imryn
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Posts: 156
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Post by imryn on Feb 19, 2019 8:43:49 GMT -6
Finally we understand each other.
I think you are again mixing up All or Nothing design principals and Flat deck on Belt armour. The first is the way the ship is designed, the second is a suitable way to armour the ship, but not the only way. I understand what you mean, that you look at it as : 1. if ship has citadel to protect buoyancy 2. how ship is protected - sloped deck vs. flat deck on top of belt armor
I was quoting from that article earlier - it is very good. I agree with both you and Nathan Okun that in the real world the turtleback armour scheme was a poor choice compared to the flat deck on belt scheme. I agree that in the real world the protection it offers is very situational and at a cost of a lot of additional weight. Agreed.  The thing is that RTW and RTW2 are not the real world. The situation under which the turtleback armour scheme offers maximum protection is quite common, and therefore the weight cost might just be worth it.
In case you are speaking of 18+ mod, I cannot tell, I do not use it. If you speak about standard game, there is no possibility to build ship with citadel to protect enough buoyancy and sloped deck armor except one possibility. The game does not allow it and no ship with such configuration was build at era of the game. You can build ship which has complex protection from bow to aft if you put BE and DE at same level as B and D. However you get ship too heavy, for vanilla game it is useless as completly inefficient and it is correct.
I am proposing this for RTW2 and the scope of RTW2 is 1900 to 1950 so ships with this armour scheme were definitely built in that period. The German ships were built along All or Nothing principals (citadel with reserve buoyancy etc) with a banded armour scheme (WW1 style) and turtleback armoured deck. The only innovation in that was the turtleback armoured deck. There is no reason (apart from "It wasn't done in the real world") that you should not be able to build a ship in RTW2 with a turtleback armoured deck designed to AoN principals. The armoured deck would be heavier than a flat deck, and the design could not benefit from the weight reductions available to flat deck ships with short citadels (ABL) but apart from that they should be more or less the same, with the turtleback ship enjoying far greater protection at short range. |
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imryn
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Post by imryn on Feb 19, 2019 9:29:00 GMT -6
I suggest you install the mod and take a look. There is a sticky patch after 51,500 where the calculations for machinery break down but if you move up to 60,000 they work again. If you don't believe my design install the mod and check it out. I don't need to install it to tell you that that design isn't realistic. It might work in the mod, but that does not mean it isnt fantasy. You can try plug that into a design tool like springsharp or springstyle and see what they give you, but I would wager something around ~80,000t.
EDIT: I went and put a rough version together on springsharp - looks like somewhere around ~86-90kton standard with 1940s tech. I had to assume a few things which I'm not sure how RTW calculates (turret armour other than face?, torpedo bulkhead thickness, etc), but erred on the light side where I could.
If you aren't comparing ships of similar displacement then the whole debate is meaningless. For every bit of weight you add to your design, you can do the same to an alternative design. If your whole argument is boils down to 'turtleback AoN is possible, but only if I can have ships 35% bigger than anyone else', then its not much of an argument, is it?
I never used that ship as a comparison with anything, I gave it as an example. Without the 18+ mod nothing changes - i have weaker ships and so does the AI and I still beat it with the same tactics. Vanilla RTW allows the player to build up to 52,000 tons yes? I have never seen an AI ship much bigger than about 46,000, so yes I can build a bigger ship in the basic game without mods. Comparing ships of similar sizes is not the only way of assessing the efficiency of a design. If I can build two smaller ships or one bigger ship for the same price which is more efficient? If I fight those ships and lose one of the smaller ones each battle but the larger one always survives which is the most efficient now? I would argue that in the RTW context a ship built the way I describe with a turtleback armour deck would beat a flat deck ship with the same tonnage (yes more armour or bigger guns or whatever) if i can control the engagement range, and by that i mean fight a short range battle. My question to you is why are you insisting on this fitting in with RTW1? I am asking for it to be implemented in RTW2... |
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Post by dorn on Feb 19, 2019 10:43:36 GMT -6
I don't need to install it to tell you that that design isn't realistic. It might work in the mod, but that does not mean it isnt fantasy. You can try plug that into a design tool like springsharp or springstyle and see what they give you, but I would wager something around ~80,000t.
EDIT: I went and put a rough version together on springsharp - looks like somewhere around ~86-90kton standard with 1940s tech. I had to assume a few things which I'm not sure how RTW calculates (turret armour other than face?, torpedo bulkhead thickness, etc), but erred on the light side where I could.
If you aren't comparing ships of similar displacement then the whole debate is meaningless. For every bit of weight you add to your design, you can do the same to an alternative design. If your whole argument is boils down to 'turtleback AoN is possible, but only if I can have ships 35% bigger than anyone else', then its not much of an argument, is it?
I never used that ship as a comparison with anything, I gave it as an example. Without the 18+ mod nothing changes - i have weaker ships and so does the AI and I still beat it with the same tactics. Vanilla RTW allows the player to build up to 52,000 tons yes? I have never seen an AI ship much bigger than about 46,000, so yes I can build a bigger ship in the basic game without mods. Comparing ships of similar sizes is not the only way of assessing the efficiency of a design. If I can build two smaller ships or one bigger ship for the same price which is more efficient? If I fight those ships and lose one of the smaller ones each battle but the larger one always survives which is the most efficient now? I would argue that in the RTW context a ship built the way I describe with a turtleback armour deck would beat a flat deck ship with the same tonnage (yes more armour or bigger guns or whatever) if i can control the engagement range, and by that i mean fight a short range battle. My question to you is why are you insisting on this fitting in with RTW1? I am asking for it to be implemented in RTW2... You can beat AI with almost any tactic. AI in RTW is quite good however cannot outsmart player.
And AI builds ship with historical references hence not so effective.
I built battleship with 35.000 displacement similar to Rodney - 23 knots, 3x3x16" ABL, 16" belt, 4" deck armor, AoN, TDS 2 in 1923. Ships costs less than 125M. I can build 52.000 tons ship but I would not get something which do mission better as higher power was meaningless, more protection not needed and higher speed not usefull in my strategy. With these ship I can have fleet as large as 2 other nations so I can blockade USA and Germany in one time. With 52.000 monsters which could get me nothing I could not do that.
Note: But for playing purposes it is true that RTW favors larger ships however they are not necessary.
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imryn
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Post by imryn on Feb 20, 2019 8:32:10 GMT -6
I never used that ship as a comparison with anything, I gave it as an example. Without the 18+ mod nothing changes - i have weaker ships and so does the AI and I still beat it with the same tactics. Vanilla RTW allows the player to build up to 52,000 tons yes? I have never seen an AI ship much bigger than about 46,000, so yes I can build a bigger ship in the basic game without mods. Comparing ships of similar sizes is not the only way of assessing the efficiency of a design. If I can build two smaller ships or one bigger ship for the same price which is more efficient? If I fight those ships and lose one of the smaller ones each battle but the larger one always survives which is the most efficient now? I would argue that in the RTW context a ship built the way I describe with a turtleback armour deck would beat a flat deck ship with the same tonnage (yes more armour or bigger guns or whatever) if i can control the engagement range, and by that i mean fight a short range battle. My question to you is why are you insisting on this fitting in with RTW1? I am asking for it to be implemented in RTW2... You can beat AI with almost any tactic. AI in RTW is quite good however cannot outsmart player.
And AI builds ship with historical references hence not so effective.
I built battleship with 35.000 displacement similar to Rodney - 23 knots, 3x3x16" ABL, 16" belt, 4" deck armor, AoN, TDS 2 in 1923. Ships costs less than 125M. I can build 52.000 tons ship but I would not get something which do mission better as higher power was meaningless, more protection not needed and higher speed not usefull in my strategy. With these ship I can have fleet as large as 2 other nations so I can blockade USA and Germany in one time. With 52.000 monsters which could get me nothing I could not do that.
Note: But for playing purposes it is true that RTW favors larger ships however they are not necessary.
Does that ship have enough deck armour for long range work? I would think you would want at least 6" if you are planning to fight at 20,000 yards plus. The choice of TDS2 is a good trade off - at long range you have a reduced risk of being torpedoed. The thing I really couldn't live with in that design is the low speed. At 23 Kts you are surrendering all control of the battle to the enemy; they can literally sail rings around you, engage or disengage at will, and prevent you from disengaging. I suppose you have faster BC's to go with these BB's but if they are fast enough to exert any control over the enemy they will be too fast to cooperate with these slow BB's, and if you attempt to use the BC's aggressively you will likely end up with the enemy able to concentrate their fleet on your BC element with your BB's unable to assist. I imagine that you have to play quite conservatively to prevent your forces getting separated, and I imagine that you tend to fight wars that feature a series of fleet battles over many months that apply cumulative losses over time that eventually result in a victory by attrition. That is perfectly fine if you enjoy playing that way, and its actually pretty historically accurate. Naval thinking in the RTW time frame (certainly up to 1918) was centered on decisive fleet engagements, however both Britain and Germany were more concerned with "not losing" than they were with "winning". It is sad to think that the nation that produced Nelson, a fleet commander who undoubtedly knew that in order to win you must take risks and accept losses, had fallen this far. I am not Nelson, of course, but every time I play a scenario my primary intent is to sink every enemy ship in the game. This means I always take the initiative and try to control the enemy fleet, and because I play so aggressively I am normally fully committed to battle before I even know what I am up against. This means that when the AI plays one of its "little jokes" and gives my enemy twice as many capital ships as me I can't disengage easily and just have to bull through. This, combined with the tactics I use, means that I expect my ships to take a lot of hits and so I build them to take those hits, and they have to be fast to control the enemy so I build them as fast and tough as I can. There is one other reason for building them like I do - I want them back. My ships are insanely expensive (BB / BC ~270 mil, CL ~70 mil, DD ~13 mil) so I want to get then back at the end of the battle, and as long as I don't screw up that is what happens; my ships get damaged but they don't get sunk. With my tactics most of my wars are effectively over after 1 or 2 fleet battles and most of my capitals can go back into reserve. My ships last through dozens of battles despite the punishing damage I subject them too, frankly damage that your ship has no chance of surviving, so to me that makes them a bargain compared to your ship. I use the 18+ mod in my games which allows me to build bigger and tougher ships than vanilla RTW, but I would (and did) use the same tactics in vanilla. If I was designing your ship I would reduce the armament to 15" or even 14" guns in order to give it more speed and armour, and with the armour I would try to create an immunity zone that was close range. The guns don't really contribute much with my tactics, and certainly don't sink anything; that's what torpedoes are for. My BB's and BC's are there to get the enemy fleet corralled and then the CL's and DD's go in and do the real work with torps. |
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Post by dorn on Feb 21, 2019 3:24:29 GMT -6
The numbers you used are for the mod. For the original game the balance is as I can see much better. The vanilla game has usually going wrong just before the end of game in 1925 where penetration skyrocket and armor does not help either.
Your define strategies:
1. large expensive ships 2. close range fight 3. preference of speed and armor over guns caliber
I will make some notes to these strategies for vanilla game. 1. - it works quite well because of several factors a) AI does not design properly to counter these large design (historically if this happened it would be countered correctly) - I think AI first put guns and speed and than for the rest of tonnage is used for armor.
b) engagement in RTW are more number balanced. There is still favor for owning large fleet but it seems that the game decrease for actual battle the disadvantages in numbers. For cruisers numbers winning as the difference is not so large but for capital ships armor wins so big ships wins 2. - it is quite risky in vanilla game as your armor in the second half of the game could not help you in close fight and torpedoes are very dangerous. I played game quite aggresive at start but there is issue that even if you win you get losses too. For UK or USA it is not the issue but for smaller nations which you build less than 1 capital ship per year it is big issue loosing 2 modern capital ships in battle. It hampered you for the decade. 3. You can try it but it would give you a lot of attrition if you fight nations with good guns. In my last game as A-H I was not able invented 13" guns for long time and after that 13" guns were maximum practically to the end of game. As I have house rule that I can build/refit ship only in home yards and allies yards I use for large part of game only 12" and 13" guns, later 14" guns. I have refitted some of the ships to 15" guns in USA. I fought several fights and the difference between 13" and 15" guns are in the second part of the game radical. 13" guns were just awfull from medium to long range. And going to short range was not an option as 15" and 16" guns of enemy ships would sink my ships quite quickly. Having smaller caliber main guns for capital ships in vanilla game is quite disadvantegous.
I do not play carefully, I use calculated risk. With fleet of 15 capital ships from which only about 7 are modern ones you cannot loose any of them. But some bad luck always make you loose some of them. As example in one of my fights as A-H with UK I was able in long range duel severely damaged 3 enemy capital ships even outnumbered which I was able to sink at time night was comming. I ordered scout division (2 my most modern battlecruisers) to turn back to home but during night enemy fleet changed course and my flag ship find herself in the middle of enemy battleship fleet. The both ships had no chance against dozens of 15" and 16" guns.
Just another note about conservative play. In my last game as A-H I did not invented any! torpedo protection till 1922 which is practically useless for capital ships. I did not loose any capital ship by torpedoes in engagements for whole game (I loose one old capital ship off screen by submarine) and all my capital ships that fought in battle had not got any torpedo protection at all. It was my first game to do so. It means that having TDS seems give me confidence which is not justified.
I find the beauty in RTW in this. Lack of torpedo protection means I need to adapt, completely forbids night fights for capital ships (I never did it, I was just caution), focus on medium to long range duels and be carefull (I fight usually at medium distance), focus on costs efficiency as I need to be ready to loose ships, so my largest battleship has less than 37.000 tons, my largest battlecruiser was less than 34.000 designed in 1913, all more modern ones were a little smaller.
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imryn
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Posts: 156
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Post by imryn on Feb 21, 2019 9:49:30 GMT -6
The numbers you used are for the mod. For the original game the balance is as I can see much better. The vanilla game has usually going wrong just before the end of game in 1925 where penetration skyrocket and armor does not help either.
Your define strategies:
1. large expensive ships 2. close range fight 3. preference of speed and armor over guns caliber
I will make some notes to these strategies for vanilla game. 1. - it works quite well because of several factors a) AI does not design properly to counter these large design (historically if this happened it would be countered correctly) - I think AI first put guns and speed and than for the rest of tonnage is used for armor.
b) engagement in RTW are more number balanced. There is still favor for owning large fleet but it seems that the game decrease for actual battle the disadvantages in numbers. For cruisers numbers winning as the difference is not so large but for capital ships armor wins so big ships wins 2. - it is quite risky in vanilla game as your armor in the second half of the game could not help you in close fight and torpedoes are very dangerous. I played game quite aggresive at start but there is issue that even if you win you get losses too. For UK or USA it is not the issue but for smaller nations which you build less than 1 capital ship per year it is big issue loosing 2 modern capital ships in battle. It hampered you for the decade. 3. You can try it but it would give you a lot of attrition if you fight nations with good guns. In my last game as A-H I was not able invented 13" guns for long time and after that 13" guns were maximum practically to the end of game. As I have house rule that I can build/refit ship only in home yards and allies yards I use for large part of game only 12" and 13" guns, later 14" guns. I have refitted some of the ships to 15" guns in USA. I fought several fights and the difference between 13" and 15" guns are in the second part of the game radical. 13" guns were just awfull from medium to long range. And going to short range was not an option as 15" and 16" guns of enemy ships would sink my ships quite quickly. Having smaller caliber main guns for capital ships in vanilla game is quite disadvantegous.
I do not play carefully, I use calculated risk. With fleet of 15 capital ships from which only about 7 are modern ones you cannot loose any of them. But some bad luck always make you loose some of them. As example in one of my fights as A-H with UK I was able in long range duel severely damaged 3 enemy capital ships even outnumbered which I was able to sink at time night was comming. I ordered scout division (2 my most modern battlecruisers) to turn back to home but during night enemy fleet changed course and my flag ship find herself in the middle of enemy battleship fleet. The both ships had no chance against dozens of 15" and 16" guns.
Just another note about conservative play. In my last game as A-H I did not invented any! torpedo protection till 1922 which is practically useless for capital ships. I did not loose any capital ship by torpedoes in engagements for whole game (I loose one old capital ship off screen by submarine) and all my capital ships that fought in battle had not got any torpedo protection at all. It was my first game to do so. It means that having TDS seems give me confidence which is not justified.
I find the beauty in RTW in this. Lack of torpedo protection means I need to adapt, completely forbids night fights for capital ships (I never did it, I was just caution), focus on medium to long range duels and be carefull (I fight usually at medium distance), focus on costs efficiency as I need to be ready to loose ships, so my largest battleship has less than 37.000 tons, my largest battlecruiser was less than 34.000 designed in 1913, all more modern ones were a little smaller.
I am not actually capitalising on any design flaws that exist in AI designed ships with my tactics, I am capitalising on the AI's behavior. The AI will always turn its capital ships away from you once you get close enough, so if you run your ships up the flank and turn across them you can "steer" them quite easily. The trick is getting your ships ahead of them in the first place, and surviving while you do it. With 18+ mod ships it is pretty easy, but it is also possible to do with vanilla ships; you can't be as aggressive and you can't get as close with vanilla ships, or you might have to let them run a bit further so they string out before turning them, but it can be done. You mentioned that scenarios favoured the side with the higher numbers of ships; my experience has been exactly the opposite. I generally pick my wars so that I have at least parity in numbers with my opponent, and only activate enough ships to maintain that parity, but when I get a fleet battle the AI always eliminates more of my ships than my opponents. My feeling is that the AI makes about 60% of my ships available and 80 - 90% of my opponents. Worse, if there is a mismatch in numbers the AI always capitalises on it. To illustrate, I fought France and they had 4 BB's and 20 BC's - I had many more BB's and activated 8 because I only had 12 BC's at the time. The only fleet battle I got that war the AI eliminated all BB's, gave me 8 BC's and France all 20 BC's. The answer would seem to be to have 25% more ships in every class than the enemy, but then the AI never lets you fight a fleet engagement and you cannot put your ships back into reserve. So if you want to fight and win you have to let the AI actively screw you over, which is annoying because the AI should be neutral, not actively trying to screw you. As you say, torpedoes are the main ship killers later in the game. Even with TDS4 once you get a few torpedo hits you have to be very careful with your speed and the AI will always drive ships too fast so you cannot leave a ship with flooding in AI control. The best defense against torpedoes is a big fat secondary battery of 5" or 6" guns. I was sneak attacked by Japan one time - I had 6 capitals each with 24 x 5" secondaries sat at anchor and as I watched the Japanese DD's come in it was like they hit a wall. They veered of, they circled, they just milled around. Not one completed a torpedo run, not one of my anchored ships was hit by a torpedo. By the time I was able to move out the entire Japanese DD force was shattered and sinking. I love a big fat secondary battery! I hadn't thought about the constraints that the small nations work with. I have played 3 campaigns as GB (scrapped the first 2, the 3rd is my current campaign and I am trying to capture every colony in the world so it is slow going) and 1 as USA. I plan on trying a campaign as Japan next, but as yet I haven't had to face the consequences of having a very small budget. I will say that in my first campaign as GB I tried to maintain a historical fleet size (i.e. match the next two fleets combined) but found that I had to build very inferior ships to manage it, and would then lose far too many of them when I went to war. This was unsustainable and I scrapped the campaign. My second campaign as GB i concentrated on building fewer but better ships designed for a long range doctrine and ignoring the US fleet size. Again it didn't work and I came to realise that the AI controlled nations don't lose ships unless you sink them. They don't fight amongst themselves they only fight you, and unless you periodically force a war with each of them and cull their fleet they will just keep growing. My 3rd campaign as GB I set myself the goal of capturing every colony, and because I knew this would be a long campaign I slowed down technology to 10%. The reason I slowed the research down so much was to allow my ships to remain relevant longer and this did help in the early game but turned into a hindrance later on. I found myself with a lot of ships that were less capable than my new ships and were costing me a lot to maintain - I had planned to use them away from the active zone to trigger invasions, but that mechanic is broken and invasions don't trigger no matter how big a force advantage you have. So I had to go through a lengthy consolidation period were my fleet growth was cancelled out by the older ships getting scrapped. I don't try to match the largest fleets, I build the toughest ships I can so I don't lose them and pick fights with country's that I can beat. If USA, Germany, Japan, and Russia all have significantly more ships than me I pick a fight with France or Italy. I accept budget cuts and prestige loss to avoid getting into a fight I can't win easily, and use the extra budget in time of war to build up my numbers of "super" ships. Each war I crush the enemy capital fleet quickly so I can put my ships back into reserve and then drag the war out as long as possible to get the most VP and money out of it. I have eliminated Germany, Russia, Italy and France as colonial powers so far, but there are still a few unclaimed territories so I might have to fight them again at some point. Japan was eliminated but it just annexed North Korea so my next war will be with them. And then there is the US ... I have been leaving the US until last because I know its going to be hard to beat them. They have colonies in SEA, NAWC, and Carib and a fleet that outnumbers me 2 to 1. I can improve those odds if I avoid fighting them and continue building for 10 years; the US will also continue building but they have hit the budget cap so eventually they will hit a limit in the fleet size they can maintain, and it might be interesting to see what the AI does at that point. It will be interesting, fighting against 2 to 1 odds across 4 zones where 3 of them are "Home" zones for the enemy and I have to prevent them from getting a local 4 to 1 advantage in any of them. With the invasion mechanic so broken I know that as soon as they get that 4 to 1 advantage they will get an invasion against me, but I will never get one against them. The only way I see me winning is to fight (and win!) a series of defensive wars, minimising my losses and slowly stripping away the US colonies in SEA and the Carib. This tactic won't allow me to reduce their fleet much because anything I sink will be replaced in the time between wars. The biggest unknown for me is how does the AI behave when there are large numbers of ships? The US has over 100 capital ships split between NAEC and the Carib so if I put 50 into one of those zones what happens? Can I get a battle where I only get 10 ships and they get 50? Or 5 against 50? My fleet will quickly evaporate no matter how good my ships are if I am continually fighting those kind of odds. The alternative is to postpone the showdown and keep building. Eventually I can build a fleet so large that my budget goes into deficit spending just by activating it, but I should have better than the 2 to 1 odds I face now. So I build up a budget surplus and trigger the war and hope I can get some of the fleet back home and into mothballs before I get imprisoned for fiscal malfeasance  |
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Post by dorn on Feb 21, 2019 13:58:57 GMT -6
I think you should try other nations. UK especially on historical budget is the easist it is practically impossible to loosee any war.
I am not actually capitalising on any design flaws that exist in AI designed ships with my tactics, I am capitalising on the AI's behavior. The AI will always turn its capital ships away from you once you get close enough, so if you run your ships up the flank and turn across them you can "steer" them quite easily. The trick is getting your ships ahead of them in the first place, and surviving while you do it. With 18+ mod ships it is pretty easy, but it is also possible to do with vanilla ships; you can't be as aggressive and you can't get as close with vanilla ships, or you might have to let them run a bit further so they string out before turning them, but it can be done.
This is impossible on vanilla game as AI works quite well using inner circle strategy.
You mentioned that scenarios favoured the side with the higher numbers of ships; my experience has been exactly the opposite. I generally pick my wars so that I have at least parity in numbers with my opponent, and only activate enough ships to maintain that parity, but when I get a fleet battle the AI always eliminates more of my ships than my opponents. My feeling is that the AI makes about 60% of my ships available and 80 - 90% of my opponents. Worse, if there is a mismatch in numbers the AI always capitalises on it. To illustrate, I fought France and they had 4 BB's and 20 BC's - I had many more BB's and activated 8 because I only had 12 BC's at the time. The only fleet battle I got that war the AI eliminated all BB's, gave me 8 BC's and France all 20 BC's. The answer would seem to be to have 25% more ships in every class than the enemy, but then the AI never lets you fight a fleet engagement and you cannot put your ships back into reserve. So if you want to fight and win you have to let the AI actively screw you over, which is annoying because the AI should be neutral, not actively trying to screw you.
May be I do not write it perfectly in English. It seems to me that numbers deployed in battle are generally not in ration of the ships available with decreasing the gap in favor for smaller force. But usually more available ships mean more ships in engagement. The numbers are most welcome in cruiser engagements because of limitation of 3" belt armor, 8.000 tons and 6" guns for light cruisers.
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imryn
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Post by imryn on Feb 22, 2019 3:06:29 GMT -6
I think you should try other nations. UK especially on historical budget is the easist it is practically impossible to loosee any war.
I am not actually capitalising on any design flaws that exist in AI designed ships with my tactics, I am capitalising on the AI's behavior. The AI will always turn its capital ships away from you once you get close enough, so if you run your ships up the flank and turn across them you can "steer" them quite easily. The trick is getting your ships ahead of them in the first place, and surviving while you do it. With 18+ mod ships it is pretty easy, but it is also possible to do with vanilla ships; you can't be as aggressive and you can't get as close with vanilla ships, or you might have to let them run a bit further so they string out before turning them, but it can be done.
This is impossible on vanilla game as AI works quite well using inner circle strategy.
You mentioned that scenarios favoured the side with the higher numbers of ships; my experience has been exactly the opposite. I generally pick my wars so that I have at least parity in numbers with my opponent, and only activate enough ships to maintain that parity, but when I get a fleet battle the AI always eliminates more of my ships than my opponents. My feeling is that the AI makes about 60% of my ships available and 80 - 90% of my opponents. Worse, if there is a mismatch in numbers the AI always capitalises on it. To illustrate, I fought France and they had 4 BB's and 20 BC's - I had many more BB's and activated 8 because I only had 12 BC's at the time. The only fleet battle I got that war the AI eliminated all BB's, gave me 8 BC's and France all 20 BC's. The answer would seem to be to have 25% more ships in every class than the enemy, but then the AI never lets you fight a fleet engagement and you cannot put your ships back into reserve. So if you want to fight and win you have to let the AI actively screw you over, which is annoying because the AI should be neutral, not actively trying to screw you.
May be I do not write it perfectly in English. It seems to me that numbers deployed in battle are generally not in ration of the ships available with decreasing the gap in favor for smaller force. But usually more available ships mean more ships in engagement. The numbers are most welcome in cruiser engagements because of limitation of 3" belt armor, 8.000 tons and 6" guns for light cruisers. I think maybe I will. I have been meaning to play a Japanese campaign for a while, but my "conquer the world" GB campaign has been running on for longer than I expected. I think I will shelve it for a bit while I consider how to finish it and start up a Japanese game. I am not entirely sure what you mean by "inner circle strategy", but if you mean that the AI will turn inside me and maintain its chosen engagement distance then that is exactly what I am exploiting. Predictable behavior is always exploitable and in this case I can get the AI to head in any direction I want by approaching his formation from the right direction. Scenarios would be far more challenging if the AI varied its responses occasionally - instead of turning away it threw a DD division at me or something. I suppose it is possible that if I was playing as a weaker nation, or picking fights against country's with larger fleets I might see the AI scenario selections differently, but playing as GB the AI consistently eliminates a greater percentage of my available ships for all Large and Fleet battles. I will see how it goes as Japan. |
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