Tycondero

I just read the following message on discord and steam that our beloved developer Nick Thomadis is leaving Game-labs. I wish him all the best and hope that he will continue to do what he is great at: making innovative strategy games. Hopefully he has something better ahead for him with a larger budget so that we can all enjoy his future work even more! https://steamcommunity.com/app/1069660/discussions/0/592884386754509192/ https://discord.com/channels/752511217716691015/752515850069868553/1321122302762680413 With that said, what does this mean for UAD? Nick mentions the "last patch", does that mean that UAD will no longer get support/updates?

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.

I haven't played UAD for quite some time, despite being part of this journey from the start about 4 years ago. I decided to give the game a ride again after about 6-9 months. Still I find it very weird that compared to most decent games, UAD remains to have a feel of incomplete to me. In this thread I try to sum up most if not all the aspects that I find requiring more effort and focus from the developers and no it is not about demanding CVs Game performance Whether in naval battles or on campaign turns the game behalves very sluggish with lag and delays happening, controls not responding well etc. It just feels very unoptimized. I had hopes that this would eventually be resolved, but I now have my doubts whether it will ever be. It is just not a great experience. Is it the engine that was/is a bad choice? I have a very good PC yet this game has a feeling of running worse than most games. Game balance The balance of the game is often off. I just played as France in a campaign starting in 1900. France has so much money that I can easily build up the strongest navy in the world in about 10-15 years. I am hoarding so much money that I can never spend enough and this is literally with all the financial sliders to max expenditure whilst having a large navy (and no limited or mothballed ships). It just feels that I don't have to make any choices at this point. In fact only shipbuilding capacity is a limiting factor. To me it just doesn't feel realistic/right when money is in essence no limiting factor. Limited objectives for the campaign I understand that one has to make one's own objectives. However, it feels like there are no real objectives to focus on in the campaign. I often have a feeling that I am just there being present in this game world and building a navy because I can. Maybe within the role as naval director this is actually somewhat realistic. But after getting over 800 prestige or so within 15 years when playing as France it just feels a bit "shallow". I often wonder at this point: why play on? All other opponents (naval directors) seem to have been beaten. There is nothing I can spend the prestige on for instance. Lack of control on generated campaign battles Compared to some games, such as "War on the Sea" which also have their own pitfalls. I often feel that we lack the ability to really impact the campaign. I know that we can make a task force and order it to another place on the map, but it again feels like it all hardly matters what you do. Random battles get generated with some impact due to the choices of the player, but is still feels like the player has only some impact on how these unfold. In a game like Hearts of Iron, I have the feeling that I have more strategic control over the navy despite that UAD has a much better focus on shipbuilding and design than such a game. Missing features There are still features that were once discussed that I do not see in the game, nor getting mentioned. The multiplayer aspect is one addition that I applaud, but also one I personally do not care so much about. I would rather see more investment into getting the game finished and right. What happened with certain features that were once talked about, such as captains and admirals, naval conferences, more varied maps (not just water)? Naval designer doesn't feel well organized This one is a bit more tricky to explain, but to me it feels like the choices in the Naval designer are still unorganized. Especially when playing the campaign I feel that we get all these options in terms of towers and hulls, but it still feels like a bit of a mess in terms of some designs getting a huge number of options and variety, but others having only 3 funnel options in comparison. Also hardly ever do I see more modern tower options available to older (for refit) ships compared to the choices I already had when designing my first build with that hull. Research tech tree is very hands off Maybe this is more realistic as in reality no government or naval design bureau would ever directly control all technological development. Yet, the current implementation of the research tree feels very hands off. I would very much like to have a bit more control and consequences to making certain choices. Right now it feels like just throw in as much money one can, try to prioritize engine tech to unlock turbines and perhaps some hull tech and that's it. Lackluster graphics and sound I know, this is not your typical eye candy game and I fully agree. However, by now the graphics and sound of this game feel very outdated. Perhaps it is the engine, but I would be great if we have a bit more fidelity here. Final comments If this thread feels a bit like a rant, it is not meant that way. I am trying, as a critic to the state of the UAD, to sum up all the things I feel if resolved would make UAD a better game. I understand that this game was and is developed by a relatively small team of dedicated developers in even more difficult times (Ukraine and getting bought by publisher). I have spent a lot of time in this game and got more than enough hours out of it for the money. Yet, I hope that my thread can serve a bit more as a review of this things that require more effort. I have the feeling this game would and could be so much more with a bit more focus and polish. I hope to read your and developer feedback on this.

I think that in general more game actions should require prestige as a currency. Right now, most prestige can be leaked by in game events, but these are rather passive as in you never know what event you get. If things like, coordinated offensieve, more income/budget or even temporary boosting ship building capacity by requesting the government to enable more war time economy laws for instance, could be traded in for prestige that would make the game more flexible and give you more things to do.

Indeed. We need more reasonable money sinks or less income. Due to massive GDP growth some countries get massive budget. I am very much okay with some countries having an economical advantage, such as the USA, UK and Germany, as these nations did historically develop their economies very heavily in this time frame. I would personally be in favor of just getting a certain (small) percentage of the national budget ,with some "dictatorial" governments allowing for a higher percentage. having a feature to request more funding when required would be great. This is somewhat in the game already with events and "going bankrupt". But having it an in game action would be better I think. Furthermore, it would also be great if we could manually affect the naval base capacity for each territory. Some colonial bases are very tiny eventhough their contribute a significant share to the GDP.

One thing I noticed is that both wealthy AI nations as the player seem to hoard money at some point. Especially during war, when the naval budget is increased a lot, wealthy empires (e.g. Britain, Germany, France) will hoard more than they can ever spend. Is this intended for the game? This almost amounts to unlimited money at some point. Furthermore, it seems to the demand territory in peace deals still doesn't work that well. I demanded a territory from Spain, but after the peace had been signed I received nothing.

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.

I think the refit option for ships needs a calculation overhaul. Some calculation don't make sense. For instance I swapped the steam engines for a turbine drive in some older ships. This but the refit at a couple of months, however increasing the ship speed limit decreases the time to refit. That makes no sense. The same is true for replacing guns or armor. Some options take huge amounts of time whereas others decrease it even though it is still a change to the ship. I feel that some changes really fall into the rebuild category (take a lot of time to complete) whereas others are an upgrade or even minor improvement. Changes that require a rebuild (taking at least 1/2 of the full build time): - Changing the citadel type (should this even be allowed??) - Changing the armor technology (e.g. from Krupp I to Krupp III) - Changing the main gun type or location (e.g. going from 12 inch to 13 inch) - Changing the engine type (especially when implementing Steam to Turbine or Turbine to Diesel) Also the time required for a rebuild should be mostly limited by the component that takes the longest, meaning that replacing all of the above would hardly further increase the time to rebuild even further. Components that are upgrades (taking up to 1/4 full build time at most) - Changing the main gun calibre and barrel length (e.g. going from 12 inch to 12.5 inch) - Changing the torpedo protection - Changing the range finding equipment (including adding radar or radios) - Changing ammo types or composition - Changing the gun reload mechanisms - Changing secondaries

The game has improved a lot in balance over the last couple of patches, both the AI and economy feel more in balance. However diplomacy still feels rough, furthermore the AI seems to always end up behind me tech wise (I just push 100% tech budget all the time with some priorities here and there). There are still too many full world wars occurring. I like that it can happen, but they happen too often due to all these alliances that are created. Also, the AI still needs some more strategic understanding of the situation. I have seen France putting all their ships out in the wide world with the result that they got blockaded.

Good to read that you will continue to develop the game. Especially the weather and visibility mechanics are required as this was a promised feature. Another feature that I do not hear anything about anymore is naval treaties. I believe we were supposed to get the ability to have countries sign a naval treaty at some point, like the Washington Naval Treaty. Besides the list that you provided I think that the campaign AI and balancing of the campaign is most needed. Currently, the game is a bit too easy, especially when you are a couple of years into the game. As Germany I am swimming in money, even though I am building ships to the maximum dockyard capacity all the time. It feels as if money is no longer a factor in the game.

The game still needs a lot of work to feel fully finished. Especially the campaign AI and balance is not that great. As Germany I am dominating the waves, however I have like 23 billion in the bank with accumulating about 400 million monthly. Yet have the largest fleet in the world (tonnage and numbers). There needs to be a greater money sink, albeit rather not just through random events as they can cause too much shocks in the budget, especially for the AI. I feel that the greatest restriction is currently the total shipyard and port capacity. I think this is excellent. However, the money flow balance seems to still date from a time when you could build an unlimited number of ships simultaneously. The AI seems to also still want to build in numbers that predate the shipyard tonnage restriction limitations. I have seen AI Britain, USA and France all wanting to build 200+ ships. Though I cannot see what kind of ships these are, I have the feeling that they are severely overloading their building capacity, which could even cause more delays for them than desirable to fix their fleet power.

The campaign AI is just not that great. Indeed illogical wars are regularly declared and the AI seems to have difficulty in understanding how to have a sensible naval build program. I have seen hundreds of ships getting queued by AI Britain, USA, France and I don't believe that even Britain has the ability to build 350 ships without incurring a severe shipyard construction penalty. Unless the AI is not bound to the same rules as the player of course. Also, AI diplomacy has improved. I see moves being made by the AI to me. However, still there is much to improve on that front. Especially minor nations seem to make illogical alliances. For example, why would Portugal make an alliance with Japan. Seems to me little sense to me.

Yes it is very annoying, however I fear that will not fix this at this point in development.

Would be great. I would also like it to see how many kills a ship has over its lifetime.

I have seen a couple of campaigns in which Germany rolls up France on land, but gets decimated at sea by having their transports (hence economical activity) sunk. Effectively, France lost the land campaign and should capitulate, but by the luck of Germany being near to revolution or economical collapse gets saved, eventhough they hardly have any troops left to do anything, even in their colonies. Although I am fully aware of how WW1 ended, with effectively Germany suffering from revolution and economical collapse, I feel that once Germany takes over large parts of France (North and South) they should capitulate and sue for peace. Also, I would advocate to split France proper into more provinces. There should be an Alsace-Lorraine like province between Germany and France, as this was the "source" of much hostility between these nations. Also, a central French provinces which includes the Paris area should prevent that when the northern part of France falls to Germany that effectively the war on land is lost. EDIT: Also, offensives should be reinforced by the attacker and defender where possible/necessary. Indeed defense of the core provinces of a nation should be the highest priority. Now, an offensive is set up with some forces on either side from the start and someone eventually always wins (often the attacker) eventhough the nations involved still have plenty of troops in adjacent provinces or even within the province.