Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts work in progress.

Destraex · October 04, 2019, 09:43:31 AM

Zero Gus. No campaign to speak of at the moment. The 21 Tutorials are all you get currently.

Destraex · October 04, 2019, 09:54:24 AM

Quote from: trek on October 04, 2019, 09:41:28 AM
Longtime dream come true for me too! Funny how timing in life works. I recently purchased several books on the subject: One on Naval Warfare 1914-1918 from Amber Books UK as part of their multi-volume series on WWI and also one of the Osprey Duel Series books: British Dreadnoughts vs German Deadnoughts. Talk about learn as you read/go!

Destraex, thanks for the detailed info in you're posts as I've just purchased UAD and I'm just getting into the academy and building my first ship. How would you rate the naval battles with your gameplay experience so far? I guess I'm interested in ship movement and strategy. Last WWI naval game I played was Jutland. so I'm very excited to hear more details.

The damage model is more of a health bar style model, I mean the way it shows the ship state. But perhaps not the ship damage model itself. Ricochets, armour penalties etc are in. You can flood compartments and knock out specific parts of a ship.

The movement is a system that allows you to choose a few basic formations for your line. Line abreast and single file are ones I know are in game. You click where you want the first ship to try to get to and the game will draw a trajectory line to the destination. Their is a point at which you can be too slow to shoot effectively due to roll etc, you can also be too fast to be a stable gun platform. So those are things to watch for to make your guns more accurate.

As for strategy. Long range battles can sometimes mean I just run out of ammo plugging away at the enemy. But you can choose to take extra ammo, higher yield powder and shells etc. Get too close though and torpedoes can be a major issue. See the dotted line way in the distance in the pic below? I think that is the main gun max range for the CL in the pic, you can also just see the outermost range ring. To give you an idea of scale. The bottom screenshot has the innermost ring as the torp range and the outer as the gun max range. Obviously DDs have very small guns. I think I took the smallest for this scenario in order to fit more torps on deck.

trek · October 04, 2019, 10:14:18 AM

Impressive! I like the depth of the gameplay already. How long did it take you to complete your first ship build? I seem to be repeatedly going over the ship weight limit as I'm trying to build my first ship. Any tips you've discovered?

Gusington · October 04, 2019, 10:38:54 AM

Thanks Des - dare I say that, like Trek mentions, the tutorials look fun. Can this be?? I must be dreaming.

trek · October 04, 2019, 12:05:53 PM

So, got my first ship built and put to sea whereupon I lost my first battle. Going to do a retry soon. Really enjoying the entire aspect of this game. The naval combat is spot-on and the ship construction is intuitive and fun. Can't wait to experience the development process going forward. And yes, like Des said it's also very relaxing to play.

trek · October 04, 2019, 12:36:23 PM

Just noticed on the ship-building page the "light-bulb" icon at the top of the page. Clicking on that gives you an "auto-build ship" so you can go quickly into battle without doing-it-yourself. I need to spend more time on the details of this game! This is true love!

Gusington · October 04, 2019, 01:55:43 PM

:D

JasonPratt · October 04, 2019, 02:39:24 PM

SQUEEE!

---EEEEK!

uh, I mean, "squeak" as in the sound of.... ..... of... of naval sounds! :D

Destraex · October 04, 2019, 08:34:36 PM

I would liken this to Battletech due to the fact that my Destroyed blew up a minute into a battle. That lucky shot destroyed 50% of my force at long range in the first 60 seconds. Now this is the first time it has happened for me. But it shows that it is possible. The range was 3km and the enemy was a BB. So it is certainly possible.

Gusington · October 04, 2019, 08:35:42 PM

Please don't compare it to Battletech...

Destraex · October 04, 2019, 09:20:59 PM

:peace:Well like battletech their are a tonne of things that affect your chance to hit. But I guess you probably think I mean that you can get so many bonuses as to make a headshot a sure thing. If you got that impression I am sorry. I did not mean that. These are just small bonuses. They do add up but especially at range it's still hard to hit.

Here is a pic of a DD I made to destroy a battleship. Note that I could spend a lot more money and make it a helluva lot better. Why did I not do that? Because you will notice if I keep the price below half, I get two!!

Skoop · October 05, 2019, 04:35:11 PM

Looks great, I may have to jump in rather than wait for steam release. The age of sail one looks great too, I'll probably get em both.

Gusington · October 05, 2019, 07:05:24 PM

^Agreed, and I thought Dreadnoughts was much further out because of the Age of Sail game. Will be getting both.

Destraex · October 06, 2019, 02:11:01 AM

Scratch that.

MengJiao · October 07, 2019, 11:31:41 AM

Quote from: Skoop on October 05, 2019, 04:35:11 PM
Looks great, I may have to jump in rather than wait for steam release. The age of sail one looks great too, I'll probably get em both.

I'm enjoying it. Here HMS Agamemnon (a late pre-dreadnought sort of...) tries to close with two Imperial German Superdreadnoughts, hoping to use the 7-inch casement guns (30-seconds later she was blown to bits):