Does Range Matter?

[warspite1995]

Hello People!

Having a ship building conundrum, asides from endurance, which to be honest does little as most battles you start with full fuel tanks, is there any purpose to a ships range? ASAIK my long range colonial crusiers have no advantage over my medium range ones.

Is it just optimal to build all ships medium (as short range cant move during a war)?

[keris]

As far as I understand, short range is limiting (can't operate outside of home areas? Never really tried it myself) but everything more than that is pretty much the same in a practical sense.

Longer ranges, I think, just reduce risk of impounding due to low fuel and maybe reduce the penalty to operating without sufficient basing in the sea zone by a bit. IIRC, the general consensus is that in most cases the extra tonnage is not really worth the benefits.

[dorn]

Ships with long range will:
* Have better chances to escape interception as raiders.
* Better chances of sinking merchants if raiders.
* Better chance of intercepting raiders.
* Less risk of being interned or scuttled from lack of fuel.
* More fuel when a scenario starts (rarely of importance).

Ships with reliable engines will have:
* Less chance of engine problems in scenarios.
* Less chance of needing to return to base area when at sea (getting a *)

* Less risk of being interned or scuttled from engine problems.

This is offical info from RTW1 and it did not change in RTW2.

During 40s using diesel engines can allow very cheap (by tonnage) incresing range to long range.

Usually long range is important mainly for raiders and sometimes it could be good to add it to cruisers that hunt enemy raiders. Otherwise I cannot see reason for long range as till reasonable diesel engines it is quite expensive.

It could help if you blockade enemy nation in area where you have no bases. It is usually achievable by USA as USA have very large budget surpassing all others without large colonial empire.

EDIT: there is one change from RTW1. It seems to me that raiders are more difficult to intercept in RTW2 and ignoring them seems to be best strategy.

[brygun]

Short range ships can not change sea zones during wartime.

If your only a Mediterrean power thats okay.

Long range is definitely good for raiders. That includes pre-positioned raiders if you choose to give them long range.

It could possibly, Im not sure, be of use if you are projecting your fleet into a sea zone you don't yet have at least one base for. In the older versions the invasion dynamic looked at local fleet strengths so this could get you colonies. In the current one this is less useful as you won't have invasion range into the next sea zone (except in rare cases?). It might still be an issue if you are projecting to blockade the enemy home area. That is risky if you don't have at least one colony as any damaged ship will be interned.

[JagdFlanker]

Jul 29, 2019 17:40:10 GMT -6 brygun said:

Short range ships can not change sea zones during wartime.

If your only a Mediterrean power thats okay.

Long range is definitely good for raiders. That includes pre-positioned raiders if you choose to give them long range.

It could possibly, Im not sure, be of use if you are projecting your fleet into a sea zone you don't yet have at least one base for. In the older versions the invasion dynamic looked at local fleet strengths so this could get you colonies. In the current one this is less useful as you won't have invasion range into the next sea zone (except in rare cases?). It might still be an issue if you are projecting to blockade the enemy home area. That is risky if you don't have at least one colony as any damaged ship will be interned.

if you are going to try and blockade a country in a seazone you don't have ports in you are much better off having reliable engines over long range to lower engine trouble/internment

i don't see any point of long range outside of raiders, and perhaps raider interception - if long range even helps much with intereptions

i suggested before (perhaps not in suggestions) that to make long range more attractive perhaps ships with long range (and a certain minimum speed) have a 25%-50%(?) chance of moving a 2nd seazone in a turn/month since they don't have to stop and refuel.  extreme range could double that chance

this might make it a lot more tempting for countries with lots of colonies (or Russia) to have long range on their ships