>>>v1.5 Feedback<<<(Latest version: v1.5.1.6)

[TK3600]

9 hours ago, TK3600 said:

I also noticed AH BB2 hull suffer no belt hit bug back in 1.5.1.4. I wonder if thats fixed.

Sorry, it was Italian experimental BB. 1890 hull.

[TK3600]

Can we have the 'change port for multiple ships in the menu' back? It was previous disabled because of bug, but it was a barely noticeble bug. It is a super convenient feature that I would like to keep regardless of bug. For a single player, some bugs are ok. Please bring it back.

[atv]

On 5/15/2024 at 1:54 AM, Nick Thomadis said:

We haven't made any change regarding this. Please report with the in-game button to take a look.

I want to come back to this comment because I keep experiencing this issue despite the latest updates. I don't think it's an issue with modded saves in general. 

The issue with captured ship designs not showing is much rarer when the player doesn't choose the ship with the same name as the class. I was thinking maybe it had something to do with clashing ship names between nations but I have had no issue refitting 7 Austrian BBs of the same class playing as Germany. The lead ship of that class was sunk so likely there wasn't an issue with ship designs there. 

In the same save I had just won a landslide victory against USA in which 16 classes of ships as war prizes are rewarded to me. All the classes without their class leaders (of the same name as the class) were present in ship designs and others with which the class leader I have taken does not appear under the ship designs tab. 

It is simple-ish for me to fix this (although time consuming) and given the past history of saves not being fixed I would ask if a potential fix can be deployed here?

[Suribachi]

Feature Request:

Current Version: 1.5.1.5 Live as of June 8, 2024

Issue:  In the Settings > General menu, there is a slider to adjust what armor quality the information panels use to calculate the gun penetration values.  currently, to switch back and forth between the enemy's guns and the player's guns, the player needs to constantly pause and tweak the slider causing unnecessary disruption of game play.

Request:  Have two separate sliders in the same menu.  The first slider will be the quality of the player's armor.  The second slider will be the quality of the enemy's armor.  This way, the game already takes into account which information panel the player is looking at during combat and adjusts the displayed value's accordingly so the player is not adjusting the value when going from vessel to vessel of the same class.

[TK3600]

Can early light cruiser get a accuracy buff? CL1 get less stab than a torpedo boat.

[TK3600]

Feedback on latest AI: They are much more aggressive which is great. The problem is while they find optimal engagement range for gun, they often disrespect torpedo range and get spammed. The new AI is great for CL and DD, but for bigger ships like BC it make them take more risk than needed. Generally speaking if the ship is closer than 9km, it is at risk to get torp spammed and cant dodge.

[eraserr83]

Why does the AI scrap its ships being only 2-3-4 years old? I see Nations scrapping their 1923 BB designs in 1926, barely a year after they got completed. Instead of nations having a realistic navy size, now they even struggle to keep 2-5 battleships in-line, even on hard difficulty. Makes the game really unenjoyable without any real competition.
I would consider greatly increasing the scrapping threshold.

[TK3600]

2 hours ago, eraserr83 said:

Why does the AI scrap its ships being only 2-3-4 years old? I see Nations scrapping their 1923 BB designs in 1926, barely a year after they got completed. Instead of nations having a realistic navy size, now they even struggle to keep 2-5 battleships in-line, even on hard difficulty. Makes the game really unenjoyable without any real competition.
I would consider greatly increasing the scrapping threshold.

In addition, start making minor scrap ships, even if at half the rate.

Minor power accumulates lots of old ships, slowing down the game.

[TK3600]

One easy way of improving AI ship design: Always pick maximum bulkhead.

It is such a no brainer pick. Yet AI rarely go max. The only exception I can think is TB, because it gets 1 shot anyways.

[Zuikaku]

AI is scrapping ships only to build the same ones of the same class. Insane!

[Nick Thomadis]

Hello admirals,

We are happy to announce one more small but very important update:
 v1.5.1.6
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1069660/announcements/detail/4167598937309175424 

[TK3600]

Am I crazy or is AI better at tech last few patch. Previously they were hopelessly outeched except UK, as long as you max budget no priority.

[TK3600]

8 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Hello admirals,

We are happy to announce one more small but very important update:
 v1.5.1.6
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1069660/announcements/detail/4167598937309175424 

Thank you for the fast update. Ignore the haters. They complain about too much update, when they could have just turned auto update off in steam.

[PalaiologosTheGreat]

Ships still fishtail

[TK3600]

Is the new hulls beta patch coming? I heard it was ready, but only delayed because of compatibility.

[Thramoun]

Giant in the playground

I think there needs to be improved balance if the player is very far ahead... currently with some nations especially the game becomes very easy and stale because you have practically infinite money and cannot spend it all even on max research and a huge navy, especially when you have been playing a game for a while already. And at that point, no AI can put up even a semblance of a challenge. This is a wargame after all, and wargames with no credible opposition are not fun.

I recommend two (not necessarily mutually exclusive) approaches:

1. It's lonely on the top

If the player is very, very rich and powerful more events should fire that may result in reduction of their Naval budget or Relations with other nations.

Here's some example events:

Other nations should be wary of a very powerful naval nation, giving a choice of GDP reduction (unfavourable trade deals with those nations) and GDP increase to two other nations, -or- decreasing relations with two other nations while increasing their relation with each other

Naval contractors/sailors demand better conditions, leading to either loss of manpower (sailors) -or- (temporarily) increased upkeep/building costs for ships, -or- possibly a one-off cost

The point is these events should give the player a choice, but be generally negative as an opportunity for increased power balance. It should be clearly felt by the player that their country feels unstoppable and will act as such, and others will react to this fact. I want to see corrupt politicians, a complacent leadership, rebellious colonies, greedy trade corporations, lazy contractors, opportunistic enemies, belligerent rivals etc..

 

2. Invention is (a lot) harder than imitation

The more major powers have researched a certain technology, the cheaper it should get.

If no major powers have researched a technology it should be very expensive/slow to research. For example, after the british built the HMS Dreadnought the other powers didn't continue designing ships already obsolete before finished. They were still behind the curve of course, but they didn't need to come up with the idea of what a dreadnought is all on their own, they had an example to go off of. And they certainly didn't need to invent the 2 versions of pre-dreadnoughts they hadn't researched until that point.
It should still be a worthy boon to be ahead in research, but it should be very difficult if not nearly impossible to be more than 2 "innovations" ahead of the runner-up in terms of any of the different tech lines.

Large empires are harder to manage and hold together and the game should reflect that.

Note

Please understand that I am arguing from a gameplay perspective, and not from a realism/historical accuracy perspective. Though I feel none of my ideas are out of the realm of possibility.

Also, please note that my examples are just that; examples. I'm not claiming they should be in the game in any form, they're there to give an idea of what I'm getting at.

What do you guys think? Do you struggle with this as well or not? Do you agree with my sugestions? Disagree? Do you have additional ideas on how to improve this aspect of the game?

As a closing note, as I've mentioned before we need more events in general. What's there to do if noones willing to declare war on you? Currently, you'll continuously update your naval designs and build ships, never actually seeing how they perform, which takes a lot away from the ship design aspect - I want to design a navy that solves a problem, not just have better and better ships for no purpose because my 5 years out of date navy would still trounce any opposition by sheer numbers.

Note 2

Also please please please add at least some events that let us see some aspects of enemy ship designs at peacetime. Currently you're designing with no idea what you're going to be up against beyond the number of ships in each class. Do the new Battleships my rival just produced have a new, larger caliber gun that can now penetrate my own battlehips? Do they build fast battlecruisers that will outrun my battleships in combat? Do they have some new fancy technology on their new ship design?

I'm not asking for all of this information, or even 100% accurate information, but having anything at all to design against would immensely help me not build the same fleet every time.

Examples:

The british have just laid down a new battleship with a main belt armor thickness of at least xyz inches!

The new german cruisers are using newly designed semi-AP shells!

The newly laid down italian Battleships are employing new types of rangefinders!

[TK3600]

1 hour ago, Thramoun said:

Giant in the playground

I think there needs to be improved balance if the player is very far ahead... currently with some nations especially the game becomes very easy and stale because you have practically infinite money and cannot spend it all even on max research and a huge navy, especially when you have been playing a game for a while already. And at that point, no AI can put up even a semblance of a challenge. This is a wargame after all, and wargames with no credible opposition are not fun.

I recommend two (not necessarily mutually exclusive) approaches:

1. It's lonely on the top

If the player is very, very rich and powerful more events should fire that may result in reduction of their Naval budget or Relations with other nations.

Here's some example events:

Other nations should be wary of a very powerful naval nation, giving a choice of GDP reduction (unfavourable trade deals with those nations) and GDP increase to two other nations, -or- decreasing relations with two other nations while increasing their relation with each other

Naval contractors/sailors demand better conditions, leading to either loss of manpower (sailors) -or- (temporarily) increased upkeep/building costs for ships, -or- possibly a one-off cost

The point is these events should give the player a choice, but be generally negative as an opportunity for increased power balance. It should be clearly felt by the player that their country feels unstoppable and will act as such, and others will react to this fact. I want to see corrupt politicians, a complacent leadership, rebellious colonies, greedy trade corporations, lazy contractors, opportunistic enemies, belligerent rivals etc..

 

2. Invention is (a lot) harder than imitation

The more major powers have researched a certain technology, the cheaper it should get.

If no major powers have researched a technology it should be very expensive/slow to research. For example, after the british built the HMS Dreadnought the other powers didn't continue designing ships already obsolete before finished. They were still behind the curve of course, but they didn't need to come up with the idea of what a dreadnought is all on their own, they had an example to go off of. And they certainly didn't need to invent the 2 versions of pre-dreadnoughts they hadn't researched until that point.
It should still be a worthy boon to be ahead in research, but it should be very difficult if not nearly impossible to be more than 2 "innovations" ahead of the runner-up in terms of any of the different tech lines.

Large empires are harder to manage and hold together and the game should reflect that.

Note

Please understand that I am arguing from a gameplay perspective, and not from a realism/historical accuracy perspective. Though I feel none of my ideas are out of the realm of possibility.

Also, please note that my examples are just that; examples. I'm not claiming they should be in the game in any form, they're there to give an idea of what I'm getting at.

What do you guys think? Do you struggle with this as well or not? Do you agree with my sugestions? Disagree? Do you have additional ideas on how to improve this aspect of the game?

As a closing note, as I've mentioned before we need more events in general. What's there to do if noones willing to declare war on you? Currently, you'll continuously update your naval designs and build ships, never actually seeing how they perform, which takes a lot away from the ship design aspect - I want to design a navy that solves a problem, not just have better and better ships for no purpose because my 5 years out of date navy would still trounce any opposition by sheer numbers.

Note 2

Also please please please add at least some events that let us see some aspects of enemy ship designs at peacetime. Currently you're designing with no idea what you're going to be up against beyond the number of ships in each class. Do the new Battleships my rival just produced have a new, larger caliber gun that can now penetrate my own battlehips? Do they build fast battlecruisers that will outrun my battleships in combat? Do they have some new fancy technology on their new ship design?

I'm not asking for all of this information, or even 100% accurate information, but having anything at all to design against would immensely help me not build the same fleet every time.

Examples:

The british have just laid down a new battleship with a main belt armor thickness of at least xyz inches!

The new german cruisers are using newly designed semi-AP shells!

The newly laid down italian Battleships are employing new types of rangefinders!

Better to do it more organically. If the player becomes very strong, all the hostile countries becomes more likely to get enemy of my enemy events. They get relationship bonus and reduce relation to player, leading to unexpected interventions.

Furthermore, if player is beating a country by a lot of VP (lets say 100k), there may be international pressure to peace out. Otherwise the disruption of international balance reduce their opinions.

[TK3600]

Speaking of late game balance, can we lower the gdp growth a bit? By 1910 money cease to be an issue, as the countries have like double their historical gdp. This is even bigger problem in 1930's when great depression hits IRL but not reflected. I would love to have a random chance of global depression slowing down the exponential economy/military growth, forcing players to adapt.

[Nick Thomadis]

On 6/13/2024 at 9:18 PM, Thramoun said:

Giant in the playground

I think there needs to be improved balance if the player is very far ahead... currently with some nations especially the game becomes very easy and stale because you have practically infinite money and cannot spend it all even on max research and a huge navy, especially when you have been playing a game for a while already. And at that point, no AI can put up even a semblance of a challenge. This is a wargame after all, and wargames with no credible opposition are not fun.

I recommend two (not necessarily mutually exclusive) approaches:

1. It's lonely on the top

If the player is very, very rich and powerful more events should fire that may result in reduction of their Naval budget or Relations with other nations.

Here's some example events:

Other nations should be wary of a very powerful naval nation, giving a choice of GDP reduction (unfavourable trade deals with those nations) and GDP increase to two other nations, -or- decreasing relations with two other nations while increasing their relation with each other

Naval contractors/sailors demand better conditions, leading to either loss of manpower (sailors) -or- (temporarily) increased upkeep/building costs for ships, -or- possibly a one-off cost

The point is these events should give the player a choice, but be generally negative as an opportunity for increased power balance. It should be clearly felt by the player that their country feels unstoppable and will act as such, and others will react to this fact. I want to see corrupt politicians, a complacent leadership, rebellious colonies, greedy trade corporations, lazy contractors, opportunistic enemies, belligerent rivals etc..

 

2. Invention is (a lot) harder than imitation

The more major powers have researched a certain technology, the cheaper it should get.

If no major powers have researched a technology it should be very expensive/slow to research. For example, after the british built the HMS Dreadnought the other powers didn't continue designing ships already obsolete before finished. They were still behind the curve of course, but they didn't need to come up with the idea of what a dreadnought is all on their own, they had an example to go off of. And they certainly didn't need to invent the 2 versions of pre-dreadnoughts they hadn't researched until that point.
It should still be a worthy boon to be ahead in research, but it should be very difficult if not nearly impossible to be more than 2 "innovations" ahead of the runner-up in terms of any of the different tech lines.

Large empires are harder to manage and hold together and the game should reflect that.

Note

Please understand that I am arguing from a gameplay perspective, and not from a realism/historical accuracy perspective. Though I feel none of my ideas are out of the realm of possibility.

Also, please note that my examples are just that; examples. I'm not claiming they should be in the game in any form, they're there to give an idea of what I'm getting at.

What do you guys think? Do you struggle with this as well or not? Do you agree with my sugestions? Disagree? Do you have additional ideas on how to improve this aspect of the game?

As a closing note, as I've mentioned before we need more events in general. What's there to do if noones willing to declare war on you? Currently, you'll continuously update your naval designs and build ships, never actually seeing how they perform, which takes a lot away from the ship design aspect - I want to design a navy that solves a problem, not just have better and better ships for no purpose because my 5 years out of date navy would still trounce any opposition by sheer numbers.

Note 2

Also please please please add at least some events that let us see some aspects of enemy ship designs at peacetime. Currently you're designing with no idea what you're going to be up against beyond the number of ships in each class. Do the new Battleships my rival just produced have a new, larger caliber gun that can now penetrate my own battlehips? Do they build fast battlecruisers that will outrun my battleships in combat? Do they have some new fancy technology on their new ship design?

I'm not asking for all of this information, or even 100% accurate information, but having anything at all to design against would immensely help me not build the same fleet every time.

Examples:

The british have just laid down a new battleship with a main belt armor thickness of at least xyz inches!

The new german cruisers are using newly designed semi-AP shells!

The newly laid down italian Battleships are employing new types of rangefinders!

We will up the difficulty in the next major update. Now we cannot make big changes because many players' saves will be affected negatively to the point they will have to abandon their old campaigns.
There were a series of campaign bug issues fixed in the last months, which previously affected the economy very negatively resulting in nations to become easily dissolved. 
Restricting the economy in a proper level, again, but without the old bugs, should be a very effective way to increase the difficulty, something that possibly will make many players angry ....

[Tycondero]

On 6/13/2024 at 8:18 PM, Thramoun said:

Giant in the playground

I think there needs to be improved balance if the player is very far ahead... currently with some nations especially the game becomes very easy and stale because you have practically infinite money and cannot spend it all even on max research and a huge navy, especially when you have been playing a game for a while already. And at that point, no AI can put up even a semblance of a challenge. This is a wargame after all, and wargames with no credible opposition are not fun.

I recommend two (not necessarily mutually exclusive) approaches:

1. It's lonely on the top

If the player is very, very rich and powerful more events should fire that may result in reduction of their Naval budget or Relations with other nations.

Here's some example events:

Other nations should be wary of a very powerful naval nation, giving a choice of GDP reduction (unfavourable trade deals with those nations) and GDP increase to two other nations, -or- decreasing relations with two other nations while increasing their relation with each other

Naval contractors/sailors demand better conditions, leading to either loss of manpower (sailors) -or- (temporarily) increased upkeep/building costs for ships, -or- possibly a one-off cost

The point is these events should give the player a choice, but be generally negative as an opportunity for increased power balance. It should be clearly felt by the player that their country feels unstoppable and will act as such, and others will react to this fact. I want to see corrupt politicians, a complacent leadership, rebellious colonies, greedy trade corporations, lazy contractors, opportunistic enemies, belligerent rivals etc..

 

2. Invention is (a lot) harder than imitation

The more major powers have researched a certain technology, the cheaper it should get.

If no major powers have researched a technology it should be very expensive/slow to research. For example, after the british built the HMS Dreadnought the other powers didn't continue designing ships already obsolete before finished. They were still behind the curve of course, but they didn't need to come up with the idea of what a dreadnought is all on their own, they had an example to go off of. And they certainly didn't need to invent the 2 versions of pre-dreadnoughts they hadn't researched until that point.
It should still be a worthy boon to be ahead in research, but it should be very difficult if not nearly impossible to be more than 2 "innovations" ahead of the runner-up in terms of any of the different tech lines.

Large empires are harder to manage and hold together and the game should reflect that.

Note

Please understand that I am arguing from a gameplay perspective, and not from a realism/historical accuracy perspective. Though I feel none of my ideas are out of the realm of possibility.

Also, please note that my examples are just that; examples. I'm not claiming they should be in the game in any form, they're there to give an idea of what I'm getting at.

What do you guys think? Do you struggle with this as well or not? Do you agree with my sugestions? Disagree? Do you have additional ideas on how to improve this aspect of the game?

As a closing note, as I've mentioned before we need more events in general. What's there to do if noones willing to declare war on you? Currently, you'll continuously update your naval designs and build ships, never actually seeing how they perform, which takes a lot away from the ship design aspect - I want to design a navy that solves a problem, not just have better and better ships for no purpose because my 5 years out of date navy would still trounce any opposition by sheer numbers.

Note 2

Also please please please add at least some events that let us see some aspects of enemy ship designs at peacetime. Currently you're designing with no idea what you're going to be up against beyond the number of ships in each class. Do the new Battleships my rival just produced have a new, larger caliber gun that can now penetrate my own battlehips? Do they build fast battlecruisers that will outrun my battleships in combat? Do they have some new fancy technology on their new ship design?

I'm not asking for all of this information, or even 100% accurate information, but having anything at all to design against would immensely help me not build the same fleet every time.

Examples:

The british have just laid down a new battleship with a main belt armor thickness of at least xyz inches!

The new german cruisers are using newly designed semi-AP shells!

The newly laid down italian Battleships are employing new types of rangefinders!

Very good points which I also raised recently in a seperate thread. 

I would say that the economy and naval budget would need to be balanced as follows to get to more realistic territory.

1) Restrict the peace time Naval budget to make the game harder and have relationships with other nations impact the peace time budget.

Restrict it in such a way that only a small percentage of the GDP will be allocated to the Naval budget. When more nations are hostile/rivals (i.e. you have low/negative relation with them) more naval budget will be allocated from the national GDP to stimulate that the government invests in meeting a possible challenge. This should in turn decrease economic growth as less national budget is available to spend of "economic growth" policies. Having good relationships with the other great powers would boost you economy long term, but restrict the government's willingness to build a large navy. Remaining at peace or provoking war becomes much more of a balancing act. 

2) Boost the Naval budget in war time (already in the game) and have more economic feedback by transport capacity. 

Once at war, the Naval budget needs to be increased dramatically as the entire nation mobilizes to meet the challenge. This should decrease GDP growth even if you have plenty of transport capacity, as the increased navy and army expenditure comes at a cost to developing the civilian economy. Losing transport capacity should severely impact economic growth, especially for large overseas great powers that rely of transports heavily. This could be simulated by having transports be rebuild at a pace that is dependent on ship building capacity, but nations with large overseas territories have a dramatically higher requirement for transports. This would simulate that nations such as Great Britain have a huge transport fleet, but that losing a lot of them has serious consequences. While a nation such as Germany has few transports, but can rebuild lost ones to meet the minimal required number of them much more easily, even when they get lost during conflict. 

3) It should be very difficult to sustain a full naval R&D budget when at peace. 

The balance of the Naval budget should be as such that when you are at peace, a nation cannot sustain a 100% slider setting on R&D without serious consequences for the Naval budget. The balance would be best if when at war (and/or perhaps when having to face a serious number of rivals), your naval budget income is great enough to sustain full R&D funding. This still should require the nation to retain a healthy economy. These effects on the budget should slow down tech development when at peace and boost it when at war or in an arms race with a rival nation. 

4) Being at the forefront of innovation should be more expensive on R&D.

As you mentioned, it would be excellent to have diminishing returns on R&D when the nation has a significant leading tech edge. Meaning that tech should become relatively more expensive it is ahead of time. It would even be more ideal if this could be compared to other nations instead of just time, as this would make the game more dynamic as the world could develop slightly different each campaign (many versus few conflicts). 

5) Have a seperate crew training versus crew recruitment slider. 

You should be able to have seperate budgets for trading of the crew versus recruitment. This reduces our ability to finetune naval expenditure. The more crew is available to the navy the more expensive maintaining high training levels should be. 

[TK3600]

9 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

We will up the difficulty in the next major update. Now we cannot make big changes because many players' saves will be affected negatively to the point they will have to abandon their old campaigns.
There were a series of campaign bug issues fixed in the last months, which previously affected the economy very negatively resulting in nations to become easily dissolved. 
Restricting the economy in a proper level, again, but without the old bugs, should be a very effective way to increase the difficulty, something that possibly will make many players angry ....

Thank you for the bug fixes. There are some rude players likes to blame difficulties, but "what people say is not important, it is why people say something". Most of the time when players blame difficulty they are not actually having difficulty problem. They are misunderstanding game mechanics. And indeed game is full of opaque mechanics with no tutorial or wiki to reference.

"how come AI always hit my ship when I cant? AI is cheating" 

^what actually happens could be the players has rear facing enemy, and the smoke debuff the accuracy. But since there is no tutorial telling them that ships have trouble aiming backward, they just assume the game is hard. 

Alternatively the player maxed out the barrel and got accuracy debuffed by barrel erosion and has pathetic rate of fire. No tutorial on this. People see new barrel tech unlock and always put it max. New tech has to be better right? Even when you know this mechanic, you still gotta be check each increment of barrel length to see if accuracy drops. Each gun is different, no rule of thumb. No warning pop up for too long of a barrel. It is a pretty big pain. 

 

UI dont even show gun stats when you adjust barrel length. you have to hover your mouse, memorize numbers, change, hover mouse again, do mental math, stop when accuracy drops. As you can see even experienced player struggle with opaque mechanics, let alone casuals. They are just going to blame "game hard" and move on.

[TK3600]

51 minutes ago, Tycondero said:

Very good points which I also raised recently in a seperate thread. 

I would say that the economy and naval budget would need to be balanced as follows to get to more realistic territory.

1) Restrict the peace time Naval budget to make the game harder and have relationships with other nations impact the peace time budget.

Restrict it in such a way that only a small percentage of the GDP will be allocated to the Naval budget. When more nations are hostile/rivals (i.e. you have low/negative relation with them) more naval budget will be allocated from the national GDP to stimulate that the government invests in meeting a possible challenge. This should in turn decrease economic growth as less national budget is available to spend of "economic growth" policies. Having good relationships with the other great powers would boost you economy long term, but restrict the government's willingness to build a large navy. Remaining at peace or provoking war becomes much more of a balancing act. 

2) Boost the Naval budget in war time (already in the game) and have more economic feedback by transport capacity. 

Once at war, the Naval budget needs to be increased dramatically as the entire nation mobilizes to meet the challenge. This should decrease GDP growth even if you have plenty of transport capacity, as the increased navy and army expenditure comes at a cost to developing the civilian economy. Losing transport capacity should severely impact economic growth, especially for large overseas great powers that rely of transports heavily. This could be simulated by having transports be rebuild at a pace that is dependent on ship building capacity, but nations with large overseas territories have a dramatically higher requirement for transports. This would simulate that nations such as Great Britain have a huge transport fleet, but that losing a lot of them has serious consequences. While a nation such as Germany has few transports, but can rebuild lost ones to meet the minimal required number of them much more easily, even when they get lost during conflict. 

3) It should be very difficult to sustain a full naval R&D budget when at peace. 

The balance of the Naval budget should be as such that when you are at peace, a nation cannot sustain a 100% slider setting on R&D without serious consequences for the Naval budget. The balance would be best if when at war (and/or perhaps when having to face a serious number of rivals), your naval budget income is great enough to sustain full R&D funding. This still should require the nation to retain a healthy economy. These effects on the budget should slow down tech development when at peace and boost it when at war or in an arms race with a rival nation. 

4) Being at the forefront of innovation should be more expensive on R&D.

As you mentioned, it would be excellent to have diminishing returns on R&D when the nation has a significant leading tech edge. Meaning that tech should become relatively more expensive it is ahead of time. It would even be more ideal if this could be compared to other nations instead of just time, as this would make the game more dynamic as the world could develop slightly different each campaign (many versus few conflicts). 

5) Have a seperate crew training versus crew recruitment slider. 

You should be able to have seperate budgets for trading of the crew versus recruitment. This reduces our ability to finetune naval expenditure. The more crew is available to the navy the more expensive maintaining high training levels should be. 

On topic of R&D, you often fall behind historical years even on max, no priority. This is because every time you unlock tech, you start at 0% for next tech. This means you 'waste' tech point in the last month. Eventually you will slow down. This is even worse if you used priority. At last month, you are certain to waste like 6month of tech points.

In terms of economy, cost is not the issue. Ships already cost like 10x of historical costs. What is problematic is the economy. Nations grow like 2x of historical rate, never run into recession. Everyone get trillion gdp by 1914.

Edited June 15 by TK3600

[HMS Implosive]

Talking about budget: Sometimes I have seen sertain youtubers face a situation where their peace time funding is too small to maintain the fleet, so they push for war to get more money. This should definitely not be the solution, as peace time should be time for preparation for the next war, not other way around.

Exception to this might be a situation where the government intentionally tries to strangle their navy, as USA historically did at almost every time they were not actively fighting somebody. However, that is propably something better not to be replicated in the game. Though, second thought, that might make an interesting challence run.

[Thramoun]

8 minutes ago, HMS Implosive said:

Talking about budget: Sometimes I have seen sertain youtubers face a situation where their peace time funding is too small to maintain the fleet, so they push for war to get more money. This should definitely not be the solution, as peace time should be time for preparation for the next war, not other way around.

Exception to this might be a situation where the government intentionally tries to strangle their navy, as USA historically did at almost every time they were not actively fighting somebody. However, that is propably something better not to be replicated in the game. Though, second thought, that might make an interesting challence run.

Did these players take all possible measures to reduce their naval spending? I.e. mothballing, setting operations to "Limited" for all vessels, reducing research, crew training and convoy funding? If yes to all of these, the navies must be immensely oversized. They should be keeping their navy at a reasonable expense especially at peacetime.

If you could just sustain an infinite number of the largest, newest ships decked out with the best tech where would be the challenge?

[TK3600]

2 hours ago, HMS Implosive said:

Talking about budget: Sometimes I have seen sertain youtubers face a situation where their peace time funding is too small to maintain the fleet, so they push for war to get more money. This should definitely not be the solution, as peace time should be time for preparation for the next war, not other way around.

Exception to this might be a situation where the government intentionally tries to strangle their navy, as USA historically did at almost every time they were not actively fighting somebody. However, that is propably something better not to be replicated in the game. Though, second thought, that might make an interesting challence run.

The fact is peace time should save money via less intense use of ships. This is hardly reflected in game. There is a high constant maintenence cost at peace. In war ships moves a lot, shoot a lot, use lots of fuel. But there is barely any cost to that.