This battle randomiser is ***** !

[BathTubAdmiral]

It's 1905, I'm Germany and fighting the US for several months now.

Strangly, they insist of raiding Danzig, teleporting their cruiser right into the baltic see. (one may argue they are operating out of british ports, but didn't I read somewhere about someone complaining that the IJN did that against his russkies as well?)

The first 2 raids where 2 CLs, which where always met by my backyard coastal patrol of 2 CLs + some DDs.

Now, they go even bolder, and teleported in at least 1 CA, 2 CLs and 2 DDs, which I am again supposed to fight with 2 CLs. All the while my complete High Sees Fleet (8 Bs, 8 CAs, >10 CLs) is sitting in port watching the show carnage.

This is unrealistic - one sneak attack into the baltic at the start of the war would have been ok. After that, I don't see how they should get capital ships there unnoticed.

This is boring. Always fighting at the same spot, always fighting with the same setup (on my side at least). And it's not I didnt give the game the chance to generate something different - I move a CA/CL force into the carribean, and up the US coast, but nothing happened other than a denied battle .

And now the game tries to hand over a "free" victory to the AI, where in reality that force wouldn't make it out of the baltic alive ...

Therefore, it's on the verge of being gamebreakingly st000pid.

Had the demo done this to me, I surely wouldn't have shoveled over €35 for a spreadsheet game.

PS: Did I mention the shitload of bugs?!?

[namuras]

Remember that battles are created in the zone... which is northern europe for germany in this case.

What i noticed is that if you fight russias its more likely to spawn a battle in the baltic, while against england north sea is more probable. France its either channel or biskay.

With nations not bordering the area it seems to generate it randomly. So you basically got bad "rng" as far as i am concerned. Also the baltic isn't sealed by germany. If one could occupy denmark that might be the case, but the way it is the baltic is accessible by anyone.
Also you are not meant to win all generated engagements. As with the AI you are free to decline. Check the description for what the battle will be and decide then to take it or not. IF you absolutly dont want to lose VP for declining you can always accept and then run away after checking the opfor.

[jorgencab]

First I would say that it is not unrealistic with unfairly balanced fights... if they have a few cruisers you can't expect your fleet to be everywhere. There will be many things for a fleet to do at any time.

The British deployed their entire home fleet to find Bismark and it still was not easy to find and they could not converge more than a token force at once when they did.

As for where the missions appear could probably be tweaked so they end up mostly in the North Sea.

[secondcomingofzeno]

The game can be very...Strange. Supposedly it is indeed balanced in what matches it gives to you and the AI, but it always makes me cringe when my entire main fleet seemingly disappears and I am forced to engage a battlecruiser and 3 CL's with a single CL or something.

[rimbecano]

One thing I'll point out here is that the AI fleet is operating in a zone where it has no bases, which means that any ship the OP manages to damage in battle suffers a very high risk of being interned or scuttled, and thus unavailable for the duration of the war (or permanently, if scuttled), while, as the OP does have bases in the Baltic, any of his ships that aren't sunk outright will be repaired in a few months. So this engagement isn't quite as lopsided as it looks: the battle is likely to be lost, which means the enemy gaining VP, but still could contribute to depleting the enemy's fleet. Now, saying that it isn't as lopsided as it looks doesn't mean it's not lopsided: I'd be nervous about how much damage the opfor described could do to the friendly force described even with the mitigation of fighting in my own home waters against an enemy who's not in his, but it's not a total lost cause.

[zardoz]

To be honest, US ships in the Baltic Sea during a war with Germany in 1905 is not very realistic. The approaches are very narrow and can be easily closed by few ships. Even Denmark is not controlled by Germany the distance from Kiel and Wilhelmshaven is not big.

Unrealistic are are also German operations in the channel in a war with the UK. The only operation I remember in the channel was "Unternehmen Cerberus", the retreat of the last German big ships in the Baltic from France in 1942.

[splashell]

Jun 11, 2019 3:50:35 GMT -6 zardoz said:

To be honest, US ships in the Baltic Sea during a war with Germany in 1905 is not very realistic. The approaches are very narrow and can be easily closed by few ships. Even Denmark is not controlled by Germany the distance from Kiel and Wilhelmshaven is not big.

Unrealistic are are also German operations in the channel in a war with the UK. The only operation I remember in the channel was "Unternehmen Cerberus", the retreat of the last German big ships in the Baltic from France in 1942.

In WW1, the British actually planned a host of operations in the Baltic Sea (i.e. transferring and landing Russian troops to North Germany from St. Petersburg to threaten Berlin). They also planned arms shipments through the Baltic. Both were basically possible, but not ever implemented. The reason for this was the Kiel canal, and although the German fleet was outnumbered, it was large enough to cause concern ("fleet in-being") and fighting much closer to German ports was not a good idea. That was the whole German naval philosophy as well, it was not to "beat" the British navy in size, but to create a navy powerful enough to cause serious concern. If the British could have had their "Trafalgar" victory, they might have actually done these (and btw. arms shipments might have kept Russia in the war long enough, we might not have USSR at all - alt history is fun lol). Of course very small raids through Skattegat are always possible, but haven't heard of any such British operations, maybe there were or weren't.

As for operations in the Channel, in the game as well British have potentially a lot of air bases in Channel port towns, making it costly for day time operations. Of course the Germans might have CVs etc.

[zardoz]

Yes ... the RN. I think the RN was in 1905 a lot bigger than the US navy.

[jma286]

I was very surprised to see three Austrian BBs bearing down on my BCs in the midst of a cruiser battle yesterday, especially since my only other ships were 2 CLs. I thought about retreating but instead used my BCs speed to control the range and pound the BBs outside the range of their pitiful 11 inch -1 guns. The randomizer is frustrating sometimes but I think if you're being honest you have to admit that a numerically inferior navy can still find itself in positions of local superiority, which is what the randomizer tries to represent.

[keris]

I feel like I always get either neutral or unfavorable match-ups - almost never do I get an advantageous battle unless I have overwhelming superiority in the sea zone (i.e. they don't really have capitals to contest). The number of times I've had 1 or 2 Cls against several CAs or BCs in my damn home region is ridiculous.

[rob06waves2018]

Jun 11, 2019 5:13:59 GMT -6 zardoz said:

Yes ... the RN. I think the RN was in 1905 a lot bigger than the US navy.

We had a two-power standard until the First World War - the RN had to be at least the size of the next two largest navies combined (US and Germany most of the time I think). Then after the end of the war, the RN dropped to approximately the size of the USN. However, we had the largest navy on paper until the massive WW2 build-up of the US finally caught up in 1942.

[alsadius]

Jun 11, 2019 10:28:43 GMT -6 rob06waves2018 said:

Jun 11, 2019 5:13:59 GMT -6 zardoz said:

Yes ... the RN. I think the RN was in 1905 a lot bigger than the US navy.

We had a two-power standard until the First World War - the RN had to be at least the size of the next two largest navies combined (US and Germany most of the time I think). Then after the end of the war, the RN dropped to approximately the size of the USN. However, we had the largest navy on paper until the massive WW2 build-up of the US finally caught up in 1942.

Minor amendment: The two-power standard was generally understood to be France and Russia. When the German fleet started growing in the early 20th century, they changed it to 160% of the largest fleet(i.e., Germany's) instead, and kept it to that until after WW1. 

[mycophobia]

The match of forces themselves isn't all that unrealistic since it is still possible for pieces of a superior fleet to be caught by a locally superior enemy force. The problem is more with the location choices of some of the battles being very odd.

Besides the US into the Baltics against Germany, I've had a fair share of Russia into the bay of Biscay and fighting a massive fleet battle there against the French on multiple occasions. While I feel these scenario can happen occasionally, the battle generator should skew things towards a more reasonable placement of battles. North Sea should be the most likely place for conflict in a Russo-French war, and perhaps the Baltics if we imagine France gaining an upper hand. It makes no sense for Russia to sail their whole fleet into bay of Biscay when the French battle fleet was intact x.x

[jma286]

Jun 11, 2019 10:39:44 GMT -6 mycophobia said:

The match of forces themselves isn't all that unrealistic since it is still possible for pieces of a superior fleet to be caught by a locally superior enemy force. The problem is more with the location choices of some of the battles being very odd.

Besides the US into the Baltics against Germany, I've had a fair share of Russia into the bay of Biscay and fighting a massive fleet battle there against the French on multiple occasions. While I feel these scenario can happen occasionally, the battle generator should skew things towards a more reasonable placement of battles. North Sea should be the most likely place for conflict in a Russo-French war, and perhaps the Baltics if we imagine France gaining an upper hand. It makes no sense for Russia to sail their whole fleet into bay of Biscay when the French battle fleet was intact x.x

Agreed. A fleet battle between France/UK on one hand and Germany/Russia in the other should take place in the North Sea or maybe the Baltic, not the Bay of Biscay.

I also think that the randomness of the randomizer should be tied to how large the fleet in a sea area is. A massive fleet in one zone should be less liable to getting caught with its pants down than a medium sized fleet, all else being equal.

[Warspite]

Jun 11, 2019 10:24:56 GMT -6 keris said:

I feel like I always get either neutral or unfavorable match-ups - almost never do I get an advantageous battle unless I have overwhelming superiority in the sea zone (i.e. they don't really have capitals to contest). The number of times I've had 1 or 2 Cls against several CAs or BCs in my damn home region is ridiculous.

I've just been playing now and had exactly this a lot of the time.