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Post by theexecuter on Oct 8, 2017 18:56:36 GMT -6
During the run of play...
No mine markers were visible on the map. It was night however when we ran into the field.
I did note an enemy coastal gun nearby...which probably explains it.
Note to self, escape into open water next time. Don't hug the coast.
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Post by boomboomf22 on Oct 8, 2017 23:24:06 GMT -6
Yah, coastal guns spawn a smattering of mines on the tactical map. Usually you find these by hitting them. Additionally from experience the potential mine strike zone around a enemy port is about 1/3 more than the exclusion zone.
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Post by eserchie on Oct 9, 2017 0:14:30 GMT -6
Russia seems to have some terrible luck at times. Slowly playing my way through a game currently. High point? fighting a 36 month long war against england in 1902-1905 and holding the VP advantage the whole way, before settling at a white peace (was steadily losing the tonnage race against them though)
low point? during next war 1908-1909 versus france I had a large scale cruiser engagement in the baltic. about 8 cruisers a side, and destroyers. France landed a single medium gun hit all battle, and no torpedoes. I lost 1 CA, 1CL and 4DDs, and had another CL suffer heavy damage. all my ships were at least medium damage. France lost a DD, and had a mod damgaged CL and a Hvy damage CA. I'm not sure how much of the french damage was weather related, but the sea and wind were the main foes of the russians that day. Also friendly fire, friendly collisions, and a drifting mine entering harbor.
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Post by rimbecano on Oct 9, 2017 4:09:25 GMT -6
This was the first time I ever hit mines during the tactical phase. I've not hit mines in tactical often, but it's not unheard of either. A few times per game, maybe, but never more than once per tactical mission. One thing I will note is that the message that shows up when you strike a mine is not always what you see in the reports after the battle. In a recent game, the immediate message lead me to believe my ship had been hit by a submarine torpedo, but looking at the actual damage taken by the ship afterwards indicated a mine strike. This sort of confusion was not unheard of in real life: a factor in the sinking of the live bait squadron was that the initial torpedo strike on Aboukir was mistaken for a mine strike, so the other ships hung around to pick up survivors. |
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Post by theexecuter on Oct 9, 2017 8:52:38 GMT -6
Does this mean that building large numbers of coastal guns might be a viable strategy in closed areas like the Adriatic, Baltic, and Yellow Sea for the increased mine count?
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Post by aeson on Oct 9, 2017 9:33:03 GMT -6
Does this mean that building large numbers of coastal guns might be a viable strategy in closed areas like the Adriatic, Baltic, and Yellow Sea for the increased mine count? On the strategic level, perhaps, but I rather doubt it would be worth it on the tactical level except maybe if you end up defending against coastal raids on targets close to your batteries in those areas frequently; even in very closed areas like the Adriatic, Baltic, and Yellow Seas the area covered by the coastal batteries and their minefields is tiny compared to the overall engagement area - in a long war you might see a relatively dense minefield out to about maybe 10-15kyd from each coastal battery, but much past that you don't get anything - and I've never had any luck drawing the computer's ships into minefields and little luck drawing them into range of coastal guns. Also, having played Chin China, Japan, and Austria-Hungary in a couple games and having tried Russia out once: You won't fight nearly as many battles in the Adriatic and Yellow Seas as you might expect except maybe in a war between Austria-Hungary and Italy (and even then those will drop off after you've taken over some colonies), and Russia's Far East commitments make it inadvisable to invest heavily on coastal batteries in Europe while its European commitments make it inadvisable to invest heavily in coastal batteries in the Far East. Coastal batteries cannot move, and even when a battle takes place off the coast of the possession in which the battery was built the battery will often be unable to participate due to its location or due to the computer being reluctant or unwilling to come into the battery's range. |
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Post by theexecuter on Oct 9, 2017 10:17:20 GMT -6
The Austria example is mostly what I was thinking.
In a war with Italy, there is often no room at all to maneuver, especially in the straights of Otranto.
Fleet battles in the Adriatic consist of a sighting and a pursuit phase...because whichever fleet believes itself to be weak will immediately fall back to port. I have almost always been pursued into my own mine fields even with coastal guns present.
The only comparable place for Russia where minefields might be useful is south of Finland and north of Estonia...where the sea is narrow and it is harder to avoid the mines.
Yet, the relative rarity of minefield strikes means it is likely to be a waste of resources.
I do wish we had a better understanding of how coastal guns initiate minefields and the resulting extent of the field. I feel like experimentation os discouraged by the unknown relationships here.
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Post by bramborough on Dec 13, 2017 15:26:14 GMT -6
There's the standard large blue circle ("suspected minefield") always visible around the enemy's port. But then there's the minefields which populate around his shore batteries...those aren't visible. Until struck (or spotted by a close-by ship). Which I have done multiple times, lol (struck, that is, not spotted). And despite their small size, those aren't individual mines. A line-ahead at cruise or higher speed can get all kinds of torn up before the player can react - no matter how quickly and radically one changes course/speed, a ship's turning radius and time to answer the ordered bell are what they are. When I've "found" these minefields (lol, or did they find me?), they've shown up for me as a cross-hatched blue square, slightly larger than the friendly red circles of the player's minefields.
As far as the MS on CP bit. From my observation/interpretation thus far (always open to correction...this is one of those games where much of the innards remain opaque after multiple playthroughs. YMMV.):
a) MS's on ASW/CP duty also perform their mine clearance duties (as one would hope/expect...it's their primary mission, after all). We've all seen CP-assigned "MS XXX cleared minefield in XXX" messages, I'm sure.
b) It doesn't matter what zone the MS's are in for purposes of meeting the overall ASW/CP requirement. BUT...
c) It does matter, however, what zone an MS is in for purposes of mine clearance. I've not seen a "minefield cleared" message for a zone where I hadn't actually placed MS's, whether CP-assigned or not.
Anyhoo, since catching on to that, I've distributed by ASW/CP MS's more or less evenly among all home areas of whatever nation I'm playing (which can be annoying for Russia or pre-1914 USA; they arrive on station with a boatload of asterisks, lol). I've also started attaching a group of 4-6 MS's to accompany a major fleet movement during wartime (which of course requires placing them on AF...another good reason to have many more MS's than needed to cover the minimum ASW/CP requirement).
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