Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts News

Hello Admirals,
We are offering an intermediate patch which improves gameplay and fixes various issues, before our planned major update which will include a larger map, more nations, more ships and many other new features. Let's have a look at what this small but very important update has to offer.

The AI will create more coherent formations against the player

[h2]Improvements[/h2]

• Improved the Battle AI in all aspects. It should be more aggressive when stronger, keep a more effective firing distance and maneuver more dynamically. The AI auto-targeting is also improved.
  
• AI auto-design further improvement to build more balanced and effective ships.
  
• Ship evasion slight improvement. Ships should more effectively try to keep distance from each other. Some remaining issues will be fixed in the next update.
  
• Improved Acceleration/Deceleration of ships to be more natural and be affected more from flooding. Fixed also an old issue for ships that were not Division leaders, which made them speed up and turn unnaturally fast.
  
• Now ports can be damaged in the campaign after successful “Port Strike” missions.
  
• Ships now sink more gradually and lose speed slowly.
  
• Secondary guns will now aim more effectively against fast moving targets.
  
• Shell dispersion for missing shells should not happen so often close to the target.
  
• AI will be able to auto-switch shell type more effectively, evaluating the angle of the target. Moreover, the penetration estimation info now uses a more accurate algorithm that estimates the penetration chance depending on the angle of the target ship.
  
• Flash Fire and Detonations now properly reduce the exploding ammo. Moreover, the chance of receiving a Flash Fire or Detonation is directly dependent on current ammo storage, so if ammo is zero, the chance becomes zero.
  
• Increased the cost of Bulkheads to proper levels according to its significance in battle. Missions and Campaign income have been balanced to compensate for this change.
  

When there is an ammo explosion the ammo depletes accordingly

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed issue with torpedo friendly fire calculations, causing the firing of torpedoes through friendly ships.
  
• Fixed bug of Division Auto-Avoid option which could cause ships to stall and become non controllable.
  
• Fixed bug in campaign that caused TR losses to not be displayed each turn.
  
• Fixed bug that did not allow you to exit the Ship Design if you have previously interrupted an auto-design process.
  
• Fixed bug that allowed you to interrupt auto-design when pressing the H key during battle load.
  
• Fixed bug that allowed you to continue the campaign after a peace treaty when pressing ESC.
  
• Fixed some inconsistencies in the Key-Binding options.
  
• Some minor hull fixes.
  
• Some text fixes.
  

Keeping formations will now be easier (Still work in progress)

We thank all the players who have helped us with their feedback to optimize the patch while it was in beta stage. Your continued feedback and suggestions in our forums will be much appreciated:

• Official Forum
• Steam Forum

The Game-Labs Team

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/