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Post by generalvikus on Jul 23, 2023 6:19:27 GMT -6
I tried doing that by building a fleet exclusively out of BB and DD (and later CV). The funny thing is that you still get cruiser battles with all your ships being Destroyers and nothing else. It's absolutely silly. And you still gets lots of convoy attacks and defenses, too, with just your Destroyers for the most part. The battle generator kinda breaks in those circumstances from my experience. And I agree with the rest of what you said. It makes sense for a superior force to seek decisive engagements while trying to blockade the enemy, whereas a smaller navy might want to slowly chip away at their stronger enemy without risking a full-scale fleet battle. That would be a much welcome change. I can confirm this. I don't build any CL, concentrating on CAs and that approach mostly works but once in a while I will get a cruiser battle, coastal raid or a convoy attack where I can field all of two DDs vs. whatever the enemy brings (I don't know because this is a clear case of CTRL-ALT-DEL) I suggested some time ago to add some field in doctrine that would allow a player to specify what classes of ships are to be included/excluded for some missions since I, as the CIC Naval Forces most definitely will _not_ authorize convoy attacks or coastal raids conducted by a pair of DDs and have the responsible admiral transferred to toilette-duty in a heartbeat. As for the "declining fleet engagements lift the blockade" suggestion, I 100% agree. I think that in these cases, the battle generator is probably working as designed. While the devs have never quite said so, one gets the strong impression that the intent of the battle generator is to create a series of relatively small, numerically even battles where each side has roughly the same numbers of each ship type, regardless of the actual balance of forces. Everyone is allocated a certain number of symmetrical slots, and if you can't fill a 'slot' to mirror the enemy force, then that slot is left empty. I think that's how it is because that's how they always wanted it to be. It's not realistic and it's not meant to be.
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Post by generalvikus on Jul 20, 2023 18:24:46 GMT -6
I think the simplest solution is to add a mechanic whereby declining a battle breaks the blockade for the subsequent turn.
A more complex and better solution might be to add a doctrine menu for fleets, similar to the existing system for submarines: an 'active' posture will generate fleet battles and blockade the enemy if you have superior blockade points; a 'passive' posture will not generate fleet battles and will not blockade the enemy.
In the meantime, to maximize the probability of fleet battles, make sure you have no cruisers on AF. Doing away with BCs will probably further increase the probability of fleet battles.
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Post by generalvikus on Jul 20, 2023 2:08:46 GMT -6
This error prevents me from loading the save at all. Other saves can be loaded. Is there any way I can fix it? Attachments:Game3.zip (3.48 MB)
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Post by generalvikus on Jul 19, 2023 16:15:37 GMT -6
There has been a lot of discussion of SAM effectiveness, but has anyone made a study of the effectiveness of AA? I have a few questions:
What do AA directors do? How effective are light, medium, and heavy AA respectively, both at disruption and inflicting losses? Does the relationship between light / medium / heavy AA change over time?
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Post by generalvikus on Jul 19, 2023 16:00:45 GMT -6
I'm currently playing a 1920 USA campaign where I've decided to play out the Treaty for as long as possible; and, since the battle generator does not seem to be very kind to carriers - I don't yet know if that has changed with the last update - I've been building lots of 10k ton treaty cruisers. This has naturally raised the question of how best to cope with treaty limitations. I'm playing with the realistic speeds mod.
Naturally, there's the low - hanging fruit; all - or - nothing armor with 0" extensions, and all - forward armament. But beyond that, what to do?
On the face of it, machinery development looks to be a dead end; almost all the techs are 1% weight reductions. One would therefore guess that ship design and hull research, both of which provide nebulous "HP requirement reductions" are a better bet. The next option is armor tech - again, 2% weight reductions are not impressive, but the 'gradual increase in armor quality' might make up for it. Finally, there's going overweight. As I understand it, doing so increases flotation damage, but I don't know how much. Has anyone looked into that?
In 1926, my latest 10K ton treaty cruisers are 3x3 8" (I lack reliable quads) with 130 rounds in an ABQ layout, 5"B and 1.5" D and 0 TDS, immune to my Q1 guns from 14 to 17k yards; medium range, speed of 31 knots with speed focused engines. In my case, the high speed is a necessity, because the world is swarming with BCs and hardly any BBs, and so I sacrificed the TDS; but I could fit TDS 1 by going considerably overweight. I'm interested to hear what sort of treaty cruisers you guys like. I can see very little room for improvement. For example, a 2x4 8" design saves 200 tons, or 2% of the displacement, in exchange for 12% less firepower - it seems hardly worth it, even before you consider the impact of hits and mechanical failures disabling the 50% of your firepower instead of only 33%.
And, while we're at it, how about Treaty battleships? I intend to set a 35KT limit, though I'm undecided as to whether to end the holiday in 1930 or 1935. I'm leaning towards 3x3 14" ABQ, 120 rounds with a 14" AoN inclined belt, 3.5" D, (regardless of efficacy, I've restricted myself to AoN only for this campaign,) at 28 knots. Bomb penetration as I understand it, is anemic, so may as well capitalize on that. The immunity zone is 14 - 20k yards against Q0 16" guns, and 10 - 22k against Q0 14". Unlike the cruiser, a 2x4 gun all forward layout seems like an attractive alternative for a battleship - with 14" guns it saves 2k tons or 6% of the displacement, and with 16" guns it saves 2,300. Getting to 28 knots is very expensive - I have always assumed it's necessary so that the ship won't be penalized by the battle generator if it doesn't meet the design speed. Does anyone know if this is the case?
As for tech, I'm considering going all out on armor, ship design, and hull for the remainder of the build holiday in order to get the best possible BBs and CVs when it expires, on the assumption that machinery is essentially a worthless tech group. I'm particularly interested in hearing your thoughts on how to get the best out of technology with a displacement limit.
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Post by generalvikus on Jul 19, 2023 14:16:53 GMT -6
Hey guys,
Two questions about carrier development: what lifts the requirement for 8 x 6" guns, and what allows carrier displacement to increase? Are these things gated behind a tech group, year, or some other mechanism?
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Post by generalvikus on Jun 22, 2023 12:31:20 GMT -6
I find the "spawning on top"-problem not really decisive, just a little annoying. After the first two or three minutes everything should be cleared. Please concentrate on important bugs. In these early game battles it was always quite decisive, because contact was made immediately and long before the traffic jam or black hole resolved itself, and because my line was slower than the enemy's. As such, the head start it provided resulted in the enemy getting off more lightly than they should have on many occasions.
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Post by generalvikus on Jun 22, 2023 3:39:04 GMT -6
I always understood that a battleship needs to have a speed of at least 27 knots in order to be considered 'fast' and therefore be given preferential treatment by the battle generator. But this raises two questions: firstly, what if the ship is designed for 27 knots but fails to reach its design speed? Secondly, what if it originally makes 27 knots, but falls below that speed over the course of its service life? This is of considerable importance, because a ship may commonly lose two knots of speed over the course of its service life, so a margin of safety which accounts for that and failing to meet the design speed would put the minimum speed for a 'fast' battleship at 30 knots - even with the realistic speed mod, considerably more expensive on any displacement. Does anyone know the answer to these questions?
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Post by generalvikus on Jun 21, 2023 12:23:06 GMT -6
Hey guys,
For my next campaign, I'm interested in trying USA or Japan for some carrier - on - carrier action in the Pacific. However, I get the impression from your reports that battle ranges are so short as to make carriers tactically irrelevant. Furthermore, I know from my experience in RTW2 that the biggest limiting factor on what kind of battles you get to fight is whether or not your AI enemy is willing to deploy its main fleet to a zone you can reach, and it tended to be the case that only the Russian AI would deploy a large battle - fleet to the Pacific - a practice which I've seen it repeat to its own detriment in RTW3.
So, I have two questions. Firstly, are carriers currently useful enough to base a campaign around them, or are they too impractical? Secondly, when playing as Japan, do nations other than Russia deploy major forces to fight you? Conversely, when playing as the USA, will the Japanese deploy to Southeast Asia or other parts of the Pacific, or will they stay in home waters and deploy only small forces to other zones, as I think they tended to do in RTW2?
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Post by generalvikus on Jun 20, 2023 6:41:58 GMT -6
Which armour zone covers the lower belt edge, I wonder? Is it BU?
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Post by generalvikus on Jun 19, 2023 20:58:47 GMT -6
Title requires no further explanation.
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Post by generalvikus on Jun 19, 2023 9:43:52 GMT -6
Yep... for Rev B, 250-lb Snakeyes will be the go-to, with some follow-on strikes using 1000-lbers for devastation. I think auto-planned Strike missions *will* pop up, they just have to live that long. The standard off-axis mission has an IP 20nm from the target, then a run-in at mil power/min-alt, then pops up to minimum weapon release altitude. Or at least it should... with hundreds of aircraft and literally thousands of loadouts in CMO, I've found a couple through the years that didn't work as intended. If you're lazy and don't adjust the IP, it ends up inside the SAM envelope, and your digital pilots bob and weave avoiding a couple hundred SAMs. Re ARMs and doctrine... i have no idea, but given their effectiveness in Vietnam at forcing SAM radars to go dark or die it seems like something I'd include. Each A-6 squadron at that point included a couple A-6Bs optimized for that role, so it makes sense. I don't know when the Mk82 Snakeye was introduced, but the Command DB says 1967 in the Navy and 1970 in the USAF. Wikipedia references the existence of a Mk 81 Snakeye variant, but it's not in the CMO DB and wiki doesn't say when the Mk 81 variant was introduced. Either way, given its date of introduction, the Mk 82 Snakeye isn't quite representative of the period covered by RTW3, which is an important fact because it is a far superior anti - ship weapon compared with the conventional iron bomb. The introduction of those weapons might well have been the moment when the conventionally armed tactical aircraft had the greatest advantage over the surface ship.
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Post by generalvikus on Jun 19, 2023 8:11:34 GMT -6
Well, gentlemen, I feel compelled to report that the question has been settled rather decisively, and in a most tragic fashion. By early 1915, four years into the war, we had claimed a total of 16 British predreadnoughts, five battlecruisers, and twenty British dreadnoughts sent to the bottom, (that's 41 total) for the loss of four dreadnoughts and two pre-dreadnoughts. Nevertheless, Britain had no fewer than twelve capital ships under construction. After the above battle, we finally succeeded in establishing a firm blockade of Britain, which would have lasted; and Britain was finally teetering on the brink of revolution. America and Japan had both joined on my side mid-way through the war, but neither contributed anything. France, which had sat on the fence for many months, finally came to Britain's rescue. France alone had a larger budget than I had, with 9 capital ships under construction, bringing the Allied total up to 21 - to my two. Keeping all those predreadnoughts alive to finally turn the tables on the British blockade had paid off, but it was all for naught - sink another twenty enemy capital ships and I would still be blockaded and headed for revolution. The massed torpedo boats which had bought my later victories contributed no blockade points. What's a German to do in such a bleak situation? Submarines, of course! So, I tearfully scrapped most of the heroic predreadnoughts, undefeated in countless battles, and put the remainder of the surface fleet into ignominious reserve to fund a hundred submarines.
A few months later, Britain collapsed into revolution - at last, a place in the sun! But all we got was five measly points, which bought Burma and Cyprus in the peace deal. Had I not betrayed the heroic predreadnoughts, I would now have been blockading France; but instead I was blockaded myself, since the French had kept enough of their pre-dreadnoughts. In the short interval, my crews had lost all their hard - earned proficiency. Weary from endless indecisive fleet battles, unwilling to fight, I declined all battles and waited for the submarines to arrive, but revolutionary ideas spread from Britain and by the time the first ones were a little over half done, the Kaiser was out!
The French did considerably better out of their peace deal than I had out of mine - considering they didn't sink a single ship. They made off with half of my remaining fleet; five battlecruisers and four dreadnoughts, leaving me with nine dreadnoughts and the eight predreadnoughts which had been spared the scrapyard (three 20 knotters, and 5 15 knotters which had been kept for global power projection, in expectation of the glorious victory when I would never be blockaded again.) And France, never having fought a single battle, was master of the world's oceans, with 18 BBs, 14 BCs, and 8 Bs!
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Post by generalvikus on Jun 19, 2023 4:31:25 GMT -6
I just finished my first run as Britain, and in my war with Germany in 1969, aircraft were brutal, both for and against me. SAMs definitely did a lot of damage, but in one engagement my last remaining strike carrier (60K-odd displacement, 100 aircraft - it had an armoured deck which I was testing to see if it helped with damage resistance*) hammered the opposition with repeated strikes. In the opening engagement of the war I'd lost my main cruisers and a number of destroyers (and one of my two large carriers - mostly to enemy aircraft), and had to lean heavily on my carriers (a second large carrier was commissioned a few months into the war, thankfully) to carry me through. Air damage is a bit random - some engagements aircraft are brutal, others they're less effective - but I feel this isn't implausible. I'm not suggesting there isn't room for improvement (and the tweaks to have battle start further apart will be most welcome) but I didn't feel there were any great issues with late-game aircraft in my playthrough. Noting it's just one playthrough so may not be representative. Also, given my experience with enemy aircraft, Heavy CAPs are good! * One missile from an aircraft on its sister started a fire that sank it - so that's the last post-1940s armoured carrier I'll build for a while! Can you say anything more about the aircraft that managed to do a lot of damage?
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Post by generalvikus on Jun 19, 2023 2:55:56 GMT -6
An update on my experience - two years of constant fleet battles into the war, we finally got a convincing result against the British fleet. On this occasion, our BCs lured them in front of our line, but they chose to engage anyway: Two changes were made before this battle, though of course it's difficult to say yet whether or not they were responsible for our victory. Firstly, I decided to reverse my earlier judgement and load up exclusively AP ammo on the capital ships. I came to this decision, ironically enough, because I had finally given up on the idea of a decisive battle, and resolved to fight the war of attrition, and I hoped that even if less damage would be done by firing AP shells at long range, it might at least succeed in slowing a few enemy ships so that they could be caught. A cursory look at the results doesn't prove either way whether this theory played out. Secondly, after one particularly frustrating fleet battle, I did a fleet - wide command shakeup, generally weeding out any officers of below average ability anywhere in the battle line, and getting good commanders in charge of the DD divisions. Obviously, one sample is not sufficient to say anything conclusive, but it seems that it may have helped. Despite my leaving all friendly battle divisions on AI control, they did a much better job of maintaining a battle line - so much that I never had to reduce speed below the line speed of 12 knots, which is unheard of. Moreover, almost the entire destroyer flotilla - also AI controlled and on their own initiative (I made sure that my flag was not up) decided to charge the enemy, sweeping them away from our line and hitting several stragglers in the process. A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one. After that, we pursued the enemy at 15 knots, leaving our slow boats behind, and with several British ships lagging on the outskirts of their roughly circular formation, I was able to pick off several stragglers with (this time deliberate) destroyer attacks, resolving to sacrifice a destroyer division if necessary to kill each battleship. In the end, it turned out much better; 8 enemy BBs and 5DDs sunk for 9 DDs lost and 10 heavily damaged. Fortunately, I switched some time ago to building almost exclusively 600 ton 'torpedo boats,' which seem to be very cost - effective, completing in 9 months instead of 13 (which has helped stay ahead of the attrition.) Each one costs less than 1/40th of a battleship.
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