Some Newbie Gameplay Questions

[fogofwar]

Have about 10 hours of game play in as the USA and did read the Manual.

Is the USA a poor starting player choice since I am having a hard time at it ?

Also in another area, I keep getting error messages that insist "Not Enough Ships on Foreign Stations" but when I send them I get" No Support available " ??

When I send modest Battle Squadron ( a BB, CL and few DD`s ) to the USA West Coast, in case of War with Japan,  I get a message "Not enough support ? Surely that`s not historic ??

Can we not build specific area support bases ? In the real world that`s where much of the naval budget went starting in TR`s administration.

The default for the battle scenarios seems to be "Rear Admiral", is that why, in over 20+ battles  I can never win one.. is it possible to lower the settings to make the battles more balanced in this game. Perhaps it needs some large hardcoded fleet actions ??

I have yet to see an AI ship lose speed and the scenarios almost always ends in Night ? I have yet to see a battle that picks BB`s, even USA VS England. I don`t know why I build them if they are never used, am I missing a setting here ? 

Also in the Scenarios that end the battle when night falls just run on forever....and ever.. and that`s most of the time, I think this needs to be looked at IMHO 

Also what`s the point of a squadron of DD`s tagging along with the 2 CL`s I always get, since they never use Torps despite being on top of the AI ships.

I have more, but for now let me say I understand this is  at the core an economic and ship building naval game but that part of the game doesn`t seem to be resolved in the Combat generator...hopefully I`m misunderstanding the interface but so far I`m lost.

PS: This Game _really_ needs the option to go past 1925.

[ccip]

Some answers:

- The USA is actually a good starting choice, although it's actually easier to play with "historical resources", since in that scenario you have a big financial lead over every other nation except Britain.

- The way around "no support" for foreign stations is to simply rotate your ships every once in a while; but you should also use "foreign stations" command instead of sending ships directly, because I believe the game will automatically rotate your ships between assignments and give some support.

- What is your base capacity on the west coast? You may want to expand it a bit. Remember that in the year 1900, the West Coast is still very much a new frontier and does not yet have the major bases it does today.

- You can and should build bases - it's a bit expensive (2.4 million per expansion) but especially for the US it's worth investing in. Click on a possession (one of the flags) and then expand the base there.

Lack of support is also not always a fatal problem - your ships deteriorate, yes, but you can keep even "out of support" ships operating for a month or two in foreign waters before they start having really serious problems. You can set temporary blockades and force battles on your enemy for a month or two before returning back to the home area and letting your ships recover for a while.

And in general, as a rule you want to keep the majority of your fleet stationed in your home area when it's not wartime. There's no need to spread them out because most of the time, all that does is simply make you more vulnerable if war suddenly starts up.

- The difficulty setting isn't affected by the mode - the AI still behaves the same. Winning battles is tricky, but here I think more depends on your tactics - see if you can identify where you usually lose ships/points, and I'm sure people here can help out with some advice

- Fleet battles between battleships are rare, and in fact, Britain will probably be pretty reluctant to just fight you directly when instead they can blockade and pick off your fleet in weaker areas. Fleet battles DO happen however, and you want to prepare for them.
You can also look at fleet battles in this perspective: in all the years between 1900 and 1925 historically, there were arguably only 2-4 (depending on how you classify them) battles involving battleships on both sides - Yellow Sea, Tsushima, Jutland, and Moon Sound (though that one was a very unequal match). So don't be surprised that you aren't seeing a lot of action between them.

- What do you mean by scenarios running forever? If you're just looking to end a scenario without quitting, just put the time speed to "ultra fast" and it'll be over in a minute.

- Destroyers not launching torpedoes might be something you see early in the game, because the torpedo range is severely limited, but that's not the case later on. Also, use the "flottilla attack" order and you will definitely see your destroyers acting a lot more aggressively when ordered.

[doubledeuce]

Jul 25, 2015 16:32:11 GMT -6 ccip said:

- Destroyers not launching torpedoes might be something you see early in the game, because the torpedo range is severely limited, but that's not the case later on. Also, use the "flottilla attack" order and you will definitely see your destroyers acting a lot more aggressively when ordered.

That's something that should come in handy for me as well. Thanks!

[charonjr]

And lowering the difficulty to Captain should help at the start since yoh can put AI fleets under manual control.

[fogofwar]

Thanks CCIP, but from the Map window I don`t see anyway to build bases at specific locations either left or right clicking on the Map window ??. The Map window says the West Cost has 550 bases value, what ever that means ( is that in the Manual somewhere ? )

Do you means build dock Size ??

I don`t see any " Flotilla Attack " order option in the Combat module window ? It always defaults to the DD`s under friendly AI control.

Charonjr: When starting a new game I see no option for difficulty setting ??

Thanks for all the help Guys

[cleveland]

I just fired up the game and moved 8 US B's to the West Coast. They were there for over a year and I never got a "not enough support" message.

Flotilla attack: right click on your top level HQ in the OB tab (over on the left hand side of the screen), then go to "status". You can give the order there, along with other orders.

[lixma]

Jul 25, 2015 18:15:56 GMT -6 cleveland said:

Flotilla attack: right click on your top level HQ in the OB tab (over on the left hand side of the screen), then go to "status". You can give the order there, along with other orders.

Or just right-click on the squadron's flag in the main window.

[Fredrik W]

Jul 25, 2015 17:30:58 GMT -6 fogofwar said:

Thanks CCIP, but from the Map window I don`t see anyway to build bases at specific locations either left or right clicking on the Map window ??. The Map window says the West Cost has 550 bases value, what ever that means ( is that in the Manual somewhere ? )

Select the possessions tab in the list to the left of the map. Right click a possession and select details. Or zoom in a bit (using mouse wheel) and left click a possession flag on the map. You will get a small screen with details about the possession. Threre is a button for improving bases.

[phoenix]

You can select Captain's mode from the preferences button (3rd from left at top) once you're in the scenario screen, or from the 'campaign' screen preferences button - over on the right, bottom, third along.

But I don't see this 'possessions' button. Where's that? Can someone post a screenie of it please?

edit: sorry, found it now, map tab then it's in the little OOB window to the left. Got it.

[fogofwar]

Sincerely appreciate all the help guys.

Perhaps old news, found this 10 parts series on UTube, this guy loves the game and is clearly the Master of Micro Management..:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0mCiWhVClM