>>>v1.3 Feedback<<<(Latest Update: v1.3.9.9 Rx2)

[Admiral Donuts]

Alright enough of this. Game's broken again. Enemy AI has vast improvements in targeting which go way beyond their tech level, while my AI takes consistent flooding hits from inferior firepower. In fact inferior everything. With a navy that simply can't compete even with technological superiority, it's just not worth playing anymore. Range advantage means nothing. Spotting the enemy first means nothing. Nothing means anything when I can't effing hit the effing target with advanced guns. These design decisions in order to improve....whatnot ... every patch are ONLY making enemy AI deadlier, while reducing the effectiveness of my navies, while at the same time making it impossible to maintain a decent sized navy.

Now we're back to square one. Stop doing stupid sh1t.

[itolan1752]

5小時前，甜甜圈上將說道：

Refit times are still harsh. This was a minor refit.

Furthermore, cost is huge. I went from a $38 million surplus to -$128 million just refitting 30 cruisers and destroyers. Dang near broke the bank, and these are not major refits.

my 1.3.9.3 Russia save have the same problem about refit time.

but because 1.3.9.4 change the logic of refit time. so it could happened on ship which first refit in 1.3.9.4.

after that. refit time seem not so long. although still need 2 months to get buff tech and new Mk gun. (before now, only 1 month)

maybe I should try a new 1.3.9.4 campaign later.

[SirTrafalgar]

12 hours ago, Admiral Donuts said:

Alright enough of this. Game's broken again. Enemy AI has vast improvements in targeting which go way beyond their tech level, while my AI takes consistent flooding hits from inferior firepower. In fact inferior everything. With a navy that simply can't compete even with technological superiority, it's just not worth playing anymore. Range advantage means nothing. Spotting the enemy first means nothing. Nothing means anything when I can't effing hit the effing target with advanced guns. These design decisions in order to improve....whatnot ... every patch are ONLY making enemy AI deadlier, while reducing the effectiveness of my navies, while at the same time making it impossible to maintain a decent sized navy.

Now we're back to square one. Stop doing stupid sh1t.

I have been noticing this with battle cruisers specifically. My guns hit less than what the average suggests. If I have six guns in three turrets and a 33% chance to hit at least one gun should hit but instead my main guns get about a 5% hit rate the enemy with smaller caliber guns gets a 20% hit rate with the main battery. This is despite my ships having better tower tech, better range finders, more advanced and .05% offset, and under 20% pitch and roll numbers and their ships having those numbers all over the place. Also more of my shells are blocked while the AI has insane piercing abilities. With other ship types my ships are competitive with theirs. 

[Nick Thomadis]

Hello again Admirals,

We continue to optimize the game, offering this new update:

v1.3.9.5 Update
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1069660/announcements/detail/6533084468178371962 

Please restart Steam to get the update fast

[o Barão]

@Nick Thomadis the range found bonus is killing the experience. To have, suddenly, 2900% boost is crazy. There was an update a few weeks ago where the range found bonus was limited to 800% +/-. Sadly, I didn't backup the "params" file from that version. Is it possible to share that file?

[CatboiWaifu]

Trying a United Med Italy run, starts fine, my fleet of 100mm belt CLs (because no BBs and I'm not building CAs with 20% funnel efficiency) bumrushes the Balearics and I eat it up in a snappy invasion. Their entire fleet's in the Carribean fighting the yanks, start a Naval invasion of Southern Spain, green numbers in the invasion circle.

After building more ships and exceeding the invasion tonnage requirements by three times, Spain starts to fall apart, my armies are dealing 10 to 1 casualties, Spain's asking for peace, life is good.

With Spain begging for peace, I save a backup and accept. War continues. Another failed naval invasion later, Spain dissolves one turn from the invasion completing (and likely failing again)

If nothing else, at least give provinces being actively invaded when a country dissolves to the aggressor invading it. Hell, a country dissolving shouldn't mean the end of the war, it should mean massive territorial advances for the aggressor and unconditional surrender for the country.

A government toppling shouldn't force a peace with no reparations. And Peace deals should reflect the situation the losing nation is in. Totally blockaded, naval budget hundreds of thousands in the red, actively being navally invaded, GDP in the pits, the government shouldn't be able to ask for peace and then get off with only losing some colonial territory across the world that would compromise your transports safety in a future war. Pace deals should be offered in a finalised form, and you should be able to demand terms. And if you demand something they're not willing to give you, then you should have the option of dragging the war on. I don't want Carribean provinces for a United Med run, the UK will annihilate my transports and tank my economy when I want to take Gibraltar and the UK's Med Holdings. Spain shouldn't be able to secure a peace deal and decide the terms when they lost.

Also, the US decided to break our alliance while we were both at war against Spain. Seems like a poor time to break an alliance, and I think breaking alliances should have some form of penalty across the board, like an 'untrustworthy' modifier for relations across the board.

As for invasions, it'd be cool to see invasions given some more depth. A landing phase, where every ship and gun in the invasion force gives a bonus to the invasion. A beachhead phase, where your big ships continue bombardment and your small ships reinforce and supply the invasion, and an inland phase where all you can do is protect transports, maybe give a bonus for torpedo boats acting as river gunboats? While you have enough big ships supporting a beachhead, they shouldn't be able to be pushed back. A peace deal with a beachhead or inland invasion should greatly favor ceding that territory to satisfy the invader.

[Knobby]

I think refit logic needs another look.

I want to refit this BC. it's my newest design that has only just finished it's initial build, so actually not that much new technology. To start of with, not changing anything, other than the designer auto applying passive techs of course, the refit is 6 months! Then when I add a single 2 inch secondary the refit time jumps to 14 months. That's 50% of the total build time from scratch! This simply cannot be as intended...

 

[Fangoriously]

Highlight color missing from conquered Chile and Portuguese Congo.

 

Also could something be done about the firing arcs of the American "iowa" turrets? they are unreasonably terrible, and it appears to be mainly because the barrels are so wide apart.

In the picture, you can see the barrels aren't anywhere close to the superstructure yet the firing arc is massively restricted, and in battle those turrets will traverse right into the superstructure and get stuck there half the time, but refused to fire from were they are plus 30 degrees ago.

If you look at the single turret though the firing arc is fine and what you would expect. if the singles firing arc could just be force applied to the dual and triple this would be fixed.

 

 

[Nick Thomadis]

2 hours ago, Knobby said:

I think refit logic needs another look.

I want to refit this BC. it's my newest design that has only just finished it's initial build, so actually not that much new technology. To start of with, not changing anything, other than the designer auto applying passive techs of course, the refit is 6 months! Then when I add a single 2 inch secondary the refit time jumps to 14 months. That's 50% of the total build time from scratch! This simply cannot be as intended...

 

You can send us a bug report to check it out. Previously the time was too small, and player and AI could exploit the system by making refits applying techs of 10 years in one turn if they did not move a part. This was wrong. If your secondary battery changes and something else you edited, alters the weight too much, this is why you get a very high refit time.

[Nick Thomadis]

1 hour ago, Fangoriously said:

Highlight color missing from conquered Chile and Portuguese Congo.

 

Also could something be done about the firing arcs of the American "iowa" turrets? they are unreasonably terrible, and it appears to be mainly because the barrels are so wide apart.

In the picture, you can see the barrels aren't anywhere close to the superstructure yet the firing arc is massively restricted, and in battle those turrets will traverse right into the superstructure and get stuck there half the time, but refused to fire from were they are plus 30 degrees ago.

If you look at the single turret though the firing arc is fine and what you would expect. if the singles firing arc could just be force applied to the dual and triple this would be fixed.

 

 

We will check about the highlighted areas, thank you About the guns, they work fine in most cases. We would have overlapping problems when they rotated otherwise.

[Nick Thomadis]

11 hours ago, o Barão said:

@Nick Thomadis the range found bonus is killing the experience. To have, suddenly, 2900% boost is crazy. There was an update a few weeks ago where the range found bonus was limited to 800% +/-. Sadly, I didn't backup the "params" file from that version. Is it possible to share that file?

Maybe you need to re-adjust something in your mod? There are hard coded changes, so you just need to edit your mod config, to suit your needs.

[Knobby]

19 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

You can send us a bug report to check it out. Previously the time was too small, and player and AI could exploit the system by making refits applying techs of 10 years in one turn if they did not move a part. This was wrong. If your secondary battery changes and something else you edited, alters the weight too much, this is why you get a very high refit time.

I agree the 1 month refit was too short.

In this instance though adding the single secondary was the only change. Weight did change because automatic application of passive end-game techs. Still, the single secondary added 8 months on top of refit time which is crazy...

 

Edit: bug report sent

Edited July 15, 2023 by Knobby

[Suribachi]

When the game does a crash to desktop, does it automatically send a bug report?  Just had that happen to me twice in as many days.

[PalaiologosTheGreat]

Can reparations be added to GDP rather than naval budget? 

[o Barão]

3 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Maybe you need to re-adjust something in your mod? There are hard coded changes, so you just need to edit your mod config, to suit your needs.

The 2900% is also in stock game. Yes, I can lower the effect to some degree in the mod, but the range found boost when kicks in will give around x10 times +/- a multiplier to the accuracy values, and this I can't control. If it was x2 or x3, sure ok, fair enough, could be interesting. But this value is so insane that it completely changes the game dynamics, going full arcade mode. It will ignore the natural gun's dispersion at insane long ranges, making it possible to connect many hits from a single salvo. Complete unrealistic.

 

I also suspect the players that come to the forums accusing the AI of cheating is because they are facing the enemies with this boost in battle, and they don't understand why is possible. They will say that they had the better tower, tech, etc, and still got wrecked.

 

So, some players that don't fully understand the game mechanics, are thinking the AI is cheating, this is not good. And completely ruins the immersion for the hardcore players. So whatever point of view you choose, it is a bad mechanic. I can't stress it more, how bad it is.

[Aurora]

1 hour ago, o Barão said:

The 2900% is also in stock game. Yes, I can lower the effect to some degree in the mod, but the range found boost when kicks in will give around x10 times +/- a multiplier to the accuracy values, and this I can't control. If it was x2 or x3, sure ok, fair enough, could be interesting. But this value is so insane that it completely changes the game dynamics, going full arcade mode. It will ignore the natural gun's dispersion at insane long ranges, making it possible to connect many hits from a single salvo. Complete unrealistic.

 

I also suspect the players that come to the forums accusing the AI of cheating is because they are facing the enemies with this boost in battle, and they don't understand why is possible. They will say that they had the better tower, tech, etc, and still got wrecked.

 

So, some players that don't fully understand the game mechanics, are thinking the AI is cheating, this is not good. And completely ruins the immersion for the hardcore players. So whatever point of view you choose, it is a bad mechanic. I can't stress it more, how bad it is.

Isn't that boost supposed to represent the fact that your fire control acquired an accurate heading+speed lock on the target and can thus land shots with great accuracy? I believe Nick mentioned that some time ago.

To test things out i made a few battles like the one in your screenshot but changing radar and crew: it seems that veteran crew is the single biggest factor in how quickly you acquire that bonus. If i used radar 1 and regular crew i went the entire battle without seeing the full bonus, while when i used radar 1 and veteran crew as soon as i was at about 20km and going parallel to the target it maxed out and i started hitting 50+% chance to hit.

So essentially having the best crew possible and possibly radar makes your ship a god at acquiring targets at medium-long range.
Now it may be a bit too overtuned if you have veteran crew, but in general the mechanic makes sense, a late ww2 ship with radar and great crew should be able to consistently nail hits at what is essentially medium-long range if the target isn't maneuvering.

However i think it needs to be exposed and explained a lot more to the player, there is little indication in game that any of this is happening, so people are going to see it as "AI cheats" or "bug" when it actually isn't because they see the accuracy spike and see a +2900% bonus that looks completely out of place in the middle of the rest of the modifiers.

[Panzergraf]

18 minutes ago, Aurora said:

Isn't that boost supposed to represent the fact that your fire control acquired an accurate heading+speed lock on the target and can thus land shots with great accuracy?

The "Range Found" bonus is supposed to represent that, yes. And it typically sits at around +200-400% or something. Which gives you reasonable accuracy after the aiming and ranging process has been completed.
 

But when that 2900% bonus kicks in, you get levels of accuracy a Harpoon missile would get jealous at. And it sticks for a while too even if you/your target perform some wild maneuvers. I don't know exactly what causes this sudden accuracy bonus either. It just suddenly appears some times, and then goes away by itself after a short while.

Maybe it's actually working as intended, but that still feels strange to me.

[MDHansen]

I think that the "superbonus" should not be more than 500% at the very most, and only in very strict conditions (general weather, your maneuver/speed, target maneuver/speed etc).

Even a target-found bonus at 100% pretty much nullifies out the negative traits. Granted I play a very modified game, but regards to target finding and accuracy, I've done very few tweaks, and the ones I've done we talking single percentiles

Edited July 15, 2023 by MDHansen

[brothermunro]

Hi @Nick Thomadis

Had a crash to desktop today (so couldn’t send an in game report). I haven’t been able to repeat it yet but what happened was I had one division of ships (about 6 of them) being followed by a single ship division. All 6 ships in the lead division took damage and went to the back of the following division, creating a new ‘following’ division as expected. However when the last ship in the lead division took damage and tried to join the second following division the game hung and eventually windows terminated the .exe

I’m pretty sure the division logic got stuck in a loop as ships were trying to follow a ship that was trying to flow them and that caused the error. Not the easiest to replicate I know but I thought I’d pass it on

[brothermunro]

3 hours ago, Panzergraf said:

The "Range Found" bonus is supposed to represent that, yes. And it typically sits at around +200-400% or something. Which gives you reasonable accuracy after the aiming and ranging process has been completed.
 

But when that 2900% bonus kicks in, you get levels of accuracy a Harpoon missile would get jealous at. And it sticks for a while too even if you/your target perform some wild maneuvers. I don't know exactly what causes this sudden accuracy bonus either. It just suddenly appears some times, and then goes away by itself after a short while.

Maybe it's actually working as intended, but that still feels strange to me.

Had a 2900% bonus today. It really makes any other factor completely irrelevant, ship was flooding, with a destroyed main tower, destroyed fire control, was still hitting every shell! 
I agree with you @o Barãoa x10 modifier is way too high, a x2 or x3 would be much more reasonable I think.

[o Barão]

13 hours ago, Aurora said:

Isn't that boost supposed to represent the fact that your fire control acquired an accurate heading+speed lock on the target and can thus land shots with great accuracy? I believe Nick mentioned that some time ago.

Yes it is.

 

13 hours ago, Aurora said:

...but in general the mechanic makes sense...

I also agree with the concept behind this game mechanic. It is the values being used that are complete nonsense.

 

13 hours ago, Aurora said:

...a late ww2 ship with radar and great crew should be able to consistently nail hits at what is essentially medium-long range if the target isn't maneuvering.

This is the part where I need to disagree. Radar is not a special button that you press and will have all the data to plot your target solution with perfect accuracy. Special early radar tech. That is not how radar works. In the best case scenario from the WW II period, we will get this:

[The Mark 8 and Mark 13 fire control radar installed during World War II completely revolutionized spotting. Radar, which was much more accurate than visual spotting (at least in range) quickly superseded aircraft spotting entirely, and battleships were soon recommending that their aircraft be removed. Even in perfect weather, optical spotting deteriorated rapidly beyond 18,000 yards; in comparison with the Mark 8 mod 0 fire control radar could spot 16-inch splashes out to about 20,000 yards and the improved Mark 8 mod 3 could reliably spot 14-inch and 16-inch fire out to at least 35,000.The Mark 13 radar was even better yet. Officers testing the equipment aboard USS Iowa in 1945 would write:

"Spotting both 5-inch and 16-inch splashes, HC or AP, with the Mark 13 radar is comparable to deliberately drawing a picture of the splashes on paper and looking at it. At all ranges fired during this period, the most inexperienced officer, given a brief explanation of what to expect, can spot splashes accurately to within 100 yards, and to within 50 yards with some experience."]

 

Source: Evolution of Battleship Gunnery in the U.S. Navy, 1920-1945 by William J. Jurens

http://www.navweaps.com/index_inro/INRO_BB-Gunnery.php

 

So as we can see, the splashes from the shells in the waters were used to made the calculations for the target solution, and these are not exact values. "...can spot splashes accurately to within 100 yards, and to within 50 yards with some experience."  And then we have to take into account the natural shell dispersion at those ranges that will influence the splashes readings. The fact the ship is still moving, rolling, the wind, the air temperature, the earth rotation. Add all together, and you will not see two digits of accuracy values against a BB target size at 25000 yards away. Not even close to the insane values we get when we have the 2900% range boost in game, that is so high that will make all the others modifiers almost irrelevant.

[halofanjames]

I assume this is a bug but with US super heavy cruisers the 6 inch battery is currently the US dreadnaught battery rather then the new mark 5 model which causes a lot of connecting issues with the secondary tower. Also smaller note the 5 inch still uses the old model for most late war heavy ships.

[Suribachi]

14 hours ago, brothermunro said:

Hi @Nick Thomadis

Had a crash to desktop today (so couldn’t send an in game report). I haven’t been able to repeat it yet but what happened was I had one division of ships (about 6 of them) being followed by a single ship division. All 6 ships in the lead division took damage and went to the back of the following division, creating a new ‘following’ division as expected. However when the last ship in the lead division took damage and tried to join the second following division the game hung and eventually windows terminated the .exe

I’m pretty sure the division logic got stuck in a loop as ships were trying to follow a ship that was trying to flow them and that caused the error. Not the easiest to replicate I know but I thought I’d pass it on

+1 on this.  Thinking about it, I believe this is what happened to me as well.  My game crashed during a battle right after my ship took damage in a very similar situation.

[StrikerDanger]

22 hours ago, brothermunro said:

a x10 modifier is way too high, a x2 or x3 would be much more reasonable I think.

x10 is definitely too high, but I think it should be slashed to x5 and then tuned from there based on what feedback gets sent in from players. It's definitely off-putting to land 6 or 7 shells of a 8 or 9-shell broadside(Assuming a conventional battleship), especially if your warship is sitting beyond 10km from an enemy.

Of course, it needs an absolute metric ton of tuning given hit rates, especially with later tech.

[CatboiWaifu]

One thing I've noticed is that with aiming in general, it seems to work by having the actual point of aim a considerable distance short of the actual target, then deciding based off your hit calculations which shells to actually aim at the enemy ship's range and 'picking shells from the herd'. This is evident and exploitable when you have two enemy ships going past each other at a short distance from each other. By targeting the far ship through the near ship, you get a nearly 100% hit rate as the shells fall short of the targeted ship and the fall of shot straddles the near ship.

I think it would be better to have the point of aim be such that the natural scatter straddles the targeted ship and let dispersion deal with it. Any that are aimed up from dispersion could hit the superstructure, any that fall short straddle the belt

Edited July 17, 2023 by CatboiWaifu