The settings.json file is gone and is replaced by a new settings in binary format that can't be edited.

[Abuse_Claws]

Military conflicts and uprisings seem to be bugged
After taking over a province if it starts rebelling, I can't send ships to stop it, as it seems that the game counts the old owner of the province as the "defending" side, even though it shows me as the defender. Furthermore, after the rebels won, I now see a Military Conflict with attacker and defender being the same country (Northern Marianas)

[__Arminius_]

There is a bug in the description of submarines, campaign for France 1910. Also, I want to note that it might be good to reduce the size of the player's economy buffs during the war, because money ceases to be a problem after the first long war.

[Zuikaku]

Yes, in war we just get way too much money 

[SirTrafalgar]

On 4/17/2023 at 1:17 PM, AdmiralObvious said:

Fighting in the worst possible circumstances frankly isn't very fun for the player, and now we also encounter the issue where torpedoes are weirdly powerful again, partially because the waves don't affect the accuracy of their launch and partially because they're invisible in heavy sea conditions. I feel like some mechanic should be in play to reduce the efficacy of that kind of strategy. Currently it seems like the optimal strategy is to just fill your battleships with torpedoes since they're now much more reliable than guns in poor weather.

 

Additionally, it doesn't seem like sea state has much of any effect on smaller ship classes. Torpedo boats in a near hurricane/typhoon really shouldn't even be able to participate in battles let alone score accurate shots on larger ships.

Admiral, you're obviously right! Small ship classes taking part in those battles should at the very least be constantly dealing with flooding issues if they can even sail into those battles at all.

With the advances in meteorological studies that came out of WWI specifically and then improved upon in WWII Fleets could tell the optimum time to engage one another if there was a choice because historically it was not advantageous to either side. Right now it doesn't work that way and the AI because of its reliance on torpedo spam and is far more effective in stormy battles. So much so that when I see a storm with bad sea and wind conditions or one of those and at night I run until the timer runs out or the conditions improve. That's not fun gameplay.  So we should have techs to make it less likely we fight in stormy weather because of better weather predictions. We also should get a weather report on the battle screen as tech advances letting us know how long until the conditions change and what they may change to. I cannot overstate how important meteorology was and is to warfare. 

Also it seems like conditions and time changes far to rapidly. Furthermore. why can fights take a couple days if they are long drawn out stern chases? It seems insane because that means that guns aren't firing every minute but rather like over the course of a half hour. Give us a clock too, basically just change the battle timer clock to be a real clock put red over the areas of when we are fighting. That way we know if the battle is taking place at "magic hour" (the time that its still light but the sun has already set then it will get dark within an hour of fighting. If the battle starts at five am it should end at seven if its a two hour timer. 

[MDHansen]

My number one comment is damaged ships being sent back to a random port from a TF after a fight.

1. Please, make so they at the very least return to the port of origin.

(Suggestion; make Repair Priority Low (or a new Manual Repair) for TF only return ships to port manually, completely disregarding damage and an automated forced return to port)

2. If possible, place current researching tech in each category show on top of the list, not bottom

Edited April 19, 2023 by MDHansen

[o Barão]

7 hours ago, MDHansen said:

My number one comment is damaged ships being sent back to a random port from a TF after a fight.

Did you try to edit the "repair priority" settings from all your ports to force the ships to go where you want?

[MDHansen]

12 minutes ago, o Barão said:

Did you try to edit the "repair priority" settings from all your ports to force the ships to go where you want?

Yes. I\ve always done this, and this has worked 100% before (1.3.0) but lately it seems mostly random. It does help though.

What is also an issue, that might be connected to this, is that generated battles pulls X amount of ships from active TFs. Those will be thrown in to a random "nearby" port after the battle. Its actually something I noticed just now last few hrs of playing.

I'm pretty sure generated battles shouldn't pull ships from active TF, or atleast shouldn't in my opinion

Edited April 19, 2023 by MDHansen

[ZorinW]

Anyone else yet again stuck in eternal world war?

[Vinrellren]

I don't, but the problem is always that I ask for a peace deal, and the AI rejects it. Next turn, they offer me a peace deal, and I reject it, but a peace deal anyway. To be fair, the new beta is excellent, just that, as others have pointed out, torpedoes, even till 1924 still pretty much a reliable way to kill ships ( I personally even designed a DD with 12 torpedoes per launch due to how accurate and OP they are in this weather update).

[Vinrellren]

One more thing, what the heck happened to my economy? I know the US and the UK got a GDP growth boost from government type, but is it too much? They have a combined tonnage of 15 million tonnes and over 2100 ships. How can they maintain that while I was going negative in peacetime for maintaining 90 ships (which, as you can see, I scrapped all of them), I always picked the GDP boost decision, but I had only 6-7 times the GDP of my starting Germany in 1890.

 

I have the entirety of Russia, part of China, and part of Japan as conquered states, but my GDP was 6% of the US 1.3 Trillion in 1925 and smaller than that of France and Italy... Hell, even partly conquered Japan (North Honshu and Kyushu, Okinawa, and North Hokkaido taken), leaving only South Hokkaido, South Honshu, and the Shikoku on the Japanese side still have more GDP than I do.

 

I know this game suppose to be hard, but how can I compete with 1k ships when I cannot field 90

 

[ZorinW]

2 hours ago, Vinrellren said:

One more thing, what the heck happened to my economy? I know the US and the UK got a GDP growth boost from government type, but is it too much? They have a combined tonnage of 15 million tonnes and over 2100 ships. How can they maintain that while I was going negative in peacetime for maintaining 90 ships (which, as you can see, I scrapped all of them), I always picked the GDP boost decision, but I had only 6-7 times the GDP of my starting Germany in 1890.

 

I have the entirety of Russia, part of China, and part of Japan as conquered states, but my GDP was 6% of the US 1.3 Trillion in 1925 and smaller than that of France and Italy... Hell, even partly conquered Japan (North Honshu and Kyushu, Okinawa, and North Hokkaido taken), leaving only South Hokkaido, South Honshu, and the Shikoku on the Japanese side still have more GDP than I do.

 

I know this game suppose to be hard, but how can I compete with 1k ships when I cannot field 90

 

No no, that is a misunderstanding. The game is NOT hard, not at all. What you are describing is just a very bad and rudimentary economy system that is still in need of a lot of fixing. Yet at its core this game is way too easy. I can't even recall a single battle that I lost or god forbid that I lost because the "AI" outsmarted me.

All the game does to increase the "level of difficulty" is give the AI even more money and in general introduce features the player has zero influence on (land battles, etc.) The AI designed ships are still way worse than anything a player with a day of experience in the ship builder can come up with so even if the AI has thousands of them all that does is create hundreds of lame battles you are going to win anyway, which in turn is a drain on your time. Which can aslo be said for the argument of "we have shared designs now". Cause I ain't got time to either design a ship for each year, for each tech level and each nation in the hopes the AI has all it takes to build them. Even a whole community will take forever to provide for that. Besides, even then the AI will ruin said designs with the first refit anyway.

So yeah, 1.3. is still firmly headed towards a wall in my opinion, which is really really sad, because of all the wasted potential.

 

Edited April 19, 2023 by ZorinW

[Vinrellren]

Ha, yes, I agree. I am sorry for the misunderstanding. Yes, the game isn't hard battle-wise; the AI is pretty much a dummy with ships so imbalance it's a miracle it's not sinking due to the sheer offset; what I meant is the economy "cheat" the AI got and nerf players economy to a point where AI can make me mad by killing the FPS, not my ships. Improved turn time did work in the early game until the 1920s; now, it took an average of 3 minutes per turn because, I don't know, 2.1k ships is not enough for the US and UK. In total, the AI of 7 countries wields 3k ships. My economy is so bad that I am at negative while employing 100 DD and 30 SS without any capital ships or even a CL. This made me lose almost all of the land battles in my colonies because I could not protect my trade/supply routes...  

Your point about battles and political action is valid too. Why do I fail to worsen/improve relations? I have no idea. Why does my soldier lose an invasion while having a numerical and logistical superiority with naval bombardment from my ships in the sea? I have no idea. Not attacking a neighboring province while at war? No idea

1.3 is a good update for visuals (I love it), but features need to be polished and thought through first.

[Nick Thomadis]

Beta Update v1.3 "Build 3"
- Province borders with color highlight have been finalized. You can find a new button on the top right corner which allows you to toggle on/off the color highlight according to province ownership, which helps to monitor your territory possessions.
- Balance overhaul for accuracy and visibility according to the new weather system. Please note that the fog visuals will be improved so that ship control is easier at maximum zoom out level.
- Ship motion due to waves further improved to provide an even more realistic experience. The maximum designed speed will be possible only in very calm waters, because the large tides will reduce the ship's top speed and acceleration accordingly.
- Added back the manual rudder control. Players will still have to steer carefully because in large formations a full rudder could cause unwanted circular movements for all ships.
- Disabled the common alliance mechanic, which caused too frequent world wars.
- Oil, Rebellion and Major Offensive flag icons are now properly scaling according to map zoom level.
- Various bugs of the UI have been fixed.
- Fixed major bug of the auto-deesign (temporary of the beta build) which caused late tech CL to not be buildable.
- Auto-Design optimizations.
- Battle AI optimizations.
- Various other small bug fixes.

PLEASE RESTART STEAM TO GET THE UPDATE FAST

[ZorinW]

Problem with the color. Prussia belongs to me but is colored like it belongs to Russia.

[Lima]

Rudder is back 😀
common alliance is gone 😀

Edited April 19, 2023 by Lima

[Nick Thomadis]

2 minutes ago, ZorinW said:

Problem with the color. Prussia belongs to me but is colored like it belongs to Russia.

Can you please make an in-game report for this? 

[ZorinW]

7 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Can you please make an in-game report for this? 

👍

[o Barão]

1 hour ago, Nick Thomadis said:

- Ship motion due to waves further improved to provide an even more realistic experience. The maximum designed speed will be possible only in very calm waters, because the large tides will reduce the ship's top speed and acceleration accordingly.

Not working.

• Stormy weather.
• 40 knots max speed.
• Ship doing 39.5 knots
• Ship motion is the same as calm sea.