Totem Ironclads, my own humble opinion/review/thoughts

[Maxim]

2 Crinius\

The artillery in days of Civil war was still very primitive. The shell flied aside the enemy, but not to a concrete part. To aim a gun at any part it was almost useless.

However, if your ship stands very close to the enemy the shell flies in parallel a direction of a gun. It can be used to fire separate parts. Always shoot only from one side of a vessel. Always shoot at that part which is protected by the reservation worse. Simply put the ship in parallel or perpendicularly to the enemy and shoot.

Try to imagine sector of bombardment of your gun. Here in this sector the shell also will fly to the purpose.

Totem Team

[Maxim]

2 jdkbph\

We tried make game in which the person who does not understand war on the sea can to play. Besides we have decided to not show the player of that information which the captain in 1862 could not know.

1. Damage is a physical destruction of a design of the ship, destruction of guns and murder of a crew. Destruction influences efficiency and accuracy of shooting, speed of the ship and its maneuverability. Flooding is a receipt water inside of the case of the ship through through holes in the case. Flooding leads to that that the ship or will slowly sink or overturns. If water acts in all parts of the ship in identical quantity to sink quantity of water inside of the ship should be equaled to its displacement. If in one of parts of the ship there are more than holes and more water the ship bends until will turn over. To turn over the ship it is necessary that in one of its parts was more waters than in other parts provisional on 10 % from displacement. Critical damages to game are not present.

2. It is very difficult to find balance between simplicity and details. I have understood your wish.

3. Onboard there is a crew. 68 hits it not so are a lot of. At the first bombardment of the Charleston in each of monitors of the USA 50 shells have got on the average.

4. You can remove the ship from fight. The opponent too does it if its ship is threatened with danger of destruction. But it not always turns out. Sometimes the ship receives such damages that has not time to run aground or fall outside the limits a map any more for one round.

5. To a regret in 1862 there were no devices for measurement of speed of the ship. The captain approximately measured the speed on number of turnovers of a shaft of the screw. Thus if the steam machine has been damaged, measured not truly. Pay attention what even today we do not know exact speed CSS Virginia.

6. It agree. Good idea.

7. Movement - the Stop - the Shot - Movement. The most successful combination.

8. Save of game - explain please more in detail.


It is our first game. We attentively study your responses to understand that it has turned out, and that it is necessary to change. Thanks for your response.

[jdkbph]

Thanks for the reply. I'll respond in-line below...

Originally Posted by Typical Russian

We tried make game in which the person who does not understand war on the sea can to play.

I'm not sure about the thinking here. Based on subject matter alone, it seems to me your audience is by definition "grognard". Casual gamers are not interested in ACW era ironclads.

Besides we have decided to not show the player of that information which the captain in 1862 could not know.

I agree with this design principle. However, nothing I suggested would require that you violate that principle.

1. Damage is a physical destruction of a design of the ship, destruction of guns and murder of a crew. Destruction influences efficiency and accuracy of shooting, speed of the ship and its maneuverability. Flooding is a receipt water inside of the case of the ship through through holes in the case. Flooding leads to that that the ship or will slowly sink or overturns. If water acts in all parts of the ship in identical quantity to sink quantity of water inside of the ship should be equaled to its displacement. If in one of parts of the ship there are more than holes and more water the ship bends until will turn over. To turn over the ship it is necessary that in one of its parts was more waters than in other parts provisional on 10 % from displacement.

I understand. I was referring to specific damage, such as damage to a rudder or steering mechanism, an engine, or a boiler.

Critical damages to game are not present.

This is something I believe you should consider for a future update or perhaps your next game. Critical damage such as damage to systems I mentioned above did occur during battle more often than not. Catastrophic damage such as magazine or boiler explosions did occur as well, albeit not as frequently.

2. It is very difficult to find balance between simplicity and details. I have understood your wish.

See my comment above RE: your audience. Grognards want details. If the details are there in the game, but not being presented to the player (with the "only knowing what you should know" caveat), you're selling the game short, IMHO.

3. Onboard there is a crew. 68 hits it not so are a lot of. At the first bombardment of the Charleston in each of monitors of the USA 50 shells have got on the average.

I meant numerous hits from a 68lb'er gun, not 68 gun hits. What I'm trying to say is that any significant number of hits, even if they don't penetrate the armor, should still affect the crew - and by extension the fighting effectiveness of the ship - in a negative way. Again, this may already be part of the game... but if so, we should be aware of it. If not, it may be something else to consider for the future.

4. You can remove the ship from fight. The opponent too does it if its ship is threatened with danger of destruction. But it not always turns out. Sometimes the ship receives such damages that has not time to run aground or fall outside the limits a map any more for one round.

Maybe so. I'm still getitng used to the game and I've only seen one example so far where discretion was obviously the better part of valor, but on that one occassion the AI unwisely chose valor.

I was engaged in a battle with 2 fast cruisers/commerce raiders. My force of 2 ships was more heavily armed but much slower. The AI, having the initiative, decided to engage. I quickly sank one of them, at which point the second could have easily escaped but did not even try. The battle inevitably ended with both enemy cruisers sunk. My conclusion was that the AI is either programmed to fight no matter the tactical advantage or disadvantage, or the fight/flight algorithm simply has an error in it. There may be something else more complex at work here, but again, if so, it would be nice to know what it is.

5. To a regret in 1862 there were no devices for measurement of speed of the ship. The captain approximately measured the speed on number of turnovers of a shaft of the screw. Thus if the steam machine has been damaged, measured not truly. Pay attention what even today we do not know exact speed CSS Virginia.

I think they were still using simple logs for determining speed through the water... but of course they would not be making those measurements during battle. That said, they would absolutely have a fairly good idea of how fast they were moving relative to their maximum achievable speed under the conditions extant, using the same techniques and drawing on the same type of experience sailing masters used during previous centuries.

The problem here is that damage as it relates to speed is not reported, therefore the percentage of the max speed as shown by the green line is pretty much useless. For instance, if we're showing 50% of max speed, is that 50% of the normal max speed (eg, 12 knots / 2 = 6 knots) or 50% of the current max speed, factoring for damage (eg, 4 knots / 2 = 2 knots)?

7. Movement - the Stop - the Shot - Movement. The most successful combination.

Yes, however many game systems that employ that mechanism also use opportunity fire to offset the lack of control during the opponent's turn. For instance, Steel Panthers (computer game) uses an Igo-Ugo play style with opportunity fire.

In that game, you get X number of shots per unit, per turn. If however you leave one or more shots unfired, the AI will fire those shots for you if an enemy unit moves within (a player defined) range during the opponent's turn.

Many board wargames have used this system since forever. It is a well established, well understood gaming convention.

How this would apply to Ironclads is simple. For every ship under your control, you would choose to fire either all or some or none of the guns during your turn. Then during your opponent's turn any enemy movement would trigger a check to see if their current position places them in range and within the firing arc of any previously unfired guns on your ships. If so, then those guns would fire. This could be further refined by giving the player the ability to set a maximum range at which opportunity fire would occur, or perhaps specify a minimum accuracy % for opportunity fire to occur. This way if the player is trying to conserve ammo, the AI would not waste it on far away or low percentage shots.

8. Save of game - explain please more in detail.

Hard to explain without pictures... and I didn't think to take any. I tried to save a game using my own save game name. I used AAA as the name of the save. When I went to load a save game, AAA appeared as a save I could load, along with all the autosaveX files. So far so good. However, I then tried to save a game called BBB, but it showed up in the save game load screen as BBBosaveX and it would not load. No matter how many times I tried to save BBB, being sure to delete autosaveX from the name field, it kept overwriting the autosaveX and corrupting the save. I finally figured out that using autosaveX as a save game name was the only sure way to actually save a current situation, so I just started overwriting those, keeping the same name.

I hope that's understandable.

It is our first game. We attentively study your responses to understand that it has turned out, and that it is necessary to change. Thanks for your response.

I know and I appreciate that. Please don't take anything here as a criticism. I think it's great that you guys are addressing areas of naval warfare that no one else will touch, and with the great customer support you've shown so far, I have no problem putting up with a few minor issues.

As I said at the end of that last post... I would not hesitate to recommend your game to anyone.

Thanks... and keep up the good work.

JD