>>>Beta 1.6.0.7 - Fast Loading in campaign<<< (Update x5 Hotfix 2)

[GronusCZ]

It also happens to me that everything freezes while loading battles and the only solution is to play from the beginning of the month. It also happened to me that I lost ships in a battle and finally got them in the table for the next battle, but after loading the battle map, the ones I lost in the previous battle were not there.

[Warspite96]

Just tried this patch and it appears the "Screen" function in battles no longer works. In the previous patch ships in "Screen" mode at least loosely followed the ship they're screening, in this patch I tried to get my cruisers to screen a BB and they just kept sailing directly forward until I manually moved them.

[casperwieik]

I don't know if anyone else has gotten this issue yet, but I've stumbled upon a rather curious bug:

I was building a batch of new ships of all classes (Germany 1896), but when they were finished I noticed that the ship counter at the top of my screen did not line up with the amount of ships I build. For example, I had ordered 15 new CL, but the counter only went up by 13. Same with my new BB: 5 ordered, 2 listed.

I did a little digging and as it turned out, part of the batch of ships I ordered left the dockyard listed as Mothballed. They cannot be un-mothballed, and the button to do so actually thinks they aren't mothballed at all. This means that roughly 33% of all new ships I build in the last year (and 60% of all my BB which took 16 months to build) are completely useless for anything other then scrap value.

Coincidentally the AI minor nations keep begging me each turn to sell these ships to them, and every turn I refuse. But they keep insisting (even asking for a BB that had left drydock that very turn, but was mothballed)

I don't know if its the AI demanding these ships that forced them into mothball status or if there is some other reason, but as it stands this issue severely hampers my ability to play the game, since it'll be a gamble each time I finish a ship whether or not it'll actually enter service or go straight to irreversible mothball status.

[Panzergraf]

Do you have enough crew in your crew pool to man them?

[Warspite96]

This patch is giving me an absolute nightmare trying to load into battles. Multiple times an hour I will try to load into a battle and the game will try to infinitely load a ship in some random division, requiring a full restart of the turn. 

[Dutchy]

5 hours ago, Warspite96 said:

This patch is giving me an absolute nightmare trying to load into battles. Multiple times an hour I will try to load into a battle and the game will try to infinitely load a ship in some random division, requiring a full restart of the turn. 

well, at least to restart is quicker now

[Zuikaku]

I was always puzzled why torpedo boats can not mount fixed forward torpedo tube although in game models have graphic representation of it. And historically torpedo boats had single or double fixed forward torpedo tube.

[Steeltrap]

Starting in 1890 as USA.

 

Yes, campaign start and turn lengths have improved dramatically.

So, a big THUMBS UP for that improvement.

 

While it's entirely possible there are no great changes supposed to have happened to the economy, I am finding France in particular is the INSANE economy.

It has about 1/3 the oil per capita, an economy that's just over DOUBLE mine (which frankly has never been true from back then until now, of course), and yet ALSO has a GREATER GROWTH RATE. Mine is approx 10.8% p.a., France's is ~12%.

How on earth is that possible?

This oddly inflated growth rate for France has been that way for the past 6+ months (IRL, not game time) I've been playing. Something's still significantly wonky about the economy in that the oil per capita, supposedly significant in the total growth rate of GDP per annum, doesn't seem to be doing that at all, UNLESS its effects are being overshadowed by some hidden factor(s).

 

I submitted a report about the "arrives in X turns" that I mentioned to you in Steam. Only raising it here for completeness, nothing else.

Cheers

Edited September 26, 2024 by Steeltrap
Clarified time frame around economic issue

[casperwieik]

On 9/24/2024 at 11:01 PM, Panzergraf said:

Do you have enough crew in your crew pool to man them?

I checked, and yes, I should have enough crew to man at least one more BB.
I also decided to see what would happen if I mothballed an active ship. Turns out it also becomes perma-mothballed (whilst I now have enough crew to man 2 BB).

[Nick Thomadis]

Uploaded Beta x 2 which includes the following:

- New options "Mixed", "Fast", "Slow" for starting the campaign, allow you to use the pre-made AI ships according to your liking. If you want to play in the fastest way, you choose “Fast” so all AI designs are pre-made. In “Mixed” mode only the starting units are pre-made and in “Slow” mode all AI designs are generated on demand, making it a full sandbox mode, but it will cost the most time during turn times. *Important:* Mods will be compatible only with the “Slow” mode.
- Fixed a minor auto-resolve issue, not causing adequate transport losses in “Undefended Port” battles.
- Visual optimizations in combat environments.

Note: It is advised to not play yet a "Fast" campaign mode in 1940 because it has not been enriched with the necessary amount of pre-made ships.

[flaviohc16]

29 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Uploaded Beta x 2 which includes the following:

- New options "Mixed", "Fast", "Slow" for starting the campaign, allow you to use the pre-made AI ships according to your liking. If you want to play in the fastest way, you choose “Fast” so all AI designs are pre-made. In “Mixed” mode only the starting units are pre-made and in “Slow” mode all AI designs are generated on demand, making it a full sandbox mode, but it will cost the most time during turn times. *Important:* Mods will be compatible only with the “Slow” mode.
- Fixed a minor auto-resolve issue, not causing adequate transport losses in “Undefended Port” battles.
- Visual optimizations in combat environments.

Note: It is advised to not play yet a "Fast" campaign mode in 1940 because it has not been enriched with the necessary amount of pre-made ships.

Is the slow mode faster between turns or same speed as of the 1.6.0.6?

[Nick Thomadis]

11 minutes ago, flaviohc16 said:

Is the slow mode faster between turns or same speed as of the 1.6.0.6?

It should be faster on average.

[adrianstu98]

I think it could be a very interesting improvement to have the option of having more than one design per ship class in quick battles, for example, two or three different types of battleships. I have been following the development of the game for years and I think it would be a very easy resource to implement and would greatly increase the game's playability.

[SirTrafalgar]

10 hours ago, Steeltrap said:

Starting in 1890 as USA.

 

Yes, campaign start and turn lengths have improved dramatically.

So, a big THUMBS UP for that improvement.

 

While it's entirely possible there are no great changes supposed to have happened to the economy, I am finding France in particular is the INSANE economy.

It has about 1/3 the oil per capita, an economy that's just over DOUBLE mine (which frankly has never been true from back then until now, of course), and yet ALSO has a GREATER GROWTH RATE. Mine is approx 10.8% p.a., France's is ~12%.

How on earth is that possible?

This oddly inflated growth rate for France has been that way for the past 6+ months (IRL, not game time) I've been playing. Something's still significantly wonky about the economy in that the oil per capita, supposedly significant in the total growth rate of GDP per annum, doesn't seem to be doing that at all, UNLESS its effects are being overshadowed by some hidden factor(s).

 

I submitted a report about the "arrives in X turns" that I mentioned to you in Steam. Only raising it here for completeness, nothing else.

Cheers

That has been the case for a few major patch cycles. Each nation has its challenges. The USA in 1890 is historically a joke to the international community. Its economy was recovering from a huge crisis in the 1880s and was unstable; its military was small but nearly technologically on par with the major powers. That's part of why, in 1898, the USA's absolute dominance over Spain shocked the European community of nations so much. The challenge for the USA is to grow its economy. It's a slow burn at the beginning, but if you look over the long term, by about 1920, you will have overtaken everyone economically. It should have happened earlier, but the game can't exactly explain historical events such as the USA being the arms manufacturer for Europe during WWI because WWI didn't happen in your play-through.  

The other thing that should be considered is that the start values for the GDP are randomized within a range. Sometimes, France has an insane GDP, and sometimes, it's AH that does its national challenges in 1890, which aren't economic like the USA's. 

Every country has challenges with each start date. I don't start much in 1890, my personal favorite is 1900. Typically, the challenges are about the same and don't change much until about 1920. 

 

 

[Suribachi]

On 9/26/2024 at 4:57 PM, SirTrafalgar said:

That has been the case for a few major patch cycles. Each nation has its challenges. The USA in 1890 is historically a joke to the international community. Its economy was recovering from a huge crisis in the 1880s and was unstable; its military was small but nearly technologically on par with the major powers. That's part of why, in 1898, the USA's absolute dominance over Spain shocked the European community of nations so much. The challenge for the USA is to grow its economy. It's a slow burn at the beginning, but if you look over the long term, by about 1920, you will have overtaken everyone economically. It should have happened earlier, but the game can't exactly explain historical events such as the USA being the arms manufacturer for Europe during WWI because WWI didn't happen in your play-through.  

The other thing that should be considered is that the start values for the GDP are randomized within a range. Sometimes, France has an insane GDP, and sometimes, it's AH that does its national challenges in 1890, which aren't economic like the USA's. 

Every country has challenges with each start date. I don't start much in 1890, my personal favorite is 1900. Typically, the challenges are about the same and don't change much until about 1920. 

 

 

True.  This is why I usually start my 1890 USA playthroughs with about 4 CA's on Limited with crew training low, then just let the economy do it's thing.  Yeah, some years will pass with not much going on, but usually by 1897-ish, I have about 100k tons worth of ships to take the Caribbean from Spain.  From there, I decide if I want to push into Africa or recover more so I can take the Philippines later.

By 1910, I usually have a foothold in East Asia (if not Japan outright), Africa and South America.

[Nick Thomadis]

Beta Update x3 uploaded.
- Several improvements in the auto-resolve system to make results even more consistent based on the power of ships. This will not be a "hand holding" mode for players. You will expect more sunken ships for the side that is inferior in techs and overall firepower of the fleet for both AI and player. Mods are not guaranteed to have the same results, as always, so if you want to test it out, you need to use the default game values (auto-resolve is affected not only by dedicated parameters but also cost and many other aspects of ships).
- Fixed and improved various aspects of Campaign’s Victory points system. You will notice the impact of submarine raiding of transports more noticeably and battle results will be much more consistent.
- Increased the impact of Crew rescuing/healing techs.
- Weight fixes in several late tech destroyers, which had very heavy towers and were very difficult to design, creating delays in the auto-design. These various destroyers of your fleet will gain free tons which you can use to improve them.
- Added shipyard capacity indication in Ship Design and Map interface.
- Technology priorities/penalties got a milder effect, addressing cases where technology could either be researched too quick for the era or it could delay too much the AI, when it used the priorities.
- Fixed various bugs that were reported.
- A few more pre-made ships for the time period of 1940+ are added. Still not fully working.
You need to restart Steam to get the update fast

The current v1.6.0.7 Beta 3 must be already very stable and working. It is advised to try a new campaign for all those who had anticipated problems with AI not generating capital ships (temporary bug of the first beta).

We invite everyone to try this version as it is already stable and much more enjoyable and faster. It is going to become live the coming week.

[MDHansen]

Gonna give it a whirl for sure! disabling TaF and my mod, pure vanilla ice

- Added shipyard capacity indication in Ship Design and Map interface. 👍

Edited September 28, 2024 by MDHansen

[Panzergraf]

1 hour ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Beta Update x3 uploaded.
- Weight fixes in several late tech destroyers, which had very heavy towers and were very difficult to design, creating delays in the auto-design. These various destroyers of your fleet will gain free tons which you can use to improve them.

Could you maybe take a look at some late tech light cruisers too? Some, like the Chinese "Gun Cruiser" are almost impossible to build a decent ship on because the available towers are all really heavy (which gets massively heavier with radar and rangefinders, which apply percentage based weight increases)

[Aldaris]

All right, I'll give it a go. I normally wait for stable, but hey - it's been a couple of weeks.

 

EDIT: Started as A-H in 1910. With "mixed" setting for AI. So far:

The good: Turn times are lovely, thumbs up on that. 

So-so: I'm not sure I like the decreased impact of research focuses. Before, it felt more like a tradeoff, now, it seems hardly worth it. Reducing a tech from 30 months to 26 in exchange for slowing everything else down by the same amount feels overly harsh.

The bad: I still get battles where I'm up against a single ship that's running away immediately. That is so, so tiring... I'm aware that wasn't on the list of fixes, but I wanted to mention it. Those battles need to go. When I load into a battle, I want a battle, not navigation by vague directions without any indication where those are measured from (north east FROM WHICH SHIP?), followed by "end battle" as soon as I'm allowed without ever having seen the enemy. Getting rid of the AI button made this a lot worse - now I can't even set a course automatically to compensate for my lack of information. I realize that was a dumb workaround, but as long as the core problem isn't adressed (where is this mythical smoke on the horizon I keep reading about) it was a nice quality of life thing.

And the autoresolve is still unuseable. I just had a battle of my fleet of 4 BBs, 4 CAs, and 4 DDs vs. 1 British DD. The result? One sunk British DD (so far, so good) and one heavily damaged BB. That's stupid. There's no way in hell that should ever happen with 1910's tech, where torps have a range of 6 km or so. No one wants a "hand holding mode" (seriously, what kind of concern is that? Are there really players who play this game for the intricacies of the campaign map and who'd love to autoresolve everything?), but if I have this overwhelming of a superiority, gimme the realistic result. Either the destroyer ran away, or if it didn't, it got blown to confetti before coming into range when 8 capital ships opened up on it. The way it is, you might as well take that feature out, because if the player must expect to be unreasonably punished for pressing that button, he simply won't.

As it stands, autoresolve when you have overwhelming superiority is the choice between "waste 5 minutes of your life until enough time has passed to end battle, because of course the enemy ran" or "get screwed over". That isn't great.

Also, battles so far: 10. 1 against a good chunk of enemy fleet. That felt great. They had superiority in heavy ships, and I lost a CA to long range gun fire and they a handful of destroyers before I retreated. Thumbs up! 7 of them against single ships I never even saw. And one against a single CL that tried to run, but I managed to find and catch after a lengthy chase. And one was the autoresolve I tried.

10% super cool, 70% complete waste of time, 10% "this could have been so much less painful", 10% bad autoresolve.

I feel this needs work.

One more edit: game very frequently hangs up at loading into battle, and save doesn't seem to occur after every battle anymore. So if you have 3 battles in a turn and it hangs up at the last one? Yeah, you're doing the other two again.

No offense, but I'll dip out again until there's been some more polish. The battles, when one actually occurs, feel better, as far as I can tell. AI gunnery seems much improved, but my sample size isn't huge so far. But the combination of all the factors above frankly suck the fun out of it at the moment.

Also, what would really be appreciated is some kind of indication which feedback is actually being taken into account, or even being recognized as a problem. I don't think I've seen a single dev statement about the frequent "run awaaayyyy" fights for example. Is that something that's being recognized as needing work? If so, are there plans to adress it? This is a feedback thread, as far as I can tell. And I'm happy to give detailed and constructive feedback. But if I'm shouting into the void, I won't bother - I'd like to help the game improve, but my willingness to write walls of text declines if I feel it's not being read.

Edited September 28, 2024 by Aldaris

[Северная]

12 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Beta Update x3 uploaded.
- Several improvements in the auto-resolve system to make results even more consistent based on the power of ships. This will not be a "hand holding" mode for players. You will expect more sunken ships for the side that is inferior in techs and overall firepower of the fleet for both AI and player. Mods are not guaranteed to have the same results, as always, so if you want to test it out, you need to use the default game values (auto-resolve is affected not only by dedicated parameters but also cost and many other aspects of ships).
- Fixed and improved various aspects of Campaign’s Victory points system. You will notice the impact of submarine raiding of transports more noticeably and battle results will be much more consistent.
- Increased the impact of Crew rescuing/healing techs.
- Weight fixes in several late tech destroyers, which had very heavy towers and were very difficult to design, creating delays in the auto-design. These various destroyers of your fleet will gain free tons which you can use to improve them.
- Added shipyard capacity indication in Ship Design and Map interface.
- Technology priorities/penalties got a milder effect, addressing cases where technology could either be researched too quick for the era or it could delay too much the AI, when it used the priorities.
- Fixed various bugs that were reported.
- A few more pre-made ships for the time period of 1940+ are added. Still not fully working.
You need to restart Steam to get the update fast

The current v1.6.0.7 Beta 3 must be already very stable and working. It is advised to try a new campaign for all those who had anticipated problems with AI not generating capital ships (temporary bug of the first beta).

We invite everyone to try this version as it is already stable and much more enjoyable and faster. It is going to become live the coming week.

 

The fleets and auto-resolve are much better now, thank you.  I have noticed that the tension mechanics are even more sensitive in the beta than I have ever seen before.  Here are screenshots from scrolling through a SINGLE MONTH, April 1930, three months after a January 1930 start.  This much tension makes the game unbearable as it is constant war very quickly and the AI has difficulty building a cohesive fleet and often times they go bankrupt and explode.  They need time to recuperate losses.

I have a suggestion:  Fleets should only generate tension when your relationship with the nation is BELOW, say, -15 or something.  The vast majority of tension problems seem to be just navies innocently passing by, especially going through the Med to get to the Suez Canal.  If they only generated tension with negative relation countries, it would make more sense, and make more use of the player mechanic to improve/worsen relations for desired results.

 

EDIT: I actually have one more screenshot than this, as it keeps scrolling as you see, but I have reached my upload limit for the day or something.  I think you get the point.

 

Edited September 29, 2024 by Северная

[Steeltrap]

Couple of minor things...

1. If an ally asks you to build some ships, the request includes your current shipyard use, your total, and the tonnage of the ship.

Issue:  it shows the tonnage for ONE ship, regardless of how many are being requested. In other words, you need to do the calculation yourself as to the TRUE tonnage and thus building capacity that will be used if you agree.

Suggestion: Add a step that multiplies that tonnage by the number requested so the TRUE tonnage is presented in the request dialogue.

 

2. On the FLEET SCREEN if you sort by STATUS, it sorts it as a single field despite there being three pieces of info i.e. status, % complete and time remaining.

The issue: When you sort by status, it sorts ships that are building BY THE % COMPLETE and not by how long is remaining because the field lists COMPLETE (x %) ahead of the TIME REMAINING (x months)

I believe only TWO of those pieces of data are important to players, or at least ought to be used in the sorting priority. The first is the status, obviously, but the second is the TIME REMAINING. Perhaps I'm the odd one out, but I don't care about the % as it's functionally irrelevant (what can I do with it?). I DO want to see the list sorted by TIME REMAINING if I'm going to juggle some things for budget reasons.

Suggestion: Change the status field so it presents 'Status', THEN 'Months remaining'. This means sorting by status will group ships first by status, then by the time remaining for the activity (be it building, repairing, commissioning etc).

It can keep '% complete' if you think that is relevant, although I'd be perfectly happy for the field only to contain the status first and the remaining time second as I find that % to be entirely useless information.

As an aside, the sorting in various screens seems peculiar. In the FLEET screen, for example, sorting by CLASS doesn't appear to sort them by NAME alphabetically within the class, even though one might expect that would be the case (I'm not sure how it DOES sort them by class, frankly).

 

These have been present forever, but I thought I'd toss them out there as I find them minor irritants that I believe could be addressed with next to no effort (at least I'd hope that's true given what they are).

Cheers

Edited September 29, 2024 by Steeltrap
minor formatting and content additions

[Zuikaku]

Can we have a better graphic representation of destroyed guns/turrets. It is very hard to see if the turret or gun is destroyed if deck is in red and the turret is also of simmilar colour. Maybe use black to indicate destroyed guns/turrets?

[Suribachi]

4 hours ago, Zuikaku said:

Can we have a better graphic representation of destroyed guns/turrets. It is very hard to see if the turret or gun is destroyed if deck is in red and the turret is also of simmilar colour. Maybe use black to indicate destroyed guns/turrets?

The issue is that the vertical hull damage view needs some minor changes.  The biggest being that there is no layering.  This means that if the deck underneath a turret is damaged, the green stripes will overlap the turret making it difficult to see if the turret itself is damaged without also consulting the horizontal damage view and doing some mental mapping.  If the view was built in a way where the components were always on top of the deck so it is easier to see, that would be a terrific step in the right direction without having to change anything else.  But while we are at it:

What if we combine all of the elements together?

Layered as  "always underneath" of components (Hull/Deck in this case means the blank hull in the ship designer without anything attached by the player yet)
No coloring: No damage
Green Stripe:  Hull/Deck light damage
Yellow Stripe: Hull/Deck moderate damage
Red: Stripe:  Hull/Deck heavy damage / destroyed section

Layered as "always on top" of deck elements (Component here means anything that the player adds to the blank hull in the builder including all weapons, towers and funnels)
Dark Green with Light Green Outline:  Component light damage
Dark Yellow with Light Yellow Outline: Component moderate damage
Dark Red with Light Red Outline: Component Heavy damage
Black with Dark Red Outline: Component Destroyed


Just a passing thought to try and make use of an insomniac night so I am sure I missed something.

Edited September 29, 2024 by Suribachi

[justMike247]

 

Attempt to load battle.. Game crash… relaunch game… Attempt to reload battle after enduring replay of all previous skirmishes that happen that month… Game crash… Relaunch game… Rinse and repeat 5x… Give up trying to fight battle… Auto-resolve… Fleet gets creamed… Rinse and repeat per every major fleet v’s fleet battle.

 

Improve Relations… Exercise in pointlessness when multiple examples of Fleets affect Tension can tank political relations by up to 80 points per month… Result;- continually being bled dry by parasites.

 

Province Conquest… Attacking force at 1100% (no that’s not a typo) of stated required tonnage… Conquest failure…

 

Province conquest via invading land forces… Impossible to defend against… Successful recapture within 2 months.

 

“Reduced frequency of “come chase me” engagements” = 2-6 failed chase me missions per month. Auto resolve to negate failed stern chase invariably sinks all opposition while putting my fleet into repair.

 

Captured 5x major ports in theatre… Ships damaged in engagement end up in neutral port because…????

 

Refuelling / ammo replenishment, even in a major port takes between 4-6 months. Fleet fuel reserve exhausted after 1 month sailing plus 1 month blockading a port.

 

Attrition of merchant fleet…  Forced into continual war = decimation of merchant fleet (reduced to 7%) despite slider constantly at max.  How are they being found?? Why can’t they be formed into convoy and given armed escort?

[NathanKell]

On 9/26/2024 at 8:36 AM, Nick Thomadis said:

Uploaded Beta x 2 which includes the following:

- New options "Mixed", "Fast", "Slow" for starting the campaign, allow you to use the pre-made AI ships according to your liking. If you want to play in the fastest way, you choose “Fast” so all AI designs are pre-made. In “Mixed” mode only the starting units are pre-made and in “Slow” mode all AI designs are generated on demand, making it a full sandbox mode, but it will cost the most time during turn times. *Important:* Mods will be compatible only with the “Slow” mode.
- Fixed a minor auto-resolve issue, not causing adequate transport losses in “Undefended Port” battles.
- Visual optimizations in combat environments.

Note: It is advised to not play yet a "Fast" campaign mode in 1940 because it has not been enriched with the necessary amount of pre-made ships.

It's nice that at least the Usage option exists now, but why not just store the packedShips TextAsset as text rather than binary? Then mods can just include their own predesigned ships and take advantage of the speedup. It's not like there's much of a perf hit deserializing text json instead of binary.

Edited September 30, 2024 by NathanKell