Issues with the game's desgin

[Nyxyx]

While I do love AF a lot, it seems that it has several major problems when playing Battle of the Atlantic as the British:

1) You are limited to 30 vessels, which is understandable as AF is a former mobile title. However, it really makes it hard to get much coverage and slow down the u-boats. Additionally, it prevents you from doing what the allies did in real life and using simple overwhelming force against the Germans. This also undervalues Corvettes, as their main advantage was that they were really easy to build and there were lots of them. (It's also silly considering that the RN started WWII with 176 destroyers alone).

2) Some war winning allied weapons are not implemented, presumably due to limitations of Mobile deivces. Things like the absence of the Mark 24 Mine; which was a homing torpedo that was lethal to U-boats, the Leigh light; which made it possible for allied aircraft to attack shipping at night, Allied air and shipborne radar; which made it possible to pinpoint the location of U-boats and surface raiders at great distance, Frigates (the only time I'd request more ships); which combined the simplicity and affordability of Corvettes with the speed of Destroyers, even the absence of simple searchlights on Merchants and Warships can make the Kriegsmarine very powerful.

3) Convoys are too tight: in reality convoy escosrts were placed very far away from the Merchants to catch U-boats before they got close enough to launch torpedoes at them. Obviously mobile devices can't render several Nautical miles of convoy, but it would be possible on PC.

4) Merchants always sink after one torpedo hit.

5) Submarines don't try to evade when they see several escort ships bearing down on them rapidly, they simply wait until they are close enough to torpedo in one action. In reality, the crew wouldn't have nearly enough time to calculate a solution for thier topedo, and even if they had, it might of been within arming range. Even if they could perform this action, they'd be far more concerned with living another day to try it; the subs always die anyway as the next escort passes over and depth charges them.

6) No allied intelligence. As the war goes on eventually nearly the entire German navy should be visible to the player, such was the extent of Allied intelligence.

Just some ideas, really.I haven't had enough time to play a Campaign as the Germans, but then I guess I would be wanting S-boats, Homing torpedoes, Graf Zeppelins, sonar decoys etc.

[^Steel-Savage^]

ASW definitely isn't AF's strong point!

For me, AF is primarily a wargame-style simulation of WW2 surface battles (like the classic, Fighting Steel) but with the addition of quite basic ASW and aero-naval elements (unlike Fighting Steel).

Agree entirely that this affects primarily the realism of the dynamic, Battle of the Atlantic campaign, which as you say was mainly an ASW campaign.

But as we already have Silent Hunter, AF delivers what I want most and what the market most needed.

A game that did better, SH-like ASW and better air ops would have been better still of course but compared to the compromises FS made, AF, though Atlantic only, does pretty well IMHO.

[Catshley]

PLEASE give us gunsights, they had those in the war, not some slider in a 3rd person view, and i dont mean binos, i mean sights.

[Iron Yeti]

1- Bigger numbers on the elevation control. I like the concept, but having to zero out and go back up multiple times since its hard to read is a time killer.
2- Decide what the game is, or split it into two. ASW and surface combat don't go together well. Fighting Steel made the right choice on that one back in the day. It would be great to see it just split in two. One game focusing on surface combat in the Atlantic and Med, and a more detailed ASW game, with the occasional surface action on Barrent Sea missions. Bonus if your allied heavy elements remain under AI control during those battles, leaving you to focus on the convoy.

3- Let the player save during the campaign. Seriously.
3.5 Or provide a way to aquire more tonnage points. Can't replace your light cruiser? Good, because you won't be continue on when you lose your hopelessly outgunned destroyers next mission. Enjoy sinking those merchant ships back on mission one and two again.

[Nyxyx]

Originally posted by Iron Yeti:

2- Decide what the game is, or split it into two. ASW and surface combat don't go together well. Fighting Steel made the right choice on that one back in the day. It would be great to see it just split in two. One game focusing on surface combat in the Atlantic and Med, and a more detailed ASW game, with the occasional surface action on Barrent Sea missions. Bonus if your allied heavy elements remain under AI control during those battles, leaving you to focus on the convoy.

I don't think it has to be split. I don't think it would be very difficult to improve the ASW, really, it would just take Killerfish modifying the PC version beyond what is possible in the Mobile version.

As I said above, allow players much higher ship counts, which is a simple integer change that I would do myself if I knew how.

Give us some specific technologies: one gives you airstrikes at night (leigh light), another is a torpedo that has AI ship code so that it always ends it's turn pointing at the nearest enemy (mark 24 mine), another is just an event that makes German ships show up the map sometimes (radar) and the last, which would take the most work, is a few new ships whose code can be simply copied from the Corvettes (frigates).

Changing the default convoy patterns and starting seperation wouldn't be very hard, but it would be nice to pick our own.

Changing Sub AI might be tricky, but I doubt it's impossible.

Changing the damage model of Merchants can't be too hard.

All of these things most PC's could definetly handle, and would vastly improve ASW.

Overall, I really don't think ASW and surface combat can't both exist in AF. Surface combat is already pretty good, and they don't really detract form one another.

[Keijo]

They need to add some extra turn to raise periscope from periscope depth and maybe they could change the min distance of torpedos to 1500 and that it only travels 2500 in first turn, it would make it more difficult to instakill dds and bbs.

Same with airstrikes there needs to be some turn to prepare landbased aircraft as well not like that you can lose a capital ship without even able to move or arrange your aa ships.

I was playing the boa campaign with axis and i had 2bbs 2cas 2lcs and 3dds in a group and I lost one ca instantly at their first turn to an airstrike. Next battle after that I was against 1 british sub and it had the first turn and spawned 2km away from the other ca and i couldnt do anything.

[skwabie]

Originally posted by Keijo:

I was playing the boa campaign with axis and i had 2bbs 2cas 2lcs and 3dds in a group and I lost one ca instantly at their first turn to an airstrike.

It's a good idea to put surface ships away from zones with air coverage. Use subs!

[^Steel-Savage^]

Originally posted by PandaWithAFedora:

PLEASE give us gunsights, they had those in the war, not some slider in a 3rd person view, and i dont mean binos, i mean sights.

But they didn't use gunsights to fire main or secondary batteries - except in very small ships or when fired under local control due to fire control system damage - they fired under director control, even in ships as small as destroyers:

http://maritime.org/doc/br224/part3.htm#par256

While what we have now certainly looks like the view through a set of military binos, but with some added read-outs and that 'floating red line-of-fire indicator', in functional terms I treat it as more of a representation - of sorts! - of the fire control system in the above link. I say 'of sorts' because for example, the player is forced to do manually things that would be done by the Fire Control Table/Clock.

As has been said, Fighting Steel is the benchmark for representing WW2 surface action - you play the role of ship or division commander and essentially operate by giving navigation and fire control orders, based on what you can see, or is relayed or presented to you. The AI takes it from there - goes where you tell it to go, shoots what you tell it to shoot, with the weapon(s) ordered. THAT'S the way to do it. Not looking down gunsights.

[mostevil]

The ASW is what I thought I was getting but its very dissapointing. I tried sending out my battleship with 5 destroyers as a screen but for some reason the BB sits exposed at the corner and often starts in range of subs topedos again and again. Sub start positions on all sides of a convoy don't make a whole lot of sense either given the low submerged speed.
Subs are crazy over powered because of the point blank start positions and the fact that gunnery hits seems rare even when you land shells right on them and have relatively little effect when they do. The AI often doesn't bother to fire at them anyway, once revealed by a destroyer you'd expect the cruisers to fire on them also if at periscope depth, and shouldn't miss so badly point blank (<3000).
The only reason you can beat them as allies is that they dive if you land shots close, but when you play subs there's no reason to do this. If you get within 3000 a sub can instagib a destroy with a torpedo anyway. Also in my experience ramming them has no effect, where in reality it was common and deadly. Sub hunting is still satisfying though if only because the AI is dumb enough to dive and let you kill them.
I'd second the unit limits being very problematic, a tonnage limit would seem much more reasonable to encourage sensible escorts.
Also whats the point of secondary guns on large warships, if you can't fire them the same turn, the only reason to fire the smaller guns is the big ones ran out of ammo.
The ships look fabulous though, excellent work on that.

[skwabie]

The starting position is a hard thing to gauge. I'm playing KM instead of RN, and even if given close start positions, it is still a looong chase playing many many turns, even that sometimes a firing chance will never happen due to slow submerged speed. So it can get rather boring playing subs. It may not be as simple as just increasing starting range which would make it even more boring.

Solutions are imo many.. For example a proper screening formation as suggested - also during surface action why are destroyers and cruisers on the enemy side? They should go behind the battleships. Or a game time acceleration function, you set a heading, press a key and there, 10nm traveled, unless a detection by you/enemy happens, upon which the game would pause and drop out of time accel.

But I think all these would require good amount of work and given KF is already committed to the next project... which includes modding support so I imagine each user would be able to mod these engine parameters to his own liking, which is great.

[Keijo]

Yeah it's really boring in the campaign to fight against convoys, be it with bbs or subs. Like 3/4 of my encounters are 4-8 merchants with 1-3 dds.

I havent seen RN assemble a single sub/task force hunting group against me. I just have my bbs sit between ireland and new york and they do nothing.

Has anyone even played the campaign to 1942?. Historically things were easy for subs but started to get really hard towards the end but does the game reflect it in the campaign at all or is it gona be the same grinding with uneven battles to the end.

[skwabie]

Originally posted by Keijo:

Has anyone even played the campaign to 1942?

!! 1943 KM side atm and is pretty hard!! RN air power got a huge bump. last night met the Lion class BB Temeraire with Bismarck and CL Koln. I'm all fired up for this adrenaline pumping surface action, while under-gunned by his 16inchers, I'm confident that my supreme gunnery will come up on top!! ---> First turn, BB Temeraire do not fire but calls a B-24 bomber, 1 hit. Second turn calls another B-24, 3 hits. Third turn he calls YET another B-24... needless to say Bismarck went up in flames!
Awesome:X:X
Koln layed smoke for 3 turns and disengaged with shock... Mind that I'm at a zone without shore coverage so if it's pre-1942 or so there'd be no airplanes there at all.
For subs the hedgehogs and squids mean you are under threat from head on by DD/DCs. But I'm less concerned with sub losses for they're cheap and there're lots of them to buy more, NOT a battleship of which there're only 6.


I'm still grinding my teeth!

[Nyxyx]

Originally posted by Keijo:

Yeah it's really boring in the campaign to fight against convoys, be it with bbs or subs. Like 3/4 of my encounters are 4-8 merchants with 1-3 dds.

I havent seen RN assemble a single sub/task force hunting group against me. I just have my bbs sit between ireland and new york and they do nothing.

Has anyone even played the campaign to 1942?. Historically things were easy for subs but started to get really hard towards the end but does the game reflect it in the campaign at all or is it gona be the same grinding with uneven battles to the end.

I've played beyond 1942 for bit as Brits.

I had wiped out most of the uboats, but because I had done so with corvettes and old destroyers, and the Battleship I started with got sunk by a lucky airstrike (and sinking subs gives pittance in terms of Reknown and ASW involves a lot of losses to attrition and BS, so I couldn't buy another), as soon as the German surface fleet showed up they steamrolled my navy and the KM won. Turns out Britian's WWI heavy ships are pretty crap against the ultra-modern KM battleships.

Though I don't thik that it's entirely the fault of the game being unbalanced, I think I just made a poor choice in buying units.

Overall, you can avoid the "Happy Times" if you know when and why they happened.

[Nyxyx]

Originally posted by skwabie:

Originally posted by Keijo:

Has anyone even played the campaign to 1942?

!! 1943 KM side atm and is pretty hard!! RN air power got a huge bump. last night met the Lion class BB Temeraire with Bismarck and CL Koln. I'm all fired up for this adrenaline pumping surface action, while under-gunned by his 16inchers, I'm confident that my supreme gunnery will come up on top!! ---> First turn, BB Temeraire do not fire but calls a B-24 bomber, 1 hit. Second turn calls another B-24, 3 hits. Third turn he calls YET another B-24... needless to say Bismarck went up in flames!
Awesome:X:X

I'm still grinding my teeth!

That's not exactly unrealistic. You did lose the Battle of Britian and piss off America.

Believe me though, those airstrikes are sooo necessary to the RN. Most RN ships are hopelessly outmatched by KM Battleships.

[[IF]Marauder_JRS]

Any chance, that developers are reading this?
Another brick.. in the face. Merchants for unknown reason, sometimes more maneuverable than DD !!!
On convoy attack - even with unspotted sub, merchants stars evasive maneuvers!

[skwabie]

Originally posted by Nixod321:

That's not exactly unrealistic. You did lose the Battle of Britian and piss off America.

Believe me though, those airstrikes are sooo necessary to the RN. Most RN ships are hopelessly outmatched by KM Battleships.

Well, history is another matter while for a video game it is a good challenge to play as the underdog.
I always prefer the underdog:)

The battleship "quality" is probably up for debate by others I'm no expert... RN certainly has the numbers.