What is the benefit to Long and Extreme range?

[aeson]

Jun 10, 2019 12:42:06 GMT -6 lukasdietrich said:

If you are playing someone like Germany, Italy, AH who fights almost always close to home. Should you ever use the extra tons towards medium range?

It depends a bit on what exactly you want to do, but Italy and Austria-Hungary can certainly get away with mostly- or entirely-short-ranged fleets - neither has much of any reason to worry about anything outside the Mediterranean, at least early on, and if you're content with being a Mediterranean naval power that's unlikely to change all that much over the course of the game.

Germany and Russia are a bit less able to get away with a mostly- or entirely-short-ranged fleet, because they have possessions in the Far East and might end up in a war with Japan, and as bad as having to send a fleet to the far side of the world in wartime is, it's worse to have to fight only with the ships that were already over there, with no possibility of reinforcements arriving for the foreseeable future. That said, you can usually avoid fighting Japan if you don't want to fight Japan, and at least for Germany it could be argued that it's not really worth protecting the colonial empire, or at least the Pacific part of it.

[JagdFlanker]

i personally don't see the point of using long range ships outside of raiders since the benefits are pretty specifically for raiders

if you want to use your ships for blockades in areas where you don't have a port you are much better off using reliable engines instead since that lowers the chance of getting a breakdown and getting interned


now if there was say a 20% chance with ships equipped with long range that can go at least 18kts to move a 2nd seazone in a turn, and a 50% chance for ships equipped with extreme range to move an extra seazone in a turn - then perhaps i can see some situations where equipping ships with either may be a serious consideration