[Update] Forthcoming patch information: Alpha 4
Hello Admirals,
Thank you very much for your ongoing feedback and your fantastic participation in the forum, where you share so many interesting ideas and historical knowledge with us. We would like to inform you about the planned improvements of the next patch.
SPECIAL NEW FEATURES
The above mentioned changes are not absolutely final, as we continue to add improvements. The update is soon going to receive internal testing, and if all is working right, we estimate to release it next week.
Thank you for reading!
The Game-Labs Team
Thank you very much for your ongoing feedback and your fantastic participation in the forum, where you share so many interesting ideas and historical knowledge with us. We would like to inform you about the planned improvements of the next patch.
SPECIAL NEW FEATURES
- Two new 3D Base Models ships: the legendary battleship "Bismarck" and the mighty battlecruiser "HMS Hood": Bismarck and Hood hulls are available in new Naval Academy missions and Custom Battles (after year 1927).
- Improved Damage Decals: The damage is more detailed, according to where it actually happened and the ship now becomes more realistically darkened. Soon, all Towers, Funnels, weapons will have a detailed special appearance when destroyed.
- New secondary gun barbettes: You can now create special looking and realistic ships by using a combination of barbettes for your secondary guns, on the centerline or at the sides. These barbette mounts appear when mounting main gun or special towers. If the hull is not wide or enough, you might not be able to use them all efficiently.
- German Pride: Design a powerful German battleship and attack the English fleet, in a similar way as it happened in the historical battle of the Denmark straits.
- Prove your Might: Your British battlecruiser must defend a valuable convoy against a German Battleship and a heavy cruiser. Can your ship do better than HMS Hood?
- Modern Battleship vs Destroyers: Your battleship must survive the attack of multiple Destroyers.
- The US Super Battleship: A group of large dreadnoughts that have been modernized by the Japanese Navy is sailing back for refueling. You have the opportunity to attack and sink them with your much more powerful super-battleship, before strong reinforcements arrive.
- Design your own H-class: Create the continuation of the legendary Bismarck-class and defeat a US Fleet.
- Hurry Up: A German raiding squadron is approaching your lightly protected military convoy while you are far away. Build the naval force that will be capable to travel fast and repel the enemy.
- Mission: "Heavy Duty" has now objective to only kill the super battleship. Previously it could be also won if all cruisers were sank, ending the battle prematurely.
- Mission: "Search & Destroy" has been improved. You need to destroy the two BB before strong enemy reinforcements arrive and make your task harder.
- Mission: "Torpedo Basics" has more available money, so that more torpedo boats can be built (The mission could become very hard against a much more powerful battleship, due to the new settings).
- New hulls have been added to missions “Rise of the Heavy Cruiser”, “The Modern Battleship”, Sink "The Cruiser Killer", “Heavy Duty”.
- Several new gun models added. Please note that the rescales and improvement of guns as well as the general improvements of ship designer could make your saved designs non functional.
- Various hull fixes for better looking ship designs at all technology eras.
- Three more super-battleships based on Bismarck and Iowa hulls. You can find those ships in new Naval Academy missions and in Custom Battles (after year 1929)
- More hull variants of late tech, mostly based on the new 3D models: 6xBB (Britain, Russia, Japan, Austro-Hungary, China), 2 x BC (Germany, Russia), 3x CA (Germany, Austro-Hungary, USA). These ships are also distributed to the other nations so that custom battles after year 1927 include more late technology ships for all countries.
- You can now set specific targets for main guns, secondary guns and torpedoes as follows:
- All weapons: Right Click
- Torpedoes: Shift + Right Click
- Secondaries: Alt + Right Click
- Main Guns: Shift + Alt + Right Click
- All weapons: Right Click
- Weapon Fire Mode (ammo control) is now working per division, not per ship.
- Improved damage float up info, showing more clearly the damage inflicted on ships, and fixing issues that caused game performance drop.
- Damage/Penetration of guns is balanced according to feedback of players. Capital ships should be more durable. Secondary guns will still be useful but not overpowered.
- Improvement in accuracy mechanics. Big Guns will not have so much accuracy difference with smaller guns. Aiming will be more dynamic, so that maneuvers or steady course will affect aiming accordingly.
- AI Design of Battlecruisers will prefer to use armor more, and not make weakly protected ships.
- AI Design of Destroyers will be more effective and will focus more on speed and maneuverability. Additionally, the minimum speed of Destroyers is 26 knots.
- Fixed issue of not updating torpedo stats according to techs/components used. Now torpedoes should be more properly effective depending on their technology level.
- Fixed issue of accuracy that could make AI not to fire vs very small torpedo boats or Destroyers at a range that they should.
- Minor rebalance of reload penalty/bonus according to shell type. Light shells should be quite more effective for short range. Heavier shells reload slightly slower.
- Minor rebalance of Lyddite shells, so that they continue to be effective after the new damage changes.
- Tube Powder shells gain a further slight bonus in penetration and reload.
- Several issues of buggy gun rotations have been addressed.
- Fixed issue of interrupting smoke screen emission for ships becoming detached.
- Fixed various reported problems that caused gun overlapping with towers.
- Other minor bug fixes reported by players.
- Various performance optimizations.
- AI in custom battles will never retreat. It is a temporary fix and later we will add this as an option.
The above mentioned changes are not absolutely final, as we continue to add improvements. The update is soon going to receive internal testing, and if all is working right, we estimate to release it next week.
Thank you for reading!
The Game-Labs Team