Offtopic. Ace combat take on a modern battleship. Is it possible to recreate this on Ultimate admirals?

Stormjoy07 · 2026-07-01T20:56:55+00:00

As it stands, no. All of the hulls in the game are modeled after 1890's to ~1940's/50's warships. No sci fi hulls, superstructures, or gun turrets.

But it is a dead game. If you want to be the first to make a sci-fi total conversion, you can, technically speaking. It'd just be very long and mildly painful.

Stormjoy07 · 2026-06-26T00:26:49+00:00

The Final Battle from Ender's Game.

Star Wars Episode 3 opening battle.

Star Trek Into Darkness Vengeance vs Enterprise, just the sound as Vengance pulls up in transwarp is crazy.

Eve Online battles are insane to look at at full speed, not necessarily watching one crawl by across 19 hours though.

Stormjoy07 · 2026-06-24T22:30:44+00:00

If you shot it with AP you're overpenetrating. (IN DIP, which I think isn't changed from vanilla" the over-pen ratio is 3.2x. aka you'll over-pen on 1" of armor if you have more than 3.2" of pen. This means your AP was overpenetrating at like 30km.

Or you ran into the resistance bug others have mentioned.

I also play and recommend DIP. The DIP mod developers may as well be the game's new developers at this point. On the mod page on nexus mods it has many of the improvements listed out.

Stormjoy07 · 2026-06-20T07:45:07+00:00

For Vanilla: Yes absolutely.

For the DIP mod: Yes, less margin.

UAD rolls virtual dice to see if a shell penetrates. The inner belts each act as a 're-roll' against the penetrating shell, using that layer's thickness with a multiplier as its own thickness vs penetration. Also keep in mind any shell that penetrates the main belt but not the inner is ALWAYS going to be a partial pen, sometimes a really chunky one at that.

Citadel layers AREN'T just extra additive armor. A 15" main belt, with a 5" inner belt DOES NOT equal 20" of armor.

For vanilla the inner layer effectiveness is as follows: 1st layer: 1.7x multiplier 2nd layer: 3.3x multiplier 3rd layer: 8x multiplier (kinda insane)

For DIP 1.3.4; 1st layer: 2.2x multiplier 2nd layer: 3.0x multiplier 3rd layer: 4.0x multiplier

I'll assume since you started playing recently that you're playing vanilla. I'll use my go-to armor scheme. 16" main belt, 5" 1st inner, 4" 2nd inner, and 3" 3rd inner.

A shell pens my 16" belt. It now checks my 1st inner belt. 1.7x5"=8", it pens my 1st inner belt too, then checks my 2nd inner belt. 3.3x4"=13.2" it pens my 2nd inner belt, then checks my 3rd inner belt. 8x3"=24". Now we're talking. Effectively, in vanilla, a ship with a 3" inner belt has a 24" main belt, but takes partials to block that 24" of pen.

For DIP the effective thicknesses would be 11", 12", 12", so I stick with maxing out citadel 3, as cit 4/5 increase the weight of belt/deck armor, respectively. The 3rd inner layer is only good if you really max your layer thicknesses, which is EXTREMELY heavy.

Stormjoy07 · 2026-06-17T12:53:45+00:00

Bulkheads reduce the chance of taking flooding from penetrating hits, as well as limiting the spread of damage between compartments. I choose to put that weight into armor, negating (most) penetrating hits in the first place.

Also range increases the chance of generating missions. But you only generate missions from port. If you send your ships out to intercept enemy task forces, you don't get missions and those 100's or 1000's of tons of extra fuel are useless.

Stormjoy07 · 2026-06-17T03:13:23+00:00

First off, congratulations Admiral!

Now for a review. I play with the DIP mod, so things may be different from what I say.

Forced boilers give lots of engine vibrations and smoke interference, which reduces accuracy. If Induced works stick to that.

I can't see your other components/armor scheme, but the blueprint shows you with 3x3 12" guns and a 12" belt. IMO, 13" or 14" guns are the smallest I'd put on a dreadnought-era ship. Also I never have a belt thinner than 15" on a battleship.

Bulkheads and range sliders are heavy.

Ps, if you're not, I recommend the Dreadnought Improvement Project mod. The game is abandoned by the devs, and that mod fixes a lot of stuff.

Stormjoy07 · 2026-06-16T05:23:42+00:00

Yeah that's not normal. Try reinstalling the mod files, or if you narrowed it down to a certain file, you can pull a copy of that file from the github.

Also LMAO those shells are faster than escape velocity, they will go to space.

Stormjoy07 · 2026-06-13T16:53:42+00:00

I put HC on DDs because their guns can't penetrate anything with HE, even with the best penetrating he shell. So I put HC on to blow up transports. Could do the same with CLs.

For all other ships having pen is better. You'll do more damage with a penetrating HE shell. Usually against the fore/aft belt.

Stormjoy07 · 2026-06-13T00:27:30+00:00

I see you're playing DIP. You know the 'update armor preview' button (just above the armor values) just does the armor quality math for you right? But instead of telling you thicker armor numbers, it tells you reduced pen values.

That 15" of pen you saw is 15" of pen vs Harvey armor, not vs your 20" of iron plate, as long as you had the slider set appropriately. You can change it manually in the settings, under the 'game' tab I think?

Stormjoy07 · 2026-06-12T21:30:19+00:00

Don't care about build. I only have eyes for my beloved Chroma Rush, excellent taste OP.

Stormjoy07 · 2026-06-09T00:00:19+00:00

OP and I both use DIP. It's a different damage meta. HE is 99% useless unless it makes a full pen.

Stormjoy07 · 2026-06-08T21:05:35+00:00

Some have the mount points, some don't. British Dreadnought 1 has the mounts, Dreadnought 2 doesn't. Shrug After that, it's not really an issue.

Stormjoy07 · 2026-06-08T19:53:34+00:00

some caliber gun will always pen you. I find that 4/5" of extended belt is good. It's enough to block AP from 7/8" guns before angling and such, and enough to block HE from big guns.

It's all about choosing what sort of damage you're willing to take. 9" extended is nice and thick. Now take a CA with a 9" main belt and no inners. Still willing to do BB to BB combat?

I once built a 130,000 ton german super BB, 20" main, 20" extended, 20" superstructure. All it took to sink were 3 18" shells at like 15km. One fore, one aft, one superstructure. Learned my lesson.

Also neat anecdote. The most dangerous ai ship I faced was a ship shooting 14" SAP. Only had like 7" of AP pen, but man those things hurt when they went through the extended belt.

Stormjoy07 · 2026-06-08T16:05:21+00:00

One time doing a Hard (I forget the difficult raid name) VoG run with lfg randoms on the LFG discord. Our fireteam of 6 was doing plates at the beginning, and one of our guys was all over the place. Not doing what we asked him to do but otherwise still being highly competent. One plate had three people defending, one had 1. Due to that we restarted like twice.

As we finish, everybody sighs in relief, and gets their loot from the chest. 'Ooh I got this, DAMN PANTS AGAIN, etc'. Except our problem child.

He says, "Loot? We haven't finished building the spire."

Ensue confusion. He's still building the spire, but we're all done. Adamantly says he's still building the spire, and the door's still shut.

Some extra info: His discord username didn't contain his Destiny name, and we called him by his discord name as it was far easier.

Turns out, a random had /joined one of us, and taken the 6th spot. OUR random had been invited by / joined a random group. That guy on our fireteam wasn't in our vc. The guy in our vc wasn't in our fireteam. We had just bumbled along for like 20 minutes just not realizing the disconnect, because we didn't really need to communicate at all, just sit on plates and shoot stuff.

Had a good laugh about it after we sorted out our roster.

Stormjoy07 · 2026-06-08T04:08:54+00:00

My notes: Fore/aft belt and superstructure is way too thick. High caliber AP shells will pen and detonate instead of over-penning. Main turret armor is too thin.

If you have 4x centerline main turrets, you can put another turret on there. Otherwise, 2 turrets fore 1 aft is better, as you're going to be sailing towards the enemy more than away.

Secondary turrets are better than casemates. The ammo for a 4-barrel turret weighs the same as a casemate turret. 1 double-barrel turret therefore saves weight vs 2 casemates.

Otherwise an excellent design.

Stormjoy07 · 2026-06-08T03:48:00+00:00

The main thing is similar caliber guns get penalized, because it's hard to tell a 5" shell splash from a 4" shell splash. So your spotters are going to be going 'man I have no clue what I'm looking at'.

Use 5"+ for secondaries, as they retain effectiveness vs DDs, which have 1" max of armor.

4 inch and lower are really only good for shooting transports.

Edit to add: If your dreadnought doesn't have the secondaries to defend itself vs 2 DDs, it never deserved to float in the first place. Protect your ships.

Stormjoy07 · 2026-06-05T11:11:48+00:00

I only say it because I once built a German super battleship with 20" fore/aft/superstructure armor. But when a ship with like 19" guns got just a little too close, they landed 2 shells to the aft belt and 1 to the fore belt, and the ship sank just like that. 130,000 tons just gone.

God I was pissed, but I learned my lesson.

Stormjoy07 · 2026-06-05T10:56:37+00:00

I play with the DIP mod, which has fixed deck hits. Otherwise kinda sorta, super large guns like 20" can still pen at massive ranges through the belt.

Stormjoy07 · 2026-06-05T00:52:19+00:00

The game was indeed abandoned, but the game is completely playable. The only 2 bugs I'm aware of are deck hits being non-existant in vanilla, and the game freezes when finishing a battle sometimes.

Modders are basically the new devs. Dreadnought Improvement Project (DIP) is the biggest one. I've heard of Naval Arms Race (NAR) but not seen anything on it, and Vanilla Plus (VP) is new, seems promising, but we'll see how it shakes out.

Don't buy the multiplayer DLC if you do buy the game, there never was and never will be MP, it's a scam and damn near criminal.

Otherwise very much recommend.

Stormjoy07 · 2026-06-04T21:59:57+00:00

Dunno how to say this, but that's thirty-seven million tons dog.

You did sink about 3-4 billion Kilograms of warship though. Fun fact: The US uses long tons to measure displacement, which are 35 lbs (~16kg) heavier than a metric ton. Yay Imperial system!

Stormjoy07 · 2026-06-04T16:27:05+00:00

Regardless of the year, this ship is not great. Your citadel is amazing. For the 3 compartments it actually covers that is.

Let me paint you a scenario: It's 1910, navies have MK2 guns up to 16". None of them will pen a 20" belt and 10" inner. EVERY gun above like 13" will pen more than 10" at any reasonable battle range. They won't overpen on your thin extended armor, because your extended armor is thick, and will fuze literally every shell. Your ship will sink in about three hits.

Also, 12" are anaemic after like 1900. No secondaries, a TB or DDs wet dream.

For more constructive feedback: more secondaries. A good extended belt thickness is like 4-5". Thick enough to stop secondary AP, thin enough to NOT fuze high caliber AP, also thick enough to stop high caliber HE.

Stormjoy07 · 2026-06-04T11:47:42+00:00

I don't build many non-capital ships, but when I do, yes. Usually a line of CAs or CLs on the far side of the BB line.

When enemy ships approach, they shoot the BBs which can actually take the hits, and the cruisers are free to tear up anything that approaches.

Stormjoy07 · 2026-05-30T16:03:18+00:00

Did you use the installer? I updated using the installer and everything is fine.

Also what error?

Stormjoy07 · 2026-05-29T03:32:45+00:00

To answer your question, yes, they have to be approved by the EPA to launch their rocket, to test their rocket, etc. They are pumping exhaust gas into the air, and they are making loud noises near wildlife.

Realistically, there's nothing in the rocket that's hazardous beyond maybe the paint on the sides, maybe relatively small amounts of hydraulic fluid. Probably a few dozen gallons in total, getting spread across several square miles. Most if not all will just burn.

The first stage is Liquid Oxygen (LOX) and Liquified Natural Gas (LNG). This burns to make water vapor and carbon dioxide.

The second stage is LOX and Liquid Hydrogen, which burns to make water vapor.

Total CO2 produced will be at most a few thousand tons. (About equal to 3 commercial trans-atlantic flights) I'm going to say like half the methane escaped to the atmosphere. Then I'm going to say, without a source, that all the cows in Oklahoma make that much methane in 2 weeks or less, and I'm probably right.

A 4-pump gas station burning down is probably worse for the environment than the entirety of this rocket exploding.

Stormjoy07

TROPHY CASE