Feedback & Suggestions

[Runsva]

For some time now, I've had the chance to experience Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts. 

I first acquired the game in its very early access stage back in 2020, and since I've also acquired it on Steam. At this point I've had the chance to try out the vast majority of the content that the game has to offer, and hence I wanted to provide some feedback on some of the features I've encountered and some suggestions.

 

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Firstly, I want to say that this game shows real promise.

 

As someone who has been very invested in the warship video game community for the better part of the past decade, I can confidently say that this game is very unique in it's concept and gameplay.

 

To start off with some positives, I think that the overall art-style and graphics theme of the game is very fitting and appropriate. You appear to have chosen an middle-of-the-road approach when it comes to graphics quality, and I'm very happy with it. The models of the various ship parts have just the right balance between quality & minimalism, and I don't believe that making your ship models as detailed as the ones present in World of Warships would be the way to go personally. The ocean graphics are also quite impressive, and while you don't appear to have any underwater elements modeled out, what we are able to see when it comes to water models is quite good.

 

Additionally, I think that your sound design is quite good. I'm an especially big fan of the water splashes sounds upon shell impacts with the ocean water. They're louder than most other games' simillar splash sounds, and they feel way more realistic. You've pretty much nailed it with the ocean splash sounds, the only other game that comes close would be the original Battlestations: Midway. I also like most of the muzzle explosion sounds, and I'm excited to know whether you'll also implement engine sounds too.

 

Moreover, I think that modularization of ship parts is done quite well. It appears you've pretty much found a good middle ground between complexity and simplicity when it comes to ship parts, with only limiting it to the Hull, Towers, Funnels, Barbettes & Guns. That way, users get to spend a relatively balanced amount of time planning their ship designs & actually playing them. I think you've pretty much struck the perfect balance when it comes to ship design complexity, and if I were you I wouldn't change it.

 

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Moving into areas that would require improvements, the first thing I wanted, and in my opinion the single largest issue that your game is currently facing, is overall AI inconsistency.

There are certain times in certain missions that I played in which the AI of my ships appears to be very apt at targeting enemy vessels, while in certain other missions is fails to hit almost any enemy targets. In my opinion, whatever system is being used to simulate aiming errors with the ships' guns to handicap the player, is too obvious.

 

Secondly, I want to comment on the shell impact decal markings on spots where shells impacted the ships.

While I really like the presence of such decal markins, I can't help but notice that larger such markings appear to only be projected onto a single axis plane, likely the plane parallel to the surface which the shell directly impacted. This appears to cause weird graphical appearances, where the damaged texture is quite clearly overly stretched over any surfaces that don't allign with the plane of the surface that was directly hit by the shell, such as in this example:

 

Thirdly, I want to mention the fact that turret guns appear to often times elevate past the visual limits of their turrets. This only tends to happen during engagements at extreme ranges, and often looks like this:

 

Lastly, I want to comment on the fact that refitting ships in the world campaign appears to produce some strange behaviour;

In my latest playthrough as Austria-Hungary in the 1890 start date, I designed a few ship types, and I wanted to refit some of them to upgrade them. After I conducted a refit in the ship designed, and clicked on "Save", I noticed that the old design was still present in the design list. I then went ahead and immediately deleted the old designs, so I would only have the new updated ones.

After closing out of the ship designer and going back to the world map, all my refitted designs appeared to have a number appended at the end of their design name:

 

I was also unable to actually build any of the refitted designs, as the "Build Ship" button would become greyed-out upon selecting any of the refitted designs.

 

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In conclusion, this game has real potential that, if most of the important bugs get ironed out, will undoubtedly shine through to make your game stand out amongst the rest of the naval war games.

Edited December 20, 2023 by Runsva
attempt to fix images

[PhoenixLP44]

all of your pictures are broken

 

[Runsva]

6 hours ago, PhoenixLP44 said:

all of your pictures are broken

 

Strange... I can see all the images without issue.

I've just edited the post and re-attached all the images manually. Let me know if they're visible now.

[PhoenixLP44]

11 hours ago, Runsva said:

Strange... I can see all the images without issue.

I've just edited the post and re-attached all the images manually. Let me know if they're visible now.

They are working now.

Also the refit is eorking as intended. If you want to build directly from a refit design you need to copy and save it.

Refits are only there to improve previous designs.

Edited December 21, 2023 by PhoenixLP44

[Markus1985]

 

Hi again I'm Markus. I hope I'm not interrupting this thread. This is a repost of suggestions from the version update thread, but with a few more added from my recent campaign.

I've been trying out the releases of the game back and forth over the years and overall I really like what I see and what it can developed into further into the future. I really enjoy the ship building and to build and upgrade the navy and nation over the campaign. But I only now decided to join in here because I'd like to pitch four feature requests that I feel could benefit the game. In general these have to do with the ports and task forces.

1. A way to gather your ships into task forces wherever they are on the map.

At one point you'll get a lot of ports and your ships will spread out, especially if you don't decide where you want to build them. Therefore I'd like to sugest a feature where you can basically order your ships to gather at a specific place into a task force. That way you don't have to look up each and every one of all of your ports, ships, classes etc to gather your ships and assemble the "perfect" task force you want. This way you'd go through your ordinary list of ships, create a new task force by ordering among each available ship you'd like it to have, and then order said ships to join up at a certain sea, point or port on the map. After which said ships will start their journey, gather up into the ordered task force. The order should also include how long you have to wait until the ships arrive at the point you asked for, as well as if you've reached the total tonnage or crew capacity of the task force and if the ships risk running low on fuel.

2. A way to quickly see which ports have ships and how many.

If the first feature request is implemented this one may not be as important. But when I'm presently trying to find my ships I end up looking around the map, hoovering the mouse over each and every port trying to find my ships. This is quite a long and tedious process, especially when you own many ports and your ships have returned to a random port to repair after a battle. There is simply no quick way to find your ships when they are not at sea.

Therefore I'd like a way to see which ports have ships and not. The easiest, I imagine, would be to use different colors to highlight the port icon on the map depending of how much port capacity is used. Imagine a coloured aura or glowing effect around the port name or icon.

For instance an empty port is not marked at all. Casablanca.

However when there are ships present it goes green. Casablanca. 

When the ships starts pilling up closer to critical it goes yellow. Casablanca.

And when it reaches over critical capacity it goes red. Casablanca.

Doing this will both help you find your ships, as well as quickly track down ports that drain your budget if they work over full capacity.

3. A way to highlight which ports you'd like to build ships at.

This one isn't too important, but just like how you can decide which ports your task forces should join up at to repair, I think there should be a way to decide which ports/shipyards you'd like to build ships at.

4. Show how much tonnage your task force has or will have.

I hope this one is easy to implement and ever since the naval invasion was introduced I hoped this one would. In short, when I in the present game version gather a new task force by selecting a port and pick out the ships in a port I'd like to gather, I'd also like to know exactly how much tonnage the task force will be. At present you only see the number of crew, which of course is important. But along this crew number I'd also like to see the current tonnage of the task force, both when you gather it in port and when the task force is out at sea.

At present the only two ways to confirm the tonnage is to see how much of the port capacity is used, and how well you've reached the criteria to commence the naval invasion. Other wise you'd have to guess something that should only need a quick glance in the task force information to know how big your task force is.

5. Show the current and expected shipyard capacity when accepting or rejecting an order to build ships

This, just like nr 4 is about the lack of information when you make decisions. As of the latest build whenever I get an order for ships from a minor power I get the number, what kind of ships and the cost to build it for them. However in addition to I'd like to know the following:

• The current ship yard capacity and what it will become if you accept the order.
• In what time they expect the ships to be delivered and if that is feasible with the current ship yard capacity. 
• How much will the relationship between the nations be affected if you accept or deny the order of ships.

This is something I'd love to see more of in general when it comes to your decisions to events. I'd like to know as exactly as possible what consequences these actions will have and what you'd have to do to make them happen if you choose to go through with it. 

6. A way to manually decide what fleet or port you'd like to engage with your fleets.

This one would probably be very hard to implement and I don't expect it to happen soon since it would involve new UI and be a drastic shift from the current randomness of the game. In short I'd like to see a way to not just move the fleets to a position on the map, but to also choose what fleets or ports I'd like to engage with. I imagine the system to involve a new click, drag and plot action.

You place a fleet at position X and on the next turn the fleet arrives. You now see that there is an enemy fleet a few inches to the east at position Y. You can also see if the fleet at Y is currently moving (the direction forward could be clearer). In the current game there is (in my experience) a bit of randomness at play if these fleets will engage or not. Even if you'd place the fleets right next or in their sphere of influence there is no guaranty that they'll engage. 

This is where my suggestion comes in. Once you've placed your fleet at position X, I'd like to be able to click and plot a new course of engagement from the fleet at X, to the enemy fleet at Y and basically try to improve the chances to engage with them. This should probably not be a 100% sure way to engage the fleet, but this would at least give a bit more control to the player.

This could also be implemented in other aspects of the game. For instance if you'd like to generate negative relations with a minor power to sprung an invasion you can place your fleet next to their shore and plot an engagement action to a port to generate a blockade or power display that will negatively affect the relationship between the countries. 

Kind regards, and looking forward to the next version. 

Markus

Edited February 8, 2024 by Markus1985

[Markus1985]

Thank you for adding my fourth suggestion in the 1.5 update. It really makes it easier to plan and organize the task forces. 

Looking forward to more updates in the future. 😀

[Nick Thomadis]

Thank you (and many others) who kindly help us to improve the game. 
More mini-improvements based on your or others' suggestions shall follow.

[Markus1985]

Hi and thank you for your hard work. It's great to see how much of our feedback is turned into actual features in the game.

Therefore I'd like to add another suggestion based on a topic that have frequently appeared again and again in the forums, namely how much influence the admiral should have over the nation, and particular the army forces?

I do agree that the game as a whole should stay in the perspective of the admiral and navy. But I also think there could be a way for the admiral to influence the other parts of the government. In short because the navy is a part of the defensive capabilities of the nation and even if the navy isn't necessarily the only one deciding the course of the nation, it should still be able to argue for and have some influence over the politics. And this potential influence will depend on the overall state of the nation.

My suggestion is therefore to create a new political tab in which the nation is divided into several parties or sectors, each with a national focus that benefit or have consequences for the development of the nations citizens. We already have different forms of government in the game, and these should then have a specific relationship to these sectors or parties of the nation:

Public sector, Private sector, Industry/Trade sector and Military sector (which in this game is divided in to army and naval forces). Depending on the type of government the sectors have a different trust or sway over the others. A democracy have a stronger connection for the public and private sector, while a militant government have stronger connection for the military. Depending of the state of the world and the outcome of wars the unrest of the nations citizens have them revaluate if the current government is the best for them, and votes to keep or replace them.

Each year there should be a council where these sectors meet up to discuss the overall plan and budget for the country. At this table the admiral should be able to argue for raised navy budgets to build or modernise the navy, but also listen to the concerns of the other parties and what you and they can do to benefit each other. To get sway or influence over the others you can use your prestige to raise your chances to get what you want, or spend to increase the chances of the other sectors wishes. 

There should then be different actions available that you can spend your influence on that influence your relationship and standing with the other sectors. In the case of the game many players are annoyed by the military and how it seems to do to little or to much in the wrong places. What if you at this meeting could actually listen to the army and see what they're planning and then decide to support or sugest other possible targets. Or if you could team up with the private or trade sector to create a stronger merchant fleet? Depending on how much prestige and trust they have in you, they have more faith in your suggestions. And if you'd suggest that the government should step in to stabilise an ungoverned country, they may or may not agree, and their trust in you may grow or lower depending on how the operation turns out.

Depending on your actions in the game you can gain navy prestige and raise or lower the unrest, but also the GDP of the nation. If you construct new ships there is need for workers and trade for resources that could benefit the nation as a whole, or topple it completely if the strong navy becomes too big and so expensive that other social benefits of the citizens become lacking.

This is of course quite the large suggestion and not something that can be implemented right a way. This is probably not the best way to implement it either. But I definitely think a system like this could give more control to the player as well as more consequences as they play the game.

Edited March 28, 2024 by Markus1985

[Markus1985]

Hi again.

It's been a while since I last played but decided to try out the latest builds and came up with some more suggestions for features along the ones I've already suggested before. 

- Button for increased damage control and repairs.

Since the increased damages and casualties from HE and fires spreading through the ship (haven't tried the latest patch so I don't know if this is improved), I felt the need to be able to temporarily increase the damage control, pumps and repair to at least try to save the ships.

If I recall it was in Empire and Napoleon Total war ship battles that they had something similar to what I'd like to sugest here. Basically a button that assigns the main parts of the crew for damage control. Basically you'd sacrifice damage output (your guns fire rate) to increase the damage control. 

I tend to stick with the campaign when I play, and usually start at the very beginning, which mean a lack of tech for advanced damage control, and I think this could at least be of a little help.

- Your surrendered ships shouldn't be lost if you win the battle

Again this comes from the great increase of surrendered ships, as the HE and fires would create enormous casualties (which I don't know if it's been improved or not). But because of this I've lost a lot of ships from surrendering lately, and I wonder if it would be better if the side that wins a battle gets to keep the ships they lost to surrendering crew?

In short, the winner of a battle will get its surrendered ships placed in port for repairs as well as a new commission, since so much of the crew was lost.

-More to do with your renown / prestige points.

It's probably common that at some point during your campaign you'll stack your prestige pretty high, until you can pretty much do what you want without suffering any short turn consequences.

It ends up being a resource that just sits there. That is why I'd like to do more with this prestige in the campaign. I've already suggested some ideas for that above, but I also have some new ones bellow.

- More options to affect relationships with minor nations and a more aggressive fleet stance.

During my campaign as Austria-Hungary I came across this event.

Am I reading this correctly that we already have "relations" with the minor nations as well? The event clearly says that this will harm the relations with Ceylon. I imagine that -5 however should be attributed to Britain since they owned Ceylon at this time. But then again what actually makes minor nations gravitate towards alliances and trade deals with you in the first place?

If there is actually invisible relations that we can't see but have a chance to affect depending on your actions I'd love to see them displayed, as well as be a bigger part of the campaign.

Let's say I place a task force in the eastern Mediterranean. This should increase my presens there and should then also destabilise the power balance in this region. This would then mean that the relations with all of the nations with shores to the eastern Mediterranean would be affected either negatively or positively depending on your fleet stance. But further more it would affect the nations you anchor your ships at and increase the chance of an invasion (for instance if you anchor close to Athens you'd affect Greece and the Ottoman Empire more than Egypt and Syria).

Speaking of fleet stances I'd also like you to add the indiscriminate submarine warfare to surface ships as well. This would be a straight up harassment (even during peace time) of the close by nations to increase the chances of armed conflict with minor nations. It is a given that you'd not make a good impression on your own nation or other powers, which would lead to a decrease of your renown or prestige points.

But doing this you would then be able to either play aggressively to create conflict and invasions for your nations well being, or become a nation that try to uphold the peace in a region and protect the merchant fleets in the area sparking a conflict with the overbearing nation. This would off course affect how the entire worlds nations see your nations, and affect their overall relationship and how willing they are to make alliances and trade deals with you. 

- Nations government style affects their aggressiveness or peacefullness.

This is another way how your prestige could be used more. My idea is that the government style would affect the general state of the nation. A monarchy or empire style nation would be more nationalistic and ambitious in its aim to increase its size and influence, while a democratic nation would be more peaceful. There would be a dynamic at play here on a global scale where some government styles are more inclined to get a long better while others would not.

This would be another challenge for the player, depending on if they want to go with the flow and style of a nation, or if they'll go against it. To do this you'd have build up your prestige points to be able to spend them to influence the government. But depending on the style of government it would be easier or harder for some nations to build alliances. It shouldn't be impossible to create an alliance between a monarchy and a republic or a dictatorship, but you'd have to use more points to get the same effect, or you'd have to use your fleets to try and stabilise or to escalate the power balance and relations between the nations (which should also anger or please the government if it goes with or against their style).

- Minimise event popups.

 I've been playing some of Paradox strategy games lately and they have two small features I appreciate; the ability to press on the info in the pop up to "go to the location", and the option to temporarily minimise the event pop ups.

I'll use the above event as an example. As Austria, Ceylon is far away, but I only know that after I pressed it and looked it up. If it was a paradox game I could have pressed the nation/country line "Ceylon" in the event text, to go there on the map, as well as still be able to interact with the game (even though it is paused until you've made your choice). 

These are two features I'd love to see in the game. That you don't have to make choices immediately when you get the pop ups, and that you can wait to start the battles. 

- A gradual build up of experience when at sea

And lastly I'd like to suggest that when a task force is placed out at sea there should be a gradual increase of experience gained since the cadet crew is now actually out at sea. This shouldn't mean that you'd be able to reach seasoned or veteran crews just by having them at sea at peace time. But it would be nice if you could have another reason to place your ships at sea, if only to increase the cadets to at least a green status.

Kind regards, and looking forward to the next version. 

Markus

 

[Markus1985]

Thanks for all your and other co workers hard work at Game labs Nick Thomadis.

Not sure how or if the development of the game will continue after your departure, but I wanted to bump up this thread as a place to gather more suggestions of what would improve the game if there are further patches and updates. 

Feel free to add more suggestions here in hope that the developers will have all suggestions added in one place.

Either way, thanks for the many years of fun with Ultimate admiral Dreadnoughts.
I hope for more, but these years have been fun too.