Campaign Feedback

[dickturpin]

Overview

I have just completed the RJW campaign playing as the Russians and would provide feedback on how I found the game.

I found the game fun to play and won with circa 500k points at the end point. Port Arthur fell on the very last turn (with 3 B and 2 DD scuttled in the harbour).
Losses for the Russians were 4 B, 1 CA, 3 CL, 15DD. For the Japanese 3 CA, 8 CL, 8 DD, 3 AMC and 113 Transports and Merchants.

I sortied with the main battle fleet on 7 occasions (including one foray to cover the arrival of OSLYABLYA, once to evacuate Port Arthur and once to cover the arrival of the second and third Pacific Squadrons). There were 3 clashes between the battlefleets but these were little more than skirmishes.

In the most significant clash, I was covering OSLYABLYA and her consorts that had just arrived from the Red Sea. I had 6 B (excluding OSLYABLYA as her force was low on fuel and took no part) against 6B of the Japanese. I had already had some success against Japanese cruisers when I encountered their main body. I had an advantageous position with respect to smoke interference and established superiority in gunnery. The Japanese started to draw away and I tried to concentrate my forces against the FUJI which was isolated. She however had the better position and landed a number of unanswered blows, most noticeably on PETROPAVLOVSK. With fuel running low in the light forces and some distance between the main bodies (and the gunnery of FUJI) to consider, I also pulled away and headed to port. A minor victory was however turned on its head when PETROPAVLOVSK struck a mine and sank. Losses in this battle were DMITRI DONSKOI (demonstrating the suspect logic of having a scout that can be outrun by the enemy battle line), FUSO (demonstrating that the AI can show the same degree of ineptitude as this player, for the same reason) and SAI YEN

In the second most significant clash, I was outnumbered and outshot by the Japanese as I covered the retreat of TSESSAREVITCH which had hit a mine. Losses were 3 Russian DD (1 to a mine) and NISSHIN which sank after crossing a minefield.

The decisive element of the campaign was commerce raiding which (after some early experimentation) was carried out by cruisers (usually but not always of the light variety) operating individually. I did lose 3 LC in undertaking commerce raiding but these losses occurred due to a failure to keep to the mission of finding and sinking merchants and instead getting involved in trying to sink enemy warships (or AMC) instead.

Mines played a significant part in the campaign and accounted for PETROPAVLOVSK and ultimately TSESSAREVITCH; the later due to her being badly damaged and the amount of time required to repair her. A DD was also lost to mining. On the Japanese side, NISSHIN was the most notable loss to mines (this was rather frustrating as the Japanese fleet crossed my minefields on 5 occasions in tactical battles) together with 4 LC and 1 DD.

Torpedoes were somewhat less of a factor but PERESVYET was badly damaged by a torpedo and scuttled at Port Arthur due to insufficient resource to repair her. BOGATYR was sunk by torpedo whilst commerce raiding. In both instances, this was a result of getting too close to a crippled adversary. The Japanese lost 1 DD to a torpedo.

The most valuable surface warship sunk at sea by gunfire was KASUGA but this was countered by her torpedo hitting PERESVYET.

[dickturpin]

Comments and Conclusions

To a large extent, wargames will inevitably be “what ifs” as they are games of chance and probability; the player will then react to the actual events which will inevitably diverge from historical events due to the element of chance. Playing as the Russian, you have the benefit of hindsight and are likely to try to use their fleets in a decisive way. This is not necessarily un-historic as bad luck including the loss of commanders, Makaroff in particular, probably contributed to the way in which the navy was used. In any event, players will not want to purchase a naval wargame then leave the fighting to the Generals!

When considering the Russian navy, what strikes me is the very high proportion of battleships constructed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century when compared to the other major naval powers. This tends to suggest that use of the battlefleet was seen as the preferred doctrine as opposed to commerce raiding. Similarly, the nature of guns and shells tend to suggest that they were thinking in terms of a short range (and thus decisive) engagement. I think the respective benefits and problems with the Russian designs are well covered within S&I RJW. However, a combination of restricted OP, limited repair and reduced chance of an encounter (due to the size of the campaign map compared to the North Sea or Baltic) means that the chances of a decisive fleet battle are low. It has been discussed elsewhere that the OP restrictions are not necessarily a reflection of resource and actually reflect a variety of factors such as inertia in the high command. However, would such inertia have been as significant if Makaroff had survived?

Moving on to commerce raiding, a number of posts have explained the military wisdom of such a course of action. However, would a fleet commander realistically sanction the detachment of his meagre cruiser force for commerce raiding and thus leave himself with insufficient resource to operate the fleet effectively? Furthermore, would the Admiral want to unleash his cruiser captains to earn the glory and prestige whilst sitting in port himself? The OP limitations appear to drive the campaign in one particular direction and I am not totally convinced that this is the most likely one.

Nonetheless, playing the RJW from the Russian perspective is a great gaming experience and has a totally different feel to the WW1 campaigns. However, the replay value is probably a bit limited as the playing difficulties lay in learning the best tactics and strategies. Early in my campaign, VP’s were fairly even (and more importantly, the campaign felt as though it was in the balance). Later, I was able to rack up VP’s and suffer minimal losses even following the upgrade which increased Japanese VP accumulation.

[neospapa]

Turpin, my congratualtions on a brilliant victory!

I am not sure if you noticed my similar campaign for which I completed an AAR for? If so, you'll notice I failed miserably. May I ask what settings this campaign was run on? Also, how did you manage to find and sink all those merchants?

In my game I sank but a handful of merchants. I agree with you that the mines do hurt and the game does feel very balanced.

Once again, congrats on accomlishing what I did not.

[randomizer]

Thanks for the balanced and well presented comments and perspectives.

It is unfortunate that you find little replay potential but the entire situation tends to limit strategic options.  May I suggest trying to win as Russia without an implementing an extensive guerre de course strategy?

The death of Admiral Makarov is usually presented as the Great What If for the Tsar's navy in the war and perhaps that is accurate.  I rather think that it may not be the case for although he was vastly energetic and aggressive compared to those he replaced, there is no evidence that he believed in a guerre de course strategy for Russia and so his strategic and tactical visions probably lay elsewhere.  Certainly modern Russian historian Constantine Pleshakov does not seem to think that he would have saved the situation in the Far East even had he lived.  Given his scientific bent and icebreaker speciality there does not seem to be any indication that he viewed the Navy outside of the conventional battleship-oriented coast defence role with perhaps a bit more emphasis on mines and submarines than some of his peers: essentially a very conventional outlook for the era.  In any event, every Russian Player can be a Makarov (whatever that might mean) if they wish.  It would be unfair to minimize the admiral's potential and at least some the reforms that he imposed on the Port Arthur naval establishment survived his death and he was able to get the fleet to sea in about three-hours where it had taken more than ten under the Stark regime.  This alone was a worthy accomplishment but he does not appear to have passed one what he expected the ships to actually accomplish once they had sortied other than perhaps trying to catch an inferior Japanese force.  Certainly he never dispatched any of his serviceable fast cruisers to raid Japanese shipping in the Yellow Sea during his brief command tenure.

In the game the Player can put together an effective guerre de course campaign as all of the assets were in place and indeed the Vladivostok squadron under a variety of commanders did very well from February through July 1904.  The big armoured cruisers Gromoboi, Rossyia and Rurik were designed precisely for that role but the intended enemy was Britain and not Japan and the Navy does not appear to have prepared doctrinally to wage this very specialized type of warfare.  The Player does not have this problem.

Like other Great Powers the Russian government subsidized shipping companies so that their ships could be absorbed into the Navy as auxiliary cruisers in time of war but the Volunteer Fleet ships so equipped did not contribute effectively to the war effort in any significant way.  Attempts to conduct guerre de course in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans principally served to antagonize neutrals while the total lack of supporting infrastructure and bases meant that the raiders' times on station was minimal.  All of this is outside the scope of SAI however.

Amongst the intangibles that OP represent is freedom of action allowed by superiors.  Vice-Admiral Makarov's appointment to command in the Pacific was not greeted with universal joy throughout the Russian naval establishment so chances are that any successes may have increased the acrimony already in segments of the Admiralty and Higher Naval Board.  There appears to have been bad-blood between him and Viceroy Alexiev, his direct superior in theatre as well.  Certainly the history of late Tsarist Russia is full of senior officers, politicians and princes placing their personal interests and petty hatreds above the interests of the State.  Again this lies outside the scope of the game and the OP restrictions to limit the Russian options are probably sound in overall availability.

I think that you have done the Community a service posting your Overview, Comments and Conclusions; thank you again.

[dickturpin]

Jan 22, 2014 15:25:15 GMT -6 neospapa said:

Turpin, my congratualtions on a brilliant victory!

I am not sure if you noticed my similar campaign for which I completed an AAR for? If so, you'll notice I failed miserably. May I ask what settings this campaign was run on? Also, how did you manage to find and sink all those merchants?

In my game I sank but a handful of merchants. I agree with you that the mines do hurt and the game does feel very balanced.

Once again, congrats on accomlishing what I did not.

Thanks neospapa.

I have read your post on the AAR and look forward to reading your reports.

I ran the game on standard difficulty and two week turns; I was part way through the campaign when Randomizer suggested one week turns on hard.

I found the Korea Straight East of Fusan the best area for hunting merchants as you find a fair few 6,000 tonne transports in this area. I will try and attach a few screenshots (my IT "skills" are a bit suspect so apologies in advance). If you are not finding any, then it may be worth having a look at the screen on completion of a scenario just to make sure that they are working properly (the guys at NWS have always been brilliant when I have encountered little glitches in the game).

Hope you have time to fit in another go at the Russians and happy hunting

Attachment Deleted.Attachment DeletedAttachment Deleted

[dickturpin]

Jan 22, 2014 17:45:42 GMT -6 randomizer said:

It is unfortunate that you find little replay potential but the entire situation tends to limit strategic options.  May I suggest trying to win as Russia without an implementing an extensive guerre de course strategy?

Due to my experiences in playing WW1, I did start the game looking to force a fleet battle and launching raids with cruiser squadrons. I developed the guerre de course strategy as I was running low on OP and had most of my ships awaiting repairs.

I could possibly have used the destroyers more.

In any event, the game overall has a massive amount of content and I have barely scratched the surface yet.

I would like to thank you and Fredrik for your efforts in developing the game and in my opinion, the really important thing is that the RJW game is different to WW1 and forces the players to develop new tactics and strategies. It would have been the easy option to cash in on your earlier work rather than push the boundaries in new and interesting directions.

[fredsanford]

Perhaps some additional VP deals, such as one time OP awards options? i.e. "For 50k victory points, you've influenced the Tsar to approve a major fleet operation. Gain 200 OP".

[alex]

Just finished Russian campaing with great defeat I use 4-weeks turns with some house rules (limitation for laying mines, training and using radio). So, Japanese fleet in Port-Arthur area operate more stronger now. Togo's battleships several times intercepted Russian fleet and won the battles. It was interesting. And where was mister Kamimura at the same time? My Vladivostok squadron operate in the Tsushima Strait like at own house. I never saw Kamimura's cruisers during all the game.

[Fredrik W]

Feb 23, 2014 4:59:44 GMT -6 alex said:

Just finished Russian campaing with great defeat I use 4-weeks turns with some house rules (limitation for laying mines, training and using radio). So, Japanese fleet in Port-Arthur area operate more stronger now. Togo's battleships several times intercepted Russian fleet and won the battles. It was interesting. And where was mister Kamimura at the same time? My Vladivostok squadron operate in the Tsushima Strait like at own house. I never saw Kamimura's cruisers during all the game.

Glad to hear that you like the new enhancements.

As for Kamimura, I think that is a matter of luck. I have had my Vladivostok squadron jumped by superior Japanese forces on several occasions when testing, so I know they can strike hard.