Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts

Yeah, it's garbage. I want my money back. The UI is terrible. It's slow, full of bugs, and has the stupidest AI implementation ever -- the AI can't even manage a simple line ahead formation. Fleet management during large engagements is impossible. Watch with horror as your ships randomly do donuts under the enemy's guns. The campaign is silly and unbalanced. The game looks nice but is so fundamentally broken that -- ultimately -- it's an exasperating, disappointing gaming experience.

The game has been abandoned and the Game-Labs dev team was disbanded by their parent company. The game had promise, but has been left in a broken state with no more updates other than whatever steam requires to continue selling it.
Do not waste your money.

The game showed a lot of promise, but the developers didn't know how to fix the balance, struggled to add anything new to the game. They decided to make multiplayer as a payed DLC, that is actually a completely sepparate game running on a different version from the base.

You can't make your own hulls like the trailer shows, you never could.

On top of all that, the game was abandoned with no warning, 1.7 was not only the "last major update" but THE last update this game recieved

Never purchase this game. It is a complete joke not only is the "trailer" a straight lie but you can't even play late campaigns as all the ai does is mass place torpedos yet still has low caliber weapons do more flooding then a player 18 inch gun.
This dev company went under due to the sheer incompetence, never get this game.

This game is great in theory. In practice it is very unfinished, and after the developers left, left to rot. As a german I hoped to construct ships like the Derfflinger or Bayern class, but you can´t actually do it. The parts are not close to the real counterparts, sometimes it feels even a bit lazy to see some parts at other nations more similar to the german stuff than what the germans have in game.

very good, realistic compartment-based damage and free customization of ships to the player's liking.

I quit playing until they came out with a stable version that quit resetting my game save files..lol After that an about 790 hrs of play I found the game enjoyable and worthy of recommendation and a solid game design and fun (real) strategy game. This is a rare characteristic in today's game market and hard to find. I found the game fun and addictive. Was well worth the price for myself.

The good- I love being able to build and design my own ships and sticking them into battle. That is the appeal for this game. The game design drives to that goal or result encounters. I thought the game excelled at this goal. The battles are fun, the conditions and weather variable. There is adequate depth and strategy for myself. There is options to simulate (or withdraw if ships are fast enough) combat (option give most of time), but you will be at the AI's mercy. I found it not unreasonable and a little unpredictable.

The no as good- The campaign design and economy model is simplistic, the goal is producing encounters for the ships you design. Transport capacity is completely overrated/overwelming which is ridiculous in practice (use your own tweaks or mods). To the game credit it allows such things, thus this and most things are fixable :)

Just buy NavalArt. Cheaper, more possibilities, easier modding.

This game had so much potential.. too bad the devs gave up on it because they cant fix it. Its literally a dev skill issue.

What is this game ? Its basically a ship builder with a strategic layer added on top. You can build fleets, manage research, design your own ships.. naval invade enemy countries sounds great right ???

Well.. every single mechanic in this game, every single feature, is either unfinished, poorly implemented or makes my PC blow up.

Researching allows you to select 3 priorities but doing do cripples you in the long run because anything else gets shafted. This means you shouldnt interact with research at all unless you want to rush the super op RADAR early (its randomized so good luck).

Building a ship is still buggy as hell and LAGGY.

You dont actually control your country, you control the NAVY. So you can get invaded on land and you cant do anything. Russia shits on AustriaHungary because they never send men to defend. Its just bad.

Submarines do nothing but destroy the tempo of the game. Fleets can only attack once per turn so subs (which you always are forced to autoresolve because they are a rushed mechanic and AI spams) will take a meeting engagement between 2 fleete like 10 turns to happen.

Turns are really slow even on the fast setting. If you put it to slow (god help you) the game takes like 20 mins to load the campaign. Thats because AI is designing ships (they suck at it).

The only saving grace of this game is the tactical battles but even then, the AI loves to spam many small ships that they dont use. They make them sit still and pop smoke while you try to dodge the 50 gazillion torpedoes manually because if you put on auto dodging your ships go crazy and your formation is ruined forever. (Ships never regain their formation). Not to mention friendly fire with torpedoes. All of this while playing at under 30 fps on a 7900XTX,5800x3d,64gbs of RAM,M2SSD AND LOW SETTINGS.

SHAME ON THE DEVS FOR GIVING US THIS SLOP AFTER SO MANY YEARS. I WILL NEVER BUY ANYTHING FROM THEM AGAIN.
This game is basically abandonware.

P.S. they are also selling a DLC for multiplayer mode that barely works for like 20$ or some shit.
Why ? F U thats why

you just dont buy this game, it is RIDDLED with bugs even after years of updates. Bugs that have been in the game since its initial release, that the community has been pleading to be fixed, but instead we get ship modules on top of ship modules instead of any bug fixes. The AI is still broken and the avoid ships command just doesn't work, you can get stuck in decade long wars that wont end so the AI can death war you into the ground, ending you game that mind you deletes your save afterwards so you cant go back and fix it.
This game isn't even worth $5, let alone the full price of $35 they list it as.

I like the game, but it is just not done. And they have stopped development.
If you want to buy it wait until a sale, Since it's basically abandonware it's absolutely not worth the 34 euro price tag.

it is a decent game to play can be a spare time game to play if your ever bored but its pretty good

Terrible game. Tutorial gives no information as to why you can't launch and you learn nothing. Couldn't get past the first tutorial. Terrible game.

Well, was a great game. Logged in to play again and it doesn't matter what era or your tech or how good your ships are. You cannot win battles anymore. Not sure what happened. However, was fun while it lasted. The building aspect is fun, if not flawed. Try your luck.

Another game with a great concept, killed before it cooked long enough to make a meal, seems to be a real issue with this dev studio, So many games just didn't get the time they needed before you moved onto the next game, that you are just leaving behind a long list of promising yet disappointing titles. You guys only have one or two more shots before the market will no longer trust you, regardless of how cool of a concept you provide. I wish the devs the best of luck, but just slow down and get the base mechanics right, before fleshing out everything else.

EDIT: DEVS CLOSED THEIR DOORS, CAN'T SAY I DIDN'T SEE IT COMING BUT STILL SAD TO SEE, THIS IS WHY IT'S IMPORTANT TO LISTEN TO YOUR PLAYERS, IF THEY DID THAT INSTEAD OF A TRASH EXTRACTION SHOOTER THEY'D STILL BE IN BUSINESS.

This game had so much promise but they gave up on developing it. Many such cases with Game Labs. In it's current state the game is a buggy, unoptimized mess where the AI cheats and just runs away. Every time I fight something of the same era, the AI will spot me first and hit me first despite my ships having the best spotting directors available. Don't waste your money on this junk and just play World of Warships or War Thunder instead if you want a battleship fix.

Fabulous game!
Honestly I had stayed away too long because of mixed reviews, but it really is a fun game. The music is fantastic, to the point where I tried to find it outside of the game.
I jumped right into Campaign Mode and honestly play this a lot! The key is to understand that you are playing the role of the Admiralty, or chief of the Navy. So you can "influence" diplomatic events, but not outright control them. This makes the game pretty interesting, and different from things like Hearts of Iron IV.
The graphics are passable. Not "World of Warships", but better than older naval titles. The bread & butter of this game is the balancing act of designing ships that have the "holy trio" of Speed / Armor / Firepower in just the right balance to be effective in battle yet not overweight, which results in not being able to build a design outright, or significant performance penalties. This is really fun getting this right. And sometimes you get it wrong and realize your nation will take a loss in this war because your design was not up to par. Getting it right however, allows you to punch far above your weight with your ships!
Then there is a whole export market to minor nations with your designs. If you build good ships, your alliance rises to prominence. But your ally could turn on you and now you are fighting ships that you built: Do you choose to export top notch ships, or do you leave critical advantages to your Navy only?
After 170 hours of play at the time of this writing: I strongly recommend the game but offer this caveat - There are certain elements that could be added that would make the game even better, for longer campaigns or small tweaks here and there. But this game is unlikely to receive any additional updates, as the studio is in Ukraine and they were forced to cease development due to their situations. I still highly recommend the game as it provides an experience I have not had in other games (6k hours in WoWS / 2.6k hrs in HoI4). It is a lovingly done way to experience the "Why" behind ship design from the pre-dreadnought era to WW2. Wonderful experience that I almost missed out on.

They finished developing the game as it is broken campaign is unplayable

Fun game, only recommend if you're really into the strategy genre though. The game can get slow and boring at times, but the customization paired with the campaign and combat can make a really enjoyable experience. Still one of my favorite games

Great game, More than playable and enjoyable in its current state.

No the game is not as finished as it could be, however the developers are based in Ukraine.

KEEP THIS IN MIND when reading other reviews that THEY ARE IN A GOD DAMN WAR and that is why they cannot continue working on the game

Dog shit game. At first you think it will be fun designing ships and running a navy, and for the fist few rounds it will be, but at some point one of the AI nations will decide that they must go to unending war with you and it is over at that point. Your naval budget will never allow you to build enough ships, you can never protect you transports which further hurts you naval budget, and despite having 10x the victory points the enemy will never capitulate. The AI will almost always win an invasion with a 5% chance, and you will almost loose and invasion if you don't maintain at least an 80% chance. I played 5 campaigns with the US. 2 on normal and 3 on easy. and all were lost before 1925. I've watch numerous videos on how to play the game better and tired different strategies that other say work and none of it seems to have worked. Can not recommend this game.

was fun till they left this game to rot after promising a lot of content that we never got

like the game alot but dont like the system that we have to wait other nation building new ship it wash my time to get my navy ready......and the game load more longer if more nation come up in play.....that is just me saying it dont know if this happen to other player

Awesome game. I like that you are only the admiral of the Navy. So there is some empire management but not the whole empire so it is a nice break from the total empire management games I like too. And the navy battles are well done.

This game should be more known as one of the best made naval games, you have so many options for this game

very good ship builder progression is as slow or as fast as you what it to be with the next turn button just keep an eye on your tech and stats some tech "upgrades" can some times work against you, happened with me and semi amour piercing shells.

Engaging, fun game. Better with mods.

To preface this: The game studio was acquired and basically dissolved by a private equity firm. It's almost certainly never going to be updated again, even though it genuinely did need some more love and polish.

Now, despite this problem, I still enjoy this game. The campaign has its shortcomings, namely in minor nation conflicts and the lack of player agency in land warfare. The AI nation balancing is so-so, and it does have some peculiarities. However, the ship designer is reasonably intuitive, and the battle UI is perfectly fine in my eyes. Performance can start to drop as the save goes on, if you've still got multiple major powers surging upwards after ~1930.

This is a very decent game if you like tinkering and fiddling with things. Get it on a decent sale though, because it's definitely abandonware in the strictest sense of the word.

abandoned just like every other game put out by game-labs, not worth the price even on sale.

Still needs a ton of work, mainly the money balance with AI, money management options, being able to take over a port needs to be a lot more simple, cutting off AI ships is pretty much impossible even if you have 500 ships.

TLDR: the game had so much promise, some of which it delivered. But ultimately it has been left in an incomplete state which makes me quite sad, so i cannot recommend this to you, unless you can pick it up fairly cheap.

I love the ship building, especially the WWI era dreadnoughts, main reason i bought the game, and have mostly enjoyed over 400 hours of game play focused on this.

But the game is still buggy, the ship building does not offer as much freedom for component placement as one would like and the campaign and its AI sill needed a bit of tweaking IMO.

The UX also is not great, and probably one of the main turnoffs for the game, especially in the campaign mode, its usable but wears you down over time. That along with rng of the appearance of minor nation conflicts and having no player controlled ability to influence these, really puts a dampener on the campaign mode.

Unfortunately, Game-Labs has a bad history of making interesting concept games and then over promising and under delivering in the end. I guess shame on me for buying an early access game more on promise instead of something finished and polished.

campaign mode is broken, you cant even build a single battleship without paying for cheat codes :( but this is fixable with a json editor to make an enjoyable experience. The game is otherwise amazing!

Honestly its a pretty alright game it has just been abandoned by the devs after a terrible update and i honestly cant recomend a game like that to anyone

Love the ship builder in this game...makes you feel more invested in the ships you make and it is satisfying to see an old model you made that was so well designed, it can be in service for 50+ years with refits. Also I like how you don't have absolute control of your countries decisions. This makes it feel more like you are in service to your nation, not a dictator.

Unfortunately this game has been abandoned by the developers. However, the game can still provide some fun, even though it is feature incomplete.

i loved the game when it came out really loved the building ship part a while ago they made some stuff better that was then sadly. now after this new update in Dec not got at all! game chugs like a old dog when their is more then 6 ships it gets worse when you do 1950's ships 1v1 slogs so bad i was really hoping for "Improvements" you know the thing that they do updates for? this game could have soo much more now? its nothing more then a ruin down 2 star motel cant understand why they leave it like this with the last update. should players get it? hell no should players get it when its sub 15 bucks sure if you want to. all and all i give a hard no unless they do a surprise update and randomly fixes everything and the game becomes a 4 star hotel with amazing service.

Actually very good game, easy to design ships, fun battles, but it's sad it won't receive updates anymore

good strategy game, very involved and the ship customization options are very fun

The good part is that you can design ships. The bad part is that a large number of them are broken, incapable of slotting parts and modules assigned to them. This would be OK if not for the unbalanced mess that is campaign mode.

The odds of any of this getting fixed? Poor.

The devs seem satisfied with the product as is, which means it's not ever going to get fixed.

Not only is the game abandoned but the developers broke the game with the last update. Several nations are now broken to the point of it being unplayable due to pathetically low crew recruitment. Also past a certain point the game just decides to give you a 40 to 50 million defect in your funds making any further progress impossible.

peak fiction action

also though game abandoned mods pulling up to save it

It saddens me to say that this game had so much potential, but even after all these updates, it still, unfortunately, falls short. A few years ago, this game seemed so promising—I had an absolute blast playing it back then, with the expectation that the bugs I encountered would eventually be patched out and that it would evolve into an awesome naval warfare game. But sadly, that never happened.

90% fantastic design undercut by 10% flop in execution.

The appeal of putting together 3D warships ranging from pre-dreadnoughts to the superbattleships of WW2 is totally realized here. You can model real life warships or go off the beaten path to make some truly "inspired" designs to your heart's content, and this part of the game really is excellent. The campaign mode is engaging, the campaign and combat level enemy AI never made a painfully obvious blunder, and there are few titles that can give the same experience of guiding a nation's development as a naval power.

The core issue with the game is the combat level maneuvering AI. In a game all about building warships and arranging fleets to fight each other, the maneuvering AI cannot even sail in a straight line. The fundamental issue is a lack of look-ahead/PID control for speed or turns. When a ship needs to make a turn to follow its leader, the ideal behavior is that it shifts the rudder hard to begin the turn and then, as its bearing approaches the target, it slowly returns the rudder to a neutral position such that it does not oversteer past the target bearing. In UA:D, however, the ship will not back off on its rudder angle, overshoot the target, and then try to reverse the turn leading to a sine wave pattern behind its lead ship. Because ships cannot regulate their rate of closure, it will typically overtake the lead ship, colliding or turning away to attempt to fall back into formation, which cascades its failure to ships behind it, as well as subordinate divisions set to follow the tail of the lead division. It is more common than not to see your entire fleet - instructed to sail in straight lines due North - scattered over an area ~10,000 meters in diameter with some ships straying directly into torpedo range of the enemy force.

The issue extends even down to the lowest levels of manual control of ships; instructing even a single ship to turn to a new bearing will cause it to oscillate left and right of the target for multiple minutes! This is a glaring oversight that should never have been present in any build in the game, let alone what the developers have claimed is the final release. Every other system in the game has been completely undermined by a lack of attention at what should have been a core concern for a game about ship combat.

There are other, some fairly serious issues. The "Screen" and "Scout" orders roughly translate to "suicide charge the enemy," as there is no measurement for the relative threat of an enemy force, or the threat that force poses to the division's assignment. Cruisers will charge headlong into the enemy battleline - despite the fact that the enemy task force's destroyers are nowhere near in range of launching torpedoes. The campaign UI can become very cumbersome when handling large numbers of ships and ports; there is no way to see on the map which ports have ships in them, requiring you to either hover over each port or scroll through a list of every ship you have, looking for ships sitting around in a random port in the Pacific.

If you want the experience advertised, play Rule the Waves instead.

As others have said: this game is abandonware now.

The devs had something special here, even given how janky it was at times, but they decided to concentrate on something literally noone asked for: multiplayer.

That's right. Instead of concentrating on making the designer function properly, or optimizing the base gameplay, or improving the AI, or making the campaign mode worth a damn, they decided to focus on adding something that the game was NOT ready for and that the playerbase made VERY clear we did not want.

And the multiplayer mode was trash (or so I've heard I haven't played it) and it didn't even come with the base game.

TLDR: the devs abandoned the game that was in a rather shaky state to make a half-baked MP mode (that was PvP only) that noone wanted, and when it expectedly bombed they decided to abandon the game. Well done idjits.

It is a beautiful and fun game. However, the interface was clearly created by a special retard that needs a kick in the head to reset him or her. Fucking seriously. It can be infuriating. 5/10 because of that.

Fun, very laggy on higher graphics when building sometimes. Super fun just to send out strong battleships and watch them fight, or for scenario enjoyers as well.

it is an exceptional naval simulation that lets you design and command powerful warships along the years. With deep customization, intense battles, and detailed graphics. The historical component adds extra depth. Many improvements can be applied in the future, but I think that as for today this is the best strategic naval warships game.

This games has been abandoned without warning, the developing team does not exist any more - so the chance for an update is like the survival chance of a snowflake in hell.
It had a promising idea and concept, and imho could have been great - but it seems funding ran out.
If you want to simply build some ships and blow stuff up, go for it. If you expect tactical and strategic gameplay, don't bother. The AI is a crapshot, best example is if the AIs forces are weaker than yours, it will simply run away with ships made to impossible designs - well, impossible for the player that is.

The campaign lacks several features or has severe bugs that make playing a pain in the ass. A few examples
a) Invading minor nations:
This mechanic is completely out of the control of the player. You cannot interfere with it in any shape, way or form. If a minor nation is attacked or is attacking someone, you can't do anything to help or hinder.
b) Naval Invasions:
Let's say the enemy has a few measly islands in the pacific. Let's also say you go for overkill and send a few million tonnes of ship there, despite the invasion requiring about 50k tonnes. The invasion will still take a few months, up to half a year - and if a single enemy destroyer enters the contested area, there is a good chance the counter is reset.
c) Economy:
There is a real chance, that your economy just goes to hell for no apparent reason. One month you are 700k in the green, the next you are over a billion in the red - without any change in fleet strength, maneuvers, battles, repairs, building status, or the outbreak of war or peace.

i bought it wanting to watch another game develop as i play every here and then but then i read the new patch notes saying that its getting no more updates. it had real promise but the devs didnt seem like they wanted to even develop the game at all.