Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts News

Dear Admirals,

We would like to inform you that we have just deployed a hotfix, addressing issues related with the damage model, and including various other fixes. Here are all the changes.

[h3]Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts Alpha 4 v68 HotFix[/h3]

• Increased damage of main guns. The whole damage model should feel now much more realistic, as intended for the main update.
  
• Reduced base accuracy for secondary guns. On average their accuracy is inferior compared to main guns but they will aim progress more effectively when targeting fast vessels.
  
• Flooding should happen more often when guns hit underwater sections. - Flooding will not be repaired so fast, so it will have a noticeable impact on large capital ships.
  
• Increased slightly the damage of torpedoes.
  
• Torpedo protection effect reduced slightly so that late battleships do not become immune to torpedoes.
  
• Increased base speed of torpedoes about +2 knots. They could become unhistorically too slow at their maximum range settings, creating targeting issues (Ships not firing torps at long range, firing at too wide arcs and hitting themselves etc.).
  
• Decrease speed penalty of electric torpedoes from -30% to -25%.
  
• Weight issues making ships, especially battlecruisers, too fast for their size have been resolved. A ship may still be designed to exceed the 40 knots but with much greater sacrifices in armament and protection.
  
• Fixed an issue with German Battlecruisers (They were unavailable for a small time period between 1924-1929 in custom battles).
  
• Fixed issues that made Torpedo Boats (TB) either too slow or too vulnerable to gun fire.
  
• Fixed a problem with a British BB of the 1920s that made its hull too long. - Allocated more funds to mission "Hurry Up" to allow strong ships of higher speed.
  
• AI & Gun Targeting Improvement.
  
• Other minor fixes.

As always, your feedback will be much appreciated in our forums:
Official Forum Steam Forum

Dear admirals and fans of Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts. We are pleased to announce the next update which offers many new ship design variants and several improvements based on your feedback.

In particular, the detailed base hulls of the famous ships "Bismarck" and "HMS Nelson" are available for you, not only to recreate them as they were in history but also to change them as you want with countless different design options.

Design your own HMS Hood, as in this example, possessing triple 15-inch guns

You will be able to design many other new ship types, including modernized dreadnoughts for Japan, Austro-Hungary and China, new modern heavy cruisers and battlecruisers as well as battleships, all available for various nations after the 1920s. Six new Naval Academy missions include some of the new hulls. The rest of them can be explored in the custom battle system.

One other important change is the improved damage decals. You will notice the much more detailed damage holes inflicted on ships and the realistic darkening of the hull at the area being on flames. Further improvements will follow on next patches, with more detailed visualization for destroyed weapons, funnels, towers.

The Bismarck-class can be re-created with minor changes compared to the original...

... or you can try out gigantic variants, similar to the plans of H-class

The Ship Designer System is improved not only with increased flexibility on placing the various objects but also with new secondary gun barbettes that will make your ships to look even more realistic and powerful.

Lastly, we responded to your latest feedback by fixing several bugs, and improving the damage model, with goal to make battles even more spectacular and realistic.

You can read in more detail what is offered in the below changelog.

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.

The damage decals are now much more realistic

NEW NAVAL ACADEMY MISSIONS

• 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.

Modernized Japanese Battleships that you will confront in a new mission

OLD MISSION IMPROVEMENTS

• 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”.

VISUAL & SHIPS

• 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.

New secondary barbettes that can be placed on the centerline or at the sides, are available in several late hulls

CONTROLS

• 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
• Note: Due to the new targeting changes, your selected ship will no longer follow the target when right clicking on it. The targeting system should work more effectively, overall.
  
  
• Weapon Fire Mode (ammo control) is now working per division, not per ship.

BATTLE INTERFACE

• Improved damage float up info, showing more clearly the damage inflicted on ships, and fixing issues that caused game performance drop.

BALANCES/INCONSISTENCY FIXES

• 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.

BUG FIXES

• 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.

OTHER

• Various performance optimizations.
  
• AI in custom battles will never retreat. It is a temporary fix and later we will add this as an option.

We hope you will enjoy the new update! See you in our forums:
Official Forum Steam Forum

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

• 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.

NEW NAVAL ACADEMY MISSIONS

• 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.

OLD MISSION IMPROVEMENTS

• 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”.

VISUAL & SHIPS

• 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.

CONTROLS

• 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
• Weapon Fire Mode (ammo control) is now working per division, not per ship.

BATTLE INTERFACE

• Improved damage float up info, showing more clearly the damage inflicted on ships, and fixing issues that caused game performance drop.

BALANCES/INCONSISTENCY FIXES

• 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.

BUG FIXES

• 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.

OTHER

• 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

Hello Admirals,

We just deployed an important hotfix including the following:

HOTFIX v66 (18/12/2019)

Balances

• Addressed issue making ships too hard to sink.
  
• Fine tuning of damage model, addressing especially the low power of secondary guns.
  
• Improvement of short range accuracy for secondary guns.
  
• Improvement of dynamic aiming mechanics.
  
• Reduced damage resistance of torpedo protection belt, so that there is more critical damage against large torpedoes.
  

Fixes

• You can now restart a custom battle via menu, or replay it after victory/defeat (and also rebuild your designed ship, if you made any).
  
• Fix of unbuildable over-the-budget ships in missions.
  
• Fix of small issue with renaming of ships.
  
• Fix of exception due to Fn hotkeys of saved designs in missions.
  

We will be very glad to read your feedback in our forums:
Official Forum Steam Forum

Alpha-3 brings many new features!

We are glad to announce the next large update of Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts that contains not only gameplay improvements based on your feedback, but also many new features.

The new custom battle mode allows you to set up your fleet and the opponent's and either quick start a battle or design your desired ship type. In this way you are able to explore a multitude of hulls for all nations and technology periods between 1890-1940 and experiment with scenarios you've created.
The new "Custom Battle" interface

The Naval Academy has been enriched with six new missions, introduces several new ship types and allows you to save and name your designs. Detailed damage decals increase the battle immersion, while all the new balances and fixes should improve the overall realism and challenge of battles. Read below in more detail what is included in this new update.
Commanding a "Super Battleship" in custom battle mode



NEW SPECIAL FEATURES

• Custom Battles: You can now choose to fight randomly during years 1890-1930 selecting the nation, fleet composition and year for both you and opponent. The available ship designs will be based on the upcoming campaign tech tree , so errors/warnings may occur, for example ships might not be available for a nation in a specific year. We are going to improve further the functionality in next updates.
  
• Explore all available hulls via the Custom Battles: We delayed the patch to create this additional feature. In custom battle mode you can quick-start or design your desired ship class of your fleet. You will be able to select all available hulls of the selected nation and year. Enabling the setting “Unlock” will provide you all hulls of all nations for the selected year! This feature replaces and supersedes the previous cheat mode (Unlock Parts/Techs). All cheats had to be eventually disabled, because they caused multiple issues to the game, and were replaced by this new feature which can be easily played by anyone without exploits.
  
• Damage decals: You will notice much more detailed damage effects on ship hulls due to shell or torpedo impacts and realize where each hull penetration took place.
  
• Improved Combat Penetration Info: Detailed “Penetration Estimator” shows up when you hover your mouse over an identified target, including information about sections that you can penetrate, your total pen power over the enemy armor, ricochet angles and side/deck hit chances. You can use this in reverse by selecting enemy ships and pressing the alt-key while hovering your mouse over your own ships. This feature should help players to understand what is the best distance and angle to attack versus heavily armored warships.
  
• Save and name your designs: You can now save your ship design, for the respective missions. and also give custom names to your creations. This is a first simple functionality and is going to be improved further when we make the campaign.
  

The damage received from shells and torpedoes is represented in more detail

NEW MISSIONS

• Sink the Raiders: Use your Semi-Dreadnought or other ships to defend your transports from three dangerous cruisers.
  
• Meet the US Battleships: Try to defeat two very large and experimental battleships of US Design.
  
• Rise of the Heavy Cruiser: Design modern heavy cruisers without the constraints of treaties and confront three strong reconstructed armored cruisers.
  
• There can be only one: A speculative Iowa vs Yamato scenario! The ships of course are not identical but their designs are based on the historical hulls.
  
• Sink “The Cruiser Killer”: Fight versus an experimental and deadly Battlecruiser.
  
• Heavy Duty: Design modern warships and fight versus a super battleship and its escorts.
  

NAVAL ACADEMY BALANCES

• Increased armor of targeting ship in mission "Targeting Practice" and reduced available time to increase the difficulty.
  
• Added +1 opponent torpedo boat in mission "Battleship vs Torpedo Boats" to keep things interesting with the new balance.
  
• "Search and Destroy" mission rebalanced in initial distance between ships and also two light cruisers escort the enemy BB.
  
• In the “Modern Battleship” mission, the AI fleet has one extra BB, to make it a tougher challenge, due to the new balance.
  
• Re-allocated mission "Pre-Dreadnought conflict" in the mission row, since it is now easier than initially. Additionally, the enemy will not retreat, so that the mission can be not lost because of some enemy light ships running away.
  
• Reduced the time for mission "Raid an undefended convoy" due to new balances.
  
• Further rebalances as per feedback for several other missions. “Defeat the Semi-Dreadnought” allows one extra BB hull plus technology bonuses are more appropriate versus the opponent’s tech. “Destroyers vs Torpedo Boats“ mission gives to player ships less technology difference vs the opponent, so that AI ships are not overpowered on average and various more.
  
• Ship building limit for missions became 30. Previously without limits, it was possible to build many more small ships in some specific missions, causing balance or performance issues.
  

COMBAT GAMEPLAY

• Improved Secondary Guns' Penetration & Accuracy.
  
• Torpedo Boats less resilient against gun fire.
  
• Penetration rebalance for more effective medium/long range encounters. HE shells should not be as overpowered as previously.
  
• Fixed issue with hull damage that made severely damaged ships and torpedo boats too hard to sink.
  
• Reduced ladder aiming penalty of initial salvo shot, from -75% to -50% because it caused too low accuracy at close range.
  
• Cordite, Tube Powder, TNT explosives rebalanced to reflect better their special characteristics. Cordite offers more explosive power but is unsafe, Tube Powder is the safest explosive and more effective in penetrating armor, TNT is very expensive but overall the best compromise.
  
• Fixed issue of Radar towers, increasing too much the surface visibility of ships that carry them.
  
• New Oxygen fueled torpedoes.
  
• New 23-inch and 24-inch torpedoes.
  
• Late tech torpedoes have even more intensified damage so they are useful against heavily protected battleships.
  
• Torpedo protection now also increases floatability but reduces acceleration and turning speed making a ship slightly less maneuverable, yet, it will be vital for your capital ships in order to survive against the stronger torpedo threat.
  
• Citadel armor schemes increase the armor quality, but are more expensive. Citadel is a feature not yet finalized, but this new functionality simulates better its influence in armor schemes and vitals protection.
  
• Ship steering/acceleration slight rebalance for more realistic maneuvering. This balance addressed additionally the over-effectiveness in evading torpedoes and the unnaturally very tight turning circles of small ships, which causes also issues in formation and evasion logic.
  
• Coal engines produce more smoke obstruction from funnels. Oil fuel engines will significantly reduce this penalty.
  
• Engines hp efficiency and other related balances for improved ship maneuverability with the proper design and vice versa.
  
• Reduced slightly the penetration penalty of light shells, from -7.5% to -5%. Their weaker weight and steeper trajectories at long ranges made them too inefficient.
  

Gun barrels elevate to fire and depress to reload

VISUAL

• Guns smoothly elevate to fire at target and depress to reload.
  
• Water displacement effects (better waves, ship splashes and interaction with water).
  
• Improved fog dissipation over distance.Sinking mechanic improved so that ships do not “jump” to a default sinking state as previously.
  
• Ships will gradually sink according to their last floating state.
  
• Fixed issues with USA battleship hull type. Now mission “Design a Dreadnought” includes a properly looking and scaled model based on BB South Carolina.
  
• Cage mast towers are available to a series of hulls belonging to USA.
  
• New modern battleship assets based on BB Musashi.
  
• New modern battleship towers and hull types, based on BB Missouri/Iowa.
  
• New Heavy Cruiser hull types based on Italian Cruiser Pola.Several other hull types unlocked to become playable.
  
• Several new visualizations for guns according to technology.
  
• Fixed also some issues with scale for some guns.
  

BATTLE AI

• Slight fix of AI related with formations. AI should keep formation and respond to screen orders at better distances. The fix is not final. AI is going to be optimized on this aspect in next updates.
  
• Fixed issues of AI related to engage mechanics. AI ships should approach more gradually and fire broadside salvos at more effective angle and distance.
  

BATTLE MECHANICS

• Targeting became more dynamic and is affected more smoothly due to maneuvering.
  
• Ladder aiming may be acquired faster but aiming can be lost very soon, due to evasive maneuvers. This new feature will make much more effective your evasive actions against long range guns, that previously could lock on you and progressively destroy you without a real chance to do something to avoid them.
  
• Barbette damage now causes damage to its attached gun and vice versa. You will no longer see barbettes becoming individually damaged without any effect to the attached gun.
  
• Detected torpedoes are now indicated by a visual warning for a short period of time.
  
• Improved shell ballistic mechanics, addressing cases where shells could go too wide at short ranges.
  

Place guns with more freedom and save your designs

SHIP DESIGN

• Minor interface fixes. Some stats were not properly updated. More fixes will follow on next updates.
  
• Improved AI ship design (with proper focusing on armor for Battleships).
  
• Some minor bug fixes reported by players, related with ship assets.
  
• Slight more flexibility in mounting guns/towers/barbettes/funnels. More fixes will follow in next updates.
  

BATTLE UI

• Gun ranges now show with better visuals and are optimized for better performance. You can toggle them to fade out after some time or not, from the in-battle settings.
  
• Gun stats show what is their propellant.
  
• Added notification when battle time runs out.
  

BUG FIXES

• Fixed error-message/bug caused by gun aiming calculations.
  
• Fixed crash related with amount of torpedoes fired.
  
• Fixed timer not reverting to maximum speed, even though enemy was completely unseen.
  
• Fixed error of log report that could make it completely invisible for player.
  
• Fixed bug that could make invisible AI ships traceable by using the mouse pointer.
  
• Fixed crash that could be caused in Ship Designer interface when pressing a hotkey for a disabled category.
  
• Fixed issues of flags that could become white at a certain angle.
  
• Fixed a bug related with the scrolling of Help window.
  
• Fixed issue with operational range not altering weight, in some late ship designs.
  
• Fixed distorted damage info window for ships that disappear from LOS.
  

OTHER

• Some game performance optimizations, increase the FPS for all pc systems.
  
• Minor improvement on gun fire, shell trails and impact sounds.
  
• In-game music reverted back to full functionality.
  
• Removed possibility to enable developer debug options on build.
  
• Much faster loading of Ship Designer interface.
  
• Added graphics quality slider in settings.
  
• Added option “Centimeter” in measurement system.