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Post by dougalachi on Feb 27, 2021 17:49:33 GMT -6
To number 1: The games sends in my 6" cruisers against guns well above my caliber. Maybe you could argue that this is somewhat plausible, but if the guns are beyond the range of my guns and within port protection, I can do nothing but twiddle my thumbs for the match length or try to hunt down some transport ships. To number 4: All I get when I am given a choice to decline or accept a battle is a theoretical maximum strength figure. I strongly get the feeling that my enemy gets information not just on what I theoretically can pull into the game, but what it will choose to actually pull into the battle. If I move in a massive amount of ships with the intention of forcing a set-piece battle with basically everything I have, why should the game be able to halve my line-up? If I am cruising off of the coast of N America trying to defend Newfoundland, I'm not sitting in port with cold boilers. You move ships with intention, but the game has its own ideas of what those ships will do. Historically, up to the later part of WW2, I believe that it was in fact pretty rare to dispatch a battleship for bombardment purposes - remember, these are RARE, EXPENSIVE and PRESTIGIOUS units that you don't want the enemy to get a cheap propaganda claim against. More often, purpose built Monitors were used - but that is not an option as the game is currently, so that leaves Cruisers. Sounds like you are unlucky. Last few times I was defending against a US invasion (Caribbean and Canada both), I did get my full force available...and quite handily ripped through the invasion fleets, stopping the attack dead. Yes, it bugs me as well. It can be turned down in options, I can edit the saved game data to eliminate it entirely. The AI is very conservative, and will try to avoid battles not in it's favour. As for ships engaging piecemeal, that became the norm, at least in the European Theatre post-WW1. The British had nothing available to stop the Channel Dash. When hunting the Bismarck, HMS Prince of Wales was still working up (to the point they still .had civilians on board) whilst HMS Rodney's engines were badly worn and she was officially limited to 20kn top speed. Heck, even Graff Spee was hunted down by a pair of 6" Cruisers later joined by an 8" Cruiser.Depends what you mean by "every ship available". It takes hours to warm up the boiler of a steam train to operating temperature. Ships have bigger boilers that are more awkward to repair and service, so you'll probably want to be even more careful with those - so any ships where the boilers are cold aren't available. Ships may be in dock for resupplying or even a minor repair/refit that doesn't show up on the main screen. Yet again, ships could be drastically out of position with no real hope of an intercept. In the early part of the game, communications options are more limited, even when wireless was available it wasn't always easy to get a message to the ship you wanted. Indeed, lackofgravitas on the spacebattles forums has an anecdote about not being able to communicate with higher command on the Falkland Islands in the 80s Would be nice, but the game needs to be able to auto-resolve fleet battles on a consistent basis for this to be viable. Can't say I've noticed this, but then can't remember the last time I didn't want as many ships as the Admiralty anyway. Check their ship losses. Your saboteurs might have sunk a ship...doesn't mean they have identified it correctly. I seem to remember once being informed that they had sunk a battleship, checked the ship losses to find they had blown up a garbage ship. As others say, yours isn't the only voice involved. All it takes is one diplomat to act in bad faith and it can completely derail the negotiations. I agree it would add to the accessibility of the game I must admit that it does feel like it sometimes. Pretty sure this has been reported multiple times, and we've had a "we're looking into it", but so far we've had no changes. [/quote]
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jatzi
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Post by jatzi on Feb 28, 2021 9:04:37 GMT -6
I've heard and it makes a lot of sense that the battle generator often tries to balance battles so that no one is overly out numbered, even the AI. There may be a slight bias towards letting the AI have more ships, if available, in battles and this again makes sense from a certain point of view. The AI cannot hope to match us players in combat skill, the difficulty settings make the game harder by removing more and more control from the player not by making the AI better. Player ships can usually be counted on to be better than AI ships as well. As such it stands to reason that they'd often have more ships in battle to offset this skill, and ship quality, disparity by way of numbers. Nothing personal, but when you are playing against the US, that argument doesn't hold water. It is VERY hard to outproduce the US Navy. If you want any hope of winning, you need decisive battles where you can throw everything at the wall and make something stick while you have the chance. They have created a dynamic that artificially helps the AI to the point that you are very unlikely to win against an opponent that can outproduce you if they limit battles to when they aren't disadvantaged. I don't have that ability as the player, but the strongest AI nation who can outproduce anyone else gets this? It's ridiculous. Why bother playing UK then if your main competitor is always able to neuter your fleet campaigns by choosing how many ships they want to fight against. I've fought and won against larger opponents. I've won against the US while playing as the confederates and Japan and the UK. I've won as Italy fighting against the UK and France at the same time (hardest war I've ever fought actually but super fun) and as the UK by itself at it's prime. Just because it limits the battles so they aren't outrageously one sided doesn't mean you can't win. Numbers comes in very handy during successive battles btw. That hardest war I fought as Italy was hard because there was a year of constant invasion battles and fleet/carrier battles. Every battle ships would get damaged or sunk leaving me with less ships for the next battle which made it harder to avoid more ships getting damaged and sunk. It was a death spiral that I thankfully avoided by eventually doing the same thing to the AI, damaging enough ships that they couldn't launch another invasion or fleet battle. Numbers would have helped a lot there. I'm confused on what you're arguing though. You want AI nations that outnumber you to bring their full power to bear against you? Cuz you'd lose, everyone would lose and that's not fun. Losing is fun yes but not like that.
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Post by wlbjork on Mar 1, 2021 1:14:40 GMT -6
Nothing personal, but when you are playing against the US, that argument doesn't hold water. It is VERY hard to outproduce the US Navy. If you want any hope of winning, you need decisive battles where you can throw everything at the wall and make something stick while you have the chance. They have created a dynamic that artificially helps the AI to the point that you are very unlikely to win against an opponent that can outproduce you if they limit battles to when they aren't disadvantaged. I don't have that ability as the player, but the strongest AI nation who can outproduce anyone else gets this? It's ridiculous. Why bother playing UK then if your main competitor is always able to neuter your fleet campaigns by choosing how many ships they want to fight against. I've fought and won against larger opponents. I've won against the US while playing as the confederates and Japan and the UK. I've won as Italy fighting against the UK and France at the same time (hardest war I've ever fought actually but super fun) and as the UK by itself at it's prime. Just because it limits the battles so they aren't outrageously one sided doesn't mean you can't win. Numbers comes in very handy during successive battles btw. That hardest war I fought as Italy was hard because there was a year of constant invasion battles and fleet/carrier battles. Every battle ships would get damaged or sunk leaving me with less ships for the next battle which made it harder to avoid more ships getting damaged and sunk. It was a death spiral that I thankfully avoided by eventually doing the same thing to the AI, damaging enough ships that they couldn't launch another invasion or fleet battle. Numbers would have helped a lot there. I'm confused on what you're arguing though. You want AI nations that outnumber you to bring their full power to bear against you? Cuz you'd lose, everyone would lose and that's not fun. Losing is fun yes but not like that. I've had several one-battles that the generator has thrown me into. These things happen - HMS Rawalpindi was an armed merchant cruiser that ran into Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in the opening months of WW2 (Britain's perspective). Sometimes I've pushed through for a win, other times I've been forced to break off as soon as the enemy is identified.
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Post by mobeer on Mar 1, 2021 4:42:32 GMT -6
... The game basically pushes into building bigger, better and more expensive ships, because if you want to go for quantity instead of quality, the game screws you on every occasion.
I think this is a real flaw in the game engine. If in a sea zone the player has 5 old pre-dreadnoughts and the AI has 1 modern battlecruiser, then the resulting battle seems to invariably be 1 vs 1. There is no way to influence \ instruct player fleet to keep the pre-dreadnoughts grouped together.
This in turn limits effective use of the ship designer, as the player cannot risk building cheaper ships.
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Post by williammiller on Mar 1, 2021 11:57:37 GMT -6
I simply don't have time to address each and every point brought up in this thread, but I will say this:
We do read every complaint/suggestion/issue report/etc posted in these forums, along with emails and other correspondence that we receive from outside them. We have made numerous changes and additions to the game based on such inputs, and we will continue to do so in the future. However, we frankly do not have the amount of time nor resources required to add everything that is possible, or even everything that we ourselves would personally like to see in the game sometimes - mind you we are quite avid naval gamers as well :-)
Many of the items mentioned in this thread are/will be considered for inclusion, and I think it likely that a number of them may make the cut for inclusion. At this point I simply cannot get more specific than that: we have to evaluate each potential item and determine if it 1) is reasonable/realistic/desirable to add, 2) how it will affect game-play and the other game systems, and 3) do we have the resources/time to actually implement said feature in a satisfactory manner. Now, how popular an item/feature is for inclusion does indeed affect our decision (since we rather obviously would want to include the more requested features/changes), but we still have to consider/balance our time and resources even then.
So in short, keep the suggestions/complaints/ideas coming, we are listening and will consider them.
I thank each of you for taking the time to read and consider this post.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 1, 2021 21:14:54 GMT -6
Adding to discussion. X axis shows gun caliber, Y axis shows armor penetration I plotted the armor penetration of quality 1 guns with full technologies (1950), at 5kyards distance and noticed it had an odd shape. The 14" and 8" guns are (most noticeably) above the trend, while 9", 10", 18", 19", 20" guns are below the trend. I was wondering why, so I computed the sectional density of 10" and 8" shells. 10" shells had significant advantage in sectional density, as it should, being a higher caliber projectile. Plugged values into deMarre calculator assuming same velocity, using characteristics of 8" gun, estimated penetration of 10" gun at 5kyards; 11 inches. Plotted weight of gun, 10" appears to fit trend. This suggests to me 10" gun offers similar velocity to 8" gun. In cost 10" is a little better on trend line. Calculating armor penetration of 10" gun by interpolating its armor pen with 11" and 8" guns gives result ~11.56", significantly higher than rated penetration of belt at 5kyards in game. I did not calculate for the other underperforming guns. Then I compared 16"Q1 gun from RTW2 to real life 16"/45 Mk2/3/4 (British) Naval Gun designed in 1938. Performance of 16"Q1 cannon at 15k yards only matches 16" Mark1 Gun of Nelson, and 15"/42 Mk1 of 1912. Compared to 16"/45 at 17.7", it is not even a contest. 16" gun projectile is also significantly underweight compared. At 5kyards the 16" Mk2/3/4's defeats ~26". Assuming Q of gun reflects this; -2 --> L/30, -1 --> L/35, 0 --> L/40 1 --> L/45, and 16", penetration of projectiles (Q1 guns) in 1938 should be around 26 inches. You can also notice the horizontal (x axis) displacement that contributes to these problems. I think, RTW severely underestimates belt armor penetration of kinetic penetrators. Even if these values are for something like base through, 100% chance of 80% projectile mass penetrating armor at X distance, I suspect its not using it correctly, given difficulty players have had defeating armor protection of contemporary battleships with armor piercing projectiles.
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jatzi
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Post by jatzi on Mar 1, 2021 23:56:32 GMT -6
I've fought and won against larger opponents. I've won against the US while playing as the confederates and Japan and the UK. I've won as Italy fighting against the UK and France at the same time (hardest war I've ever fought actually but super fun) and as the UK by itself at it's prime. Just because it limits the battles so they aren't outrageously one sided doesn't mean you can't win. Numbers comes in very handy during successive battles btw. That hardest war I fought as Italy was hard because there was a year of constant invasion battles and fleet/carrier battles. Every battle ships would get damaged or sunk leaving me with less ships for the next battle which made it harder to avoid more ships getting damaged and sunk. It was a death spiral that I thankfully avoided by eventually doing the same thing to the AI, damaging enough ships that they couldn't launch another invasion or fleet battle. Numbers would have helped a lot there. I'm confused on what you're arguing though. You want AI nations that outnumber you to bring their full power to bear against you? Cuz you'd lose, everyone would lose and that's not fun. Losing is fun yes but not like that. I've had several one-battles that the generator has thrown me into. These things happen - HMS Rawalpindi was an armed merchant cruiser that ran into Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in the opening months of WW2 (Britain's perspective). Sometimes I've pushed through for a win, other times I've been forced to break off as soon as the enemy is identified. Yeah. And? I'm confused on what your point is too
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Post by wlbjork on Mar 2, 2021 0:04:36 GMT -6
I've had several one-battles that the generator has thrown me into. These things happen - HMS Rawalpindi was an armed merchant cruiser that ran into Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in the opening months of WW2 (Britain's perspective). Sometimes I've pushed through for a win, other times I've been forced to break off as soon as the enemy is identified. Yeah. And? I'm confused on what your point is too It's neither unrealistic, nor - depending on the exact mission - unbalanced, which tends to be the two big complaints about this style of game. Expendable, I guess 2" and 3" guns - which both have a pen of 0 in game - are not included in the graph? On that assumption, yes, it does indeed appear that 8", 15" and 16" guns get a boost in penetration compared to others whilst 10" and 17"+ guns are effectively nerfed - at 5k range. Have you run a check at other range bands to see if there is a consistent trend? There should be, as penetration is, AFAIK, run on some form of algorithm but confirmation is always good. Of course, balancing that is the fact that the game is shoehorning in several generations of guns into just 3 whilst not altering shell weight or other characteristics - however, there is a very small team on the programming side and they don't have the capacity to model everything down to the last molecule (although the joke among fans is that that is the goal of Dwarf Fortress ).
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jatzi
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Post by jatzi on Mar 2, 2021 0:08:55 GMT -6
Yeah. And? I'm confused on what your point is too It's neither unrealistic, nor - depending on the exact mission - unbalanced, which tends to be the two big complaints about this style of game. One ship running into 2? What's so unrealistic about that? I'm not trying to defend this to the death or anything. There's issues with it all for sure. But hindering one side to make a battle more fair isn't one of those major issues to me. Nor is having one ship occasionally run into 2 or 3
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Post by wlbjork on Mar 2, 2021 1:08:22 GMT -6
It's neither unrealistic, nor - depending on the exact mission - unbalanced, which tends to be the two big complaints about this style of game. One ship running into 2? What's so unrealistic about that? I'm not trying to defend this to the death or anything. There's issues with it all for sure. But hindering one side to make a battle more fair isn't one of those major issues to me. Nor is having one ship occasionally run into 2 or 3 Yet it's a regular complaint that people don't get to choose what ships they get in a mission. I can accept people wanting to set up how their ships are organised, both by division and by force slot (battle line, scout and carrier). I think that is an area the task force commander should have most of the say in - but I know that this is probably going to be a complex area to be implemented, so it's on my "nice but not essential" list. I'll also point out that you don't just get 2 or 3 to 1 matchups. Very occasionally you'll get some really odd situations whereby its more a case of 2 CLs vs half a fleet. That tends to be interesting, trying to evade the enemy when you messed up and got a bit too deep into the engagement zone. I've had a KE attack a convoy defended by 1 CA, 1 CL and 1 AMC...and got a significant win. I've even seen a really odd situation where a pair of AI AMCs were assigned to a completely unsuited mission attacking me - that was just a tedious case of chasing the darn things down though.
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Post by director on Mar 2, 2021 13:06:08 GMT -6
wlbjork - I don't complain so much about not getting to choose exactly which ships go on a mission; my suggestion has more to do with letting me organize my ships into functional units, assign them to an area and then assign missions to them. That's not the same as the current system of cycling through mission after mission that I do not want, or which happen in an area I don't care about, or which I cannot sanely accept (like deploying my fleet just offshore from AI airbases, or deploying a French, English, Italian or American fleet in the Baltic). I'd be OK with having some ships not available, such as by last-minute grounding or mechanical casualty. I'd be happy to see 'such-and-such is needed for last-minute merchant escort - detach her Y/N?' with various penalties or results depending on what I pick. But constantly having my ships shuffled into unmatched sets and scattered over the ocean in a 'forced' mission I didn't choose... well, that just seems to be designed to give the AI a detached portion it can fall upon. I should at the very least be able to put fast ships in one group and slow ships in another. That matters more to me than the force levels on each side.
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Post by Fredrik W on Mar 2, 2021 13:34:55 GMT -6
Thanks for your feedback and comments! Rule the Waves is a very complex game and tries to simulate many aspects of naval warfare. I am certainly aware that it is not perfect in every aspect, but all game designs has to be a compromise between realism, playability and what is possible to accomplish with the resources available. Some brief replies below: I have hundreds of hours in this game but this is my first post because I have never been more incredibly upset. 1. Your algorithms send my cruisers into shore bombardment missions where the radius of port protection surrounding the target is greater than the range of my guns so that I can't attack it. This is ridiculous and a waste of players' time. Also, how are you determining what ships that are available in the region to send in for the shore bombardment? Often, I have BCs and BBSs available in that, but you send in my 6" armed cruisers to attack 9-11" coastal guns. Again, RIDICULOUS! There can be a problem in some cases where the defensive minefield will prevent effective bombardment. We are identifying and correcting them. If you point out specific cases where that happens it will be helpful. As for matching ships and coast artillery, coastal artillery should not normally be so heavy as to prevent a bombardment, but admittedly, with bad luck it could happen, but such cases should be rare. Most engagements are generated to get a relatively equal number of ships for both sides, with some variations, except for Fleet Battles. The same algortithm is used when generating the AI fleet as for the human controlled fleet. There is a chance that the side with more ships in the are of the relevant type will get an extra ship, and there is a chance that the AI will sometimes get an extra ship, to balance for human ingenuity. In fleet battles, both sides will get most of their ships in the area , with some variation, but the algorithm is the same for both sides. They do learn from their mistakes. The chance of turret flash fires will get smaller after some have occured. If you do not like flash fires, they can be turned off in preferences. The hidden flaw mechanism is also partly for play balance to make it possible for smaller navies to have a chance against the RN. Though all nations have their advantages and disadvantages. There is no mechanism in the game that will let the AI know everything about the player force. As stated above, the same algorithm is used for selecting the AI and the player fleet, and the AI fleet does not know the composition of the player fleet. The AI makes tactical decisions on the basis of enemy ships it has sighted. It makes decisions about wether to accept or decline battles on the overall force level in the area. One can not accomplish everything in a game. Development effort has to be prioritized. Though we have seen this request from many players, and we are planning on including AI vs AI wars in the expansion. If you select the half option you should get a rquirement for half the number. Note though, that ships already building are added to this number, as the requirement is above and beyond what is already building. Then there is a bug. There should be a loss of some ship, unless the attempt fails. Sometimes they blow up an unimportant enemy ship, but you will get to know the result in a message. I will investigate that this is working as intended. The intention is that the player as admiral will give advice to the government. This advice will influence the decision taken, but is no sure guarantee that things will turn out as desired. Also, the enemy is a variable too. Wars can be started easily, but do not always end when you want them to, as Machiavelli put it. This could admittedly be improved. We are a small team and have to select between research, programming and testing the actual game and writing manuals and doing tutorials. The game itself and its funtionality has tended to take priority. No. Some nations (Germany) have a bonus tech in damage control that will increase the survivability of their ships. Ohter nations (Japan) has a malus in damage control. The US is average in this respect. The AI will tend not to slow down if there are enemy ships nearby. Its first priority is getting away from percieved danger. We have had this feedback from other players, and this has been modified so that the AI will be more inclined to slow down, but it might well be that more tweaking is warranted. The US has no close enemies and a buoyant economy, which does make it relatively easy to play. It is the intention that different nations should have different strengths and weaknesses, and not all nations are intended to be equal challenges. Any differences are intended to be a compromise between our interpretetion of history and playability. There is though in some cases an intention to make small and weak nations more interesting to play, for example Austria Hungary is somewhat stronger in game than it should be historically.
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Post by Fredrik W on Mar 2, 2021 13:40:58 GMT -6
wlbjork - I don't complain so much about not getting to choose exactly which ships go on a mission; my suggestion has more to do with letting me organize my ships into functional units, assign them to an area and then assign missions to them. That's not the same as the current system of cycling through mission after mission that I do not want, or which happen in an area I don't care about, or which I cannot sanely accept (like deploying my fleet just offshore from AI airbases, or deploying a French, English, Italian or American fleet in the Baltic). I'd be OK with having some ships not available, such as by last-minute grounding or mechanical casualty. I'd be happy to see 'such-and-such is needed for last-minute merchant escort - detach her Y/N?' with various penalties or results depending on what I pick. But constantly having my ships shuffled into unmatched sets and scattered over the ocean in a 'forced' mission I didn't choose... well, that just seems to be designed to give the AI a detached portion it can fall upon. I should at the very least be able to put fast ships in one group and slow ships in another. That matters more to me than the force levels on each side. We are considering some kind of fixed organisation and/or more player control over which ships will be selected for engagements in the expansion, as many players have had this request. I cannot say exactly how this will work now, or what the exact solution will be.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2021 13:55:50 GMT -6
Update original with it, not expansion.
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Post by blackvoid on Mar 2, 2021 14:16:15 GMT -6
1. Is there a way to stop your own DDs torpedoing your battle line? For some reason screening DDs are "behind" the battle line, not in front. Happens a lot.
2. Does AI get some kind of advantage the longer the war goes?
I am on my 4th year of war with SU as Japan and SU is outbuilding me. I struggle to build a modest BB (Richelieu clone, just with 16" guns), SU builds massive 16" Nelson types with better armor. I look at their Almanac, and they build BBs, BCs, CVs, SS, all at the same time.
It is possible that massive Air Force is bleeding my budget and SU doesn't have any in Europe. Also losses were lopsided, so SU have some savings in fleet maintenance.
3. Regarding battle generator randomness. I cancel battles near SU air bases in NEA. AI cancels them near Japan. I usually select a cruiser engagement in a "neutral area" so AI agrees. Then I get 1 CA, SU fields 3 BCs. That's a complete SU BC force in NEA. I have in the same area 5 CAs and 3 BCs. I turn around and run. Next turn.
4. Don't understand how sub warfare works. My main ASW corvette 900t 24knts two DP 4" guns, top notch FC and ASW rating 10. I have about 20 of them above TP requirements. Often getting defeated in "gun duels" or torpedoed. I guess after sinking all old subs, new ones are better than 10 ASW rating?
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