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Post by theexecuter on Oct 8, 2017 1:28:05 GMT -6
So, I thought I'd have a bit of RTW fun, and try out a new thought process with respect to ship design and refits. Built my predreadnought fleet and armored cruisers with sufficient main armor and speed to let me refit them. Had small numbers of good quality ships. Got into an early war with Germany, where we were blockaded, and basically just trying to get the politicians to realize that we should get out of this war pronto. Done without losing anything. So far so good. Dreadnoughts get unlocked...but I don't get the requisite technology to build them and am forced (by the Tsar) to build battleships. Sigh. Fine, two Imperator Alexsander II battleships with heavy secondary armament...and exceptionally heavy armor (14" belt with 4" deck!). Realize that even Austria Hungary has a bigger budget than I do...in 1910. WTH? Japan declares war in 1911. I have four armored cruisers, and 9 light cruisers in the far east. Sneak attack occurs at Port Arthur...instead of Vladivostock, where I'd placed my coastal defences. Facepalm. The sneak attack uses everything the Japanese have (4 dreadnoughts, 5 battlecruisers, tons of destroyers). I'm lucky to only lose two armored cruisers and a light cruiser. I start moving my main battlefleet from the Baltic to North East Asia. I decline battles in NE Asia, until I get a unavoidable coastal raid of enemy shipping off Incheon. It's night, so I'm cautiously poking around with my two armored cruisers and seven light cruisers. Manage to kill an enemy transport...then tangle with a few armored cruisers in the murk and heavily savage her with my 'machine gun cruisers' (8x7 in guns and 16x6 in secondaries). We spot BCs in the murk and turn away. I decide discretion is the better part of valor and disengage and head home. On the way home... That's right. We run into a mine field and I lose all three ships. Way to kick a man when he's down. So...yep. Rage quit. I didn't realize Russia's budget would be so anemic. Seriously, being outbuilt by Japan and Austria Hungary because they both have 10-30% more budget than Russia seems wrong. I never got a chance to build dreadnoughts at all.
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Post by JagdFlanker on Oct 8, 2017 6:57:47 GMT -6
ouch...
it's likely not winning that first war that hurt your budget - winning your first war really sets your budget up for the rest of the game, even if you don't gain any new territory. best way to do this is to pick high intel effort for countries you want to fight, and no intel effort for the rest - in the case of Russia i would consider high intel against the USA, A-H, and Japan with Japan likely being the best case for your first opponent since you can blockade them easier than the other 2; and no intel effort against GB, France and Germany. this doesn't guarantee your first opponent, it just makes it much more likely
also consider trying out 20% research rate - it stretches out the dreadnaught era very nicely
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Post by boomboomf22 on Oct 8, 2017 8:30:16 GMT -6
Personally II suspect you were building you B's a bit too expensive. With Russia you really need to have numbers of B's and CA for those early wars. I try to get an early war with Japan I can win with blockade, then when I get Central Firing I take on Germany and try to win on points and sinkings.
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Post by babylon218 on Oct 8, 2017 8:32:43 GMT -6
What I would suggest (and this goes for all the smaller countries, not just Russia) is to build your first Dreadnought in foreign yards, rather than domestically. Countries like GB, USA and Germany will likely gain the necessary technology to build BBs significantly earlier than the smaller naval powers, so purchasing ships from them is a good way to get your BB fleet up and running first. It costs more, but it avoids a gap in capability which appears to have crippled your war with Japan. You can always shift to domestic production when you gain the necessary technology, and it still meets the 'x Battleships under construction' requirement.
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Post by Airy W on Oct 8, 2017 8:42:52 GMT -6
People shouldn't underestimate pre-dreadnoughts. Even if they dont offer as good a bang for the buck as dreadnoughts, they can be very powerful with a large secondary battery. Without high quality primary guns and fire control, the relative strength of a pre-dreadnought seems even better. Just dont fall into the trap of trying to make a 1915 battleship in 1905. By 1915 they will need to be regulated to a secondary role.
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Post by theexecuter on Oct 8, 2017 9:46:57 GMT -6
In hindsight, I made several mistakes.
My B's weren't too expensive, they were just more heavily armored. The cost problem came from spending too much on CLs. I had more CL tonnage than any other power and no way to deploy it.
My cruisers spent too much on speed, making them very expensive...which compounded the above problem.
Foreign policy wise, I don't think I could have got into a war with Japan early. They were very much intent on being on my good side. Had I focused more resources on the B's and less on CLs I would have had a fleet capable of dealing damage to the Germans...as even outnumbered 2-1 we always forced the German fleets to retreat in fleet battles.
I think my Imperator Alexander II's were more than a match for the Japanese BBs, and I probably should have continued the game...however the reality of having only 70% of the budget of Japan while trying to rebuild the losses was just too much.
I should have built my defenses at Port Arthur rather than Vladivostok. Obvious in hindsight but not obvious that that is the main port from Port sizes.
I hadnt thought of foreign yards. The US would have been a great place to investigate ordering BBs from as they loved us throughout the play period.
First time I've run into mine field like that in play. Each mine hit I paused the game in growing disbelief. Damn, hit a mine. Ok...what? Another one? Sigh. Another one? Rage intensifies! I wondered if I was going to lose the entire fleet.
The moral drop was exactly like what happened to the real Russian fleet when the Petropavlovsk sank to a mine and killed Admiral Makarov. I was still positive about how the war would go until that moment.
I will retry Russia soon with the above thoughts in mind. I'll be grateful for any other thoughts as well.
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Post by babylon218 on Oct 8, 2017 10:46:54 GMT -6
I won't call this a universal recommendation, because I rarely do so myself and it's really only helpful in hindsight, but having a number of minesweepers in NE Asia may have prevented that minefield disaster by clearing the minefield. Now, that is of course by no means certain and as I said is heavily reliant on hindsight...
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Post by JagdFlanker on Oct 8, 2017 11:31:07 GMT -6
I won't call this a universal recommendation, because I rarely do so myself and it's really only helpful in hindsight, but having a number of minesweepers in NE Asia may have prevented that minefield disaster by clearing the minefield. Now, that is of course by no means certain and as I said is heavily reliant on hindsight... if you have MS on coastal patrol i believe they cover all your home coasts regardless of the actual MS locations. i keep triple my requirements just to be safe, but don't remember having much problem when i used to keep just double my requirements
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Post by babylon218 on Oct 8, 2017 12:10:50 GMT -6
I won't call this a universal recommendation, because I rarely do so myself and it's really only helpful in hindsight, but having a number of minesweepers in NE Asia may have prevented that minefield disaster by clearing the minefield. Now, that is of course by no means certain and as I said is heavily reliant on hindsight... if you have MS on coastal patrol i believe they cover all your home coasts regardless of the actual MS locations. i keep triple my requirements just to be safe, but don't remember having much problem when i used to keep just double my requirements I've tried that before, but from what I can tell they don't sweep minefields on CP.
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Post by JagdFlanker on Oct 8, 2017 14:45:01 GMT -6
if you have MS on coastal patrol i believe they cover all your home coasts regardless of the actual MS locations. i keep triple my requirements just to be safe, but don't remember having much problem when i used to keep just double my requirements I've tried that before, but from what I can tell they don't sweep minefields on CP. i rarely get mine events so i figure they gotta be doing something good...
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Post by bcoopactual on Oct 8, 2017 15:45:06 GMT -6
I won't call this a universal recommendation, because I rarely do so myself and it's really only helpful in hindsight, but having a number of minesweepers in NE Asia may have prevented that minefield disaster by clearing the minefield. Now, that is of course by no means certain and as I said is heavily reliant on hindsight... if you have MS on coastal patrol i believe they cover all your home coasts regardless of the actual MS locations. i keep triple my requirements just to be safe, but don't remember having much problem when i used to keep just double my requirements Here are a couple of "Fredrik's Tidbits" on the subject of mine warfare: "Ships equipped with mine rails are assumed to carry out offensive mining in enemy waters. These are abstracted and cause enemy losses during the strategic turns, much like subs do. Minesweepers in active fleet or coastal patrol in the same area will reduce the effectiveness of these." "Minelaying subs do actually lay mines, not tactically but they contribute to the mine level in an area and thus to enemy-ship-striking-mine events in the strategic game. Otherwise they work as medium subs but with fewer torpedoes." My understanding based on the above and what else I've read is that each ocean area has a strategic mine warfare value. Enemy ships with mine racks in the area raise the value, friendly minesweepers in the area (as long as they are AF or CP/ASW) lower the value. The higher the value the more likely the defending side is to see an event that his ship struck a mine. Since submarines are totally abstracted and don't have a physical location in game, I would assume that minelaying subs provide a small boost to the mine warfare value in all areas but surface ships only affect the area they are in for mine warfare. I realize that the statement on minelaying subs states that submarines contribute to an area which is different than what I interpret. It's possible I'm wrong and that minelaying subs are "assigned" to specific area in the game's internals and so each SSM contributes to mine warfare only in one area per turn. However, that would be inconsistent to everything I've always read about submarines in game particularly since SSM's are treated as medium subs for all other purposes.
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Post by theexecuter on Oct 8, 2017 16:10:33 GMT -6
That only addresses the losses in the strategic phase.
This was the first time I ever hit mines during the tactical phase.
I've also always used MS on coastal patrol...I had more than a dozen during the war with Japan. Also, no one had invented mine laying subs yet.
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Post by HolyDragoon on Oct 8, 2017 16:23:13 GMT -6
I've seen mines during tatical phases, can't really say if MS affect that since every occurrence of mines was just some isolated spots...
Or were those my mines? :unsure:
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Post by aeson on Oct 8, 2017 17:31:25 GMT -6
I've seen mines during tatical phases, can't really say if MS affect that since every occurrence of mines was just some isolated spots... Or were those my mines? :unsure: Given that the game uses red for your ships and for the small cross-hatched circles indicating where the minefields you laid around your ports and coastal batteries are while it uses blue for enemy ships and the large cross-hatched circle indicating the region of minefields around enemy ports, I would suspect that those are your mines if what you are talking about are isolated red cross-hatched circles and your enemies' mines if what you're talking about are isolated blue cross-hatched circles. I myself have never seen a blue cross-hatched circle anywhere except for around an enemy port, though after I start fielding minelaying submarines or put mine rails on my cruisers I usually see occasional isolated red cross-hatched circles in seemingly-random locations on the tactical map. I would therefore suggest that what you saw were probably your own minefields, and if they were not in the general vicinity of one of your coastal batteries or ports then they probably represent a minefield laid by a destroyer, cruiser, submarine, or AMC, rather than being a hostile minefield detected but not swept by one of your minesweepers.
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Post by bcoopactual on Oct 8, 2017 17:44:47 GMT -6
I have rarely seen the small enemy mine circles appear on the map after one of my destroyers reported sighting them. theexecuter, were the mine strikes during the run of play or during the 200 turns that occur after the end of a scenario? If it's the former that's really unlucky and I sympathize. Actually I sympathize regardless, that's a bad beat. Regardless, pretty sure you are right, minelayers and minesweepers don't do anything mine related during a tactical scenario. I think it's only the year (minefields get more extensive in later years) and the presence of defensive shore batteries that determines how many mines are on the map during an actual scenario.
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