Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts work in progress.

[Gusington]

Austria-Hungary, Spain and China sound amazing. I can't wait.

[JasonPratt]

Hello Admirals,
We are very happy to announce the next large patch for Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts. The game now includes the full global map and all playable major nations for the campaign. The campaign has been enriched with many new features, including submarines, minefields, the finalization of the main technology tree, and various new aspects which aim to make the gameplay deeper and more realistic. Please read below in detail what v1.09 has to offer.


MAJOR CAMPAIGN FEATURES
Full Global Map: The map is expanded in its maximum size scale and it includes the whole world. You will be able to travel with your fleets everywhere and now the strategic importance of Task Forces and other new technologies become a necessity.

All Major Nations added: All 10x major Nations become available to play. The previous nations were:

- British Empire
- French Empire
- German Empire
- Italian Empire
- Austro-Hungarian Empire

and the new are:

- United States
- Russian Empire
- Empire of Japan
- Spanish Empire
- Chinese Empire

Note: For starters, their initial starting provinces will not differ according to the start year of the campaign.

All necessary technology aspects become available: All previous not functional "To-Do" which you were seeing in the technology tree will be now fully operational, and many more. The most important to mention are the following:

Submarines & ASW: The technology tree is enriched with the submarines which you can fully use in the campaign map. ASW new techs will help in the countermeasures against submarines. Fleets with no ASW and light ship escorts will be very vulnerable against submarines.The submarines will only be playable on the campaign map and will execute autoresolved missions against convoys and enemy fleets.Special mine submarines could sink enemies with their mines without engaging them.

Mines: The technology tree includes a full set of mines and minefield options which can be used in the campaign map. DD and CL will have the ability to deploy mines with special components around the ports. Fleets will be able to clean them up faster if they have DD or TB with dedicated minesweeping equipment. Ports that are protected by mines can heavily damage enemies that attempt to close in for Port Strike missions.

Ship Construction Flaws: Only for the campaign, the ships may have various minor or major defects when building them which you can overcome if you invest in construction technologies. Some complex components may increase the chance of defects, so overpowering your ship with the latest technology may result in defective ships if you haven't invested sufficiently in the ship construction technologies. The "Overweight" and "Underweight" type of defects are permanent, while the extra "Hull Defects", "Weapon Defects" can be gradually repaired with refits.

New "Recon" rating for ships: The *Recon* rating represents the reconnaissance capability of the ship, its ability to report enemy movements without being detected, and greatly improves the strategic power of the fleet to gain initiative on offensive missions or get away from trouble before the enemy comes too close. "Recon" is affected mainly by the respective technology as well as spotting, detectability and speed attributes of the ship.

Large and slow ships such as battleships are expected to have a smaller "Recon" rating than small cruisers and destroyers. Radio and Radar equipment greatly increase the reconnaissance capability surpassing inherited disadvantages of larger ships.

Various strategic technologies: Technologies that speed up the crew training, raise the maximum training level without combat, enhance the power projection/invade/protect capabilities or even reinforce transports with more armament (and torpedoes). All in all, the technology aspects have been rebalanced and enriched so that they matter significantly and require careful planning on which one to focus on.

EXTRA MAJOR FEATURES
Updated Shipyard graphics: New graphical improvements for the shipyard, according to the size of the designed ships. These shipyards will fit all ships, even the largest super battleships.

Campaign Ammunition: Spending ammunition in combat is no longer free, but has a cost which is added in the fleet maintenance. Ships will gradually regain ammo according to the weight of their requited ammo, the free port capacity and their distance from it. So ships that are in Task Forces must not waste ammunition, especially if they are far away from a large friendly port, as they will be in danger of ammunition shortages.

Detailed ship map movement and fuel: Ships travel at sea according to their cruising speed which is dependent from the designed top speed and the engine type (for example, Diesel Engines provide a higher cruising speed). According to their operational range, they spend fuel, in map or during combat (maximizing consumption at full speed).

If they reach a "Low Fuel" state their maintenance becomes more expensive (simulating the necessity to refuel with supply convoys), they slow down the fleet with their lower cruising speed and in combat they cannot use the full engine throttle, so they are severely more vulnerable.

Ships will gradually refuel according to their distance from a friendly port and its free capacity and the refueling cost will be dependent from the designed operational range and its cost. So now, chasing for hours withdrawing enemies may result in excessive fuel costs and shortages which will negatively affect your fleet in the next turns.

New "Defend" Role: During wartime players can switch to "Defend Port'' when they wish their ships to not participate in any other mission than port strike defense. This was many times asked by players as a way to manage the economy without trying to exploit the mothball options.

New "Commission Time": When ships are constructed or are removed from mothball status, they need some time to become fully operational. Note: This new essential feature replaces the temporary very large "Repair" time when ships returned from mothball status.

New "Repair Priority" for ports:Previously all ships in ports received immediate repairs even for minor damages. Additionally, if you moved damaged ships from a task force to a port they would not be repaired unless they participated in a battle and survived. These problems are now addressed by having a "Repair Priority" button which appears when you click to a port which works similarly as for the Task Forces.

Detailed Refit Time: After popular player request, the refit time became more detailed, utilizing the amount of objects and tonnage changed on the ship. The refit time shows up during the refit design, so the player is well informed of his design actions.

Undo Action in Ship Design process: Players can undo a certain number of previous actions if they make a mistake. This new feature is a work in progress and may not be fully working.

Undo Action in Ship Design process: Players can undo a certain number of previous actions if they make a mistake. This new feature is a work in progress and may not be fully working.

Multiple Saves for campaign: A simple way of having different campaign save slots. We will try to include save capability during campaign battles.

Engine Vibrations: According to engine type or technologies, the ship may have excessive engine vibrations which negatively affect the ship's accuracy. By lowering the ship's throttle, the vibrations become reduced.

Shell Splashes accuracy effect: When firing at a target and other guns of your own or friendlies also fire at the target, there is a temporary accuracy penalty, simulating the difficulty to distinguish different splashes of multiple gun calibers. Rangefinders (especially the Radar) and some new techs lessen this negative effect. This new feature also enhances the ships of uniform gun caliber because shell splashes from minor secondaries is very small.

Gun recoil accuracy effect: You will now notice a realistic recoil accuracy effect when firing guns which will be significant if your hull is too small for those guns. This effect will dissipate over a short time but can greatly affect ships which are equipped with super velocity guns, too large for the displacement of the hull.

Updated ship physics: Ships interact with the waves more realistically. You will notice the acceleration to increase not linearly according to the size of the waves.

Engine efficiency is more important: The engine efficiency benefits are enhanced, since the engine efficiency level can increase further to 100%. Ships with low engine efficiency will be drastically slower at sea and have less operational range, making them strategically less important.

"Funnel smoke" and "smoke screen" new functionality: Smoke obstruction from funnels no longer causes a permanent accuracy penalty but this penalty is applied according to the direction of the smoke in relation to the target. Furthermore, this smoke obstruction affects other ships which will target with accuracy penalty when their targets are obstructed by the funnel smoke. The same functionality enriches the smoke screen which will now reduce the accuracy for targets that reside behind the smoke screen (not only inside the smoke, as before).

Armor plate damage affects shell penetration: As armor plates become damaged their resistance against incoming shells becomes reduced. So you will notice that even the most heavily armored ship can gain weaknesses after a prolonged combat and the hazard of a catastrophic detonation increases significantly when the ship is almost a wreck.

Flooding increases according to section damage: Various ship design aspects, crew and amount of damage received affect the flooding effects. Now the ship's structure integrity affects them further. As a result, ships with increased damage have much difficulty to control flooding and so ships with maximum bulkheads will not feel "invulnerable" and so hard to sink as before.

Gun length settings depended on technology: The maximum gun length caliber is now researchable in "Turret Mechanisms" (and can be increased a little further than before), simulating the needed metallurgy developments to allow durable large caliber naval rifles which previously were unrealistically available too early in the technology era.

(POSTPONED for the next update) - New hulls: The USS Maine (1889) and several ship variants of early technology will enrich the roster of available hulls.

BALANCES / FIXES
Battle AI improvements to follow the new changes.
Auto-Design improvements to follow the new features. It should also now not produce ships with zero superstructure armor (unless it produces a very special rare armor layout).
Various balances in ship weights.
HE armor penetration capacity is reduced. Overpowered large caliber HE shells should not exist anymore.
Shell ballistics improvements affecting penetration mechanics. Shell dispersion should be noticeably improved.
Various balances in many components and techs.
Fixes of various campaign bugs (too many to mention).
Fixed the turret rotation stalling when angle is not sufficient (WIP).
Various minor hull improvements.
Fixed issue of overpowered player technology when he started a campaign with "Own Fleet". Previously the AI ships would be behind at least 3 or 4 years while the player would have ships of the present start year (for example 1910 instead of 1906 ships). This fix addresses one of the main reasons that AI was weaker in battles because it always started with lower tech ships than the player.

In other news, currently the "more" button for accessing the rest of the forum smilies (now restored after many years!) does not close again, even after posting one of its extra smilies. As it happens, the only one I can find which vaguely fits the aforementioned news is...

 

[Gusington]

^ Nice!

If you scroll down in that box you will see a 'close' button

 

[JasonPratt]

Oh! -- it's just under the Picard Facepalm meme!

Appropo.

 

[Gusington]

 

[Dammit Carl!]

 

[FarAway Sooner]

                  

[MC]

To my surprise, it is already out of early access. Can anybody who has it agree that it is good to go? The forums seem to indicate otherwise.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

I've only tinkered with it a little bit since the latest big patch bringing it up to the full release build. 

The one problem I noticed was that the game would slow to a crawl if I used the new feature that let you focus each of your turrets of the same calibre on different ships.  They released a hotfix that supposedly dealt with the FPS loss but I haven't tried it since the hotfix came out.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Another hotfix was released today that fixed a few more issues.

[solops]

It's on sale!

I have had this game for about six or eight months but never got past booting it up for a look. About five days ago I finally took a serious run at it and now I cannot stop playing it. This is the game that finally broke Shadow Empire's hold over me. I really like it. It DOES have some rough spots, both in the UI and combat, but they are easily overlooked because of the FUN factor. I hope the devs fix the rough spots as they have said they would. If they do, this will be on my play list for a looooong time.

Oversimplified Summary:  Basically, you design ships and then have them battle it out with rivals. A world wide campaign is included to provide excuses to have said battles and you have a big R&D tree to research for new goodies to choose during shipbuilding. A basic economy is provided to fund research, ship builds and maintenance. What's not to like?

[CaptainKoloth]

To my surprise, it is already out of early access. Can anybody who has it agree that it is good to go? The forums seem to indicate otherwise.

Reinforcing what solops said, every time I play this game I have an absolute blast. I haven't the foggiest notion what all the forum people are so upset about. I'm sure if I went and hunted for bugs I would find some, but I do think this is one of those cases where they have a bunch of rabid internet fans who won't be satisfied with anything they do.

[solops]

To my surprise, it is already out of early access. Can anybody who has it agree that it is good to go? The forums seem to indicate otherwise.

Reinforcing what solops said, every time I play this game I have an absolute blast. I haven't the foggiest notion what all the forum people are so upset about. I'm sure if I went and hunted for bugs I would find some, but I do think this is one of those cases where they have a bunch of rabid internet fans who won't be satisfied with anything they do.

From what I can gather, half of the rabid pack know nothing of naval combat and are upset that their ships do not behave exactly as instructed and that some of their shots miss. The other half seem to be upset because the game is not perfect. Go figure. Yeah, it has warts. Show me a game that doesn't. I do hope the devs polish it, because it can be improved, but all of the big elements are present and work, some better than others. I could pick a lot of nits if I chose to.

[Gusington]

+2 to Koloth and Solops, every time I played this game I enjoyed myself and that was on much earlier builds. I haven't had the time lately to get back in but can't wait once I do find the time.

[ArizonaTank]

+4 What the other guys said. I always have a blast playing the game as well.

There are a few things I would like to see... No show stoppers.

I find the game to be fun.  If you like big gun naval combat, it is definitely worth it IMHO.