Question on ship range and engine reliability/speed?

[jorgencab]

So.. two questions...



The first is a about the engines and how this actually practically work in the game, I have yet to notice my ships breaking down through unreliable engines. When and how will this actually affect the game or is it just that I never really noticed it?!? 

The manual say that it is good to have reliable ships far away from your home waters or on raiders, but why is that game mechanic wise?

I understand this from a conceptual level and why that is.




Then I'm not sure about naval range either... I know that range is good for raiders and perhaps also potentially for trade protection. But should not operational range have any other meaning aside from this?

I know that short range have a few problems associated with them, such as limited possibilities to move during wars etc.. I also know that ships fuel are tracked in combat, but I have yet to experience ships lack of fuel being a problem in any scenarios.

[pirateradar]

Engine reliability can come into play with any ship, but it's more noticeable with raiders--same for fuel. You're right that in scenarios fuel is rarely if ever a problem, though.

When you have ships assigned to raider duty you might send them out to other sea zones, right? In that case fuel and reliability become much bigger issues. In your home zone you can easily refuel and if you have a breakdown you spend time in port. In other zones, if you run out of fuel or have engine trouble, you end up interned in a neutral port, or have to scuttle the ship.

[ramjb]

RE:Reliability: chances are you haven't noticed it, or that you've been inordinately lucky. Particularily so with early coal-burner machineries, having a random machinery breakdown that causes loss of speed in the middle of a battle is, I won't say common, but certainly isn't rare for ships without the "reliability" trait.

Truth be told those random breakdowns happen more rarely after the switchover to turbines happen (which should already have happened between 1905-1908 unless you're quite unlucky with your tech unlocks), because, just as in real life, in game turbines are a lot more reliable than triple expansion engines.

But I've had in-battle machinery problems in pretty modern oil burning ships in 1942 wars. So they do happen afterwards aswell.

They also affects things like random between-turns machinery ailings like condenser trouble that, if they happen to a Raider which is operating far from friendly ports, can lead to it being either scuttled or interned.

AS for how worth/not worth they are, up to you really. Same as going for "Speed" (Which saves on machinery weight but increases the odd of having some random trouble both in battle and in the strategic map). You're the one calling the shots and judging how worth running which risks or going safe is for each class of ship . But breakdowns do happen, that for sure.


Short range ships pretty much "Locks" them into home areas where you have naval bases big enough to service the ship. massively viable for one-zone locked nations with no short-term prospect of getting anywhere beyond that (like Austria-hungary, for instance), a massive issue for nations with worldwide commitments (France or UK to name two).

"Long range" ships play a massive role for raiders. the longer the range, the more time they can operate in zones without friendly ports...if they run out of fuel, in they go into internment or worse...scuttled.

But "Long range" also plays a part in normal fleet units that you want to keep on station in a zone you don't have any port in. Think for instance of a US-Germany war. You as an US player might want to go and blockade the german shores but you have no ports in the zone (let's assume you have no allies either). If you send your fleet to the North Sea zone, and they are all of "Normal" range they'll soon be short on fuel (they'll have an asterisk on them in the ship listing) and you'll need to withdraw them to a zone with ports you own so they don't get interned (or scuttled). So that helps for longer station keeping and less shuttling ships from zone to zone if you want to keep a blockade going without interruption.

Extreme range...that's for raiders only, honestly. Same benefits, but for a bigger cost (and a bigger benefit in how much the ship can stay away from home). That one I only use for AMCs ,to be completely true, because it's demands in tonnage are prohibitive even for a "run of the mill" fleet raider.

[wknehring]

At the beginning of the game you have problems with long high speed runs while coal firing- in fleetbattles after half a day your big boys will do 1-2 knots slower. Reliable engines will compensate this a little bit.
In my opinion that´s not necessary, because in the second half of a battle speed drops because of battle damages.
Another thing are events with "condenser trouble" or "engine break downs" during wartime with a few months repair time in the ship yards. They become a bit less often. I had one playthrough with reliable engines at all my capital ships- I had fewer events of this type for them.
All my raiders have reliable engines and long range with high speed and I normally don´t have casualties through scuttling or internation. And in case you solve your raider encounters manualy, you will be happy, that your raider is capable to outrun his oponent, without your speed dropped.

The range is some thing of its own- I usually use short range when creating my legacy fleet (Bs and DDs) with A-H, Japan, Italy or Germany- in all cases you don´t need your pre-dreads in your colonies, or don´t have any. Normally the 2nd generation Bs (normally semi-dreadnoughts) get medium range.
All cruiser get medium or long range. I never use short range on MS/KE anymore- I did it once and my ASW-capabilities were really bad! I had one war against France in the late 30s in which they had ~50 subs and after 4 months I inflicted the first sub casuality for them! Normally my MS punish them and sink 5-10 subs each month. And I guess this will be equal in RTW2.

[jorgencab]

Ok... thanks... this was really helpful. So basically these traits are all applicable in a rather intuitive way.

So, in terms of range, there is not really much point in long range ships for Transport Protection?

Let's say I want to build a light cruiser class of ships whose main job is transport protection. These would be good at medium range or even short range if stationed in my one home area in some cases. It would seem a bit odd with short range trade protection ships though.

[JagdFlanker]

if you have to choose 1 of reliable engines/long range, pick reliable engines since it's breakdowns that gets ships interned in neutral ports. i never use long range outside of AMCs and almost never have any issues getting interned outside of getting battle damage


wknehring interesting view on building KE with short range - i have been building them short range the last few games (including RtW1) to save money (i usually have 60+ in service at once) but didn't pay attention to see if there was a performance difference. i might go back to building them with med range and see

[pirateradar]

May 24, 2019 2:36:16 GMT -6 jorgencab said:

Ok... thanks... this was really helpful. So basically these traits are all applicable in a rather intuitive way.

So, in terms of range, there is not really much point in long range ships for Transport Protection?

Let's say I want to build a light cruiser class of ships whose main job is transport protection. These would be good at medium range or even short range if stationed in my one home area in some cases. It would seem a bit odd with short range trade protection ships though.

Correct, unless you're building cruiser-hunters and sending them around the world to hunt enemy raiders.

[snwh]

Hmmm, I think I remember reading somewhere that long range on a ship makes them more likely to intercept a raider though, I wish I could remember where I saw that. Can anyone confirm that? Its should be similar to how floatplanes help with intercept chance as well (both for raiders, and intercepting them)

I'll try and see if I can't find where I saw that.


also, I'll mention about reliability. back in rtw1, I used speed tuned engines almost exclusively. But in rtw2, the penalty feels much steeper to me. iirc I had speed cut by something like six knots due to engine troubles once. If that happened on say, a CA during a cruiser battle, that could be absolutely crippling. But as the game has progressed, I've had less problems (which isn't to say no problems).

Its probably a good idea to consider how badly the design needs its speed. That being said, if I can't fit every thing I want into say, a CL, I'm not afraid to speed tune its engines, as long as its worth it. In the end its you who gets to decide whats worth it, which is whats great about this game :3

(I also tend to use speed engines on refits, because if you're to the point of refitting an engine in a ship, you really need all the space you can get to make it worth it)

[jorgencab]

May 24, 2019 2:58:53 GMT -6 snwh said:

Hmmm, I think I remember reading somewhere that long range on a ship makes them more likely to intercept a raider though, I wish I could remember where I saw that. Can anyone confirm that? Its should be similar to how floatplanes help with intercept chance as well (both for raiders, and intercepting them)

I'll try and see if I can't find where I saw that.


also, I'll mention about reliability. back in rtw1, I used speed tuned engines almost exclusively. But in rtw2, the penalty feels much steeper to me. iirc I had speed cut by something like six knots due to engine troubles once. If that happened on say, a CA during a cruiser battle, that could be absolutely crippling. But as the game has progressed, I've had less problems (which isn't to say no problems).

Its probably a good idea to consider how badly the design needs its speed. That being said, if I can't fit every thing I want into say, a CL, I'm not afraid to speed tune its engines, as long as its worth it. In the end its you who gets to decide whats worth it, which is whats great about this game :3

(I also tend to use speed engines on refits, because if you're to the point of refitting an engine in a ship, you really need all the space you can get to make it worth it)

Well, in real life then both reliability and range would and should help your ships be more efficient in both raiding and counter raiding operations. 

Range will give the ships more time on station thus more time to find and engage their intended targets, reliability will help reduce maintenance cycle costs in time spent and increase the chance of the ships being able to use its range effectively. A ship with long range and unreliable engines seems like a pretty stupid design to be honest from a realistic standpoint.

In reality reliability or easy maintenance equipment means you get to use them more often and is more important than most people realise. It is all good to have crazy good ships on paper but what good are they if they need to spend 70% of their service life in dock for maintenance overhauls. It can be a trade of you can do on some very specialised high performance equipment or platforms, thing that you need high performance on in certain situations.

But I digress from the subject at hand here...

[JagdFlanker]

range does give you a greater chance of intercepting raiders, but chasing raiders is not something i consider important compared to destroying the enemy fleet and getting ahead in VPs so i'd rather save on the the building cost and stick with med range. the only ship i use LR on are AMCs

the only ships i ever put speed-rated engines on are DDs since they are built in numbers and pretty much expendable anyways, and sometimes CLs since speed is their #1 defensive weapon

[snwh]

See, I personally try not to put speed rated engines on CL's or DD's. Precisely because speed is their greatest defense and weapon. If a speed tuned engine breaks down, they just lost that weapon for nothing. especially a problem for CL's where one knot can make all the difference.

That doesn't mean I don't use speed tuned engines on them from time to time, but I feel a lot better sticking them on say, a battleship. Where it's not going to affect them quite as much. I've actually been sticking them on carriers quite a lot too.

[bcoopactual]

May 24, 2019 2:58:53 GMT -6 snwh said:

Hmmm, I think I remember reading somewhere that long range on a ship makes them more likely to intercept a raider though, I wish I could remember where I saw that. Can anyone confirm that? Its should be similar to how floatplanes help with intercept chance as well (both for raiders, and intercepting them)

I'll try and see if I can't find where I saw that.


also, I'll mention about reliability. back in rtw1, I used speed tuned engines almost exclusively. But in rtw2, the penalty feels much steeper to me. iirc I had speed cut by something like six knots due to engine troubles once. If that happened on say, a CA during a cruiser battle, that could be absolutely crippling. But as the game has progressed, I've had less problems (which isn't to say no problems).

Its probably a good idea to consider how badly the design needs its speed. That being said, if I can't fit every thing I want into say, a CL, I'm not afraid to speed tune its engines, as long as its worth it. In the end its you who gets to decide whats worth it, which is whats great about this game :3

(I also tend to use speed engines on refits, because if you're to the point of refitting an engine in a ship, you really need all the space you can get to make it worth it)

This is the quote Fredrik made on the subject in the RTW1 forum.  I don't think there is any reason for this to have changed.  This is from the Fredrik's Tidbits thread on the RTW1 forum.


"To clear this up:



Ships with long range will:

* Have better chances to escape interception as raiders.

* Better chances of sinking merchants if raiders.

* Better chance of intercepting raiders.

* Less risk of being interned or scuttled from lack of fuel.

* More fuel when a scenario starts (rarely of importance).



Ships with reliable engines will have:

* Less chance of engine problems in scenarios.

* Less chance of needing to return to base area when at sea (getting a *).

* Less risk of being interned or scuttled from engine problems.

-----------------

Thre is a small chance that raiders will take part in regular battles, especially in the colonies. This is to simulate that they have been recalled to take part in an important operation. However, when interned, they should not be present of course.
"

[snwh]

May 24, 2019 5:30:36 GMT -6 bcoopactual said:

This is the quote Fredrik made on the subject in the RTW1 forum.  I don't think there is any reason for this to have changed.  This is from the Fredrik's Tidbits thread on the RTW1 forum.

Thank you ^^ This is exactly what I saw. I think I stumbled upon a collection of some of his more informative posts, and this was in it

[rimbecano]

May 24, 2019 4:25:52 GMT -6 snwh said:

See, I personally try not to put speed rated engines on CL's or DD's. Precisely because speed is their greatest defense and weapon. If a speed tuned engine breaks down, they just lost that weapon for nothing. especially a problem for CL's where one knot can make all the difference.

That doesn't mean I don't use speed tuned engines on them from time to time, but I feel a lot better sticking them on say, a battleship. Where it's not going to affect them quite as much. I've actually been sticking them on carriers quite a lot too.

But those ships are cheap and plentiful, and hence expendable. It hardly matters if one is sunk outright, and not at all if it is mission killed, so long as it survives the engagement. A minor loss of speed isn't even of concern in the context of the battle as a whole.

[snwh]

When I think of where speed is most important, I would probably say in cruiser battles and raider interceptions. Both are battles where getting away if your outgunned, or closing in for the kill are very important, and both usually involve light cruisers. So This is usually what im thinking about when not giving them speed based engines. I'll fully admit that in larger battle settings it's nowhere near as important, since light cruisers are in more of a screening or scouting role, with the occasional flotilla attack thrown in.

I'd also argue that it depends on the CL, whether its cheap or not. a 5-6k ton raiding cruiser, yeah. But a 10k ton fleet cruiser isn't fun to lose (and same with a 2k ton DD). Not to mention time to replace. My current class of CL takes 22 weeks to make, (I usually make them in batches, and then rotate out obsolete surviving CL's)

Either way tho, I do think you have valid points. so don't take my arguing too seriously, I just find it fun expounding thoughts on the game :3