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View Full Version : Things to improve in the gameplay.



mik1984
09-30-2008, 09:27 PM
This is a standard reason why I join game forums: always making a list of things I would like to be improved in a game I like.
Here it comes:
1. Snapshotting torpedoes.
It seems as the biggest problem of the game, especially if you play Japanese. At 15k yards you don't want to fire at any specific target, you want to create a wall of torpedoes. That was also the basic premise of the IJN tactic. They didn't make torpedoes run for 20 minutes believing that the enemy ship will navigate for those 20 minutes with unchanged speed and course.
You should be allowed to choose a course, spread and speed for torpedoes manually and just take a snapshot.
2. The influence of the course vs. the waves on the targeting and speed.
A ship that is either cutting(second best) or running before the waves(the best) should have a lesser impact on targeting than a one that is running perpendicularly to them(the worst possible direction). Running exactly before the waves with speed equal to the wave speed should minimize the impact of the waves on targeting. Moreover the sea state should have a different impact on ships ability to target according to their size. On top of that waves should have a different impact on the ship's max speed depending in which direction is he trying to go. Naturally the ship which is running before the waves should be able to go faster than a one that is cutting the waves.
It would be VERY good enough if the game would stay with the simple model of one direction waves running with the wind.
If some genius would come with a way to model crisscrossing two direction waves and changing wind I would truly congratulate him, since I understand the complexity of the issue when it comes to programming it. However the KISS rule tends to advise not to get into such stuff.
3. Q ships.
They just don't belong to sea battles. Those are merchant raiders. They were very effective in that role, but they didn't fight battles with other ships. They worked alone. Moreover the speed 17kts isn't really accurate. That's their stock max speed with their low speed screws and low rpm engine designed for a merchant for fuel economy and long working life. But who needs those two in a battle? The crews used the engines at rpm's higher than those they were designed to if they were in trouble to squeeze a couple additional kts out of them. On top of that it seems a bit weird how structure damage destroys their targeting effectiveness in the same proportion as like in a normal ship, since most of their structure wasn't related to combat or ship command in any way. The ship would fuction well even with the entire gallery blown away(which was just a decoy anyway). It would be more realistic if those were simply immune to that targeting factor.
This is a minor thing though.
4. Salvo spread.
It seems that weather you shoot at 1000yds or 25000yds the space between the shells in a salvo remains the same. Weird, isn't it? Another minor issue.
5. Starshells.
Sometimes night battles break out with assymetric radar equipement. Sometimes the enemy is firing starshells on you and you can't even fire a starshell back more or less in the direction from which the gunfire is coming. Moreover sometimes you lose an enemy ship from sight, because a starshell that lit him has fallen down. Now you don't see him, but you remember where he was. Why can't you fire a starshell to his last location to find him back? The issue of starshells generally needs some more attention.
6. Severe bug where secondary guns always choose ammo automaticly even if order them to use a diffrent ammo. They will fire one salvo with the ammo I ordered and then swich back to a type of ammo the AI thinks is the best. Minor bug where you always have to give the ships personal firing orders to use a specific type of ammo. Using the division level order of using specific ammo brings no effect. You might order all ships in division to use HE, but they will still be using the type of ammo automaticly chosen by each ship individualy.

That's it for today. I hope you survived it!

Warship NWS
09-30-2008, 09:37 PM
Hi mik1894,

The final supported version of FSP is v10.43. All of our efforts are now focused on WCDB, SAS, and NAW. Please read the FSP manual and our FAQ for any possible answers to your inquiries above.

Thanks.

mik1984
10-01-2008, 09:21 AM
I am using the newest FSP.

Another thing came to my mind however:

Battleships vs. Torpedoes

If a battleship is hit by a torpedo you would expect him to get something like 8% flotation. But that is something he can fix with the new pumping ability in 10 minutes. Can you imagine a ship fully recovering from a torpedo hit after 10 minutes? One time I hit a battleship with more than 10 torpedoes, but with a time spread. He didn't go down.

Warship NWS
10-01-2008, 09:40 AM
Mik1984, I say again.. we are no longer working on FSP. All of our attention is now on SAS, WCDB, and NAW.

As to your inquiries.. there are parts I think your missing, not understanding, possibly incorrect, or in some cases are seeing limitations within the original FS engine. In any case, our last official NWS update for FS was FSP v10.43. To reply in detail would not really prove constructive to our limited time available to work on our presently ongoing projects. I hope you understand.

Thanks.

Kyle Holgate
10-01-2008, 03:36 PM
May I recommend Warship Combat: Dreadnoughts and Battleships? It is not 3D or as snazzy looking as FS, but it's about to get a big step improvement here and IMO is a pretty darn good game right now. Further, it's something you can complain about and you can get changes to unlike FS! :D

mik1984
10-01-2008, 09:27 PM
Too bad it won't be improved. I understand the concept of limited resources. Just in case somebody would try to reactivate this idea of a game, he has a ready blueprint.

Warship NWS
10-01-2008, 09:36 PM
Too bad it won't be improved. I understand the concept of limited resources. Just in case somebody would try to reactivate this idea of a game, he has a ready blueprint.

Limited resources was not really the most critical issue, it was a matter of choosing between recoding a major portion of the code to work with newer versions of DirectX and graphics technologies, FS uses a 10 year old 3D engine, or focus our work on our own productions. FS is a good naval simulation that we wanted to improve on. The original design team ran out of funds and time to do everything they wanted so we did our best to pick up from where they were forced to leave off. In the end.. FS/FSP ended up being one of the best real time gunnery simulations available. We were happy we could at least keep it a viable simulation for the naval enthusiasts.

Thanks.

mik1984
10-02-2008, 04:40 PM
Of course it is, and it will be hard for any next game to beat it. But if somebody could at least consider killing this ammo bug for secondary guns as a finishing tweak. I don't suspect that it would need a lot of additional work.