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Post by JagdFlanker on Aug 29, 2019 6:56:57 GMT -6
just saying - 21/22kt Bs let you chase/position your ships in such a manner where you can close in and pound the crap out of an enemy B when given the chance
sometimes you have to wait for the enemy formation to break up (or run out of ammo - i go with 180 rounds early game which is double the ai), but with a little patience you can start whittling down the enemy fleet over a war even when you are out-numbered
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Post by dorn on Aug 29, 2019 7:19:47 GMT -6
My target for gunfire in pre-dreadnought battle is to slow them down that destroyers can torpedo them.
By this strategy I can limit my pre-dreadnoughts not being too large as there is no need for large amount of ammunition, superb protection or very large number of secondaries.
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Post by aeson on Aug 29, 2019 8:18:36 GMT -6
Regarding the indecisiveness of predreadnought battles: This is the end-of-battle summary for a major engagement between the British and American fleets which took place in September 1904.
The immediate causes of loss given in the logs for the ten battleships sunk were four 'sinking through progressive flooding,' three 'fires ranging out of control,' and three 'ship sinking.' The loss of eight of these battleships - the three which burned out,* the three 'ship sinking' losses, and two of the progressive flooding losses - can be solely attributed to damage inflicted by gunfire; of the other two, one took a torpedo hit the same round that it was declared to be sinking and the other was rammed by another battleship about 20 minutes before being declared to be sinking, though I doubt if the collision was a significant contributing factor to the loss of the latter as it had already sustained a significant number of hits prior to being rammed (thirty 12", five 8", thirty-three 5", and five 4"; an additional nine 12", three 8", and eight 5" hits would occur between the collision and the ship being declared sunk), had indications of flooding in the logs several hours prior to the collision, and was the only available target for the 11-12 British battleships in close proximity to it by the time the collision occurred.
The CL which sank and the heavily-damaged CA both struck mines during the engagement; their logs do not indicate any other damage being sustained. Two British battleships survived torpedo hits while also sustaining some gunfire damage, one with heavy and the other with moderate damage; the battleship which did the ramming got away with light damage. All other damage was inflicted by gunfire.
*One of these sustained a pair of torpedo hits, but both occurred after the ship was already abandoned to out-of-control fires.
If you want to fight a decisive engagement during the predreadnought period, it is very rarely wrong to aggressively close with the enemy - torpedoes probably aren't a threat beyond 1,000-2,000 yards and gunnery tends to be very spotty much over 5,000-6,000 yards due to the combination of poor fire control and poor armor penetration. You need to get in very close before gunnery really becomes effective and you need to get even closer before torpedoes really become dangerous; if you try to fight at long range, as tends to be advisable later in the game, you're very unlikely to accomplish much. This is perhaps the one stage of the game where running your battle line through the enemy's to break up their formation and hopefully isolate either the head or the tail of the line can actually be a pretty decent idea rather than a desperation tactic and where exchanging broadsides at two or three thousand yards isn't asking to have your fleet wrecked by torpedoes, flash fires, and magazine explosions; adapt your tactics appropriately.
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