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Post by chaosblade on May 23, 2019 13:05:55 GMT -6
Germany could do something about the blockade--sortie into the North Sea and sink the auxiliary cruisers maintaining the blockade. They did not do this because the crushing superiority of the Grand Fleet made such operations much closer to Scapa Flow than the German fleet bases would almost certainly have been disastrous. The problem in RtW is that blockade status is determined purely by numbers, not status--you can decline every battle and still get credit for a blockade. (Although there is a quick and obvious fix not as invasive as my proposal--just cancel blockade status after declining a battle in the home region until the next battle that is not declined, regardless of relative numbers.) Good suggestion, will think about that.
Blockade is admittedly somewhat simplified in the game, but there has to be some definition.
What about air power? is there involvement there? both from CVs and airbases? that should have some degree of weight on the matter, right?
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Post by bcoopactual on May 23, 2019 13:26:35 GMT -6
Imho the blockade requirements should be set by an external config file. UK can more easily blockade Germany than Germany can blockade the UK or France, simply because of geography. Also blockading France or the US at one of their coastlines should only result in a partial blockade. Russia would need to have some time based blockade entries, before and after their railway reaches Murmansk, Vladivostok etc. I always like to see settings in external files (more mod-friendly), but this is somewhat built-in to the game, isn't it? Nations have a modifier which dictates how effective a blockade is against them. Yes there is a modifier included in the BNat file in the Data Folder. Most nations are set at 10. Which is the baseline and their fleet strength is multiplied by one. If I recall, UK is 12 (x1.2), Japan is 11, Russia is 8 (x0.8), A-H is 9 and everyone else is 10. Good suggestion, will think about that.
Blockade is admittedly somewhat simplified in the game, but there has to be some definition.
What about air power? is there involvement there? both from CVs and airbases? that should have some degree of weight on the matter, right? I can imagine that it would allow a blockading nation that had airbases in range to perform the blockade with fewer ships since the aircraft greatly expand the visible search radius. But for game purposes I don't think it would matter much. The blockade mechanic doesn't count the number of small auxiliary ships actually performing the stops, searches and seizures it counts the major naval combatants that are backing up and defending those auxiliary ships versus the blockaded nation's forces that would seek to break the blockade.
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Post by chaosblade on May 23, 2019 13:59:11 GMT -6
I always like to see settings in external files (more mod-friendly), but this is somewhat built-in to the game, isn't it? Nations have a modifier which dictates how effective a blockade is against them. Yes there is a modifier included in the BNat file in the Data Folder. Most nations are set at 10. Which is the baseline and their fleet strength is multiplied by one. If I recall, UK is 12 (x1.2), Japan is 11, Russia is 8 (x0.8), A-H is 9 and everyone else is 10. What about air power? is there involvement there? both from CVs and airbases? that should have some degree of weight on the matter, right? I can imagine that it would allow a blockading nation that had airbases in range to perform the blockade with fewer ships since the aircraft greatly expand the visible search radius. But for game purposes I don't think it would matter much. The blockade mechanic doesn't count the number of small auxiliary ships actually performing the stops, searches and seizures it counts the major naval combatants that are backing up and defending those auxiliary ships versus the blockaded nation's forces that would seek to break the blockade. I was seeing them less as spotter and more about being able to drop mines as well, but an air supremacy should also factor, at least in some manner (because if there are fields operated by the fleet air, there should be other fields operated by the army or the Air force) and would also indicate some degree of power projection, but without going too complex, number of planes per theater or size of airfields should have some weight either as an agregate or an us vs them (including CV and CVL in these numbers, obviously)
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Post by tortugapower on May 23, 2019 14:19:36 GMT -6
I was seeing them less as spotter and more about being able to drop mines as well, but an air supremacy should also factor, at least in some manner (because if there are fields operated by the fleet air, there should be other fields operated by the army or the Air force) and would also indicate some degree of power projection, but without going too complex, number of planes per theater or size of airfields should have some weight either as an agregate or an us vs them (including CV and CVL in these numbers, obviously) Wow, mine dropping, why hadn't I thought of that! It was a big campaign in WW2 on both sides. I guess that's currently not implemented in any manner. Maybe in a few months when Fredrik can breathe again, we can start talking about options here.
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Post by dorn on May 23, 2019 15:29:37 GMT -6
Issue with blockade is much more complex and geographic position is quite an important.
Just look at Germany and UK. UK can blockade German easily. The dreadnoughts are not needed to maintan blockade as long as there are enough fast cruisers. The main point is that dreadnought cannot force battle with light units. So only chance to go through blockade is escort convoy by heavy units. But it is practically impossible as you get Germany in same position as was Bismarck in WW2. You can be easily follow and attacker (in this time blockade maintaner - UK) can choose where, when will attack the convoy.
I agree that blockade in RTW is simplified sometimes too much. Main issue of maintaning blockade is who blockade whom.
UK can easy blockade Russia, Germany, Italy, R-U. France is a little more difficult as west France has much eaiser chance to get to Atlantic but still not as much as history shows. USA is the most difficult as there just too much space and USA economy is not dependent to others. Japan is difficult too but because of vaste space of Pacific.
Italy can easily blockade A-H, but from the Mediterranean nothing more.
To have best solution it would be best have value for each nation vs. each nation based on geographical position. The other thing is that cruisers are better for blockade than heavy ships if the blockade point is not too much narrow.
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Post by chaosblade on May 23, 2019 16:13:20 GMT -6
Issue with blockade is much more complex and geographic position is quite an important.
Just look at Germany and UK. UK can blockade German easily. The dreadnoughts are not needed to maintan blockade as long as there are enough fast cruisers. The main point is that dreadnought cannot force battle with light units. So only chance to go through blockade is escort convoy by heavy units. But it is practically impossible as you get Germany in same position as was Bismarck in WW2. You can be easily follow and attacker (in this time blockade maintaner - UK) can choose where, when will attack the convoy.
I agree that blockade in RTW is simplified sometimes too much. Main issue of maintaning blockade is who blockade whom.
UK can easy blockade Russia, Germany, Italy, R-U. France is a little more difficult as west France has much eaiser chance to get to Atlantic but still not as much as history shows. USA is the most difficult as there just too much space and USA economy is not dependent to others. Japan is difficult too but because of vaste space of Pacific.
Italy can easily blockade A-H, but from the Mediterranean nothing more.
To have best solution it would be best have value for each nation vs. each nation based on geographical position. The other thing is that cruisers are better for blockade than heavy ships if the blockade point is not too much narrow.
The blockade weight of the heavy units seem to be more related in that you don't really need that many cruisers to disrupt trade, but you do need a big stick to keep the other guy's big stick at bay or to force a confrontation on your terms, also note that you can also get a blockade like situation with sufficient subs
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Post by sloanjh on May 25, 2019 12:08:43 GMT -6
Blockades happen when the blockading side has 110% or more of the naval strength of the defending side in the Ocean Area where the Defender's main home area is. The strength is calculated by number of ships weighted by type (I forget the exact numbers from RTW1 but it was something like each BB/BC=10, B=8, ACR=5, CL=3 and DD=1). The size and capabilities of the individual ships doesn't matter so a small BB counts the same for blockade purposes as a large BB. [SNIP] Thank you for that point of information (that tonnage/armament doesn't matter). In years of playing RTW1 that hadn't clicked (or if I did I've forgotten it ). I just looked in my RTW2 game (1926, Large(?) fleets) and found (by mothball/unmothball) that it's BB=14, BC=12, B=4, CA=6, CL=4, DD=1, CVL=0. I don't have any CV or ACR to check, and my only AV is not in home waters (aha - it looks like it's also zero by adding up points for co-located ships). I then looked at my most recent designs to see about cost-effectiveness of strength points between the various types and found this (high numbers in the last column are good): A few comments: 0) To emphasize: this is a single snapshot in 1926, using my most recent designs for each type. 1) I like to go for big, heavily armored, fast (22kt early BB/27kt early BC), big-gun designs, so I'm regularly building expensive BB/BC that are much larger that opponents' ships. This lets me beat opposing fleets while suffering low losses. It appears that this strategy is heavily punished in the strength calculations - 2x25kTon BB are worth twice the strength points as 1x50kTon BB, while the costs are probably about the same (since my experience is that cost tends to scale pretty directly with tonnage). I can see arguments in favor of this, since two hulls can be in twice as many places as a single hull, but there's a good chance the single hull will typically beat the two hulls in a fleet action. 2) I don't have a 1900 fleet handy, so I don't know if the point values change over time. I suspect they do - I'd be surprised if B (4 pts) is worth less than CA (6 pts) in the early game. 3) CVL are worthless!!! They are worth 0 strength points, even less than a DD, even though they're already beginning to have a significant effect on my battles. Again, this might change at some trigger date, but this is one of the more difficult aspects to understand, giving their ability to do scouting. My gut is that they should be worth at least as much as a DD, probably as much as a CL. Note that the CVL I'm using are all 16kTon conversions with 28 planes. 4) (Given my design style to make large powerful units) the smaller units give the most strength per dollar. This means that my 1900 500ton destroyer spam is worth a lot more strength points compared to my 1500ton modern destroyers. This is probably why people (certainly me) are incentivized to keep the old units around long past their expiration date. 5) Note that there are 2 entries for B. The 18" B (Hood) is really a (22kt) BB that only has 2 turrets (1x2 and 1x3) - I got 18" guns crazy early and it was my first 18" design. It would have been more expensive to have the 5 guns arranged in 3 turrets, so I went ahead and "ate" the B designation. I hadn't realized that this cost me 20 strength points (10-20% of my home fleet strength, after cruiser deployments as GB) for the two units in the class. This is another one (like the CVL) that is hard to rationalize. The "old" B is a more typical situation. 6) Strength doesn't just count for blockade, my understanding is that it also counts for the 4x ratio needed for an invasion to fire. I'd be interested in understanding how much of the above is WAD and how much isn't. Even though my first reaction was that big ships should have more strength/$ than small, I think the argument that many hulls can be in many places is a strong (no pun intended ) one, and is needed to counteract the effect that in an equal cost slugging match, the fleet with "denser" firepower will probably win, which in turn will distort player build strategies. OTH, I think the Hood "B" and the CVL are cases where the model isn't working. I have two thoughts on possible improvements: A) Make the strength calculation algorithm more complicated. The idea is that the effectiveness of a single hull isn't linear in its combat capability, so develop some metric for individual unit combat power then do something like Strength = sqrt(Power). B) bcoopactual's idea for allowing a blockaded party to force combat. If the tradeoff the player is using is "Do I build big units that can beat the enemy fleet, or do I build small units that can smother commerce", then giving the player the opportunity to attempt to break the blockade is important.
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Post by dorn on May 25, 2019 12:46:26 GMT -6
Issue with forcing combat if you are blockaded is that if nation who blockade deny combat you are still blockade.
In WW1 British tried to set up "trap" to be in Jutland. If RN refused to leave port with heavy units Germany was still blockaded. What could Germany dreadnoughts do to eliminate blockade?
I would go a little different method. To give each possession blockade value and choke points. Blockade value depends on lenght coast and potential ports and show how much of sea need to be controlled to blockade such possession. And than to sum in area it for needed force to blockade. This mean minimum force to be able to blockade fully, so no more blockade with 2 battleships. Choke points means that nation which own these choke points which have percentage value have ability to blockade with much lower force, just percentage of original needed strength. If force is lower than minimum blockade value in area than effectivness of blockade is lowered. By this way you can blockade all possessions, eg. India, Madagaskar etc., however it has much lower effect compare to blockading home areas.
It also means that you need to blockade all home areas to have effect.
To get it even better, there can be links between European powers. It means that if they are allies there is needed to blockade them both. Eg. Germany is allied with A-H. There should be Link as they are neighbourhoods and as that both home areas needed to be blockaded.
System seems complicated however main principles are simple and resolving formulas should be too: - blockade points for possessions - choke points - links (neighbourhoods) between powers
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Post by sloanjh on May 25, 2019 13:23:41 GMT -6
Issue with forcing combat if you are blockaded is that if nation who blockade deny combat you are still blockade. In WW1 British tried to set up "trap" to be in Jutland. If RN refused to leave port with heavy units Germany was still blockaded. What could Germany dreadnoughts do to eliminate blockade? I just posted in Suggestions about this. Basic idea is to have each zone have a "sortied" vs. "un-sortied" stance that you can set. If enemy fleet refuses to sortie then you have lots of light vs. heavy encounters in convoy raids. I would go a little different method. To give each possession blockade value and choke points. Blockade value depends on lenght coast and potential ports and show how much of sea need to be controlled to blockade such possession. And than to sum in area it for needed force to blockade. This mean minimum force to be able to blockade fully, so no more blockade with 2 battleships. Choke points means that nation which own these choke points which have percentage value have ability to blockade with much lower force, just percentage of original needed strength. If force is lower than minimum blockade value in area than effectivness of blockade is lowered. By this way you can blockade all possessions, eg. India, Madagaskar etc., however it has much lower effect compare to blockading home areas. It also means that you need to blockade all home areas to have effect. To get it even better, there can be links between European powers. It means that if they are allies there is needed to blockade them both. Eg. Germany is allied with A-H. There should be Link as they are neighbourhoods and as that both home areas needed to be blockaded. System seems complicated however main principles are simple and resolving formulas should be too: - blockade points for possessions - choke points - links (neighbourhoods) between powers +1, especially when combined with a sliding "percent blockaded" value so blockades aren't all or nothing (which I think is what you mean with "lower effect).
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