>>>Beta v1.4 Feedback<<< [Final version released]

[ijp8834]

3 hours ago, _Marlow said:

It feels like the fire arc's have gotten narrower across the board in one of the recent updates over the past couple days. I've just been playing around with some quick battle builds, but when I logged on yesterday I noticed that mounts that provided a decent fire arc before now have more restrictive arcs. It could be that I'm misremembering, but the best example I can find to illustrate is this 8.9inch gun on a later British cruiser. I am pretty sure that this had a better fire arc a few days ago. Anyone else finding this?

(BTW, I'm loving the British hulls that have been added since I last picked up the game!)

Yea there is no reason whatsoever that a turret in that position should be limited to a firing arc as bad as that.

[Captain Vlad]

These are some thoughts from my ongoing Spanish campaign.  Please be advised that I have not reviewed the thread.

1:  I am really enjoying the new hulls, especially the cruisers as they've really helped add some more nation specific vibes to the ships you can build.  However, in some cases, I think they age out a little too quickly.  In the Spanish campaign, I felt like I barely had the small scout cruiser and fast armored cruiser as options before they became obsolete, with the scout cruiser especially seeming to have potential beyond the point where you lose it.  I personally would like it if some of these newer hulls had their available timeframes extended.

2: The newer hulls mostly seem to have better balance characteristics than the older hulls, which I presume is due to the changes to weights, etc. being in place when they were designed. I feel like some of the older hulls need to be looked at to make balancing them out a bit more viable than it is currently, to bring them into line with the new hulls.

3:  Maximum armor on hulls is a great idea, but there are some hulls I feel like the limits are set a bit too low on, especially battlecruisers.  While yeah, IRL, most BCs had less than 10 inches of main belt armor, prior to 1.4 it was very possible to use a BC hull as an early fast battleship if you were willing to sacrifice some firepower or speed for armor.

This in turn allowed nations that had lower shipyard capacity and/or money to develop them to use the BC hulls as smaller "good enough" battleships or more traditional BCs as the player chose.  This had great utility, and since ships that fudged the line between BC and Battleship (HMS Hood, for example) certainly existed IRL, I feel like we ought to have the option.

4: Some of the towers with integral barbettes on some of the cruiser hulls aren't sized in a way to allow the use of the full spectrum of guns available to the hull, yet there are no towers with no integral barbettes as an alternative.  I'm at work and can't check the game directly, but one case that springs to mind is the Spanish Experimental Heavy Cruiser hull (IIRC).

5: In a similar vein to the above, some hulls are arranged in a way where it's practically impossible to use most of the secondary tower options available to them.  It's possible I was just sleepy, but I was having a hell of a time fitting the larger aft towers onto a Spanish modern CL hull.

6: Small obstructions blocking fire arcs for main gun turrets really ought to be looked at.  The depth charge racks on a lot of later destroyer hulls have had this problem for awhile even if the ship in question doesn't actually have depth charges.  Some of the small gun tubs for 2-3 inchers don't seem like they would realistically mask the big guns firing arcs either, and on some hulls they do, and some they don't.

7.  It may just been my perception, but tactically the AI seems to be noticeably better in the most recent patch and I'm enjoying it.  It's especially been more competent in trying to keep the range open when it has bigger/longer range guns than you.  

 

Edited October 6, 2023 by Captain Vlad

[Holioo]

First i would like to say that i really like this game. And games like this in general where you can buld your own units.

in this beta i only had time to play with the US, UK and Germany.

and oh boy there are some differences...

The new US hulls and towers look quite good and you can build nice new stuff with them, so in general thumbs up.

The UK got really awesome new hulls and towers there are so much new possibilities, i can sink hours in the builder.

But Germany....
the new modern BC 2 is a good new hull finaly germany can buld a modern BC with big guns, this was really needed.
And i think there is another late tech CA hull thats just upscaled but works just fine.
But most of the other new CL and CA hulls are just unusable. They are impossible to balance the forecastle (as always are WAY to heavy) so many towers only fit if you increase the beem, some boats dont vanish if you place down guns and block them, small DC block even biger guns, the step up in the back half makes placing guns towers and torps so insanely akward.
You can sometimes make a kind of aesthetically pleasing ship... but its stats will be trash with red offset.
Why is the german stuff so much harder to work with?

Edited October 7, 2023 by Holioo

[Sydd]

Thanks for the wonderful new hulls. I've been having a blast playing as Germany. 

As others above me have mentioned there are hulls where depth charges are blocking fire arcs of the rear gun, forcing you to put them on a barbette. 

- DD1, DD2, CL5, CL6, Scout cruiser, Heavy Cruiser, modern dd, modern, dd leader, modern CL2 are among the hulls (for germany) I've noticed where depth charges are blocking firing arcs. 

- CL5, CL6, Scout cruiser, Heavy cruiser (for germany) are unable to fit some/all secondary towers without having to increase beam.

- Some german hulls are also incredibly difficult to balance due to foreweight offset being in excess of 30% +  I had an especially hard time with CL1-5 and Scout cruiser, however I faced this issue with dreadnoughts 3-5, BC1-5 and, large armoured cruiser as well.

I don't know how difficult it would be to balance weight so I have a suggestion to the dev team to give the player the ability to move the engine room to help with balancing the ship. 

[Pappystein]

3 hours ago, Sydd said:

Thanks for the wonderful new hulls. I've been having a blast playing as Germany. 

As others above me have mentioned there are hulls where depth charges are blocking fire arcs of the rear gun, forcing you to put them on a barbette. 

- DD1, DD2, CL5, CL6, Scout cruiser, Heavy Cruiser, modern dd, modern, dd leader, modern CL2 are among the hulls (for germany) I've noticed where depth charges are blocking firing arcs. 

- CL5, CL6, Scout cruiser, Heavy cruiser (for germany) are unable to fit some/all secondary towers without having to increase beam.

- Some german hulls are also incredibly difficult to balance due to foreweight offset being in excess of 30% +  I had an especially hard time with CL1-5 and Scout cruiser, however I faced this issue with dreadnoughts 3-5, BC1-5 and, large armoured cruiser as well.

I don't know how difficult it would be to balance weight so I have a suggestion to the dev team to give the player the ability to move the engine room to help with balancing the ship. 

Where you place the stacks affects the location of the Engine room, the Engine room area is basically centered on the center of the stacks.  +/-

 

[casperwieik]

I am loving the new update, but on my current US run I have run into something that is currently bogging it down completely. I am at perma war with Japan and China because they don't have any real fleets and I cannot siege down their main ports yet since its 1901. Any ships they do have are sailing around as single ship formations (The British are doing that too, very annoyingly) and never seem to get caught in battle. The perma war has already stopped my economy from growing and having to balance a fleet in Asia and in the Atlantic means my transports are now also suffering.

 

Please add something of a stalemate peace so that if a war goes on for over 2, 3 years without borders changing so you can go back to focussing on matters that are actually important to grow your navy and economy, because right now I fear my save is going to have to be reset.

[halofanjames]

So don't really know how to describe it but kinda odd and annoying that the 6 inch guns for US heavy cruisers are the mk 2/3 dreadnought guns instead of the new models you guys have for CL's and DD's 

[vonPeretz]

On 10/6/2023 at 1:08 PM, brothermunro said:

I’ve been running a campaign with over 2000 shared designs in the folder, I’m 20 ish years in and seeing player designs pop up every now and then but I’d say 90% of the designs have been AI generated (though they do seem *better* I don’t know if the AI can use shared designs as a seed or not but it feels like that’s what is happening). I don’t know how the AI selects shared designs on ‘always’ or what is eligible for the AI when it goes to build a ship but it does seem to reject player designs a lot even when it should have all the requisite techs.

 First. Yes, the AI rejects our designs because they are bad. Repeatedly I made designs for each country strictly one BB CA CL TB in 1890. At the start I chose Shared designs: Always.

Second. Do you understand what this means? I forbade AI to make his own designs. What everyone talks about - sometimes AI take my design - it's very strange. After all, we have a button: Selective.

And third, main. I created all designs for all countries exclusively using AI. Then it turns out that the AI considers the designs created by itself to be bad. You can check it yourself, it doesn't take that long.

P.S. If AI makes his designs in 1887 (AI doesn't see designs from 1890), then let us make these designs from 1887.

P.P.S. I'm making a historically accurate mod. All the ships are historical and thanks to you they turn out very similar to the real ones. But the behavior of AI depressing.

Edited October 8, 2023 by vonPeretz

[Panzergraf]

On 10/6/2023 at 12:02 PM, killjoy1941 said:

 

A question to both of you (and everyone else using shared designs, really) since I haven't had the time to extensively use shared designs... Did you build them with the maximum available tech at the time?

No, not with max tech. But also with me editing the save file to give them more tech, they should have at least enough tech to build some of my designs. But they don't, other than at the very start of the campaing.

The AI always using all three of its research priorities, and rarely on anything worthwhile, is an issue in and of itself, though. The AI would be much better off not using any priorities, not just for the purposes of shared designs, but also for building its own AI designs - after a few decades they usually lag way behind in the most important techs, like big guns, hulls, and radar.

[as24862486]

Hi Nick,

I create "Camouflage Editor" topic

can you analyze the feasibility?

 

[Sydd]

23 hours ago, Pappystein said:

Where you place the stacks affects the location of the Engine room, the Engine room area is basically centered on the center of the stacks.  +/-

 

This is true. But it still has a mind of its own, just because I put down a funnel doesn't necessarily mean the engine room will center itself below the stack, from my experience, it has always moved further towards the front and every german ship I've designed thus far has a foreweight offset I need to play around with, usually, just adding an underwater torp tube on the aft helps with that but it also forces me to not use any casemate guns on the front of a lot of hulls, but even that wont help in instances where foreweight offset is upwards of 20%

What's the point of having hull cutouts for equipment when the weight distribution is forcing you to not use them? I just think it'd be easier to allow the player to move the engine room rather than try and balance literally every single hull so there's no excessive offset.  

[Nick Thomadis]

[Update 18]
- Improved the fire arc calculation system, fixing issues where the fire arcs were more limited than they should. This improvement affects the game greatly, in the design phase and in battle, addressing issues where guns were unable to rotate and fire because of a few degrees difference.
- Improved Battle AI on how it manages divisions and formations in general. 

Please Restart Steam to get this update fast.

[Nick Thomadis]

11 hours ago, as24862486 said:

Hi Nick,

I create "Camouflage Editor" topic

can you analyze the feasibility?

 

Hello, I am sorry, we cannot promise anything on this, at least now.

[halofanjames]

16 hours ago, halofanjames said:

So don't really know how to describe it but kinda odd and annoying that the 6 inch guns for US heavy cruisers are the mk 2/3 dreadnought guns instead of the new models you guys have for CL's and DD's 

Just realized Aradragoon had made this note but yes with the towers and barbettes on the super heavy cruisers make it impossible to use 8 inch guns and above mostly thanks to the rear tower and aft gun shields upsizing the rear tower and or giving it the fast scout cruiser towers but upscaled seem to be the best bet if it's in scope for this update

[Dalk]

I was goofing around in the shared designs builder and noticed that the US coastal defence ship hull still has a minor bug with the secondary guns- the placement anchor points on the left-hand side work for all displacements, but the one on the righthand side seems to not scale properly and only lines up with the smallest displacement option. I have included some screenshots that illustrate this.

[EndsBeginning]

Hello I've just started playing, done about half of the Academy and tried the US campaign a few times and noticed several issues that could be... better. Not bugs, but quality of life issues. I'm sure most have been mentioned before, but I need to point these out.

• The time scaling multiplier should be at least a step higher at every level but the lowest. Beyond relatively early torpedo range (about 1.2 km) it's rare that evasive maneuvers are necessary and it's fun to just watch the fight and see how it turns out. Especially in conditions that gunnery is terrible it gets really slow. It's especially bad when you're trying to chase down ships that you can't see or shoot at and it just lowers the the time setting just dragging out watching the weather. In almost all cases the game would be smother at a full step above what the maximum allowed is. Or at the very least not block out the higher scaling.
• If the opponent doesn't let you withdraw from a fight (especially when they are massively outclassed such as only have a torpedo boat/destroyer against a task group) they need to be set on No retreat. I've wasted so much time just chasing a lone fleeing torpedo boat that I never see.. Otherwise please have it so they'll let me withdraw when they're out classed. I don't care if they let an overwhelming force withdraw and I can skip the whole fight, but if I do auto battle it sometimes ends up stupid where a torpedo boat takes out a destroyer and light cruiser (with a massive tech and crew quality edge) and gets away with light damage. I understand Auto Battle is hard to balance, but with my tech/crew/firepower advantage they're just targets. So having to chase them down or if I'm too slow just hop in and sail in the wrong direction to wait out the timer is obnoxious because they don't let me withdraw and skip it. Also, when all enemies are fleeing and no one can see each other the battle end button pops up and the timer doesn't matter.
• Please make the world map "wrap" so it connects back to itself. The scroll rate on the world map is low, and cross pacific wars are a pain.
• For the early US, the torpedo cruiser is actually the most effective starting ship (due to abysmal gunnery primarily), so can it remain relevant a bit longer, taking the first few cruiser upgrades? It's the same hull as the light cruiser with 2 extra torpedo slots... in fact why don't you make an American light cruiser that just has 2 extra torpedo slots? Those funnels with casements on them are awesome! Jeune École really works when it takes a lucky shot for an anyone to hit the broad side of a barn.
• Please have the ports be easier to select (larger radius to select the port). I often have the problem of a fleet going right next to one of my ports, but not going in. I have to mouse over the port see the little box with the port info and wait a few seconds to hopefully have my fleet to go there. It's even worse when having to do cross pacific movements.
• Okay I forgot there is a bug. I don't know if it's US only, but there's several upgrades in the destroyer tree where it "unlocks" new displacement for torpedo boats or destroyers that apply to the FOLLOWING UNLOCKS new hull and not to the existing available hulls. I believe the 900 ton upgrade is one.

Edited October 9, 2023 by EndsBeginning
Jeune École, ports and clarity

[Harwood_39]

Apologies in advance, this will likely be a long post:

1) Designs

13 hours ago, Sydd said:

This is true. But it still has a mind of its own, just because I put down a funnel doesn't necessarily mean the engine room will center itself below the stack, from my experience, it has always moved further towards the front and every german ship I've designed thus far has a foreweight offset I need to play around with, usually, just adding an underwater torp tube on the aft helps with that but it also forces me to not use any casemate guns on the front of a lot of hulls, but even that wont help in instances where foreweight offset is upwards of 20%

What's the point of having hull cutouts for equipment when the weight distribution is forcing you to not use them? I just think it'd be easier to allow the player to move the engine room rather than try and balance literally every single hull so there's no excessive offset.  

I'm playing a German campaign at the moment, and I'm having this issue with all of my designs - which doesn't help if I'm trying to build a real historical ship (e.g. SMS Blucher massive FW offset), and even with these new hull designs, I position the funnels well to the aft of the ship (even though I can't think of any historical ships with funnels that far behind the forward superstructure), I still get a 5-15% FW offset without balancing it out with armour/stern TT Tubes.

2) Diplomacy

I've been stuck in a war with Italy for years and as you can see, I'm unable to ask for a peace treaty, and they're stuck in a "build submarines" loop for years - I have a small DD fleet that I keep in the Med that is more than enough to deal with the submarine fleets that they come across.

Last night, I was dealing with wars with the US and Soviet Union (with another couple of nations) and the only nation that was threatening war with me was the UK, but after getting a peace treaty with the US, the next turn Japan declared war on me (despite generally having positive relations), and the turn following peace with the Soviet Union, China declared war on me.
Both of these was despite the only tension events I was having in the turns leading up to this was with the UK.
I have an issue in this campaign (playing as Germany btw), with me constantly losing 5-8 relations with the UK each turn, regardless of whether my fleets are in harbour or not.

3) Battlecruiser designs

I was somewhat surprised when my Battlecruiser got hit by a single 18" torpedo (French, if that helps) which caused a flash fire chain reaction and ultimately what you see here.  Just surprised that a single torpedo did that much damage, despite all the defensive protection I had in place.

4) Casemate issue

As you can see here I place these upper casemates and unless I manually change their angle, they don't have a natural firing arc.  This is common with all of this style of German tower.

 

In general, I am enjoying this new update, I'm finding Submarines are better balanced, as a single submarine so far hasn't managed to sink a BB despite all the cruisers and destroyers in the fleet that should deal with it beforehand.

Another frustration I do have is when I move a fleet into harbour for repair or refuel is the fact that they stay in "sea control" and I have to run the gauntlet of them being pulled into a mission before I can set them to "defend".  Also, is there a way for ships who are in "limited" status in peace to automatically switch to "defend" when war is declared?

 

Edited October 9, 2023 by Harwood_39

[Harwood_39]

Ran out of space in my previous post, but it wouldn't be feedback without the complaint about the AI designs 😆

What looks like a very overcomplicated design by the Russians here

[Fangoriously]

10 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

[Update 18]
- Improved the fire arc calculation system, fixing issues where the fire arcs were more limited than they should. This improvement affects the game greatly, in the design phase and in battle, addressing issues where guns were unable to rotate and fire because of a few degrees difference.
- Improved Battle AI on how it manages divisions and formations in general. 

Please Restart Steam to get this update fast.

Holy crap! what a difference! this is by far the best addition to the game in this update.

before

after

[as24862486]

11 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Hello, I am sorry, we cannot promise anything on this, at least now.

😭 Thank Nick for the reply. I still have hope.

[MDHansen]

Here is a situation that occurs often, and is not resolvable. That Chinese 5x CA fleet between Port Arthur and Weihaiwei is blocking my fleets and is not generating a battle no matter what I do.
my fleets are: 4x TF with 4bb, 6ca, 10cl and some random BC/CA fleets for invasion support.

This is basically a standstill, because the Chinese fleet wants to move towards Tianjin that I just invaded, and is not changing its orders even though they cant move either or provoke a fight.

*shrugs*

 

Edited October 9, 2023 by MDHansen

[Tycondero]

In my recent beta campaign I observed some weird AI building behavior. The Italian AI especially was (according to the political view) having billions of credits as naval funds, yet even though they had only 4 ships left they never build new ones, hence that the Italian navy was no longer existent. This behavior also persevered during peace time as well.

Furthermore, I am sometimes wondering whether the AI manages the funds appropriately. Often the AI accumulates large sums of navy funds but is still only average in tech level. To me this says that the AI seems to underspend in the research category.

P.S. I reported this using the in game bug reports.

Edited October 10, 2023 by Tycondero

[Zuikaku]

All AI nations ,except Britain, fall behind player in tech levels in a few years time. At least german and US AI shoul'd be able to keep techs levels advanced or very advanced.

[ijp8834]

4 hours ago, Zuikaku said:

All AI nations ,except Britain, fall behind player in tech levels in a few years time. At least german and US AI shoul'd be able to keep techs levels advanced or very advanced.

I think a good solution to this would be an option to turn off research for AI countries, just giving them techs for the year in question in January of that year. This could be a toggleable option so if players prefer to play without it, they could leave it off.

[Zuikaku]

1 hour ago, ijp8834 said:

I think a good solution to this would be an option to turn off research for AI countries, just giving them techs for the year in question in January of that year. This could be a toggleable option so if players prefer to play without it, they could leave it off.

I don' t like this. Spain and UK can not have the same tech levels. Instead AI shoul'd have priorities for every country: research, training, transports. When AI can max one slider than it can move to increasing other, being carefull not to enter deficit in the process.