Jeune ecole

[millsian]

Currently in ww1 era war with France (playing as AH) having trashed Italy twice already.

Have built lots of DD both larger 1000T plus as fleet boats and a number of smaller 500-600t smaller ones as historical torpedo boat with one gun and max torp loadout

But in battle even with flotilla attack orders they seem very shy to use torpedoes which is annoying as have spent on torp doctrine and re equipment of all my single tubes with multiple tubes

Am I missing something?

[fleet5]

You need long range torpedoes before flotilla attack really becomes useful other than in night battles and most of the launched torpedoes will still be misses. Ships loaded with torpedoes are really good from the twenties onward, not before.

[jwsmith26]

Using destroyers before 1920 is not really about hitting enemy ships with torpedoes (though I never give up trying). The key to their successful use is understanding how the AI views destroyers. It is quite easy to see that the AI is absolutely terrified of destroyers and therein lies their power.

I should preface this by admitting that destroyers lose much of their power when you play the game at admiral level. At that level you have little control over these vital ships. However, when playing at rear admiral or captain level their super powers are unleashed.

More than any other ship class, destroyers allow you to control the flow of a battle. The AI reacts to the approach of a destroyer flotilla by turning its capital ships away from the destroyers. This will often occur when threatened by the approach of even a single destroyer; a flotilla attack can cause quite dramatic reactions, especially if the enemy line is threatened by destroyer charges approaching from several different directions. This often results in battleline confusion that exceeds the apparent confusion that arises from an aerial attack. This tumult provides similar benefits by disrupting the ability of the enemy to fire effectively while providing inviting targets for your own undisturbed line.

Destroyers are critical whether being pursued or pursuing the enemy. Throwing a destroyer attack at a pursuing enemy battleline will often allow you to break contact when the enemy battleships turn away. When pursuing, destroyers can be sent on a flanking maneuver to prevent the enemy from moving in a certain direction, allowing you to control the direction of enemy flight.

While the above are useful tactical maneuvers, I find the most important destroyer tactic to be the ability to break an enemy battle line. A carefully timed thrust by one or several destroyer flotillas will allow you to separate a portion of the enemy line for annihilation. I've included an image below from a battle that took place in 1905 between the Austrian fleet and the Italian fleet. In this battle the Italians had 13 battleships and my Austrians had just 7. I was not going to win if I simply squared up against his line allowing us to blast away at each other. My only hope of victory was to face off against a reduced Italian line. I accomplished this with a dagger thrust to the enemy midsection.

In the image you can see two of my destroyer divisions racing toward the enemy center. The back half of the Italian battleline, from the Napoli class ships back, will start to turn away in about 2 turns. In fact, this back section of the line was never able to regain a position to threaten my own ships. When the battleships turned away I could have withdrawn my destroyers but I judged that the Italians would have recovered too quickly in this situation, so I pushed my destroyers right into the enemy line. With so many perceived threats coming from those pipsqueaks right among their leviathans, the Italian line was thrown into complete confusion that persisted for perhaps 15 minutes. I lost 4 of the destroyers and one even managed to put a torpedo into an enemy battleship. 

Meanwhile those front 4 battleships, now isolated, raced forward to their doom at the hands of my 7 battleships. I sank all four of the isolated battleships (and their little CA friend, as well :-) without a loss to my own battleships. This battle flipped the power in the Adriatic and in ensuing battles I was able to whittle down their remaining battleline until they sued for peace and ceded Sardinia to my nation. (Yeah, I know I should have taken the bucks instead.)

Finally, I'll also point out that, when threatening the AI, it doesn't matter if a destroyer has already expended its torpedoes. In RTW2 a destroyer is perceived as an existential threat by the AI regardless of whether it still has fangs. The power of early destroyers is not that they can sink enemy battleships but that the AI thinks they can.

[brygun]

The lead squadron of a cluster/task force will have the option for "flotilla attack". This seems to increase the frequency of torpedo launches.

I play at rear admiral level. I maneuver the fleets to bait the enemy moving in a direction my massed DDs are already, or going. Then turn on flotilla attack, manually steer each DD squad and have each DD squad make smoke. Making bugle blowing sounds at the computer contributes to the affect. The IJN would probably prefer Tako drumming though as they adopt British naval customs they to might be seen sounding Charge on a bugle.

[millsian]

Not sure my AH navy destroyers - main class being the Von trapp class ( he was a KuK navy officer and I needed a name quickly as commute was about to end and I needed to save game quickly and get off train) would have the same elan when charging to the music from the sound of music - the seas are alive with the sounds of torpedoes?

[rodentnavy]

Feb 14, 2020 7:58:38 GMT -6 millsian said:

Not sure my AH navy destroyers - main class being the Von trapp class ( he was a KuK navy officer and I needed a name quickly as commute was about to end and I needed to save game quickly and get off train) would have the same elan when charging to the music from the sound of music - the seas are alive with the sounds of torpedoes?

Von Trapp is a very appropriate name given his first wife and thus mother to the children portrayed in the movie was the grand daughter of Robert Whitehead who invented the locomotive torpedo.  It should encourage the class to fire off lots of torpedoes as Agatha needs to pay for that big house.  

[euchrejack]

jwsmith26, I would have taken Sardinia also. Playing as AH, I generally try to take all the Mediterranean, and versus Italy, that island is beautiful. Dump gun batteries, airships and aircraft on it, and it can win wars for you.

[rimbecano]

Feb 14, 2020 7:58:38 GMT -6 millsian said:

Not sure my AH navy destroyers - main class being the Von trapp class ( he was a KuK navy officer and I needed a name quickly as commute was about to end and I needed to save game quickly and get off train) would have the same elan when charging to the music from the sound of music - the seas are alive with the sounds of torpedoes?

We've launched sixteen, going on seventeen?

...
So, a needle pulling thread,
Tor, da da da da da da,
Pe, da da da da da da,
And that brings us back to do-o-o-o.
...

[Deleted]

To be fair, I´ve never used flotilla attack order. I´ve just set it to independent and maneuvered it close to enemy ships. With enough DDs I often manage to score one hit even in pre-BB era,