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Post by rimbecano on Apr 6, 2021 9:12:36 GMT -6
One of the frustrations people have with this game is how technology feels like it advances too rapidly. And indeed, at 100% research rate it's very common to see the first dreadnoughts get laid down towards the end of 1903, a full two years prior to the real HMS Dreadnought. Keep in mind that Dreadnought was rush-built at a pace that is impossible in-game, even with accelerated construction, so a ship laid down in late 1903 won't beat Dreadnought into actual service by all that much. Given that you can't build a BB in 14 months, the game has to give the tech early for the first BBs to be commissioned on time.
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Post by rimbecano on Apr 3, 2021 3:14:07 GMT -6
The vast majority of engagements in a war are cruiser engagements in one form or another. Question: Why would I add, say, 6 to 8 CL to my fleet and run the risk of losing at least some of them every war when I can build two additional CA and be almost guaranteed victory in that majority of engagements? Because, barring misfortune, I'm already confident of winning the overwhelming majority of cruiser engagements using CLs. Why should I build a big expensive ship that's more of a loss if something goes wrong when I already have significant confidence in my ability to win cruiser engagements with a much cheaper ship, especially considering that that cheaper ship is a much, much better ship to use for screening capital ships than a larger cruiser that costs almost as much as the ships it's supposed to be protecting? [/div][/quote] In the very early game, I find CLs are at a sour spot in the power/speed curve, and just end up being too expensive for their combat value. Later on as engine tech improves, they become more viable, but the late date at which it becomes possible to give them a decent centerline armament still makes a heavy CL / light CA with an 8" or 9" main battery and a secondary battery of 4"/5"/6" (according to best available gun quality) a better bargain than a classic protected cruiser CL with an all-light armament. Once dreadnought CLs (finally!) become possible, the size of capital ships is often into the 40kton range, and a heavy cruiser style CA tends not to be much more expensive compared to a BC or fast BB than a CL is to a B or CA or a pre/semi-dreadnought BC in the early game. Plus, the AI is often building at least a few such ships (and Germany is building Panzerschiffe), for which a CA is a cheaper answer than a BC. I do find that I build Atlanta-style CLs for the AA / light forces gunboat role (with destroyers in the torpedo boat role), and for filling foreign service, but CAs are definitely part of my fleet mix. When the last of my BCs age out (the same build scheme I use for BCs early on eventually qualifies as a fast BB as it gets heavier), I'll even start building new BCs on heavy-cruiser lines (18-20 kton, relatively light armor, speed above any capital ship in service, 11-12 in guns) as a firm answer to German Panzerschiffe. Of course, all this might be much different if I were typically playing Britain.
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Post by rimbecano on Mar 27, 2021 18:35:33 GMT -6
Short answer - no. Longer answer: This is a modification to the missions themselves, not to the AI deciding to decline a battle or not. Basically the mission template logic will try to avoid placing task forces in very constricted areas of certain regions in later game time frames (where land-based aircraft are likely to be aplenty). It would not prevent a battle, just place the attacking forces in the areas that are not so constricted. Problem is, I've had surface units spawn in waters that are open enough, but deep enough into air cover and close enough to daylight hours that there is no way to prevent them from being hit by enemy airstrikes. The problem isn't just confined waters, it's "why would a force go this deep into enemy air cover in daylight?". I'd rather stuff like coastal bombardment missions in the North Sea started out at the edge of air cover in the evening twilight. Of course, this won't help the Baltic or the Med where there is no "out of air cover", there it might be best for the bombardment force to start at its own bases in the evening twilight (and certain types of missions maybe shouldn't be generated in the Baltic in the summer months).
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Post by rimbecano on Mar 14, 2021 2:39:33 GMT -6
I think what's going on is that with the US having less income, GBR's "increased budget to maintain preeminence" perk doesn't get pushed as hard.
In other words, Britain's budget isn't explicitly tied to the US, but is tied to whichever of its opponents has the most money (which is generally the US).
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Post by rimbecano on Mar 6, 2021 3:12:01 GMT -6
Update original with it, not expansion. I have tons of changes I'd like to see regarding battle generation and force selection, but much of what I'd like to see (and much of what others have advocated for), would involve a significant overhaul of the game, such that it would necessarily have to be part of an expansion or sequel. That said, these things have been on my wishlist since RTW1. I was disappointed that RTW2 did not include them, and would rather have had the original 1900-1925 game overhauled rather than having aviation and another quarter century added to the game. And I'll be disappointed if he expansion, or at least a future RTW3, does not include them. A few more comments for the NWS team: 1) While I myself am not especially eager to get ahold of the features involved, I do sympathize with the people who have expressed concern about features that were announced for RTW2 before the expansion was announced that now seem like they'll end up being pushed back to the expansion, especially the features that have been in the UI, but unimplemented, since 1.0. 2) I myself have concerns that RTW2 is not to the point, in terms of outstanding bugs, that RTW1 was when RTW2 was announced. 3) I'm a bit concerned about the feasibility of a game engine that handles everything from 1890 to 1970, particularly given that an 1890 legacy fleet will contain a lot of oddball designs from the steam to sail transition. I know that players have been asking for an 1890 start, but I don't know how well it can be implemented in a game that also includes missile cruisers.
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Post by rimbecano on Feb 26, 2021 21:56:17 GMT -6
Regarding 3: If I recall correctly the effect of this condition actually does decrease with every successive detonation. I don't recall the exact number but after perhaps 3-4 occourances your rate of flash fires becomes the same as other nations without the effect. You are right that this condition has taken a situational truth applying to a very specific period of time out of context and applied it to the whole first half of the 20th century, to my understanding it is a contrivance to allow non-UK players to put some kind of dent in the UK's often monolithic mid game fleet. So there really were three problems that contributed to the British flash fire problem: 1) Poor flash safety procedures. This was recognized and corrected. On some ships it was not a great problem (e.g, Lion, whose gunnery officer, some time prior to Jutland, ordered the magazines swept and the sweepings dumped in a pile on deck. He then dropped a match into the pile with the turret crews looking on, after which everyone wore their magazine shoes). 2) Poor armor on BCs. This was recognized and corrected on new construction, but not much could be done for existing ships. 3) Touchy powder. Seydlitz survived a dual turret fire that actually reached both magazines involved, whereas I'm not aware of any British vessel that survived flash reaching the magazines. This was never corrected. IIRC, the British lost a BB (Royal Oak?) to a spontaneous flash fire in port in WWII, and the USN did a test on the flash susceptibility of US vs British powder in WWII in which the British powder did very poorly. Depending on where exactly the shell that destroyed Hood went off, this might have made the difference (e.g, if the shell went off in the engine room and sent splinters into the 4" magazines, then less volatile powder might have prevented the loss of the ship. If the shell went off in the middle of a magazine, the ship was probably doomed with any powder).
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Post by rimbecano on Feb 22, 2021 22:14:35 GMT -6
RE: the Alaska/BC debate, I feel it's worth noting that at no stage did the Imperial German Navy refer to their battlecruisers as such, but as Large Cruisers (Grosser Kreuzers), which reflected the fact that doctrinally these ships were follow-ons from Germany's armoured cruisers - oriented to battlefleet scouting duties first and foremost. Nevertheless, we still refer to them as battlecruisers in the English-speaking world. Just because a ship isn't called a Battlecruiser doesn't necessarily mean it isn't one (and vice versa). Interestingly, though, for the Germans not having called them Battlecruisers, they were more fit to stand in a battle line than the British BCs. One could even argue for calling them fast BBs. There's doctrine (where none of the original BCs on either side were conceived of as fast battle line elements), and then there's actual usefulness. The concept of the BC as originally developed by Fisher was a ship in an armored cruiser / large cruiser / cruiser-killer role with the same tonnage and main battery caliber as a contemporary battleship. A lot of designs from the interwar/WWII period fulfill the first criterion, but only fulfill the second (especially by the time WWII actually began) if you squint really hard through treaty-colored glasses. Put quite simply, by 1940, 35,000 tons was no longer capital ship tonnage, and 11/12 inches was no longer capital ship caliber. Really, but for the treaty, that was already the case in 1920 for new construction. It would have been the Scharnhorsts, the Deutschlands were a complete dead-end. Pretty much all the new construction BBs of the WWII era could match or exceed their speed.
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Post by rimbecano on Feb 18, 2021 4:25:19 GMT -6
Besides this is something else, even with battles where I am often at cruising speed or less because of the AI's propensity to cross its own T and my desire to not miss such opportunities and even in later game I am seeing divisions simply unable able to follow a straight line track and keep up with a flag doing 14 knots in 24-30 knot ships. In broad daylight with 20kyd visibility, I might add. Normally I've found it undisruptive enough that I've not mentioned it here, but I recall one instance where it was incredibly disruptive and lasted for hours.
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Post by rimbecano on Feb 15, 2021 22:53:06 GMT -6
1 more edit: Is there a reason you leave so much spare displacement room? Am I making a mistake leaving so little on mine? I tend to try to leave about 100 extra displacement for capital ships, to make room for fire control upgrades. 200 is probably excessive, and 600 definitely is. Keep in mind that you can always reduce your rounds-per-gun to free up weight if a fire control refit takes you into overweight territory, though this makes the refit take longer.
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Post by rimbecano on Feb 15, 2021 22:46:44 GMT -6
lol. Yeah I definitely know the differences, and a fast BB is my preference but I wanted it classified as a BC in order to serve that purpose and not mess with my battleline. If what you're saying is accurate that they'll be prioritized for BC duty as long as I have slower battleline units to fill that role then I have absolutely no reason not to build them. Thanks for that! The big question is what sort of role you want to use BCs/Fast BBs in. If you plan on running your main battle line parallel to the enemy in fleet battles and then using your BC line to get out ahead of the enemy and cross his T, then your BC line will be going toe-to-toe with enemy BBs and needs to be able to take a beating, so you really need fast BBs. If you want your BC line to engage the enemy BC line when it shows up, but not to directly engage enemy BBs, then you still need to be able to take a hit, as your enemy will have heavy caliber weapons, but you can afford to have a bit of a glass jaw, because your enemy will have one too, as AI BCs tend to be lightly built. In that case, 12" of armor is fine. If you primarily want your BCs to be cruiser-killers, and not to engage any type of enemy capital ship, including BCs, then a British-style BC with no more armor than it needs to keep out 8" or 10" shells is sufficient.
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Post by rimbecano on Feb 14, 2021 3:45:28 GMT -6
Given the issues with how the mission generator works, the constant AI running away even when it has superior forces, the lack of any value from crossing the enemy's T On the one hand, I don't think T-crossing was as valuable in the dreadnought era as it's made out to have been, at least in daylight action. Jellicoe accomplished very little in crossing the enemy's T at Jutland *twice*. In fact, he *lost* the battle, though that wasn't really his fault, the point being that even crossing the enemy's T twice, he couldn't salvage things. On the other, I've had the AI completely melt down and lose all force cohesion so many times in game, when its T was crossed, that I can't agree that T crossing has no value in game Torpedoes are definitely frustratingly difficult to make use of in the first five or ten years, but I find it easy to make them just as hard to use for the AI as they are for me. By the 1910s, though, I find them quite effective. That said there *does* seem to be a bug where friendly ships on the disengaged side of the firing ship can block shots, and I *really* want an indication for blocked shots of which ship blocks the shot and how, so such things can be debugged. I do agree that there are rough edges on the game that should be smoothed out before missiles go further. I've had games where I was too slow with fire control upgrades, or where an enemy simply out-researched me in fire control (particularly when playing poorer nations), and that can definitely bite you in the butt. And, particularly in the early game, main-caliber hits are few and far between, and that means statistical variation can bite you in the butt, too. Night actions are dangerous, and the beginnings of night actions especially so, because one side typically identifies the other well before the other side identifies the first. So even with good positioning, you can get clobbered. When I make contact at night, I generally raise the flotilla attack flag and have my lead division turn together to break contact. If all goes well, my DDs will maintain contact with the enemy while my main force retreats, and then I'll keep my main force out of sight of the enemy until I see an opportunity to cross the T of a ship or formation that my DDs have identified and engaged. I treat any ship that has me in-arc for torpedoes as having already launched (really, the devs could make this kind I'd knife-work a lot more interesting by having the AI build ships with submerged fore-and-aft tubes. As it is, I know that I'm completely safe from torpedoes if the enemy is bow our stern on to me). And yeah, every once in a while I get impatient and try and use my battle line to maintain contact, and then I eat a few fish.
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Post by rimbecano on Feb 13, 2021 7:48:08 GMT -6
I normally keep about 2-3 months revenue in reserve and this sees me out when wars end. Having a reserve is often important for other reasons: But that's just the thing, other than late game end-of-war budget crashes, the reserve I keep would be good for *years*, and for any budget crash I ever had in RTW1, it would have kept me afloat for a year or so while I figured out how to rebalance my budget. But I had one war in RTW2 where I went from a healthy surplus to a 40M/month deficit at the end, which wiped out at least a third of my reserve in the interturn, and left me with no time to recall ships from foreign theaters for mothballing.
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Post by rimbecano on Feb 5, 2021 3:16:24 GMT -6
I was thinking in terms of the heavy loss rates.
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Post by rimbecano on Feb 4, 2021 13:03:01 GMT -6
Sounds like the old "pack the holds with cork, run through the minefield until you hit something, and hope the cork keeps you afloat" method of minesweeping, which was actually sometimes used historically, believe it or not.
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Post by rimbecano on Feb 4, 2021 11:01:36 GMT -6
I'm in the habit of refitting my old 500 tonners for TP duties. I've had a number of games where I've never scrapped a single destroyer, and a few more where I've scrapped destroyers just to cut down micromanagement.
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