Feedback Post (Long) - II: Electric Boogaloo

[Kane]

 

1) Ship flaws.

I'm going to some effort to restrain my language here. But ship flaws are a decent idea executed in the absolutely worst way possible. The idea of a ship having flaws is and of itself not bad, but this is beyond the ridiculous. 3/4's of any fleet I build is full of shitheap warships apparently made by drunken monkeys carefully disguised as dock workers. I'm not joking, the tooltip box on most of my ships needs more room to list all the flaws than it does to list all of the other features of the ship.

 

Refits don't appear to do actually do anything to address this problem. I have ships with just about every flaw they can have, that have been refit 4-5 times, and still have every possible flaw. Hell, some refits I seem to end up with more flaws when technology upgrades are involved.

 

This entire system either needs to be re-worked, or it needs to go away.

 

And before someone comes and tells me a trick about making more ships and scraping those that have flaws...no. Just no. I shouldn't have to build 60 ships just to get 5 that don't appear to have been made by drunken crack-addicts using duct-tape and aluminum foil.

 

 

Suggestions for fixing...

 

A) Diminishing flaws by class. It makes a lot of sense for the first ship of a new class to have several flaws. However as lessons are learned during construction and operation, the number of possible flaws needs to go down as more ships of the class are built.

 

B. There needs to be a limit on the number of flaws that can attach to any one ship. Because as it stands it is just stupid.

C.  As someone else on the forum suggested, flaws could be made class-based rather than being randomized for each and every ship made.  If this route is chosen, then refits need to do a lot more (ie actually do something) in reducing those flaws.

 

2) Torpedoes.

 

Torpedoes...my god, torpedoes.

 

A. This may just be my experience, but there is something seriously imbalanced here. Even when I've reached the point of oxygen torpedoes, I still experience roughly 85-90% duds on impact. I've come close to throwing my computer a few times after slipping a destroyer next to a battleship, firing 8 torpedoes, watching 5 of them hit....and all be duds!

 

I'd be much less pissed about this, except for the fact that the AI never seems to have this problem. Since dud torpedoes were introduced I can count on one hand the number of times one of my battleships was hit by torpedo that turned out to be a dud. I'm not convinced the AI has the same dud chance we do.

 

B. I'll touch more on this in a second, but torpedoes are too weak. This is particularly infuriating given how hard it is to get a torpedo that 1) Doesn't veer off course, and 2) Actually explodes when it hits the target. A large torpedo hit should be the kiss of death to anything without a torpedo defense system, and should still be a big deal for anything with a TDS that doesn't overmatch the torpedo (such as a level-5 TDS vs. a 16" torp)

 

We should not be seeing destroyers surviving exploding hits from 24" torpedoes. It is not an exaggeration to say that such a hit should blow the damn thing in two. If this is how torpedoes are going to be going forward, their damage needs a serious buff. Even if things are going to change going forward, torpedo damage still needs a buff.

 

 

3) Armor

 

I....can't figure out how armor works any more. With the changes that have been made, particularly in regards to citadels and layers of armor. I've run a number of custom battles where I've watched 20" guns firing super-heavy shells only achieve partial pens on ships with less than 10 total inches of deck plating. All while the tool-tip says my gun should be penetrating a hundred inches or more at the range the partial-pen occurs.

 

The math simply isn't working. According to tooltips, at least 90% of a shell's penetration is lost before reaching the 3rd layer of an All or Nothing scheme. Okay, this is, at least. How do I figure out the rest? How do I figure out how the final 1" of an AON scheme is stopping shells that should still have 10+ inches of penetration left?

 

Maybe its just me, but as it stands I can't actually figure out how much armor I need to put on my ships to protect them from a given caliber. I can't tell if I'm over-armoring them, under-armoring them, etc without putting as close a configuration as I can into custom battle, and letting the AI shoot me. There needs to be a more reasonable way for me to tell what my armor is going to stop and what it isn't.

 

Don't misinterpret me, I'm not unhappy with the system itself. A ship should be armored against its own guns, and if a ship is going to carry 20", it should be armored against them. But I have to have some means of figuring how how much armor I actually need to some reasonable degree of accuracy.

Also, something is seriously f'ing wrong when I am routinely seeing iron plate blocking 13" guns at less than 1 kilometer.  Armor is broked.  Its either borked because its giving way more defense than it should, or its borked because shells are scoring deck hits at ranges where that's damn near impossible.  Either way, it needs to be fixed.
 

4) Roach Ships

 

This ties in to comments above about armor and torpedoes. But we once again seem to be in a situation where smaller ships, cruisers and destroyers especially are able to endure way more punishment than they should. A hit from a 16" gun, with HE or a 24" torpedo should pretty much be the end for any destroyer. But I'm back to seeing destroyers survive 20" HE rounds, and 24" torpedoes and continuing the fight. This should not happen.

 

Destroyers and torpedo boats need to be made harder to hit, but much more fragile. Many navies hovered around 5" guns for secondaries as that was seen as the minimum needed to inflict crippling damage on a destroyer in 1 hit. If a 5" is capable of doing that, a 16, 18, or 20 should be gross overkill.

Cruisers simply need to be more fragile than they are as it stands cruisers seem to tank 16" fire better than any real-world battleship would in their place.

 

5) Submarines

 

Like that they're in the game. Don't like the implementation and that they get no design phase of their own. Have my doubts this will change. However, submarines take way too long to enter the game. The first time a submarine was able to fire a torpedo while sumberged was in 1886...good luck having any kind of functional submarine at all by that point in this game, even if one focuses all research on subs.

 

6) Campaign

 

Canals. Good that they're in the game, execution is lacking. If I'm at war against the US, I shouldn't be able to use the Panama Canal. If I'm a war with Germany, I shouldn't be able to use the Kiel Canal. As it stands there are no inhibitions in the game against using a canal controlled by the enemy. This needs to change.

 

Victory Points: We need a clear detailed explanation of how they actually work, and how we or the AI can seem to accumulate them without actually doing anything.

 

Blockades: Did the devs turn this off? I remember some time ago managing to kill Great Britain via blockade and driving her into bankruptcy. This no longer seems to be possible, as many times I've kept nations blockaded for decades at a time. Despite the transport losses, their negative economic growth never lasts. Eventually the blockaded nation's economy rebounds and grows despite the blockade.  This needs to be addressed, as it stands blockades don't seem to actually do anything when being blockaded should be an incredibly big deal.

 

Mission Generation: I always keep the research slider to full, and have been either advanced, or sometimes very advanced in my tech. Problem is, once this happens, the enemy refuses to fight me. Even if my ships are faster, the game never generates any missions. If it does, it will be just another convoy raid. I can never actually use my tech advantage, because once I have it the game refuses to give me missions.

 

Also, ship position on the map seems to mean basically nothing. In war with Russia, I parked a fleet of BB's, CA, and CL's right off their ports in the Baltic. Routinely I watched Russian ships sails out of their ports, sail through the Kiel canal which I as Germany controlled, and go off and do their own thing. All without ever interacting with the huge fleet that was probably within visual range of their port.

 

On the rare occasion a mission does generate, I get severely handicapped. I'll have cruisers and destroyers operating with a battleship. Yet when a mission is generated, my battleship conveniently gets left out of the fighting. Why the hell would my cruisers and destroyers generate a battle independently of the battleship they're attached to, when the whole reason for them being there is to escort the battleship(s)? They're part of a fleet, they're suppose to operate together.  This is particularly egregious since in the instances I saw it happening, my battleship(s) were faster than my cruisers!  So one can't even argue that they left the slow battleship behind to force the engagement.

 

Even worse. I parked not 1, not 2, but 3 different fleets in the Strait of Hormuz. I then watched as seven...seven Russian fleets all sailed through the straight, past all three of my waiting fleets without ever generating a battle. There is no way in hell a single fleet should have been able to sail through that strait without being blocked by at least of one the three fleets waiting there.

 

 

7) Campaign Map

 

We need more utility on the campaign map, such as the ability to set the condition of ships in port, while viewing that port.

 

Example. I playing as Germany have ships stationed in China. I'm not looking to antagonize the Japanese or the Chinese. So I want to put the ships in the local port to Limited action. Problem is, I can't do that from the port itself. I end up having to write down the names of all the ships there, then go to my main fleet list, find them one at a time, and manually change them. The ability to do this from the port itself would be an incredibly welcome quality-of-life feature.

 

Second. I've asked for this before, I'll ask again. We need a way to expand our ports when we want to. Using my above example, if I intend to keep a fleet stationed in China, I need to be able to spend some of my money to expand the port there, and bring it up to snuff for the ships I'll be keeping there.

 

Third. We need the ability to actively choose to do things like attack enemy ports. My ships have spent long-tracts of time in blockades (that apparently do nothing) all adjacent to completely undefended ports. The only thing that should be any obstacle to me in attacking those ports should be mines and shore batteries. But as it stands, my ships just sit there doing nothing. And doing nothing is boring.

 

 

 

That's all I have for now.

But I will thank the devs for finally listening to my previous critique, and that my battleship radios now weigh less than entire destroyers.

Edited November 3, 2022 by Kane

[Danz_Von_Luck]

You don't need the name of each ship in a specific port to change roles just the name of the port. You can order your ship screen by port and then do them all in one go

[ZorinW]

1 hour ago, Danz_Von_Luck said:

You don't need the name of each ship in a specific port to change roles just the name of the port. You can order your ship screen by port and then do them all in one go

IF that list would actually include all ports that one controls, which it doesn't.

[neph]

Flaws are perfectly fine as they are. Choose at most one advanced technology to put on your boat. If you're throwing all the 5% flaw or worse techs on at once you're almost guaranteed trouble.

 

Rather, flaw % (& flash fire chance %) should be displayed in the ship designer HUD like stability & engine efficiency are

[Skeksis]

48 minutes ago, neph said:

Flaws are perfectly fine as they are. Choose at most one advanced technology to put on your boat. If you're throwing all the 5% flaw or worse techs on at once you're almost guaranteed trouble.

 

Rather, flaw % (& flash fire chance %) should be displayed in the ship designer HUD like stability & engine efficiency are

I think the AI needs to be… let’s say, ‘a bastard’.

To do that it needs to apply best tech. Ok it’s not doing that fully, yet, but maybe that’s because it’s still a WIP/placeholder and will be improved dramatically sometime soon. But nonetheless, to challenge the player, best tech has got to be flawless. Otherwise, battles will forever be unchallenging.

And if that happens, battles are endanger of becoming passive or unintelligible – players will sooner or later skip because they can’t be bothered.

IMO, it’s a greater issue than just a fun gimmick.

[Kane]

3 hours ago, neph said:

Flaws are perfectly fine as they are. Choose at most one advanced technology to put on your boat. If you're throwing all the 5% flaw or worse techs on at once you're almost guaranteed trouble.

 

Rather, flaw % (& flash fire chance %) should be displayed in the ship designer HUD like stability & engine efficiency are

No, they aren't.  Not even close.  The fact you'd say they are borders on insulting.

So just how exactly am I supposed to gauge my tech?  How many generations behind in technology does my brand-new warship have to be before I know its safe to put something on there?  Do my turrets need to be 1 generation behind?  2 generations behind?  How far behind do they have to go before I know I won't be creating a shitheap underneath my main guns?

What about my engines?  Do I need to research gas turbines before I'm finally safe to put a regular turbine on my ship without in being deluged in engine problems?

What about my guns?  Do I need Mark-IV's before I can safely upgrade my fielded ships to Mark-II?
Edit:  Oh wait, I don't even have a choice on this one, since I can only use the most modern, guns, and any refit to an older ship forces an upgrade to newer guns.

And if I have flaws, just how many refits do I need in order to get rid of them?  5?  No, 5 doesn't do it.  10?  15?  20?  How many times should I be prepared to refit the same ship before its not a shitheap?

This is one of the main problems, and why flaws are not as you say "fine", they are a mechanic that is beyond broken and needs to be addressed.

Another is why I'll build 10 ships of identical design, and they all have wildly different flaws despite all coming from the same template and using the same tech.  This is not fine.  Its not even close to fine.


 

Edited November 3, 2022 by Kane

[Kane]

7 hours ago, Danz_Von_Luck said:

You don't need the name of each ship in a specific port to change roles just the name of the port. You can order your ship screen by port and then do them all in one go

Which adds more steps to the process than it should actually take.  While viewing the ships in port, I should be able to interact with those ships, in that window, without having to go to another to give orders to the ships I'm already viewing.  Hence why this is a QOL suggestion.

[Danz_Von_Luck]

7 hours ago, ZorinW said:

IF that list would actually include all ports that one controls, which it doesn't.

No but it lists every port with a ship in it