Alpha-9 in Progress

[Joryl]

God I am so excited for this update  

[Jord109]

When do we think this will be released, don't need exact date bu the month would be nic.

[TotalRampage]

1 hour ago, Jord109 said:

When do we think this will be released, don't need exact date bu the month would be nic.

Its up in the air unfortunately because of covid they pushed back some planned features. We as in the community are hoping for a campaign release of 2020. Also on July 20th they said this 

Quote

We have to reshuffle the team in order to put the project back on tracks. As a result, the Steam release date has moved from 10th of August to end of Autumn. More developers will join the project as well to speed up the development. This will of course delay us initially but it will pay off in the future.

So home by Christmas boys we hope

Edited September 22, 2020 by TotalRampage

[Jord109]

1 hour ago, TotalRampage said:

Its up in the air unfortunately because of covid they pushed back some planned features. We as in the community are hoping for a campaign release of 2020. Also on July 20th they said this 

Thankyou for the responnse

[TotalRampage]

On 9/22/2020 at 12:39 PM, Jord109 said:

Thankyou for the responnse

Anytime bud

[Worry_Rock]

2nd Amendment Update

[HMS Skillet]

Love everything with the game so far! The 2 only things I have a huge issue with is I wish barbettes were able to be placed freely as it REALLY limits the freedom and creativity when designing ships. The second is that theres no save file for ships youve designed. Really hope they add those features!

Edited September 26, 2020 by HMS Skillet

[HMS Skillet]

The Barbette thing is a major one, in a game about designing your own ships, limiting where barbettes can be placed really forces you into making the same designs. Would also be cool if you could edit the shape of the premade hulls like make the bow or stern longer, etc instead of the premade hulls we have now. That would add even more flexibility to the designs we can create!

Edited September 26, 2020 by HMS Skillet

[1MajorKoenig]

23 hours ago, HMS Skillet said:

The Barbette thing is a major one, in a game about designing your own ships, limiting where barbettes can be placed really forces you into making the same designs. Would also be cool if you could edit the shape of the premade hulls like make the bow or stern longer, etc instead of the premade hulls we have now. That would add even more flexibility to the designs we can create!

Indeed. Same for the superstructures - we need some more variety Pls  

[Shaftoe]

Still come to check forums every day for Alpha-9 updates. 

So far nothing. 

[Cptbarney]

2 hours ago, Shaftoe said:

Still come to check forums every day for Alpha-9 updates. 

So far nothing. 

Ill take a guess, next week on thursday lol.

[Marshall99]

2 hours ago, Shaftoe said:

Still come to check forums every day for Alpha-9 updates. 

So far nothing. 

I always check the forum, at least three times a day. I can't wait for the update. 

[Aceituna]

14 minutes ago, Marshall99 said:

I always check the forum, at least three times a day.

Since high schools in my homeland are switching to online classes again on Monday I think that constant refreshing and checking the forum will be my only activity for next few weeks xd.

Also five days ago Nick said that they will inform us soon so...

Edited October 2, 2020 by Aceituna

[Cptbarney]

Me waiting for Alpha 9 atm.

Forum waiting for Alpha 9:

[DerRichtigeArzt]

Ussualy they release it when we are spamming how we are dying of boredom. If the time has come then it means they are almost done. It has been like that for every patch. It goes like this.

1 new patch announced 

2 asking specifics 

3 Asking for a rough date of release

4 comparing the wait for the patch to waiting for one's own demise

5 patch releases

6 bitching about ones long awaited feature not beeing added

7 bitching about bugs

8 hotfix

9 q/a or a "which missions remain overly difficult" type question

10 new patch announced

 

[1MajorKoenig]

I am curious to see the new content - at least quads are in I hear. Maybe too early to hope for Ship Designer improvements but still very curious 

[BuckleUpBones]

I'm not so sure about these 'screen formations'. 

First, player battle activity is selecting targets and directing ship groups, using screen formation will cut out commanding these groups, reducing player activity (even lower to what it is now). Secondly, better admirals or human admirals would probably command their only battle groups to out smart the AI anyway.

On the AI side I can see formations being used as the setup but once the battle is underway I can't see them maintained, especially when fleets run through each other and if the AI tries to maintain the formation throughout the whole battle it could make ship groups (and fleets) predicable, setting ships up to be sitting ducks. On the battle chaotic side, it's going to take alot of development to solve, that is to maintain formations during battle (and to know when to break them).

All-in-all I doubt 'screen formations' would actually be worth it to the serious gamer, maybe suited for the lazy admiral.
 

Edited October 4, 2020 by BuckleUpBones

[akd]

The new screen formation has no connection to actual tactics until very late in the era as an anti-aircraft screen and to a lesser degree anti-submarine screens (but more in regards to convoy defense for the latter).  This complex formation would pose insurmountable command and control problems during a fleet battle for a good portion of this era.

There is a good overview of formations and maneuver during WWII here:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/44888020

Edited October 4, 2020 by akd

[SonicB]

On 10/4/2020 at 3:00 PM, akd said:

The new screen formation has no connection to actual tactics until very late in the era as an anti-aircraft screen and to a lesser degree anti-submarine screens (but more in regards to convoy defense for the latter).  This complex formation would pose insurmountable command and control problems during a fleet battle for a good portion of this era.

There is a good overview of formations and maneuver during WWII here:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/44888020

This is a great read and well worth creating a free jstor account if you don't have one.

In particular I want to point out this maneuvring board as used by the USN and others:
One of these in the corner of the screen would be a far better way of managing formations than the current approach. Simply drag your formation ship icons into the position you want them relative to the lead ship, or choose a preset and instantly see where it will put your ships relative to each other. Battlestations Midway/Pacific used this method and it worked very well indeed.

[Steeltrap]

9 hours ago, SonicB said:

Simply drag your formation ship icons into the position you want them relative to the lead ship, or choose a preset and instantly see where it will put your ships relative to each other. Battlestations Midway/Pacific used this method and it worked very well indeed.

This is exactly what I had in mind to suggest, just haven't got around to it.

I want to be able to position my ships as I please, not according to a limited available format; think of it as the formation equivalent to having fixed available barbette locations vs more flexibility. No issue with the AI using certain 'vanilla' formations, nor players electing to use them as well. I, however, would like to be able to choose to place my ships, and formations, as I wish if I can be bothered.

While it's more programming and thus more work and testing etc, the whole matter of how ships are manoeuvred is a MAJOR factor and topic.

I want to be able to set a fleet speed without having to jump to each formation IN the fleet. I also want the ships to be able to maintain specified distances of separation, even when they may be capital ships with differing performance characteristics. As an aside, I suspect part of the reason the AI gets so charlie-foxed at the moment is this issue, including the fact the lead ship of a division will accelerate to the ordered speed and leave its other members behind. That's fine if the speed isn't flank or near flank, but when it is it means the other ships have no way of getting back to their positions. That's NOT how navies manoeuvred.

I also want to be able to dictate a course in degrees through a simple input for either the fleet OR formation OR individual ship. A simple box into which we could type the (compass) course in degrees would suffice. It used to annoy me no end that SH III used to make me jump through hoops to achieve that (I used to use periscope view then the hotkey to set course to view). If I want the FLEET to head on course 125, I ought to be able to set a number into a relevant input mechanism and have the whole fleet, or division, or ship, depending on how I select the command, turn to that course. They should also maintain separation WITHIN the formation and BETWEEN the formations as/once they do so.

Ideally I think their ought to be a mini-map/control station we can 'open', within which we can set courses, speeds and even order which ships to fire at which targets. If it doesn't have the last bit that's ok, but the others really are VERY basic "plot and combat information" functions. That example @SonicB showed of the manoeuvring board is showing the gist of it. The fact I've failed a mission because I've no way of knowing where the last merchant ran away and can't catch it in time is really irritating; your crew would take note of those sorts of things, including the "last observed position, course and speed estimates" of anything that had been reported to them.

Obviously I don't expect these sorts of things to pop into being immediately, but I DO think it's where the devs ought to be heading (pardon the pun, lol). Just another case of asking "what do we KNOW to be fact and thus realistic, and how do we build that or as close as we can manage?" that I would imagined the guiding principle to have been from the start of the project.

Cheers

Edited October 6, 2020 by Steeltrap

[Shiki]

I mostly want QoL changes. Unsurprisingly, most of them are Ship Designer-oriented, since that's the main selling point to me (and quite possibly a lot of other people).

- Options for torpedoes larger than 61-cm / 24in. The Japanese were developing a 72-cm torpedo (11.5 m long, weight 5mt, 850 kg warhead, rated for 54,000 m @ 40 kts) when war broke out and I don't want to be restricted to merely mauling battleships- I want my underwater tactical nukes.

- Options to set the loading angle. You could have it be as simple as three: "Semi-fixed", "Fixed", and "All-Angle". The first would be the default option for ships before 1920 and the second would be default for ships past that period: the former has no benefits or maluses, but the second would potentially offer decreases of weight for the turret (reduced gunwells and simpler loading machinery) at the cost of some rate of fire. All-angle loading could reduce the loading cycle but result in a heavier turret (deepened gunwells and more complex arrangements for ramming shells and bags).

- A general increase in all maximum ranges for all guns past 1920. The Japanese 20-cm/50 No.2 could reach 29,400 metres at its maximum surface-fire elevation; comparable (and even longer) ranges were achieved with similar weapons. Hitting a target with 203 mm shells past 200 hm is an academic question, but I want the option to open fire at those ranges.

- Two new hulls with respective superstructures: one to represent the Japanese Myōkō, Takao, Mogami, and Tone types, and one for the Americans to represent Brooklyn, Wichita, Baltimore, Cleveland, and Des Moines (along with their respective subclasses). You could even scale the former up to 35,000 tons, since a few of the Kongō Daikan proposals used a similar hullform (and I would like to have my Takao-style bridge on everything, wind resistance and giant target be damned).

- Preferably some sort of system where I can do weird calibres, like British and Japanese 140 mm guns, British and Italian 190 mm guns, and of course the characteristic French 138.6 mm and 164.7 mm. It would certainly require quite a bit of work, but a flexible system using sliders to determine bore diameter, muzzle velocity (within reason), shell weights to the nearest kg (or lb), and length of the barrel in calibres (up to L/65?) would probably be optimal. It would certainly allow for more replayability, especially if you could save specific guns (the way you can save ships).

[DerRichtigeArzt]

I feel like the devs didn't really know what they are getting into when they launched this project. There are so many intricacies with naval combat of the 20th century that making it into a game would require at least half a decade of hard work on coding and research. Unless the changes to the dev team were really vast i don't see this game becoming a Sunday armirals dream. It is too basic in its current form and some of the features seem hard to change now. 

Still hoping it will accualy turn out awesome but criticism is the best form of motivation, except money but I already bought the alpha access so criticism is the only thing left for me to give. 

[Skyguy1944]

[IronKaputt]

On 10/7/2020 at 10:19 PM, Shiki said:

The Japanese were developing a 72-cm torpedo (11.5 m long, weight 5mt, 850 kg warhead, rated for 54,000 m @ 40 kts)

Source? I only heard about 780 kg Long Lance variant.

Six-tube launcher also would be nice.

On 10/7/2020 at 10:19 PM, Shiki said:

would probably be optimal

Streamlined shells (I absolutely adore boat-tails), filler % (1,5-3% for AP, up to 15% for HE), dye (and perhaps tracers) color, fuzes (especially for torps).

For guns and mounts: damn RoF and traverse speed, reliability for both cases, barrel life (chrome plating and wear reduce additives), weight reducing tech, base accuracy of course, gain-twist and gradual rifling (dunno if it worked together, but I'm a greedy perfectionist).

Would be sad, if I'll have to simply mod meself some fancy stuff, for it is kinda unsporty.

[Cptbarney]

Well its going to be interesting when this drops, surprised the devs have time to do this along with campaign unless they are planning to push it back further (which is fine as i would rather not have a call of duty dev cycle too be honest).