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Post by bcoopactual on Jun 14, 2017 20:41:55 GMT -6
If we wanted to segue back to carriers, how about CAs as a carrier escort? . These are just some non-expert thoughts that popped up at this question. A lot depends on what you are protecting them against. Carriers for the most part did not operate aircraft at night so knowing that the Japanese had a bunch of large, 35 knot heavy cruisers that might pop up unexpectedly at night, I would definitely want some of my own as an escort for my carriers. So in the 20's and 30's I'd definitely want heavy cruisers to escort my carriers. But at the same time, by the 40's once my aircraft had sufficient range and numbers that the chances of a surface group getting close enough to attack at night unseen was pretty remote (as historically proved true)*, I'm not too worried about heavy cruisers attacking at night. Then the priority shifts to AA protection. You don't need the extra armor and 8 inch guns. For that I'd want something smaller and more economical than a Cleveland (I read somewhere that Cleveland's cost $32 million vs. a Baltimore's $40 million so even being a "light cruiser" they aren't cheap to build in numbers for anybody that doesn't have the USA's budget and industry) but a little larger than an Atlanta so that it could carry the Atlanta firepower on a more stable platform. On the other hand, you could argue that the Atlanta's were too specialized and you have to have a ship capable of handling unexpected missions like a night fight off of Guadalcanal. Then something the size and expense of a Cleveland/ Baltimore makes more sense. So in the end, I might want a mix, say one Cleveland/ Baltimore for every three or four plus sized- Atlanta's. *On a similar note, would a couple of heavy cruisers have made a difference against Scharnhorst and Gneisenau during the sinking of HMS GLorious? I don't think so but maybe the carrier could have escaped if the heavy cruisers sacrificed themselves. But would two heavy cruisers lost be an acceptable trade-off for saving Glorious?
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Post by bcoopactual on Jun 14, 2017 10:05:34 GMT -6
Just some more information about the Hawkin's and the large cruisers. In "Nelson to Vanguard" by D.K. Brown, he states that the small ships with 6in guns were suitable for the North Sea or Mediterranean but did not have the endurance for ocean trade routes. He goes on to say that the funding for more Hawkin's class ships was not available. He does say that "it is often said that the Treaty encourage an escalation in cruiser size but it is clear that the major navies were already thinking of such ships which were still smaller than the First Class cruisers of the beginning of the century which had mounted 9.2in guns." Apparently Japan and the US were either building a class of those ships or were studying it. This information from Chapter four: cruisers for reference. He continues stating that the most probable enemy was Japan. This prompted the Plans division in 1923 to set out the requirement for cruisers. This requirement would be 39 cruisers of less than 15 years age. It was proposed that eight 10,000 ton cruisers be constructed by 1929 and a further 10 smaller cruisers. So, my thoughts are that with the change in geostrategic thinking and planning, Japan and US now being seen as rivals, both with better economies than the British, that the larger cruiser was being investigated more. In fact, the Japanese already had four heavy cruisers in construction slated to be finished in 1926. These would be the Furutaka class, 10,507 tons with 6 x 8"/50. I appreciate all your observations because it forced me to re-evaluate my position and investigate again this issue. I still believe the Treaty was responsible for the acceptance of the heavy cruisers type warship but that the requirements and specifications for such a type of ship were already being considered. Thanks oldpop2000. The Furutaka Class wikipedia page quotes a source* stating that the Furutaka's were designed to outclass the American Omaha (which wasn't by any definition a heavy cruiser but was our first post WWI cruiser design) and the British Hawkins. So I guess, treaty or no treaty, the heavy cruiser race was on even if they weren't called that yet. * Lacroix, Eric; Wells II, Linton (1997). Japanese Cruisers of the Pacific War. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 0-87021-311-3. OCLC 21079856. Retrieved 23 September 2013.
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Post by bcoopactual on Jun 14, 2017 9:56:05 GMT -6
Has anyone noticed a correlation in position - that wars seem more likely against nations to the left of the list and less likely for nations to the right? Could be I am noticing that because I'm expecting to see it... The game does seem to roughly line the nations up left-to-right in order of the intensity of the historical rivalry prior to and during the game's time frame with some exceptions. i.e. Italy listed third in a German game as opposed to Russia which seemed a bigger historical rival to me.
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Post by bcoopactual on Jun 14, 2017 5:02:43 GMT -6
I thought the Hawkins were built to deal with feared but never built large Imperial German light cruisers armed with 7 inch guns? Assuming the Washington treaty never happened, with the German Navy hobbled by Versailles, who would have built cruisers that the Hawkins type would have been needed to combat? Neither the US or the Japanese seemed to be concerned with cruiser construction until after the treaties were signed. Once it was determined that the perceived threat did not exist, it's possible that the Hawkins could have been a one-off design and navies would have gone back to the cheaper, smaller light armored cruisers of the day.
Of course it's also possible that Japan or the US would have decided that they had to have a Hawkins-fighter and we would have had the typical one-ups and tonnage creep that led a number of what we now call heavy cruisers anyway.
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Post by bcoopactual on Jun 13, 2017 16:52:18 GMT -6
I don't know if you would call it advantages. In my experience, the higher the intel effort the more tension generating events you get with that nation. If I want to fight one nation, I'll shift that nation to high, if I want to avoid fighting a nation, I'll set that nation to low. I doubt it's foolproof but it seems to work pretty well. As far as stealing tech, it's a pretty rare event for me no matter what. My latest game I stole one tech and purchased 11. Similarly, in guns, I've stolen one design and purchased 4. Other nations stealing tech is somewhat hidden from you so I'm not sure how much good it does to be in high as far as counter-espionage goes, maybe others have a better answer.
[Edit - I forgot that enemy espionage is included in the intel reports. I went back and counted the intel reports. There were 35 reports of my tech being stolen with 13 of them being traced to a specific country. My Intel levels have been all over the map this game but in general, if I wasn't fighting or about to fight someone, I had the intel level at medium or low. Maybe someone who left their intel levels consistently high or low can check to compare notes.]
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Post by bcoopactual on Jun 12, 2017 6:13:12 GMT -6
JagdFlanker, my mid to late game MS's are similar in size and speed except for not having 5 inch guns. I'll give that a try next game. Thanks.
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Post by bcoopactual on Jun 10, 2017 6:32:17 GMT -6
Just finished the working up of my most modern Scharnhorst-class BC, only for it to immediately be blown up by Italian saboteur's the next turn, and in the first major engagement of the war, I lose 2 further BC's to a 500-ton DD firing torpedoes :/ Ouch.
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Post by bcoopactual on Jun 10, 2017 6:29:08 GMT -6
Although if you really want to you can just save-scum and re-do the turn. Just remember to save every time you go to hit the "turn" button Also true. You should be able to load the autosave to accomplish that.
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Post by bcoopactual on Jun 10, 2017 6:26:34 GMT -6
i find that the only reason that the ai will build a ton of subs is if you went to war with them and you destroyed their navy. if that's the case i make it a point to not go to war with that country for at least the next war since they need time to rebuild their fleet and it's a waste of time to fight a country with little to no navy anyways also if you play very large fleets it gives the ai more cash to rebuild his fleet sooner than later. smaller fleet sized games trap the enemy country into building subs more since they are more affordable and it takes a looooong time for it to be able to replenish their navy with little cash I think those are both excellent points. By the way, I've never put 5 inch guns on a MS because 600 tons is the largest I build and it says there is an accuracy and ROF penalty for putting 5 inch guns on anything less than 1,100 tons. Then I was reading your post and had a V8 moment and realized it doesn't matter because it's not like you ever sail those ships in a scenario anyway, LOL. And if they show up as AI patrol craft they are dead meat anyway. Have you won gun duels against submarines with that MS type?
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Post by bcoopactual on Jun 9, 2017 6:36:12 GMT -6
Air-based radar would like to disagree Certainly a reasonable idea. I've played games where I had no old DD's and 60+ MS's. I don't recall any abject failures using that variation. I'm coming around to keeping old DD's as ASW for a couple of reasons. First, they can be used as actual combatants when they are front line units so I think I get more bang for my buck than MS's that just sit around all of the time being on CP/ASW. Also, to go along with what Airy W wrote, I've built minesweepers of various sizes from 200 tons with one pop-gun to 600 tons and armed to the gills and no matter what I build, minesweepers seem to always get owned by submarines in spirited gun duels. I've had old, CP/ASW DD's torpedoed but I can't recall a single instance where one of my destroyers was sunk in a spirited gun duel. Not saying it's never happened, I just can't recall one. To use the above game as an example, I write down the reasons I lose all of my ships. I've lost seven MS to spirited gun duels (I get a kick out of that phrase), three MS's to submarine torpedo attacks and two MS's to mines (although I have no idea if they were laid by surface ships or submarines). I've lost two DD's to torpedoes, three DD's to mines (again, no idea if sub or surface laid) and none to spirited gun duels. (Plus eight DD's lost in surface actions but that's not relevant to submarine warfare) So DD's, even old 500 ton DD's, seem to be much more survivable against submarines and no less effective in the ASW role. [Edit - In total, there have been 15 spirited gun duels in this game. All against MS's and all won by submarines. There has been one duel between a Q-ship and a submarine and the Q-ship won that one.]
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Post by bcoopactual on Jun 9, 2017 6:01:52 GMT -6
I just uploaded 1.34B1 - found a bug. When at war and you get the choice of ' a few more months on on extreme or make peace at the other - if you pick continue the war, a few more moths - it defaults to accepting the peace conference. You apparently cannot continue to total victory. I haven't tried picking the peace route to see if they are just backwards. Too much of a war monger Hopefully that makes sense, if not I can try to get more details. it doesn't default to peace, but it has such chance you just got unlucky Yes, this was a deliberate change to the game by the developers based on player feedback that the game was too predictable, that you could always drive the opponent to collapse just by picking the aggressive option. So the developers added a relatively small percentage chance in one of the updates that your Head of State will disregard your recommendation (remembering that your position is the Chief of the Navy so there is always someone you technically answer to in-game) and sign an armistice with the enemy anyway. The thing is you can get five or more of these "peace offer" events in a war so the chances of getting through to absolute victory are much less even when the individual chance of any one check is small. It can be frustrating but I personally think the game is better this way having played the game before and after that update.
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Post by bcoopactual on Jun 9, 2017 5:46:53 GMT -6
I'm probably not the first to mention this but my recent experience in my current game showed me one strategy that seems to work against larger submarine fleets I thought I'd share. Background - (100% Research Rate, No Varied Technology) 1913-1917 At war with France while allied with England. After blockading and decimating the French Capital ship fleet over a series of major battles in the first couple years of the war, the French AI did the expected submarine construction program and ended up with roughly 90 submarines commissioned or under construction at wars end. The Russia AI and Japanese AI followed suit with major submarine construction programs of their own. Russia ended up with about 116 submarines of all types and Japan 81. For comparison, at the time I had roughly 24 submarines in commission or under construction.
Fast forward to January 1923 and Russia has declared war against me. As you can see below, unlike the other classes I haven't been deleting my older destroyers. The three most recent classes of destroyers, 48 ships in all, are my front line ships that I leave in Active Fleet mode. Most of the rest that aren't travelling as well as most of my minesweepers, I've put in CP/ASW mode. So I have roughly three times the required patrol requirement of 31 ships.
Also my ASW tech level is 11, I have everything researched or purchased except for the last tech K-guns.
So starting in February, my merchant losses were still pretty bad. I lost 11 one month and 13 another. However, I was killing 8-11 submarines every month as well. As the Russian submarine numbers dwindled so did my losses and theirs. In the five months or so of combat I had the following events occur because of enemy submarine activity: I had one old destroyer in CP/ASW mode strike a mine and sink off of the US East Coast. I had one minesweeper torpedoed and sunk. I had one battleship torpedoed and sent to the yards for two months. I lost one minesweeper to a spirited gun duel.
At the end of June, in 5 months of combat I had sunk 38 submarines and lost 41 merchant ships. (5 additional merchants were lost to surface raiders)
In the meantime I had sunk 41 merchants (plus 4 more to surface raiders) for the loss of 10 submarines and had already gotten one event about possible hardships and shortages in Russia when in July, the Russians asked for peace and my President agreed to it against my recommendation. At least I got 6 points out of it.
I realize this is just one data point so it doesn't mean this strategy for anti-submarine defense is guaranteed or even likely to work and it wasn't a unique idea I pulled out of thin air, I'm pretty sure it's been discussed in the forums previously. ALso, it's a strategy that might not work for every nation. Smaller nations for example might not be able to afford to keep all of their old destroyers around even though they don't cost too much in Reserve. It also takes some long term planning because you have to not scrap your old DD's.
However, I wanted to share my results for others who are looking for ways to combat large submarine fleets in-game. I'd be curious for anyone else who tries a similar strategy to post their results in this thread to let me know how it worked. Please include information like what your ratio of actual to required patrol ships was and how many merchants you lost and how many subs you sank. Some of that you have to keep your own tabs on because the game doesn't store that data.
In real life, submariners rule the seas and you have no shot but fortunately for the rest of you this is a game.
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Post by bcoopactual on Jun 9, 2017 2:21:03 GMT -6
I bet the lookout had to confirm that sighting more than once. Crows nest, Bridge. Say again. You've spotted a WHAT?
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Post by bcoopactual on Jun 9, 2017 2:10:28 GMT -6
You have to admire the skill of the Russian diplomats to eliminate the adversary's greatest weapon with a stroke of a pen just before you attack. That's some Vezzini level diplomacy right there.
To misquote the Princess Bride:
Let me put it this way. Have you ever heard of Bismarck, Machiavelli, Richelieu?
Yes.
Morons.
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Post by bcoopactual on Jun 8, 2017 12:13:23 GMT -6
When you are so French that you have to French at the French because no one else can appreciate how French you are. Yup! But in my defense, they started it. Lobbying Parliament to cut my funding in favor of them was a dirty underhanded move! That was too funny. Bravo Zulu to you both.
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