foreign stations, how do they work

[nordlys]

Hello all,

I don't get it how FS tonnage requirement fulfillment is calculated.

Some background: I've spent half of the campaign filling my ship roster with useless 6000t colonial service CLs for nothing but FS requirements and also dispatching older capital ships to guard colonial regions shared with the enemy for actual combat purposes. The CLs kept triggering annoying cruiser battles though, so I thought I can do away with them and have those old battleships fulfill both roles, scoring the FS points AND sinking stray enemy battleships while they are doing that. Bye-bye, useless cruiser deadweight.

Problem is, the FS tonnage value keeps unpredictably dipping into the red. I assign three battleships to FS at home waters and everything is fine, but a couple of months later, when they sail out, the game suddenly claims I need like 20000 more. So I appoint another, then another still, until I have like 7 battleships with a combined tonnage of about 300000 tons moved back and forth by AI doing FS (yes, I know there is a tonnage penalty for the FS purposes, but even with this penalty it  cannot be insufficient, can it?).

At this point I may switch some of them back to AF and see that they do not contribute to FS tonnage at all now. 3 out of 7 seemingly cover all FS needs. Out of the other 4, some do not contribute to FS tonnage entirely if assigned to FS (when all ships are taken off FS), others might contribute like 2500 tons.

Okay, there is "Area overview" tab. It shows the tonnage of ships per region, and to the right of it, a mysterious column called "Tonnage req". If a ship is put on FS, its tonnage is not shown in "Tonnage" column. And apparently it contributes to FS tonnage requirements by the value of its (modified) tonnage MINUS the region's "Tonnage req". So, when a FS ship of effective 20000 tonnage is moored at home waters or crosses some south american region we've never set foot at, it contributes the entirety of its 20000 tonnage to the FS tonnage fulfillment, but as soon as it arrives at actual colonial region where we have lots of colonies and a "Tonnage req" value of 21000, it suddenly stop contributing to FS score? WTF, game, what is the point of this?

To add insult to the injury, the FS ships are moved randomly across the map by the AI, ending up in high "Tonnage req" regions where they stop contributing and forcing me to manually send them back to South America or home or whenever they'd do anything but protect my colonies. I can't even.

So, how do I make sense of it all?

[kriegsmeister]

From what I have observed, the FS role just makes the ships cruise randomly around the world. For tonnage requirements to actually be fulfilled you need ships in that region which has requirements in either Active Fleet or Trade Protection.

So simply setting a ship to Foreign Stations will only count towards tonnage when it passes through those regions. Not very effective unless you set several dozen relatively cheap 2-4kT cruisers loose so that there is always a handful passing through your colonial areas. It's much better to just base your colonial ships in the area and during wartime set them to TP to avoid most of the silly encountets (unfortunately not all)

[aeson]

Sept 16, 2019 18:57:52 GMT -6 nordlys said:

So I appoint another, then another still, until I have like 7 battleships with a combined tonnage of about 300000 tons moved back and forth by AI doing FS (yes, I know there is a tonnage penalty for the FS purposes, but even with this penalty it  cannot be insufficient, can it?).

Ships above 6,000 tons design displacement count for (4,000 + [design displacement]/3 tons)*[colonial service modifier] towards the station requirement of the sea zone in which they are present if assigned to Active Fleet (AF) or Trade Protection (TP), or towards the total unfulfilled station requirement if assigned to Foreign Stations (FS). The colonial service modifier is 1.25 the design is specifically fitted for colonial service (checkbox in the design menu, available only when you create the design), or 1 otherwise. Note that ships which are temporarily out of service due to damage - mechanical/condenser trouble events, battle damage, torpedoed-by-submarine/mined - or which are assigned to act as raiders (R status) do not count towards station tonnage fulfillment.

Seven battleships totaling about 300,000 tons suggests an average battleship of 42,000 tons, which in turn suggests that each ship counts for about 18,000 tons towards station requirements. Assuming that you have not fitted your battleships for colonial service, these seven ships totaling about 300,000 tons count for only about 125,000-130,000 tons towards the total unfulfilled station tonnage requirement - roughly the same as 17-18 10,000t cruisers, or about 14 10,000t cruisers fitted for colonial service. Using battleships for this purpose is therefore incredibly inefficient, as far as aggregate real tonnage required per ton of station requirement fulfilled. As to whether or not this could be insufficient, Britain's aggregate station tonnage requirement on Very Large fleet size at game start in 1900 is 156,000 tons - roughly 26,000-30,000 tons more than your seven battleships represent. So, yes, if you're playing Britain or have somehow managed to acquire a colonial empire similar in scale to Britain's, I would say that it is entirely plausible that 300,000 tons of battleships is not an adequate provision for foreign station requirements.

On Very Large fleet size, typical station tonnage requirements appear to be 1,000 tons per point of colony value held in the sea zone, with Northeast Asia having a x4.5 (based on British and German requirements on the 1900 start), the Mediterranean having a x2.25ish (based on British requirements on the 1900 start), and the North and South Pacific having a x0.5ish (based on British, French, American, and Russian requirements on the 1900 start) multiplier applied to the tonnage requirement. Station tonnage requirements below 3,000 tons (after the multiplier is applied) or in home sea zones are waived, and it appears that there is either a cap or a nonlinearity in the function when you hold very high aggregate colony value in a sea zone, as is the case for Britain in the Indian Ocean, Southern Africa, Southeast Asia, and the South Pacific. Ships on AF or TP in a sea zone with a station tonnage requirement count their displacement, modified according to the function given above, towards the station requirement of the sea zone in which they are present; ships assigned to FS count their displacement, modified according to the function given above, towards the total unfulfilled station requirement across all sea zones but do not count towards the station fulfillment in any particular sea zone (including the one in which they are actually present).

Likely causes of loss of adequate foreign station fulfillment:

- Temporary or permanent loss of ships due to battle damage.

- Temporary or permanent loss of ships due to submarine torpedo attack (wartime interturn event).

- Temporary or permanent loss of ships due to naval mines (wartime interturn event, potentially preventable through the assignment of minesweeping vessels to the station).

- Temporary loss of ships to mechanical or condenser trouble (wartime interturn event, probably reduced likelihood with Reliabiltiy priority on engines and increased likelihood with Speed priority on engines; also increased likelihood in sea zones with insufficient base capacity for the ships present, though if you have more ships on station than your bases can support I would think it very unlikely that you do not have adequate tonnage on station unless everything is assigned to R status).

- Permanent loss of a ship to attack by an unidentified submarine (peacetime interturn event, often results in the outbreak of war).

- Permanent loss of a ship to internal explosion (peacetime interturn event, often results in the outbreak of war).

- Inadequate provision made to cover station requirements when retiring ships, taking ships in for refit, or movement of ships to cover station requirements in areas which experience a shortfall for any of the previously-mentioned reasons.

- Movement of warships through areas with inadequate tonnage assigned to the station for purposes other than fulfilling station tonnage requirements.

So simply setting a ship to Foreign Stations will only count towards tonnage when it passes through those regions. Not very effective unless you set several dozen relatively cheap 2-4kT cruisers loose so that there is always a handful passing through your colonial areas. It's much better to just base your colonial ships in the area and during wartime set them to TP to avoid most of the silly encountets (unfortunately not all)

Ships assigned to FS never count towards the tonnage requirement of a specific station but do always count towards overall station tonnage fulfillment for the purposes of the Tonnage on Foreign Stations (OK / some negative number) box on the main screen. A 4,000+ ton cruiser assigned to Foreign Stations in Northern Europe will cover a 4,000t shortfall in total station tonnage fulfillment regardless of where you're actually short of station tonnage, but will not count towards any particular sea zone's tonnage requirement even in the ship happens to be in the sea zone with the shortfall.

[nordlys]

Thanks, I get it now. So the value displayed on "tonnage on foreign stations" is calculated *after* the active ships overseas substract their tonnage from zonal requirements, and the FS duty is not even needed if zonal requirements are filled manually. Still a confusing system but I got the idea.

Sept 16, 2019 20:23:52 GMT -6 aeson said:

these seven ships totaling about 300,000 tons count for only about 125,000-130,000 tons towards the total unfulfilled station tonnage requirement - roughly the same as 17-18 10,000t cruisers, or about 14 10,000t cruisers fitted for colonial service. Using battleships for this purpose is therefore incredibly inefficient, as far as aggregate real tonnage required per ton of station requirement fulfilled.

True, but those 10000t cruisers can't stop an invasion attempt spearheaded by a battleship. They can, however, trigger a constant flow of "destroy a bombardment target with your puny 5in gun" missions. Since the battleships are going to be there to protect the colonies anyway, they could just as well double over fulfilling colonial presence requirements. I can spare half a dozen, I still got enough 90kt battlewagons at home

So, yes, if you're playing Britain or have somehow managed to acquire a colonial empire similar in scale to Britain's, I would say that it is entirely plausible that 300,000 tons of battleships is not an adequate provision for foreign station requirements.

I am playing Germany, and the sum of tonnage requirements as shown in Area Overview is just short of 130k. FS battleship tonnage is actually over 360k tons (3x44, 3x56 and one 62).

[BathTubAdmiral]

Use colonial gunboats like this:

It's cheaper than BBs or CLs, does not trigger battles, adds some minesweeping to the sea zone, and is quite historically correct ...

[dohboy]

I use gunboats much like that for colonial service, doesn't take that many to meet the requirements and the maintenance is cheap. Only time I use the FS status is if they are rebuilding.

[dougphresh]

I know KEs can take armour but does it do anything?

Versus unarmoured DDs, 3 IN in a protected cruiser layout would be great, but I never see my KEs in action.

Ditto speed.

Better to have 10kts, a 2 in gun and no armour, right?

[aeson]

Sept 18, 2019 13:50:08 GMT -6 dougphresh said:

I know KEs can take armour but does it do anything?

As far as I can tell? Not really - certainly not enough to justify the cost, at least in my opinion. If there's a credible hostile force then the independently-patrolling corvettes that spawn in the Coastal Forces during shipping raids and bombardment missions are pretty much doomed regardless of their armor and armament; likewise for the pair of corvettes that you can sometimes draw as the integral escort of a convoy (the warships in the Convoy Force rather than the player-controlled force, though at least in my experience they're more usually a pair of destroyers). Maybe it'd save a corvette or two during a destroyer raid, but you could easily have twice as many corvettes, probably at a lower overall construction cost, if you just don't armor them, and it's only against small numbers of destroyers or maybe an absolutely terrible midget cruiser that a corvette such as the example given by BathTubAdmiral would have a chance in a fight - and, really, a 1,200t corvette probably doesn't actually need armor to have a reasonable chance at winning a gunfight against a small number of early-game destroyers anyways.

The only other thing that I can think of that it might possibly affect is performance in gunnery duels against submarines, but when I ran some test games to try checking that for minesweepers in Rule the Waves 1 it seemed as though the win:loss ratio correlated more with size than armor and armament, and while the bigger minesweepers did seem to win the gunnery duels more often it also looked like they were relatively more likely to get torpedoed and relatively less likely to be involved in gunnery duels than the smaller minesweepers were. Haven't tried checking if that still holds in Rule the Waves 2, though I don't see any particular reason to think that it would have changed.

[sloanjh]

Sept 18, 2019 12:34:25 GMT -6 BathTubAdmiral said:

Use colonial gunboats like this:

It's cheaper than BBs or CLs, does not trigger battles, adds some minesweeping to the sea zone, and is quite historically correct ...

The downside of this (using a KE as opposed to a DD) is that it doesn't give you any strength points to counteract invasions, so if you're at war with someone who has colonies in invasion range of your foreign colonies and this is all you've got in the zone you'll get invaded.

[swang]

That's why you build a 6kt B, backed up by 1x 1.6kt Minesweeper KE, and as many 1.6kt ASW KE as you need to fill the cap.

Edit:

Yes, it is a piece of crap, but it can take out any unsupported DDs, and defend itself against most CLs.  By the time your opponent gathers up enough force (they'll need 36 ship points) to pose a problem, your own fleet, which should be rather large because you don't need to waste money on FS, should be there to back it up.  

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