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Post by rob06waves2018 on Jun 4, 2022 8:51:52 GMT -6
But by the same token, people in the US and Britain have no clue how to visualise 381mm. Intellectually, I've worked with metric since I could count, but if someone says they're 183cm tall, it means precisely nothing to me until I turn it into 6 feet. Similarly, we struggle with kilometres per hour - not because we don't know how far a metre is and how many go into a kilometre, but because no one uses kph in Britain. It's extremely hard to break habits like this because we've all been using our respective systems since birth. There's even style or technical differences in each measurement system. Some metric countries go in for decilitres, some go for centilitres, and others just use fractional litres. A US pint is 16floz while a British pint is 20. Or the fact that Brits measure people's weights in stones (14lbs) rather than the more American pounds.
One section no one's piped up about is displacement. The game uses generic tons but what does that mean? (Metric 1000kg = 2200lbs, Imperial (long) 2240lbs = 1016kg, US (short) 2000lbs = 907kg.) We think they're close, but over tens of thousands of tons they're not. It doesn't break the game though, because we use relative measures. A 10 thousand-ton(ne) ship is relatively bigger and better than an 8 thousand-ton ship. Similarly, a 18" gun is bigger and better than a 12". We can visualise it and say one has an extra half a foot in diameter but that's not really required for the actual game.
I stand by my earlier post. Can't see the problem with it being an option to switch, definitely would be a good idea for a mod, but not a priority for devs trying to publish a brand spanking new game in October.
pint is imperial, not metric. Fractional liters all have names if you care to figure them out but using decimals or scientific notation is easier. I was raised in the US but think in metric, because I have taught myself to, with the only exception being that I factor inches, feet, and yards about as well as cm and meters given they are somewhat manageable to convert if you aren't trying to be exact. I have switched all of my devices to metric and Celsius, and only figure in miles when I am driving because the length of a mile is really hard to know intuitively. As for displacement I wasn't concerned about that any more than I was about the unspecified currency used. We already know it isn't a 1/1 match to most tons because its hard to make matches to real world ships. I just think that it would be a qol improvement for people who aren't American and some British people. Yes, a pint is Imperial. I was using it to illustrate differences even between countries that ostensibly use the same measurements. There are names for fractional litres... mililitres, centilitres and decilitres. However, different European countries would say 100 ml, 1 dl, 10cl or even 0,1l.
As far as teaching yourself to work it metric, well done, but it doesn't change the fact that many people haven't. As I say, we're taught metric almost exclusively in schools, but most Brits visualise in Imperial because that's what they and their parents know. A mile is easy to know intuitively if you've been walking and driving in miles for years. A kilometre is only a tangible distance to me if I say it's about 1100 yds, because I've never used kilometres for distance.
As far as changing the code to add it, I don't know but given how the different save files and parameter files are compiled, I suspect it's more than simply a find and replace. Many different files would have to be manually changed and if you want dynamic changing (tickbox), I would think that's a fair amount of work.
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Post by forget83 on Jun 5, 2022 6:08:49 GMT -6
On the displaying in metric issue From a practical perspective, what is the point of converting the measurement to metric. The game is design with inch increment in mind so any work would just be converting from the currently nice and round number to either annoyingly odd number or deceptive round number i.e converting 14" to either 35,56cm vs 36cm. And before anyone said that's ok, remember that means every time you click the arrow to change caliber/armor instead of round 5->6->7->... you will be going 12.7->15.24->17.78->... or 12.7->15.2->17.9 when you try to increase each increment. The lack of uniform in increment will be much more annoying than any benefits of intuitively understanding of what the number actually means. Even then, the dominance of American and British perspective in English language Naval media meant that most people who would buy RTW would have a basic knowledge on which gun caliber goes on which ship type. For armor thickness, their gameplay purpose make them more "easily" convertible but if you are not converting gun caliber than there is no point.
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Post by williammiller on Jun 6, 2022 8:45:37 GMT -6
I opened up a new RTW3 board, so I am going to move this thread to that board.
Thanks!
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Post by jwsmith26 on Jun 6, 2022 9:08:48 GMT -6
Guys, I am quite sure that our developer (remember, he is just one man) would love to add the ability to switch between metric and imperial. It is not a question of whether he wants to add this ability, I'm quite sure he would like to do so, but such a change is not free; the decision about whether to do so has to be weighed against other desires, needs and must-dos for the game. So far, the equation has tilted in favor of other tasks. It is possible that a wider audience might tip the equation in the opposite direction, but for now it appears that other needs have taken precedence.
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Post by kagami777 on Jun 6, 2022 14:00:33 GMT -6
We are going in circles here. I think we have spent more time discussing this that it would take to the developers to add this option to the game. It seems to me something pretty straight forward to implement but I may be wrong. I still believe it could help sales and that it makes sense both from the point of view of easiness for the user and also that it is historically accurate as it is the way armour and calibre have always been measured in those countries. From my understanding of coding it should be as simple as adding a checkmark in the option menu that changes the string to read x dialogue instead of y. but I understand coding about as well as the people on the main forum understand nuclear radiation... so... I could be astronomically wrong and this could be insanely difficult.
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Post by kagami777 on Jun 6, 2022 14:04:54 GMT -6
On the displaying in metric issue From a practical perspective, what is the point of converting the measurement to metric. The game is design with inch increment in mind so any work would just be converting from the currently nice and round number to either annoyingly odd number or deceptive round number i.e converting 14" to either 35,56cm vs 36cm. And before anyone said that's ok, remember that means every time you click the arrow to change caliber/armor instead of round 5->6->7->... you will be going 12.7->15.24->17.78->... or 12.7->15.2->17.9 when you try to increase each increment. The lack of uniform in increment will be much more annoying than any benefits of intuitively understanding of what the number actually means. Even then, the dominance of American and British perspective in English language Naval media meant that most people who would buy RTW would have a basic knowledge on which gun caliber goes on which ship type. For armor thickness, their gameplay purpose make them more "easily" convertible but if you are not converting gun caliber than there is no point. Because it is something that would make the game more accessible to the larger audience Steam will open it to, and most of the worlds navies use metric. Not to mention I want it because I prefer the metric measurements and the lack of round numbers doesn't bother me because after playing kancolle for years I just use those measurements for guns anyways.
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Post by kagami777 on Jun 6, 2022 14:05:59 GMT -6
Guys, I am quite sure that our developer (remember, he is just one man) would love to add the ability to switch between metric and imperial. It is not a question of whether he wants to add this ability, I'm quite sure he would like to do so, but such a change is not free; the decision about whether to do so has to be weighed against other desires, needs and must-dos for the game. So far, the equation has tilted in favor of other tasks. It is possible that a wider audience might tip the equation in the opposite direction, but for now it appears that other needs have taken precedence. Understood, thank you for the respones.
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Post by TheOtherPoster on Jun 6, 2022 15:06:26 GMT -6
It seems the metric system is out for the time being, like nuclear. Well, it's not the end of the world. Making a qualitatively better game that RTW2 is a daunting task and the most important thing now is that RTW3 is ready for release on time in all its glory.
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Post by gurudennis on Jun 7, 2022 13:24:25 GMT -6
We are going in circles here. I think we have spent more time discussing this that it would take to the developers to add this option to the game. It seems to me something pretty straight forward to implement but I may be wrong. I still believe it could help sales and that it makes sense both from the point of view of easiness for the user and also that it is historically accurate as it is the way armour and calibre have always been measured in those countries. I expect it would be fairly tedious to implement. Localization (which this is a form of; translation would be another more obvious form) can be tough unless software is written from the get-go with it in mind. The odds for that in RTW are slim. Many of the interface strings would need to be more dynamic and some of the interface elements (armor thickness and caliber indicators for instance) would have to be dynamically populated with one or another unit and then converted to and from inches when saving/loading the dialog state. One might actually get substantial extra sales from a comprehensive localization support (i.e. a full French / Chinese / <insert_here> translation for markets that traditionally struggle with English) -- then again it's a fairly time-consuming proposition. Color me biased as an unapologetic user of Imperial measurements when it comes to all things naval and aviation, but I'd rather get more features or get my hands on RTW3 sooner. Post-release is another matter though.
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Post by TheOtherPoster on Jun 7, 2022 23:31:41 GMT -6
You don't have to implement localitation. In its simpler form is enough putting the option for metric before starting the game (so it cannot be changed during the game), maybe in the same window we choose fleet size, naval treaties and the rest. The program will remember what you have chosen so don't have to click it every time (as it does with other features like autosave and other preferences). But I know that for any unapologetic inch imperialist having such a switch in the window may be cause of concern Anyway, we've already been told it's not going to happen so no need to loose our sleep on this anymore. By the way, I wonder if 1. The developers are still open to new suggestions that could be added to RTW3 or they are already polishing RTW3 as it is now before releasing. 2. Would it be worth it to update the -by now wrongly named- RTW2 expansion catalog? Have any changes/new features been made since last year? Thanks
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Post by rufusshinra on Jun 8, 2022 1:26:11 GMT -6
We are going in circles here. I think we have spent more time discussing this that it would take to the developers to add this option to the game. It seems to me something pretty straight forward to implement but I may be wrong. I still believe it could help sales and that it makes sense both from the point of view of easiness for the user and also that it is historically accurate as it is the way armour and calibre have always been measured in those countries. I expect it would be fairly tedious to implement. Localization (which this is a form of; translation would be another more obvious form) can be tough unless software is written from the get-go with it in mind. The odds for that in RTW are slim. Many of the interface strings would need to be more dynamic and some of the interface elements (armor thickness and caliber indicators for instance) would have to be dynamically populated with one or another unit and then converted to and from inches when saving/loading the dialog state. One might actually get substantial extra sales from a comprehensive localization support (i.e. a full French / Chinese / <insert_here> translation for markets that traditionally struggle with English) -- then again it's a fairly time-consuming proposition. Color me biased as an unapologetic user of Imperial measurements when it comes to all things naval and aviation, but I'd rather get more features or get my hands on RTW3 sooner. Post-release is another matter though. To this, there is also the issue with some languages literally not having the words for some of the critical aspects of the game. I'm thinking about French in particular, as we do not really use different words for battleship (B), dreadnought (BB) and fast battleships (BB), just *cuirassé*, which is bound to make things confusing. Though, speaking as an unapologetically French and therefore metric lover, the imperial units tend to be more sensible for use in a historical naval game. For land artillery, it'd be different due to the major influence of France and Germany over calibre standardization: on land, people use 75 and 155, on sea 76, 127 and 152. Yes, I'd like metric to be used in a thoroughly universal manner and it is in a strong position to eventually become the standard for space navies, but for wet navies' armaments? Imperial it is. The Frogs use 76 mm guns, 533 mm torpedoes, and so on and on, even though metric would, in theory, be more sensible. So that's a point I doubt deserves the amount of effort needed for the devs to go over everything in a game which has its foundation set already.
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Post by TheOtherPoster on Jun 8, 2022 2:27:00 GMT -6
To my knowledge nobody has ever proposed to have the game translated into other languages but thank you for giving us your opinion just in case. I guess most of us would agree with you that now it's not the time: we just want our RTW3 asap. The only thing we ever proposed was to be able to switch to mm before starting the game. No player location or translation of texts required
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Post by Deleted on Jun 8, 2022 19:29:24 GMT -6
We are going in circles here. I think we have spent more time discussing this that it would take to the developers to add this option to the game. It seems to me something pretty straight forward to implement but I may be wrong. I still believe it could help sales and that it makes sense both from the point of view of easiness for the user and also that it is historically accurate as it is the way armour and calibre have always been measured in those countries. I expect it would be fairly tedious to implement. Localization (which this is a form of; translation would be another more obvious form) can be tough unless software is written from the get-go with it in mind. The odds for that in RTW are slim. Many of the interface strings would need to be more dynamic and some of the interface elements (armor thickness and caliber indicators for instance) would have to be dynamically populated with one or another unit and then converted to and from inches when saving/loading the dialog state. One might actually get substantial extra sales from a comprehensive localization support (i.e. a full French / Chinese / <insert_here> translation for markets that traditionally struggle with English) -- then again it's a fairly time-consuming proposition. Color me biased as an unapologetic user of Imperial measurements when it comes to all things naval and aviation, but I'd rather get more features or get my hands on RTW3 sooner. Post-release is another matter though. i think that I´d manage to translate the whole game into Czech language in likely less than 2 hours. It would also significantly help people like my father, who is interested in naval history and computer games, but doesnt understand English.
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Post by zederfflinger on Jun 9, 2022 17:36:26 GMT -6
I don't know if the developers are still open to suggestions, but I think that this could be an interesting addition, so I'll put it out here.
What do you guys think about fleshing out the infrastructure system more, ie. adding private shipbuilding companies, and maybe other stuff I haven't thought about yet.
Private shipyards could provide dockyard space without you having to pay for it.
There could be several tendering offers for every ship, allowing you to save a bit of money on construction.
Successful companies that win lots of orders would expand, giving you more capacity.
Unsuccessful companies may require monetary support to stay afloat, if they don't get this they will fold, reducing capacity.
If you go through a phase with little new construction or expensive refits, corporations may need your financial help or you risk losing a great deal of capacity.
I really think that this would add some more realism to the game. If anyone has any ideas on improving this proposal, I would be glad to hear them!
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Post by williammiller on Jun 9, 2022 18:08:16 GMT -6
I don't know if the developers are still open to suggestions... We are. I can of course make no promises that any specific suggestion/idea might make it into the initial game release, but we do read all of these suggestions.
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