A Large List of Suggestions for the Devs.

[AacornSoup]

I bought Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts back in October, and since then I've sunk (pun intended) over 150 hours into this game. The part where you design and build ships was easily the best and most refined part. However, I found a LOT of frustrating headaches in both Campaign and Naval Academy that needed rectification. I actually came up with a long list of suggestions for features that the Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts Devs can take into consideration for better gameplay and immersion:

Diplomacy and Politics:

-Ability to initiate treaties/alliances/trade agreements with minor nations.

-Ability to accept or refuse treaties/alliances/trade agreements with minor nations, so that you don’t get offers to buy your ships from that country you’ve been blockading for decades with intent to annex.

-Ability to pay money so as to guarantee success in increasing tension or improving relations with other countries.

-Dictatorship is a separate form of government, so that the Soviet Union and Third Reich aren’t considered “Democracies” in-game.

-Absolute Monarchies stop randomly accumulating Unrest without random events.

-Ability to buy or sell provinces with other countries without declaring war, or annexing minor countries by buying them (this should be very expensive, like upwards of $100,000,000 per province).

- Ability to designate certain Spheres of Influence where major powers will prioritize colonization and allying with minor nations (eg. the US has all of Latin America as their Sphere of Influence thanks to the Monroe Doctrine, Britain and France have Africa and Asia as their Spheres of Influence, etc.), try to keep other major powers out of their Sphere of Influence (eg. the US using the Monroe Doctrine to keep Britain and France from Colonizing Latin America), and competing with other major powers in overlapping Spheres of Influence (eg. the "Great Game" between Russia and Britain).

-Ability to order invasions of minor countries you want to annex, or to call off unsolicited Army invasions of minor countries you don’t want.

-Ability to grant independence to provinces, to create puppets/satellites that will always have an alliance/trade agreement with you and will buy your warships.

-Ability to sign trade agreements with other playable countries, increasing GDP and research rate of both countries.

-Alliances last at least five years, or the duration of the current war, whichever is longer.

-Alliances are more likely to last longer, the longer they last, with a Naval Prestige penalty for breaking the Alliance that increases the longer the Alliance lasts.

-Ability to diplomatically mediate disputes between an Ally and a third party, that can prevent war if it succeeds or start a war immediately if it fails.

-Blockading a minor country (whether or not as a prerequisite to an annexation attempt) has a non-zero chance of causing the country’s fleet to scramble in their defense, provoking a war with the minor country.

-Invading minor countries is no longer just parking sufficient tonnage off the coast to guarantee a successful annexation (or parking enough naval tonnage off the coast to keep other countries from doing the same); failed annexations can result in the minor country’s fleet mobilizing, causing a naval battle or an outright war.

-Selling warships to minor countries increases both the tonnage needed for a successful annexation and the chance of a minor country successfully fending off an invasion.

-Random event where a minor country voluntarily submits to occupation by a major power, either becoming a puppet/satellite, being annexed outright, or just remaining an ally (depending on the major power’s choice).

Finances and Research:

-Ability to lobby for increased Naval Budget (and reduced GDP), or reduced Naval Budget (and increased GDP), with +5 Naval Prestige if you succeed and -2 Naval Prestige if you fail, without having to wait for random events.

-Ability to spend money to reduce Unrest, without having to wait for random events.
 

Finances and Research:
-Ability to lobby for increased Naval Budget (and reduced GDP), or reduced Naval Budget (and increased GDP), with +5 Naval Prestige if you succeed and -2 Naval Prestige if you fail, without having to wait for random events.

-Ability to spend money to reduce Unrest, without having to wait for random events.

Construction:

-Better balancing for warships so that they aren’t so front-heavy.

-Ability to design and customize submarines, just like with surface ships.

-Very early ships such as Casemate Ironclads (IC), small Monitors (CM), large Monitors (BM), and Torpedo Rams (an early CL that represents the transition from CM Monitors to Cruisers).

-Corvettes and PT Boats are considered TBs so that the TB tech tree is not made obsolete by the Destroyer II.

-Frigates and Destroyer Escorts as smaller, lighter, late-game DD ships.

Combat:
-Amphibious Invasions that you can provide fire support for, like in Ultimate Admiral: Age of Sail.

-Commanding Marines in amphibious invasions that your ships provide fire support for.

-Organizing Fleets into Flotillas and Squadrons, with Commodores and subordinate Admirals leading from designated flagships.

-Adding submarines to tactical battles, fully under the control of the player.

-Ships can now be told to fire torpedoes, rather than either not firing them or shooting randomly.

Campaign:
-1870 and 1880 start dates so that Casemate Ironclads (IC), small Monitors (CM), and large Monitors (BM) can be added to the very early Campaign.

-Torpedo Rams as the first CL, preceding even the Torpedo Cruiser.

-Wraparound Cylindrical world map for player convenience (especially US Players).

-More provinces, for more historically accurate borders.

-Pirate flotillas, a CL flagship with 3-4 TBs or DDs, attacking transports gives players a reason to deploy their fleets outside of wars.

-The Monroe Doctrine is in effect in the 1890 and 1900 start dates, preventing major powers (besides the US) from trying to colonize Latin America, and also keeping the US from trying to colonize outside of Latin America, aside from wars between the US and other major powers.

-In a 1920 or later start date, Austria-Hungary should be either absent or replaced by either Hungary or Yugoslavia.

-Ottoman Empire/Turkey becomes a playable country.

-Either Netherlands, Serbia/Yugoslavia, or Portugal becomes playable, to increase the number of playable countries to twelve.

-Biloxi, Houston, and Guangzhou should be added to the map as ports.

-Ability to raise Battalions of Marines so as to conduct and initiate Amphibious Invasions.

-Organizing Fleets into Flotillas and Squadrons, so that your ships are organized the way you want on the campaign map (so that it’s carried over into tactical battles).

-Certain minor countries already start the campaign as allies/trade partners with playable countries (eg. Belgium and Portugal are British allies/ trade partners, several Latin American countries as US allies/ trade partners, etc.).

-Canada and Australia are part of the British Empire in the 1890, 1900, 1910, and 1920 start dates, and are British allies/trade partners in 1930 and later start dates.

-Ability to sell off obsolete ships to minor countries with trade agreements.

-Countries whose governments are overthrown cannot become Dictatorships prior to 1915, so that the Soviet Union doesn’t anachronistically form in the 1890s or early 1900s.

Multiplayer:

-Multiplayer Campaign for up to 10 or 12 playable countries.

-Support for both Hot-Seat Multiplayer and online Multiplayer (with or without Drop-In Drop-Out Multiplayer option).

-Player vs Player Custom Battles, 1 vs 1, 2 vs 2, 3 vs 3, or 4 vs 4.

AI and Difficulty:

-Remove AI cheating, less artificial difficulty.

-Easy difficulty for Campaign.

-Adjustable difficulty on Naval Academy missions (Easy, Medium, Hard, and Legendary difficulties).

-Make the AI as likely to produce slow and heavily-armored ships as they are at making lightly-armored ships that have ludicrous speed.

-AI guns’ aim should not be more accurate than the player’s.

-AI torpedoes should not be hyper-accurate homing missiles, while the player’s torpedoes consistently make the Mark 14 torpedo look reliable in comparison.

-Adjustable AI settings in General on game settings.

Modding:

-Official Steam Workshop support for Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts (yes, I underlined this because this is arguably the single most important suggestion on this list).

-Campaign Editor to create custom Campaign starts for mods (eg. using the editor to create a Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltkrieg mod/ custom scenario for UA:D).

Edited December 29, 2023 by AacornSoup

[MDHansen]

its a good list. Most is mentioned before, and most of it will never happen sadly.

 

-Remove AI cheating, less artificial difficulty
-AI guns’ aim should not be more accurate than the player’s
-AI torpedoes should not be hyper-accurate homing missiles

What cheating is this? all bonuses, techs, ships, guns, crew, etc etc, is the same for the ai as the player. If anything, the ai would need a few cheats to keep on level with the player. Of what I've seen a few youtube people complain about is the random chances when the ai gets a good hit on their battleships, while not even raising an eyebrow when their ships does the same

Edited December 28, 2023 by MDHansen

[Abuse_Claws]

On 12/28/2023 at 7:39 AM, AacornSoup said:

Remove AI cheating

As the devs said in the FAQ thread, the AI does not cheat. Maybe the AI uses smaller torps to improve reliability and sometimes designs ship with good gun accuracy, but overall in my experience (700+ hours across updates since early beta) I'd say the AI has never cheated, maybe with torp dodging a little bit in some updates (to match the player being able to spot torps before they are *spotted* as per game mechanics), but not in the current state of the game, I don't think

 

On 12/28/2023 at 7:39 AM, AacornSoup said:

Easy difficulty for Campaign.

At the moment, the only thing difficulty affects is money, so I'd suggest playing US/France/Britain on Normal difficulty as a stand-in for 'Easy'. On the other hand, playing, say, AH on Normal difficulty is closer to 'Hard', as it has very little money compared to the US

On 12/28/2023 at 7:39 AM, AacornSoup said:

Multiplayer

As a game developer myself (not working on UAD or for Gamelabs at all, to be clear) I can tell you that adding multiplayer to a game that didn't have it originally is a GIGANTIC pain in the ass. I wouldn't expect multiplayer to come anytime soon, maybe in like UAD 2 or even UAD: Online, if something like that ever happens, but not in the first game.

On 12/28/2023 at 7:39 AM, AacornSoup said:

Adjustable difficulty on Naval Academy missions

I think that kind of goes against the whole point of Naval Academy as a set of progressively more difficult challenges to help you learn ship design and combat management.

On 12/28/2023 at 7:39 AM, AacornSoup said:

Make the AI as likely to produce slow and heavily-armored ships as they are at making lightly-armored ships that have ludicrous speed.

I haven't played much in the last update, but it used to be just as (if not more) likely to produce slow thick bricks, as speedboats. Maybe with the new armor limits in place the devs forgot to adjust the armor thickness selection of the AI, idk.

On 12/28/2023 at 7:39 AM, AacornSoup said:

Countries whose governments are overthrown cannot become Dictatorships prior to 1915

Dictatorships existed well before 1915 (case in point: Paraguay). The history in the campaign is not exactly equivalent to the real world, nor do I think it should be, as otherwise we would get the same sequence of events in every playthrough

On 12/28/2023 at 7:39 AM, AacornSoup said:

Amphibious Invasions that you can provide fire support for, like in Ultimate Admiral: Age of Sail.

Again, a huge feature that I wouldn't expect to come before UAD 2 if ever. I don't think Age of Sail was a big success, so I'm not sure how many of the features of that game the devs are willing to copy to UAD. 

On 12/28/2023 at 7:39 AM, AacornSoup said:

The Monroe Doctrine is in effect in the 1890 and 1900 start dates, preventing major powers (besides the US) from trying to colonize Latin America, and also keeping the US from trying to colonize outside of Latin America, aside from wars between the US and other major powers.

Sadly, treaties of this kind (or even Washington-style naval treaties) are not part of the game. Would be nice to get a Politics DLC of some kind with more intricate (and less random) campaign politics, including treaties