Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts News

Admirals,

We deployed an urgent fix based on your recent reports. Please take notice what it includes:

*Hotfix 1.02*
- Fixed a problem that made it impossible to start a custom battle if an AI opponent ship was unfinished. Now the battle will start and any AI unfinished ships will be auto-designed.
- Fixed bug that caused a crash during battle load if you pressed “Enter”. (There are still bugs caused if you continuously press buttons during battle load interrupting the auto-design process and creating bad ships. Until we fix this, it is advised to just wait for the battle to load, without pressing the H key or other buttons.
- Adjusted the torpedo friendly fire to be stricter. Please advise if you still have problems with ships firing risky torpedoes through other friendly ships.
- Fixed potential issue that made too close the initial distance in battles of the 1890 era.
- Fixed French “Battleship IV” that had a double name.
- Made the AI ships in campaign to not desire to retreat so often. If they desire to engage from too far away, this is something different, that if it is an issue, we will fix it in another update.

Hello Admirals,

We are very happy to announce the next large update of Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts! We provide a wide range of new ships for the French fleet of the pre-dreadnought era, a significant AI enhance for the battle and campaign, a new Naval Academy mission, and a large collection of new features, improvements, fixes, things you requested many times, and we tried to offer as many as possible for this update. Please read in detail what you can find in the new patch.

A variant of the "Massena-class" Battleship

[h2]Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts v1.01 Update[/h2]

[h3]NEW HULLS[/h3]

• New ”French “Ironclad Battleship I” available from 1890 to 1906 with a displacement between 8,050 and 10,600 tons.
  
• New ”French “Ironclad Battleship II” available from 1890 to 1906 with a displacement between 8,250 and 10,900 tons.
  
• New ”French “Ironclad Battleship III” available from 1890 to 1906 with a displacement between 8,400 and 11,800 tons. This hull type can faithfully recreate the French Battleship “Massena”.
  
• New ”French “Battleship I” available from 1891 to 1906 with a displacement between 8,100 and 11,500 tons.
  
• New ”French “Battleship II” available from 1892 to 1906 with a displacement between 9,000 and 16,000 tons. This hull type can faithfully recreate the French Battleship “Bouvet”.
  
• New ”French “Battleship III” available from 1895 to 1906 with a displacement between 9,500 and 16,500 tons.
  
• New ”French “Battleship IV” which can be considered a semi-dreadnought, available from 1895 to 1906 with a displacement between 17,000 and 21,500 tons.
  
• New ”French “Light Cruiser II” available from 1892 to 1920 with a displacement between 3,500 and 4,500 tons.
  
• New ”French “Light Cruiser III” available from 1896 to 1920 with a displacement between 5,500 and 8,500 tons.
  
• New ”French “Light Cruiser IV” available from 1903 to 1920 with a displacement between 7,500 and 10,500 tons.
  
• New ”French “Armored Cruiser I” available from 1890 to 1920 with a displacement between 3,500 and 7,600 tons.
  
• New ”French “Armored Cruiser II” available from 1894 to 1920 with a displacement between 7,800 and 11,500 tons.
  
• New ”French “Armored Cruiser III” available from 1898 to 1920 with a displacement between 9,800 and 13,500 tons.
  
  A variant of the "Bouvet-class" battleship

[h3]NEW GUNS[/h3]

• New French Mark 1/Mark 2 guns for calibers 2-inch up to 8-inch.
  
• New French Mark 1 guns for calibers 9-inch up to 13-inch.
  

[h3]NEW FEATURES[/h3]

• Design AI opponent ships in Custom Battles: You can now design the ships of your opponents by switching the view between “You/Enemy” in the Ship Design phase. As a result, you can now create your own battles with much more freedom.
  
• New Key-Bind Options: You may now change the key shortcuts for several control options of the game according to your own preferences.
  
• New Friendly Fire System for guns: Ships will stop firing at targets that are blocked by friendly ships in front of them and too close, risking being hit instead.
  
• New Division Command “Avoid Torpedoes: When you enable, the ships of your division -except the leader of the group- will actively avoid torpedoes automatically.
  
• Armor distribution affects ship stability more: Previously the belt/deck armor affected the stability of the ship only as a factor of total weight. Now adding armor to the fore/aft ends of the ship directly affects the weight distribution. For example, adding too much bow armor (something usually done unrealistically by players to have an advantage over the AI with frontal attacks) will now increase weight offset and the general instability of the ship. You will also notice that ships with an initial fore/aft armor may have some initial weight offset, which you can stabilize by making equal the armor weight distribution between fore/aft sections of the ship. All in all, the weight calculations of the ship have become more realistic and offer more design alternatives.
  
  A French armored cruiser in action

[h3]NEW MISSIONS[/h3]

• “Jeune École has failed?”: The old French strategic concept called “Jeune École” of having a main fleet based on numerous light warships equipped with torpedoes and high explosive rounds is now put to the test. The Germans are approaching with several dreadnoughts and a potent force of destroyers escorting them. They are heading near the French coastlines to threaten directly the control of your waters. You have some torpedo boats and some old cruisers and the choice to reinforce them with ships of your design on a rather strict budget. Will you build more cruisers and prove that the “Jeune École” can work or prefer to fight with some battleships instead?
  

[h3]CAMPAIGN[/h3]

• Improved campaign AI to balance its shipbuilding strategy. Previously the AI could order for building so many ships that when they were all completed could cause bankruptcy and eventual defeat because the AI could not handle them economically, scrapping them in the end with no real use.
  
• VP gained from sinking Transports is now properly shown in the Battle result window. Previously these points were shown only in the strategy map report and it was not clear their effect after a battle.WIP.
  
• The Mission generator will create big battles with more probability. You can now unlock the 1940 initial year for the campaign.
  
• You can now rename your ships in the campaign in the FLEET window by double clicking the ship names and editing a new text.
  
• Initial Battle distance tuned so that fleets start in better starting distances according to tech era (not too far, not too near).
  
• Initial cash slightly increased for the late tech campaign era.
  
• Victory points calculations balanced for late years so that campaigns do not end prematurely after a few victories.
  
  In the controls you can now find several key-bind options

BATTLE AI

• Improvements on AI aggressiveness/Responsiveness.
  
• Auto Targeting is more responsive.
  
• Significant AI auto-design improvement. The better, more effective ships will also affect the Battle AI positively.
  

OTHER IMPROVEMENTS

• Improved further the shell dispersion mechanics, especially at close range.
  
• Fine tuning of horsepower output for early tech engines.
  
• Increased cost of engines/armor for the design process, to a level that better reflects the value of the ship.
  
• Iron Plate armor has a new balance, simulating more effectively its historical effect.
  
• Sound improvements: Impacts are heard more clearly/pronounced.
  
  You can now unlock the 1940 campaign

BUG FIXES

• Fixed visual bug of gun hovering in Ship Design interface. It was caused when the game was wrongly paused when you switched on/off the Help with the “H” key.
  
• Fixed some reported issues on hulls.
  
• Fixed bug in smoke interference which caused inaccurate calculations when smoke interference was negative.
  
• Fixed major bugs in UI and Y height calculations which when they happened caused ship movement arrows to disappear, torpedoes collision to break and guns to overlap with the superstructure.
  

This was the first major update after releasing the game on Steam Early Access. From now on, we plan to provide at least one large update each month and any needed smaller updates to address urgent issues. We wish a happy and healthy new year for you and your families and hope you will enjoy this update!

Thank you for reading! Please share your valuable feedback in our forums:

• Official Forum
• Steam Forum

The Game-Labs Team

[h2]Note[/h2]
There is a known issue that leads to a crash if you press enter or other buttons while battles are loading during fleet generation mode. We will fix this as soon as possible.

Hello admirals,

We have deployed a small patch with important improvements. This is the last small patch prior to our next large content update for the game. Please take a look what it includes:

*Patch v99* (14/12/2021)
- Significant AI improvement to be more aggressive and responsive.
- Flooding chance increases further at heavily damaged ships (aids to sink crippled ships faster).
- Shell dispersion improvement to be not so high at close range shots.
- Fixed a collider issue which affected fire arc calculations, created overlaps and auto-design errors.
- Fixed issue of auto-design producing ships with excessive funnels.
- Fixed bug that made Operational Range to become maximum for new designs in Naval Academy and consequently make hull weight too large (In Naval Academy the range cannot be edited).
- Some UI fixes.
- Battle Sound improvement for several impact hits. 

EDIT:
The following small update fixes some problems found. Please update your game clients to receive it.
*Hotfix* (15/12/2021)
- Fixed some hull & funnel errors.
- Removed Maintenance modifiers related with Hull Form, which would create cost imbalance.
- Fixed problem that caused too wide formations. 

Dear admirals, friends, players of our other games,

We are very happy to announce that “Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts” is finally available to buy on the Steam store!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1069660/Ultimate_Admiral_Dreadnoughts/
Thanks to the aid of our backers during the Alpha build development, the game has successfully reached the Core 1.0 version, and now it has significant content which is stable, highly playable and enjoyable.

Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts includes over 56 Naval Academy missions (we continuously add more) and a custom battle mode to enjoy battles using your designed ships. The revolutionary ship design system -which we also expand in every update- utilizes over 251 hull variants that use over 1155 different ship parts and thousands of different weapons in various sizes and tech levels.

The campaign is currently under development, but it already offers many hours of gameplay. The campaign is going to have 10 playable nations (now it has 2), the map will be expanded to cover the whole world, and all gameplay mechanics related with the campaign will be completed during the Steam Early Access phase. While the game is available in Steam Early Access, we will add more functionalities for the core game, expanding the ship design options and the battle gameplay.

All players may participate with their ideas and feedback so Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts becomes the naval game you always wanted! We deeply thank everyone who has supported us and welcome everyone who is interested in naval warfare to play our game and have real fun with it.

Thank you a lot for following our project!

The Game-Labs Team

PS. The backers of the Alpha-Build (owners of the "Limited Edition" & "Standard Edition") will start receiving their Steam keys from this day and onwards. Please read the related news here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1069660/discussions/0/3191360735171280249/

Greetings Admirals,

The next major patch for Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts has just become available! This large update is the precursor of the first campaign version of the game. We decided to release not together with the campaign since it has many new features which owe to be tested solely.

Among the various improvements you have requested and we implemented, there is a whole new Hull line for the Italian Navy, many new ships for the Russian Navy and all the playable nations received the capability to build their own super battleships (Britain, Austro-Hungary, China and Spain now have a special super battleship hull). Additionally, two new detailed base models can reproduce the Littorio-class Battleship for Italy and the Russian Battleship project “Sovetsky Soyuz”.

A Littorio-class variant that you can now build in the game

The new crew mechanics are the next major feature we introduce to the game which will greatly affect the ships’ performance in battle while in campaign they will be a crucial resource for maintaining your fleet in a functional state (Crew is a very important factor for the campaign and will need your extensive testing in the current patch, so that we optimize it).

Other new features include the long anticipated save system for custom battles and Naval Academy and the various new armor zones which will greatly add to the detail and uniqueness of your ship designs.

A Sovetsky-Soyuz variant that is available for the Russian Navy

Please read below about all the improvements we have prepared for you for this patch:

[h2]Core Patch 0.5[/h2]

[h3]NEW FEATURES[/h3]

• New Crew Mechanics: Ships now have crew which you can manage not only in campaign but also in Naval Academy and Custom Battles, affecting your ship design decisions significantly. Crew losses during combat will affect several aspects of ships’ functions, making battles more realistic.
  
• Ship Design Saves: Finally, you can now save your favourite designs in Custom Battles! The system works similarly as for the Naval Academy. You will be able to save and reuse your designs depending on the technology year and the ship types used for the battle.
  
• Battles Saves: You can now save your custom battles or Naval Academy missions at any time during battle gameplay! Load them at your next play session from the special “Load” button found in Custom Battles and Naval Academy.
  
• Design Custom Battle AI: Now you can design not only one type but all the participating ship types for your fleet in Custom Battles. A new interface helps you to browse all available ship types that you want to design prior to the battle.
  
• New “Propellant/Shell Charge” components: The old “Explosives” component which included, temporarily, options both for Propellant and Shell Charge has become split into two new categories named “Propellant” and “Shell Charge”. The new vital characteristics for the shells used in your ship will play a very important role for your designs.
  
• New “Rudder Type” component: Rudders are categorized in three generic settings, “Balanced”, “Semi-Balanced”, “Unbalanced” affecting the maneuverability of your ships.
  
• New Operational Range functionality: Operational Range is now properly measured in Km and is affected by ship design.
  
• New Conning Tower armor: Now the Conning Tower armor is properly depended according to the weight of the main tower. Previously it was only a crude multiplier of weight and thus it was very light in large warships causing excessive free tonnage.
  
• New Superstructure armor: The new armor zone is properly protecting the Towers and Funnels and its weight is included in ship design evaluations (previously the armor for Towers and Funnels was much simpler).
  
• New Belt & Deck armor: The extended Belt/Deck armor zones are split into the corresponding Bow/Stern sections, so that you can edit different armor settings for the front and rear armor protection of the ship.
  
• New detailed Gun armor: Each gun type can now be armored with side and top armor according to its caliber and type. Previously the gun armor system was much more limited, layered differently according to two only different zones for main guns and secondary guns.
  
• Keyboard input values for Displacement and Speed: Now you can alternatively type the desired values instead of using the slider.

New options for the crew became available

The Battle Stations are operated by crew
[h3]18x NEW HULLS[/h3]

• The Italian “Littorio-class Battleship” can now be recreated in a hull base between 45,000 and 75,000 tons for Italy after 1936.
  
• The Russian battleship “Sovetsky Soyuz” that was never completed can now be built with a displacement between 63,000 and 83,000 tons after 1936.
  
• New Italian “Super Battleship” available after 1936 with a displacement between 76,500 and 92,500 tons.
  
• New Russian “Experimental Battlecruiser” which resembles the Stalingrad Battlecruiser. It is available after 1935 and has a displacement between 41,000 and 51,000 tons.
  
• New Italian “Modern Battlecruiser II” available after 1935 with a displacement between 39,500 and 54,500 tons.
  
• New Italian “Large Cruiser II” available after 1929 with a displacement between 32,500 and 42,500 tons.
  
• New Russian “Super Cruiser” available after 1934 with a displacement between 19,000 and 23,000 tons.
  
• New Russian “Heavy Cruiser III” available after 1925 with a displacement between 14,700 and 17,500 tons.
  
• New Italian “Heavy Cruiser ΙΙ” available after 1934 with a displacement between 16,500 and 19,500 tons.
  
• New Italian “Modern Light Cruiser II” available after 1930 with a displacement between 8,000 and 11,000 tons.
  
• New Italian “Compact Light Cruiser” available after 1930 with a displacement between 6,700 and 8,000 tons.
  
• New Italian “Hybrid Destroyer” available after 1936 with a displacement between 3,500 and 4,500 tons.
  
• New Chinese “Super Battleship” available after 1936 with a displacement between 74,500 and 82,500 tons.
  
• New Spanish “Super Battleship” available after 1936 with a displacement between 75,500 and 87,500 tons.
  
• New British “Super Battleship” available after 1936 with a displacement between 80,500 and 92,500 tons.
  
• New Austro-Hungarian “Super Battleship” available after 1936 with a displacement between 89,500 and 101,500 tons.
  
• New Russian “Super Battleship II” available after 1936 with a displacement between 86,000 and 117,000 tons.
  
• New "Small Dreadnought" available between 1906 and 1918 for Germany and Austro-Hungary with a displacement spanning from 18,000 to 20,500 tons.
  
• Additionally: Various new ship parts became available in previous hulls.

The armor became enriched with new options

[h3]NEW GUNS[/h3]

• New Special Italian Guns for 3-inch up to 8-inch caliber ranging from Mark 3 to Mark 5.
  
• New Special Italian Guns for 12-inch up to 20-inch ranging from Mark 1 to Mark 5.
  
• New Special Russian guns for 2-inch up to 8-inch ranging from Mark 3 to Mark 5.
  
• New Special Russian Guns for 9-inch up to 20-inch ranging from Mark 1 to Mark 5.

[h3]BALANCES[/h3]

• Shell Ballistics/Weights/Costs have been rebalanced to support the new Propellant/Shell Charge components.
  
• Belt Armor weight has been increased by about 10% (it could become rather light in the late technology era).
  
• Torpedo Protection now contributes slightly to the Hull Resistance, making it useful not only against torpedoes.
  
• Overpenetration mechanics improved. You should not get excessive overpens against torpedo boats, destroyers and generally unarmored ships.
  
• Fires are extinguished less easily, so they can have more impact on ships.
  
• Various others minor.

Italian Battleship fighting on sea

[h3]AI[/h3]

• Friendly AI division commander has been reworked.
  
• Improved further the AI design system.
  
• Improved further the opponent AI.

[h3]BUGS & OTHER FIXES[/h3]

• Fixed guns that could not rotate during battle. The problem was caused by errors in colliders which allowed guns to be placed very near to the superstructure which blocked their rotation.
  
• Fixed rotation of guns that were mounted on turrets.
  
• Fixed bug that was related with Attach/Detach of divisions.
  
• Repairs in the LOD of the new torpedo models. They could cause, very rarely, the “Too many threads'' error in low-end systems.
  
• Fixed bug that could make early torpedo boats to have 12 inches belt armor in Custom Battles.
  
• Fixes on the availability of German/Italian/Austro-Hungarian cruisers of the 1900s.
  
• Fixed bugs that could cause great delays during the Auto-Design processes.
  
• Fixed a Battle UI issue that showed inactive components still active on the list.
  
• Fixed issue with 17-inch guns of mark 3 that could be researched slower than they should.
  
• Various hull and gun fixes as per feedback.

Custom Battles now allow to design all friendly AI ships

[h3]GRAPHICS & OPTIONS[/h3]

• New settings with more available details for configuring the optimal graphics settings for your system.

We are going to continue improving the campaign version while you enjoy all the new features. Your impressions and ideas on the new crew system, will be utilized to optimize the final campaign patch, which will become available in the coming days.


Thank you for reading! Please share your valuable feedback in our forums:

• Official Forum
• Steam Forum

The Game-Labs Team

[h3]Note[/h3]
There is a known bug of freeze if you click mouse button while waiting to load a battle. If you choose to not terminate but wait for the program to respond, the battle should load successfully. We delayed the patch in order to make this freeze not critical. We will fix fully as soon as possible.

[h3]*Hotfix v88* (19/9/2021 UPDATE)[/h3]
- Fixed major bug of gun armor resetting for saved designs, when trying to apply new gun armor settings.
- Fixed major bug of armor penetration, incorrectly evaluating the armor thickness of guns and causing too many detonations and flash fires.
- Fixed issue with part selection in ship design, that could become overly big and inaccurate.
- Fixed bug that caused keyboard edit of gun armor to use only inches measurement.
- Fixed bugs of Auto-Design which could cause building delays, overweight or overcost ships.
- Reduced about -5% Belt/Deck armor and about 10% the superstructure armor. Designs should now be more consistent with historical values.
- Increased crew damage from penetrating hits +10%.
- Various inconsistencies for hulls and stats fixed according to your feedback.

[h3]*Hotfix v89* (20/9/2021 UPDATE)[/h3]
- Fixed various bugs of auto-design, which were also responsible for freezes while loading battles.
- Fixed gun collider issues. You should be able to mount guns with more flexibility, especially in towers.
- Fixed bug in gun selection when it was placed on a tower.
- Fixes on other minors you reported.

[h3]*Hotfix v90* (30/9/2021 UPDATE)[/h3]
- Refactoring of the Auto-Design code, addressing various issues that could cause errors and delays in the process. Most, if not all, problems regarding freezes, delays, unbuildable ships, should be fixed.
- Improved the overpen mechanics, so now you will be able to see full penetrations on the smallest craft such as the Torpedo Boats.
- Increased the torpedo damage (due to latest changes in ship section density, damage could be small in large warships).
- Fixed bug that caused operational range to become reset when loading a custom battle saved design.
- Fixed bug of custom battle saves which included Transport ships, making them disappear when loaded.
- Fixed some other bugs related to battle saves.
- Some minor UI issues with overlapping buttons in 16:10 resolution have been resolved.
- Fixed bug of Bug reporter not allowing to use the Enter key.
- Fixed bug making graphical settings to reset. This could have been a source of graphical bugs, depending on player’s system.
- Fixed bug on smoke screen becoming available to BB, BC, CA if they were on the same division with DD or CL.
- Minor fixes in some hulls.