Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts News

Hello everyone,

We would like to share brief information about the next major update, which is scheduled to arrive by the end of February 2024.

Several new hulls
We are going to add a lot of new hulls for all ship types and for all nations, mainly for the technology years after 1920. We will offer a very close recreation of the Brooklyn-class and many of its variations that will be available for the USA. We will also provide a hull that can recreate the historical Dutch cruiser HNLMS De Ruyter. This ship was made on a tight budget and is speculatively offered as an alternative hull for Austria-Hungary, producing cruisers which could fit their ship arsenal if the nation had survived World War I. Many new battleships, cruisers, destroyers will be added to the list of new hulls.

Work in progress hull variation

New gun models
Up to now the following are added into the game and are in the testing phase.
- New Mark 3 USA guns for calibers 16-inch guns.
- New Mark 4 USA guns for calibers 6-inch up to 16-inch guns.
- New Mark 5 USA guns for calibers 6-inch up to 9-inch guns.
- New Mark 4 and Mark 5 British guns for calibers 4-inch up to 7-inch guns. (offering the more realistic style of guns of that time for the British).
- New Mark 4 and Mark 5 Austro-Hungarian guns for calibers 3-inch up to 12-inch guns.
We will also add more Italian gun variations and some extra new 3d models for some older guns.

Work in progress hull variation

Balances, fixes & gameplay improvements
- Faster and even more effective Auto-Design procedures.
- Fixed an alliance condition which could wrongly create tension at sea regions where there were no enemies of the alliance.
- (Work in Progress) Other things that will, according to feedback of players, need improvements or fixes.

Language support
- Greek language localization support.
- Korean language localization support.

Thank you for reading!

The Game-Labs Team

Hello Admirals,

We just deployed a new patch which fixes some old issues of the campaign and improves the AI. Please read:

*Optimization Update v1.4.1.1 R*
- Fixed old issue of the campaign related to the final recurring technologies. There was a bug in the saving process that could result in ships including at least one type of such technology to become overweight when you loaded the campaign save. This fix cannot repair existing overweight ships but addresses the problem so that it does not happen again for new ship designs or new campaigns.
- Fixed ID issue of the refit procedures which players could create on their games when they used the same names for already made ships. We are unaware if this fix may cause bugs to players that exploited the naming errors to refit ships of other minor nations, but on new campaigns the previous corrupted data which could bug the game in various ways, should not happen again.
- Further Battle AI improvements to fight on a more effective distance and utilize better the Scout/Screen formations.
- Improved further the torpedo friendly fire mechanics, addressing cases of unwanted torpedo fire through large ship formations.
- Other minor fixes.

This patch is probably the last prior to the next major update. The next major update will mainly include several new hulls, the localization of Greek and Korean languages and maybe some new features.

Enjoy!
The Game-Labs Team

Uploaded repaired version including the following
- Reverted the Refit ID fix because it prevented building a refit based on a previous refit design. This was an unwanted error of the new system so we had to take back the feature until it works properly.
- Fixed bug that could make a player accidentally delete all ammo of a selected ship when making a bug report with a shortcut.
Please restart Steam to get this update properly. Users should not allow downloading of updates during gameplay because it may corrupt their installation. This is an advice not only for our game but any game.

Uploaded optimized version including the following
- Brought back the Refit ID fix, which now should work properly. It should also speed up saving procedures and turn times.
- Aiming fine tuning: Gun aiming is sharper, making the rate of fire more significant and the accuracy more realistically balanced.
*Economy balance:*
- Oil resources become even more significant in growth, income and fuel consumption
- Nation growth is normalized in values. There is a more balanced growth during war, revolution and peacetime period, plus growth is shaped up according to GDP, so it distinguishes developed nations of very high GDP from developing nations with too low GDP.
Please restart Steam to get this update properly. Users should not allow downloading of updates during gameplay because it may corrupt their installation. This is an advice not only for our game but any game.

Uploaded optimized x2 version including the following
- Fixed some issues that were reported, causing ships to not be eligible to be constructed into a new refit version although they were available.
Please restart Steam to get this update properly. Users should not allow downloading of updates during gameplay because it may corrupt their installation. This is an advice not only for our game but any game.

Hello all admirals and fellow supporters of our game,

We hope you are having happy holidays with your family and friends. We present another optimization update that offers improvements and fixes based on your recent feedback. Here is what it includes:

*Optimization Update v1.4.1.0*
- Some further optimizations on the auto-design processes to speed up campaign generation and campaign turns.
- Difficulty level of campaign now impacts the research and AI income bonuses have been re-balanced. The goal is to offer a more comfortable gameplay experience according to the difficulty rate of the game.
- Improved the Campaign AI scrap logic so that it does not mass-scrap its fleet.
- Improved the Campaign AI delete design logic so that it is less often to have many nations delete and design new ships at the same turn.
- Auto-Resolve balanced to be more consistent. Sometimes a single DD can do some unwanted damage, but this can happen in live combat too.
- Fixed an old rare issue causing shells to pass through hulls without registering a hit.
- Fixed some old issues with the gun weights, for example 7 inch guns being heavier than 8 inch guns on some techs. This change may affect your saved designs to make them either overweight or gain some extra weight space.
- Fixed various minor issues on hulls and gun models that were reported.
- Minor other optimizations affecting various aspects of the game.

Due to the necessary changes in the weights of the guns that was mentioned in the list, your saved designs will be affected and some of them may become overweight and they will need a refit. The AI will also attempt to refit those designs in your campaigns, resulting in some of the beginning turns of your saved games to be slower.

If you do not want to update, then you can switch to the older version v1.4.0.9 Optx5 using the new Steam's branch "Previous stable version" as shown in the image:



We wish to everyone a happy new year with health and happiness,

The Game-Labs Team

Uploaded Optimized version including the following:
- Further optimization in the auto-design process making it faster and more effective than never before. Campaign generation in 1890 should take less than 2 minutes in fast machines.
- Further battle optimizations for a faster fps performance during combat.
- Some fixes for minor issues that were reported recently.
You need to restart Steam to get this update with no problems

Uploaded Optimized x2 version including the following:
- Further optimization in the Battle AI logic affecting fps performance and, also, addressing issues where the AI could desire to fight too far away, even beyond its main guns' firing range.
- Fixed issue of the torpedo friendly fire mechanics, making torpedoes unreliable in shooting, in several cases.
- Fixed a tower issue which could result in some ships not having available a tower to design the ship, if they haven't progressed in the tower technology. This problem could cause random turn delays as ships could not be auto-designed in several tries.
- A few other minor issues solved, in UI and localization.
You need to restart Steam to get this update with no problems

Hello Admirals,

We offer another update which should further improve your gameplay experience. Here is what it includes:

*Optimization Update v1.4.0.9*
- Further Battle AI optimizations.
- 3D battles fps optimizations.
- Auto-Design further optimizations to be faster and even more effective.
- Balanced ASW to matter more in Submarine battles' autoresolve.
- Improved Campaign AI in finance and research management.
- Fixed possible issue of canceling AI task force movement undesirably, resulting in AI ships to not return to ports for refueling or support a region under attack.
- Fixed a potential freeze issue during “Battles..” loading.

Enjoy!
The Game-Labs Team

Uploaded optimized version including the following:
- More 3D battles fps optimization.
- Fine tuned Submarine auto-resolved battles.
- Fixed "Task Force Failed to escape" mechanic which made Task Forces to not trigger all meeting battles consistently.
- AI Task Force pathfinding optimizations.
- Fixed double geared steam turbine engines having a double maintenance cost.
- Other minor fixes.
You must restart Steam to receive this update with no problems

Uploaded optimized x2 version including the following:
- Fixed issues that could cause inconsistent Task Force interaction. In the next turn you should always get battles between Task Forces which intersect, unless the enemy was able to retreat.
- Shell Ballistics and Ship Movement mechanics optimizations. Some slight related balances for a smoother 3D battle experience were needed for compensation and were done.
- Further Battle AI optimizations. The Battle AI should not approach so much at an ineffective range, as before.
- Adjusted Friendly Fire mechanics so that they do not cause issues, as before, in torpedo launching.
- Other minor fixes and improvements in localization and UI.
You must restart Steam to receive this update with no problems

Uploaded optimized x3 version including the following:
- Further optimizations in auto-design and saves processes. There should be a noticeable increase in the speed of loading for everything. If you notice a very short windows process freeze when you click buttons during campaign's generation "Creating World" just ignore it. We will try to optimize further with parallel cpu threads processing.
- Reduced the tension caused by enemies of ally. If diplomatic relations are good, then very small or no extra tension will be caused.
- Reduced Torpedo Arm time from 3 sec to 2 sec to fix rare issues of no torpedo firing at very close distance.
- Minor UI and localization issues fixed.
You must restart Steam to receive this update with no problems

Uploaded optimized x4 version including the following:
- Further optimizations in the Battle AI. The Battle AI should be more balanced, not overly aggressive to move so close as before in cases it should not.
- Further Auto-Design optimizations.
You must restart Steam to receive this update with no problems

Uploaded optimized x5 version including the following:
- Fixed old rare issue which could cause guns to not fire, thanks to the dedication of kind players that reported to us very useful information. At modders: please be extra careful when you edit the values "shootDelayMin" and "shootDelayMax". We made hard coded changes to lessen the chance to get a bug but still, you need to not increase too much these values.
- Minor Battle UI fps optimization.
You must restart Steam to receive this update with no problems

Hello all,

We offered a small update which addresses issues and improves things based on your recent feedback.

*Optimization Update v1.4.0.8*
- Fixed cases where the submarines were stuck near the coastlines of an enemy and it became impossible to destroy them because no mission was generated against them.
- Optimized the way the Auto-Design processes manage "bad parts" and "empty barbettes", speeding up the fleet auto-generation procedures.
- Fixed issues of the Shared Design UI, not allowing to edit a previously saved shared design (The changes would not apply).
- Fixed an issue which would cause inconsistent gun caliber changes in refit design processes.
- Other minor fixes and optimizations.

Enjoy!
The Game-Labs Team

Uploaded optimized version including the following:
- Battle AI improvements so that it is overall more effective and not desire to keep a large ineffective distance as it happened before.
- Fixed potential problem which could cause AI task forces to get stuck when their ships were in "Low Fuel" state, so they would be unable to refuel.
- Auto-Design further optimizations reducing the time it needs to accomplish its goals in an effective manner. This is not final. We will continue to improve this aspect to reduce further the campaign generation time and overall turn times.
It is mandatory to restart Steam to get this update without possible issues. Steam may not update the game successfully for players who tend to leave their PC and Steam client open for a large amount of time

Uploaded optimized version x2 including the following:
- Further optimizations on auto-design, making it faster and more effective, affecting positively campaign generation and turn times.
It is mandatory to restart Steam to get this update without possible issues. Steam may not update the game successfully for players who tend to leave their PC and Steam client open for a large amount of time

Uploaded optimized version x3 including the following:
- Further optimizations on auto-design, making the AI balance more effectively the firepower, protection, speed and range of its ships.
- Battle AI further improvements, so that it chooses effective fire distances in most if not all cases.
It is mandatory to restart Steam to get this update without possible issues. Steam may not update the game successfully for players who tend to leave their PC and Steam client open for a large amount of time