Blockades, fleet postures, and ship roles

[Blothorn]

My primary annoyances from RTW:
- If you are blockaded but have an advantage in certain classes of ship, the enemy can decline most battles while maintaining the blockade, preventing you from reducing their superiority and breaking the blockade.
- Lack of player agency with respect to battle type.
- All ships are liable to be thrown into all combat situations (subject to class restrictions), making some historically-useful classes unattractive. (In particular, cruisers wind up in 1:1 battles a lot; while a 4" scout CL is much cheaper and almost as useful as a fleet scout as a "max" CL, I never build them because they give up too much in encounters. If cruiser encounters stay the same in RtW, I imagine AA cruisers would suffer the same fate.)

I think the simple solution to the blockade issue is to disable the blockade for several months after declining a battle, but I think there is an opportunity for addressing the lack of player agency in battle types too. I would propose a handful based on historical strategies, perhaps:
- Blockade: isolated patrolling cruisers are a potential target; required to gain the blockade modifier.
- Decisive battle: Send the full fleet in an attempt to meet the other; likely to have fleet battles if they enemy takes a similar strategy or else bombardment/convoy battles as you try to force a reaction.
- Attrition/fleet in being: only sorty light forces, protecting heavy forces against a superior opponent at the likely cost of war score.

Regarding ship classes, I think I would like a flag for scout/escort ships, which should not be deployed unless there is a larger class in the fleet.

[alexbrunius]

Yeah I really like the idea of being able to set certain ships if they can be used for independent small action or not. Especially with airplanes adding another dimension which requires supporting ships to defend against them later in the game.

It would suck to have your independent raider Heavy cruiser swap place with your light AA CL, imagine Graf Spee as fleet AA escort swapping place with Atlanta for battle of river plate...


It could also be interesting if having good scouting ( lots of planes, subs, bases and small ships ) in an area allowed you more control over when and how to do battle. I mean if you send in your ships blind you should expect the enemy to have the upper hand, but if the situation is reversed you should be able to pick a battle that's more advantageous for you.

[rimbecano]

I'll note that full fleet battles are much more common in RTW than they were in WWI. The game is meant to model the factors that caused that, so difficulty in bringing the enemy to action is really just part of the game.

[Airy W]

I find it annoying that blockades and invasions each have their own system in place. I would prefer if all missions were being handled through the same system which would let you see what missions are planned before hitting "end turn" not discovering afterwards what you did. This means you wouldn't just have ships sitting around in sea zones where they aren't actually changing anything while one sea zone over they could be doing something.

Some missions could be:
Blockade Patrol: Having a task force on this mission in every enemy home sea zone gives 200 VP a month if the enemy doesn't sortie. Moderate maintenance costs.
Sortie: Task force has very high chance of battle with Blockade Patrol or Naval Interdiction. Low maintenance costs.
Naval Interdiction: When the army wants to do an invasion, they will tell you about it ahead of time then wait for you to interdict the target. No VP effect besides the invasion.
Scouting: Up to five task forces on scouting will give better information about the enemy forces in the sea zone. High maintenance costs. High chance of battle with raiders. Reduces submarine losses for other missions in the same zone but unlikely to actually trade blows with submarines. Efficacy is increased by higher speed and by having aircraft (particularly long range aircraft such as float planes).
Convoy protection: Sea zones require between zero and five convoy protection task forces with five being northern europe and zero being south pacific. Each missing group costs 20 VP. Moderate maintenance.
Raider: 1-20 VP per raider group up to the number of required convoys. Highest maintenance costs. High chance of battle with scouts, moderate chance of battle with convoys.
ASW: Solitary ships on ASW might stumble into raiders. Reduces submarine losses of other missions in the sea zone, likely to sink or be sunk by subs.

I think having more missions like this would give a raison d'être to scout cruisers and floatplane tenders. You couldn't just send one BC to whichever sea zone the enemy has a raider then rack up the battlepoints for stomping their CA. Without a large number of ships at sea, you aren't even going to know which sea zone their raider is in. That means unless you have five battlecruisers to put on scouting duties, you need the smaller ships.

[largo4545]

Ship Roles:

I like the idea of ship class distinction, or flagging ships for certain roles.

While it is nice to have some randomness to the battles to simulate real unprepared random engagements, there are also plenty of real battles that were very well planned and structured, and not being able to determine your fleet for planned engagements is really unrealistic strategically. I mean imagine giving an Admiral a set of dice and telling him that every time he is going to perform an operation he has to roll the dice and that will be the ships he can use.

Perhaps you could assign ships to task groups/flotillas/formations, and set them to different mission statuses as suggested in previous posts.

It seems like the way the RTW is currently you can't build any kind of specialized ship because there is an equal chance it will end up in any scenario including that class. Every ship you build other than battleships has to essentially be a jack of all trades but a master of none.

[Deleted]

Yeah, I agree that we need some task groups/flotillas/formations management to choose which ships can appear with which. I often ran into battles where my new 28kts 40k tons BBs were ruined because there were one or two old 22kts 26k tons BBs which slowed them down totaly to the level where the battle couldnt be won. But those old BBs still had 8x14in guns and not-so-bad armour, so I would like to keep them for battles, but only for those battles where are no new BBs. The same applies where my scouts for BC flotilla are some old heavy armed CAs with 24kts top speed.

[zulu354]

The solution would be some fleet management like we saw in SAI Campaign expansion. Form your own divisions, set them for a certain tasks. Send ships for refitting or crew training will exlcude them from the task force for this or a certain amount of rounds.
The mission objectives should be your own choice, except some special missions, wich will be given by the country leader, to you. That would be more likely in countries with a certain government (monachries, etc).

[dorn]

Jul 2, 2018 15:57:23 GMT -6 Blothorn said:

All ships are liable to be thrown into all combat situations (subject to class restrictions), making some historically-useful classes unattractive. (In particular, cruisers wind up in 1:1 battles a lot; while a 4" scout CL is much cheaper and almost as useful as a fleet scout as a "max" CL, I never build them because they give up too much in encounters. If cruiser encounters stay the same in RtW, I imagine AA cruisers would suffer the same fate.)

I try to simulate focuse on CL and verify if this problem occures.
I find out that it is not true. If you have more cruisers (as UK I had about 40-45) and deploy them to counter enemy cruisers I get a lot of cruiser mission or mission when enemy cruiser try to run through blockade.

All the times! enemy cruiser was sole it was intercepted by 2 of my cruisers. So even my a little weaker cruisers were able to sink him.

So this strategy is valid and achievable.

[tbr]

This is not about numbers but about the ability to build specialized designs without getting them selected (excessively, the odd and rare encounter is tolerable and would add some spice) for scenarios for which they never would have been available because the Navy would have tasked them differently, according to their specialty.

This is about the 2.5 kton 4inch armed fleet scout/torpedo cruiser respective Destroyer Leader getting treated in RTW effectively the same way in scenario force selection as the 8kton 6inch armed "heavy-light" cruiser meant for trade protection, colonial presence and detached scouting. And in RTW2 we will not just have DL/CS's and CM's, but also CLAA's among the "CL" category as well as DE's, DER's, DD's, DDK's, DM's, DMS's in the "D" category, FF's, FFL's, FFR's, MCM's, MS, MSC's, PCE's, PG's and PC's in the "K" category, let alone the variety amongst the carrier types.

Do you want your CVE's slowing down your "fleet" CVBG's? Your destroyer screen slowed down by DE's which should be on convoy escort duty? Your CLAA with 5inch DP armament, which should be the AA escort for your CV's, on "Raider interception duty" against CA's with 8inch guns and heavy armor? That is the kind of force selection/setup we want to be able to avoid in RTW2.

Now, there are two ways to do this, either use the SAI task force system or add a player selectable "duty" rider for each ship which modifies force selection for scenarios. (e.g. 1st, 2nd and 3rd class, for a BB that would translate to 1-"prime" battleline, 2-"secondary/reserve" battleline or 3-"coastal defence/convoy escort", a BC 1-"fleet BC / independent BC TF" 2-"independent patroller or secondary/reserve batlleline" and 3-"coastal defence/convoy escort", for a CL to 1-"independent patroller/detached scout", 2-"close capital ship escort" and 3-"destroyer leader", for a D to 1-"fleet DD / GP DD" 2-"capital escort DD" 3-"merchant escort (also for CVE's etc.)")

[fifey]

Definitely agree that there needs to be more granularity with regards to assigning ship roles, both at construction and as they age.