|
Post by generalvikus on Aug 19, 2017 10:09:22 GMT -6
Hey guys,
I recently purchased RTW and have enjoyed it a great deal so far. I am new to the game, but on the other hand I am not completely 'green', as I have spent a lot of time browsing the 'best ship designs' thread and watching a lot of let's plays over a period of several months. That said, I have a number of questions about the game.
I'll begin with a few that require only a single-sentence answer:
1. What does the 'varied technologies' check box (displayed when beginning a game alongside the fleet size and resources drop-down boxes) do?
2. Is the effectiveness of raiding governed by any factors other than the number of raiders vs the number of defending ships, and the presence or lack of a blockade? For example, do nations like Japan and Britain suffer relatively more from raiding than nations like Russia and France? Is the answer different when it comes to submarines?
***
Now for some more complex questions, if you should be willing to take the trouble to answer them:
3. As I am just progressing through my first game, I've been basing my ship designs mostly on historical designs, using wikipedia for statistics. I have noticed that, when creating a more-or-less replica of a historical ship, the weight will be closer to the 'full load' displacement given by wikipedia than the 'standard displacement' figure. This seems straightforward, but on the other hand, it seems to me that the term 'standard displacement' is often used interchangably with 'designed displacement', which leads me to believe that, all other things being equal, the displacement of a replica should coincide with that figure. If that is the case, then it is possible that the discrepancy is due to technological difference (my technology is not sufficiently advanced to achieve the same economy of weight) or a discrepancy between the game and real life (ships in the game are generally heavier than similar ships in real life.) Could anybody shed some light on this issue for me?
4. I was doing some research and read that the general practice was to make armoured cruisers 30% faster than the battle line, in order that they could outpace battleships effectively enough to perform their duties. I was wondering - is this ratio more widely applicable? Is it generally accepted that a ship ought to be approximately 30% faster than anything it is designed to outrun - so, for example, destroyers should be approximately 30% faster than contemporary cruisers, et. cetera? I know that this is an inherently debatable question without a right answer, and that it ultimately comes down to personal preference - and I do not, by any means, want to be spoon - fed the design decisions which are the most enjoyable part of the game. However, since I stumbled across this figure by accident and have only ever seen it in one source, I wanted to see if I was missing out on a crucial convention of ship design - or if it really is just a matter of opinion.
5. All of the sources I can find state that the main distinction between protected and armoured cruisers is that armoured cruisers had belt armour, and protected cruisers only had armoured decks. Protected cruisers became light cruisers when they gained belt armour. However, AI designs for early 'light cruisers' always include belt armour, and the 'protected cruiser' armoured configuration in the ship designer allows for this. Was this actually the norm (which would not surprise me, since most of my research has been done on wikipedia) or was it a rare but not un-heard of practice to use belt armour on protected cruisers? In that case, what is the definition of a light cruiser?
***
6. I'm reasonably well initiated in the history of modern naval warfare, however, my knowledge does not extend far past the World Wars (though I am by no means an expert in the naval warfare of that period,) and the theory of Tsushima-era warfare remains rather alien to me - I have yet to get around to reading Mahan! As I understand it, the strategy of 1900s era naval warfare (not necissarily just pre-dreadnought, but up to around 1914 - about the first half of the game) is roughly defined by the following parameters:
- Battleships form the core of major navies, being for the most part concentrated together in a small number of battle fleets and used to either blockade the enemy or deny key strategic areas (usually home waters) to the use of enemy cruisers. They do not usually operate in small groups. Battle lines are supported by a small number of protected cruisers and destroyers, but the balance of captial ships to escorts is weighted much more heavily in favour of the capital ships than in later decades, with a general upwards trend in this ratio from 1900 to 1945.
- Protected cruisers are the main instrument of sea lane control, raiding enemy commerce and disrupting the enemy's attempts to do the same, as well as escorting the battleships. This leads me to the conclusion that there were effectively two distinct sub-types of protected cruisers - some for 'patrol' and some for 'fleet' purposes. As I understand it, this distinction did develop for light cruisers of the Royal Navy in the post - World War I era, but I have not read any reference to such a divide in earlier years.
- Torpedo boats are the wild card, as they presented the major recent technological leap and threaten battleship supremacy. As far as I know, their actual employment in combat engagements was very limited, but their presence acted as a sufficient deterrent to greatly alter the strategic paradigm. (As far as I can deduce, they along with the presence of mine fields and the related short range submarines were the reason for the Grand Fleet's adoption of a 'long range' or 'loose' blockade in World War I, which is always portrayed as a novel idea.
- Destroyers are more or less truer to their initial name of 'torpedo boat destroyers' than to their later multipurpose role, operating in relatively small numbers alongside the battleships. As I understand it, they made their transition to their World War I / World War II role after about 1910. As far as I can gather, the ratio of Destroyers / Cruisers was still about 1:1 at the beginning of World War I.
- Armoured Cruisers are the biggest mystery to me, as their role is not well defined by any of the sources I've read. Some sources describe them as proto-battlecruisers, others describe them as 'discount battleships' designed to operate where an investment of battleships would be probihitive, and no source seems to mention a distinction between armoured cruisers designed to fill those two different roles. The first definition seems to be more convincing to me, since different sources seem to agree on the fact that armoured cruisers were often as large and well - armed as battleships but with inferior armour, and one would imagine an 'auxiliary battleship' to be simply a downsized battleship with the same ratio of speed, proteciton and firepower. However, it occurs to me (though this is purely speculation) that the two ideas could be reconciled, if it were the case that since battleships required heavy mutual support from other battleships and lighter vessels in order to be effective, a proto-battlecruiser might be able to escape this requirement and operate more or less independently thanks to greater speed.
If you've made it to the end of the text wall, then thank you for your time! I hope that you can provide some answers, or at least help me to better answer these questions for myself - perhaps this will even spark a little bit of debate in the responses, which is always fun.
TL; DR:
If you answer none of my other questions, I would appreciate some more information on the role of armoured cruisers the most!
|
|
|
Post by garrisonchisholm on Aug 19, 2017 10:20:29 GMT -6
Welcome to the Forums! I am dashing our the door, but I will hazard my rum ration for the day that by the time I log back in late tonight you will have been amazed by the quantity and quality of your replies. It is an amazing game, with a fun and attentive development team.
|
|
|
Post by generalvikus on Aug 19, 2017 10:22:25 GMT -6
Thanks very much, that's very encouraging to hear! I certainly didn't expect more than one or two replies give the volume of questions I've asked, but I'm pleasantly surprised at the number of views it's accumulated in ten minutes.
|
|
|
Post by bcoopactual on Aug 19, 2017 10:29:26 GMT -6
Wow, welcome to the forum. That's a heck of a first post (no criticism implied or intended) I'll try to answer some of them in an edit to this or a later post. It might be helpful if you go back and number the questions that way a responder can just put the number and go with his answer rather than having to quote or explain which specific question he is trying to answer. Not a big deal one way or the other though.
By the way, good luck on getting a firm answer on Armored cruisers. Even the Naval thinkers of the time had a problem defining their roles. Too expensive to efficiently do cruiser tasks and too lightly armored and armed to participate in the battleline. True Jack-of-all-trades and master-of-none. But if the other guy had them and you didn't they could cause trouble because they would be hard to counter (until battlecruisers made them obsolete but battlecruisers raised many of the same questions).
I'll start with question 1.
Varied technology applies some non-historical randomness to the game. For example, it could make the power-weight ratio of engines less efficient so your ships would need heavier engines for the same speed meaning less guns and armor. It could make multi-gun turrets far less reliable than they are in the vanilla version. It could make torpedoes more erratic and less reliable. I think there is one where it adjusts the armor piercing ability of shells to less than what you would find at the same tech level in the vanilla game. Those are all negatives, I'm not sure if any of the varied tech's make things better than the vanilla version but the techs are affected equally for all nations so like I said, it makes for some non-historical outcomes (Like few multi-gun turreted ships). As far as I know (I don't use the option myself) it will only cause one of these effects per game.
Question 2. Probably just a partial answer that others can add to. I'm not aware of any country specific modifiers to commerce raiding or submarine warfare. Some things that will affect the success rate of raiders are long range and reliable engines for raider ships and I believe that reliable engines make ships better at intercepting raiders when on the defensive. Submarine warfare is mostly affected by the type of submarine (medium and minelaying submarines can attack merchants outside of home waters so they are more successful at killing merchants) and the number and crew quality of the ships the enemy puts on CP/ASW mode. The developers have stated that ships with the obsolete (O) tag [meaning you haven't refitted them recently enough, sometime between 8-10 years] will not do ASW as well, or anything else for that matter, as ships without the tag so try not to let ships go more than 8 years or so without at least a blank refit (where you don't change anything but save the refit design anyway). Many players have commented on the forum that towards the end of the game they try to have at least 2-3 times the required number of old destroyers and small MS ships on CP/ASW to effectively combat submarines.
|
|
|
Post by generalvikus on Aug 19, 2017 10:46:14 GMT -6
Thanks for the response! I'll go back and number the questions right away, it's a good idea. I expect I won't employ varied technology for a while - I already know little enough about the game that my limited knowledge of naval history leaves me with an abundance of unanswered questions - but I certainly like the idea of adding some ahistoric elements so that an experienced and knowledgeable player will experience at least some requirement for adaptability and learning - it's a good way to keep things interesting.
As for the armoured cruisers - at least knowing there is no good answer is better than not knowing at all! Battle cruisers, as far as I can see, turned out to be a mistake on the part of Mr. Fisher - the course of history certainly does not seem to indicate that they were at all worth the investment. Would you say the same about armoured cruisers?
|
|
|
Post by bcoopactual on Aug 19, 2017 11:00:47 GMT -6
No problem at all. 3. I just checked my current game. A 1904 21,200 ton coal-fired BC design that changed from Medium range to long range added 1,200 tons to the hull and fitting weight. I'm not familiar enough to be able to say whether that makes more sense to be the just the weight of the extra steel needed to enclose bigger coal bunkers and storerooms meaning the ship designer uses standard displacements or if that much extra weight would have to include the weight of the coal as well meaning the ship designer uses deep or full loads. I personally tend to think in terms of deep/full loads when I'm looking at historical designs for inspiration but that could be just me. I'm going to log out for a bit to get some sleep before I go to work tonight and to give others a chance to type a word in edgewise. Good luck. I don't necessarily agree that battlecruisers were a total waste although they definitely had flaws. They certainly obsoleted armored cruisers. But again, I'll step back and let others comment for a while. There is actually an active thread about battlecruisers in the General History Forum right now if you want to look at it.
|
|
|
Post by generalvikus on Aug 19, 2017 11:03:14 GMT -6
No problem at all. 3. I just checked my current game. A 1904 21,200 ton coal-fired BC design that changed from Medium range to long range added 1,200 tons to the hull and fitting weight. I'm not familiar enough to be able to say whether that makes more sense to be the just the weight of the extra steel needed to enclose bigger coal bunkers and storerooms meaning the ship designer uses standard displacements or if that much extra weight would have to include the weight of the coal as well meaning the ship designer uses deep or full loads. I personally tend to think in terms of deep/full loads when I'm looking at historical designs for inspiration but that could be just me. It might be worth considering that since the weight of ammunition is included in the ship designer, it makes sense for fuel to also be included. EDIT: Also, good thinking!- A very creative way to test it!
|
|
|
Post by ddg on Aug 19, 2017 12:44:13 GMT -6
I'll take a stab at answering a reasonable number of questions in a reasonable amount of time.
1. Already well explained. I'll add that reduced armor penetration is definitely one of the options.
2. Something that hasn't been mentioned yet: The region where the raiders are deployed affects their efficacy. In general the best regions are enemy Home Areas and Northern Europe (the idea being that Northern Europe is the busiest trade center in the world).
3. Note that "standard" displacement isn't defined until the Washington Naval Treaty right at the end of the period the game covers. I haven't done any detailed analysis, but I'm inclined to suspect the game uses full load. Perhaps someone could check Steam and Iron against historical data for corroboration?
4. It's just not possible to maintain a 30% speed margin with anything throughout the game. That would require end-game destroyers to achieve 40 knots, whereas the maximum achievable speed is 36 (max design speed 35 plus the exceeds-on-trials event). I would say CAs (and even most CLs) usually have more like a 20% margin over Bs in the early game in any case.
5. I believe Belt in the Protected Cruiser armor scheme refers to the angled outer edges of the protective deck.
|
|
|
Post by archelaos on Aug 19, 2017 12:45:47 GMT -6
Protected and Armoured cruisers were just different construction methods - there were both big and small ships built in both ways - compare UK Powerful and Cressy 1st class cruisers for example, or French designs. In general, designs with protected scheme are older while ones with armoured scheme more "modern", though a few small PCs were built in XXth century. The actual distinction was between 1st class (big and powerful ships), 2nd (general fleet roles) and 3rd rate cruisers (mostly unarmoured patrol, raiders or colonial gunships) As almost all of the small classes (2nd class cruisers) were PCs, and this class evolved into CLs that started to appear around 1907-10(?) it was natural to drag the role few years back and give PCs the same role and some of the design restrictions as later CLs. In game, belt on PCs is supposed to simulate slopes of the deck I believe. I also do not think there were any rules on on speed of cruisers. They were generally faster than Bs, but for example early German CAs were powerful, but slow(18kts) while Italian Bs were very fast (20-21kts), but with poor armour. In general, there was a lot of experimenting going on. Great website for comparing designs: www.navypedia.org/ships_index.htmNow in game: TBs are, AFAIK, abstracted in "exclusion zones" around bases together with defensive minefields. Early DDs are strange in that their role is decided by game difficulty - if you play on Captain mode, they are very strong, as they should. In other modes they are mostly useless, as player controlled ships are not willing to launch torpedoes, or launch them in completely absurd situations (through own line, at enemies turning etc) while AI ships most of the time react to launch as soon as it happens by dodging, so they can be only used effectively against disabled targets. DDs at this time are mostly to fight other DDS and as chaff to launch at enemy if you want to run away. Later, they become much more powerful, though torpedo problems are still there. CAs are my favourite class just as BCs later - they can be used in almost any cruiser role and as I play mostly smaller countries, that can't out build enemies big CAs and BCs are my weapon of choice, capable to defeat or run from any enemy they encounter. Usually they gather a lot of kills, and can even win early wars - I won at least one war without a single fleet battle, by eliminating 70-80% of enemy cruiser force.
|
|
|
Post by boomboomf22 on Aug 19, 2017 12:51:11 GMT -6
I'm gonna take a crack at BCs and ACs answerwise...
My opinion on the matter is that BCs have a worth as scouts that can also perform a variety of roles in support of the battleline in addition to cruiser actions such as raider interception and the effective destruction of light forces, which Battleships aren't great at. However, this only works if you don't build British style BCs because (and I have tried doing it) a battleship sized ship is simply too much and too expensive of an investment to be running around with 6" of armor.
With ACs I have used them in one of 2 ways.
1. cut down BCs: ie use them to scout and crush opposing light forces and be strongly built enough to stand in against the opposing battleline supporting the battleline, however this only really works during the Pre and Semi-dreadnought era. Speed is less of an issue with these ships, but they still need to be fast enough to have a chance of catching raiders and other ACs.
2. Heavy Raiders: Build them for speed, reliability and long range. All else is secondary, but ideally they should also be built with being able to instead of just run from interceptions also be able to crush the intercepting ship. However they tend to be very big and expensive ACs, and like other ACs are obsoleted by BCs, but more so due to their role of killing the intercepters and often cannot run from BCs unless they were built exceedingly fast.
|
|
|
Post by aeson on Aug 19, 2017 14:36:12 GMT -6
Historically, the armored deck of a protected cruiser was normally curved or had inclined outer sections, and the outer portions were at least sometimes of greater thickness than the inner more or less horizontal section; within the game, then, I would regard it as likely that the 'belt' armor that you give to a protected cruiser is the outer portion of the armored deck while the 'deck' armor that you give it is the inner portion. There are historical cruisers which do not quite fit into either the armored or the protected cruiser categories, with for example an armored deck covering more or less the whole ship in the same manner as on a protected cruiser and partial armored belts providing protection a more limited portion of the ship. An example of this type, sometimes called a "semi-armored" cruiser, would be the American St. Louis-class cruiser. A 'modern' light cruiser, or light armored cruiser, differs from a semi-armored cruiser by having a full armor belt, i.e. one that stretches the full length of the armored deck (more or less).
It should be remembered that the family of cruisers known as "armored" cruisers is not defined by a common role, a common size, or a common philosophy regarding the armament so much as by a common armor scheme. As such, coming up with a generalized role that works for all armored cruisers is likely to be an exercise in frustration, and I would suggest breaking the family into sub-groups - for example, there are the large (~12,000+ ton), heavily-armed (>9" guns) armored cruisers such as the Tsukuba-, Ibuki-, Tennessee-, Warrior-, and Minotaur-class cruisers which are sort of proto-battlecruisers, and then there are the smaller (~8,000-10,000 ton) armored cruisers with ~8" guns which are more meant as heavy patrollers or heavy surface raiders. Bear in mind, however, that there is still overlap between these groups - for example, the German armored cruiser Blucher is a large (~16,000t) fast (~25kn) armored cruiser with relatively light (21cm, or ~8.3") guns, and while probably fits the proto-battlecruiser group better than the heavy patroller/raider group it also doesn't really have the armament to contribute to the German battle line the way that the Japanese Tsukuba- and Ibuki-class ships with their 12" guns or the American Tennessee-class ships with their 10" guns could contribute to the battle lines of those nations.
Depends on what the speed advantage is relative to, and on when we're talking about. For 17-19kn pre- and semi-dreadnought battleships, a 30% speed advantage means 22-25kn cruisers, which is manageable and relatively historical. For 21kn dreadnought battleships, we're looking at 27kn cruisers, which is a little impractical in 1906ish but will be reasonably manageble within a couple years. We'll start seeing 22-24kn superdreadnoughts or early fast battleships in the 1910s, and that'll push things up to 28-31kn, which, again, might be a little impractical in the early portion of that period but will be manageable not much further along. When we start seeing true fast battleships in the 1920s, though, it starts becoming a bit less practical to maintain that 30% speed advantage, because to have a 30% speed advantage over a 26kn vessel means that you need to be able to reach 33-34 knots, and that starts to get quite expensive; once the battleships get a bit faster, you run into the game's 35kn speed limit (which drops to 34kn between 17,000t and 23,000t, and to 33kn above 23,000t) and you won't be able to get a 30% speed advantage over the battleships. These numbers are similar to the speeds that real-world cruisers were actually able to attain; you start seeing 25-28kn cruisers in the late-1900s and early 1910s, with the first ~33kn cruisers (not counting destroyer leaders) appearing towards the end of the First World War a couple years after the Queen Elizabeth-class battleships with their ~24kn speed entered service.
If you want to measure speed advantage relative to contemporary battlecruisers or to post-1930ish fast battleships, though, forget about it. Battlecruiser speeds will probably freeze at around 27-28kn for about a decade after 1910 while the gun caliber and armor protection increases, and 1930ish fast battleships will probably be about that fast (at least at 100% research in an unmodded game), but in order to have a 30% speed advantage over a 27-28kn ship your light cruiser would need a speed of around 36kn. The only way to get a speed of 36kn within the game is to have a design speed of 35kn and get the "ship exceeded design speed" event when the first one completes, and moreover speeds much above 30kn are not going to be practically attainable until the late-1910s at the earliest, at least not for a general-purpose fleet cruiser. On a scout cruiser or destroyer leader, perhaps, but not on a general-purpose fleet cruiser.
Within the game, the armor thickness is some kind of equivalent armor thickness rather than the real armor thickness, because while 1' of Krupp armor and 1' of Harvey armor have the same dimension, they do not provide the same protection, and it makes it easier on the player if all of the armor thicknesses and gun penetration values are set to a common standard while the difference in real thickness (and thus weight) of the armor is taken care of by a semi-hidden armor weight multiplier. There are also inaccuracies due to approximation or due to different sources being used for weights (German and British shells of the same caliber are not necessarily of the same weight and yet the game treats them as such, for example) or other things like that. There is also, as you note, the possibility for the technological state you're in at a given date within the game to not model the real world particularly well at the equivalent point in time for the country that you're playing. It is also possible that the displacements that are recorded for historical ships are not entirely accurate or measure displacement 'creatively'; for example, the Washington Naval Treaty defined standard displacement to not include the weight of the ship's fuel, and some of the treaty ships have 'paper' weight savings where the weights of certain parts of the ship are ignored since they're not explicitly required to be counted towards the displacement of the vessel to keep the official weight of the vessel below a treaty limit without resorting to outright falsification (not that that wasn't done as well for some ships).
The Washington Naval (Five-Power) Treaty defined standard displacement as:
I.e. the weight of ammunition does and the weight of fuel does not count towards standard displacement as defined in the Washington Naval Treaty.
Personally, I don't think that surface raiders are worth building once decent submarines become available. If you're going for a blockade or decisive sea battles victory, then there isn't much reason to bother with surface raiders because the points they generate are normally trivial compared to a blockade or to sinking even one or two small ships in an engagement. If you're going for a commerce raiding victory, then small cruisers, AMCs, and submarines are much more economical to mass, and number of raiders usually matters more than the individual quality of each raider. If I feel the need for a patrol cruiser heavier than a maximal light cruiser and more economical than a battlecruiser, I'll consider building CAs, but not otherwise.
|
|
|
Post by boomboomf22 on Aug 19, 2017 15:01:22 GMT -6
True, but in the AC era (ie at most 3 centerline or some wing turrets) is before subs get good. Blucher types do fit in with the ACs, but when addressing ACs I am mostly looking at the semi and pre-dreadnought eras. In the era of BCs and BBs the AC really doesn't have much of a use, and CAs have a limited one at best while BCs roam around
|
|
|
Post by bcoopactual on Aug 19, 2017 17:02:18 GMT -6
5. I believe Belt in the Protected Cruiser armor scheme refers to the angled outer edges of the protective deck. Yes, Fredrik has directly confirmed that in the ship designer when the protection scheme is set to "protected cruiser" the value in the Belt field and Belt Extended field represents the sloping area of the armored deck and the Deck and Deck Extended fields represent the center, flat portion of the deck. 6. - Battleships form the core of major navies, being for the most part concentrated together in a small number of battle fleets and used to either blockade the enemy or deny key strategic areas (usually home waters) to the use of enemy cruisers. They do not usually operate in small groups. Battle lines are supported by a small number of protected cruisers and destroyers, but the balance of captial ships to escorts is weighted much more heavily in favour of the capital ships than in later decades, with a general upwards trend in this ratio from 1900 to 1945. The US and French navies were heavily unbalanced towards battleships. The USN didn't build any cruisers at all from 1908 until the first two Omaha's were laid down in 1918 when they realized their scouting forces were totally inadequate. I believe the The Royal Navy was more balanced although the rapidly increasing cost of dreadnoughts might have affected their ability to continue to build lighter forces. The technological development in the 10 years or so prior to the game's time period up till right before WW1 was so rapid that it led to a lot of experimentation and variation as designers tried to fulfill rapidly changing requirements and desired specifications. For a while, the Royal Navy only built protected cruisers and no armored cruisers so you see some huge, 14,000 ton protected cruiser designs. Keep in mind though that in RtW you can't designate specific roles for cruisers except for CP/ASW and since cruisers are a popular choice for scenarios you could see the same cruiser selected for fleet battles, raider interceptions, coastal defense, convoy attack, etc. So if you build a smaller fleet scout type it could easily get put in a situation where it is isolated and outmatched. Because of that, I tend to build a smaller number of larger (6,000+ ton) general purpose cruisers rather than a lot of smaller ones.
|
|
|
Post by jwsmith26 on Aug 19, 2017 17:14:58 GMT -6
Welcome generalvikus. Here are a few comments on your questions.
1 and 2. bcoopactual answered questions 1 and 2 well. I would only offer that I would not advise turning on varied tech until you are more familiar with the game.
3. I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that I've never really studied historical naval ship designs. I just add the stuff I think will work the best and try to create a well-balanced ship that can dish it out, absorb a lot of damage and is as fast as I can make it. It can be difficult to match historical designs in the game and to achieve similar results you may need to make compromises in the game design that are undesirable (in the game). You may find that significantly ahistorical designs do quite well in the game. The AI is facing the same design limitations as you (subject to its own research level and national differences) but is much less imaginative. Once you get past the basics you'll probably want to use your imagination and play with the design system and then watch your brilliant creation go down in minutes at the first gentle touch by the enemy. Great fun.
4. I would say that my cruisers are seldom 30% faster than my battleline. They could certainly be initially designed that way but speed is very expensive and building that much speed into a cruiser makes for a rather weak ship in battle. I try to keep my cruisers around 3 to 4 knots faster than my battleline (but I build my capital ships very fast). Everything is always in a state of flux in this game; typically each generation is capable of steaming faster than the previous generation, so regardless of you initial intent older cruisers can become slow in relation to newer battleships. The speed ratio can also vary quite a bit depending on how, when and whether you rebuild your various ship classes.
The other major consideration is the speed of comparable enemy ships. Especially for cruisers, which tend to fight a lot of one-on-one or small division battles, speed is critical for surviving when you are outgunned or for winning when you are stronger. I always keep an eye on enemy cruiser speeds and try my best to exceed their speeds.
I find this ratio to the enemy's speed is much less important for destroyers. You will seldom find youself in a situation in which a single knot or two of speed will make the difference between success and failure with destroyers. Speed is critical for destroyers, just not the ratio of your destroyer's speed to the enemy destoyer's speed.
5. Can't help with that one.
6. In the game, armored cruisers are, at best, moderately useful for most purposes. In many cases (battle scout, protection from destroyers, regional garrison, raiding or anti-raiding, etc.) a much cheaper protected cruiser will serve as well. I find that ACs tend to be most useful in pure cruiser battles, in which they can dominate until battle cruisers arrive. There are a LOT of cruiser battles offered in the game and you can win wars by dominating this portion of the game. A small fleet (I typically build a "fleet" of two ACs) of strong armored cruisers can go a long way toward compensating for a weak main battleline by racking up victories in the numerous small cruiser battles.
The characteristics I build into my battle cruisers are speed - they have to be able to chase down all those succulent enemy protected cruisers - and anti-cruiser firepower. I install as many guns capable of putting holes in protected cruisers as I can. I make them as big as is needed to achieve those goals, which makes them pretty big. They typically come out the same size as my pre-dreads (but then I only build two, whereas most AI nations tend to build up to a dozen). After battle cruisers arrive on the scene things get tough for armored cruisers and you'll see them rather quickly disappear from the ranks of the AI navies. Battle cruisers dominate cruiser battles even more thoroughly - until the enemy gets their own.
|
|
|
Post by oaktree on Aug 19, 2017 21:28:09 GMT -6
Hey guys, I recently purchased RTW and have enjoyed it a great deal so far. I am new to the game, but on the other hand I am not completely 'green', as I have spent a lot of time browsing the 'best ship designs' thread and watching a lot of let's plays over a period of several months. That said, I have a number of questions about the game. I'll begin with a few that require only a single-sentence answer: 1. What does the 'varied technologies' check box (displayed when beginning a game alongside the fleet size and resources drop-down boxes) do? Answered most effectively by others.2. Is the effectiveness of raiding governed by any factors other than the number of raiders vs the number of defending ships, and the presence or lack of a blockade? For example, do nations like Japan and Britain suffer relatively more from raiding than nations like Russia and France? Is the answer different when it comes to submarines? The presence of a blockade by yourself will make your raiders less effective - due to a lack of targets.
Japan and Britain don't seem to suffer more from raiding when it happens. However, both are more effective than average in the capability to inflict a blockade. (They get a bonus adjustment in the calculation of blockade force. Russia gets a penalty.)*** Now for some more complex questions, if you should be willing to take the trouble to answer them: 3. As I am just progressing through my first game, I've been basing my ship designs mostly on historical designs, using wikipedia for statistics. I have noticed that, when creating a more-or-less replica of a historical ship, the weight will be closer to the 'full load' displacement given by wikipedia than the 'standard displacement' figure. This seems straightforward, but on the other hand, it seems to me that the term 'standard displacement' is often used interchangably with 'designed displacement', which leads me to believe that, all other things being equal, the displacement of a replica should coincide with that figure. If that is the case, then it is possible that the discrepancy is due to technological difference (my technology is not sufficiently advanced to achieve the same economy of weight) or a discrepancy between the game and real life (ships in the game are generally heavier than similar ships in real life.) Could anybody shed some light on this issue for me? A couple of factors at play which have been mentioned previously. Armor is standardized in the game, which will affect using historical designs. And since fuel and ammo is included in ship designs the full load displacement could be considered more accurate.4. I was doing some research and read that the general practice was to make armoured cruisers 30% faster than the battle line, in order that they could outpace battleships effectively enough to perform their duties. I was wondering - is this ratio more widely applicable? Is it generally accepted that a ship ought to be approximately 30% faster than anything it is designed to outrun - so, for example, destroyers should be approximately 30% faster than contemporary cruisers, et. cetera? I know that this is an inherently debatable question without a right answer, and that it ultimately comes down to personal preference - and I do not, by any means, want to be spoon - fed the design decisions which are the most enjoyable part of the game. However, since I stumbled across this figure by accident and have only ever seen it in one source, I wanted to see if I was missing out on a crucial convention of ship design - or if it really is just a matter of opinion. Opinion in how you want to operate your fleet. Faster than your battleline gives you some flexibility in how to deploy the cruisers. (I usually have them ahead or behind my battleships, so some extra speed is useful since if there is a battle turn they need a few extra knots to catch up and maintain position.)
It also affects your tactics. If your cruisers are intercepting or engaging enemy cruisers, do you have any sort of speed advantage that serves you with the flexibility to more greatly control the action? And this would have to be relative to the capabilities of your enemies, which will change as the technology progresses and new ships are built. (And this factor drives some of my early cruiser designs. Trying to get an extra knot of speed over the enemy in order to successfully chase them down, or maybe run away from them.)5. All of the sources I can find state that the main distinction between protected and armoured cruisers is that armoured cruisers had belt armour, and protected cruisers only had armoured decks. Protected cruisers became light cruisers when they gained belt armour. However, AI designs for early 'light cruisers' always include belt armour, and the 'protected cruiser' armoured configuration in the ship designer allows for this. Was this actually the norm (which would not surprise me, since most of my research has been done on wikipedia) or was it a rare but not un-heard of practice to use belt armour on protected cruisers? In that case, what is the definition of a light cruiser? Answered previously.*** 6. I'm reasonably well initiated in the history of modern naval warfare, however, my knowledge does not extend far past the World Wars (though I am by no means an expert in the naval warfare of that period,) and the theory of Tsushima-era warfare remains rather alien to me - I have yet to get around to reading Mahan! As I understand it, the strategy of 1900s era naval warfare (not necissarily just pre-dreadnought, but up to around 1914 - about the first half of the game) is roughly defined by the following parameters: David K Brown's _Warrior to Dreadnought_ and _The Grand Fleet_ covers 1860 to 1920 (roughly) in British warship design. If you're interested in the technology and challenges of ship design it's a good read.- Battleships form the core of major navies, being for the most part concentrated together in a small number of battle fleets and used to either blockade the enemy or deny key strategic areas (usually home waters) to the use of enemy cruisers. They do not usually operate in small groups. Battle lines are supported by a small number of protected cruisers and destroyers, but the balance of captial ships to escorts is weighted much more heavily in favour of the capital ships than in later decades, with a general upwards trend in this ratio from 1900 to 1945. This varies by fleet and strategic war aims. Britain had a vast empire to protect, so they had factors driving them towards having lots of cruisers - which hopefully would be economical and able to patrol vast stretches of ocean. The German fleet, as it developed on the other hand, pretty much concentrated on the North Sea. Just as a few examples.
Logistics is a big factor as well. Need for coaling stations, repair facilities, and access to communications. - Protected cruisers are the main instrument of sea lane control, raiding enemy commerce and disrupting the enemy's attempts to do the same, as well as escorting the battleships. This leads me to the conclusion that there were effectively two distinct sub-types of protected cruisers - some for 'patrol' and some for 'fleet' purposes. As I understand it, this distinction did develop for light cruisers of the Royal Navy in the post - World War I era, but I have not read any reference to such a divide in earlier years. Pre-Washington Naval Treaty you can almost simply lump it together as cruisers. Different sizes and such depending on how one tried to fit the challenges faced. Britain, for instance, needed range and fuel economy for protecting trade. However, they also needed a ship combat capable enough to face off with their French or US counterparts. And then you can mix in the tech changes; new armor, better guns, better propulsion, and the threat of the torpedo. - Torpedo boats are the wild card, as they presented the major recent technological leap and threaten battleship supremacy. As far as I know, their actual employment in combat engagements was very limited, but their presence acted as a sufficient deterrent to greatly alter the strategic paradigm. (As far as I can deduce, they along with the presence of mine fields and the related short range submarines were the reason for the Grand Fleet's adoption of a 'long range' or 'loose' blockade in World War I, which is always portrayed as a novel idea. The torpedo developing as a threat was a major factor in a number of developments. Among other things it pushed the expected engagement ranges outward and then led into the whole tech race to improve fire control and the push to the dreadnought. And the early submarine was really not much else than a torpedo boat that could submerge for a period of time to avoid detection and/or evade attack.- Destroyers are more or less truer to their initial name of 'torpedo boat destroyers' than to their later multipurpose role, operating in relatively small numbers alongside the battleships. As I understand it, they made their transition to their World War I / World War II role after about 1910. As far as I can gather, the ratio of Destroyers / Cruisers was still about 1:1 at the beginning of World War I. The destroyer and torpedo boat essentially merged. The torpedo boat got bigger in order to be more seaworthy and more capable. The destroyer picked up torpedo armament of its own and then subsumed the role that the torpedo boat originally had. It is interesting as the tech improves to see how the destroyer design capabilities adjust. Early- and mid- game you often have to decide on whether the ship is more of a "gun" boat or a "torpedo" boat.- Armoured Cruisers are the biggest mystery to me, as their role is not well defined by any of the sources I've read. Some sources describe them as proto-battlecruisers, others describe them as 'discount battleships' designed to operate where an investment of battleships would be probihitive, and no source seems to mention a distinction between armoured cruisers designed to fill those two different roles. The first definition seems to be more convincing to me, since different sources seem to agree on the fact that armoured cruisers were often as large and well - armed as battleships but with inferior armour, and one would imagine an 'auxiliary battleship' to be simply a downsized battleship with the same ratio of speed, proteciton and firepower. However, it occurs to me (though this is purely speculation) that the two ideas could be reconciled, if it were the case that since battleships required heavy mutual support from other battleships and lighter vessels in order to be effective, a proto-battlecruiser might be able to escape this requirement and operate more or less independently thanks to greater speed. Cruisers follow a whole spectrum of designs. (And you will see the AI use it.) There are some rules that will shoehorn a design into a particular ship class, but essentially you can make a cruiser weigh from 2000 tons on up. So you essentially are given a blank slate to build on. What is the role of your ship? What does it need in order to carry out that role given the expected opposition? How many of these ships do you need? Are they a stop-gap design to hold the line for a few years, or are they intended to get upgrades and serve for decades?
And historically some armored cruiser designs were thought of as ships that were built, and then had to go looking for a role since they did not efficiently meet the needs at had as compared to other designs.
(Perhaps one thing to do is to look at some of the AI cruiser designs. France for instance. And from there work out the role their designs can carry out, how they compare in that role to your ships, and how your fleet will deal with them.)If you've made it to the end of the text wall, then thank you for your time! I hope that you can provide some answers, or at least help me to better answer these questions for myself - perhaps this will even spark a little bit of debate in the responses, which is always fun. TL; DR: If you answer none of my other questions, I would appreciate some more information on the role of armoured cruisers the most!
|
|