Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnought

[roachbeef]

Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnought is a real-time strategy game developed by Game-Labs, who are known for their Ultimate General Series. In the game you are both a ship architect (imagine you're the Admiralty sending out specifications to designers in a world where HM Treasury kowtows to the Navy) and naval commander. In the ship designer, you can design your own ship from the late-19th to mid-20th century, selecting from archetypal hull types (based on real-life ships) that include torpedo boats, destroyers, light cruisers, armored cruisers, pre-dreadnoughts, and dreadnoughts. Thus what I think justifies its "Alternate History" status.

It is currently in alpha (with an option to preorder to gain access), and is supposed to come out some time in 2020.

Almost every aspect of a ship can be changed--hull form, armor thickness of each section, number of watertight/flashproof compartments, torpedo protection, armor type, propellant type, explosive filler type (the previous two are currently combined, unfortunately), radar type, sonar type (if applicable hull type), armament placement, reloading mechanism, turret mechanism, rangefinder type, fuel type, and so forth. There are abstractions, of course, but that still makes it the most detailed ship builder I've seen so far.

Spoiler

You will then take the ship (the less it costs, the more you can build) into real-time battle, where enemies will spawn with differing stats each time (not sure if it's random or reactive). Instead of having an arbitrary HP bar that decreases each time you hit a ship, each ship has a floatability and structural integrity statistic that decreases depending on the number of affected compartments. Of course, you can pump out water with the right technology and can put out fires. So it's not like certain arcade games where you can hit a ship in the mast enough times and it will blow up. And yes, shell hits in lower compartments will cause flooding.

While angle of impact, horizontal vs. vertical protection, and differing penetration/muzzle velocity values at different ranges are all currently simulated, unfortunately you cannot slope the armor as part of the design yet. Explosive filler and propellant are currently lumped together, and the developers have stated that carriers will not be added until after release if at all. Multiplayer is also not available. Fuel capacity and range are currently a stat, but as the campaign has not been implemented yet it is currently useless. Updates seem to be every month and the developers respond to most posts on the forum within 24 hours.

I think it's a fascinating game with a lot of potential (and fun even in it's current state) and could be extremely useful for simulating battles when people are writing naval timelines. More fun than rolling a dice, that's for sure!

More images at (https://imgur.com/a/NT5XQ4B)
Official forum at (https://forum.game-labs.net/forum/93-ultimate-admiral-dreadnoughts/)
*No disclaimers to make.

Is anybody playing/planning to play?

 

[Deleted member 2186]

Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnought is a real-time strategy game developed by Game-Labs, who are known for their Ultimate General Series. In the game you are both a ship architect (imagine you're the Admiralty sending out specifications to designers in a world where HM Treasury kowtows to the Navy) and naval commander. In the ship designer, you can design your own ship from the late-19th to mid-20th century, selecting from archetypal hull types (based on real-life ships) that include torpedo boats, destroyers, light cruisers, armored cruisers, pre-dreadnoughts, and dreadnoughts. Thus what I think justifies its "Alternate History" status.

It is currently in alpha (with an option to preorder to gain access), and is supposed to come out some time in 2020.

Almost every aspect of a ship can be changed--hull form, armor thickness of each section, number of watertight/flashproof compartments, torpedo protection, armor type, propellant type, explosive filler type (the previous two are currently combined, unfortunately), radar type, sonar type (if applicable hull type), armament placement, reloading mechanism, turret mechanism, rangefinder type, fuel type, and so forth. There are abstractions, of course, but that still makes it the most detailed ship builder I've seen so far.

Spoiler

You will then take the ship (the less it costs, the more you can build) into real-time battle, where enemies will spawn with differing stats each time (not sure if it's random or reactive). Instead of having an arbitrary HP bar that decreases each time you hit a ship, each ship has a floatability and structural integrity statistic that decreases depending on the number of affected compartments. Of course, you can pump out water with the right technology and can put out fires. So it's not like certain arcade games where you can hit a ship in the mast enough times and it will blow up. And yes, shell hits in lower compartments will cause flooding.

While angle of impact, horizontal vs. vertical protection, and differing penetration/muzzle velocity values at different ranges are all currently simulated, unfortunately you cannot slope the armor as part of the design yet. Explosive filler and propellant are currently lumped together, and the developers have stated that carriers will not be added until after release if at all. Multiplayer is also not available. Fuel capacity and range are currently a stat, but as the campaign has not been implemented yet it is currently useless. Updates seem to be every month and the developers respond to most posts on the forum within 24 hours.

I think it's a fascinating game with a lot of potential (and fun even in it's current state) and could be extremely useful for simulating battles when people are writing naval timelines. More fun than rolling a dice, that's for sure!

More images at (https://imgur.com/a/NT5XQ4B)
Official forum at (https://forum.game-labs.net/forum/93-ultimate-admiral-dreadnoughts/)
*No disclaimers to make.

Is anybody playing/planning to play?

Have it an cannot wait to play as the Empire of Germany and rule the waves.

 

[Babatus]

I plan to buy it someday, as I had a great fun on both Rules the Wave and Ultime Generals. However, I was a bit put off buy the cost of the "premium" version you need to preorder to get access to the early alpha: What is the content actually avaliable ?

 

[roachbeef]

I plan to buy it someday, as I had a great fun on both Rules the Wave and Ultime Generals. However, I was a bit put off buy the cost of the "premium" version you need to preorder to get access to the early alpha: What is the content actually avaliable ?

23 single-player missions, which are basically scenarios in which you have to choose from certain types of ships within a tonnage and cost budget. Pretty much all types of ships (pre-dreadnoughts, dreadnoughts, torpedo boats, destroyers, light cruisers, armored cruisers) in the 1000~150K-ton displacement range, with the exception of carriers. Devs say that they might come after launch but didn't make any promises. No campaign yet and no multiplayer planned atm, but honestly I would rather they focus on the singleplayer.

Patches come out roughly once every 4~6 weeks. Here's a link to the upcoming patch: (https://forum.game-labs.net/topic/32784-alpha-3-news-26112019/).

There is currently a "cheat" menu or debug console that lets you try tons of stuff, but it breaks the game every now and then (which causes players to report it as a bug) so the devs are all of the options except for two: unlocking all tech and unlocking all components.

IMHO it's worth the price if you've got the money, but that's partly because there is no equivalent in the market. It's already given me about 30 hours of enjoyment and that's more than most fully-priced AAA games.

 

[Deleted member 2186]

23 single-player missions, which are basically scenarios in which you have to choose from certain types of ships within a tonnage and cost budget. Pretty much all types of ships (pre-dreadnoughts, dreadnoughts, torpedo boats, destroyers, light cruisers, armored cruisers) in the 1000~150K-ton displacement range, with the exception of carriers. Devs say that they might come after launch but didn't make any promises. No campaign yet and no multiplayer planned atm, but honestly I would rather they focus on the singleplayer.

Patches come out roughly once every 4~6 weeks. Here's a link to the upcoming patch: (https://forum.game-labs.net/topic/32784-alpha-3-news-26112019/).

There is currently a "cheat" menu or debug console that lets you try tons of stuff, but it breaks the game every now and then (which causes players to report it as a bug) so the devs are all of the options except for two: unlocking all tech and unlocking all components.

IMHO it's worth the price if you've got the money, but that's partly because there is no equivalent in the market. It's already given me about 30 hours of enjoyment and that's more than most fully-priced AAA games.

Well there is now a major new update which allows you to do custom battles, and i love it, i tried to do a Falklands battle of 1914 and i still lost as Germany against the Royal Navy.

 

[Sargon]

I've recently discovered this and have been watching videos on YouTube. It is now up to Alpha 7 release and more features have been added. It looks like, finally, we may have the best non-arcadey warship simulator since Fighting Steel. I could never fully get into World of Warships because of all those silly islands in the way, and although it has amazing graphics and the ship models are great, it's just an arcade game at ridiculously short ranges, so not really a proper battle simulator.

I have noticed some of the gamers on YouTube appear to be ending up fighting battles in this in a World of Warships way by closing to ridiculously close distances rather than using range advantages, and their warships suffering for it. Maybe they are just too used to that sort of play or just want to make less plausible but more entertaining videos, however for those who played such titles as Great Naval Battles series, Task Force 1942, or Fighting Steel, you could have battles at realistic ranges rather than the implausibly short ranges usually forced on the player by something like WoW. I think that is perfectly possible in this if you're sensible about managing your vessels.

This is even better than GNB, TF1942 or FS* since you now have a ship designer with considerable freedom in cooking up a wide range of ships. With some more tweaks and further development to add more features and iron out some of the issues it has, this game has a lot of potential. The campaign mode will hopefully be a good addition when it is completed, and if they do manage to put carriers and submarines in, then we're really getting somewhere. Multiplayer is nice, but not absolutely essential. I'm probably an old fossil or something for preferring solitary play in games.

I will no doubt save up to try and get it but only if it comes out on GOG because Steam's way of delivering things is not my cup of tea. Not all of us have reliable internet connections all of the time for repeated verification and instead prefer to have the whole game on our HDD for offline use, and have another copy on a small laptop as well as the big main PC, so we can take it with us when we travel, which GOG allows. I do miss the days when you could buy a proper boxed game with all the physical extras that could come with it though. I remember getting a Wing Commander keyring and cloth mission patch for example. Not as easy to get that sort of thing these days!

So, watched with some anticipation.


Sargon

*Made even better with NWS' FS Project.

 

[Colonel Grubb]

It looks good, but not good enough for me to shell out for their premium alpha access. When its in early access or beta maybe, as it looks like a great game. Its a shame alot (but thankfully not all) of the YouTube vids of it descend into stupid meme ships, rather than even somewhat realistic builds and tactics which don't really show off the potential of the game.

 

[Sargon]

It looks good, but not good enough for me to shell out for their premium alpha access. When its in early access or beta maybe, as it looks like a great game. Its a shame alot (but thankfully not all) of the YouTube vids of it descend into stupid meme ships, rather than even somewhat realistic builds and tactics which don't really show off the potential of the game.

Aye, the meme ships are a bit much sometimes. It'd be nice to see more videos where people use historical ships. I'm not certain the game can model those entirely accurately yet given I did see one with an attempt at a Treaty Cruiser in it for instance, but it didn't quite resemble the historical example.

There are plenty of videos with crazy designs and charging in close, but not that many where the uploader has made an effort to do things in a more realistic manner. This is probably driven by the need for uploaders to get views and increase the drama factor of their channels to bring in revenue or something. Those who do that may think a battle that goes on for a couple of hours or more might not draw in the punters. Whereas there are probably more than they think who'd like to see more realism.


Sargon

 

[e350tb]

I've been trying out the alpha and rather enjoying it, even if I seem to use it mostly to design 'meme ships.' For example, taking Admiral Fisher's battlecruiser dreams to their logical conclusion...

The results were predictable.

But yeah, this game could be a pretty good resource for AH - I can't draw warships to save my life, but a realistic warship builder could be an immense help to illustrating my ideas!