#2 is really useful. It's very misleading to call them free priorities (I know now it means free to be used) as they cost you more time in other research. They don't really provide you with any long term benefit, just a short term boost to get something urgent... but it costs you in the long run.
It is best to use 1 priority to wrap up tech that should be on the ship the moment it's available, and that component is on the R&D. There's diminishing returns when pulling other engineers from other departments to work on one.
"Reparing a ship is always faster than building a new one." Oh my, that one sure stung IRL after Sola TS gave the death blow to Helge Ingstad... It was too expensive to repair compared to building a new one... How the times have changed I suppose.
Some times teaching people the obvious is the hardest thing to do . When a ship with a high skill crew begins to take crew losses from combat at what point do you retreat the ship to avoid the reduction in crew ability when you "add crew" The run away advice is good since 60% of the 144 ww1 surface actions ended with 1 or both sides fleeing with only 118 ships being sunk in the whole war That is than 1 per battle!
I wish they could allow you to upgrade current design when having new techs. It's little bit annoying to have a brand new class just because I get new engine/boiler/range finder...
I agree, but! This should have limits, though. As not everu component could be refitted, or, if could, it would be very costly in time and resources. Just switching a gun caliber makes you change a whole lot of internal mechanisms and systems, as example.
You should mention when setting ships to "In control", deploying them, it going to cost a whole lot more, about double and plus some. Also "In Being" is your reserve fleet, so when ships go on repairs or sink, you can redeploy reserves to "In Control", i.e. you should always have some ships "in being", reserved, to be made active immediately. "In Being" keep crews trained as opposed to being "mothballed", I think? PS: You know that Nick never gives the game up, it has been a GameLabs thing for as long as I know.
I find running away is not really that important because the AI always seems to be running away, even when they have the advantage. Quite frustrating actually.
Why can't I find enemy transports in a battle that has 1 CL, and 4 transports? Are the smoke signals only from the CL that is running away? Is there a technique for finding the transports instead? (I'm playing an 1890's campaign). Are those transports traveling at the same speed the CL is while invisible, instead of the ultra slow speed they should normally be doing?
I think the research focus is interesting. As I see it, if you just got enough improvements to start designing and producing a better ship, there might be a case where using one of those to get a single additional improvement next turn may be beneficial. Ideally, your improvements would all be prioritized such that they all finished the improvement on the same day, and on that day you start the new design/production. But life is not always ideal. And that's where those focus points come into play. All in all, they are bad. Using them comes at a cost to the other techs in the tree. But as I said above, if it lets you get an additional improvement into a design before production begins on the hull, it's is likely worth the hit to the rest...but you may want to take it off as soon as you achieve it. Another thing to consider is that the amount you put into the research budget does make a difference as well. If a tech says that it's going to improve in 1 month, try sliding the research budget down until just before it would change to 2 months -- to save some cash for your building projects.
Yes get a lot of ships out there. Battleships and cruisers help your power projection. Having that makes it harder to get blockaded. Torpedo boats and destroyers aren't that useful for that task but they make great killers.
i designed 2 ships, within the tonnage limit and everything is green, but it wont let me build them. any idea why? i have the money, could they be too long??
tips to cheese the AI. torpedo boats and destroyer swarms, cheap effective and the AI does not deal with them well at all. up to 1920 with the longest campaign era 1890 still taking less than a year before AI surrenders. it tends to build all ship classes, from 1900 on i only build BB, BC, no cruisers or CL's and the rest destroyers of two types, gun ships and torpedo ships. why destroyer gun ships? transports, escorted, so torpedoes tend to get used or used up killing or driving off the escorts while the gunboatss kill the transports. additional tips, always get into a line abreast. micromanage individual ships. turn off torps until optimal range and watch gun fire as at close ranges 5 and 4 inch tend to fire flat and anything between the target and the ship firing gets wrecked...even when they have a hard time hitting what they're shootng at they have a 100% accuracy against their own ships in the way >.most torp launchers>.everything else yeah, this is basically an exploit...of sorts. torpedoes were feared and for good reason from their inception. the game makes their opness worse by limiting how many targets a single ship can fire on and how it will continue to pound a ship mostly dead just because close/has more torp launchers ignoring closer single launcher ships like the gunboats. you still need some capitol ships at least of parity or greater to maintain sea control w/ single side launchers deck or hull can discourage the AI from getting too close forcing engagements of your choosing. general, unbalanced rudders when you have access to them, always fast (24kn or higher) for all ships at 100% efficiency or near enough. a little armor on superstructure so someone spitting at it won't instantly destroy a funnel or something. for capitols armor the turrets and upgrade barbettes as flash fires are insane. pointless on destroyers of course but for your capitols mandatory. i did try to use Cl's as gunboats in a 1900 campaign...they were basically mobile fireworks shows once they got hit as they can't be armored enough to stop hits from setting off flash fires. flippin 4 inch from a transport set one off destroying the cl :/ why it's only dd gunboats, yeah they can still be set off but they're WAAAY cheaper and quicker to build. note well, this is game, not realistic so don't try to argue realism if you're so inclined. i treat it as a game, using it's weaknesses against it...much like you do in war, there is no cheating, there are no exploits, there is no honor (or honour for your extra letter types) there is only winning or losing. asymmetric warfare is a doctrine, use it.
I’ve noticed this as well, anytime I see two enemies together I aim at the one that’s behind the other and every shit is a hit on the boat in the way. This is awesome when it works in your favor. Annoying as hell when you don’t notice your own ship getting hit with friendly fire. I’d have to disagree with you on torpedo boats, I’d way rather spam light cruisers and battleships, the smoke button is the best.
@@OriginalName42069 i like smoke but CL's are easier targets and can't take a hit. >.< at least not mine. the torp boats are, like i said, cheaper and build faster. lose less crew too. just had the 1920 campaign end in 6 months...AI is messed up, just BB's and destroyers this time. it's like operational range doesn't even really matter.
@@Joe-Dead ive noticed in the later campaigns the AI is able to build a ton more ships. might be because I tend to use better tech but cant be for sure since I dont know what the AI builds exactly
@@OriginalName42069 saw that in one of stealths videos, british empire suddenly got a LOT more ships. mine have all lasted less than a year, hell i've never even gotten any upgrades researched. been going through as britain, that might change when i do germany...but i kind of doubt it. pretty sure there's more than a few bugs in their campaign system, one of which being revolts then surrenders that happen multiple times before the campaign actually ends. possibly quantity over quality issues, i have a lot of ships because of my reliance on destroyers with just enough BB's for parity+1 with germany. effectively a lot more ships in the water even though they're less capable than all the cruisers and CL's the AI has that take up their budget. if number of ships factor in to the AI's 'decision' making then that could weight it badly towards believing it's losing from the very start of the campaign. just guessing, the 1920 one still bugs me and just stopped playing. early access and campaign still has sea trials ahead.
Can’t wait for them to fix the campaign so research is actually necessary, at this point I’ve never actually used it because the war ends in a year or less. Also no point in building new ships at this point, or building new shipyards
In my campaing the ships keep going to the furthest ports every turn, lets say I play Germany, and they always go to danzig. Why is that? is there an option to stop it?
I built plenty of torpedo boats and a few battleships in the first german campaign and basically nothing else, as the light cruisers become overweight by adding two of the smallest main guns which is ridiculus. (speed at 20kts and maximum bulkheads). But the british keep sinking so many transports that I keep running out of money. At the same time I don't manage to sink any of theirs. What can I do? (all my ships are in sea control).
Well first of all 20 knots for a battleship is absurdly fast for 1890. 16-18 knots was the norm for that time period. 20 knots is for your "fast" cruisers. So that's probably where all your tonnage went preventing you from adding bigger main guns. Second of all you can reduce range. For some reason it defaults to max even though if you let the game autodesign your initial fleet most of the ships will have *minimum* range. Which makes sense given that you're only playing in a very small part of the world with no need for ships that can sail from western europe to china. That will save you more tonnage. It'll still be a tight squeeze and you'll have to compromise, but you should be able to fit things much better if you cut down range and speed.
Encyclopedia describes - IN BEING - as ship being closer to ports defending it, while SEA CONTROL is more aggressive stance, so its not like IN BEING ships are doing nothing.. they just stay closer, which in terms of current campaign, where ships are not really sailing across the world that limiting factor i think... (whole range of ships is quite pointless so far with only UK and Germany as playable countries)
i have a question, is it normal that i can't have 100% engine efficiency on my ship, i'm playing in 1890 with austria hungaria and i just can't have a ship that run 20 knots, can a ship that does not have 100% engine efficiency sail at 20 knots ? also, is it a problem if pitch and roll are superior to 25% and appear orange ?
#1 Not only is Crew Training highly desirable, it seems to me pretty much mandatory, just to keep up. It's hard to see very much of how the AI handles the economy side (most of it probably not very well), but does seems apparent to me that it tends to prioritize Crew as well. Veteran-vs-Veteran battles become pretty common in a campaign lasting longer than, say, a year. #2 A more extreme tip on Tech: Zero it out and don't spend a penny entire run. I think (hope?) this will not remain a viable practice in the eventual full campaign lasting 50+ years. But for now in these short one-war-only campaigns (they're really "campaign snippets", in a way), it works. #3 I'm not yet 100% convinced that Sea Control is really that important (at least as currently implemented)? I've often had the entire fleet In Being, either for financial or just experimental reasons. And other times the entire fleet in Sea Control. And sometimes sort of half/half. I haven't really discerned a noticeable difference in the frequency, type, location, or favorable odds of the battles. Or if there is one, not enough to warrant the much higher operating costs. The one exception is that the monthly enemy transport losses do seem to increase, which is a nice effect, but again, not really sure it's worth the cost. It might (or might not) increase Power Projection for blockade purposes, but I haven't seen clear evidence either way. At very least, for now, it seems In Being vs Sea Control is a discretionary on-or-off sort of thing, with neither as the clear always-superior option. Or perhaps I'm missing something fundamental about Sea Control which I've missed for 13 campaigns. Which is entirely possible; I went for quite a while not realizing the beneficial effect of ships' Range (which means little if anything for battles, but I think does significantly contribute to Power Projection and enemy merchant losses).
On crew experience - fighting crew is lagging behind in veterancy. It seems, when ship spends 1 m in repair dock, crew does not train. So my BB, that was fighting every other month had cadets crew, but another ship, that entered its first fight already was green
@@JkaaraKoDi I can't say I've seen that. Or perhaps more accurately, can't say I've "noticed" that...entirely possible I've missed cases of that occurring. Does bring to mind one other observation though. Contrary to what devs have said (forgot where I saw it), it is quite possible - in fact, normal - for a ship to train all the way up to Veteran from Crew Training alone, without ever fighting a battle or even been placed in Sea Control mode. Have routinely seen it many times in every campaign (13) I've played. Probably a bug or just oversight they need to eventually fix.
Would also like to see some ship building tips, or even just gun tips as when im building my (1910) BBs I'm hard pressed to find a reason to use anything other than the biggest 13 inch guns. I don't know much about naval warfare either so I typically don't know how many light cruisers I should have or why I would want armored cruisers at all
Generally speaking the larger guns will have longer reload times than the smaller ones. So if two ships approach each other one with 13 inch guns and one with 11 and equivalent armor the ship with the small guns might fire up to 2X more quickly than the first ship. Depending on ranges and design if the 11 inch gun is enough to pen the armor then the second ship will get many more hits and lots more opportunities to cause fires, flooding, and damage components.
Personally I always do light guns that can spam shells for early fights, I might not do hit damage but damage control is poor at the start so constantly starting fires is a plus
Hello, many thanks for the really good tips. I still have one question. If a ship is in repair in the fleet overview, do you have to set it to In Beining or can you leave the status Sea Control?
if you start a campaigne with "create your own fleet" and you put the crew training at maximum, did the "free" crew who will be add in your ship will be at a trainig skill ? or will be always cadets ?
so I beat the 1895 campaign way faster than I wanted to, and unlocked the 1900 campaign. so Stealth, if you beat 1900 do you unlock 1905 at the moment? regardless, I'm currently finicking with the code to hope to set the Victory Points to an unreachable number, and take a long term campaign
Hey some good tips, didn’t adjust my training slider far enough in my English campaign so I just repeatedly watched the Germans tear up the RN without taking many losses unless heavily outnumbered. Have to go back and try again keeping all this in mind. So with having ships either ‘at sea’ or ‘in being’ is there a difference in monthly cost at the moment?
Also could you do an episode explaining the best fleet building strategy before campaign start? I often find I build too many ships that burning through my monthly balance and have to scrap them in the first month, or building too few that immediate goes in been blockaged and lose transports.
I'd very much like to see such a Stealth video on this topic too. That said, don't be surprised if such a video boiled down to "Build BB's and nothing else." Perhaps an additional few DDs just for fun, but not really necessary. At least in the hands of the current AI, there's not much of a rock-paper-scissors dynamic working here. At moment it's "Rock Beats Everything...Including Other Rocks". Yep I know. I was skeptical too. Then I tried it. A decent player-built (and then average intelligently-played) BB-only fleet with starter tech (no need to spend tech $$$ either) will handily pulverize pretty much whatever the AI can throw at it. I'm sure Stealth could offer many more astute insights into why/how this is. In my mind, however, there's two main reasons. First, player-design ships are inherently superior to auto-gen ships, if for no other reason than we typically zero out fore/aft weight offset (and can also minimize pitch/roll), resulting in much more stable ships. With resulting buffs (or lack of nerfs) to accuracy, maneuverability, and flooding/DC. This ensures that ship-for-ship, your BB will stack up very well to their BB/BCs. Second, in-battle AI usually isn't very aggressive with torpedo-armed ships. They do launch a lot of torps, but usually from long range, which makes them pretty easily avoidable most of the time given sufficient torp-detection tech (which goes back to point one about player-design). This situation means your BB will be able to easily deal with enemy CA/CL/DD. (edit: this last bit does have one exception: the greatly decreased spotting ranges of Night/Stormy battles does give the AI torp-shooters their best chance to succeed in spite of themselves. In these occasional cases, Stealth's last point is applicable; it's okay to run away sometimes, lol). As far as numbers, the player does have the advantage of seeing the composition of the enemy fleet at start. In every campaign I've started with this strategy (including the poorer Germany), there's been plenty of budget available to initially build enough BBs to at least match the enemy BB/BCs, usually a couple more. This has been sufficient to stave off blockade and result in relatively low monthly transport losses, regardless of how many uncontested CA/CL/DD faced.
@@cragnamorra Agree with your analysis. AI built ships are generally not the best. Players can both build and generally manage ships better than the AI (armor angling, staying out of torpedo range - oh wait...). A full BB fleet works, but it's a bit boring. I'm running a mixed fleet of several BBs, a bunch of heavies and some light cruisers now. Works very well and creates more challenging encounters.
@@Stealth17Gaming Yup, agreed. After trying several BB-only runs, I'm going back to a more "conventional" ship mix myself. But now that's in the realm of "how do I make this more fun/challenging despite the AI shortcomings", rather than "what is the most reliable/optimal way to beat the game". Hopefully there will be some AI and other mechanics changes which incentivize a more balanced fleet composition. (one idea I've had...notionally while my BB's are pulverizing their opponents in actual battles, all those uncontested enemy CA/CL/DD "ought" to be running rampant among my merchant traffic regardless of blockade status, with ruinous monthly transport losses. That currently isn't happening, obviously.)
This might be a bug. I thought crew training was not working yet, I played 3 campaigns and had no crews above cadets, and yes I had the crew training at 50-100% usually.
Have olayed custom battles and naval academy so far. Yesterday I tried campaign, needless to say my crew didn't hit squat 😄 Gonna pit some more points into cre training 😄👍🏻
Hiya, Stealth17! I have got a question about the timeline of the campaign. Are campaigns based on the results of previous ones? For example, the starting conditions of the german 1900s campaign based on the results of the german 1890s and so on?
I wish they’d let you refit ships, like when you got better engines or armor techs, you have too build a new ship entirely. Whereas in real life it was often feasible too incorporate these advances too older ships too bring back up too par
Life’s been terrible lately. I cry all the time, I am uncertain my girlfriend loves me, and I have no idea what the future holds. The pain is often immense…But at least I can still watch Stealth17 at the end of the day. At least I can laugh at jokes only our community understands. That’s one constant thing I’ve had since the age of 13. You aren’t just a UA-camr. You’re a blessing.
Started playing recently and already noticed the quirk's: they really need to take that "Free Priorities" back to the drawing board and figure something new. Investing to reduce 10 months to 5 makes other non-priorities jump up to almost twice their current progress? Jeez... Dont get me wrong, I can see the inspiration of this game, it shares heavy similarities with "Rule the Waves", but they need to make their game their own at the end of the day. And it is a good spin at what "Rule the Waves" does, this one seems to be aiming for gold and do it in 3D (and look prettier)! But the research, yeah thats gonna have to change... Also, I bought the game for the campaign and all I can say from starting the 1900's campaign (after beating the 1890's with both UK/DE), from 1900's onward, their going to have to balance stuff out and make CL's and CA's at least useable. Dont get me wrong: I love doing the "Only BB's im my fleet!" joke of a playtrough, but I seriously want to take the game a bit more serious. To develop a navy, have different ship classes that fullfil their roles and complement each-other. I also legitimatly want to expirience a bit of limitation or "growing pains". (Chalk it up to Rule the Waves, man. Beating Italy has Austria-Hungary while having limited Battleship displacement is a cruel challenge but one I enjoy very much repeating by coming up with new Cruiser's to back up these "Pocket Battleship's" (alternativly going full "Kaiser's Pirates" and waging a war of hit and run, daring raids and only ocassional grand-battles). If CL's and CA's are going to be pretty roman candles that go off at the slightes sneaze in their generall vacinity, whats the point of the game to have them in the first place? Light Cruiser's and Heavy Cruiser's served important roles in real life navies, in the game, their a good decoration for a port or the bottom of the sea. Lastly I will say this: I think they need not be afraid of making you have to choose carefully with early fleet composition. Seriously, the designer aspect of creating ships classes and concepts within those classes makes me grin from ear to ear (if only for the cruel mistress that is reality to remind me that CL's and Ca's right now are situational at best, donwright useless at worst). Again, thats why I mention Rule the Waves: can't muster enough BB's? Think with CA's and CL's, grab a good amount of DD's to screan those precious capital ships. Dont have enough to comission a lot of BB's early on? Think about BattleCruiser's (BC's), they borough firepower and power projection from Dreadnought's and the speed and long-travelling of Cruiser's. Limitations are not inherently there to stop you from moving foward or making progress, sometimes their there to test you problem-solving skills while also opening paths to new discoveries and play-styles. I seriously think "Ultimate Admirals Dreadnought's" need to lose its fear of yelling "We have big ships!" only to mutter "Oh yeah theres also these smaller ones, I guess". The game after all, as the promise to pit you in a grand-campaign in the future which will envolve diplomacy, war, naval-combat as well as fleet management. Its really sad that "Rule the Waves", despite deciding by rule of the dice, to sink my 3 battleships via sneaky submarine, still make me get creative when a naval treaty imposes tonnage and weapon restrictions. Suddently I cant consider the bigger designs I have on paper! Do I down-scale them? Or do I turn my navies focus away for a bit and develop other ship classes. "Ultimate Admiral Dreadnought's" despite my understandment of them trying to do some thing more "their's" (because I do not really want a clone of RtW with better grapichs to play, I already have RtW and play it for its unique gameplay loop), somethings are inherent to the "genre" of game, UAD is in, and trying to beat certain things out to be "hardcore original" is not exactly the way to go about in (in my opinion). The current campaign is bare-bones yes, but the promisse is there and I am cautiously optimistic for it (I really want this game to succeed!) I really hope they balance things out in future updates, been a long time since a game has scrached that "itch" for naval warfare for me. In the end I guess this is really more of an opinion that statement of any fact at all, so take my words with a good grain of salt.
My only tip would be: "Don't play the campaign." Tips 1-2 demonstrate that the campaign is broken already, but you are missing another tip, one the Steam forum brings up a lot. Tip #6: give your ships longer range and put them on closer ports so they can actually pretend to reduce your transport losses. Not that it will help, and it's fairly silly, and stupid, and absurd, but here you go. Tip #7: detach your ships. Because every other battle one ship will slow down to a full stop for no conceivable reason, and the best way to prevent that is to give up on divisions entirely. Tip #8: work around the battle generator. Just like with RTW2, it will frustrate you something fierce, especially if you went with a legacy fleet, so don't build your ships according to logic, build them according to the meta. Oh yeah, I forgot. Tip #9: Don't bother with expanding your docks. It may give you bigger BBs, which you don't need, but it won't give you bigger CAs/CLs, where you might actually want more tonnage. Most worthless slider in history. The reality is that even after 2-3 battles my crew was still cadets -- and no, they didn't take heavy losses -- while I was down to 2% transport capacity and only because that was how much I was adding each month. I was beating the UK in tonnage, I had won the only big engagement the battle generator gave me, decisively, I was 2-to-1 in victory points, and glad to the battle generator I was losing the war. This is also why I don't bother watching let's play on the campaign. And not just because everyone seems intent to lose a CA to torpedoes as a blood pact. It's really just random, repetitive battles that change nothing to the course of war. With tech too slow to matter and hardly a need, if at all, to build ships. That map might as well not exist. In its current state the campaign is not worth playing. EDIT: And while I'm salty, the academy missions are also worthless. I played "sink the Monitor" and according to UA:Dreadnoughts, Hampton Roads had two Virginias with better machinery than a brand new ship, doing circles around the Monitor until that prey decided to just stall in the middle of the water, after which both Viriginias parked ten meters away from it and bombarded it for more than a quarter of an hour. Point being, even without the crew slider breaking all balance in those missions, cheesy designs that defy common sense will trivialize them, leaving a stubborn UI and possibly bad luck as your only obstacle to victory.
not sure I like that everything takes longer to research with a priority point. this should be looked at as extra spending so it shouldn't be causing too many issues with other categories. this is a big negative to the game for me.
Seen them in his BBs at the 1910 campaign. Great as finishers, but preferably used sparingly, and can be used as a last-ditch attack if they are designed for single-use and not reloaded afterward.
Does someone know, why Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts from Steam won't load? I waited at least 30min after designing my ships and still the game only said "loading"
The research system is a joke, not only are focuses a colossal net negative in the long run but campaings are too short for any tech advance to matter.
yeah, its not worth spending too much money on research because you will end the campaign in a year or two right now.. so no matter what you research, you wont be able to use that research on a new designed ship and get it into fight anyway...
tbh I think this might be one of the AI's management shortcomings in the current version of the campaign. They discover techs, create new designs, and even sometimes lay down ships of those ostensibly-improved designs. But I've rarely if ever seen them actually complete and field any of these newer ships. So the AI is currently wasting a lot of resources on a dead end. That said, big-picture this is probably not something that needs to be "fixed" per se. These current short campaigns are not the vision for the eventual single long campaign. Eventually (hopefully?) ongoing tech investment will (at least "should") be critical for player and AI alike.
@@JaM-R2TR4 Dont fight every battle yourself, use mostly autoresolve and the campaign will last much longer. In one campaign i was able to build 2 new BB designs, just because i did mainly only 1 BB vs 1 BB, the other battles or better chasing a fleeing enemy got too boring
#5 "We must embrace the oldest and nobelist of pirate traditions. We must fight, to run away"
#2 is really useful. It's very misleading to call them free priorities (I know now it means free to be used) as they cost you more time in other research. They don't really provide you with any long term benefit, just a short term boost to get something urgent... but it costs you in the long run.
It is best to use 1 priority to wrap up tech that should be on the ship the moment it's available, and that component is on the R&D.
There's diminishing returns when pulling other engineers from other departments to work on one.
"Reparing a ship is always faster than building a new one."
Oh my, that one sure stung IRL after Sola TS gave the death blow to Helge Ingstad...
It was too expensive to repair compared to building a new one...
How the times have changed I suppose.
was just about to start a campaign, good timing, very useful tips, thank you
Good hunting!
Some times teaching people the obvious is the hardest thing to do . When a ship with a high skill crew begins to take crew losses from combat at what point do you retreat the ship to avoid the reduction in crew ability when you "add crew" The run away advice is good since 60% of the 144 ww1 surface actions ended with 1 or both sides fleeing with only 118 ships being sunk in the whole war That is than 1 per battle!
interesting fact
I wish they could allow you to upgrade current design when having new techs. It's little bit annoying to have a brand new class just because I get new engine/boiler/range finder...
I agree, but! This should have limits, though. As not everu component could be refitted, or, if could, it would be very costly in time and resources.
Just switching a gun caliber makes you change a whole lot of internal mechanisms and systems, as example.
I hope they add that. Rule The Waves 2 does it and I really enjoy refitting older ships to keep them capable.
it is still alpha that feature is likely in progress somewhere.
Was about to start a new 1890 campaign. Glad I found this since I'm quite new to the game. Thanks, Stealth
The shift and ctrl functions was completely worth the view.... but this is a good video and I am enjoying it.... Thank you for the Tips.
Got this game because of you. Been crushing it on the campaign.
You should mention when setting ships to "In control", deploying them, it going to cost a whole lot more, about double and plus some.
Also "In Being" is your reserve fleet, so when ships go on repairs or sink, you can redeploy reserves to "In Control", i.e. you should always have some ships "in being", reserved, to be made active immediately. "In Being" keep crews trained as opposed to being "mothballed", I think?
PS: You know that Nick never gives the game up, it has been a GameLabs thing for as long as I know.
He did the thing! Keep up the great work stealth!
I find running away is not really that important because the AI always seems to be running away, even when they have the advantage.
Quite frustrating actually.
I was wondering why my crews weren't replenishing. Thank you!
#6 Design you ships manually.
ohhh, I know all about running away. lol This is a great tip.
Why can't I find enemy transports in a battle that has 1 CL, and 4 transports? Are the smoke signals only from the CL that is running away? Is there a technique for finding the transports instead? (I'm playing an 1890's campaign). Are those transports traveling at the same speed the CL is while invisible, instead of the ultra slow speed they should normally be doing?
I think the research focus is interesting. As I see it, if you just got enough improvements to start designing and producing a better ship, there might be a case where using one of those to get a single additional improvement next turn may be beneficial. Ideally, your improvements would all be prioritized such that they all finished the improvement on the same day, and on that day you start the new design/production. But life is not always ideal. And that's where those focus points come into play. All in all, they are bad. Using them comes at a cost to the other techs in the tree. But as I said above, if it lets you get an additional improvement into a design before production begins on the hull, it's is likely worth the hit to the rest...but you may want to take it off as soon as you achieve it. Another thing to consider is that the amount you put into the research budget does make a difference as well. If a tech says that it's going to improve in 1 month, try sliding the research budget down until just before it would change to 2 months -- to save some cash for your building projects.
At the beginning of a campaign, how many ships should I have constructed? Should I squeeze every available penny out of my starting budget?
Yes get a lot of ships out there. Battleships and cruisers help your power projection. Having that makes it harder to get blockaded. Torpedo boats and destroyers aren't that useful for that task but they make great killers.
i designed 2 ships, within the tonnage limit and everything is green, but it wont let me build them. any idea why? i have the money, could they be too long??
Is there a tutorial to teach how to organize and move fleets on the "world" scale map?
tips to cheese the AI.
torpedo boats and destroyer swarms, cheap effective and the AI does not deal with them well at all. up to 1920 with the longest campaign era 1890 still taking less than a year before AI surrenders. it tends to build all ship classes, from 1900 on i only build BB, BC, no cruisers or CL's and the rest destroyers of two types, gun ships and torpedo ships. why destroyer gun ships? transports, escorted, so torpedoes tend to get used or used up killing or driving off the escorts while the gunboatss kill the transports.
additional tips, always get into a line abreast. micromanage individual ships. turn off torps until optimal range and watch gun fire as at close ranges 5 and 4 inch tend to fire flat and anything between the target and the ship firing gets wrecked...even when they have a hard time hitting what they're shootng at they have a 100% accuracy against their own ships in the way >.most torp launchers>.everything else
yeah, this is basically an exploit...of sorts. torpedoes were feared and for good reason from their inception. the game makes their opness worse by limiting how many targets a single ship can fire on and how it will continue to pound a ship mostly dead just because close/has more torp launchers ignoring closer single launcher ships like the gunboats. you still need some capitol ships at least of parity or greater to maintain sea control w/ single side launchers deck or hull can discourage the AI from getting too close forcing engagements of your choosing.
general, unbalanced rudders when you have access to them, always fast (24kn or higher) for all ships at 100% efficiency or near enough. a little armor on superstructure so someone spitting at it won't instantly destroy a funnel or something. for capitols armor the turrets and upgrade barbettes as flash fires are insane. pointless on destroyers of course but for your capitols mandatory. i did try to use Cl's as gunboats in a 1900 campaign...they were basically mobile fireworks shows once they got hit as they can't be armored enough to stop hits from setting off flash fires. flippin 4 inch from a transport set one off destroying the cl :/ why it's only dd gunboats, yeah they can still be set off but they're WAAAY cheaper and quicker to build.
note well, this is game, not realistic so don't try to argue realism if you're so inclined. i treat it as a game, using it's weaknesses against it...much like you do in war, there is no cheating, there are no exploits, there is no honor (or honour for your extra letter types) there is only winning or losing. asymmetric warfare is a doctrine, use it.
I’ve noticed this as well, anytime I see two enemies together I aim at the one that’s behind the other and every shit is a hit on the boat in the way. This is awesome when it works in your favor. Annoying as hell when you don’t notice your own ship getting hit with friendly fire.
I’d have to disagree with you on torpedo boats, I’d way rather spam light cruisers and battleships, the smoke button is the best.
@@OriginalName42069 i like smoke but CL's are easier targets and can't take a hit. >.< at least not mine. the torp boats are, like i said, cheaper and build faster. lose less crew too. just had the 1920 campaign end in 6 months...AI is messed up, just BB's and destroyers this time. it's like operational range doesn't even really matter.
@@Joe-Dead ive noticed in the later campaigns the AI is able to build a ton more ships. might be because I tend to use better tech but cant be for sure since I dont know what the AI builds exactly
@@OriginalName42069 saw that in one of stealths videos, british empire suddenly got a LOT more ships. mine have all lasted less than a year, hell i've never even gotten any upgrades researched. been going through as britain, that might change when i do germany...but i kind of doubt it. pretty sure there's more than a few bugs in their campaign system, one of which being revolts then surrenders that happen multiple times before the campaign actually ends. possibly quantity over quality issues, i have a lot of ships because of my reliance on destroyers with just enough BB's for parity+1 with germany. effectively a lot more ships in the water even though they're less capable than all the cruisers and CL's the AI has that take up their budget.
if number of ships factor in to the AI's 'decision' making then that could weight it badly towards believing it's losing from the very start of the campaign. just guessing, the 1920 one still bugs me and just stopped playing. early access and campaign still has sea trials ahead.
Can’t wait for them to fix the campaign so research is actually necessary, at this point I’ve never actually used it because the war ends in a year or less. Also no point in building new ships at this point, or building new shipyards
In my campaing the ships keep going to the furthest ports every turn, lets say I play Germany, and they always go to danzig. Why is that? is there an option to stop it?
I built plenty of torpedo boats and a few battleships in the first german campaign and basically nothing else, as the light cruisers become overweight by adding two of the smallest main guns which is ridiculus. (speed at 20kts and maximum bulkheads). But the british keep sinking so many transports that I keep running out of money. At the same time I don't manage to sink any of theirs. What can I do? (all my ships are in sea control).
Well first of all 20 knots for a battleship is absurdly fast for 1890. 16-18 knots was the norm for that time period. 20 knots is for your "fast" cruisers. So that's probably where all your tonnage went preventing you from adding bigger main guns. Second of all you can reduce range. For some reason it defaults to max even though if you let the game autodesign your initial fleet most of the ships will have *minimum* range. Which makes sense given that you're only playing in a very small part of the world with no need for ships that can sail from western europe to china. That will save you more tonnage. It'll still be a tight squeeze and you'll have to compromise, but you should be able to fit things much better if you cut down range and speed.
Encyclopedia describes - IN BEING - as ship being closer to ports defending it, while SEA CONTROL is more aggressive stance, so its not like IN BEING ships are doing nothing.. they just stay closer, which in terms of current campaign, where ships are not really sailing across the world that limiting factor i think... (whole range of ships is quite pointless so far with only UK and Germany as playable countries)
Fair enough. Good addition.
@@Stealth17Gaming pretty sure your fleet in being ships fought in at least one close to english shores battle in your recent bb campaign.
how do i do better at protecting transport ships?
i have a question, is it normal that i can't have 100% engine efficiency on my ship, i'm playing in 1890 with austria hungaria and i just can't have a ship that run 20 knots, can a ship that does not have 100% engine efficiency sail at 20 knots ? also, is it a problem if pitch and roll are superior to 25% and appear orange ?
Yes. You need better engines/boilers/funnels to get to higher speeds
#1 Not only is Crew Training highly desirable, it seems to me pretty much mandatory, just to keep up. It's hard to see very much of how the AI handles the economy side (most of it probably not very well), but does seems apparent to me that it tends to prioritize Crew as well. Veteran-vs-Veteran battles become pretty common in a campaign lasting longer than, say, a year.
#2 A more extreme tip on Tech: Zero it out and don't spend a penny entire run. I think (hope?) this will not remain a viable practice in the eventual full campaign lasting 50+ years. But for now in these short one-war-only campaigns (they're really "campaign snippets", in a way), it works.
#3 I'm not yet 100% convinced that Sea Control is really that important (at least as currently implemented)? I've often had the entire fleet In Being, either for financial or just experimental reasons. And other times the entire fleet in Sea Control. And sometimes sort of half/half. I haven't really discerned a noticeable difference in the frequency, type, location, or favorable odds of the battles. Or if there is one, not enough to warrant the much higher operating costs. The one exception is that the monthly enemy transport losses do seem to increase, which is a nice effect, but again, not really sure it's worth the cost. It might (or might not) increase Power Projection for blockade purposes, but I haven't seen clear evidence either way.
At very least, for now, it seems In Being vs Sea Control is a discretionary on-or-off sort of thing, with neither as the clear always-superior option.
Or perhaps I'm missing something fundamental about Sea Control which I've missed for 13 campaigns. Which is entirely possible; I went for quite a while not realizing the beneficial effect of ships' Range (which means little if anything for battles, but I think does significantly contribute to Power Projection and enemy merchant losses).
On crew experience - fighting crew is lagging behind in veterancy. It seems, when ship spends 1 m in repair dock, crew does not train. So my BB, that was fighting every other month had cadets crew, but another ship, that entered its first fight already was green
@@JkaaraKoDi I can't say I've seen that. Or perhaps more accurately, can't say I've "noticed" that...entirely possible I've missed cases of that occurring. Does bring to mind one other observation though. Contrary to what devs have said (forgot where I saw it), it is quite possible - in fact, normal - for a ship to train all the way up to Veteran from Crew Training alone, without ever fighting a battle or even been placed in Sea Control mode. Have routinely seen it many times in every campaign (13) I've played. Probably a bug or just oversight they need to eventually fix.
do you have any tips to stop losing TR in campaign? because all the time i lose tons of ships and it wrecks my economy in seconds
Would also like to see some ship building tips, or even just gun tips as when im building my (1910) BBs I'm hard pressed to find a reason to use anything other than the biggest 13 inch guns. I don't know much about naval warfare either so I typically don't know how many light cruisers I should have or why I would want armored cruisers at all
Generally speaking the larger guns will have longer reload times than the smaller ones. So if two ships approach each other one with 13 inch guns and one with 11 and equivalent armor the ship with the small guns might fire up to 2X more quickly than the first ship. Depending on ranges and design if the 11 inch gun is enough to pen the armor then the second ship will get many more hits and lots more opportunities to cause fires, flooding, and damage components.
Personally I always do light guns that can spam shells for early fights, I might not do hit damage but damage control is poor at the start so constantly starting fires is a plus
Hello, many thanks for the really good tips. I still have one question. If a ship is in repair in the fleet overview, do you have to set it to In Beining or can you leave the status Sea Control?
You can leave it on sea control
if you start a campaigne with "create your own fleet" and you put the crew training at maximum, did the "free" crew who will be add in your ship will be at a trainig skill ? or will be always cadets ?
My experience has been that they always start at cadets
so I beat the 1895 campaign way faster than I wanted to, and unlocked the 1900 campaign.
so Stealth, if you beat 1900 do you unlock 1905 at the moment?
regardless, I'm currently finicking with the code to hope to set the Victory Points to an unreachable number, and take a long term campaign
You unlock 1910
@@Stealth17Gaming and did we get 1920 after ?
@@LF-yy3fi I think currently it keeps unlocking the next up to 1930 or 40.
Hey some good tips, didn’t adjust my training slider far enough in my English campaign so I just repeatedly watched the Germans tear up the RN without taking many losses unless heavily outnumbered. Have to go back and try again keeping all this in mind.
So with having ships either ‘at sea’ or ‘in being’ is there a difference in monthly cost at the moment?
If you scuttle a ship with a veteran crew, do you lose the veteran crew?
Also could you do an episode explaining the best fleet building strategy before campaign start? I often find I build too many ships that burning through my monthly balance and have to scrap them in the first month, or building too few that immediate goes in been blockaged and lose transports.
Sure!
I'd very much like to see such a Stealth video on this topic too. That said, don't be surprised if such a video boiled down to "Build BB's and nothing else." Perhaps an additional few DDs just for fun, but not really necessary. At least in the hands of the current AI, there's not much of a rock-paper-scissors dynamic working here. At moment it's "Rock Beats Everything...Including Other Rocks".
Yep I know. I was skeptical too. Then I tried it. A decent player-built (and then average intelligently-played) BB-only fleet with starter tech (no need to spend tech $$$ either) will handily pulverize pretty much whatever the AI can throw at it.
I'm sure Stealth could offer many more astute insights into why/how this is. In my mind, however, there's two main reasons. First, player-design ships are inherently superior to auto-gen ships, if for no other reason than we typically zero out fore/aft weight offset (and can also minimize pitch/roll), resulting in much more stable ships. With resulting buffs (or lack of nerfs) to accuracy, maneuverability, and flooding/DC. This ensures that ship-for-ship, your BB will stack up very well to their BB/BCs. Second, in-battle AI usually isn't very aggressive with torpedo-armed ships. They do launch a lot of torps, but usually from long range, which makes them pretty easily avoidable most of the time given sufficient torp-detection tech (which goes back to point one about player-design). This situation means your BB will be able to easily deal with enemy CA/CL/DD. (edit: this last bit does have one exception: the greatly decreased spotting ranges of Night/Stormy battles does give the AI torp-shooters their best chance to succeed in spite of themselves. In these occasional cases, Stealth's last point is applicable; it's okay to run away sometimes, lol).
As far as numbers, the player does have the advantage of seeing the composition of the enemy fleet at start. In every campaign I've started with this strategy (including the poorer Germany), there's been plenty of budget available to initially build enough BBs to at least match the enemy BB/BCs, usually a couple more. This has been sufficient to stave off blockade and result in relatively low monthly transport losses, regardless of how many uncontested CA/CL/DD faced.
@@cragnamorra Agree with your analysis. AI built ships are generally not the best. Players can both build and generally manage ships better than the AI (armor angling, staying out of torpedo range - oh wait...).
A full BB fleet works, but it's a bit boring. I'm running a mixed fleet of several BBs, a bunch of heavies and some light cruisers now. Works very well and creates more challenging encounters.
@@Stealth17Gaming Yup, agreed. After trying several BB-only runs, I'm going back to a more "conventional" ship mix myself. But now that's in the realm of "how do I make this more fun/challenging despite the AI shortcomings", rather than "what is the most reliable/optimal way to beat the game". Hopefully there will be some AI and other mechanics changes which incentivize a more balanced fleet composition. (one idea I've had...notionally while my BB's are pulverizing their opponents in actual battles, all those uncontested enemy CA/CL/DD "ought" to be running rampant among my merchant traffic regardless of blockade status, with ruinous monthly transport losses. That currently isn't happening, obviously.)
If your ship is "In Being" are its crew still being trained?
Yes
This might be a bug. I thought crew training was not working yet, I played 3 campaigns and had no crews above cadets, and yes I had the crew training at 50-100% usually.
Have olayed custom battles and naval academy so far. Yesterday I tried campaign, needless to say my crew didn't hit squat 😄
Gonna pit some more points into cre training 😄👍🏻
Hiya, Stealth17! I have got a question about the timeline of the campaign. Are campaigns based on the results of previous ones? For example, the starting conditions of the german 1900s campaign based on the results of the german 1890s and so on?
No they have no impact on each other.
@@Stealth17Gaming what a pity!
thanks buddy
Hello, may I ask what factors on this game affects the turning circle of your constructed ship?
Thanks a lot!
The ship speed and the rudder. For the tightest turning circles you want an unbalanced rudder and a ship that has a high turn loss ratio.
I wish they’d let you refit ships, like when you got better engines or armor techs, you have too build a new ship entirely. Whereas in real life it was often feasible too incorporate these advances too older ships too bring back up too par
That's true. They even outfitted the USS Iowa with cruise missiles, getting rid of the smaller AA guns and instead mounting several CIWS's on it.
Life’s been terrible lately. I cry all the time, I am uncertain my girlfriend loves me, and I have no idea what the future holds. The pain is often immense…But at least I can still watch Stealth17 at the end of the day. At least I can laugh at jokes only our community understands. That’s one constant thing I’ve had since the age of 13. You aren’t just a UA-camr. You’re a blessing.
Oh dude I'm sorry to hear things are so rough! Shoot me an email if you need to vent.
Started playing recently and already noticed the quirk's: they really need to take that "Free Priorities" back to the drawing board and figure something new. Investing to reduce 10 months to 5 makes other non-priorities jump up to almost twice their current progress? Jeez... Dont get me wrong, I can see the inspiration of this game, it shares heavy similarities with "Rule the Waves", but they need to make their game their own at the end of the day. And it is a good spin at what "Rule the Waves" does, this one seems to be aiming for gold and do it in 3D (and look prettier)! But the research, yeah thats gonna have to change...
Also, I bought the game for the campaign and all I can say from starting the 1900's campaign (after beating the 1890's with both UK/DE), from 1900's onward, their going to have to balance stuff out and make CL's and CA's at least useable. Dont get me wrong: I love doing the "Only BB's im my fleet!" joke of a playtrough, but I seriously want to take the game a bit more serious. To develop a navy, have different ship classes that fullfil their roles and complement each-other. I also legitimatly want to expirience a bit of limitation or "growing pains". (Chalk it up to Rule the Waves, man. Beating Italy has Austria-Hungary while having limited Battleship displacement is a cruel challenge but one I enjoy very much repeating by coming up with new Cruiser's to back up these "Pocket Battleship's" (alternativly going full "Kaiser's Pirates" and waging a war of hit and run, daring raids and only ocassional grand-battles).
If CL's and CA's are going to be pretty roman candles that go off at the slightes sneaze in their generall vacinity, whats the point of the game to have them in the first place? Light Cruiser's and Heavy Cruiser's served important roles in real life navies, in the game, their a good decoration for a port or the bottom of the sea.
Lastly I will say this: I think they need not be afraid of making you have to choose carefully with early fleet composition. Seriously, the designer aspect of creating ships classes and concepts within those classes makes me grin from ear to ear (if only for the cruel mistress that is reality to remind me that CL's and Ca's right now are situational at best, donwright useless at worst). Again, thats why I mention Rule the Waves: can't muster enough BB's? Think with CA's and CL's, grab a good amount of DD's to screan those precious capital ships. Dont have enough to comission a lot of BB's early on? Think about BattleCruiser's (BC's), they borough firepower and power projection from Dreadnought's and the speed and long-travelling of Cruiser's. Limitations are not inherently there to stop you from moving foward or making progress, sometimes their there to test you problem-solving skills while also opening paths to new discoveries and play-styles. I seriously think "Ultimate Admirals Dreadnought's" need to lose its fear of yelling "We have big ships!" only to mutter "Oh yeah theres also these smaller ones, I guess". The game after all, as the promise to pit you in a grand-campaign in the future which will envolve diplomacy, war, naval-combat as well as fleet management. Its really sad that "Rule the Waves", despite deciding by rule of the dice, to sink my 3 battleships via sneaky submarine, still make me get creative when a naval treaty imposes tonnage and weapon restrictions. Suddently I cant consider the bigger designs I have on paper! Do I down-scale them? Or do I turn my navies focus away for a bit and develop other ship classes. "Ultimate Admiral Dreadnought's" despite my understandment of them trying to do some thing more "their's" (because I do not really want a clone of RtW with better grapichs to play, I already have RtW and play it for its unique gameplay loop), somethings are inherent to the "genre" of game, UAD is in, and trying to beat certain things out to be "hardcore original" is not exactly the way to go about in (in my opinion). The current campaign is bare-bones yes, but the promisse is there and I am cautiously optimistic for it (I really want this game to succeed!)
I really hope they balance things out in future updates, been a long time since a game has scrached that "itch" for naval warfare for me. In the end I guess this is really more of an opinion that statement of any fact at all, so take my words with a good grain of salt.
Are these tips still valid?
My only tip would be: "Don't play the campaign."
Tips 1-2 demonstrate that the campaign is broken already, but you are missing another tip, one the Steam forum brings up a lot. Tip #6: give your ships longer range and put them on closer ports so they can actually pretend to reduce your transport losses. Not that it will help, and it's fairly silly, and stupid, and absurd, but here you go. Tip #7: detach your ships. Because every other battle one ship will slow down to a full stop for no conceivable reason, and the best way to prevent that is to give up on divisions entirely. Tip #8: work around the battle generator. Just like with RTW2, it will frustrate you something fierce, especially if you went with a legacy fleet, so don't build your ships according to logic, build them according to the meta.
Oh yeah, I forgot. Tip #9: Don't bother with expanding your docks. It may give you bigger BBs, which you don't need, but it won't give you bigger CAs/CLs, where you might actually want more tonnage. Most worthless slider in history.
The reality is that even after 2-3 battles my crew was still cadets -- and no, they didn't take heavy losses -- while I was down to 2% transport capacity and only because that was how much I was adding each month. I was beating the UK in tonnage, I had won the only big engagement the battle generator gave me, decisively, I was 2-to-1 in victory points, and glad to the battle generator I was losing the war.
This is also why I don't bother watching let's play on the campaign. And not just because everyone seems intent to lose a CA to torpedoes as a blood pact. It's really just random, repetitive battles that change nothing to the course of war. With tech too slow to matter and hardly a need, if at all, to build ships. That map might as well not exist.
In its current state the campaign is not worth playing.
EDIT: And while I'm salty, the academy missions are also worthless. I played "sink the Monitor" and according to UA:Dreadnoughts, Hampton Roads had two Virginias with better machinery than a brand new ship, doing circles around the Monitor until that prey decided to just stall in the middle of the water, after which both Viriginias parked ten meters away from it and bombarded it for more than a quarter of an hour.
Point being, even without the crew slider breaking all balance in those missions, cheesy designs that defy common sense will trivialize them, leaving a stubborn UI and possibly bad luck as your only obstacle to victory.
the game is still in an alpha status, so alot can be left to that.
I just can't beat the ai for some reason. I feel like it's too RNG based.
not sure I like that everything takes longer to research with a priority point. this should be looked at as extra spending so it shouldn't be causing too many issues with other categories. this is a big negative to the game for me.
stealth my man you have earned yourself a forever fan although i do have a weird question have you ever built a BB with underwater torpedo tubes?
Seen them in his BBs at the 1910 campaign. Great as finishers, but preferably used sparingly, and can be used as a last-ditch attack if they are designed for single-use and not reloaded afterward.
I almost always have BBs with torpedoes.
@@Aereto wait how can you do that?
@@AustinBlack28 You just have to decrease the torpedo loadout
@@wolf310ii like a reduced compliment?
Does someone know, why Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts from Steam won't load? I waited at least 30min after designing my ships and still the game only said "loading"
i think your computer is not exactly compatible with the game…thats my opinion
@@AustinBlack28 but I don't get it why. It ain't that bad of an PC regarding the Components
@@maflox_6842 ok so what computer do you have?
Plait gtx 2080, AMD Ryzen 5 2600 and 16 gigs RAM
@@maflox_6842 ok like how many enemy units do you deploy?
The research system is a joke, not only are focuses a colossal net negative in the long run but campaings are too short for any tech advance to matter.
yeah, its not worth spending too much money on research because you will end the campaign in a year or two right now.. so no matter what you research, you wont be able to use that research on a new designed ship and get it into fight anyway...
tbh I think this might be one of the AI's management shortcomings in the current version of the campaign. They discover techs, create new designs, and even sometimes lay down ships of those ostensibly-improved designs. But I've rarely if ever seen them actually complete and field any of these newer ships. So the AI is currently wasting a lot of resources on a dead end. That said, big-picture this is probably not something that needs to be "fixed" per se. These current short campaigns are not the vision for the eventual single long campaign. Eventually (hopefully?) ongoing tech investment will (at least "should") be critical for player and AI alike.
@@JaM-R2TR4 Dont fight every battle yourself, use mostly autoresolve and the campaign will last much longer.
In one campaign i was able to build 2 new BB designs, just because i did mainly only 1 BB vs 1 BB, the other battles or better chasing a fleeing enemy got too boring
Dam I was hoping this was a campaign video not tips welp
Then make your own damn channel.
Next part coming tomorrow.
@@Stealth17Gaming YEAH
vor the algorithmen