Guerre de Course in-game strategies and tactics

[gornik]

Though I love fleet mega-battles, in the middle of game there is period, when poor countries couldn't afford them even with non-historical budget. When Spain has 2 BB + 2BC, France has 5+6, Britain 8+9 ETC. And there is still nearly no chance for lucky shot from first salvo or silver torpedo from horizon. They blockade me, I can do nearly nothing with it, mutinies happen, revolution come closer. As I personally love to play smaller Powers, Guerre de Course seem to be only decision to win war. So let's speak about its different aspects.

[gornik]

Submarine war in my opinion gives less fun and highest risk among others. Generally I simply click "build 10 SS", click x 10 "U-1234 commissioned", got message "10 subs lost", goto 1. And don't forget that bloody neutral liners! Also you don't have money to build one more shining powerful battleship, don't fight battles etc. So hope that someone else will clear this theme, I have not much experience in it.



Surface raiders.

Firstly - some general thoughts about them. When you send raider at hostile waters with no safe port, you should expect loss of her after any battle or even without it, while in home waters raider, if stay afloat, usually may return home. Raiders tend to generate cruiser engagement and coastal raid battles, though they actually don't appear in them, if there is no "regular" ships in the area (result - "can't combine force"). So in VP flow their activity may be negative, even if successful.

Interesting spotting - * (problems with risk of internment) tends to appear just at war start much more often, than in other time, so if you send raider at station before war, you may lose her without any results just at the beginning. Better keep them at home in peacetime.



Type 1: BC (or heavy CA) - in my opinion, nearly ideal "home waters" raider. Her main duty is to attract raider hunters and then hunt them. Most of raider battles are 1:1 engagement, so your better ship may farm victories and prestige, thus feeding your starving people with good news. However, there are some disadvantages as well. You take one of your best ships out of common activities, so have even smaller chances to win other battles. And there is still chance... Very small chance... That damn dumb captain decide to scuttle lightly damaged ship few miles away from port. Which may mean loss of war, as you usually have only one such ship.



Type 2: Weak CA - may work as previous class, but with much greater caution. Much cheaper price may allow you have pair of them instead of one larger. If such ship has great speed advantage, she may raid enemy possessions for month or two, killing weak, running from strong, trying to fire colony capturing event (Certainly you couldn't take it, but enemy usually send strong force to secure possession, giving your main fleet chance in decisive battle, or even break blockade for some months). Need more experiments to be sure of their reliability.



Type 3: Regular CL - even if I don't expect need for Guerre de Course, I have some long-ranged reliable cruisers. For roleplay in peacetime they are ruler's yachts, and in wartime they are mobilised as cruisers. Their main problem, that out of home station they have only one chance to fight before internment. CA (even weakest) may be lucky enough to survive some battles and sink opponent without notable damage, while CL usually may brought to dockyard with ONE medium shell. So they may only run away, even from weakest enemy. Or run in semi-suicide charge if you need great victory immediately to shut up opposition.



Type 4: Minimal CL - 2100 ton potential grave of her crew. For price of one Type-3 you may build bunch of them. I usually used them as "ship wave", with expected heavy loses and small results. But now I think they are best choice - with addition of 10" rear gun! I lost only 2 of them in combat after 5 full games with very intensive usage. Disadvantage, however, is huge - they give as small fun as subs. Even worse - you need to resolve manually every interception, as their unique performance is mostly usage of tactical AI exploits.



Type 5: AMC - cost of Type-4 with even worse battle performance and disappearing in peacetime - never used them since speed nerf.



How many surface raiders one need to win? I remember wars which were won with 2-3 cruisers, but it took forever to end them. 8xType 4 wiped France after 2,5 years, so 12 is ideal, I think. 1T1/T3 in YOUR home zone 2-3 T4 in Europe, 2 T4 in every enemy home zone, 1 T4 for every sea zone with his possessions, all other in reserve (RF, to prevent their usage in regular battles).



The other question is what is better for raider - long range or reliable engine? I always use both options, so some cruisers don't need replacement for whole war. But it is interesting to decide which is better strategically (Tactically reliability is better - I don't want to face overheating with battlecruiser on tail...)

[aeson]

The only two types of ships I'll consider building specifically for use as raiders are 2100t cruisers and AMCs. The return on investment is too low and the risk is too high for anything heavier to be worth it as a dedicated raider, in my opinion. If I'm going to pursue a guerre de course, I aim to eventually have two cruiser-raiders for every sea zone, and because they're low-value units and a pair of them won't overstrain the peacetime base capacity in sea zones where I lack colonies, I leave them on their war stations almost permanently - they only leave when I can be bothered to bring them in for refits.

When I build cruiser-raiders, I design them to be reasonably fast for when they're laid down, give them an armament of two 7" or 8" and six 4" or 5" guns in unarmored single mounts, and provide the bare minimum armor to make the design a legal CL (1" belt in narrow configuration); if I'm still building new cruiser-raiders by the time it becomes possible, they'll also carry mines and maybe torpedoes, and older cruiser-raiders will be given mine rails if I can do it cheaply on their next refit.  I've occasionally had ships of this type sink intercepting CLs in the 4000-5000t range with gunfire, though they're usually badly damaged if they survive the encounter.

As to how many raiders are actually necessary for a guerre de course to succeed in a timely manner, I don't know. The victory points gained by raiding are marginal, the unrest generated by raiding doesn't have a clear impact on a negotiated peace, and I've never committed to raiding so heavily that I decline most other engagements before building up a significant VP lead, so it's difficult to say how much of an impact raiders have in most wars.

Type 5: AMC - cost of Type-4 with even worse battle performance and disappearing in peacetime - never used them since speed nerf.

Minimum cost for an AMC is ~1.2M/ship, it'll commission in four months, and it can carry mines - or above-water torpedo tubes, not that it'll really help the vessel's combat performance - at any stage of the game. Minimum cost for a 2100t CL is ~3.1M, it'll take 16-22 months to commission depending on your construction time modifiers, and it can't carry mines until c.1908 or torpedoes until c.1914. More realistically, we'd probably be looking at ~2-3M over four months for an AMC and 8-10M over 18 months for a 2100t CL (possibly dropping to as little as ~4-5M if you don't care to use all available tonnage but still want a vaguely-plausible cruiser design). There are definitely reasons to use AMCs as surface raiders - they're the least expensive and quickest to enter service of all potential surface raiders in the game.

The other question is what is better for raider - long range or reliable engine? I always use both options, so some cruisers don't need replacement for whole war. But it is interesting to decide which is better strategically (Tactically reliability is better - I don't want to face overheating with battlecruiser on tail...)

I've never designed a purpose-built raider that had only one or the other, and while I have sometimes used reliable engines + medium range on fleet and colonial cruisers, I can't recall having ever used one of them as a raider. If I had to choose which to sacrifice, I'd be inclined to take reliable engines for raiders intended for sea zones where I have bases and long range for raiders operating elsewhere.

[Airy W]

Sending raiders to target enemy freighters is prohibitively expensive. Sending them to target enemy cruisers has quite the return on investment.

[aeson]

Apr 23, 2018 20:23:12 GMT -6 Airy W said:

Sending raiders to target enemy freighters is prohibitively expensive. Sending them to target enemy cruisers has quite the return on investment.

Heavy raiders operating in sea zones without friendly base capacity have to win fights almost completely undamaged or they stand a high chance of being lost for the duration of the war to internment or permanently to scuttling. Heavy raiders operating in sea zones with friendly base capacity where enemy ships are likely to be present would probably be better employed on active service so that they show up more consistently for regular actions. So no, I don't agree that sending out raiders to target enemy cruisers has a good enough return on investment to be worthwhile.

[Deleted]

Old fleet CLs and AMCs for me.
Tried dedicated raider CLs and discarded the idea for a small reason: they end up in normal battles. It's not the game bugged, but if the raider is damaged say 1 month, next turn it goes back to AF, and before it can be put back on R it's the battle phase. And since the raider CL is on AF, well.
Plus I didn't find them much different on effectiveness vs AMCs. Plus it's a bit of a strain on eyes physically to sort them out each turn among a list of CLs.
It's like some tricky reasons are working against them.

But! I will try them again. Because on the other hand it seems the AI enemy responds to player AMC spam by spamming as well. Since AMC can act as raider intercept it ends up cancelling most raiders' effectivess on both sides.


Then again the most guerre de course thing in game certainly is subs!

[director]

My take on this is a bit different. For a medium BC you can spend $2-3 million per turn for, say, 27-30 months for a rough total of $50 million.
For that you can build hundreds and hundreds of subs. Admittedly they die at a high rate, but once you get the pipeline stocked you can keep up with losses.
Subs won't contribute much to VP score, but losing them doesn't cost anything. And subs can win you a 'Hail Mary' victory by raising enemy unrest and forcing him out.

Now, that's if you devote your budget to subs. On the subject of surface raiders, I like two types, one being BCs and big cruisers, not put on raiding status for killing merchant shipping but for killing enemy warships. They need to be fast enough to get away from something that can kill them, and powerful enough to defeat an opponent of equal-type without taking crippling damage.
The second type I like is AMCs that are small, long-range, reliable-engined, torpedo equipped and cheap. If you can build one or two of those per turn you can apply economic pressure as subs do. Just be aware that the game engine will start killing them off, 1 or 2 per turn, with mines, subs and enemy warships. As with subs, you must keep the pressure on... but even a major power will crumple when you have 8-10 AMCs in their home sea zone. You must not use a raider in an unbased sea-zone unless you are willing to lose victory points for its loss and/or the money its construction cost you.

skwabie - I find that comment very interesting, because I cannot ever remember an AMC-on-AMC engagement. It is true that the AI will build some AMCs in any war.
aeson - I agree except for one point - using cruisers as raiders in your home sea zone works if you use them to sink enemy warships for VP. The VP cost from commerce raiding is just static and white noise, it's the combat wins that count.

The key metric is victory points, of which you get very few from commerce raiding and a great deal from sinking warships. So if you are blockaded, you need to apply economic pressure through subs (which require long-term planning and buildup) and/or by surface raiders. But the point of surface raiders is to bring enemy surface ships to battle and sink them, earning more VPs than you lose from being blockaded.


I've tried this, and I can tell you that a massive sub fleet will bring anyone (even Britain) to make peace, as will flocks of AMCs. In my current game as the US, I've built not a single sub. I'm accepting blockade on the East Coast from the Royal Navy but out-pointing them with cruiser and BC actions on the East Coast, Caribbean and West African sea zones: I'm ahead about 8000-to-1000 in VPs as a result of three or four good wins.

[Deleted]

^Oh I got lots. Battle phase AMC vs AMC duels, and 2D phase "patrolling AMC thwarts xxxx attack on merchant shipping" events.

In USA and Japan game since there is no good blockade option I started AMC spamming. 16 to 20 of them. The AI then responded in kind and built a similar number. My AMC raiding had a short period success since the AI needs time to catch up. But eventually merchant raiding becomes scarce as everybody thwarts everybody.
The AI seems pretty smart in this!...

For now I'm going back to dedicated raiding CLs.

[dorn]

Nice discussion. I will put another point of the view. And it is: costs.

Weak BC: 50-70M 
Weak AC: 30-40 M
Large CL (FCL): 25-35 M 
Small CL (RCL): around 8-9 M 
Submarine (medium range): 3.6 M 
AC: I do not use them as I do not like scrapping them after end of the war so somebody can tell.

So if you compare average you can get (with some rounding):

1 BC : 2 CA : 2.5 FCL : 7 RCL : 16 SUB

In case of maintenance costs subs are only half efficient relating to the building costs so we sill use average of half and full amount as 3/4:

1 BC : 2 CA : 2.5 FCL : 7 RCL : 12 SUB


As raiders you do not expect to loose heavy ships like BC or CA or FCL which there is really small chance of that. However you will probably loose some of RCL and subs on regular basis. 

Subs: So fleet of 48 subs will do quite damage to merchant shipping with losses 1-3 subs per months (gross estimate), so the costs of this is 7 M per month but you can force collapse quite quickly with such a fleet.
BC: For same amount of money you can have 4 BC as raiders. You can do damage mainly to sinking interceptors but 4 raiders will not be as efficent.
CA: Quite similar to BC, however if you met BC you can loose quite large ship. One ship per war mean 30-40 M which is less than expected losses from submarines however 8 raiders are still not so much
FCL: Just only 10 FCL instead of 8 CA. It depends on their quality if they can run from heavier interceptor. Either way they can be good for sinking cruisers that try to intercept them, however they are still not effective as raiders
RCL: 28 specialized raiders. It is quite a number which I do not have used yet. It is difficult to estimate what they can accomplish. Even if you loose 5 of them, 40 M is similar to 1 loss CA and they will do better job as raiders.



So it is clearly seen as submarines are effective, however cost of submarine warfare is not completely small. Cheap small cruisers could be quite effective too but it is needed to try to build that large number of riders and compare them to submarines. There are 2 possible designs - fast lightly armored that can run from anything or slow, heavily armored on not important colonies which can take any large CL but could not run from anything.
Raiding through large CL could be interesting but not to achieve raiding success but to sent enemy cruisers to the bottom of the sea.

Raiding through CA and BC seems waste of money. But it could have some reason if you have some old ones not used for other duties.

[oldpop2000]

Well, my preference for Guerre De Course is submarines; Coastal and medium range. They are stealthy and have the firepower to sink ships efficiently. In one war, I lost 23 submarines but sank over 60 enemy ships. That to me is a good return on investment.  They are also much cheaper and faster to build. 

[gornik]

Nice point, dorn  I've just tried to look at my ships from your point of view: 

Minimal Type 5 (21-knot, 1800t, 4X4", M): 2.5 - 2.3 mln, better one (2600t, 6x6") 5.5 - 4.5 mln.
Intercepts survived - 1/4 in early 1900-th, ?? (expect nearly 0) after 1920.
Battles won - around 10 in all time I play (AMC vs AMC/MS or lucky magasine hit).
Stay reliable - till fist peacetime.

Type 4 with 5" : 7,2 - 8,0 mln.
Intercepts survived - from 1/2 to 9/10 (depends greatly from enemy designs and time period).
Battles won - 1/2 (usually - with MS or 4" cruisers) 
Type 4 with rear 10": 7,7 -  8,5 mln.
Intercepts survived - 99/100.
Battles won - 1/2 (MS/AMC shooting practice - win, BC with good director - loss).
Curious fact: any ship smaller than BC prefers to stay at the edge of 10" radius till ammo ends, even early BC have respect to it, that is explanation of their success. 
Both types stay reliable for nearly 10 years, then should be replaced with faster ships.

Type 3 (7900t, long range, 12x6"): 32,5 - 30,9 mln.
Intercepts survived - 4/5 (I'm too aggressive with them sometimes).
Battles won - more than 1/2 (these unprotected uptakes spoiled MANY battles for both me and opponents...).
Ships built after turbines and modern CL configuration stay reliable at least till 1930, older ships may be in use at colonial areas.

Type 2 - still mostly theoretical, I'll try to build weak-but-armoured cruisers next game, though don't expect too much from them.
Expected cost - 40+ - 55+ mln, and they will become obsolete MUCH faster than any other type.

Type 1 - 60 mln - ∞ (140 mln? It was price of captured USA long-ranged BC), let, say 100 mln.
Intercepts survived - nearly 100%, but when they lose, that is always great hit at both fleet strength and national morale
battles won - tons of them, in last game one legacy armoured cruiser survived 4 wars without inner modernisation, sunk more than 10 faster opponents and was sunk herself only with 16" shells in 1929.
Curious facts - such ships seem to have best "thwart resistance", also one of my second-generation CA survived 41 5" & 6" hits without notable damage.

Costs - at 1900 and 1930
Intercepts survived - means evading with minimal shooting
Battles - both forced and voluntary
"Win" means both sinking enemy and running from slowed opponent with light damage.
All numbers except cost are greatly approximate, of course.

in comparison: 
SSC 1,6M
SS 3,6M
SSM 4,5M

So, let's count:
T1=(1,5-2xT2)=3xT3=12xT4=...40xT5 4"  =20xT5 6"=22xSSM=28xSS=62xSSC

Wow, maybe I underestimate weak AMC and subs - such horde will break any sea trade...

But, there are some other factors.
My personal feelings: I hate to send ships and their crews to certain death without any chance to survive. While both AMC and SS are "built to sunk" ships. I will lose all of them. And build new to lose them again. Realistic, but painful.
Also:
T3-T1 ships are not in fact raider-only ships, they are "warships with raider ability", so they may be used in many different situations outside raiding... hmm... Next time I'll try to implement "raider conversion possibility" to first BC or last pre-BC class. Long range or reliable engines may lengthen their service till end of game - they would be still able to hunt and kill most opponents in colonial zones while their scuttling would be only "delayed scraping" - fortunately (and weirdly) we don't lose prestige and VP from event loses.



And question for sub users - how much is monthly kill/death rate for submarines? It is interesting, how many SS should we expect to sacrifice before winning the war (As statistics of my games says, 120-150 sunk merchants is usually enough for revolution)

[oldpop2000]

Apr 24, 2018 17:45:32 GMT -6 gornik said:

Nice point, dorn  I've just tried to look at my ships from your point of view: 

Minimal Type 5 (21-knot, 1800t, 4X4", M): 2.5 - 2.3 mln, better one (2600t, 6x6") 5.5 - 4.5 mln.
Intercepts survived - 1/4 in early 1900-th, ?? (expect nearly 0) after 1920.
Battles won - around 10 in all time I play (AMC vs AMC/MS or lucky magasine hit).
Stay reliable - till fist peacetime.

Type 4 with 5" : 7,2 - 8,0 mln.
Intercepts survived - from 1/2 to 9/10 (depends greatly from enemy designs and time period).
Battles won - 1/2 (usually - with MS or 4" cruisers) 
Type 4 with rear 10": 7,7 -  8,5 mln.
Intercepts survived - 99/100.
Battles won - 1/2 (MS/AMC shooting practice - win, BC with good director - loss).
Curious fact: any ship smaller than BC prefers to stay at the edge of 10" radius till ammo ends, even early BC have respect to it, that is explanation of their success. 
Both types stay reliable for nearly 10 years, then should be replaced with faster ships.

Type 3 (7900t, long range, 12x6"): 32,5 - 30,9 mln.
Intercepts survived - 4/5 (I'm too aggressive with them sometimes).
Battles won - more than 1/2 (these unprotected uptakes spoiled MANY battles for both me and opponents...).
Ships built after turbines and modern CL configuration stay reliable at least till 1930, older ships may be in use at colonial areas.

Type 2 - still mostly theoretical, I'll try to build weak-but-armoured cruisers next game, though don't expect too much from them.
Expected cost - 40+ - 55+ mln, and they will become obsolete MUCH faster than any other type.

Type 1 - 60 mln - ∞ (140 mln? It was price of captured USA long-ranged BC), let, say 100 mln.
Intercepts survived - nearly 100%, but when they lose, that is always great hit at both fleet strength and national morale
battles won - tons of them, in last game one legacy armoured cruiser survived 4 wars without inner modernisation, sunk more than 10 faster opponents and was sunk herself only with 16" shells in 1929.
Curious facts - such ships seem to have best "thwart resistance", also one of my second-generation CA survived 41 5" & 6" hits without notable damage.

Costs - at 1900 and 1930
Intercepts survived - means evading with minimal shooting
Battles - both forced and voluntary
"Win" means both sinking enemy and running from slowed opponent with light damage.
All numbers except cost are greatly approximate, of course.

in comparison: 
SSC 1,6M
SS 3,6M
SSM 4,5M

So, let's count:
T1=(1,5-2xT2)=3xT3=12xT4=...40xT5 4"  =20xT5 6"=22xSSM=28xSS=62xSSC

Wow, maybe I underestimate weak AMC and subs - such horde will break any sea trade...

But, there are some other factors.
My personal feelings: I hate to send ships and their crews to certain death without any chance to survive. While both AMC and SS are "built to sunk" ships. I will lose all of them. And build new to lose them again. Realistic, but painful.
Also:
T3-T1 ships are not in fact raider-only ships, they are "warships with raider ability", so they may be used in many different situations outside raiding... hmm... Next time I'll try to implement "raider conversion possibility" to first BC or last pre-BC class. Long range or reliable engines may lengthen their service till end of game - they would be still able to hunt and kill most opponents in colonial zones while their scuttling would be only "delayed scraping" - fortunately (and weirdly) we don't lose prestige and VP from event loses.



And question for sub users - how much is monthly kill/death rate for submarines? It is interesting, how many SS should we expect to sacrifice before winning the war (As statistics of my games says, 120-150 sunk merchants is usually enough for revolution)

I can't speak for the rest but submarines are just one tool in toolbox. I use it along with my surface ships to execute my strategy. It is very important and useful, sometimes it does win wars, but I don't count on it. 

[aeson]

And question for sub users - how much is monthly kill/death rate for submarines?

The entire submarine force will collectively sink 0 to 5 merchants every month if the enemy is not blockaded, and normally 0 per month when the enemy is blockaded. I expect to lose on average around 5-10% of my submarine force per month to do that; 0 to 5* will be lost each turn to unreported causes in the pop-up that tells you how many merchants your submarines sunk (actual number is random, but appears to be at least in part proportional to the number of submarines you have in service), and a few more may be lost while supporting an operation by surface combatants or in gunnery duels with ASW/CP craft.

*I'm not sure if this is the actual maximum or not; it's simply the most submarines that I can recall losing in a single turn on that pop-up.

The key metric is victory points, of which you get very few from commerce raiding and a great deal from sinking warships. So if you are blockaded, you need to apply economic pressure through subs (which require long-term planning and buildup) and/or by surface raiders. But the point of surface raiders is to bring enemy surface ships to battle and sink them, earning more VPs than you lose from being blockaded.

I don't agree. The key metric when pursuing a commerce raiding strategy, even with surface combatants, is unrest generation, not victory points. If you want victory points, raider interceptions are no better than standard cruiser engagements, and are arguably worse since you cannot choose to decline the engagement and since if it's your raider that's being intercepted you're guaranteed to have only one ship whereas your opponent might have two comparable vessels.

[oldpop2000]

Apr 24, 2018 18:29:03 GMT -6 aeson said:

.....

The key metric is victory points, of which you get very few from commerce raiding and a great deal from sinking warships. So if you are blockaded, you need to apply economic pressure through subs (which require long-term planning and buildup) and/or by surface raiders. But the point of surface raiders is to bring enemy surface ships to battle and sink them, earning more VPs than you lose from being blockaded.

I don't agree. The key metric when pursuing a commerce raiding strategy, even with surface combatants, is unrest generation, not victory points. If you want victory points, raider interceptions are no better than standard cruiser engagements, and are arguably worse since you cannot choose to decline the engagement and since if it's your raider that's being intercepted you're guaranteed to have only one ship whereas your opponent might have two comparable vessels.

I agree with you that the key metric is not victory points but unrest and economic privation. The job of the submarine is a war of attrition. To sap the lifeblood of the opponents merchant marine and sink any naval vessel that comes to its aid. It requires patience to conduct such a campaign but as  I have already stated, it is one tool in the tool box. 

[dorn]

Yes, submarines are perfect when you cannot blockade enemy. As your force is large enough you can blockade enemy submarine force is waste. In case you have it they should attack enemy warship not commerce.

Do you have experience how effective are submarines sinking warships?