U.A.D rev 1.4.1.1 Bugs List

[justMike247]

U.A.D rev 1.4.1.1 Bugs List

 

1/ Fundamentally Messed Up

 

1a/ Battle

Contact

In 95% of engagements I’ve had to date, initial contact places my fleet well within gun range of the opposing fleet while still in a cruising formation, i.e. meeting the opponent head on, allowing them to “cross my T.” Invariably the initial roar of main guns firing even before the cam has found my flagship is closely followed by the secondary guns firing. I’ve learned to my cost that if I’m within secondary gun range, I’m well within range of the A.I.’s torpedoes, requiring some immediate, violent and radical manoeuvres to extricate my fleet from this furball, all while trying to reorganise my fleet formation into something better suited to fighting. This initial contact range makes an absolute mockery of any spotting/targeting kit built into my ships; what’s the point having a fleet configured for long range gunnery when you’re going to be dropped into the middle of a mess?

 

1b/ Division Tabs

Am I the only poor fool forced to suffer Division tabs that have greater magnetic attraction to each other than rare earth magnets? I’ve lost count of the HOURS spent having to pause the game, detach and re-arrange divisions when they’ve decided to merge with other Divisions on the toolbar, and every time I have to do that, the AI decides their sailing order has to change, resulting in capitol ships chasing their tails rather than maintaining a battle line.  

 

1c/ Maintaining Course

This, admittedly, doesn’t happen 100% of the time; incidence rate is closer to 66%. If I have two or more ships in my lead Division, supporting divisions in Follow mode, invariably, the rearmost ship in the lead division sails a sinusoidal course. Rather than dampen out over time, the amplitude of error in the ordered course increases. If supporting Divisions are set to follow the lead, they’re forced to copy that sinusoidal course while trying to steam in line ahead, turning my entire fleet into a crazy mixed up mess as formations interlock with each other.

 

1d Auto-targeting

While I’ll admit that auto-targeting is a convenient tool at times, it’s seriously frustrating when it decides to over-ride manual targeting. I won’t pretend to guess what the targeting prioritisation is for auto-targeting, but there’s something messed up when it disengages a manual decision to target opposing BB’s that are capable of one-shot-killing my smaller vessels, to prioritise ships that are no threat. Worse is when it repeatedly changes target, fires a range finding shot, then changes target again before the remaining guns can fire in battery. The result is simply wasted ammunition.  

 

1e/ Torpedoes

Do I really need to spell out how frustrating it is to see your fleet receive a ton of damage from being hit with your own torpedoes? Prior to the game’s release on Steam, it was nigh on impossible to launch torpedoes for fear of hitting friendly ships. Whatever tweak was made to make torpedo firing easier has gone far too far in the wrong direction and needs to be remedied.

 

1f/ Torpedo Range

While I fully understand the complications associated with converging/diverging targeting, evidently whoever coded torpedoes didn’t, giving the AI the ability to not merely strike targets at ranges where the AI torpedoes would need to run in excess of 50KM, but also giving them a homing capability. I’ve witnessed torpedoes bending their track to strike a target that is reversing away from their original projected track. Player torpedoes, however, have been nerfed to the point of near uselessness.

 

1f/ Smoke

Prior to the advent of centimetric wavelength RADAR, smoke was an effective way to obscure or obfuscate a fleet as spotting was entirely reliant on the Mk1 eyeball with optical aids. Atmospheric conditions could make RADAR spotting more difficult, but not impossible. Smoke became useless as a screening tactic. This should apply to game engagements following the introduction of Gen II RADAR. Currently, the AI uses smoke as an effective way to “disappear” with no adverse effect to its own ability to target. The reverse isn’t true for the player, the AI being able to engage targets irrespective of an active smoke screen while the players fleet is blinded by its own smoke irrespective of the screen’s coverage.  

 

1g/ Armour Piercing Ordinance

While I can accept that capped AP rounds have a slightly greater chance of bouncing from a target rather than a partial or full penetration, witnessing salvo after salvo of 16” super heavy APCBC rounds bounce off light cruisers with armour thicknesses in the 50mm range is a bit too much to swallow. The way AP rounds are currently “weighted” in the scripting, it’s bordering on pointless having them as they bounce more reliably than tennis balls. H.E. rounds are a more reliable way of dealing with a target, irrespective of what the target is. Strangely, those same H.E, rounds have a better record of penetrating both deck and belt armour too.

 

1h/ A.I. Tactics

Invariably, whenever an A.I. fleet loses its capitol ships, the supporting vessels revert to milling around in circles, literally chasing their own tails rather than trying to press home their own attacks. From a gameplay perspective, once you find the range and auto-targeting finally makes its mind up which headless chicken it wants to target, the result is a turkey shoot.

 

1i/ Spotting Distances

It’s increasingly frustrating to see the A.I. spot and engage my fleet long before I can return fire. Strangely, this happens irrespective of the ship classes involved. I was under the impression that the huge expense involved in giving a battleship the best fore and rear towers gave them the spotting advantage, but the A.I. demonstrates that even its destroyers can sneak in close enough to launch a torpedo attack from 8km without being spotted. Even with RADAR, although the ranges change, this disparity in spotting continues to favour the A.I.

 

1j/ Battle Locations

When I have half my fleet invading Thailand, the other half attacking Southern China, it came as a bit of a surprise to find one of my taskforces engaged in battle just north of the Canary Islands. Yes, I want to engage and defeat belligerent fleets, but to engage them, being in the same geographic locality is a fundamental requirement.

 

1k/ Utterly Pointless Engagements

Two types of pointless engagements, both similar. The A.I. has total control over engagements, plucking ships indiscriminately from port, plucking task forces from one ocean to have them fight half way around the globe from where they currently are. Occasionally the player gets the choice to withdraw without engaging, with a fifty/fifty chance of success. The pointless engagements both follow the same pattern; lighter but faster ships forced to engage heavier but slower opponents. Prior to engagement, the player has no chance to disengage and yet, when battle starts, simply retreating generates successful disengagement. The A.I. uses this same escape too, generating battles between a handful of CL’s and DD’s against a battle fleet, withdrawing successfully without ever being spotted, much less shelled. The only result from both engagements is frustration over utterly wasted time.

 

1l/ Unexplained Damage

A Task Force just one month out of Plymouth England is mysteriously engaged by an A.I. Task Force just of St Johns, Newfoundland. They successfully disengage, causing the A.I. ships slight damage while receiving none themselves. Sure as hell, the very next turn, while still mid-Atlantic, “The Previous Fight is Not Over,” and a tiny fragment of that Task Force is re-engaged by the same opposing fleet, only this time, each of my ships has sustained about 10% damage going into the engagement. Where did the damage come from?

 

2/ Campaign

 

2a/ Task Forces

When at sea, a Task Force has a circle projected around it, the size of circle varying according to the potential offensive capability of the forces composition. In practice, it’s impossible to engage an AI task force as the scripting has given this circle attributes of invulnerability utterly disproportionate to its force composition when compared to the attributes of the task force trying to engage it. This results in a force comprising a single light cruiser and a destroyer being able to blockade multiple entire fleets, and yet, the reverse isn’t true. Circles projected around player task forces are completely ignored by the AI, it’s task forces being able to pass through as if there was nothing there to obstruct it. A more frequent example of how utterly ridiculous this circle is occurs when actively trying to hunt submarines; they simply can’t be engaged unless the A.I. initialises the contact.

 

2b/ Conquest

Why list the required tonnage for conquest as one value, when the actual amount required can be in excess of 10x that to be assured success? In late game, the listed required tonnage is, frankly, ridiculous; requiring in excess of eight million tons to be assured successful conquest of relatively unimportant provinces is absurd. Why not simply list the required value from the outset? Given that task force size is restricted by their crew count, the number of task forces required means it can take half a year to move them away from a conquered province because it’s physically impossible to select them when their icons are all stacked on top of each other.

 

2c/ Auto resolve

Can someone explain to me exactly how a single destroyer attacking a 400,000 ton fleet succeeds in putting that entire fleet in for repair for periods up to 12 months while suffering only heavy damage itself? Under battle conditions, at least 6 vessels in that fleet could sink that destroyer with a single hit long before the destroyers own weapons are within range, assuming the AI doesn’t have the destroyer simply turn tail and run, so why the disproportionate damage? Are they armed with Harpoon missiles?

 

2d/ Special Missions

As things are currently, any ship in port with a Sea Control status is fair game when it comes to the A.I. flinging them to lord knows where on the pretext of doing something. Evidently whoever thought this was a good idea has no concept of command and control. Captains abandoning a fleet to pursue some hair-brained scheme, usually against suicidal odds, crippling their fleet in the process would be court martialled, facing charges of either gross dereliction of duty or piracy. While I’m not against the concept of Special Missions, the way they’re currently forced down the throat of a player is, frankly, irritating in the extreme. If a players fleet is of a respectable size, the only way they have of ensuring they control their fleet is to spend a half hour selecting each and every ship in the fleet and changing its status to Defend. With a fleet in excess of 500 hulls, by the time I’ve done this, I’m losing the will to live and the last thing I’m interested in is chasing down a convoy.

Special Missions CAN be an interesting addition to the game if they’re offered as a choice, giving a player the control to allocate proportionate assets to execute that mission.

 

2e/ Convoys

Prior to the games’ release on Steam, convoys weren’t an exercise in clicking Auto Resolve, but had escorting vessels that either had to be engaged/chased away or could defend the convoy. In order to facilitate this, a player should have the responsibility of keeping a pool of vessels available for use in convoy escort. This would extend the useful life of older hulls that might not be at the cutting edge of available tech, but are still capable.

 

2f/ Task Force Merging

In the early stages of the game, in order to provide roughly equal geographic coverage, often times, Task Force strength falls significantly below the max Task Force Crew limit. When multiple Task Forces are deployed for Naval Invasion purposes, invariably the AI chooses to lump nearby Task Forces together, treating them as one, creating a logistic nightmare when it comes to disengaging or redeployment. There needs to be a way to lock down Task Force composition to prevent unwanted merging.

 

2g/ Main Map Task Force Icon Scale

To ensure successful Naval Invasion, a player *N.B. the A.I. isn’t subject to the same requirement* needs to deploy multiple Task Forces, compressing them into a tight enough area for their mass to count toward the success or failure of the invasion. To facilitate proper control over each task force, their icon size should scale down as a player zooms in on the map so that the icons don’t overlap each other.

 

2h/ Refueling

In the age of steam, fuel is as critical as wind was during the age of sail which is why “friendly ports” overseas were critical for both mercantile and naval fleets. Those overseas ports would be developed to accommodate whatever the fleet might require, within reason. Granted, not all ports were developed equally; not every port would have heavy repair or refit facilities, but they would all be able to handle refuelling fleet expediently. it wasn’t a task that would take months to complete. And yet, in game, despite a Task Force being in a small overseas port for several months, over half that task force was still waiting to be refuelled. Currently the game prioritises refuelling ships by their tonnage rather than tending to ships with the greatest need for fuel.

 

2i/ Mine Fields

When A.I. Task Forces sailing without mine sweeping escorts can stay in minefields with impunity, it merely highlights either how ineffective mines are as a weapon in game, or how skewed the game bias is in favour of the A.I.

 

2j/ The Previous Engagement Is Not Over

Evidently task force integrity isn’t an issue for the A.I. when it’s struggling to generate pointless engagements, stripping away undamaged ships to throw them against grossly uneven odds. This begs the question, what caused these detached ships to become detached in the first place? Yet another example of a good idea crippled by pathetic execution. The engagement I refer to involves a pair of capitol ships, one month out of port being caught by a hostile A.I. fleet where each ship is merrily chirping its low fuel status.

 

3/ Politics

3a/ Rising Tensions

When being provoked by another country, there needs to be another option to respond rather than the current two options of either going to war with them, or paying for a fleet you’ll need to face sometime later. More often than not, these provocations come from countries who are significantly weaker in naval strength. There should be a response appropriate to their status where their threats are simply ignored, or counter-threats issued.

 

3b/ Naval Invasion

Why is it that a player is limited to a maximum of just six political moves against the same country per year? If I have sufficient fleet strength to deploy against multiple targets, I should be able to affect the invasion of those targets whenever there’s sufficient strength in the required area to be successful, irrespective of politics. Surely the logical limiting factor should be fleet availability, not whether some politician has left his evening suit in the cleaners.

 

3c/ Tension;- Fleets Affect International Tension

This would be a good idea if it worked properly. Unfortunately, it becomes nonsense when fleets apparently in the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, East and West Mediterranean and Red Sea are apparently increasing tension while my entire navy is in port undergoing refit or repair. For tension to work, it should be relevant to actual fleet positions. As things are currently, it’s simply a scam based on nonsense.