I am probably super crazy but here is my very first design!

[pashahlis]

I got the game a week ago. Have been doing research on tips and tricks, tutorials, etc beforehand already. Now I think I am ready for my first game. I started as Austria because I like playing underdogs. And I especially love playing nations that never had a big navy and then doing exactly that with them! Anyways, here is my first very own B design, the Franz Joseph I class!

All those secondary and tertiary high caliber guns are probably way overboard but my doctrine is going to be fewer but stronger ships. Also I often see people with very high armor on their legacy ships but I instead choose to go for only 7 inch belt, turrets and conning tower and 2 inch everything else as that, accourding to the gun data, will protect against everything up to 12 inch guns as well as protect against splinters.

I just started my first game and yet cannot wait for Rule the Waves 2! I am so excited for it because with aircraft involved you have so many more design choices and then there are even more, non-aircraft related, things that add even more options! I will definitely play Germany and build a surface raider heavy fleet with few very strong surface raiders like the Deutschland-Class!

Okay but enough talk now, here is the ship:

[aeson]

Jul 1, 2018 11:45:41 GMT -6 pashahlis said:

Also I often see people with very high armor on their legacy ships but I instead choose to go for only 7 inch belt, turrets and conning tower and 2 inch everything else as that, accourding to the gun data, will protect against everything up to 12 inch guns as well as protect against splinters.

The reason why we tend to go with high armor on legacy ships is that armor penetration will probably improve significantly over the course of a legacy ship's service life, due to improvements in powder and shell design and due to better and heavier guns entering service. You're probably going to keep that battleship in service for at least ten years. For how many of those ten or more years of service will you consider its armor satisfactory?

That said, it's not a bad first design - it'll at least be competitive with most of its contemporaries in the other powers' navies, and that's all you really need. I'd be a bit worried about the potential for flash fires in the secondary battery, and all things considered I personally would probably prefer a 6"/Q0 to a 7"/Q-, but as long as it doesn't blow up its many 6" and 7" guns should make it reasonably effective against battleships and cruisers.

[pashahlis]

Jul 1, 2018 12:27:19 GMT -6 aeson said:

Jul 1, 2018 11:45:41 GMT -6 pashahlis said:

Also I often see people with very high armor on their legacy ships but I instead choose to go for only 7 inch belt, turrets and conning tower and 2 inch everything else as that, accourding to the gun data, will protect against everything up to 12 inch guns as well as protect against splinters.

The reason why we tend to go with high armor on legacy ships is that armor penetration will probably improve significantly over the course of a legacy ship's service life, due to improvements in powder and shell design and due to better and heavier guns entering service. You're probably going to keep that battleship in service for at least ten years. For how many of those ten or more years of service will you consider its armor satisfactory?

That said, it's not a bad first design - it'll at least be competitive with most of its contemporaries in the other powers' navies, and that's all you really need. I'd be a bit worried about the potential for flash fires in the secondary battery, and all things considered I personally would probably prefer a 6"/Q0 to a 7"/Q-, but as long as it doesn't blow up its many 6" and 7" guns should make it reasonably effective against battleships and cruisers.

What's a flash fire? Also right. I did not think about that. I guess this armor will become inadequate quite fast. I should have improved the armor instead of going back to normal freeboard and normal crew accomendations. Maybe 42 7 and 6 inch guns is also absolutely overpowered but I just want to see the enemy getting absolutely hammered

[JagdFlanker]

nice! A-H is my favorite nation to play - you start off low on the totem pole but if you win wars your economy can quickly skyrocket to 3rd behind USA/UK (even in historical budgets)


some random tips:

early game you should be able to get away with 1" decks since the battles are more close-in broadsides, especially when you don't have a lot of tonnage to work with

that being said, it's good to have a beefy BE since you want to be able to absorb some broadside punishment, plus it acts like torpedo protection and greatly increases the chance of surviving 1-2 torp hits. i personally make my BE (half+1) of the belt armour

the ai's capital ships usually go 19kts - your B only going 16kts means you can't run away if you get in trouble,
which might happen more often than not when you have the smallest navy of everybody. sometimes this game throws you into an unfair fight, and if you have the speed advantage you can decide if you want to engage the enemy or head back to port intact. B's can be built to run up to 22kts, early game CA/CL 24/25kts

that said, if you do decide to go the slower ship route make sure you build 5-10 DDs per capital ship - they are guard dogs and will chase the enemy away from your capital ships, although admittedly sometimes much less so early game

this is a little risky, but since A-H's dock size is so small i don't build B's in the manual legacy fleet build, i wait until the first dock expansion is done after the first year (and i play on historical so it gets TIGHT lol). to partially compensate consider building some "superheavy" cruisers in your legacy fleet build - up to 24kts, 6"/5" belt, 0" (or 1") deck, 10" guns, 12+ 6" secondaries (i do 18-24 secondaries myself). although expensive you can 2-on-1 enemy B's with it and come out on top - but as soon as you see BCs on the enemy roster their time is almost up and they'l soon have to be regulated to backwaters or scrapped


and speaking of scrapping, don't be afraid to scrap ships once they hit 10 years in the fleet - old ships cost a LOT to maintain and that takes away from building new ships. tech goes so fast in this game ships are pretty much obsolete after 10 years - when you are a small country you want a smaller advanced navy to chip away at bigger navies, not a pile of old slow target barges

have fun!

[pashahlis]

Jul 1, 2018 13:35:18 GMT -6 JagdFlanker said:

nice! A-H is my favorite nation to play - you start off low on the totem pole but if you win wars your economy can quickly skyrocket to 3rd behind USA/UK (even in historical budgets)


some random tips:

early game you should be able to get away with 1" decks since the battles are more close-in broadsides, especially when you don't have a lot of tonnage to work with

that being said, it's good to have a beefy BE since you want to be able to absorb some broadside punishment, plus it acts like torpedo protection and greatly increases the chance of surviving 1-2 torp hits. i personally make my BE (half+1) of the belt armour

the ai's capital ships usually go 19kts - your B only going 16kts means you can't run away if you get in trouble,
which might happen more often than not when you have the smallest navy of everybody. sometimes this game throws you into an unfair fight, and if you have the speed advantage you can decide if you want to engage the enemy or head back to port intact. B's can be built to run up to 22kts, early game CA/CL 24/25kts

that said, if you do decide to go the slower ship route make sure you build 5-10 DDs per capital ship - they are guard dogs and will chase the enemy away from your capital ships, although admittedly sometimes much less so early game

this is a little risky, but since A-H's dock size is so small i don't build B's in the manual legacy fleet build, i wait until the first dock expansion is done after the first year (and i play on historical so it gets TIGHT lol). to partially compensate consider building some "superheavy" cruisers in your legacy fleet build - up to 24kts, 6"/5" belt, 0" (or 1") deck, 10" guns, 12+ 6" secondaries (i do 18-24 secondaries myself). although expensive you can 2-on-1 enemy B's with it and come out on top - but as soon as you see BCs on the enemy roster their time is almost up and they'l soon have to be regulated to backwaters or scrapped


and speaking of scrapping, don't be afraid to scrap ships once they hit 10 years in the fleet - old ships cost a LOT to maintain and that takes away from building new ships. tech goes so fast in this game ships are pretty much obsolete after 10 years - when you are a small country you want a smaller advanced navy to chip away at bigger navies, not a pile of old slow target barges

have fun!Thanks! I did everything min. 2 inches because I don't want splinter damage.

[aeson]

Jul 1, 2018 12:58:24 GMT -6 pashahlis said:

What's a flash fire?

It's a sudden, intense fire of typically short duration caused when a mixture of fuel and air ignites. Within the game, any flash fire reported presumably reaches a magazine and detonates it, as flash fires always* result in the destruction of the ship upon which they occur. Flash fires can occur whenever a main battery or 7" or heavier secondary battery turret or casemate is penetrated by a shell, so armoring main battery and heavy secondary battery turrets sufficiently to exclude shells of the calibers likely to hit them is generally regarded as important, though as the lighter guns are generally less likely to suffer flash fires you can usually get away with skimping on their armor protection to some degree.

*Possibly there's a small chance of the ship surviving as someone reported a ship surviving a magazine explosion not too long ago, but I've never seen a ship survive a flash fire and I don't recall seeing anyone report a ship surviving a flash fire.

[rockmedic109]

I go with a 9" base armor scheme {9" Belt, CT, Turrets}. I believe less than that leaves you just too vulnerable. The Brits might be able to do so and spam so many that nobody is willing to fight them but I don't think that works and might make the game less than fun if it succeeds. I also go with 4" BE, making it invulnerable to a DD getting a shot at a weak spot causing flooding {and forcing your entire battleline to slow down}.

I like {and use} the idea on cramming as many secondaries and tertiaries as possible, but I go with 5" tertiaries instead of 6". Faster firing and they kill DDs very well.

16 knots is a bit slow. But trying to fit all you want on 13000 tons is difficult.

[pashahlis]

I have finished my other designs. They are probably very crappy and I think I bought too many DDs and too few CLs and CAs but here we go:

This is my destroyer class. It is called "Jäger" which means Hunter in german. It is designed to mainly screen the fleet. Pretty standard design as far as I an say.

Next up is my light cruiser design, the Wien class. It is designed to screen the main battle fleet and not go on raiding duties, hence the short range.

And last but not least we got the Kaiser class CAs. Those are designed for long range raiding duty and as I am stripped for funds I opted for a heavy main battery of 10 inch so that I am able to outgun anything cruiser and smaller so that my very few CAs can raid without issue.

However, I have built too many DDs. Right now my legacy fleet consists of 2 Kaiser Franz Joseph I class Bs, 20 Jäger class DDs, only 2 Wien class CLs and only one Kaiser class CA.

Oh well, this is going to be bad...

[pashahlis]

Also, are those settings for the gunnery and training good?

[pashahlis]

Sorry that I am spamming so much but I just wanna make sure I am doing this right. Are those preferences good?

Attachments:

[cv10]

Jul 1, 2018 15:51:22 GMT -6 pashahlis said:

Also, are those settings for the gunnery and training good?

    Your training settings are good. Training choices are very subjective, and each player has their own preferences, so a lot of learning the game is actually figuring out what you like and what fits in with your style of play.

Gunnery Training is pretty important in the early years of bad fire control, as your hit chances will be really bad, and anything that gets your hit chance up is good. Later on, it's still good, as the accuracy bonus can mean more hits at much longer range.

Torpedo training is less important in the early years, as torpedos are terribly short-ranged, and will almost always be fired as the coup-de-grace on an already battered ship. Later on when torpedoes are better, I recommend picking it. Anything that gets you holes in the enemy's hulls is good.

Nightfighting is one I generally don't touch, but then again, I'm not all that fond of night actions. If you're going to get into them a lot, than it might not hurt, but I prefer gunnery and torpedos.

    As far as your ammo selections go: early AP-shells are not good, and you might be better off trying to set enemy battleships on fire using HE shells until the penetration for AP shells goes up (the gun data in the shipbuilding screen is really useful in making this determination). I'd switch your ammo choices from AP to HE when firing at light cruisers: CLs don't have much armor and AP shells from big guns can pass through them without exploding. 

[bcoopactual]

pashahlis , welcome to the forum.

Don't worry if some of these designs don't work out, the entire point of the game is to try different line-ups and strategies to see what you can make work and what doesn't.  

If you find you want to start over to make tweaks to the designs it's easier to do if you copy the ship files out of the GameSave folder (the game erases all files in the specific GameSave folder when a new game is created) and then you can copy the files back in when you go to create your fleets.  That way you don't have to start over from scratch if you like your general superstructure setups and whatnot.  

For your early game fights with those battleships, if you haven't already, I would recommend switching your ammo doctrine to HE rounds and increasing the percentage of HE rounds carried. [Edit - Sorry for the redundancy, I got ninja'd by cv10 while I was writing this.]  

Armor penetration sucks in the beginning of the game and most AI battleships will have enough main belt armor to defeat your shells.  But by using HE rounds, especially with your secondary and tertiary guns you have a higher probability of creating fires and you can sink ships with fire as well as by putting holes in them and filling them up with water.  The in-game mechanism is ships have two kinds of hit points, structure and flooding.  Losing all of its points in either area will cause the ship to be lost.  Fires are a good way to take out structure points because fires continue to cause structure damage each turn until the crew can put them out.  And damage control techs are also not good in the early game. 


It's an interesting fleet with some different takes on what I normally do.  Feel free to keep notes on their performance and update this thread with what you liked and didn't like about them.  Other new players would be able to benefit from your experience and I might try some new things as well like the death blossom lineup of torpedo launchers on your pre-dreadnought. 

I don't want to influence your experience with preconceived notions too much more.  All I'll add is you might find 150 rounds per gun to be too few for your CL and DD.  Ships in this game chew through ammo quickly and trying to match historical loadouts for ammo will almost end up with you running out well before the scenario time ends. 

JagdFlanker already talked about BE armor but I will add that BE armor also protects your boilers uptakes and intakes from splinter damage.  Damage to the uptakes will slow your ships down which is critical for cruisers. 

Good luck.   


[Second Edit - cv10 gave good advice on the training settings.  You might only be able to afford one of the three specialties initially as a smaller nation like A-H and I would choose Gunnery as well.  I'm not sure if this is the very beginning of your game or if you are some ways into it but spending money on training for the entire game is a LOT of money that could be used for ship building.  I would recommend waiting to spend money on specialty training until one of the tensions with the AI nations gets to at least 8 which I think is the highest yellow (not 100% sure on that, you can see the actual tension number as a tool tip by moving the mouse over the bar).  If you wait till you have high yellow or orange tension with an enemy nation before you start spending money on the training you will still probably have time to get a years training in (which is when the bonus takes effect) prior to actual war breaking out.  There is a risk of the war starting before that year is up but if it is only a couple of months you should be able to get by be being conservative during the scenarios until the bonus kicks in.  Then after the war ends, immediately stop all trainings to quit spending that money and free up some badly needed funds during the post-war budget crunch.  It makes a big difference in how much money you have to spend on shipbuilding.

As far as preferences, those are entirely subjective.  I personally have found that I like to have the game pause on hits for cruisers and above for smaller battles so it's easier for me to keep track of damage levels and detach ships if necessary but for larger battles it's too many breaks in the action and I'll turn it off like you have now.  I also like to be able to use shift-Right Click to change my ships course towards the mouse's position on-screen.  That one should be the box under "Interface". ]


  

[aeson]

Jul 1, 2018 15:51:22 GMT -6 pashahlis said:

Also, are those settings for the gunnery and training good?

Generally speaking, HE is for short ranges where your shells will penetrate armor even without being armor-piercing and for very long ranges where armor will exclude even armor-piercing shells.

As to preferences, you'll just have to play the game and see what you like to use. I personally would recommend reducing the Sound Effects setting from 'all gunfire' to something a bit quieter, but you'll have to see what you like.

This is my destroyer class. It is called "Jäger" which means Hunter in german. It is designed to mainly screen the fleet. Pretty standard design as far as I an say.

Personally, I'd prefer to have more guns for a fleet screen, but DDs aren't very good at gunnery engagements in the early game and by the time DDs become good at gunnery engagements a 500t DD won't be worth much anyways so it probably won't matter too much.

Next up is my light cruiser design, the Wien class. It is designed to screen the main battle fleet and not go on raiding duties, hence the short range.

I don't see any reason to have 141 tons left unused. Might want to add some additional main battery guns, or maybe a secondary battery. I would also say that 6" guns are more of an anti-CL weapon than an anti-DD weapon at this stage of the game; 4" guns are better for anti-DD work while 5" are more of a balance between anti-DD and anti-CL capability.

Additionally, personal opinion, but 5000 tons is more of a general purpose cruiser than a fleet escort or scout cruiser, especially at this stage of the game when many of the cruisers that the computer will be building are well under 4000 tons.

And last but not least we got the Kaiser class CAs. Those are designed for long range raiding duty and as I am stripped for funds I opted for a heavy main battery of 10 inch so that I am able to outgun anything cruiser and smaller so that my very few CAs can raid without issue.

I personally would not use a CA as a surface raider, because they're not very cost-effective raiders and because they're very expensive ships to risk losing to RNG events or minor damage for fairly little return. Using them to overpower patrolling cruisers during raider interceptions can work, but I don't feel that the CA you've designed is armored well enough to come out of most engagements effectively unscathed or powerful enough to easily overwhelm probable interceptors. If you do use your Kaisers for raiding, be careful and check for asterisks (*) in the ship status column every turn of the war, and if one does have an asterisk in that column bring it home and put it on AF until the asterisk goes away.

If you want to pursue a surface raider (guerre de course) strategy to win wars by collapsing enemy governments, I would advise you to use a large number of inexpensive ships instead of a small number of powerful ships. If, instead, you mostly want your raiders to rack up victory points by sinking intercepting cruisers, then I would suggest that you need to go for a much larger, better armored, and more heavily armed cruiser than you've designed. Regardless, experiment and find what works for you.

[pashahlis]

Okay BIG update before I go to sleep!

First of all I switched my gunnery settings to overwhelmingly HE at nearly every distance except AP at close distance for BBs and CAs. Second of all regarding the BE I guess 2" really isnt enough. I go with half of what my belt (and deck for DE) armor is in the future. I think that is a good number. I was simply thinking that BE or DE will never be strong enough to absorb main caliber hits anyways so why both going with it above 2" for splinters? But I guess secondries and smaller guns from cruisers could really cause troub le here. I will also from now on make my armor with a ships service of about 10 years in mind. So the armor should be sufficient to absorb shots in 10 years into the future (if the displacement allows that only ofc).

Now regarding the campaign. It is now 1907 and lots of things happened. First of all I built 10 minesweepers but I am not yet sure how valuable they are. Anybody can tell me something about MS? Second of all I got the following error 2 times with two different nations ships:

And since it was already 1907 and america was building the first BB already I wanted to force a war to test my designs before they become completely obsolete. I got into a war with italy which was quite the same strength as me but still stronger with more Bs. Here is the composition at the start of the war:

To continue, my first engagement was between my 2 CAs, 1 CL and 3 DDs vs 2 enemy CAs. The battle was indecisive with no hits even scored by both sites. Next up we had a large fleet battle and boi....

Needless to say it did not go well for me. The enemy already had 12 inch guns while 2 of my Bs had 11 inch and even worse, my other B only had 10 inches because of a god damn arms treaty! If only I could have broken it for tension increase... Anyways. So since I was too slow and night was still far off I decided to engage the enemy at close range to fully utilize my far superior secondary and tertiary gun numbers and calibers. The enemy had 6 Bs against my 3 but I tried my best. It was a long battle with lots of hits from both sides and lots of damage. However, my Bs secondaries and tertiaries did alot less damage than I thought they would. Very underwhelming I must say. Even though there was hours long fighting in torpedo range! And speaking of torpedoes: My Bs, which each had 6! tubes never fired them! Even when in range and with a broadside to the enemy! Anybody can tell me why? Same with my DDs and CLs! I had them all on AI control and on "support" of my Bs. I hoped they would do some torpedo attacks once we got close enough (and yes they were in range numerous times) but they never engaged with their torpedoes, only with their guns. I did click on "flottila attack" on my B division but firstly I am not sure if it orders my Bs to do a torpedo attack or my supporting DD and CL flottilas but it doesnt even matter because neither fired their torpedoes.

Speaking of roles: ANybody can give me a short description of those? What do they do etc?

Thanks for all the help so far guys and see you tomorrow!

[aeson]

First of all I built 10 minesweepers but I am not yet sure how valuable they are. Anybody can tell me something about MS?

Small minesweepers are the least expensive way to fulfill coastal patrol requirements in wartime, thereby countering submarines, and additionally counteract strategic mine warfare by detecting and sweeping minefields, reducing the likelihood that your ships will strike mines and be damaged or sunk. Large minesweepers are in my opinion worthless due to cost.

Second of all I got the following error 2 times with two different nations ships:

Ignore it. The computer tried to build a ship which wasn't quite legal, maybe due to a bad template, or maybe due to selecting a template which doesn't work for the time period and couldn't be adjusted enough. You'll usually see the error a few times with the legacy fleet build and maybe another time or two over the course of the game, but it doesn't cause any problems within the game.

my other B only had 10 inches because of a god damn arms treaty!

It's usually best not to build capital ships when under an arms limitations treaty, except early on if you get a 15,000-20,000t and 12" guns limit rather than at least one of 10" guns and <15,000 tons. I'd suggest building some good cruisers instead.

Speaking of roles: ANybody can give me a short description of those? What do they do etc?

"Independent" is for the lead (or flag) division and any division you want to operate independently of the main force. Note - if you take manual control of a division or ship while in Rear Admiral's or Captain's mode, you do not need to set the division to 'independent' in order to have it operate independently of the main force, but if you do not put it on 'independent' then the division will attempt to rejoin the formation to perform its assigned role when it returns to AI control. Also, if you want to set a division to 'independent,' check to see what's following it before you do so if you don't want to be surprised by what leaves your battle line and support groups.

"Core" is for divisions which are to form into a battle line following the lead division.

"Support" is for divisions of lighter ships such as light cruisers and destroyers which are to support the battle line, and tends to put the ships on the unengaged side of and slightly behind the division which they are set to follow. If hostile ships are not currently visible, divisions set to "support" will tend to form a line parallel to and slightly behind the division which they're set to follow.

"Screen" is similar to support, but tends to place the ships slightly ahead and to either side of the division which they're set to follow. This is especially useful if you're sailing close to enemy ports, as it allows less valuable ships to act as mine bumpers for your more valuable ships.

"Scout" is for while you're looking for the enemy, and puts the ships in the "scout" division in a rough line perpendicular to the path of travel at the edge of visual range. Divisions set to "scout" will normally shift to "support" once the opposing battle lines begin to engage one another, though depending on what's in the battle line and what's in the scout divisions you may sometimes want the scouts to join the battle line instead - for example, battlecruisers and large armored cruisers can be assigned as scouts for battleships, and it can be useful to have such vessels join the battle line instead of merely supporting it.

"Patrol" allows you to set ships to automatically linger in a region without requiring any significant input.

I did click on "flottila attack" on my B division but firstly I am not sure if it orders my Bs to do a torpedo attack or my supporting DD and CL flottilas but it doesnt even matter because neither fired their torpedoes.

Flotilla attack generally causes divisions set to "support" or "screen" to attempt to close with the opposing battle line or other nearby enemy vessels, and tends to increase the likelihood that torpedoes will be launched. Early on, it tends to be best used to disrupt the opposing battle line, to discourage the enemy's light ships from launching torpedoes at your own battle line, or to get some of your light ships to finish off a cripple while your battle line continues to pursue the enemy battle line. That said, it's a general order and can be unreliable. Also, as ships in "support" divisions will generally be on the unengaged side of and slightly behind your battle line, they can sometimes behave as though blocked in by your battle line.

Needless to say it did not go well for me. The enemy already had 12 inch guns while 2 of my Bs had 11 inch and even worse, my other B only had 10 inches because of a god damn arms treaty! If only I could have broken it for tension increase... Anyways. So since I was too slow and night was still far off I decided to engage the enemy at close range to fully utilize my far superior secondary and tertiary gun numbers and calibers. The enemy had 6 Bs against my 3 but I tried my best. It was a long battle with lots of hits from both sides and lots of damage.

It's usually best to try to avoid engagements where you're outnumbered, and if you can't avoid them it's usually best to keep the range as long as possible since accuracy tends to be worst at long range. If you are unable to decline such an engagement, try to throw your enemy's battle line into disarray (flotilla attacks can be good for this, as can sending your own battle line through the enemy's; be warned that the latter maneuver can be very dangerous, especially later in the game when torpedoes are good and heavy guns can penetrate most armor at short to medium ranges) and, hopefully, split it up into more manageable pieces which have trouble supporting one another.

Also, not sure exactly where you fought or exactly what the speed differential between your battle line and the Italian battle line was, but remember that a stern chase is a long chase even when the enemy has a few knots' advantage over you. You can usually buy quite a bit of time for bad weather or night to intervene if you run away, and if you were fighting in the Adriatic (or more generally anywhere close to a friendly port) you may even have been able to reach port without being heavily engaged.

Hopefully, you'll have better luck next time.

My Bs, which each had 6! tubes never fired them! Even when in range and with a broadside to the enemy! Anybody can tell me why? Same with my DDs and CLs!

If you want your DDs to perform torpedo attacks, I would strongly recommend designing your DDs with at least four torpedo tubes. DDs with few torpedo tubes tend to be reluctant to launch torpedoes, probably because the potential value of a torpedo attack is higher than the value of a torpedo attack which isn't likely to score any hits. Low-probability shots aren't great in the first place, but they become even less appealing when you don't have that many shots you can take.

As far as your battleships and cruisers launching torpedo attacks, I wouldn't expect great things of them. Submerged tubes tend not to be very useful except for finishing off cripples, probably because they're (presumably) fixed and so require a more ideal setup to obtain reasonable hit probabilities than do the above-water swivel-mounted tubes. Launches from submerged tubes probably also suffer from a bit of the same opportunity cost issue as occurs when you have DDs which carry very few torpedoes, as no ship in the game will have more than six submerged tubes and reloading generally takes a long time.

To increase the likelihood of launching torpedoes:

- Set the flotilla attack order. Ships in divisions set to 'support' or 'screen' will usually close with the enemy and attempt to set up torpedo attacks on heavy ships while this order is active, though they may also become distracted by the enemy's light ships. This order might also affect the likelihood of other ships launching torpedoes, but I'm uncertain of that.

- Have your ships steam at constant speed on a constant bearing within torpedo range of the ship(s) you would like to see torpedoed. Be warned that this is a high-risk behavior, especially if you're doing it with capital ships and trying to torpedo anything that isn't already effectively dead.

- Select torpedo warfare as one of the training options. Once the training takes effect, your ships will on average obtain decent firing solutions for torpedo launches more rapidly, thus making it easier to set up torpedo attacks.