Rule the Waves: Let's get Anglospherical

[hmssophia]

Come, gather round young (and not so young) readers, and take part in the adventures of a new story!

Rule the Waves 2 has been gifted upon us by the mighty Frederik and thus it is time to explore the lives (and deaths) of thousands of sailors as we take to sea under the command of the mighty yet anonymous Admiral.

But first, we must choose our command!
Do you choose:
A - The British Empire - an old and rickety globe-spanning imperialist power, chock full of demands beyond its tiny island shores. 
B - The United States of America - A new and burgeoning imperialist power, eager and ready to grab every drop of power it can.

Please post a single vote within the next 24 hours. But most of all - Let's get Anglospherical!

[mycophobia]

I misread the title as "Anti-Spherical" I came in expecting some analysis to use RTW map to demonstrate that the earth is flat, or otherwise to change the map from spherical to flat at maximal zoomout.

Anyways I vote British because I don'see much British plays on the forum.

[Awesome]

I'll vote for Britain too

[ramjb]

May 27, 2019 17:05:04 GMT -6 mycophobia said:

I misread the title as "Anti-Spherical" I came in expecting some analysis to use RTW map to demonstrate that the earth is flat, or otherwise to change the map from spherical to flat at maximal zoomout.

It's all a conspiracy, I tell you. The brightest minds in the modern world know the earth is flat and games like this are just part of the conspiration to keep the myth going!.

[yemo]

Britain, with historical budget

because the US is just easy mode and gets easier every in-game year.

[mycophobia]

May 27, 2019 18:24:19 GMT -6 ramjb said:

May 27, 2019 17:05:04 GMT -6 mycophobia said:

I misread the title as "Anti-Spherical" I came in expecting some analysis to use RTW map to demonstrate that the earth is flat, or otherwise to change the map from spherical to flat at maximal zoomout.

It's all a conspiracy, I tell you. The brightest minds in the modern world know the earth is flat and games like this are just part of the conspiration to keep the myth going!.

I’d whole heartedly agree, ever wondered why when you play the game the map is flap like in reality, and then they show you this sphere shaped abberation as you zoom out?

[Procopius]

I always play Britain, and you should too.

[hmssophia]

Based on votes from here and elsewhere, we'll be playing Great Britain in 1900 with a Historical budget. 
Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin.

---

'The 1900 election saw the appointment of the conservatives to government, the return of the Marquess of Salisbury to the premiership and, in perhaps the most personally exciting news, my appointment to the position of First Sea Lord. I am to hold senior command over the entirety of the Royal Navy. Oh, if only I had a wife with whom I could share this most delightful news. Since Martha's death, I have been very lonely. Perhaps now I will be too distracted to spend my nights dreaming of her.'

Diary entry, January 1900, The Admiral

The Royal Navy in 1900 is a hodge-podge collection of colonial cruisers, powerful battleships and innumerable destroyers. Scattered around the globe, impossible to gather in any one place and in a constant struggle to stay more powerful than its nearest rivals, the RN becomes a more expensive presence in British lives every day.
Organised across the globe, there are several major fighting units in play as of 1900:
Home Fleet
- 1st Battle Squadron
-- HMS Canopus (Flag)
-- HMS Repulse
-- HMS Empress of India

- 4th Battle Squadron
-- HMS Rodney (Flag)
-- HMS Resolution
-- HMS Anson

- Reserve Battle Squadron
-- HMS Ramillies
-- HMS Redoubtable

- 4th Cruiser Squadron
-- HMS Amiphitrite
-- HMS Europa
-- HMS Ariadne

-2nd Torpedo Squadron
-- 8 Destroyers
- 5th Torpedo Squadron

-- 8 Destroyers

- Additional Forces
-- 2 Minesweepers

Mediterranean Fleet
- 3rd Battle Squadron
-- HMS Renown (Flag)
-- HMS Collingwood
-- HMS Benbow
-- HMS Howe

-1st Torpedo Squadron
-- 7 Destroyers

Africa Station
- 6th Cruiser Squadron (West Africa)
-- HMS Carysfort
-- HMS Conquest

- 1st Cruiser Squadron (South Africa)
-- HMS Diadem
-- HMS Peleus
-- HMS Curacoa
-- HMS Calypso

Indian Station
- 1st Indian Squadron
-- HMS Pandora
-- HMS Constance
-- HMS Leander
- 2nd Indian Squadron
-- HMS Psyche
-- HMS Canada
-- HMS Pelorus

Far East Station
- 2nd Battle Squadron
-- HMS Majestic (Flag)
-- HMS Royal Sovereign

- 3rd Cruiser Squadron (Australia)
-- HMS Amphion
-- HMS Calliope

- 7th Cruiser Squadron (Weihaiwei)
-- HMS Phaeton
-- HMS Cordelia

- 4th Torpedo Squadron

-- 6 Destroyers

America Station
- 2nd Cruiser Squadron (Newfoundland)
-- HMS Niobe
-- HMS Andromeda

- 5th Cruiser Squadron (Columbia)
-- HMS Champion
-- HMS Comus

- Caribbean Squadron

-- HMS Arethusa

-- HMS Cleopatra

- 3rd Torpedo Squadron

-- 7 Destroyers

With six areas of responsibility, even the fifty-eight modern ships of the Royal Navy are hard pressed to cover them all. Certainly it would be impossible for all stations to maintain a force of battleships. Thus there are a variety of classes currently in service and operating on the high seas:
Ramillies class Battleship (1890)

Old even before their completion, only two of the class remain in service. With 10" main guns and a 5" secondary battery, she is hardly a modern ship.
Two in service.

Majestic class Battleship (1893)

Thick armour and excellent twelve inch guns does not make up for the 16 knots that is the Majestic's maximum speed. Unfortunately they make up the majority of the British battle line as of 1900.
Six in service.

Canopus class Battleship (1896)

Fast, compared to the rest of the battleline, and small, the Canopus class suffers with an underwhelming armoured belt. It is considered an update over the Majestic, however.
Six in service, two under construction.

Diadem class First Class Cruiser (1896)

Almost as large as a battleship (and larger even than the old Ramillies), the Diadem class are well armed, well equipped protected cruisers. 
Six in service, three under construction.

Comus class Second Class Cruiser (1897)

Eight in service, five under construction.

Peleus class Third Class Cruiser (1896)

Twelve in service, two under construction.

Additionally, eight new destroyers are on the slips.

"They are asking me so many questions, Martha. What to do with this, where we should be looking, who we should be hunting. I don't have answers for them. But the Prime Minister has put his faith in me. So answer them I must.
How I wish you were here to help me, Martha. Oh how I wish."

Diary entry, January 1900, The Admiral

Please make one vote for each of the following questions in the next 24 hours:
Strategy - Where should our strategic focus lie?
[ ] Europe
[ ] The Far East
[ ] The Americas

Intelligence - Where should we be looking for information?
[ ] The US and Japan
[ ] Germany and Russia
[ ] Italy and France

[janxol]

Those are some incredibly slow CLs. Will they be able to do their job? First new thing I'd design would be replacements for Amphion.

As for strategy I say the Americas - recolonize the USA.
Intelligence US as well, they should have some techs at reasonable date.

[Awesome]

I gotta agree with you both on replacing the Amphion and with recolonizing the USA

[Procopius]

It's important to crush the Americans early on, so you can continue as friends. Plus, if you take Maine, you gain control of the continent's strategic stock of weird potato candy.

[ramjb]

May 28, 2019 12:31:18 GMT -6 janxol said:

Those are some incredibly slow CLs. Will they be able to do their job? 

Doctrine of the time said that cruisers needed to be 20-30% faster than the main battleline in order to be effective enough for scouting and support roles. 20 knots for a main battleline limited to 16 knots looks well within the acceptable, if in the slow side, to act as scouts and screening forces.

On the other hand those ships have a heck of a punch, if I'm not miscounting that's a broadside of 6x6'' guns. 4x3'' and a couple 2''. You don't get much stronger than that in 1900 from a CL platform.


I'd personally hold on focusing too much on fast light cruisers until Turbine tech is reached. Even on the midterm any CL restricted to less than 24-25 knots won't have a very lenghty career. 24-25 knots without turbines can't be achieved without sacrifizing too much, and for colonial purposes 20 knot ships are as good as 23 knot ones.

I'd focus on a somewhat bigger and more capable armored cruiser instead. Something good for 22knots and packing more punch than a couple of 9'' looks like a far better investment than a faster, yet still slow, CL. CAs the UK needs for for raider hunting roles anyway, and with the proper design are good candidates for early CVL conversion later on so they're a far better midterm investment.

[hmssophia]

"The Americas have been thumbing their nose at me for many years - not just at the British empire which perhaps we may not forgive but certainly are given to understand, but at me in particular. I still remember being a midshipman in the halls of American power, those so called United States, and being ignored by ensigns three years my junior. The same, ten years and three ranks more senior still such that I saw out the 19th Century with the bitter taste of American inhospitality in my mouth. They think themselves so civilised, so modern. Half the courts of Europe would laugh in their faces at the idea. Perhaps now, with a true visionary in command, we can teach them a lesson. I will surely write to The Admiral as such."

Diary entry, Commodore Arthur Rathbone, Early 1900

British intelligence efforts in the opening year of the 20th Century were capable in most places. Agents revealed secret German naval spending and the construction of American and Italian coastal gun batteries and those developments id not go unnoticed. However, things began to change when the Marquessa Elizabeth Montmort was uncovered as an operative working for British Intelligence in the court of Tsar Nicholas II. Public opinion of the current government would not survive her glorification yet her blood ties to the Royal Family would allow for nothing else. Tensions with Russia rose, of course, as she was returned to Britain and paraded as a national hero.

Global construction continued apace even as that mess allowed public politics to devour itself. Broadsheets were filled with sketches of the keels of three new American battleships, the so called 'North Dakota's' which had been laid down in France. France, the people of London scoffed, mortal enemies of the English and allies for only the briefest of periods in the last few decades. The Americans were making a mockery, building their battleships so close to English shores, and an MP stood in parliament to ridicule the French for their part in such an obvious plot. Focus on America redoubled even as the French withdrew their Ambassador from Britain.

Seven new destroyers were launched in May of 1900 and were immediately formed into the 5th Torpedo Squadron while they worked up and trained as a unit. An eighth joined them in June, bringing the squadron to full strength after she was delayed by equipment shortages. They would later be transferred to Newfoundland to serve with the cruisers their as a deterrent against American aggression.

"I cannot believe it Alice. The damn frogs, they sailed their creaky old minesweeper right into the path of the Anson. Crazy they are, they see the big old girl and they keep coming and right in front of the Queen's barge as well. Course the old girl just went right on sailing didn't she, all big and made of steel as she is, and smashed their little trawler all to bits. We weren't half having a laugh while we fished the poor buggers out of the water. Don't think the Queen was very amused though. And the frog officers who came to pick up their boys certainly weren't neither.
Give my love to Dotty, will you? I'll be back up North soon enough and with gifts enough for all. Trust me, when you see the size of my pay packet, you wont be complaining about all the months I spend at sea.
Yours, faithfully,
Mick."

A letter, dated 19th July 1900, written by Able Seaman Michael Flowers

In August, British Intelligence struck a seam that was incomparable. An agent in Toulon sent pictures, drawings, even plans of the new American battleship being built by the French. The North Dakota was laid out in front of British naval specialists as if they had access to the ships themselves. They were so similar to the Majestic class it was spooky, but with the familiar french tumblehome and turrets. Surely they were beautiful. Dangerous though. There must surely be a way to sabotage their construction, with such access to them...


HMS Phoebe, Persian and Pearly left the slips in September and were gathered into the Eighth Cruiser Squadron and transferred to the Mediterranean to join the fleet there and continue their working up in warmer climes than the Irish Ocean and the Channel. Then the Ninth Squadron (Latoma, Philomel and Naiad) joined the Fourth in Scapa. A month later than their more equatorial sisters, there was significant grumbling amongst the sailors who crewed these ships for the fact that they would not see a warmer winter.

As the year came to a close, and more ships came off of the slips, scientists approached the Admiralty with new plans. There were all sorts of good ideas mixed in with the chaff, and many of them were of some use. But one would change many things. A new eight inch gun and concepts for other calibres, all allowing a secondary battery to rival the main guns on a battleship. This could change things. This could allow for a ship that would be the ruination of the Americans.


1901 building program - (design suggestions welcome)
[ ] 8 x fast cruiser, 2 x Heavy Secondary B
[ ] 4 x fast cruiser, 4 x Heavy Secondary B
[ ] 4 x fast cruiser, 2 x Heavy Secondary B, 2 x First Rate cruiser

[Awesome]

I choose the middle option we must build up our battleships so we can completely crush the Americans

[ramjb]

I doubt doubling down on Majestic-pattern battleships is going to do good in the long run. The Admiralty doesn't stop receiving news and ideas about bigger ships with standarized all-big gun caliber, and powered by that devilish thing Parsons was running his Turbinia on during his stunt at the naval review in Spithead some years ago. Those ideas are gaining traction very quickly and if we eventually act upon them, they would render all our existing battleline, including the proposed new battleships, obsolete in a single stroke making any investments placed on to them a very poor choice at this moment.

Before investing too much on warships that might become passé in a few years we should focus on areas where the navy is lacking, and the weakness in our armored cruisers is just one of those areas. Now that we can mount heavier guns on casemates and single turrets, this is a good chance to get some proper first class cruisers with heavy enough firepower and speed to protect the exposed shipping lanes of the Empire. Meanwhile we can still build a couple of newer battleships to match the new american construction and keep our numerical advantage intact.


(Meaning, I vote for option 3)