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Post by diereichsfurher on Mar 4, 2017 20:56:34 GMT -6
Hey everybody, I just had a few questions as a newbie to Rule the Wave, and any tips are welcome. Firstly, what are minesweepers even for? Do they reduce the chance fo enemy mines or something? Another question, are colonies worth it? Whats the point in me taking enemy colonies, if it just mean I have to spread out my forces? Do they give you a bigger budget? Final question for now, how does putting mines on ships work? I don't seem to be able to drop them in battle, do they just increase the friendly mine chance? Anyway, thanks in advance!  |
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Post by ikahime on Mar 4, 2017 21:26:19 GMT -6
I use 200 ton MS to free up DDs for ASW/CP. Building 500 ton ones with foreign service also help with overseas tonnage requirements. I know some people even build them bigger. IDK if they actually sweep mines or not.
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Post by Airy W on Mar 4, 2017 21:57:31 GMT -6
Minesweepers do occasionally clear out enemy minefields, it's an event that will randomly happen when the turn changes. Putting mines on your ship means that those ships will create minefields in the zone they are in. This isn't an event, there will just be more friendly minefields in scenarios.
However most players use them for ASW/CP like she said. MS in the game also includes corvettes and other small vessels which were used for ASW. But dont be afraid to also use older destroyers for ASW as well.
MS can be up to 1700 tons so equipping them for colonial service is a way to fulfil your colonial tonnage requirement. I played around with that but am not a fan, the savings just aren't enough to justify the fact that the ship isn't going to be useful in combat and will be too slow to escape enemy cruisers if it gets in a fight. It's better to just put your older light cruisers and destroyers on colonial duty.
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Post by diereichsfurher on Mar 4, 2017 22:16:00 GMT -6
I use 200 ton MS to free up DDs for ASW/CP. Building 500 ton ones with foreign service also help with overseas tonnage requirements. I know some people even build them bigger. IDK if they actually sweep mines or not. Interesting, so that could help deal with colonies if you play as a colonial power. Thanks for the help! |
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Post by diereichsfurher on Mar 4, 2017 22:19:29 GMT -6
Minesweepers do occasionally clear out enemy minefields, it's an event that will randomly happen when the turn changes. Putting mines on your ship means that those ships will create minefields in the zone they are in. This isn't an event, there will just be more friendly minefields in scenarios. However most players use them for ASW/CP like she said. MS in the game also includes corvettes and other small vessels which were used for ASW. But dont be afraid to also use older destroyers for ASW as well. MS can be up to 1700 tons so equipping them for colonial service is a way to fulfil your colonial tonnage requirement. I played around with that but am not a fan, the savings just aren't enough to justify the fact that the ship isn't going to be useful in combat and will be too slow to escape enemy cruisers if it gets in a fight. It's better to just put your older light cruisers and destroyers on colonial duty. Very interesting, seems like it could be intresting to do a mix of the two, so that you don't have to waste too many CLs/DDs. Thanks! |
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Post by Airy W on Mar 4, 2017 23:33:10 GMT -6
It's not really a waste of CLs and DDs, I need them to protect against raiders.
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Post by boomboomf22 on Mar 5, 2017 2:21:12 GMT -6
And colonial ms have to do the colonial shuffle to come in for refits to avoid the ms auto scrapping bug, whereas CL and dds can be left obsolete in the colonies if desired
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Post by archelaos on Mar 5, 2017 5:09:44 GMT -6
Colonies do give you additional national resuorces (from which budget is drawn) but they are generally worth a little (are there any that are truly worth taking for cash only? I do not know.)
Main reason for colonial grabs is to provide bases for your fleet operations. If you are say Germany or Russia, and want to fight Austria or Italy, you will find it really difficult unless you actually have a base in Mediteranean. Besides, RP-wise they are measure of success of your country.
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Post by bcoopactual on Mar 5, 2017 7:51:07 GMT -6
Hey everybody, I just had a few questions as a newbie to Rule the Wave, and any tips are welcome. Firstly, what are minesweepers even for? Do they reduce the chance fo enemy mines or something? Another question, are colonies worth it? Whats the point in me taking enemy colonies, if it just mean I have to spread out my forces? Do they give you a bigger budget? Final question for now, how does putting mines on ships work? I don't seem to be able to drop them in battle, do they just increase the friendly mine chance? Anyway, thanks in advance! My understanding is that during a war there is a hidden strategic mining value in each ocean area. Ships that carry mines are assumed to perform offensive and/or defensive mine operations automatically behind the scenes which contributes to the strategic mine value. Minesweepers in the area lower the strategic mine value. So there would be one value for you and one value for your enemy. The higher the value is against you (i.e. the more mines the enemy puts in the water vs the number of mines you sweep) the more likely you will see an event where one of your ships is damaged or sunk by a mine and the same goes for your adversary. All of this happens off screen and not during actual combat. I do believe that AMC's can carry mines before you actually unlock the tech for DD's and CL's so keep that in mind if you build any AMC's during early wars before about 1908 or so when you research the mines on CL's/DD's tech. During combat there are mines around friendly and enemy ports but those are unrelated to the mines you put on ships yourself. There are probably other factors to the number of mines as well but the only one I know for sure is that completed shore batteries in that territory will increase the number of local mines on the map. Pretty sure that's written in the manual. So there is no active minelaying or minesweeping during an active combat scenario. I think archelaos has it right. Colonies and territories do add to your overall resources and therefore budget but I believe over time the home grown resources have a greater effect than overseas ones so later in the game you don't get as much of your budget from overseas territories. The big reason to have them and the big reason to invest in improving them like archelaos said is the ability to base your ships there. For example, lets say that you as the US cause Russia to collapse and therefore you get ten points worth of colonies to take. You can take Finland and now you have a base in Northern Europe. Now when you get in a war with one of the other European powers you can send your fleet there and they won't have to worry about being interned because of battle damage. You also don't then need to periodically send ships back to a home area because they got an "*" indicating they need refueling/minor repairs. You would still need to keep an eye on vessels assigned to raiding duty. They can run out of fuel and be interned or scuttled even with a base in the area. You would probably need to improve the base capacity to make sure that you can fully repair all of your ships as necessary. (i.e. if your base capacity is 20 and you have 100 points worth of ships in an area and a bunch of them are damaged, I don't think you would be able to repair all of them on the same turn.) If you fight in an ocean area where you don't have a base then there is a good chance that any significantly damaged ship (needing one month or more to repair) is going to be interned on the next turn. |
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Post by zardoz on Mar 5, 2017 9:54:42 GMT -6
Ships on asw/cp also fight enemy submarines- This becomes more and more important in the later game
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Post by RNRobert on Mar 5, 2017 12:40:20 GMT -6
I find minesweepers to be mere "filler" ships. I build a few early in the game to meet my ASW/CP requirement, but later in in the game I have a plenty of 400 and 500 ton DDs that I can relegate to that role. Yes, they can detect enemy minefields, but so can destroyers. As johnw pointed out, they don't last long in a combat situation.
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Post by diereichsfurher on Mar 5, 2017 15:37:09 GMT -6
Thanks for the help guys, i'll use that in my next playthrough!
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Post by director on Mar 5, 2017 16:50:35 GMT -6
My take is a bit different - I build a lot of minesweepers (typically 24-40) and use them with old DDs for ASW/CP patrols. Typically if 20 are called for I try to use 30-40.
Colonies are mainly useful as bases, but they are also useful in a defensive sense - if you take them from your enemy then he loses bases from which to menace you. As examples, the US can find it useful to clear France out of the Caribbean, or for Japan to take the Russian or German possessions in Northeast Asia.
As others have said, minesweepers do sometimes clear enemy minefields, but mostly they are useful in ASW/CP work - cheap and fast to construct, cheaper to operate than a DD. Putting mine rails on your CLs and DDs makes them lay mines, but that is done automatically and is not under your control.
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