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Post by bcoopactual on Jun 6, 2017 9:33:00 GMT -6
v1.34 b1 In my latest game, I've been writing down the Laid Down, Commissioned and Scrapped dates for my own and the AI's capital ships with designs on making some kind of mini-Janes or something for an AAR. Last turn the messages window listed the British as having laid down a Niobe class battlecruiser. Attachment DeletedSix turns earlier GB had laid down the first of the class so I was expecting a second name but I actually saw two additional names, Andromeda and Amphitrite. Attachment DeletedSo no big deal, I figured I just missed the message about Andromeda on an earlier turn and went into the RTWGame1.bcs file to see how many turns it had been building. Andromeda was listed as being about 3.7 turns completed which didn't make sense to me, it should have been much closer to a round number. The kicker is, I went into the autosave.bcs file of the previous turn to double check the build progress on Andromeda and I couldn't find the ship in the file. That tells me that the ship was laid down by the AI on the current turn but was given build progress equal to almost 4 turns of building and no message of the ship being laid down was included in the main game screen. So I figure there is either a discreet and minor cheat for the AI for game balance purposes that I stumbled on accidentally or this is a minor bug. This is actually the second time I've noticed this happen in this game so I figured I would point it out. Not a big deal either way, I figure worst case is if it's an unexpected bug that it could screw with the AI's building priorities and ability to balance its budget. I couldn't upload the game and autosave bcs files to this post because they are too large. If it's even worth looking at, I put them into a RAR and uploaded it into my google drive. There is a link that should allow downloading the files below. No password should be required. It's not included in the link below but I made a copy of the entire Game1 folder if you end up needing the ship files or map file or something else. drive.google.com/open?id=0B5L1v3kwt7w9SFh2V1dVWVVFSG8
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Post by bcoopactual on Jun 5, 2017 19:43:05 GMT -6
Time to bust out the "Success Kid" meme! Just got offered a 10 inch (+1) gun design by my ally Great Britain for $4.25 million that I have no current or foreseeable use for and bought it anyway. Next event on the very same turn is my engineers developed a new 8 inch (+1) gun on their own that will be very handy for my new line of heavy cruisers.
Not that it's a unique strategy because I've seen it mentioned on the forum before but that's why I always buy any gun design offered even if I'll never use it.
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Post by bcoopactual on Jun 5, 2017 19:21:55 GMT -6
I guess I was really into role playing as Germans without even realizing it. Those are some thick secondaries. Although I'm not sure the admiral would like that 10 inch belt. Wow, that is a lot of director controlled secondaries. That thing is a buzzsaw in close. Pity the poor destroyer flotilla that tries to torpedo it.
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Post by bcoopactual on Jun 5, 2017 17:18:27 GMT -6
Not really humorous but I didn't want to create a separate thread just for this. I assume that means Japan in my game is no longer suffers the Undeveloped Shipbuilding Trait. Anybody who has played one of the nations with that trait (Japan, Russia, Spain, CSA) have that happen to them in game or is this an AI only thing?
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Post by bcoopactual on Jun 1, 2017 2:33:56 GMT -6
I thought narrow belt refers to the vertical distance covered by the belt, not the horizontal distance... Am I wrong? that's my assumption, but if that's the case i'd assume that the BE handles the armour thickness of any part that's not the main belt - if you choose narrow belt there isn't a huge bare un-armoured hole in the ship on the area the narrow belt is missing, there would still be armour over the entire side hull of the ship, and whatever areas that arn't included in the belt armour should be covered by BEi figured the extended belt was the entire average belt of the whole side of a ship, while the actual main belt was just the thicker part of the armour in the belt that protected the important innards of the ship so if i make the belt and extended belt the same thickness, then there should be no weight savings for having a narrow belt because the entire side hull of the ship has the same armour thickness anyways, right? You should be right realistically because the area between the main belt near the waterline and the deck where the casemates are should be considered BE. Like in the picture of the Royal Sovereign below. You have the 13 inch main belt and then on either side you have the extended belt that starts at 6 inches and tapers down. There is also the stretch of 6 inches of armor directly above the 13 inch main belt that covers the area until you get to the 6 inches of protection for the casemates (which would be secondary armor in game) The 6 inch armor between the main belt and the secondary armor is BE and I think you are right, realistically if the main belt was narrower (i.e. shorter vertically) then that bit would be wider (taller vertically) to cover the gap. So if the main belt and the extended belt were made to the same thickness then reasonably it would be all the same and weigh the same. Narrow or normal, main belt would be a meaningless description in this case. My guess is what you are actually seeing in-game when you try it is just a quirk of the simplification of the protection scheme for game purposes that was never anticipated by the developers because I'm not aware of any historic examples in that era where the entire side of the ship was protected in that fashion. As such, if the chance of missing the armor is as small as it seems, it might actually be considered an exploit.
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Post by bcoopactual on May 31, 2017 12:43:18 GMT -6
I'm not aware of the developers ever admitting to any hidden character traits. Meaning ones not listed in the manual.
One game while fighting the British at night in the English Channel, I had a (two actually) Baltimore-ish style, late game (around 1920-21) heavy cruiser with TPS Level II take two torpedoes and a couple of large caliber rounds from a British battlecruiser and survive with somewhere around 99% flotation damage. The Second CA only took one torpedo but she suffered significant flooding and survived as well. Part of that I attributed to the calmed waters of the Channel that night. I think a large part of it is just the late game Damage Control tech level and how much more proficient it makes your crews. That's just me, I don't have your perspective of course not being in your game so if you believe there is a difference in how well your ships perform damage control compared to the German AI, I'm not going to tell you you have to be wrong.
Another thing I might have looked at was crew quality but every ship picture you posted looks like the crew was level -1 or 0. Not 100% sure what those translate to but it's reasonable to speculate that they aren't elite so unless I'm wrong and 0 means good or above then I would say crew quality wouldn't be the cause in your situation.
Sorry I don't have anything more useful to add.
As a final note, I'm kind of a fan of that Freya. Hopefully you can get their government to collapse and take her as a war prize.
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Post by bcoopactual on May 30, 2017 16:14:16 GMT -6
Yes, you're right. I made the choice to stick to 6 inch secondaries based on gun quality. Right now my 5 inch guns are (0) and my 6 inch guns are (+1).
I usually start the game using 6 inch secondaries and will generally go to the one that gets +1 first as the game develops but if they are the same quality once I get Directors for my main guns then I switch to 5 inch guns for the reasons you mentioned.
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Post by bcoopactual on May 29, 2017 18:11:44 GMT -6
Hmmm, I might put my money on the Germans. That many turrets on a British battlecruiser is like a Plinko board where all the slots say Flash Fire!! Of course Agincourt's deck armor is nothing to sneeze at. I assume the turret tops are at least equal to that so depending on what the Germans did with their deck armor you might stand a good chance at distance. What year is that? How the heck did they manage an 8x14", 29 knot battlecruiser with a 13" belt on 32,100 tons? Was there a mod active in this game? They usually make their BCs with Short range and Cramped quarters, which saves around 2k tons of weight. Pain in the ass to fight, but useless as a war prize for anyone but France or Italy. I just had the happen to me as well, got a nice 14 inch armed dreadnought from the French as the USA and decided that I couldn't keep it because it was short ranged and I almost always have to travel (strategically) to get to the fight when I'm at war. So in my latest game, it's the end of 1916, I finally got France to collapse after being at war with them for the third time in the first 13 years of the game. 1916 saw the commissioning of the last of my 14 inch armed California class BB's, my only 14 inch armed capital ships. I've recently researched the last of the 1916 Machinery/Armor/Hull Techs so I don't think I'll complete another weight saving tech for another 18 months or so and I also just got Increased Elevation. All of that means it's a good time to begin my next class of BB. I've decided that the max displacement for the new ships will be in the 34,000 ton range because that is a little larger than most of the rest of new constructions going for the other naval powers and I want to be able to build four of these. The General Board (me) initially wanted a balanced design with 14 inch guns so that they can share ballistics with the California's on the battleline so this is what I came up with. Design 1916BB A1 However, the ace in my hole cards is in June 1916, the Bureau of Ordnance introduced the 16 in/50 Mark 2 gun (+1 Quality). As much as I wanted a balanced design that could work with the California's, that 16 in (+1) is a ship wrecker. So I went back and put pencil to paper and came up with this. Design 1916BB B1 She essentially has no immunity zone from her own weapons but she's carrying eight of the world's best can openers. The Brits are the only other nation I'm aware of with 16 inch guns and they are my allies right now. [Edit - In this game I haven't been able to research, buy or steal Secondary Turrets for BB's yet so that is why my secondaries are still casemated.] Here is the 1914 penetration page for comparison. The max range is low because I have Increased Elevation but the penetrations numbers are actually spot on in-game right now. The 1916BB B1 design will be commissioned as the USS Alabama.
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Post by bcoopactual on May 29, 2017 17:30:43 GMT -6
LOL, it's been my experience that once the tension bar gets that high, war is probably inevitable anyway. Too bad you can't install a chain boom across the Strait of Otranto. Then you could sit safely on the other side complaining of how the Britons smell of Elderberries.
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Post by bcoopactual on May 27, 2017 0:49:52 GMT -6
It might, but honestly I don't think it would make much of a difference: Even the largest DDs have so little flotation that you're dependant on the crew to control flooding, rather than keeping it stuck behind a bulkhead. You and director are probably right. I still do it just because and there's a chance with the 1,500 ton DD's that if the raft concept works for DD's that they have enough float points to make a difference. Either way I don't see a downside to doing it so I make it my default once I get the tech.
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Post by bcoopactual on May 26, 2017 3:58:42 GMT -6
Anyone know if there is a benefit for selecting the AoN indicator for destroyers? DD's can't have armor in RTW1 obviously but they only get the AoN indicator if you select the flat deck on top of box armor scheme.
I can confirm there is no available tonnage change when you switch armor schemes which makes sense of course but does the concept of having a central raft that makes you less vulnerable to progressive flooding from the ends of the ship carry over for destroyers when you select the AoN scheme?
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Post by bcoopactual on May 25, 2017 13:47:28 GMT -6
Hmmm, I might put my money on the Germans. That many turrets on a British battlecruiser is like a Plinko board where all the slots say Flash Fire!!
Of course Agincourt's deck armor is nothing to sneeze at. I assume the turret tops are at least equal to that so depending on what the Germans did with their deck armor you might stand a good chance at distance.
What year is that? How the heck did they manage an 8x14", 29 knot battlecruiser with a 13" belt on 32,100 tons? Was there a mod active in this game?
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Post by bcoopactual on May 25, 2017 13:34:48 GMT -6
Love that movie. "We just sunk a truck."
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Post by bcoopactual on May 25, 2017 6:33:04 GMT -6
I'm about 30% of the way into Dreadnought now and it's been fascinating. So far it's not at all what I expected when I bought the book but it is remarkable reading on the motivations of the principles that started the ball rolling towards WWI. I get the impression that Bismarck unwittingly installed a self destruct switch in the German Empire he spent his life building by implementing a political system tailor made for him but not sustainable by lesser intellects and then installed a timer set to count down after his removal from power because he encouraged the then young Prince Wilhelm II's worst character traits to cause a rift between Wilhelm and his father whose politics Bismarck strongly disagreed with.
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Post by bcoopactual on May 25, 2017 6:14:06 GMT -6
I think the manual says that a narrow belt could cause shots that would normally strike the belt to hit the BE instead or hit no armor at all.
Yeah, here is the exact verbiage in the manual:
"Narrow belt This saves weight but means that shells that would have hit the belt instead might hit BE or no armour at all."
So it seems like a plausible idea what you are doing, it's just a question of how big is the chance to miss all of the armor instead of hitting B or BE.
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