>>>v1.6.0.7+ Feedback<<<(Latest version: v1.6.1.5 Optx4)

[justMike247]

It struck me that virtually every time I’ve posted, it’s to vent a bunch of frustration about stuff that’s just plain wrong… Sadly, there’s still a hellova lot that’s still, just plain wrong… but… I figure some nudges at the opposite end of the spectrum are long overdue. So… Cue my take on things that are just about right.

 

 

Starting Tension

I started this current campaign with a sense of dread; last time I chose UK, I’d barely figured which side was up before Germany was pounding my fledgling navy into dust, with a queue of other countries just waiting their turn to claim a piece of me… This time, I figure the start tension is just about right. I still don’t understand why the whole spectrum of nations don’t start with zero tension, but… +/-25% I can live with. Some effective (barely) political influence was appreciated, serving to cool things down just enough to allow me to build the initial batch of fleets required to serve and protect a global empire. Tension didn’t begin to really heat up until I felt I was about ready for it, or at least, capable of fighting fleet actions. I need to rethink my own policies to be able to still do that, but with more capability to try protecting my merchant fleet better.

 

Budget

Anybody here or other lists saying that, at least in the first 1/3^rd of the game they have enough or even too much money, is either a damn fool or delusional… I know I’m not immune from fits of growls any time I can’t start a batch of builds because there’s not enough funds, I need to wait. I can accelerate addressing that issue by changing where my budget is going, effectively juggling. Now, I’m not saying how those resources are turned into assets is anywhere near perfect yet, there’s a whole lot of rebalancing required with crew-training, perhaps with rate of building new merchant hulls too, but overall… yea… I reckon the way the budget works, at least at the top level, is just about right. What I mean is, I can’t just zip every slider to max and thereafter just forget there’s a Finances page at all… I need to monitor it closely, month by month, constantly fine tuning to keep things ticking along.  

 

Minor Nations

Seeing the “smaller” countries suddenly become pro-active was a welcome change, introducing a whole new dynamic to take account of, and despite this being my fourth campaign since its introduction, I’m still feeling my way into it. As with other major aspects, there’s room for improvement yet, specifically with regard to their “untouchable / invulnerable” status, but having them more involved as a wildcard with significant potency is enough to make me sit up and take notice.

 

No great long essay this time… No doubt I’ll return to this as more areas come to mind.

[JaM]

Regarding Crew situation:

 

Instead of limiting number of men, restrict Experience training provides.  You already have it this way in Custom Ship builder, where player can chose what experience crew should have, increasing the cost of the ship. 

In campaign mode, same principle would be used, and player will be able to choose to what level he wants to have his crews trained (when new ship is built) using same slider.. more experienced crew, costlier they are to train.. this way, you could make higher grades of training a lot more costly than they are now, without negative impact of not having enough of crew for new ships...

But of course, Veteran status should not be achievable via training, instead, crew would have to achieve it in combat. 

 

 

[justMike247]

21 minutes ago, JaM said:

In campaign mode, same principle would be used, and player will be able to choose to what level he wants to have his crews trained (when new ship is built) using same slider.. more experienced crew, costlier they are to train.. this way, you could make higher grades of training a lot more costly than they are now, without negative impact of not having enough of crew for new ships...

But of course, Veteran status should not be achievable via training, instead, crew would have to achieve it in combat. 

This..... makes a lot of sense... if max upper limit is restricted to something like... Trained...

[Warspite96]

How come some ship models have lifeboats modelled into the hull still? Deck space is an extremely important factor in designing/operating a warship, which is why many warships didn't carry lifeboats or carried very few of them. Even some of the modern German CL hulls, such as "Light Cruiser VI" have lifeboats modelled into the hull which make it pointless trying to mount a rear gun. 

[Nick Thomadis]

Hello Admirals,

A new update is now available, continuing to improve the campaign. Please read:

v1.6.0.2

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1069660/announcements/detail/4468226896061006027 

[MDHansen]

very nice additions! 👍

Edited November 2, 2024 by MDHansen

[brothermunro]

Thank you for documenting a new param!

[justMike247]

Now seeing a long overdue, but very, very welcome boost in political influence... Thankyou...

[justMike247]

Crew Training;- A Suggestion

 

Loads of folk have, rightly, been complaining about the current state of Crew Training; it clearly needs to be addressed. I’m probably wrong making this guess, but I get the feeling that the reason Crew Training was nerfed in the first place was to slow down player fleet expansion to keep the opposing A.I. sorta kinda competitive for a longer period of time… While I can understand the desire to achieve that end, this was the wrong way to go about that. But rather than restore training to how it was previously, I’ve an idea that, hopefully, touch wood, finds some middle ground.

 

Currently, the overall Naval budget works at a “functional minimum” when we’re not at war. This gives enough latitude to continue R&D, moderate fleet expansion, Port development, merchant fleet development etc etc. Things change when we’re actually at war however, with the overall budget receiving a significant, necessary boost. I propose similar mechanics be applied to Crew Training too.

 

Currently, when the Crew Pool is particularly low, the player sees significant return on training investment, but only for a single month, with returns diminishing rapidly irrespective of level of training investment. This mechanism applies irrespective of war-condition (actively at war or in peace). It’s this specific mechanism that needs to be reworked.

 

During peacetime, with the tight budget and limited incentive (civil sector offering better pay etc), it’s difficult to recruit fresh bodies to train as crews, necessitating scrapping older hulls to reallocate their crews to newer, more efficient hulls. I suggest a moderated version of the current recruitment restriction applies during times of peace, with tight restrictions applied to how many bodies a player can recruit per month, but with a higher limit on the crew-pool size… perhaps somewhere between 7-10k.

 

During war however, there’s far greater need to recruit and train fresh crew. Conscription can apply, rather than merely enlistment. There should still be a functional limit applied to how many crew can be trained per month, so I’d suggest raising the crew-pool limit to somewhere between 12.5-15k. This increased level is still low enough to warrant scrapping obsolete hulls, but high enough to prevent newly built ships staying in mothballs for up to a year waiting for trained crews to man them.

 

As stated at the top, this is merely a suggestion; feel free to kick it around, modify, propose alternatives etc… Opinions welcomed.

Edited November 2, 2024 by justMike247

[Zuikaku]

Is BB main gun ammo returned to normal values (under "other fixed")?

[Северная]

Portugal is conquering Spain in 1892 on normal difficulty in 1.6.1.2

 

[justMike247]

55 minutes ago, Zuikaku said:

Is BB main gun ammo returned to normal values (under "other fixed")?

Negative... "normal" load is still 55 rounds per rifle... reduced = 35.75, increased = 74.375

[Северная]

Is anyone else's game running slower in this update or is it just mine?  Even the main menu has really choppy animations in the harbor.

Also in 1893, Portugal has completely conquered Iberia.  🤣

[justMike247]

2 minutes ago, Северная said:

Is anyone else's game running slower in this update or is it just mine? 

Not slower, just can't pick a fight against anybody...  Not for any lack of negative tension I might add... the buggers just keep throwing cash at me...

[Aendos]

Sailing to Med with large US fleet - 100k+ tons.  Redirected over the turn change by 1 DD, 1 TB sitting in strait of Gibraltar.

[Zuikaku]

6 hours ago, justMike247 said:

Negative... "normal" load is still 55 rounds per rifle... reduced = 35.75, increased = 74.375

Just great! Most of the battle I'm forced to conserve ammo and use secondaries and tertiaries only. I have even started building BBs with atrophied main battery and swollen secondaries consisting of 203mm guns.

Seems I'm playing Ultimate Admiral: secondary battery.

[justMike247]

52 minutes ago, Zuikaku said:

Seems I'm playing Ultimate Admiral: secondary battery.

Hmmmm... I know not having anything close to full load is a serious pain in the (((_Y_))) but I've never really had much issues with it, at least as far as fighting one or maybe two "average" battles before I need to head back to port to rearm. My fleets are a balance between BB's, CA's, CL's and DD's; I keep the BIG guns on Save (minimises killing fish), set the BB's to best cruising speed (moderate accuracy buff), and try to thin the targets out as much as I can with torps once they have enough range that I can launch without getting suicide close with my DD's. Call me chicken if it applies, but I've never ran with Increased ammo... it's way too tempting for the A.I. to sic an Ammo fire on me, irrespective of protection levels...

 

You need to babysit the Auto Targetting very closely; it loves to prioritise targetting TB's when there's multitudes of Capitol ships to shoot at, especially when they're decimating my DD's... Whoever set the current mess for target priorities needs a damn good smack up side the ear!

 

Trying to avoid exaggerating when I say I've only completely exhausted ammo stocks once... seriously doubt it's been more than that, though I've come danger close to needing to resort to throwing potatoes a few dozen times... Wouldn't be the first time I've been grateful to see the End Battle button.

 

The only major difficulty is establishing that first "beach-head"; a decent sized ports close enough to where the fighting is, but once I've consolidated that, the rest is just resetting any fleets cycling through those ports to Defend to avoid them being press-ganged into "Special Missions" with neither fuel nor ammo... man that chit seriously pisses me off!!

[Warspite96]

As I've mentioned previously, late game cruiser and BB towers desperately need some weight reductions. The superstructure on a WW2 era heavy cruiser should not weigh the same as multiple fleet destroyers (some are 5-6,000 tons with late game tech such as radar)! Destroyers recently had their tower weights reduced, why not heavier ships as well?

Edited November 3, 2024 by Warspite96

[Dave P.]

Since the land warfare changes, I've noticed that when I invade an enemy territory, it often has a defending force of 0 and is very easy for my opponent to take back. Army logistics isn't awesome, but it's better than the enemy, and I've got soldiers in several adjoining territories, as well as complete sea control.

Is this intentional? Any chance we could get an option to build troop ships and move "marines" around to serve our military goals instead of hoping the AI guesses right? Or, failing that, a way to spend naval prestige to get the army to move troops around a little?

Edited November 3, 2024 by Dave P.

[Panzergraf]

7 hours ago, Warspite96 said:

As I've mentioned previously, late game cruiser and BB towers desperately need some weight reductions. The superstructure on a WW2 era heavy cruiser should not weigh the same as multiple fleet destroyers (some are 5-6,000 tons with late game tech such as radar)! Destroyers recently had their tower weights reduced, why not heavier ships as well?

Some cruisers, like the Chinese "Gun Cruiser" CL, are impossible to build because of this, it also doesn't help that the lightest funnel for this hull weighs 500 tons. Once you add radar, rangefinder, sonar, and RDF (which you want for increased ASW score), you end up thousands of tons over weight and with a very very hefty pricetag, even if you build it with a modest top speed and minimal firepower and armor.

[Warspite96]

31 minutes ago, Panzergraf said:

Some cruisers, like the Chinese "Gun Cruiser" CL, are impossible to build because of this, it also doesn't help that the lightest funnel for this hull weighs 500 tons. Once you add radar, rangefinder, sonar, and RDF (which you want for increased ASW score), you end up thousands of tons over weight and with a very very hefty pricetag, even if you build it with a modest top speed and minimal firepower and armor.

Yeah its crazy, if you tried to build cruisers with this much top weight IRL, they'd just capsize as soon as they were launched. 😆

[MDHansen]

Loving the changes of the latest patch! 

If you would consider though, let us be able to set priority target size for Main and Secondary turrets.
e.g. BB or BC for the main etc. Or, <Large>, <Medium>, <Small> targets

[LaughingSam]

Getting very different behaviour in my second campaign, will test a little further.

 

Edited November 5, 2024 by LaughingSam

[Warspite96]

On 11/3/2024 at 12:06 AM, Zuikaku said:

Is BB main gun ammo returned to normal values (under "other fixed")?

No, its still extremely low for some reason.

[Warspite96]

So when are minor nations going to get some kind of economy nerf? I launched a conquest against the Netherlands and they literally have the largest fleet of modern ships out of any nation in the game except my own. How are they affording such a massive fleet, bigger than the Royal Navy?

Also I'm still curious as to how the AI conveniently get far better accuracy than me with inferior technology, Coincidence IV, Gen I radar, Mk3 quad turrets and some of them with CADET TRAINING should not be hitting my BBs with ranging shots from over 30km away.......

The AI also needs to be punished heavily for constantly building capital ships with 5mm of armour all around to basically force overpens of any big gun in the game, since overpens do so little damage. Overpens need a massive buff so that building BBs with absolutely 0 armour protection isn't going to be somehow more effective than building a properly protected warship.

Edited November 4, 2024 by Warspite96