Testbed Feedback - Battle UI, Localization, Patrols, Delivery quests

[Durin]

although i do appreciate the simplicity and overview this ui gives you in battle - i would like if it would look a little bit more fitting. specially the compass and ship symbol for your own and the enemy vessle, can it have some wood and brass for the immersion while keeping it simple to read at the same time? i know that might not be easy to do, but the current ui looks very much like the old placeholder.

something like this would be easy to read and still leave room in the middle for the ship and sail orientation.

o7

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, admin said:

There is a tooltip (if you enable a mouse and mouseover) explaining what each does. 

But in general we believe that those buttons will work just like the red, green, yellow lights on the intersections. You just need to find out ONCE what each means and after that you will remember.

Ok, haven't seen the tooltips but I'm not sure if one has time in the heat of a battle to make some mouseovers. Though not a big deal for me.

[admin]

5 minutes ago, Christoph said:

will there ever be an option for 4k players? the icon are all quite small

there is a canvas size option now in the settings allowing you to increase the size of the icons and windows.

[Christoph]

6 minutes ago, admin said:

there is a canvas size option now in the settings allowing you to increase the size of the icons and windows.

very nice. thx

[Baptiste Gallouédec]

30 minutes ago, admin said:

it did not work out. it only looks good in static. 

 

An in-between can't be made ? Keeping the wip  header artwork, icons for marines & muskets,  and artworks for battle log commands... Even better if one artwork for each combination of commands (one for attack vs defend, one for grenade vs brace , etc..)

Boarding is already non-immersive enough to bring a dull window while  your ships still display your lone sailors in waistcoat air-pushing guns.

 

[LeBoiteux]

French translation needs total rework : some words/phrases are not translated, others are funnily translated + spelling mistakes (no accent...).

For the moment, it looks like a google translation.

[Tom Farseer]

Keyboard Hotkeys do not work in Battle UI during battle countdown. Also crew stations are not visible. With prepared perk I can still distribute crew (e.g. turn on boarding) but I don't see it during countdown...

[John Cavanaugh]

The changes to the in - battle compass are sometimes confusing, due to the more curved yard icons. when manual sailing it is sometimes difficult to determine from the compass when a yard is positioned correctly due to the overlap of the yards and more rounded shape.
The icons for Repair, Sailing, Gunnery, etc. I did not find confusing due to familiarity with/expectations of what should be where, but a new player may have difficulty with this. perhaps a hammer icon instead of a nail for repair, a ships wheel instead of a canvas sheet for sailing, a cannon icon similar to that used for mediums of the pood edinorogs for gunnery. the grappling hook icon for boarding is excellent IMO.

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, LeBoiteux said:

French translation needs total rework : some words/phrases are not translated, others are funnily translated + spelling mistakes (no accent...).

For the moment, it looks like a google translation.

Localization bugs and issues with formatting and languages

• Keep in mind that localization was done by the outside firm and they could be less familiar with nautical terms. We plan to add great custom localizations to the selection

 

 

Edited January 24, 2019 by Guest

[Ortac]

At the start of battle ( the countdown), I couldn't allocate ammunition type to any of the four cannon sectors. Would only activate once battle had commenced.

[huliotkd]

only a fast test yesterday , today i will test more.

what we need:

1) activate/deactivate different colour for crew function (sailing, gunnery, survivial etc etc) as before

2) remove info on enemy module status when on ''damaged'' (yellow) status...only red for ''destroyed'' or you give too many information on players that can be used by a Vet vs a noob better than before

3) change word ''water'' with ''focus fire'' or ''convergence''

4) if possible go back to 3-bow 4 -stern or maybe an ''highlight'' on the guns you are selecting to be sure you are not loading/unloading the wrong guns.

5) prepared perk must let you to choose the ammunition before battle starts

6) remove unlimited repairs...with the new limited chains you must put the correct danger to their use, so go bak to 3 repair (consuming hull rig rum) for battle istance and full hull,rig,rum reps only for OW

7) Broadside weight patch...we need it....really.

 

 

[LeBoiteux]

18 minutes ago, Joernsson said:

Localization bugs and issues with formatting and languages

• Keep in mind that localization was done by the outside firm and they could be less familiar with nautical terms. We plan to add great custom localizations to the selection

Thanks for your valuable intervention.

I can read. I did. So I knew before posting. So it is not a matter of 'nautical terms'.

For the sake of witticism, i would say that outside firm is 'less familiar with' French.

Edited January 24, 2019 by LeBoiteux

[Liq]

Not really UI related but yesterday on testbed I noticed something strange

Was in a vic, shooting smaller frigates. One was down to structure, was a little far away but still possible for me to shoot it. I did get the hull hit counter, yet the structure bar didnt seem to go down.

In general I think damage models feel kinda different

[Vernon Merrill]

5 hours ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

When I was hitting 6th rate fleets in OW no problem destroying them with a board . The only big issue I see is the auto pull by AI by some one un prepared.  If AI treat d every one as if they had DD perk that would help from so many folks loosing ships to AI that have high boarding perks when you might not.  I lost a LRQ to a Reno yesterday cause he pulled me and we had close to same crew but I had no boarding mods.  It wasn’t the prep that killed me it was that he destroyed me no matter what defense I did and lost crew and moral. 

 

That and AI should not be able to pull when half sinking and your pulling to loot them.  Shouldn’t most there crew be in survival not board prep?  

If your ship was sinking and a non-sinking ship pulled up next to you, don’t you think you be pretty keen on getting that ship?  

Edited January 24, 2019 by Vernon Merrill

[Durin]

4 hours ago, admin said:

we could not find a better explanation for (old unlocked) 

how about

Convergence: Terminal

Convergence: Estimate

o7

[Liq]

4 minutes ago, Graf Bernadotte said:

Mediums?

Yes, but that shouldnt matter since the hits penetrated and thus deal some damage

[Angus MacDuff]

PVP hunt missions should be worth a lot more than PVE hunt missions

[jodgi]

11 minutes ago, Angus MacDuff said:

PVP hunt missions should be worth a lot more than PVE hunt missions

Quote

PvP reward missions on testbed are fake so we dont spoil the surprises in the main patch

about solo PZ but could be relevant.

[admin]

32 minutes ago, Angus MacDuff said:

PVP hunt missions should be worth a lot more than PVE hunt missions

the rewards are fake now.. they will have a special chest

 

[admin]

17 hours ago, rediii said:

There should be the same concept of the HP at cannons

Oh and the numbers are not centered (16,15)   7 is centered

stuck on this. Will try to improve but it is not likely
the problem is in unity centering (1 is narrow) if it was 25 it will look centered but with 15 it offsets. Changing centering will make 7 look uncentered. 

[Licinio Chiavari]

I did too a fast testing today.

- I agree about 3 for bow chasers and 4 for stern ones as in live game. Still if done for new players, better for them: we can live with that.

- I suppose morale 0 not winning the boarding has been already solved: it worked correctly a couple hours ago.

- I agree that this way is more "technical" (not seeing the enemy move but guessing it) but I have to underline that it will badly widen veteran-newbies gap on it. For a boarder veteran is only a small extra effort reading the values and "translating" them in moves. For a newbie it'll be a simply massacre.

- Attack is described as most effective vs FireDeckGuns. My impressions (4 boardings) is exactly like today: far more effective on Brace and Grenades.

- This boarding looks not touching the bottom formulas. So repeating the old scheme Defend > Attack > Brace > Muskets/FDG/Gren > Defend so again overlapping the uses of Muskt/FDG/Gren all as Defend slow killers. So what about reworking formulas having something like: Defend >> Attack >> Grenades >> DeckGuns >> Muskets >> Defend, for example, adding medium effectiveness in other cases? And having Brace as a dangerous needed prep. builder like in the past?

More in general: why not giving us the real formulas behind melee/Firepower values and allowing us to propose correction in a meaningful way?

I know that nothing bans me "reverse engineering" the formulas doing simply a bulkload of tests with a mate with different set ups and actions. Granted I can, but it could be a) an approximation b) a waste of time, isnt simpler to let players knowing the formulas and allowing them to make reasoned proposals?

Edited January 24, 2019 by Licinio Chiavari

[OjK]

Ok, so finally my turn to put some proper feedback.
I know that some of the things might be repeated, but better say it twice, than accidentaly miss it.

1) Boarding

So, at first, I liked the idea that we no longer see opponent choice, but then I realised that You still see his changes of preparation and You still see the kill prediction. So it doesn't fix anything, but actually makes it harder for people who will learn the game.

With old system we could still help them with "What do I do if he pressed attack?!" etc.

This new version is just bad. We can fix it in either of the way:

A - Completely hide all the parameters.
You just see amount of preparation he had at the start of the turn, his current crew and marines. That's it. The rest is played in the head. 
Of course, that could ask as well for some kind of tooltip available to bring into the screen for new players - like what beat whats.:
f.e. circle with arrows attack -> defend -> firearms -> brace -> attack

And then? Just play the real rock-paper-scissors without.

or...
B - Make it poker style (bluffing or not, but no timers). 
Keep the indication of each players action. No timers, or anything. Just two options:
Initial pick, final pick

First five seconds - players choose their initial action for no cost.
Another five seconds - All kill predictions are shown, players may choose to change their initial pick, or change it for different with double the cost
Last five seconds - Final selections are shown, kill calculations are shown, preparation is deducted, players prepare for next round.

Honestly, I think the type B might be actually quite good.

 

2) Battle UI

A - As said many times already, we should go back to 3 beeing BOW, and 4 beeing STERN. Muscle memory is hard to overcome

B - New convergence naming is ok, to avoid confusion of people reported that earlier, we could change the "water" for "water line" 

C - Battle Preview List (TAB) looks terribly bad with big fleets of AI. It would be cool in PB's with all the names beeing bigger, but with AI's both names (main and fleet) it's very bad looking and not readable. Is there a chance the AI could be named f.e. only "John Vaeth" instead of "Lymand Duran's - John Vaeth" ?

D - Repair Icon of Surgery. Way too fancy. This surgeon tool is just not intuitive. It should be maybe a simple cross like on ambulance or a picture of the crew. Especially, to keep it in line with other pictures - to repair sails, we press the sails picture. So if we want to "repair" crew, there should be a picture of what we are fixing, not the tool

E - Also, when all the repairs are on cooldown, all the icons looks the same. Of course, people with 1k+ hours will know that the 3rd one is for crew, but that's a bad design. Should be visible which cooldown we're talking about - crew or hull/rig

F - "Bow to Stern" vs "Stern to Bow" The main rule, when trying to make something intuitive and simple is to avoid placing the opposites in one sentence, so no one get confused. I'd suggest to keep it simpler: "From Bow" and "From Stern". 

G - Speaking about Firing - can we finally get rid of the "Random" ?

 

And one more final - make hits more visible. It's quite small and quite far from the center to notice currently.

How about we move current salvo hits to the side just below the indicator of target ship, and make it a big bigger?

 

 

That's from my side for now!

@admin Nice to see the game is keep evolving!

[Batman]

59 minutes ago, admin said:

stuck on this. Will try to improve but it is not likely
the problem is in unity centering (1 is narrow) if it was 25 it will look centered but with 15 it offsets. Changing centering will make 7 look uncentered. 

What about using square symbols - resembling gunports - instead of round symbols?

[Tom Farseer]

4 minutes ago, Batman said:

What about using square symbols - resembling gunports - instead of round symbols?

will not change the center of the number.

[Gregory Rainsborough]

One of the sail settings is "dead"...