Early-game fleet battles unplayable

[sillygoy]

Just as the title says, for the reason that your division commanders are fickle, skittish and scared 24/7 and unable to maintain a simple battle line when engaging the enemy. The AI has no trouble keeping a battle line that makes sense while the player is artificially penalized with divisions that turn away for the poorest of reasons. I'm pretty sure I'd have these guys stripped of rank and jailed or even shot were I the man in charge of the fleet. At this point, this isn't a reflection of the early-game primitiveness of fleet tactics and signalling technology, but rather downright cowardice. Playing in Admiral's mode btw.

I hope it won't be as bad in RtW2.

[rimbecano]

One thing to make sure of is that your flag division is traveling a knot or two under the max speed of the slowest ship in your line. First of all, it helps your line maintain cohesion by making sure everyone has a speed reserve to keep up with flag maneuvers. Secondly, there's a bug that I really wish they would fix wherein a division that can't keep up with its lead division will occasionally go haring off in a random direction, rather than following at best speed.

Other than that, the flotilla attack option can really sow discord into an enemy line, as ships maneuver to evade torpedoes.

[sillygoy]

My problem is more of that they disengage despite not taking effective return fire and end up fouling the battle line as a result. The AI doesn't seem to have any problem with cowardly commanders.

[generalvikus]

Jan 20, 2019 12:29:25 GMT -6 sillygoy said:

My problem is more of that they disengage despite not taking effective return fire and end up fouling the battle line as a result. The AI doesn't seem to have any problem with cowardly commanders.

You can always play on either Rear Admiral's mode or Captain's mode with whatever house rules you want to set yourself (i.e. leaving any ship out of your line of sight on AI control.)

[garrisonchisholm]

Jan 20, 2019 12:29:25 GMT -6 sillygoy said:

My problem is more of that they disengage despite not taking effective return fire and end up fouling the battle line as a result. The AI doesn't seem to have any problem with cowardly commanders.

Given all the rest of the code is written to not provide the AI an advantage, as persistently stated by Fredrik, I would have to believe that there is also no preference to "oughts" (01-09) AI battleline cohesion.

That being said, I am always frustrated by battleline cohesion until I get my Fleet Tactics up to L4 or so, and - to your point - I have to say I have never noticed the enemy having a similar problem.  Now I *do* notice the AI fleets getting spread out consistently with wide course-changing turns which often-times give me an opportunity to sheer off a B from their fleet, but that is an "imperfection" which - if not present in the player's fleets - perhaps matches the relative effect of player squadron confusion.

I think it is a case where notes should be kept to try to isolate the true percentages here.  I think this was a good point to bring up.

[boomboomf22]

I'm gonna throw in my 10 cents here, but (and this is just my opinion) my experience is that while yes the AI seems to have an easier time keeping its divisions in line in the early game it is also badly prone to straggling. I suspect this is down to the AI being slightly better at somethings (not intentionally I think, just because AI is better in some areas in any game even ones that give no active advantages to it) but also is worse at others than players.

For example with the straggling I suspect this is due to the AI either intentionally detaching ships, or not managing their squadrons speed well to keep the formation together.

Bottom line: yes your sub commanders will turn away and flounder about for the most assinine reasons, but the AI has its own handicaps.

(It is actually why I mostly play on rear Admiral with house rules. Automate all sub divisions, but after 3 failures to stay in like I temporarily take command to get them back in line, then automate again. I'll also take command sometimes for pincer movements and such to represent priority orders that the friendly AI is just not set up to handle)

[rimbecano]

Jan 20, 2019 21:20:27 GMT -6 garrisonchisholm said:

That being said, I am always frustrated by battleline cohesion until I get my Fleet Tactics up to L4 or so, and - to your point - I have to say I have never noticed the enemy having a similar problem. 

But in my case, I'd say I've noticed the enemy having more trouble than myself with force cohesion, and I don't exactly make things easy on the friendly AI as far as maintaining cohesion.

I think part of it is that there are certain circumstances in which the AI will put capital divisions in turn together mode and never take them out.

[dorn]

In my last game as A-H I can see AI has same problem.

For example in battle of predreadnoughts I have 2 division, each division had 2 ship of one class, boths able to make 19 knots in first decade of the game.

Enemy  ship has 2 divisons too. The first division has probably the most dangerous battleship in the world with heavy secondary armament of 10" guns. The second battleship was weaker so the first divison of both fleet was about equal. Their second division has 2 older pre-dreadnoughts however still much better than mines 10600 predreadnoughts.

Both ships fire at each other making battlelines. However my second division speed decreased to 17 knots, I decided not to slow down my first division. What the AI did? AI did not slowed the first divison either and as its second divison took damage both the second divisions (mine and AI) was left behind. Next step was that AIs second battleship in the first divison was hit and slow down. AI does not slow down the first divison which allowed me to make distance between the first group of my 2 predreadnoughts and AIs excellent battleship which allowed me fight between my 2 battleships and 1 AI. Result was that AI battleship was sunk without any other losses.

I regularly see that AI has problem to maintain line. But main point is you do not need to put your owns division up to limit. If your speed is maximum speed of slowest ship and you make a lot of maneuvres it could be the issue.

[sillygoy]

Yes, against an enemy that is technologically on par with you, early-game fleet battles are ridiculously frustrating and terribly unfun. I am currently losing pre-dreadnoughts one by one to France because my damned battle division commanders would rather turn to make one pretty circle instead of following the ships in front of them even before the guns start firing. What the hell man?

Edit: this has nothing to do with speed. My division commanders will turn around to make circles or wander off elsewhere no matter how many knots the battle line is going at.

[dorn]

Jan 21, 2019 6:02:34 GMT -6 sillygoy said:

Yes, against an enemy that is technologically on par with you, early-game fleet battles are ridiculously frustrating and terribly unfun. I am currently losing pre-dreadnoughts one by one to France because my damned battle division commanders would rather turn to make one pretty circle instead of following the ships in front of them even before the guns start firing. What the hell man?

Edit: this has nothing to do with speed. My division commanders will turn around to make circles or wander off elsewhere no matter how many knots the battle line is going at.

Frankly speaking, you as Admiral seeing this should adapt and not going weakend straight to enemy.

Battle maneuvres was quite complex and difficult at that time period and there was several accidents, one of best knows here.

I play on Admiral mode and frankly speaking I play much better as I have no possibility to change course of divisions so I need to anticipate everything thus taking into considaration all risks included.

Sinking capital ships at pre-dreadnought are (usually till 1907-1910) is quite difficult as armored belt is difficult to penetrate. So usually the reasons for sinking are torpedoes, progressive flooding or enourmous damage throug fire. As any ship is put in danger you could maneuver to put her out of danger. Usually there is enough time to make it so.

However it is true that sometimes that strange. In my last battle one of destroyers lost in bad weather trace of their own division in Austria-Hungary coast but remain in straight course till reaching Italian coast.

[mobeer]

One thing I do seem to get more often in early battles is the "incorrect" fleet set up, with for example 3 battleships in division 1 (core), 3 battleships in division 2 following division 1, 2 armoured cruisers in division 3 also following division 1. As soon as the battle starts errors are shown that division 1 has 2 units following and hence one unit (often the division 2 battleships) have been made independent.

Later in the game this seems to be resolved as battlecruisers get formed up far away from battleships and there are no longer too many following divisions.

[boomboomf22]

The way to fix that is before you continue (ie once the message pops up) reassign the divisions in a proper order as it will set them to indipendent

[JagdFlanker]

Jan 21, 2019 17:31:37 GMT -6 mobeer said:

One thing I do seem to get more often in early battles is the "incorrect" fleet set up, with for example 3 battleships in division 1 (core), 3 battleships in division 2 following division 1, 2 armoured cruisers in division 3 also following division 1. As soon as the battle starts errors are shown that division 1 has 2 units following and hence one unit (often the division 2 battleships) have been made independent.

Later in the game this seems to be resolved as battlecruisers get formed up far away from battleships and there are no longer too many following divisions.

boomboomf22 has got it right - the first thing every player should do as soon as they enter a battle is click on the 'OB' tab on the left side and make sure your fleet is organized properly

one thing i always do is assign ALL DD divisions to my primary (capital ship) division and make sure that no DD division is attached to any another DD division.  that way if my other capital ship divisions get 'lost' i still have all my little attack dogs following me and they get flotilla attack orders directly from me

also by assigning each DD division individually directly to the lead division you lower the possibility of losing more than 1 division when there's the inevitable 'misunderstood orders' event in battle