>>>Beta v1.6 Feedback<<< (Update RC)

[Nick Thomadis]

The beta version of the upcoming major update has become available. Read the news:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1069660/announcements/detail/4328605795694731177 

You can test the new changes and provide feedback in this thread.

***WARNING - VERY IMPORTANT***
Old campaign saves and old ship designs are incompatible. When you install and launch the v1.6 all old saves will be automatically deleted (Naval Academy progress should remain intact). It is mandatory to clean up shared designs manually.

 

(Update 1 - 18/7/2024)
- Fixed potential game launching freeze due to corrupted Shared Designs data. It is advised to check your old shared designs, either re-design or delete them.

(Update 2 - 22/7/2024)
- Fine tuning in the new side targeting mechanics.
- Battle AI improvement to not be obsessed to close in for torpedo attacks unless it is a Destroyer or Torpedo Boat. Previously the AI battleships could be very vulnerable as they tried to approach very slowly instead of utilizing their gun firepower vs the player who exploited this movement and sunk them one by one.
- Added more variance in the visualization of weathers and environments.
- Improved slightly the ship foam effects.
- Improved slightly the ship funnel effects.
- Increased the ship sinking threshold due to fires.
- Fixed a bug that could give two war reparation designs with the same name.
- Added the latest Chinese translation by “Weiyang”.

(Update 3 - 25/7/2024)
- Added back all hull models/guns of v1.5+  that were missing temporarily.  Saves had to be reset. You need to restart campaigns (Please note, that during beta, this procedure will happen occasionally).
- Fine tuned accuracy and ship damage model.
- Crew damage has been fine tuned. Please check if now is more suitable.
- Ship instability and sea motion mechanics have received a new balance.
- Fine tuned ship maintenance, costs in campaign.
- Improved Campaign AI initial fleet composure (will use one extra year, very fast, to build ships).
- Ship weights balances.
- Auto-Design became faster and more effective, producing ships with good protection.
- Further improvement on weather visuals.
- Various minor improvements on UI.
- Other minor fixes, optimizations and improvements.

(Hotfix Update 4 - 26/7/2024)
- Urgent fix, reverting changes allowing guns of older technology to appear in the ship constructor and refit processes. This experimental feature will be canceled because it will cause a lot of issues as we have checked on the beta. We are sorry for the temporary inconvenience. Saves had to be reverted again and we will focus on fixing some minor issues you reported to us, then we will start adding the new ships and models.

(Update 5 - 28/7/2024)
- The ship costs have been balanced to be more inline with historical data as per popular request. Slight ship weight adjustments have been made. Campaign's economy has been adjusted accordingly. Saves had to be reset. Hopefully no more resets will be needed, until we start adding new hulls.
- Fixed old issue, crew quarters not having a cost in campaign.
- Ship motion at sea mechanics further improvements.
- Battle AI improvement on its overall priority logic.
- Balanced Ship instability and fixed issues that have been reported.

(Update 6 - 4/8/2024)
- Further ship costs/weights balance. Should be the last before the new hulls and parts are added, The new costs should be overall very balanced, reflecting the actual combat value of ships. Saves had to be reset. 
- Campaign economy slight balance, following the new ship costs.
- Campaign AI will build enough ships, not so many to exhaust its economy.
- A few minor fixes for the campaign from reports we received.
- Gun ranges increased and shell ballistics balanced accordingly.
- Ship motion at sea mechanics further improvement, for an even more realistic 3D combat experience.
- Auto-Design optimizations. It should be even faster and produce efficient ships.

(Hotfix Update 7 - 4/8/2024)
- Fine tuned shell ballistics, affects also gun penetration and gun ranges.
- Fixed some issues in fuel consumption in the campaign which created a big expense to the nations’ economy.
- Fine tuned Campaign AI finances management.
- Fixed a temporary problem causing new ships to get to repair mode instead of commissioning mode.
- Fixed a temporary problem which disallowed special characters in ship names.

(Update 8 - 9/8/2024)
- Fine tuning in gun accuracy.
- Fine tuning in ship maneuverability.
- Disabled AI command button and Ship identification process during combat. Those aspects were rarely used, could be a reason for rare bugs in the campaign and had a cost in performance. Battles will play even smoother now. More specifically for the Ship identification, you  will be able to fully read all enemy info without the previous time delay. The identification was a left-over feature  for a complex intelligence mechanic that was not worth doing for the sake of a better gameplay experience. This change may affect some battle saves,  but we decided to not reset older saves. If you get any issue, please let us know.
- Various fps optimizations. The frame rate should be significantly increased.
- Increased the penalties of blockade slightly.
- Decreased the revolt chance for some Dutch colonies.
- Fixed issue which could create irreparable ports.
- Fixed an exploit that could make Mothballed ships to skip commissioning when adding crew (Needs testing).
- Fixed issue that could disallow using special characters in ship naming.
- Other minor fixes and improvements.

(Update RC - 10/8/2024)
- Fine tuning in shell ballistics - affects penetration.
- Fine tuning in fire damage mechanics. Crew losses from fire will increase significantly only when structure damage becomes severe.
- Auto-Design optimizations.
- Further fixes - optimizations, increasing combat fps.
- Raised the draught level of Monitor/Virginia ironclads so that they sail better in rough seas. Any mission saves that had those ships will need fixing.
- Fixed again some issues related to mothballing.
- Other minor fixes and improvements.

This build is considered a release candidate. It may get released during this weekend.

Important
Additional work for adding new hulls, new guns, new models and generally new content in the game has been postponed. All these would delay the patch a lot and could produce issues which could take time to resolve. Therefore the update v1.6 will mainly include the aforementioned and planned fixes, rebalances, optimizations etc. an overall improvement of the game and that would be all. The v1.6 Large Patch is scheduled to be offered next week, after receiving feedback that is stable and good enough for a release.

Please restart Steam to get the update
*Warning* This is obviously a beta. When we reset a save, we do it so that the game plays without bugs and you have a smoother gameplay experience. Players who play this beta are kindly asked to not complain that the game cannot save their games. There is a stable live version if you do not want to follow the progress of this beta, although the improvements on it are a must to try out.

[Weiyang]

I am the translator of the Chinese version. First of all, thank you very much for using my translations! After I posted the language file on my own account, I got some feedback from Chinese users. So I updated the language file several times to fix the problems and the final update is on June 14. May I ask which version you are using now? I compared the language file of beta version to my local file and realized it's not exactly the same.

Edited July 18, 2024 by Weiyang

[Darth Khyron]

I seem to be stuck in the loading screen with the new version. I tried several times, yet there is only a picture with description and "...Loading...". I exited the program after a quarter of an hour. What am I doing wrong?

[SirTrafalgar]

5 minutes ago, Darth Khyron said:

I seem to be stuck in the loading screen with the new version. I tried several times, yet there is only a picture with description and "...Loading...". I exited the program after a quarter of an hour. What am I doing wrong?

Same

[Nick Thomadis]

6 hours ago, Weiyang said:

I am the translator of the Chinese version. First of all, thank you very much for using my translations! After I posted the language file on my own account, I got some feedback from Chinese users. So I updated the language file several times to fix the problems and the final update is on June 14. May I ask which version you are using now? I compared the language file of beta version to my local file and realized it's not exactly the same.

Thank you again! We used one file you recommended and transferred the content to the game's data base. We will add the latest version if the one on the forum is the latest. We had a June version.

[Nick Thomadis]

1 hour ago, Darth Khyron said:

I seem to be stuck in the loading screen with the new version. I tried several times, yet there is only a picture with description and "...Loading...". I exited the program after a quarter of an hour. What am I doing wrong?

 

1 hour ago, SirTrafalgar said:

Same

The game probably tries to auto-delete obsolete save files, but some kind of antivirus protection blocks it? Did the game  eventually load for you. We have no such issues reproduced in our machines. 

[Weiyang]

2 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Thank you again! We used one file you recommended and transferred the content to the game's data base. We will add the latest version if the one on the forum is the latest. We had a June version.

Got it! I'll try this beta version and I'll give feedback if any problems!

[Werwaz]

Quote

*NEW HULLS*
- Not yet ready.

what hulls are going to be added for this update?

[kineu.a.hansen]

man this is good to hear that 1.6 is underway and for hulls i love to see some prober british hulls and towers that fit on them speeking there are alots of hulls where sometimes more then half the towers wont fit on them

 

these are all main towers

british hulls 1925

modern destroyer (small) have only 3 towers that fit on it and 10 that dont fit

modern destroyer (standard) only have 3 that fit and 2 that dont fit and 3 that fit in only one spot 

light cruiser vl have 3 towers that fit and 1 that dont fit

modern light cruiser ll have 3 towers that fit and one that dont 

heavy cruiser l have 2 that fit and 1 that dont fit

heavy cruiser ll have 4 that fit and 4 that dont fit

battlecruiser v have 1 that fit and 4 that dont fit

1930 british hull

destroyer lll have 4 that fit and 4 that dont 4

modern destroyer lv have 3 that fit and 10 that dont fit

modern destroyer (standard ) have 3 that fit and 2 that dont fit and 3 that fit in one slot

light cruiser vl  have 3 that fit and 1 that dont fit

modern light cruiser ll have 3 that fit and 1 that dont fit

heavy cruiser ll have 4 that fit and 1 that dont fit

compact heavy have 4 that fit and 1 that dont fit

1940 british hulls

destroyer lll have 4 that fit and 4 that dont fit

modern destroyer (small) have 4 that fit and 9 that dont fit

modern destroyer (standard9 have 3 that fit and 2 that dont fit and that fit in one slot

light cruiser vl have 3 that fit and one that dont fit

modern light cruiser ll have 4 that fit and 1 that dont fit

heavy cruiser ll have 4 that fit and 1 that dont fit

compact heavy cruiser have 4 that fit and 1 that dont fit

these are all the towers that need a look at for 1.6 and please give us some diversity between the towers all of the are more or less the same boring tower i love to see some battleships main towers with an inbuild barbette like queen elizabeth class and hms royal soverign ps i love to give the names of the towers that dont fit but that would take forever to do so this was the best to do

[Fal]

USA Seems to have lost access to Modern Heavy Cruiser II and Modern Light Cruiser II :(

[mrfox1918]

1.6 has been interesting so far. I have played modded for so long it's hard for me to help with any bugs. However so far, the turning seems better (much less "drunken" sailing); the increased fire rates seem alright however ammo use just gets burned through, maybe increase the base ammo storage a bit? Loved this game since before it was on steam and its been great seeing the development.  The only frustrating thing I've seen in 1.6 so far is the auto targeting seems to jump targets much more. Is there a way to over ride the auto targeting if I give a ship a manual target command? Something like always attack manually targeted ship unless line of sight is lost?  

 

With the above post, yes a lot of main towers and funnels seem to not fit their given hulls very well if not at all. Its my only complain with the ship building aspect of this game aside from the almost constant bow heavy ships when I try to make historic designs... Adding a couple casemates to the bow of a ship always makes it insanely bow heavy even if they are only 2 or 4 smaller 4" or 5" inch guns.

 

For example attached I have a dreadnaught hull the only things on it are a triple 14 inch turret and then two 4 inch casemates.
The turret is as far back as it can go and the 2 4" casemates are in the bow most positions. No armor on the ship at all aside from the minimum required 7" main belt armor, and no other items on the ship, so its purely the weight of the guns and base weights of the ship.

There is still... somehow a 2.3% bow/fore offset.... How???

I know this is not a huge number (2.3%) I just find the vanilla ships always have a massive fore weight offset unless you make them very silly looking (funnels as far back as they can go sort of thing) or not putting any bow casemates on, or triple the bow extended armor compared to the fore extended.

 

Any hope or an sms derfflinger hull or ijn ise 1917 hull? my 2 personal fave steel hull ships ^.^ 

Great stuff! Keep up the amazing work!

Edited July 18, 2024 by mrfox1918

[SirTrafalgar]

17 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

 

The game probably tries to auto-delete obsolete save files, but some kind of antivirus protection blocks it? Did the game  eventually load for you. We have no such issues reproduced in our machines. 

I have been able to get in, but it took a significant amount of time to load. Thank you for the suggestions. 

[Darth Khyron]

Thank you for the answers. It is working now without problems.
Ah...I have an issue, but it is with torpedo launchers. Often, they do not turn or get stuck in a position once they fired. In the shipyard, they are being depicted as being able to turn, but in battle, they often get stuck. That mainly happens with later model launchers, but I have encountered this issue with earlier types also.

[Senior Commander]

Fire damage and crew loss could use some better balancing. Right now (at least in 1910) seem to be a long term death sentence. Your ship is probably going to burn down until you surrender due to crew death. Maybe tone down crew losses, or even better have different levels of fire. with the current being a "fire storm" but lower levels one for small fires that will be easy to put out

[DougToss]

2 hours ago, Senior Commander said:

Fire damage and crew loss could use some better balancing. Right now (at least in 1910) seem to be a long term death sentence. Your ship is probably going to burn down until you surrender due to crew death. Maybe tone down crew losses, or even better have different levels of fire. with the current being a "fire storm" but lower levels one for small fires that will be easy to put out

Was that not the reality though, looking at Manilla Bay and Tsushima? Fires burned out of control on warships before the dreadnought era, and pre-dreadnought battleships were also prone to flooding and capsize from mine or torpedo hits due to poor compartmentalization and transverse bulkheads. 

[Senior Commander]

Don't disagree they should be dangerous but this version seems to have kicked it up to 11. For example I had a simple battle of 1 CA and 2 DD vs 1 CA and 1 CL. I sunk the CA with my CA. I then started chasing the CL down with my CA, the CL had a  big speed advantage so I had to use my DDs to corral them. While doing so the small bow fire managed to kill enough of the crew my CA surrendered without ever getting in range of the CL. my CA was max bulkheads and reinforced 1 bulkheads.

The problem isn't so much the damage the fire is doing but how quickly the crew dies, if the fire is spreading that makes sense but I watched on a later battle my CA again got a fire in one compartment, it never spread beyond it, but it kept killing around a dozen people per tick. All I could guess is the fire extinguisher stopped working so they were opening the compartment doors and having crew people jump on the fir in an attempt to smother it.

[DougToss]

Oh gotcha gotcha. Good point. From what I recall about Tsushima, the issue was that gradual damage, mainly the severing of water mains and the death of damage control parties by shell splinters, very gradually let small fires burn out of control until they joined up in one giant conflagration. Remember that there were very few penetrating hits of armoured belts at Tsushima, so this is a very gradual process as the exposed parts of ships are battered over a fairly long period of time. 

 

With that in mind, I suppose would be an inversion of the current system. When most of your crew are alive, fires are not very dangerous. Damage control parties can generally put them out, and most fires on warships start small and controllable - a paint locker here, a few bags of cordite near a gun there. As a battle goes on and more compartments are damaged (simulating water mains being damaged) and more crew are killed, the smaller damage control parties can't put the fires out, and they get more dangerous. Eventually fires burn out of control from cumulative damage, rather than the fires themselves posing a risk to an intact ship with a healthy crew.

Is that a decent compromise? 
 

[kineu.a.hansen]

please add the option of rotate superstructure on ships again and please make the buillding more open i love to be able to place a secondary barbette where ever i want on hulls british dreadnought lv v vl come to mind when i place the secondary tower and next to it would be perfect for a secondary barbette

[Zuikaku]

Was the game speeded up? It feels strange, too fast, almost like World of Warships. 

[DougToss]

8 hours ago, Zuikaku said:

Was the game speeded up? It feels strange, too fast, almost like World of Warships. 

Above 30kts it feels like go carts, for sure. 

[Aruon]

is there any way to update pre-1.6 shared designs?

[Nick Thomadis]

(Update 2 - 22/7/2024)
- Fine tuning in the new side targeting mechanics.
- Battle AI improvement to not be obsessed to close in for torpedo attacks unless it is a Destroyer or Torpedo Boat. Previously the AI battleships could be very vulnerable as they tried to approach very slowly instead of utilizing their gun firepower vs the player who exploited this movement and sunk them one by one.
- Auto-Design further optimizations. All processes related with auto-design become faster and more efficient.
- Added more variance in the visualization of weathers and environments.
- Improved slightly the ship foam effects.
- Improved slightly the ship funnel effects.
- Increased the ship sinking threshold due to fires.
- Fixed a bug that could give two war reparation designs with the same name.
- Added the latest Chinese translation by “Weiyang”.

Please restart Steam to get the update

[kineu.a.hansen]

dont know what the plans are for the new hulls or how many there be in 1.6 but again the british need to have some prober hulls in the game and not just upscaled destroyer hulls and i love to see some diversity between the hulls and not be the same boring hull 

heavy cruisers 

hawkins

county

york

british light cruiser

town class

arethusa class

c class

danac class

leander class

fiji class

minotaur class

tiger class

[Werwaz]

some thoughts about the 1.6 balance changes

Gun accuracy balance is good. big guns are now just as viable as smaller guns, given the extra displacement for the turrets and necessary autoloaders. 

Crew die way too quickly now, even in late era ships. it would be nice to have this be far closer to the 1.5 levels of crew fatality.

Engine rebalance is good, making slower and heavier ships more viable and discouraging speedboats, though it is a bit painful to build good light cruisers and destroyers. the AI could use some adjusting to account for this change, as many of their ships now die to a slight breeze.

cost balance is alright, so having a realistic number of battleships vs cruisers and destroyers makes more sense, though I have yet to start a new campaign. 

 As for new hulls, it would be nice to see the last few nations, namely China, Austria, and Spain,  get unique hulls and towers. right now, they have a strange amalgamation of other nation's parts. it'd also be nice to have the littorio and sovetsky soyuz towers retroactively applied to the older (hulls that were added in the alpha and beta versions of the game) hulls for their respective nations. some more specific hulls i'd like to see beyond this are a US standard battleship/bc/tillman maximum BB style hull and towers, a hypothetical German modernized dreadnought to help add some variety to the resized Bismarck hulls, and perhaps some additional mid to late dreadnought era (1915-1927) hulls for all nations. 

 

[Nender]

9 hours ago, Werwaz said:

 As for new hulls, it would be nice to see the last few nations, namely China, Austria, and Spain,  get unique hulls and towers. right now, they have a strange amalgamation of other nation's parts. it'd also be nice to have the littorio and sovetsky soyuz towers retroactively applied to the older (hulls that were added in the alpha and beta versions of the game) hulls for their respective nations. some more specific hulls i'd like to see beyond this are a US standard battleship/bc/tillman maximum BB style hull and towers, a hypothetical German modernized dreadnought to help add some variety to the resized Bismarck hulls, and perhaps some additional mid to late dreadnought era (1915-1927) hulls for all nations. 

Definitely, specially during 1890-1900. There's no hull that resembles the famous Pelayo battleship for Spain, or cruiser hulls like that of the Vitoria, Numancia or Reina Regente.