Patch Information: Forthcoming Improvements

[Bluishdoor76]

Just wondering, will we ever get an option for a central barbette?

[johnson smith]

i don't understand why some people don't want this game to be release on steam without a decent working campaign. Afraid of bad review ?. Like WTH. it's still early access why caring about that for. Age of sail release haft a year ago without a finished campaign and it look fine to me. Isn't releasing on steam make bug reporting much easier ? 

[Donluca95]

Hi guys, what about Saving features ? A lot of people love simple things 

 

1- Saving your ship design in/for custom battle ?

2- Design more than 1 ship category in your fleet ? 

3- Choosing Enemy designs  for custom battle ?

 

Will all of this be released with the Campaign ? Do we have any hope to see this features add to the game before it ? 

Because if we can't have any precise idea of when the Campaign will be release, we will not have idea also for this "Saving/Sand Box features"  right?

Edited June 9, 2020 by Donluca95

[Tycondero]

For course it is a rather big disappointment that the campaign will not be in the next patch. However, I do think the devs are making a good choice here to internally develop the campaign before allowing us alpha backers to test it. I have seen too many games that just release something completely broken / half finished with the result of the entire community falling out over them out of fears for missing features, incorrect expectations etc. 

There is only one chance to make a good first impression. Don't ruin that chance. 

I rather wait a couple of months to allow more internal development time to occur, which will always lead reaching an end product faster than with us intervening all the time, than have the devs constantly devote a lot of attention to fixing bugs whilst in alpha and soothing player comments/expectations.

[Cptbarney]

6 hours ago, BobRoss0902 said:

I reject your reality and substitute it with my own.

Shush. *pushes bobross into smoll box*.

Now devs can work in peace on the campaign 'w'

 

Edited June 9, 2020 by Cptbarney

[Steeltrap]

I personally don't care a bit about the campaign as I find it's rather pointless stuffing around on a campaign map if the tactical battles that result still have egregious issues with them if we're to take the "realistic" tag seriously.

In other words, fix those things still significantly broken before worrying about the broader context within which they fit.

If BOTH can be done, and we can test elements of the campaign, OK.

I rather suspect that can't be done effectively, as the in-battle issues will blow back on the campaign in potentially game-breaking ways.

I know I will simply stuff my designs with bulkheads and already have an insurmountable advantage over any other ship that's identical in every other respect. For as long as that remains true, releasing it to the broader public is simply asking for a lot of people to come to the same conclusion and then splatter that all over Steam.

That would be both terrible for the game PLUS grossly unfair in the sense of where the game's supposedly going. Yet it would be accurate, and people can and should only review what they see, not what they're promised.

[Nick Thomadis]

Reorganized the list and updated with two more fixes:

• Fixed secondary guns that could fire over their maximum range and cause the "Too many threads" crash.
• Fixed torpedo tubes that could not fire at very sharp angles.

 

[DougToss]

20 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Optimizations of all other hull types' engine weights

Can we please see a breakdown of machinery? 

It would be nice knowing how hp/ton is calculated, and how power requirements vary by hull type.

[PainGod]

Sounds like a reasonably small patch. I'm especially interested in those new barbettes for large guns.

[noobman]

I think there is still a big vacancy until more armored ships are updated and submarines can be designed. So I hope the production team can continue to improve and hope this game will be a success!

[Shaftoe]

I shall express my reaction to this with one word:

 

YAY!!!

Edited June 9, 2020 by Shaftoe

[skg02]

15 hours ago, Donluca95 said:

Hi guys, what about Saving features ? A lot of people love simple things 

 

1- Saving your ship design in/for custom battle ?

2- Design more than 1 ship category in your fleet ? 

3- Choosing Enemy designs  for custom battle ?

 

Will all of this be released with the Campaign ? Do we have any hope to see this features add to the game before it ? 

Because if we can't have any precise idea of when the Campaign will be release, we will not have idea also for this "Saving/Sand Box features"  right?

Here, Here.

This is a big one for the advancement of the game. If the omni-direction-choice is too hard for the above.

Might be an idea to trial some new naval missions with developer fixed designs rather than AI fixed designs, so some relatively accurate historical battles might be better set-up.

These dev-based ship designs then make a start on getting to a ship design data base - some of the first of these ships, if the battles are picked right can go into subsequent new naval missions of this new type.

[skg02]

13 hours ago, Steeltrap said:

I personally don't care a bit about the campaign as I find it's rather pointless stuffing around on a campaign map if the tactical battles that result still have egregious issues with them if we're to take the "realistic" tag seriously.

In other words, fix those things still significantly broken before worrying about the broader context within which they fit.

If BOTH can be done, and we can test elements of the campaign, OK.

I rather suspect that can't be done effectively, as the in-battle issues will blow back on the campaign in potentially game-breaking ways.

I know I will simply stuff my designs with bulkheads and already have an insurmountable advantage over any other ship that's identical in every other respect. For as long as that remains true, releasing it to the broader public is simply asking for a lot of people to come to the same conclusion and then splatter that all over Steam.

That would be both terrible for the game PLUS grossly unfair in the sense of where the game's supposedly going. Yet it would be accurate, and people can and should only review what they see, not what they're promised.

I agree on not letting it out into the wider world before getting it done in workable form on the campaign. I should think the campaign will have to deal with introducing land, islands, coasts, ect. Unless campaigns are just going to be WW1 North Sea like. 

The armor system and maybe the propellant/explosive system needs work. Reading up on how real armor schemes were really clarifies the need on the armor system. 

[skg02]

Nick.

Hope your programmer gets well soon, and hope its not the covid plague. 

[Skoggatt]

I guess I'm in the minority of people that is fine to see the campaign pushed further back. Not that I don't want to see the campaign, in fact that will be the only mode I play when it comes out. But I think the armor system needs to be fixed at a minimum before that time as that will require a whole new round of rebalancing in itself.

[DougToss]

39 minutes ago, skg02 said:

I agree on not letting it out into the wider world before getting it done in workable form on the campaign. I should think the campaign will have to deal with introducing land, islands, coasts, ect. Unless campaigns are just going to be WW1 North Sea like. 

The armor system and maybe the propellant/explosive system needs work. Reading up on how real armor schemes were really clarifies the need on the armor system. 

I agree. 

The foundational basis for the game: Armour, Mobility and Protection are not anywhere near done. They are in fact, a long way from being acceptable. I don't mean that as a slight, Alpha means that the game is not feature complete. I agree with that assessment. 

I'll pose a simple hypothetical: Can you imagine how differently ships have to be designed, built and employed in a campaign where hit rates are much greater than historically? Because that's where we are now. What is the role of a protected cruiser where heavy guns and armour are required to complete just about any mission? Moreover, when coal-fired ships can make frankly obscene speeds and carry absurd armour for their displacements. 

This ripples down too. I read somewhere that in 1880 there were two ports in Asia that could repair armoured ships of any significant displacement: Hong Kong and Yokohama. So on the one hand, the game practically requires any power with an interest in the Pacific to produce large armoured ships, and on the other, historically there was no way to support them logistically. That's a major issue for a campaign. 

I'm afraid that the Devs will take the easy route and just allow for armoured cruisers to be based where they could not be, rather than improve the foundational mechanics to make colonial gunboats, unarmoured and protected cruisers behave as they should and have a valuable role in the maintenance and projection of sea power. 

We're a long way from a sensible base to build a campaign on. 

[Skoggatt]

2 hours ago, DougToss said:

I agree. 

The foundational basis for the game: Armour, Mobility and Protection are not anywhere near done. They are in fact, a long way from being acceptable. I don't mean that as a slight, Alpha means that the game is not feature complete. I agree with that assessment. 

I'll pose a simple hypothetical: Can you imagine how differently ships have to be designed, built and employed in a campaign where hit rates are much greater than historically? Because that's where we are now. What is the role of a protected cruiser where heavy guns and armour are required to complete just about any mission? Moreover, when coal-fired ships can make frankly obscene speeds and carry absurd armour for their displacements. 

This ripples down too. I read somewhere that in 1880 there were two ports in Asia that could repair armoured ships of any significant displacement: Hong Kong and Yokohama. So on the one hand, the game practically requires any power with an interest in the Pacific to produce large armoured ships, and on the other, historically there was no way to support them logistically. That's a major issue for a campaign. 

I'm afraid that the Devs will take the easy route and just allow for armoured cruisers to be based where they could not be, rather than improve the foundational mechanics to make colonial gunboats, unarmoured and protected cruisers behave as they should and have a valuable role in the maintenance and projection of sea power. 

We're a long way from a sensible base to build a campaign on. 

Exactly my feelings. I want the designer and the combat in a good place before throwing all of that into the campaign mechanics. If the extra time required means the campaign is more polished when we get our hands on it, all the better.

At this point I don't think we could return a lot of valuable feedback on how the campaign actually plays. Sure, there might be features present I like or don't like, but how can we test the balance of different nations if ship designs are so far from the final product? We will end up building fleets of min-maxed vessels that wont work in the final product while the AI builds similarly unbalanced designs or flat out illogical ones.

I would love to see some aspects of the campaign of course. It would be nice to know how long turns last, how big the sea zones are and if they include areas such as the Black Sea, what minor nations are included, and how diplomacy/war declaration works. Honestly, just having some answers to questions like those would tide me over for a while until things are ready to go.

[Shaun]

Could you adjust the maximum allowed weight for heavy cruisers pre-treaty? The armoured cruisers can't exceed 13,000T; this is in custom battle.

Edited June 10, 2020 by Shaun

[shaitan]

Been mentioned by others already, but seeing as how it has become a sticking point for me, I feel compelled to inquire: how final is the current implementation of the damage model?

[ArtifaX]

On 6/9/2020 at 10:05 PM, DougToss said:

We're a long way from a sensible base to build a campaign on

I have to disagree here.. The only real concern with letting campaign out is that all resources would be diverted to it after its done, which i hope will not be the case.

I would argue that campaign should be release ASAP so that it can be tested with players. The current state of the game is enough to facilitate battles that would occur in the campaign and that is all that matters really.

The fact that some system is not fully done should not prevent main game feature from being released to testers (which we all are), given that it is actually followed up on afterwards.

And the fact that some things are not balanced (armor weight, speed, etc) literally makes no sense to fix before campaign simply cause it would be a completely different balance there.

There is no guarantee that by reaching 1930 you would have all the same things unlocked as in custom battles now. It might be the case that you would invest in armor quality and bulkheads, which would leave you with shitty range finders and subpar guns.

Only by looking at a comprehensive data set from campaign it would make sense to decide on balance.

[Steeltrap]

4 hours ago, ArtifaX said:

I would argue that campaign should be release ASAP so that it can be tested with players. The current state of the game is enough to facilitate battles that would occur in the campaign and that is all that matters really.

Depends entirely on what's being tested. If the list is something like range in design screen mapping correctly to campaign, and testing spotting/engagement (the conditions that trigger the possibility of tactical combat) are working as intended, including for weather, fair enough.

Beyond that? I suppose the economy and infrastructure mechanics, plus "political" stuff.

As things stand, I personally have little interest in it as the battles themselves have reached a point where the core design elements are very well known and thus the results are very predictable. As I stated, I for one would load everything with maximum bulkheads because they are such a magical "I'm better at everything" element in design. In fact I don't bother with citadel, anti-flood etc because the simple fact is putting all that weight into armour zones + max bulkheads (and improved bulkheads if you have access) is by far a more effective ship design.

I would expect most if not all the campaign elements I've listed could be tested solely by the AI.

Speaking of which, the AI is also a pretty significant issue at present, at the very least with respect to controlling divisions when it comes to station keeping and target selection (having ALL ships of a div engage a single target is entirely INCORRECT when it comes to capital ships at least).

For all of that, I suspect my opinion doesn't matter as the devs will produce things according to their schedule and we'll generate data for them. The fact that "flash fires" most commonly aren't flash fires at all, plus are occurring for ammunition types and gun mounts for which no flash fire would ever occur, is what leads me to this conclusion given I'd already pointed it out several times. Not that I expect the devs to listen to me; I'm simply saying why I doubt my opinion on campaign elements and readiness are largely moot when it comes to the devs' intended course of action.

The main reason I post anything is to discuss it with the rest of you. I don't expect it to affect one way or another what the devs are thinking/planning.

Cheers

[ArtifaX]

5 hours ago, Steeltrap said:

Speaking of which, the AI is also a pretty significant issue at present, at the very least with respect to controlling divisions when it comes to station keeping and target selection (having ALL ships of a div engage a single target is entirely INCORRECT when it comes to capital ships at least).

I agree those should be fixed and hence my comment about working on that at the same time as campaign. But the rest of things like bulkheads and armor being OP, this should be easy to fix with changing a few numbers (cost, weight, tech requirement) and should not impede the campaign (again, given that they are addressed b4 release cause everyone here agrees its a problem)

[DerRichtigeArzt]

will there be any new features/ship hulls or is it a purely balance and bugfix patch?

Edited June 11, 2020 by DerRichtigeArzt

[1MajorKoenig]

3 hours ago, DerRichtigeArzt said:

will there be any new features/ship hulls or is it a purely balance and bugfix patch?

Hope some more hulls 

[Nick Thomadis]

New notable changes regarding torpedoes:

• Early tech torpedoes are now having smaller range and are slower. This makes the impact and evolution of torpedoes more historically accurate.
• Sonar/Hydro equipment is now available for CA, BB, BC, making capital ships much more aware against torpedo threats. Stealth and torpedo detection levels have been rebalanced accordingly.
• "Fast Mode" of torpedoes rebalanced. Range penalty is less but accuracy is reduced further.

Changelog updated.
Soon the build goes to testing phase.