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Post by joebob73 on Feb 9, 2017 7:26:31 GMT -6
I tend to keep the super-old BCs around because the ones designed before "steam turbines" pops can be refit to go LUDICROUS SPEED if they were 28 knots or faster when launched. Then I just set them as raiders and laugh as they destroy any ship that intercepts them. Last game I had a class of 4 of them refit for 32 knots, and they successfully caused the total extinction of the light cruiser within 3 wars. Heavy cruisers continued to exist, because some of them could survive a few hits and still get out of range. But isn't it prohibitively expensive to replace engines on ships that fast? Like you might as well buy a new ship expensive? It can be more expensive per month, but is much cheaper than building a whole new ship, not to mention being faster. Normally a BB/BC started at the beginning of a war won't be ready by the end, but even a major rebuild will finish in time to take part.
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Post by joebob73 on Feb 8, 2017 23:18:13 GMT -6
axe99 - My favorite destroyer is one with 4x2 mounts for 4" or 6x2 for 5", whichever gets the +1 first. Basically a British WW2 Tribal class or an American Gearing, but with a bit less speed and two quad torpedo mounts. As soon as I get twin mounts for DDs I build nothing less. And you are right - they are nasty little beasties. ikahime - My dock size always seems to grow before I get the 4 centerline mounts tech, so my first BCs are usually semi-dreadnoughts with either 4 or 6 12" guns and 8-10". They work pretty well against cruisers but won't stand up against conventional BCs and so are usually retired early. I tend to keep the super-old BCs around because the ones designed before "steam turbines" pops can be refit to go LUDICROUS SPEED if they were 28 knots or faster when launched. Then I just set them as raiders and laugh as they destroy any ship that intercepts them. Last game I had a class of 4 of them refit for 32 knots, and they successfully caused the total extinction of the light cruiser within 3 wars. Heavy cruisers continued to exist, because some of them could survive a few hits and still get out of range.
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Post by joebob73 on Feb 6, 2017 22:35:58 GMT -6
I couldn't find this previously, so forgive me if this is common knowledge, but in having my government collapse (The Revolutionary; never again...) France claimed 2 of my ships, one being my best, the 52ktn, 11x 15", max armor Fuso class BB. But, they didn't just take those two- they seized the Whole Class. 5 ships. PLUS taking back the French prize I had claimed in the first contest. This shift of power was grossly debilitating, to the point of "its time to take a break" time. It's pretty common for that to happen if your government collapses. Would be nice if you could do that to an enemy though.
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Post by joebob73 on Feb 4, 2017 23:06:21 GMT -6
One thing I have noticed, although it may just be confirmation bias, is that ships that are changing zones tend to catch more raiders during that turn. You could try moving ships into and out of the zone where the raider is and see if that helps.
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Post by joebob73 on Jan 30, 2017 17:40:54 GMT -6
One thing that would be seriously helpful is removing the AI's tendency to scrap perfectly useful ships, especially for capital ships, but also for minesweepers. The AI tends to scrap "outdated" BB or BC that were launched only 15 years ago, even if they are nearly as capable as the modern ones. This is especially noticeable in the "overtime" portion of the game, where modern BB/BC with 16" guns get scrapped right at 15 years from launch, despite being just as capable as the newer ships. Against a player who keeps all of their own effective heavy ships in service, this puts even Britain at a disadvantage in quantity as well as quality.
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Post by joebob73 on Jan 30, 2017 12:11:32 GMT -6
True but the game also favors quality over quantity so numbers isn't a big deal for the most part. Though I get what you are saying if you are unlucky and lose many of your best ships because then you are being set back qualitative wise as well. Perhaps some ideas to combat that are to provide either a buff to research (beyond just having a higher budget than normal because you are at war) for nations at war to let them get ahead technologically of the nations not fighting or perhaps peacetime budgets need to be shrunk more for nations that are not at war. Adding AI vs AI diplomacy is a huge change in scope to the game that would require a lot in terms of time and effort for the developers to implement and then balance and tweak. I'm certainly not saying not to do it or that I wouldn't welcome it just that I would be surprised if they have the time and resources to devote to it based on RTW 2 already going to 1950 which means adding aircraft and everything that goes along with them and that's going to be a major undertaking all by itself. It *does* favor quality over quantity, but if they have more battleships than you do in an engagement, your own heavy ships won't be able to maintain fire on all of them at once. This will give them a better fire rate as well as a higher chance to hit. Then suddenly your advantage in quality means much less when a few enemy BBs get to use your ships for target practice.
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Post by joebob73 on Jan 26, 2017 22:14:45 GMT -6
If you intend to implement varied tech in RTW2, could you please make it at least tell you about it earlier? Went through an entire game with my turrets jamming non-stop, to be told in 1941 that "double and triple turrets are less efficient".
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Post by joebob73 on Jan 23, 2017 15:23:07 GMT -6
They do have a fast build rate. It just doesn't matter enough to make them useful when they are so darn expensive. What would make them more useful is if they sold for a decent chunk of change. Give the navy something like 66% of the cost of the hull and engines; they aren't going for scrap, they are going into service as cargo ships as soon as the guns are removed. Or even better, the option to call them back into service the next time a war happens. It could even give you a choice to do so or not, and then you could have AMCs on the first turn of a war.
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Post by joebob73 on Jan 22, 2017 16:23:58 GMT -6
How do you know it is the same enemy ship? At Guadalcanal San Fransico fired at and damaged Atlanta becasue she was on the same range and bearing as the target she was tracking. And that's something that can't happen in game. Friendly ships are never unidentified, and neutral ships don't exist. If you see a ship, you know it's hostile. You can even guess the target more accurately than the AI half the time. Battlegroups travel in parallel lines, convoys swarm slowly, dd squadrons travel in single lines often accompanying other formations. A DD traveling by itself is usually a misidentified CL, and a B traveling by itself is usually a misidentified CA. If you know this you can make your fight or flight decision before the enemy is properly identified because you have perfect birds eye knowledge of the relative size, speed, and formation of the enemy ships. The game gives you too much information. Friendly ships should start unidentified, and the location/speed of newly sighted ships should be less precise. What's really fun is when your lookouts identify a ship as a B...in 1935. Nobody builds them after like 1908, and they're all scrapped long before 1935. Either that or identifying a BB as a TR by accident.
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Post by joebob73 on Jan 22, 2017 15:52:27 GMT -6
ikahime , I'm curious how those 2 inch secondary guns perform for you? I've never used them on a design. How are they at deterring or sinking destroyers and or wounding other CL's? Replaced with 3 inch guns is how they preformed. The 3 inch guns are great for shredding unarmored targets like DDs and TRs. 2 inchers can do the same thing, but I would rather have that extra inch. I think the decision to use 2 inches on this one was simply a tonnage compromise. Now that I have the +1 3 inch guns, they are my primary armament for DDs, and secondary armament for anything with 6 inch main guns, and will remain that way till the end of the game. I have no interest in 4 or 5 inch guns. Esp now that I have definite confirmation that smaller guns fire faster. I personally favor 4 or 5" guns for anti-DD work, because they only need a few hits to sink them. 3" work, but take more hits to do the job and potentially put you at risk of torpedo attack.
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Post by joebob73 on Jan 21, 2017 18:44:34 GMT -6
One of the interesting things about the recent succession game of RtW as France, played by TheHistoricalGamer, XTRG and TortugaPower was the chat session afterwards where they talked about their very different ship design philosophies. One big difference was in armor for secondary guns - one favored a flat 2" and another went as high as 6". I suppose your choice would depend on how many times you've had a ship blown up... For myself, I always use armor on my capital ship secondary turrets. If it is a semi-dreadnought with, say, mixed 12" and 10" armament I make sure the 10" turrets get at least 6.5-7". For anti-torpedo batteries of 4" or 5" guns, I'll go the caliber of the gun (4" or 5") or .5" less. I'd rather pack more barrels in and use a lighter caliber, so I never use 6" secondaries on a capital ship. I'll usually go for 4-5" secondaries as soon as possible, because that allows me to use the 2" of armor required for HE/splinter protection without risking a detonation. I just never get the use that I want out of heavy secondaries, due to their dismal accuracy. And I tend to scrap pre-dreads as soon as feasible, because they are more vulnerable to torpedo-induced magazine detonations, as well as seeming to take more flooding damage.
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Post by joebob73 on Jan 21, 2017 10:54:08 GMT -6
Good story joebob73 . Seems like the British can never get away from their battlecruisers being glass cannons. I know some of the AI ship templates are Nation specific but I wonder if anyone has ever seen the British AI build a German style BC (Reduced armament or caliber to get BC speed with no or minimal sacrifice in BB level armor)? Well, some of theirs were. Unfortunately, in late game the 12" maximum armor for BCs can't even deflect 10" guns at that range, much less 13".
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Post by joebob73 on Jan 21, 2017 3:58:11 GMT -6
So I got into a fight with Britain in 1927 as the USA. I promptly send my entire battle fleet to the Caribbean, where the British have sent their main fleet. First battle that pops is a battleship engagement, maximum size. I accept, and am greeted with a shocking force arrangement. 1 ancient BC I now use as a raider, 6 CAs of similar vintage, and 2 CLs from the same time frame. Supporting them is a division of 4 excellent modern destroyers, with 35 knot speed and no compromises on armament thanks to a lucky "Exceeds design speeds" event. So I assume that the British have a similarly weak fleet. WRONG. They got 1 BB, and 4 BCs, all newer than my heavy combatants. Aside from a single one of their BCs, they are all armed with 14" guns, between 8-10 per ship. This other ship is armed with 10 16" guns. However, they only have a single escorting destroyer. But I don't yet know this. My CL squadron spots an enemy in the haze, at night, less than 3 kilometers away. I order all my ships to flank speed, and set them on course to converge at the sighting. When I hit the turn button, however, I am greeted with the message "CL Minneapolis is sinking". The "unidentified ship" turned out to be a massive 40k ton BC, and had sunk her on the first salvo. At this point, I realize that the enemy fleet has modern capital ships displacing about twice as much as my squadron's heaviest ship, and likely more than one of them. I order the fleet to head for port, and that's about when the rest of the enemy fleet appears. What the enemy doesn't realize is that they have actually put their ships in the one situation they could possibly lose in. I have several torpedo-armed destroyers, and my CAs, while ancient, have been upgraded with both advanced director fire control as well as modern 13" guns. My own battlecruiser runs headfirst into a British battlecruiser division and takes 14 heavy caliber hits, while only making 5 in response. This leaves it with about 400 flooding and only half flotation remaining. I order her to turn away from the new threat, while giving the DD squadron orders for a torpedo attack. Several torpedoes are fired, but only two hit, one of which bounces harmlessly off the hull of the battlecruiser without exploding. The other knocks out her engines, leaving her dead in the water. I order one of my 3-ship CA divisions into close range, hoping the 13" guns can take out this ship before she can get back underway. Meanwhile, my other CA division has run into a battleship. Several minutes of furious main battery fire later, both enemy capital ships are dead in the water, while I have only suffered medium damage to one of my cruisers. As her forward turret is destroyed, I detach her and send her to port. The CA division that had just sank a battleship then stumbles upon a third battlecruiser, and a short exchange of fire leaves one of my ships moderately damaged and the British battlecruiser sinking. As dawn finally approaches, I set course for the base, hoping that my battlecruiser will be able to repair enough of the flooding to make port. I then realize that more of my ships had taken hits than I noticed, and it's about then when a 4th BC pops up, this one with an escorting destroyer. But a fake torpedo run from my own destroyers, who have no remaining torpedoes, is enough to drive her off. Shortly thereafter, my fleet reaches port and the battle ends. It was one hell of a ride for those old cruisers, and probably the most tonnage sunk in a single engagement during this run. This is the only screenshot I remembered to take during the battle. And here's the scorecard
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Post by joebob73 on Jan 20, 2017 21:28:20 GMT -6
So, I was looking for a challenge, and decided to do a run where I did not build a single battleship (B or BB). It went surprisingly well, but the AI exhibited some extremely strange behaviors, such as keeping its own pre-dreads in service until around 1918, as well as not building any BB or BC until around 1907. It took until around 1910 for BB/BC to start showing up in numbers, and this is with "Large" fleet size. Even when they did arrive, they were very unusual, having either incredibly weak armament or armor. Several of the cruisers were quite strange as well, such as one French CL design of 4800 tons with only 2 6" guns and 6 4". Or a British CL armed with only 4 5" guns and having only 1" belt armor. Would posting my save file help with figuring this out? For example, this: Attachment Deleted was a French BC launched in 1913. Obviously a non-viable ship when my own BCs are running around with 4 double 14" turrets, but it was built anyways. Or this: Attachment Deleted, a British BB under construction at the end of the game. Next to the other British battleships, as well as other nations', it's a relic more than 10 years out of date. Yet it was laid down in 1924.
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Post by joebob73 on Jan 19, 2017 20:30:30 GMT -6
It also fits with my favorite legacy fleet "CA" design, which has 2 13" double turrets.
Up to 6" belt and 22 knot speed, and you can put any caliber gun on a CA.
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