Shipbucket

I'm definitely going for a more arcadey feel over hard realism, similar to WoWS. Smaller caliber guns will be able to do more than they could IRL, DD and BB of the same tier can fight and each side has a realistic chance of winning (DD via torpedo strikes or death of a thousand cuts HE spam that probably wouldn't work IRL, BB by just blowing DD out of the water in 2-3 shots). There's something of a BB beats CA/CL beats DD beats BB jenken going on, but that takes a back seat to making sure that each type of ship feels appreciably different to play and rewards different skills, while ships of different types can still fight with each other on a fair playing field. Every faction will have at least one cruiser line, one destroyer line, one battleship line, and one submarine line. Most but not all factions will have a heavy cruiser line that splits off from the light cruiser line, about half of the factions have aircraft carrier lines, and Britain/Germany have battlecruiser lines. So the 7 total possible lines are CL, CA, DD, BB, BC, CV, and SS, though only one faction (Britain) actually has a line of all 7 types.
I guess Leander vs. Atlanta hinges entirely on much gun caliber is allowed to be a deciding factor in battles. Seems like if gun caliber is as big a decider as it was IRL, it will be a very sad day for pretty much every DD & CL (and also King George V).

Dido vs. Atlanta seems very in Atlanta's favor. They have very similar weapons and Atlanta just has more of them.

Seems like the biggest issue here is that the US simply doesn't have mid-size 6-inch cruisers like the Leander, having not really done much with 6-inch guns before the 10,000 ton Brooklyn. Conversely, the closest thing Britain has to an Atlanta is Dido, which as mentioned looks a lot like "Atlanta, but less of it".
Tiger is way past the heyday of gun ships, and it shows. It was built to fight a very different battle. Similarly to Chester earlier, by the time we warped it into something comparable to a Worcester, it would basically be a paper ship anyway. (also I want to leave the name open for the Tiger battlecruiser.)
I'm leaning more towards pairing Omaha with Emerald myself, but I wanted the option open.
Yeah, if Atlanta would realistically be weaker than Leander, there's no way it would hold a candle to a Fiji or Swiftsure.
I've been hounding the pages for these ships on Wikipedia for a couple months now, but I'm incredibly aware that what's on Wikipedia, if it's even accurate, is only half the picture. Wiki particularly doesn't have armor layout (not just how thick, but where) or handling (acceleration, rudder shift, turning circle), and those could have major influence on a ship's effectiveness.
Honestly, I love paper ships. Setting out in "what-if" designs is a huge appeal for me. But if a real ship can plausibly fit in a given spot, the real ship takes priority. "Paper upgrades" to real ships are also more than welcome if they're balanced.
As mentioned above, Tiger is kind of a bad fit for this game.
I can't claim to "copy" WoWS as a base since I don't know WoWS's source code (and that would be illegal anyway). But I guess I did describe the game as "just different enough from WoWS to justify being its own game", so it's safe to assume that a mechanic will generally be the same as in WoWS unless stated otherwise. That being said, I don't know the details of their armor modeling, so my system may wind up more or less accurate. It's probably not going to be too hardball though, mainly because I am not, at the end of the day, a physicist.

There's not much of an official "tier spread" because of the focus on browsing player-made lobbies; when you make a lobby you decide which tiers are allowed, and you select your ship when you join the lobby with your selection limited by the tiers allowed in that particular lobby.

Ships do not respawn and in every game mode killing everyone on the other side is a possible win condition for at least one side, but every game mode also has another point/objective based win condition, so you never have to chase down every last enemy if they're avoiding you.

I have no hard limits on dates, but I am designing the game around the player only controlling the guns of the largest caliber on a ship, which would make gameplay awkward for multi-caliber armored cruisers and pre-dreadnought battleships. In the other direction, the focus is on gunships; missile-focused armaments and ships designed to fight missile-focused armaments are out. This creates a soft limit of roughly 1905-1950 for our timeframe.
Real Factions: Great Britain, United States, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Russia

Speculative Factions: China (what if Prince Chun's plan for a Chinese navy came to fruition either via the Qing dynasty not falling or being quickly replaced by a government that could pick up where it left off), Pan-Columbia (what if the Pacts of May had never been signed and Brazil/Argentina/Chile had a naval arms race lasting until the 1940s), Turkey (what if the Ottoman Empire built a large navy, still fell, and then modern Turkey picked up where the Ottoman Empire left off)

I simply meant making the game extremely similar, not copying the code it self.
quality of guns and Ammo also plays a part in penetration and range
again I can't really give help or suggestions on Royal navy ships, but here is a website of US designs: http://www.shipscribe.com/styles/index.html, some of the scout cruiser/battle scout cruisers might help with spots.
here https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/or ... 8ca916.jpg is a proposal from I believe Norman Friedman's book, but idk I don't own a copy (unfortunately)

well I don't really have much else to say, good luck with it

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What I like to work on/plan to work on:
US ship Proposals and prototypes
Other ships that haven't yet been put up on Ship bucket
Suggestions Welcomed

Currently working on:
Heavy Cruiser Proposal CA-B: ~80% done.
Heavy Cruiser Proposal CA-C: ~5-10% done.
Heavy/Large Cruiser Proposal CA2-D: ~35% done.
FD Scale P-51A Dazzle Camo Livery: ~5-10% done.
Getting better: Always being worked on.

Finished:
FD Scale P-51D's Dazzle Camo Livery (might be redone)
FD Scale P-51D's German Captured Livery

I appreciate the thoughtfulness of your responses... but what you are describing is functionally identical to World of Warships. Really, only a hardcore WOWS player would really understand the difference. I think you may inadvertently run into a lot of pretty serious IP issues if this game actually happens.

The only real differences I've gleaned from your posts are the addition of submarines (though even in your own words you admit that you're not totally sure how they'd be implemented), a "cell-shading" graphical style that actually strives for "less realism", and lobbies instead of matchmaking.

So what are we left with? A game that feels like WOWS and plays like WOWS (by your own admission), yet has worse graphics than WOWS and adds a gimmicky submarines feature, AND restricts players into lobbies vs. easy matchmaking. I have to apologize for not being totally sold on this idea.

We will OF COURSE continue to offer feedback for you, and I don't want you to think that you are not welcome to continue discussing this idea here - but please understand my concerns.

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Also, I just have to ask: what is your background? Are you a software dev or a game dev? Have you ever built a game from the ground up, or failing that, built a game on top of an existing engine like UE? I'm a bit concerned that you may fall into the archetypical category of gamer who wants to make a game because "I have good ideas", but may not fully understand what's involved. I work in tech and live in a city with a bunch of startup incubators crammed to the brim with "cool idea guys who just need someone to write the code" - are you a cool idea guy, or can you actually execute on this?

And again: I am 100% not trying to drive you off or shoot your idea down, I just think these are some legit concerns that you should be aware of!

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)

Games have been sold on fewer differences; think Saint's Row vs. GTA, or any 2 of the 78 million modern military FPS games I can't tell apart. There's more than enough precedent for released games that are mechanically only subtly different from predecessors, especially if said game is stylistically different. Hence the cel-shading, the alt-history ships, and the campaign mode with actual plot.

The server and lobby system makes it much easier for a group of people to play multiple matches together, and places far more emphasis on building a community of familiar allies and opponents over the treadmill of "achievement" against anonymous foes. I feel like automated, anonymous matchmaking encourages players to adopt a very reductionist view of other players which largely defeats the purpose of multiplayer games outside of a very narrow window of impersonal competition.

I have an associate's degree in game design, and run a game dev circle called Rocket Jumping Spiders, which currently consists of 3 people including myself. We're currently working on a non-profit fan remake of the 1999 PC game Lego Rock Raiders. (Almost every game I have planned boils down to "I like game X, but I think I can do it better. Let's put that to the test!) An early alpha version of said game can be downloaded from our website, and the coding there's all me. I am entirely confident that, if I were given 3D models of the ships, I could build this in Unity without any other outside help (I just wouldn't be able to promise any modicum of accuracy, not knowing the details of how the ships and guns handle).

OK, well glad to see you at least have some coding experience and you're not just looking for devs.

I don't disagree re: matchmaking, but having that as an option would be nice for those of us just wanting to play a quick game. I also must have missed your note about the campaign plot (that's something I wish WOWS had). One of the issues I can see you having is that WOWS is already an extremely niche market (despite what you might think), and further segmenting that market with another naval game (that, by your own admission, won't look as nice) might not work out the way you want. Furthermore, if you really intend to have 10 nations, each with 10-tier trees for DD, CA, CL, BB, SS, BC, and CV, then you have a lot of model making ahead of you, even if aforementioned models are not nearly as accurate as those in WOWS. I suspect that process will take you literally years with just three members of your dev team. Rebuilding a 1999 LEGO game (I actually used to play it myself) is all well and good, but from reading your website it seems you've poached most of the assets from the 1999 original which makes me even more dubious about your ability to model seven trees of ten ships each for ten different nations. That's 700 ship models. Even WOWS, with its large team of 3D modellers and monetized freemium model, won't get close to that many usable ships. It's preposterous. I would encourage you to model US and Japan first and then MAYBE consider adding other nations as resources become available.

So maybe you have the issue of "I have a cool idea and I can code, but I need someone to make all the models"!

You'll have to forgive me if I'm not falling over with enthusiasm, but I've seen a lot of these sorts of initiatives and 99% of them don't go anywhere.

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)

Not all factions have all 7 tech trees (in fact, only one faction actually has all 7), and not all tech trees have 10 rungs. I've done the math myself, and it comes out to somewhere in the ballpark of 450 ships (the exact number depends on how many factions I give a CA/CL split, but the highest possible projection is 455). That's only tech tree ships and doesn't account for the possibility of premium ships or other extra ships, but I don't see the total number rising up above 500 (which is still a ton of ships, granted).

The poached assets are placeholders. It's a specific goal to have the final game use all-original assets, some of which are being worked on right now. That's not my ballpark, which is why I'm jawing on about this instead of working on that; I'm just killing time while waiting for assets to drop. But once we finish that project and prove we can see a game to completion, we'll begin to pull in a larger team to make a sellable original IP game (still not this one). If that works, I go from "guy who needs modelers" to "guy who can pay modelers", and then we're cooking with petrol. Even then, there are other games that I've been saying I'm going to make someday for years, which take priority over this game that I've only publicly discussed since the OP of this thread yesterday. All in all, I'm looking 4-5 games ahead with this project; saying it will hit within the next 10 years is being optimistic. I'm probably planning too far ahead; I don't know what the market's going to be like 5-10 years from now, but frankly, I don't care; I'm not looking to make an awful lot of money from this. If it is a game that exists that I can play without my brain being filled with "what would I have done differently", it will have worked out the way I wanted it to. If it makes enough money to cover its own costs and help fund the next game that desperately needs out of my head, that's a bonus.

But for the time being, I'm well aware that this is not a game I can make yet, only an idea that I can discuss.

Understand 100%

I'm sorry to have derailed this so much, just wanted to get an idea of your expectations here.

Have you considered maybe working on a different style of game? Perhaps a browser game or something more simple?

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)

I don't want to reveal all my secrets, now do I? (At any rate, here is not the place to do it.) Suffice to say that I have a good idea what I'm going to do immediately following Rock Raiders, and it is something that is far more within my reach.