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

[Grayknight]

20 hours ago, DougToss said:

I think that might be interesting if the base game was in a finished state, but we're so far from smoothbore and rifled muzzle loaders being something that could be modelled accurately, not to mention sailing rigs etc. that I think that should be deferred. 

Have you tried Victory at Sea: Ironclads? 

I did but it proved to be fun but lacking game. In all honesty the game feels like far better designed for era of ironclads then for era of full metal ships and in all honesty it feels like adding years 1850-1890 should be far easier expansion then expected. While i agree that simulation level content would be very hard more simcade version of it should not be and lets be honest this game is not sim nor is it complex epic strategy game. Code is spaghetti and some mechanics are arcade rng and it is not going to change. Game seams to have spaghetti code but it is enjoyable for what it is and is over all fun experience. It lacks things that should be in the base game such as paint schems, more cosmetic elements, ability to have fleet commanders and flagships and i would hate if that became dlc (as it should be in base game) i have no problem with having to pay a dlc to for example play as minor nation or play from 1850 if base game is expanded with at least part of money earned by the additional payed content.

[DougToss]

I wouldn't have a problem with DLC either, but my preference would overwhelmingly be to see the titular Dreadnought era done thoroughly first. 

To your point about spaghetti code and RNG, I don't disagree, but certainly adding muzzle loading guns would only add to the problem? 

[Grayknight]

15 hours ago, DougToss said:

I wouldn't have a problem with DLC either, but my preference would overwhelmingly be to see the titular Dreadnought era done thoroughly first. 

To your point about spaghetti code and RNG, I don't disagree, but certainly adding muzzle loading guns would only add to the problem? 

Depends on how, ballistic model is done you just put some other numbers in, right? you do not really need loading animation given that you have no visual representation of crew. So you put limitations on shells range wise and give it long reloading... right?

[Drenzul]

Just tried playing a campaign as UK.

Really disappointed. Got to 1938 and basically given up.

Battles are vastly more buggy than it was at release, to the point of barely been playable.
Campaign mode has improved slightly but still most of the major bugs haven't been touched.

Economy is still borked. GDP is decreasing despite me having taken loads of territory no matter
what I do. Diplomacy seems borked, just getting massive relationship penalties every turn seemingly
no matter what I do. 

Game is literally worse than it was at release and it wasn't ready for release then.
I've basically given up on this game I'm afraid at this point.

[DougToss]

GDP is strange because, it didn't really matter what the navy did for economies like Russia and Austria, and throughout the period the vast majority of merchant ships were British flagged, so players having, say, 200% merchant ships would not really make a difference. I understand trade protection and interdiction in wartime, and a navy to "make the world safe for (country's) trade" at peace, but idk how much player involvement there really ought to be. 

[vonPeretz]

I have problems with arithmetic.
1. I’m starting to create a Torpedo Boat (as an example):
- the ship's hull has a crew of 4 sailors (4);
- the finished ship has a Tower (2), a Funnel (1), 3 guns (3x3), 2 torpedo tubes (2x10);
- in total, the crew should be 36, but it is written 16 (Quarters:Spacious - 23).

It is also very strange that the team of stokers consists of only one person.

2. Maintenance of ship:

- full crew (23 - 35240);

- incomplete crew ALSO (19 - 35240);

- low crew (7084);

- mothballed ALSO (7084).

It seems that the mothballed should be cheaper?

Edited June 28 by vonPeretz

[DougToss]

I think, top to bottom, weights need to be looked at, as do crew sizes and distributions. 

[justMike247]

Not gonna invest too much time with this post, given that my last two attempts to bring fundamentally borked stuff to the attention of the devs was met with total indifference. Nor am I gonna waste time trying to find unoffensive vocabulary in case some precious soul’s tender bits feel crushed by my reflections. Not gonna bother including the release Rev neither, because apparently this mess is hard-coded into every rev… That needs to end, period!!

 

So… gonna call it like I see it… Fundamental stuff that needs to be fixed.

 

#1 on the most irritating list of bundled horsechit has to be the insane list of tech biases that the AI opposition is gifted, NOT because they’ve ground out the research, but because some dev figured the AI needs all the help it can get. The list includes such things as spotting at double the range any players fleet can spot at. I did the calcs for this, and according to heads more adept at spherical trigawhatziznamery than mine, the spotters on those AI ships spotting my fleet WITHOUT the benefit of scout planes or RADAR would need to be over 350meters high. Strangely enough, I’ve yet to see any AI design that has their spotting tops even one third of that height, and yet…

 

#2 on the list… Our old friend, torpedoes… No, for a change, I’m not gonna waste time venting about being shot in the ass with my own torps. Evidently this is common enough practice in whatever reality the devs live in for it to be normalised. This is a previously unmentioned but no less frustrating vent this time. Torp dispersal and reliability.

 

Throughout the whole of my last campaign, I kept a very close eye on this, just to be sure that I wasn’t imagining what I’d witnessed with every other campaign. My TF’s usually have an escort of 10DD’s split into 2 groups of 5, both screening the capitol ships in my lead group. Irrespective of torp size, launcher version, launcher capacity etc, the same pattern follows with every attempt to launch a spread of torps. Firstly, before they’ve ran more than a single boat length away from their launchers, at least 1 torp has chosen to run at least 45deg off course. Of the remaining, (lets say we’re firing a spread from a quintuple launcher) before they’ve ran more than ten boat lengths, at least two detonate prematurely before the remainder disappear out of sight. This of course glosses over the fact that the whole spread is set to cover an arc of at least forty degrees; quite the feat given their launch tubes are sorta kinda parallel. The result is that in the unlikely chance of any of them surviving to run into the opposition, invariably there’s a 60% chance that the first four hits are duds, guaranteed. If you’re unlucky enough to have less than four hits, well it sux to be you I guess… better luck next time…

 

Usually frustration with this one sided inaccuracy (have I mentioned that, as before with the spotting, irrespective of tech advancement, the AI opposition manages to get their torps running at least 2x the range of your best, with an accuracy that’d make laser guidance blush, arriving among your capitol ships packed so densely that invariably you could walk bow to stern down the length of a 112k ton BB on the back of these incoming torps and not get your feet wet, despite said torps having ran in excess of 40KM and your ships having radically changed course while those torps were running.

 

The long and short of it is… both the anti-player bias, and the pro AI bias are utterly cocooned in horse-chit of the well matured variety.

 

#3 *and final item* on the list… What’s up with ships pumps?? Whenever the AI ships take flooding damage, invariably those flooded compartments are being pumped dry even before they’ve finished flooding. But should the same damage happen to a player ship… yea, well… don’t hold your breath waiting for all the tech you’ve ground out to actually do anything of a damage control nature… I’m going to include bulkheads in this list of non-functioning tech, having witnessed the loss of over 30 DD’s to a single hit below the waterline managing to sink the ship, despite verifying that there’s definitely a weight cost for the additional *above normal that is* bulkheads in the build stage for those ships… I guess they’re made from snow or something similar that melts on contact with salt water. Go figure…

 

As I said in one of my first posts, if this is what the devs want to pass of as Ultimate, I’d hate to see what passes for mediocrity in whatever parallel universe they live in.

 

And for the record… I’m not holding breath expecting any of this to be fixed any time soon, despite ticketing it, and a gazillion other issues; evidently third-rate horsechit is in vogue.

[Panzergraf]

Other than the AI having a lot more money on higher difficulties (which in turn gives them a higher tech budget), they don't have any advantages the player doesn't have, at least not that I've seen in 1000+ hours of playing campaigns and custom battles.

If anything I'd like to see them actually get some extra tech at the start of a campaign, at least on higher difficulties, to make up for their ships just not being as good as the ones a player can make. And this might also get them to build Shared Designs more often, if enabled.

[DougToss]

12 hours ago, justMike247 said:

#1 on the most irritating list of bundled horsechit has to be the insane list of tech biases that the AI opposition is gifted, NOT because they’ve ground out the research, but because some dev figured the AI needs all the help it can get. The list includes such things as spotting at double the range any players fleet can spot at. I did the calcs for this, and according to heads more adept at spherical trigawhatziznamery than mine, the spotters on those AI ships spotting my fleet WITHOUT the benefit of scout planes or RADAR would need to be over 350meters high. Strangely enough, I’ve yet to see any AI design that has their spotting tops even one third of that height, and yet…

I thought something like this was happening. 

I would rather work be done so that AI plays by the same fundamental rules - like ship design and battle mechanics - even if that means a period where the AI doesn't seem very good, rather than faking the appearance of the AI being capable through cheating. 

[TK3600]

13 hours ago, justMike247 said:

Not gonna invest too much time with this post, given that my last two attempts to bring fundamentally borked stuff to the attention of the devs was met with total indifference. Nor am I gonna waste time trying to find unoffensive vocabulary in case some precious soul’s tender bits feel crushed by my reflections. Not gonna bother including the release Rev neither, because apparently this mess is hard-coded into every rev… That needs to end, period!!

Wah wah, so much crying. This game has many issues but combat AI too strong is not one of them. AI cheat in campaign income, and Logistic capacity, but thats hardly making them a threat.

13 hours ago, justMike247 said:

#1 on the most irritating list of bundled horsechit has to be the insane list of tech biases that the AI opposition is gifted, NOT because they’ve ground out the research, but because some dev figured the AI needs all the help it can get. The list includes such things as spotting at double the range any players fleet can spot at. I did the calcs for this, and according to heads more adept at spherical trigawhatziznamery than mine, the spotters on those AI ships spotting my fleet WITHOUT the benefit of scout planes or RADAR would need to be over 350meters high. Strangely enough, I’ve yet to see any AI design that has their spotting tops even one third of that height, and yet...

Someone spams tech priority too much LOL. Each one debuff all other tech speed. Dont use it.

If you do it right only UK very advanced, rest all fall behind you.

Rest of the posts all display similar skill issues.

Spotting: minimize displacement, minimize drought, pick smaller towers.

Torpedo: issue is not AI dodge torpedo. They rarely kill things irl without saturation attack. Issue is player cant dodge on cue. Signs are too short. AI has instant reaction humans dont. But still, now that I dodge on enemy closing range, it helped.

 

[TK3600]

AI has -20%+ offset penalty on all ships, usually like -60%. How anyone lose to those ship with trash accuracy is really beyond me. Unless you just started. But then, no point whine about game hard if you know you are a novice.

Edited July 3 by TK3600

[DougToss]

So your argument is that the AI does cheat, and is bad at designing ships? 

 

Weird flex, but okay. 

[vonPeretz]

This is a joke [justMike247].
Even on Legendary difficulty it is impossible to lose.

I am playing using my mod (reduced player income and only historical ships for Spain), because it’s too easy. Now I already have 1903 on my calendar, Spain has a bunch of outdated cruisers, one Ironclad Pelayo and two casemate Ironclads 1860s, as well as 8 armored cruisers with open deck. I defeated Austria, took the colonies from Italy, defeated the USA and finally attacked the GB. I'm waiting for the AI to finally have dreadnoughts and destroyers (spanish 3 small dreadnoughts will be commissioned only 1913-1921), maybe then it will be more difficult.

Also I have some rules for me. For example see screenshot below. Now my 100k tonnage brigade move to Cyprus after Gibraltar and Malta. I am using historic "Cruceros auxiliares" for tonnage ( Cruceros auxiliares de la guerra del 1898 ).
Good luck!

 

Edited July 3 by vonPeretz

[TK3600]

On 7/3/2024 at 12:05 AM, DougToss said:

So your argument is that the AI does cheat, and is bad at designing ships? 

 

Weird flex, but okay. 

I think campaign AI cheats, but battle AI do not.

[DougToss]

I just want to be clear that I totally understand the AI cheating as an interim measure, while the campaign and battle systems are fleshed out. For example, until the AI can reliably follow the rules of naval architecture, letting it afford the costs of impractical ships, probably not the worst thing in the world. 

 

I think good progress is being made, it's night and day from even a year ago, but I hope these kind of things are temporary. 

[Darth Khyron]

So, I have played several campaigns now with several nations, mostly starting at 1920. The first, japanese, I enjoyed trmendously. I went full Kantai-Kessen and, as soon as I developed oxygen torpedoes, went into massive torpedo mode, followed by capital warships. It worked like a charm, especially when the larger japanese heavy cruisers were available and you can pack these with heavy torpedo boradsides. That was much fun. So much, that I did not notice the issue there. I spammed massive torpedo broadsides, sinking even the tough german superbattleships.

The second, chinese campaign, was boring. Sure, the communist chinese army is nigh unstoppable, but the available hulls are...meh. Sure, they have a lot hulls available, but one does not seem to build a decent ship out of them. I never finished this campaign.

The italian was again very enjoyable. Italian speedboats (heavy cruisers and battlecruisers) are fun to play and not having the accuracy issue as they had in real-life, one could build powerful and (most of all) very beautiful ships. It was here that I noticed the AIs absolute HATE of enemy torpedo carriers, especially destroyers. Even their battleships charge after destroyers, ignoring battlehips or cruisers, when they can kill destroyers. It was almost pathological and a bit annoying. That said, one could build cheap destroyers and let the enemy attack them to give your capital units time to destroy the enemy one by one.

The Autrian-Hungarian campaign was difficult, but more or less entertaining. Here, the biggest problem was that in the confines of the adriatic, the enemy can place a destroyer somewhere and block your entire navy. It was here that I noticed that the AIs "Auto Resolve behavior is much different from the real battle behavior.
In real battles, they mostly turn tail and run. They tend to build ships that are a bit faster than yours to escape, resulting in boring chases that mostly end in futile results. Okay, so I can auto-resolve.
BUT here the AI does not run. They almost never run. Here, the calculator weighs speed, power, etc. And most of all...torpedo tubes. It was in the AH campaign, that I lost massive amounts of capital ships to single light cruisers with 30+ tube broadsides.

The german campaign was boring again. The lack of versatility of later german hulls in camparison to most other nations is frustrating, as they mostly use the same hull for Superbattleship I, Superbattleship II, Battleship I, Battleship II, Heavy Cruiser III, Heavy Cruiser II, Modern Battlecruiser and Hybrid Battleship, gradually reducing the size of weapons you can mount on the superstructures. (please, Germany needs more flexibility with their superstructure types and weapons you can place on these and could we have modernized dreadnought hulls based on the existing Dreadnought IV and V?).

And there it hit me. It is not Ultimate Admiral : Dreadnoughts. Dreadnoughts (or later battleships) are not the center of the AIs calculation. While certainly powerful, the battleships are only secondary in the strategy of the AI and their building of ships.
It should rather be Ultimate Admiral : Torpedo carrier or Torpedo Boat or Torpedo Cruiser. It seems, the AI identifies the torpedo as THE weapon to go. Their designs are crammed to the max with torpedo tubes. Even late cruisers are often equipped with 3(!!!) fully auto II loaded main guns, some secondaries and a whole broadside of torpedoes. From torpedo boats to battleships, there are very few AI designs without massive amounts of torpedoes.

You have a powerful superbattleship afloat? Do not worry about it, the AI will always try to kill your torpedo carriers first. Do not worry about their battleships (primarily) but rather watch these heavy cruisers with their ultimate torpedo battery (especially when they have oxygen torpedoes). All of the AIs focus is centered around the eels, wether to defend against or to use them to deal damage.

I have tried to mitigate the problem by constructing "Shared Designs" with normal amounts of torpedoes. But I have never ever encountered one of these designs with the enemy. Not once. Of course I do not have a designs for each year, that would be too much. But wether I click "Selective " or "Always" does not matter. No shared design used by the enemy.

So. I still enjoy the game. Several mechanics are much improved, but there are still glaring weaknesses.

 

Ah, one thing. There seems to be a Bug regarding the modernization of ships with a similar name.
For example :
I have a battleship called "Kaiserin", a German dreadnought IV with seven twin 305mm turrets.
Much later, I build some really big battleships, one of them is called "Kaiserin Augusta", with 457mm main guns.
Now, the latters got an upgrade with radar and better guns. So I click to modify them and select all available, only realizing that there are five instead of four ships. But, too late to look, I already ordered the modernization.
Sure enough, good old Kaiserin still has her hull, but the superstructure and the guns of the larger battleships, partially sunken into the hull. Thereby, I have now a strange looking, but rather powerful battleship I should never have.

Thank you

Edited July 10 by Darth Khyron

[DougToss]

Comparing to RTW, or historical torpedo use in the Russo-Japanese War and WW1, I think ships both use torpedoes too easily and calculate their firing solutions too accurately in early periods. Historically the potential of the torpedo was great, but it never really lived up to expectations. 

[brothermunro]

A feature request primarily for modders although I think it would also be helpful for the dev team as well (there’s two options, either would work in my opinion so whichever is simpler):

Configurable armour minimums

Rather than the current minimum armour in shiptypes which only applies to the main belt; strings are added for minimum main belt, fore/aft belt, fore/aft deck, superstructure, & conning tower

Calculated armour minimums

The current minimum armour is changed by a configurable scaling factor for the other armour parts, for instance main deck minimum = 0.5*main belt minimum 

This would help modders & the dev team guide the AI towards more sensible design choices 

[Aldaris]

That sounds like a fantastic idea! I would add two more, one of which I already mentioned earlier:

Min/Max speed range based on recommended hull maximum speed

The AI could really use some guidance in what's a sensible machinery plant for a hull. A 44 knot BC is not a great idea and would be pretty much impossible to build IRL to the best of my knowledge. After a certain point the power requirements go up almost exponentially for minimal additional speed. It's a game of dimishing returns, and the AI isn't great at balancing speed/protection/firepower as it stands.

Make ship balancing easier

Seriously, some hulls are almost impossible to work with in that regard without making stupid and bad looking compromises. Take the American standard hulls for example. There is a space clearly meant for the funnels, on the upper deck between the cranes - but if you put them there, the ship becomes ridiculously front heavy, with no way of effectively balancing it. So you have to move them way back, at least partially off the stepped up deck, leaving unusable space on the highest deck between the cranes and lenthening the citadel significantly, because the rear guns have to move so much further to the rear.

I dont' know what the best approach is to solve that - making the machinery moveable maybe, and not firmly tying the plant to the funnels? But the current situation sucks, and ships the AI builds (at least the ones I checked) tend to have weight offsets often in excess of 60-70%. That's pretty bad.

Edited July 13 by Aldaris

[TK3600]

Easiest solution to balancing ship is to be able to group parts together. In fact a partial system already exists for barbette gun and the other gun in front of it, but inconsistent.

[Aldaris]

I'm not talking about a better UI for moving parts around, although that would be welcome too. I'm talking about making balancing easier to allow for a wider range of viable designs that don't look stupid and aren't unrealistic.

 

Edited July 13 by Aldaris

[TK3600]

I meant if you can move multiple parts easier, you can balance the ship by shifting a group of parts, not one by one.

[Aldaris]

Let me show you what I mean.

This is a USA modernized dreadnought hull. We have a Q Turret and 2 rear, and we still have an almost 50% forward offset.

The funnel clearly is where it's meant to be, there is a fixed forward barbette, indicating that the hull is meant for two forward turrets. So how would you balance that? Realistically, the machinery would be more centered, but in game, it's completely crammed forward, causing a stupid imbalance. The only way to get rid of that would be an armor scheme of paper forward and super heavy in the rear (and even that might not be enough), or moving the funnel to where the Q turret is and leaving the space between the cranes empty.

Edited July 13 by Aldaris

[TK3600]

Right. Engine placement should move a bit free of funnel. Alternatively, engine is too heavy relatively.