Dear admirals and fans of Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts. We are pleased to announce the next update which offers many new ship design variants and several improvements based on your feedback. In particular, the detailed base hulls of the famous ships "Bismarck" and "HMS Nelson" are available for you, not only to recreate them as they were in history but also to change them as you want with countless different design options.
You will be able to design many other new ship types, including modernized dreadnoughts for Japan, Austro-Hungary and China, new modern heavy cruisers and battlecruisers as well as battleships, all available for various nations after the 1920s. Six new Naval Academy missions include some of the new hulls. The rest of them can be explored in the custom battle system.
One other important change is the improved damage decals. You will notice the much more detailed damage holes inflicted on ships and the realistic darkening of the hull at the area being on flames. Further improvements will follow on next patches, with more detailed visualization for destroyed weapons, funnels, towers.
The Ship Designer System is improved not only with increased flexibility on placing the various objects but also with new secondary gun barbettes that will make your ships to look even more realistic and powerful.
Lastly, we responded to your latest feedback by fixing several bugs, and improving the damage model, with goal to make battles even more spectacular and realistic.
You can read in more detail what is offered in the below changelog.
Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts "Alpha-4"
SPECIAL NEW FEATURES
Two new 3D Base Models ships: the legendary battleship "Bismarck" and the mighty battlecruiser "HMS Hood": Bismarck and Hood hulls are available in new Naval Academy missions and Custom Battles (after year 1927).
Improved Damage Decals: The damage is more detailed, according to where it actually happened and the ship now becomes more realistically darkened. Soon, all Towers, Funnels, weapons will have a detailed special appearance when destroyed.
New secondary gun barbettes: You can now create special looking and realistic ships by using a combination of barbettes for your secondary guns, on the centerline or at the sides. These barbette mounts appear when mounting main gun or special towers. If the hull is not wide or enough, you might not be able to use them all efficiently.
NEW NAVAL ACADEMY MISSIONS
German Pride: Design a powerful German battleship and attack the English fleet, in a similar way as it happened in the historical battle of the Denmark straits.
Prove your Might: Your British battlecruiser must defend a valuable convoy against a German Battleship and a heavy cruiser. Can your ship do better than HMS Hood?
Modern Battleship vs Destroyers: Your battleship must survive the attack of multiple Destroyers.
The US Super Battleship: A group of large dreadnoughts that have been modernized by the Japanese Navy is sailing back for refueling. You have the opportunity to attack and sink them with your much more powerful super-battleship, before strong reinforcements arrive.
Design your own H-class: Create the continuation of the legendary Bismarck-class and defeat a US Fleet.
Hurry Up: A German raiding squadron is approaching your lightly protected military convoy while you are far away. Build the naval force that will be capable to travel fast and repel the enemy.
OLD MISSION IMPROVEMENTS
Mission: "Heavy Duty" has now objective to only kill the super battleship. Previously it could be also won if all cruisers were sank, ending the battle prematurely.
Mission: "Search & Destroy" has been improved. You need to destroy the two BB before strong enemy reinforcements arrive and make your task harder.
Mission: "Torpedo Basics" has more available money, so that more torpedo boats can be built (The mission could become very hard against a much more powerful battleship, due to the new settings).
New hulls have been added to missions “Rise of the Heavy Cruiser”, “The Modern Battleship”, Sink "The Cruiser Killer", “Heavy Duty”.
VISUAL & SHIPS
Several new gun models added. Please note that the rescales and improvement of guns as well as the general improvements of ship designer could make your saved designs non functional.
Various hull fixes for better looking ship designs at all technology eras.
Three more super-battleships based on Bismarck and Iowa hulls. You can find those ships in new Naval Academy missions and in Custom Battles (after year 1929).
More hull variants of late tech, mostly based on the new 3D models: 6xBB (Britain, Russia, Japan, Austro-Hungary, China), 2 x BC (Germany, Russia), 3x CA (Germany, Austro-Hungary, USA). These ships are also distributed to the other nations so that custom battles after year 1927 include more late technology ships for all countries.
CONTROLS
You can now set specific targets for main guns, secondary guns and torpedoes as follows: All weapons: Right Click Torpedoes: Shift + Right Click Secondaries: Alt + Right Click Main Guns: Shift + Alt + Right Click Note: Due to the new targeting changes, your selected ship will no longer follow the target when right clicking on it. The targeting system should work more effectively, overall.
Weapon Fire Mode (ammo control) is now working per division, not per ship.
BATTLE INTERFACE
Improved damage float up info, showing more clearly the damage inflicted on ships, and fixing issues that caused game performance drop.
BALANCES/INCONSISTENCY FIXES
Damage/Penetration of guns is balanced according to feedback of players. Capital ships should be more durable. Secondary guns will still be useful but not overpowered.
Improvement in accuracy mechanics. Big Guns will not have so much accuracy difference with smaller guns. Aiming will be more dynamic, so that maneuvers or steady course will affect aiming accordingly.
AI Design of Battlecruisers will prefer to use armor more, and not make weakly protected ships.
AI Design of Destroyers will be more effective and will focus more on speed and maneuverability. Additionally, the minimum speed of Destroyers is 26 knots.
Fixed issue of not updating torpedo stats according to techs/components used. Now torpedoes should be more properly effective depending on their technology level.
Fixed issue of accuracy that could make AI not to fire vs very small torpedo boats or Destroyers at a range that they should.
Minor rebalance of reload penalty/bonus according to shell type. Light shells should be quite more effective for short range. Heavier shells reload slightly slower.
Minor rebalance of Lyddite shells, so that they continue to be effective after the new damage changes.
Tube Powder shells gain a further slight bonus in penetration and reload.
BUG FIXES
Several issues of buggy gun rotations have been addressed.
Fixed issue of interrupting smoke screen emission for ships becoming detached.
Fixed various reported problems that caused gun overlapping with towers.
Other minor bug fixes reported by players.
OTHER
Various performance optimizations.
AI in custom battles will never retreat. It is a temporary fix and later we will add this as an option.
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We hope you will enjoy the new update! See you in our forums:
Steam Forum EDIT 13/2/2020 HotFix deployed addressing issues reported by players. Read about it here: LINK