YMMV / Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts

• Broken Base: There is a constant back and forth between members on the Steam forums about whether or not Aircraft Carriers should be implemented into the game. Those who are against this change argue that aircraft carriers signaled the end of the dreadnought age, which is part of the game's appeal and even its very title, trivializing the titular ships altogether; would likely cause several bugs and performance issues due to the game, which is already not well optimized, due to the addition of multiple air units and their respective weapons going off in combat. Those who want them implemented argue that they would add variety and a new challenge. For the record, the devs have said they do not plan to implement aircraft carriers. Time will tell if they walk back or hold to this statement.
• Obvious Beta: The game was fully released in January 2023, with many, many bugs still in the game and most of the campaign features half-baked. While the developers have been providing a steady stream of patches, most patches break things even more.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Ever since their introduction to the game in the 1.09 update, several players have expressed a burning hatred of mines, up to and including demands to delete them from the game, or to at least make them a toggle. The way they work is that, once the mine technology is researched, nations begin putting up minefields around their ports. Initially these are quite small, meaning that so long as you avoid going into port waters (minefields are marked as yellow stripes on the map) you can avoid them altogether. As times goes 'on,' however, research and technology will increase the size of the minefields, to the point large swathes of ocean are practically untraversable for any fleet that does not belong to the minelayers' nation. This makes combat agonizingly difficult to get to. Even worse, technologies to mitigate mines barely help, with minesweepers 'often dying themselves' to mines while barely clearing any of them out as escorts for fleets. On top of all of this, the game's AI does not seem to care about the existence of mines, which results in them losing dozens of ships at a time in the mid-to-late game entirely to minefields!
  • On a similar, albeit not as drastic level, submarines are disliked because of them being both difficult to interact with/counter (they do not show up in manual battles; instead, they are autoresolves that chip away at a fleet's integrity), unless you use submarines of your own... And they can be converted to 'minelayers.' Much like mines the AI is very bad at dealing with them, adding onto the frustration for those trying to play a campaign.
  • Fuel is another disliked mechanic introduced in update 1.09. The idea of this mechanic is that ships, well, have fuel that can run out, and need to stop/be restocked in order to continue on. In practice, however, players have found it drains 'very' quickly in battles, which leads to nasty surprises when your expensive warships suddenly slow to a crawl due to low fuel, or stop in the middle of an enemy formation due to running out entirely. This has been decried for being absurdly unrealistic, as this will affect ships anywhere on the map, even if they are engaging off the coast of their nation. You could have a Japanese fleet, off the coast of Japan, which has JUST exited port for the first time in months with topped-up fuel, run out of fuel in a single battle if it goes on for long enough.