Post by L0ckAndL0ad on Jun 11, 2019 5:14:21 GMT -6
Hi. I’ve been gathering notes during my playthrough so that I could make a personal, composite feedback/suggestions thread. For brevity sake, I’ll try to be super brief, but if you want me to expand upon something, do tell.
FEEDBACK
I played through 1.01 to 1.03, US 1920 WNT start, into ~1950. In technical terms, I had little to no problems (some bugs but no crashes).Visually and sound-wise, the game is where it should be, IMO, it does not have to be any fancier than it already is.
Gameplay requires more write-up. My US playthrough was very isolationist, and I used WNT to slow down worldwide arms race (into like ~1935), focusing on replacing the entire legacy CA/CL/DD fleet with my own designs.
Peacetime game flow felt very satisfying. I had a clear goal - rebuild the fleet, gather as much technologies as possible, avoid war, conduct exercises to practice naval warfare tactics. As with all game aspects, I was not in direct control over everything. But I had many ways of influencing my peacetime progress aspects - specific tech fields, foreign relations (both tensions and an alliance with UK), tempo and focus of my rearmament.
Ship design feels awesome. I've spent many many hours on it. One problem, I've never felt like I'm able to create historical designs within their historical tonnage. I was almost always missing like 15-25% tonnage to implement historical ships. Had to compromise things. But even so, it is a great feature of the game. I had older 20-21 knot BBs and newer fast 28 knot ones. I was afraid they'd be mixed up in divisions and ultimately decided to separate them, and, later, completely scrapped my entire 21 knot battle line.
In my attempts to avoid wars, I hit the lowest Prestige level, and was under threat of being fired, multiple times. Not a bad thing. On a contrary, I did what I thought was the right thing to do, and it felt great.
When the first war (with Russia) started, I immediately felt like I’ve lost almost all control over my progress. New tech advances and wartime shipbuilding did not make much difference to me (due to relatively short length of the war). Refitting ships, even “Obsolete” ones, felt disadvantageous, again, because it took at least 4-6 months, if not more. Wartime (interactable) events, both diplo and internal, were limited, which also made an experience more stale.
Lack of permanent or any sort of administrative OOB/TF structure for my fleet reinforced the feeling of helplessness. I felt very disconnected from my own forces, having far less options to influence my progress, doctrine or strategy. At the same time, having to shuffle ships of different build years, types and qualities between 6 regions made me feel somewhat frustrated. It is not super hard, I can do it, sure, just like I can play WITP AE when I really want to, but it is not exactly easy to do using current UIs.
My second war (against Japan; Russia joined afterwards) was different, but more desperate. I had the same feeling of being disconnected and limited in options, but it dragged for much longer this time - for more than 70 months.
I’m a huge fan of Pacific War and read a lot of historical material about it, but my second war campaign (1938-1945) did not give me similar feel. There was only a couple of big engagements, and even less of them with carriers. Warfare did not feel carrier-centric at all. The first enemy carriers I sank were destroyed by my North Carolina class fast BB replica in night surface action. But that’s mostly due to aircraft targeting problems, I guess - my strike packages were targeting the first ships they saw, lone DDs and KEs, instead of going forward to their objective area and looking for enemy carriers.
I did build new ships during this war, but was still hesitant to implement much in terms of new designs, and I did not do any refits. I had few 8-10kton CLs (both classic 6 inch and some 5 inch CLAAs), but they felt more like a liability, so I scrapped them right in the middle of the war - they often faced enemy capital ships and were tasked with surface bombardments they were barely able to reach with their guns.
Aircraft development felt super cool, all the time. I started with using flying boat for spotting, then used TBs and DBs to reinforce bases. Having fighters on land bases felt almost useless, until I got surprise-attacked by the Japanese. My ships at Pearl Harbor did not stand a chance. But none were hit because enemy planes targeted PH airfield instead of ships in the harbor.
I switched to using flying boats and medium bombers (medium range torpedo capable) for better range and area coverage. Small, separated bases (mostly on islands) did receive DBs to defend against invasions. Some wings were shifted back and forth during the conflict to where they were needed the most. Even though I played as the USA, aircraft maintenance is pricey and I could not afford to have too much aircraft, which is great balance I guess. I did feel that unlimited torpedoes were somehow cheating, however.
Due to “level 21” tech bug I abandoned my playthrought by 1950, but I did feel like it would be great to play further because there was little time for me to play with latest tech, like radar-assisted fire control, bigger carriers etc.
Alright, let’s move to suggestions.
SUGGESTIONS
1. Better regional air group management. Airfields are separated in combat and act on regional basis. But in the Air Group Management window, airbases are listed in what appears to be a chronological order of when they were built, as a single, monolithic list. Separating them by regions (and maybe going two levels deep), adding a line separator maybe, would make it much easier to manage. Example:
Central Pacific
-- Airbase Pearl Harbor (100/100)
-- Airbase Midway (38/40)
---------------------------------------------
North Pacific
-- Airbase Anchorage (20/40)
-- Airbase Dutch Harbor (20/60)
2. Better airstrike targeting rules. Before reaching target area, only big targets of opportunity (carriers and to a lesser priority, battleships) may be attacked. After reaching target area and doing an area search, then it is okay to sink whatever is close by. Some chance of air groups mistaking ship types and attacking wrong targets, scaling with air group experience level.
3. Speed up wartime ship refits. (35-50% faster, depending on ship type? Not sure about balancing)
4. Better designated scout a/c type priority. Two suggestions in one. The easy one: if “floatplane priority” is “the Japanese way”, then DBs and not TBs should be default as “the American way”. Not so easy one has already been asked here many times and I’m sure you’re already thinking about how to better implement it - ability to specifically designate the default scout a/c type in Doctrine screen.
5. "Launch New Search" button or "Launch Now" on Routine Air Ops window, to, well, launch a new search immediately.
6. “Emergency stop of deck ops” button on a/c carrying ships, just like there’s a button to hold fire for 10 minutes or to forbid launching torpedoes (in division details screen). For use on divisions/ships in proximity of enemy surface combatants.
7. Fleet doctrines. Just like there are submarine ops doctrine selection, having several options to influence the way your navy fights are generated. There are many possibilities here, but the general idea is to give slightly more control to the player. I’m no expert in naval doctrines, and not even sure if Fleet in Being and Mahan Doctrines are that much compatible, so I’ll shamelessly use Hearts of Iron doctrines as an example:
Base Strike Doctrine (Carrier Primacy) - more chance to generate battles with Carrier Force present (and more ships assigned to it). Use carriers in land strikes more. Longer starting range in battles, emphasis on standoff attacks.
Fleet in Being Doctrine (Mahan Doctrine?) - more focus on big surface engagements, emphasis on using Main Force in battles (with larger amount of ships assigned to it).
Sealane Interdiction Doctrine (Asymmetric Naval Warfare) - better effect of surface raiders, night time raids, mine warfare.
8. Allow carriers to “Support” any friendly ships, from any Force, therefore, provide CAP to them. You can only send CAP to ships of the same Force as the carriers are currently in. It would be really helpful to allow carriers provide CAP for transport ships during naval invasion, for example.
9. Improve survivability of submarines. They seem to be dying unrealistically fast currently.
10. CL classification to be determined by guns, not armor. Allowing Cleveland class and the like.
11. AI surprise attacks (Japan, I look at you!) should probably attack ships in the harbor, not the airbase
12. Making Range of ships more meaningful. I’m really clueless about this one. I tried building long and extreme range ships, but there seems to be little effect there. Every forum thread on the subject indicates that most people agree on that. Not sure what should be done about it, unfortunately. Also, game manual gives little solid info about this feature IMO.
13. Low rate ship construction. Just like there’s accelerated construction. 25-35% reduction in speed and monthly price. Allow bigger batches of ships to be built simultaneously, reduce the need to halt/resume production of ships when the budget is tight.
14. Slightly more chance to get “shortened build time due to familiarity” to give more bonus of producing ships of the same class. I’m not sure what % it currently is, but I’m trying to build big batches of ships all the time, it is great to maintain fleet composition solidity, but the actual profit of doing so seems to be really small currently. I try to read every monthly report and seen only a couple of such events trigger, while building big numbers of small ships of the same class.
15. Improvements for spotting contacts log. Maybe a button to manually hide selected spotted info entries? Also, time format of spotting. It is really hard to figure out the actual time of spotting (displayed in Zulu time, I guess?) vs dynamically changing local time. An option to display spotting time in local time would be nice, I guess? Or just having uniform time displayed across every UI window/log.
16. Better AA description in the manual. Manual doesn’t even say that HAA = DP guns. I had to figure it out myself initially, and it wasn’t very intuitive. Also, it doesn’t give clear indication on pros and cons of medium vs light AA guns. It would be great if it would clearly tell you why you should/may want to have both. Or not have some type.
17. A picture displaying armor parts in the manual. I had to google it, and found one on Something Awful. But still, it is not clear what exactly is placed behind the main belt (machinery and ammo magazines?). Does turret armor goes into the hull and acts as a belt in the area? Or does it combine with the belt? Carrier armor scheme? There are many questions that can be easily answered with couple of pictures, and they should be in the manual, preferably.
18. "Training priorities" seem to be unchanged from RtW1. Adding something for WW2 era, like Deck Ops, maybe, can be advantageous?
19. Show spotted enemy subs on the map. Pretty self-explanatory.
20. More visible aircraft group display on map. A toggle to highlight flying air groups for better visibility. They are very hard to spot at a glance currently.
PS: Overall, I think that Rule the Waves is already one of the greatest naval war games of all time. Great job, and thank you for your work!
FEEDBACK
I played through 1.01 to 1.03, US 1920 WNT start, into ~1950. In technical terms, I had little to no problems (some bugs but no crashes).Visually and sound-wise, the game is where it should be, IMO, it does not have to be any fancier than it already is.
Gameplay requires more write-up. My US playthrough was very isolationist, and I used WNT to slow down worldwide arms race (into like ~1935), focusing on replacing the entire legacy CA/CL/DD fleet with my own designs.
Peacetime game flow felt very satisfying. I had a clear goal - rebuild the fleet, gather as much technologies as possible, avoid war, conduct exercises to practice naval warfare tactics. As with all game aspects, I was not in direct control over everything. But I had many ways of influencing my peacetime progress aspects - specific tech fields, foreign relations (both tensions and an alliance with UK), tempo and focus of my rearmament.
Ship design feels awesome. I've spent many many hours on it. One problem, I've never felt like I'm able to create historical designs within their historical tonnage. I was almost always missing like 15-25% tonnage to implement historical ships. Had to compromise things. But even so, it is a great feature of the game. I had older 20-21 knot BBs and newer fast 28 knot ones. I was afraid they'd be mixed up in divisions and ultimately decided to separate them, and, later, completely scrapped my entire 21 knot battle line.
In my attempts to avoid wars, I hit the lowest Prestige level, and was under threat of being fired, multiple times. Not a bad thing. On a contrary, I did what I thought was the right thing to do, and it felt great.
When the first war (with Russia) started, I immediately felt like I’ve lost almost all control over my progress. New tech advances and wartime shipbuilding did not make much difference to me (due to relatively short length of the war). Refitting ships, even “Obsolete” ones, felt disadvantageous, again, because it took at least 4-6 months, if not more. Wartime (interactable) events, both diplo and internal, were limited, which also made an experience more stale.
Lack of permanent or any sort of administrative OOB/TF structure for my fleet reinforced the feeling of helplessness. I felt very disconnected from my own forces, having far less options to influence my progress, doctrine or strategy. At the same time, having to shuffle ships of different build years, types and qualities between 6 regions made me feel somewhat frustrated. It is not super hard, I can do it, sure, just like I can play WITP AE when I really want to, but it is not exactly easy to do using current UIs.
My second war (against Japan; Russia joined afterwards) was different, but more desperate. I had the same feeling of being disconnected and limited in options, but it dragged for much longer this time - for more than 70 months.
I’m a huge fan of Pacific War and read a lot of historical material about it, but my second war campaign (1938-1945) did not give me similar feel. There was only a couple of big engagements, and even less of them with carriers. Warfare did not feel carrier-centric at all. The first enemy carriers I sank were destroyed by my North Carolina class fast BB replica in night surface action. But that’s mostly due to aircraft targeting problems, I guess - my strike packages were targeting the first ships they saw, lone DDs and KEs, instead of going forward to their objective area and looking for enemy carriers.
I did build new ships during this war, but was still hesitant to implement much in terms of new designs, and I did not do any refits. I had few 8-10kton CLs (both classic 6 inch and some 5 inch CLAAs), but they felt more like a liability, so I scrapped them right in the middle of the war - they often faced enemy capital ships and were tasked with surface bombardments they were barely able to reach with their guns.
Aircraft development felt super cool, all the time. I started with using flying boat for spotting, then used TBs and DBs to reinforce bases. Having fighters on land bases felt almost useless, until I got surprise-attacked by the Japanese. My ships at Pearl Harbor did not stand a chance. But none were hit because enemy planes targeted PH airfield instead of ships in the harbor.
I switched to using flying boats and medium bombers (medium range torpedo capable) for better range and area coverage. Small, separated bases (mostly on islands) did receive DBs to defend against invasions. Some wings were shifted back and forth during the conflict to where they were needed the most. Even though I played as the USA, aircraft maintenance is pricey and I could not afford to have too much aircraft, which is great balance I guess. I did feel that unlimited torpedoes were somehow cheating, however.
Due to “level 21” tech bug I abandoned my playthrought by 1950, but I did feel like it would be great to play further because there was little time for me to play with latest tech, like radar-assisted fire control, bigger carriers etc.
Alright, let’s move to suggestions.
SUGGESTIONS
1. Better regional air group management. Airfields are separated in combat and act on regional basis. But in the Air Group Management window, airbases are listed in what appears to be a chronological order of when they were built, as a single, monolithic list. Separating them by regions (and maybe going two levels deep), adding a line separator maybe, would make it much easier to manage. Example:
Central Pacific
-- Airbase Pearl Harbor (100/100)
-- Airbase Midway (38/40)
---------------------------------------------
North Pacific
-- Airbase Anchorage (20/40)
-- Airbase Dutch Harbor (20/60)
2. Better airstrike targeting rules. Before reaching target area, only big targets of opportunity (carriers and to a lesser priority, battleships) may be attacked. After reaching target area and doing an area search, then it is okay to sink whatever is close by. Some chance of air groups mistaking ship types and attacking wrong targets, scaling with air group experience level.
3. Speed up wartime ship refits. (35-50% faster, depending on ship type? Not sure about balancing)
4. Better designated scout a/c type priority. Two suggestions in one. The easy one: if “floatplane priority” is “the Japanese way”, then DBs and not TBs should be default as “the American way”. Not so easy one has already been asked here many times and I’m sure you’re already thinking about how to better implement it - ability to specifically designate the default scout a/c type in Doctrine screen.
5. "Launch New Search" button or "Launch Now" on Routine Air Ops window, to, well, launch a new search immediately.
6. “Emergency stop of deck ops” button on a/c carrying ships, just like there’s a button to hold fire for 10 minutes or to forbid launching torpedoes (in division details screen). For use on divisions/ships in proximity of enemy surface combatants.
7. Fleet doctrines. Just like there are submarine ops doctrine selection, having several options to influence the way your navy fights are generated. There are many possibilities here, but the general idea is to give slightly more control to the player. I’m no expert in naval doctrines, and not even sure if Fleet in Being and Mahan Doctrines are that much compatible, so I’ll shamelessly use Hearts of Iron doctrines as an example:
Base Strike Doctrine (Carrier Primacy) - more chance to generate battles with Carrier Force present (and more ships assigned to it). Use carriers in land strikes more. Longer starting range in battles, emphasis on standoff attacks.
Fleet in Being Doctrine (Mahan Doctrine?) - more focus on big surface engagements, emphasis on using Main Force in battles (with larger amount of ships assigned to it).
Sealane Interdiction Doctrine (Asymmetric Naval Warfare) - better effect of surface raiders, night time raids, mine warfare.
8. Allow carriers to “Support” any friendly ships, from any Force, therefore, provide CAP to them. You can only send CAP to ships of the same Force as the carriers are currently in. It would be really helpful to allow carriers provide CAP for transport ships during naval invasion, for example.
9. Improve survivability of submarines. They seem to be dying unrealistically fast currently.
10. CL classification to be determined by guns, not armor. Allowing Cleveland class and the like.
11. AI surprise attacks (Japan, I look at you!) should probably attack ships in the harbor, not the airbase
12. Making Range of ships more meaningful. I’m really clueless about this one. I tried building long and extreme range ships, but there seems to be little effect there. Every forum thread on the subject indicates that most people agree on that. Not sure what should be done about it, unfortunately. Also, game manual gives little solid info about this feature IMO.
13. Low rate ship construction. Just like there’s accelerated construction. 25-35% reduction in speed and monthly price. Allow bigger batches of ships to be built simultaneously, reduce the need to halt/resume production of ships when the budget is tight.
14. Slightly more chance to get “shortened build time due to familiarity” to give more bonus of producing ships of the same class. I’m not sure what % it currently is, but I’m trying to build big batches of ships all the time, it is great to maintain fleet composition solidity, but the actual profit of doing so seems to be really small currently. I try to read every monthly report and seen only a couple of such events trigger, while building big numbers of small ships of the same class.
15. Improvements for spotting contacts log. Maybe a button to manually hide selected spotted info entries? Also, time format of spotting. It is really hard to figure out the actual time of spotting (displayed in Zulu time, I guess?) vs dynamically changing local time. An option to display spotting time in local time would be nice, I guess? Or just having uniform time displayed across every UI window/log.
16. Better AA description in the manual. Manual doesn’t even say that HAA = DP guns. I had to figure it out myself initially, and it wasn’t very intuitive. Also, it doesn’t give clear indication on pros and cons of medium vs light AA guns. It would be great if it would clearly tell you why you should/may want to have both. Or not have some type.
17. A picture displaying armor parts in the manual. I had to google it, and found one on Something Awful. But still, it is not clear what exactly is placed behind the main belt (machinery and ammo magazines?). Does turret armor goes into the hull and acts as a belt in the area? Or does it combine with the belt? Carrier armor scheme? There are many questions that can be easily answered with couple of pictures, and they should be in the manual, preferably.
18. "Training priorities" seem to be unchanged from RtW1. Adding something for WW2 era, like Deck Ops, maybe, can be advantageous?
19. Show spotted enemy subs on the map. Pretty self-explanatory.
20. More visible aircraft group display on map. A toggle to highlight flying air groups for better visibility. They are very hard to spot at a glance currently.
PS: Overall, I think that Rule the Waves is already one of the greatest naval war games of all time. Great job, and thank you for your work!
