Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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Design warships the way you want them, command fleets, win the naval arms race for your nation!
Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts is a naval combat, naval and world war i game
developed and published by Game-Labs.
Released on January 25th 2023 is available only on Windows
in 10 languages: English, French, German, Spanish - Spain, Japanese, Ukrainian, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Greek and Korean.
It has received 7,169 reviews of which 4,515 were positive and 2,654 were negative resulting in a rating of 6.2 out of 10. 😐
The game is currently priced at 33.99€ on Steam.
The Steam community has classified Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts through various videos and screenshots.
System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS *: 64-bit Windows 7
- Processor: Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz, AMD Phenom II X4 940
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 660, AMD Radeon HD 7870
- DirectX: Version 11
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Storage: 4 GB available space
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
This is my favourite game, but as you can see from some of the other reviews this is that special kind of game where people can play it for thousands of hours and not recommend it. How is that? I think it is because this game makes you care. Games are all about the consequences of your decisions and I have never played a game that gives you consequences like this one. The loop of designing ships, using them in combat and then learning the lessons from that for what you need to do going forwards is fantastic. Every decision you make has ramifications, you will have to compromise and then find out if you made the right choice potentially years later. Make a ship with everything, high speed, armour, firepower etc. Only to find out building the things will bankrupt your nation and take years to finish. Or rush out a compromised stopgap ship only for it to go on and prove exactly the vessel you need in a vital battle. As these experiences build up through a campaign you feel connected to it. Every ship in your navy is there thanks to decisions you made, each ship lost can hurt, not just because it might cost a battle, but that it can be a sign of bad decisions or compromises that you had to take. Its hard to do it justice in a written description but take these 1000+ hour play times accounts as proof that this game is doing something very right. Which is why for some people it sucks when it doesn't reach the heights they know it can. However, if this game has caught your eye then I think it is worth a try, because you might just find the game for you.
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A Fun And Unique Naval Strategy Game I do recommend Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts to anyone who likes naval warfare. BUT there are several things this game IS NOT and you shouldn't expect of it. Otherwise you will be disappointed. [*] You are not the leader of a nation or a general. You are the head of its admirality. [*] There are no aircraft and or aircraft carrier in the game. [*] It is not a simulation. If you can arrange yourself with those limitations, there a countless hours to be spent in this game. Plus the devs are still releasing regular updates and new content for this game for free. Just ignore the "Multiplayer"-DLC. Don't even look at it. Ignore its existence.
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Build Your Own Battleship/ Design Your Dream Dreadnought Aside from the campaign, UAD has a couple of other game modes: The 'Naval Academy' offers 63 self-contained, one-off challenge scenarios of increasing difficulty (but sadly not rewarded with Steam achievements). The 'custom battle' feature allows you to try out various combinations of ships versus other ships. The 'shared designs' feature allows players to create designs which can then be made available to the AI to use (sadly not integrated with Steam Workshop). The heart of the game is its dynamic (i.e. unscripted) SP campaign which lets you choose from ten playable nations and start dates of 1890, 1900, 1910 etc. Some design elements are shared across the playable nations but most major nations have at least some unique hulls. UAD's shipyard is an intuitive, 3D design interface that allows you to build your own ships without much prior knowledge of naval architecture. If you have played Simple Planes, Kerbal Space Program, or Besiege you will find UAD similarly straightforward. You select fundamental aspects (speed, displacement etc) of your design via sliders; other variables (e.g. armour thicknesses) can be clicked +/- or the desired value typed in. The components (turrets, funnels, towers) are chosen from visual menus at the bottom of the screen and placed via drag-and-drop at appropriate locations on the hull; the game provides coloured indication of where it will (or won't) fit. At the simplest extreme, you can create a valid design by placing a main tower at the front, a secondary tower at the back, a funnel somewhere in between, plus at least one main gun wherever you like, and clicking 'save'. Of course, whether you have created a good, balanced design is a different matter since the eternal trade-off between speed/firepower/armour is a design challenge without end. You can make a decent approximation (not replica) of Bismarck, Yamato, Iowa, KGV etc. If for some reason you don't want to design your own fleet at the outset, there is the option to have the AI auto-design one for you. The game features three difficulty levels (normal, hard & legendary) which - as in many strategy games - do nothing more than increase the AI's funding on higher difficulties. The highest setting can help keep a playthrough as the UK or USA challenging for longer. UAD's battle interface maintains the time-honoured dichotomy of 'left-click select, right-click do' so will be instantly playable for anyone who has played an RTS in the last quarter century. The game features modern camera controls (hold RMB to rotate the camera, move the camera with WSAD). This may sound obvious but it's a big part of what makes UAD vastly preferable to the handful of really old-school alternatives e.g. Stormpowered's Jutland/Distant Guns series. Whatever start date you select, the campaign will end in January 1965 at the latest - it may end much sooner if you go bankrupt or unrest resulting from your decisions boils over into a national revolution. Seeing battleship combat continue into the Beatles era(!) is jarring: in UAD's permanently plane-free playground, the battleship is never rendered obsolete by carrier aviation. Even spotter planes are absent from this game: it's like an alternate history where the Wright Brothers stuck to bicycles! Subs are notionally present but reduced to an unseen nuisance. Whereas by 1965 IRL the *other* HMS Dreadnought - the nuclear one - had already been in service for two years! The campaign map is visually fairly minimalist until you hover over units, ports etc for more info. However it is not explained to new players how to provoke a war or intercept specific enemy fleets. Dilemmas (random events that 'pop up' at the start of each turn) closely resemble those from Rule the Waves III: I'm unsure which game was 'inspired' by the other... Used wisely they can help to manipulate the economy to your liking (sacrifice naval budget now to boost GDP in the long run?) but will quickly become repetitive. The battle interface is necessarily less minimalist but does a good job of keeping the abundant information to the edge of the screen (and providing more via tool tips). The lack of a 'formation editor' à la Sea Power is particularly grievous since it means every large battle begins with a few minutes of chaos while you try to sort out the mess of a formation you didn't choose and couldn't see in advance. The lack of fundamental formation commands ('turn together', 'turn in succession') is galling since even lacklustre naval games like the Ironclads series get this right. Similarly, the AI's inability or unwillingness to sail its ships in straight lines once battle begins makes it impossible to ever have a battle resembling Jutland, Tsushima or indeed any other fleet action you can name. It may be that the AI has been taught to fear incoming torpedos above all else. My disappointment at this AI behaviour adds to my dismay at the relative rarity of massive fleet battles: they are the exception rather than a typical occurrence. The campaign is almost entirely free-form: there aren't even any win conditions so it's entirely up to you to decide whether you 'won'. The 'Campaign finished: retirement' screen is shockingly anticlimactic so my advice is to enjoy the journey, not the destination. In particular, the lack of any 'realm divide' mechanic - whereby almost every faction will eventually unite against the player to prevent them from steamrolling the AI - means there's no guarantee your playthrough will reach any kind of climax unless you engineer it. Diplomacy in UAD is rudimentary but logical: you can click to try to improve relations or increase tension with one nation per turn, plus you can send fleets in proximity to the enemy to provoke tension. The economy of UAD is rudimentary but logical: apart from the money you spend on ships, three sliders determine how you divide your monthly income. Economic warfare (blockade, trade hunting) is effective, though. The research aspect of the game strongly resembles a game called ICBM , because it puts you in charge of competing in an emerging arms-race and despite the names of these games, dreadnoughts/ICBMs are not the only viable way to go. The game does a decent job of communicating why things are working: for example, selecting your ship and then hovering over its target will bring up a list of all the factors influencing the accuracy of its fire at that moment. The game's modelling of ballistics/penetration is robust and broadly realistic even if relies in part on hidden 'dice rolls' (and even if 'partial penetrations' undermine this realism by rewarding ships for firing inadequate AP at a main belt). The fact that you can't scroll continuously across the Pacific is symbolic of UAD's strange combination of high quality and bizarre flaws: it's a game that gets the hard stuff right - the realism, the 3D models, the shipyard interface - but fails at stuff that you would expect to be easy: a map that scrolls continuously, a formation editor, a button to select all ships, or AI fleets that spend most of their time sailing in a straight line. The juxtaposition of overachievement and underachievement is breathtaking. UAD is: [*]stable, playable and fun; [*]a good strategy game; [*]the best 3D dreadnought game ever made. UAD is not: [*]perfect; [*]a great strategy game for people with no interest in naval warfare; [*]the Battle of Jutland simulator I still dream of. Alternatively: If you like dreadnoughts but hate 3D graphics, consider Rules the Waves III instead; If you hate 3D graphics but prefer modern naval strategy, consider Command: Modern Operations; If you like real-time naval strategy but what you really want is carrier combat, then consider either of the above or just wishlisting Task Force Admiral.
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So let me start with this: The game is far from perfect. It has many problems. - Campaigning feels like a lot is unfinished or missing. - Performance is nowhere to be found - Lots of bugs in every system - The interface is not really thought through. But the idea of the game and how it is implemented is really good. If you like big ships and want to see them shoot each other to pieces, this is your game. It is simply fun to torpedo a heavy battleship with a small torpedo boat. If you can get into this kind of game and overlook one or two problems, then this game is definitely for you. Also, a lot of the reviews are about the multiplayer DLC, not the main game itself, so don't let that put you off. By the way, 15 bucks for a 1v1 multiplayer mode that does not even include the campaign. Really?
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I have now played this game for 84 hours, probably about 75 of which was my first real campaign, using Japan, starting in 1890 and going until the end of the campaign, 1965. I am giving this game a very weak thumbs-up, because I think many of the core game-play elements are solid, but I think that there are some very serious issues with the game that lead to some serious Caveats. So... buyer beware. I will give good and bad points here. Please note that the good points are shorter, but that's because they require no explanation, whereas a bad point requires more elaboration to explain what the problem is. It doesn't mean the good points are less important. First, the good: ------------------- + Excellent graphics - the ships look great, the water looks good, the explosions are great, etc. + Excellent sound - Ship canons, weather effects, water splashes, music, all fantastic. + Tactical combat simulation - overall the combat simulation is very good. + Campaign concept - The campaign does a good job of contextualizing each battle -- they mean something on the larger canvas. The bad: ---------- - User interface - The UI for commanding ships in battle is awkward and counter-intuitive, but the UI for moving fleets around is even worse. Ugh. -Random Events - Random campaign event pop-ups are stupid and annoying. Just let us fight our war and control ships already. -Samey AI tactics - The AI in ship combat is very boring... for a given set of ships, it just does the same thing over and over again, forcing me to do the same thing over and over again (whatever works) to counter it. This makes it feel like you are just fighting the same exact battle over and over again. After a while I just want the war to freaking end because I'm bored out of my mind. Bored -- of war!?! -Bad AI design - The AI's ship designs are terrible. The AI cannot seem to balance firepower with armor for some reason. - Unbelievably long load times - Going into and out of a battle, into and out of the ship designer, and heaven forbid ending a turn (1 month of time), you may as well go get a sandwich or something. Out of my 75 hours of playing I would not be surprised if about 10 hours of it was just waiting for the next screen to load in. Of all the annoyances, this is the only one that made me consider thumbs-down instead of thumbs up, The others are nowhere near as bad as this one. Now, all that said, I think that the game is still worth it if you can get it on sale like I did. I would probably not pay full price for it. The individual battles can be super fun, it's just that when you feel like you are fighting the same battle over again that it gets frustrating.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts is currently priced at 33.99€ on Steam.
Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts is currently not on sale. You can purchase it for 33.99€ on Steam.
Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts received 4,515 positive votes out of a total of 7,169 achieving a rating of 6.21.
😐
Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts was developed and published by Game-Labs.
Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts is playable and fully supported on Windows.
Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts is not playable on MacOS.
Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts is not playable on Linux.
Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts is a single-player game.
There is a DLC available for Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts. Explore additional content available for Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts on Steam.
Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts does not support Steam Remote Play.
Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts.
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Last Updates| Steam data | 09 July 2025 04:08 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 06 July 2025 17:21 |
| Steam price | 11 July 2025 04:49 |
| Steam reviews | 09 July 2025 05:51 |
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- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts
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- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts compatibility
Game modes
Features
Online players
515
Developer
Game-Labs
Publisher
Game-Labs
Release
25 Jan 2023
Platforms