Thinking about buying, questions

[vilab]

Hi,

I have had RTW 2 for a while, and only recently bothered looking at SAI and i think i could actually enjoy it much more.

I am wondering if the action in the UK vs GER campaign is restricted to the North Sea, can there be raids in the southern atlantic and pacific in the campaign ? Would i find merchant ship / convoys to sink with German raiders far from the UK ?

Is it possible to replace SA ships with RTW 2 ones ? It could be interesting to link a custom naval race with an actually decent operation simulation. 

Thanks.

[vonfriedman]

You can try playing the raider campaign made by hschuster44, which you can download from the "Raider Campaign update" thread.
It has a very accurate WW1 OOB and a map based on that of the Baltic Sea, with place names changed accordingly.
In this way, even if at the expense of absolute realism, long and boring missions on the high seas without sighting anything are avoided.

Regarding the second question, some of us are looking forward to NWS updating SAI to cover WW2 as well.

[philo32b]

I am not familiar with mod campaigns, but the vanilla game has only the North Sea and a Baltic Sea game (between Russia and Germany). There is also the Russo-Japanese War campaign of Korea and Japan if you get that standalone game. The campaigns are a lot of fun, especially if you are into the history. Both Steam and Iron and Rule the Waves share the same tactical battle scenario feel, but Steam and Iron is more operational than Rule the Waves, while Rule the Waves is more grand strategy than Steam and Iron.

[vilab]

My wallet is now lighter.

Downloaded, and immediatly played the battle of Jutland scenario as Germany because what else ?

The battle cruiser squadrons met and fought at close range while heading south toward the German battleline.
German gunnery was much superior and 2 British BC were detonated, a third was beaten hard and started sinking while others suffered from various damages and had to turn arround. This came at the cost of three torpedo hits shared between Lutzow and Molkte which divided their maximum speed by three.
The Queen Elizabeths appeared and charged straight throught the lagging swarm of German light forces toward the limping BCs only for Barham to detonate 25 year early due to turret flash fire, and Malaya to eat a torpedo from a British ship, forcing her to head north.
The remaining able BCs kept shooting at each other for no result while heading away from both battlelines.
The crippled German BCs somehow managed to survive long enough to merge with the German battleline while the British' didn t dare following the crazed QEs throught the mess of the German light forces.
The 2 remaining QEs finally realized their poor situation as they came under the fire of 50+ 12inch guns, and turned back, but it was too late and the 21kts German BB managed to cripple and then beat Warspite into submission.
Darkness came and both fleets turned back to their ports.

Final result was 3 BC ( 1 lion, 2 invincible/indefatiguable ) + 2 QE BB sunk + various cripled capital ships at the cost of two German BC cosplaying IRL Seydlitz while that one was ironically in a very good condition despite fighting from start to end. A very nice result for the Germans.

While the UK losing a few BCs was not unexpected to me, the terrible luck and the battlecraziness which hit the Queen Elizabeth were.

I admit i felt something when i read the post battle results and realized it was Warspite who was ripped apart by overwhelming firepower.

[philo32b]

Very nice battle! I love the epic feeling of the conflicts, especially in the campaigns where you have to live with the results afterwards.

I must say, though, that in your game's world Evan-Thomas had been replaced by a more rash admiral. That doesn't sound like him at all!