Build Better Battleships

Turrets for turrets sake...

I played Ultimate General: Gettysburg many years ago and enjoyed the time I spent with it.  Despite this, I never got into Ultimate General: Civil War, This Land is My Land, or their Age of Sail game.  For whatever reason though moving the timeframe forward to the ironclad, dreadnought, and battleship era of naval warfare sparked my interest.  Specifically, being able to design the armament, layout and general configuration of various classes of ships holds a great deal of appeal to me.  Since Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts (as it is called) is in early access, I've been holding off buying a copy for myself.  Instead, I decided to watch some gameplay videos uploaded by early adopters.  Sadly, the selection leaves something to be desired.

I suppose the fundamental problem is a lack of content creators.  Of those few who do go to the effort, none appear to have much (if any) knowledge about the time period or naval architecture.  That's not a problem in of itself...after all, one of the major points of this game is to raise awareness and comprehension of the complexities that come with designing warships.  Rather than ignorance on the player's part, my gripe really stems from the "click bait" nature of what's available.  If you want to see banal and impractical then there are plenty of videos to choose from.  Now, I know I'm not alone here, and I have seen some pushback on people complaining about unrealistic designs.  "It is just a game, and why have a build-your-own-warship feature if not to showcase some crazy concepts?"  Those are perfectly valid arguments to make, but don't really address my chief annoyance - the lack of imagination.

It should come as no surprise that the creator of the vessel
uses an anime avatar

A "Double Nelson" or "Super Yamato" might be eye-catching in a Youtube thumbnail, but all we're really looking at here is more and bigger guns.  As far as I can tell, nobody seems to put much thought into speed or protection...let alone combat maneuvers.  I can only think of one person uploading VODs who actually tries to form proper battle lines, cross the enemy's "T" or set up screening formations.  These are basic naval tactics, and I'd love to see someone who combines them with different kinds of armor schemes or top speeds.

Another issue I keep running into is overly large battles.  While this might sound realistic at first (after all, there have been huge fleet combats throughout history) in practice, viewers end up looking at nothing more than a bunch of tiny green and red letter abbreviations scattered across vast swaths of ocean.  When you get down to the nitty-gritty of it, most large fleet actions were really made up of a series of smaller engagements consisting of opposing squadrons or in some cases slugging matches between individual pairs of warships.  In other words, there's no reason not to break these battles down into more manageable and visually interesting clashes.  A HMS Hood versus SMS Bismarck?  Sounds Great!  An early 20th century recreation of the Spanish Armada?  Not so much.  Now, I know some people will read that and think, "but the armada is way more epic!"  Not really...in execution, it amounts to a few ships on either side taking long range potshots at each other for while before finally just drifting apart...most likely to sink in bad weather because the designs are fundamentally incompatible with good seakeeping.

"50 vs. 1" sound like it will end in an epic blaze of glory, but in practice it's a whole lot of stern chasing until everyone runs out of ammo...or patience.  Oh well...if the patrons are happy then who am I to complain?  Still, I hope Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts gets picked up by some players who have the understanding and creativity to show off the game's full potential.