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Post by anthropoid on Jan 9, 2020 13:11:18 GMT -6
Having played the game a bit more, gained more understanding of game mechanics, and observed how a couple wars work, I would have to say, I don't share OPs "Ultimate Frustration" with how the battle generator works. Seems like, if you keep a reasonable distribution of ships in important zones, you can be fairly confident you'll have reasonable OBs when engagements are generated. That is more difficult to do in some instances than in others, and of course the fact it is random does add _some_ frustration to it. Seems to me the current system is good overall. It may deserve a bit of tweaking or some accessory features, but a good basic design.
As far as accessory features: it would be neat if it were possible to define a certain number of "task force" or "role templates," perhaps even include the set of basic types which were common for the era (convoy protection, convoy attack, probing attack force, port attack force, whatever . . .) and then let the player define which of his ship types were "qualified" for each type?
I don't know enough of the nitty-gritty details of naval theater operations in this era to say what would or wouldn't be historical, but surely the developers must know? This way, you give the player more stuff to learn about and analyse, more decisions to be made: make them "binding" by allowing them to be set when a war starts, and then only changed by expending prestige and/or if a series of disastrous engagements evoke a random "National Leader" intervention demanding that naval operations doctrine be adjusted (and again prestige loss). Then the rando battle generator has to "play by" those "rules" of what is ideal for the player even though random chance would still be of primary significance.
In fact, I have to congratulate the developer for a very well-designed strategic layer! Even with considerable foregthought and effort, and given the opponents are nothing more than algorithms, the wars are not "easy" and require tactical vigilance. They take a good long while to play out and even when "crushing" victory is achieved the rewards are not excessive. I had an 18 or 24 month war with Japan (as Germany). They had me "outclassed" in B (3 or 4 to zero) but I had them outclassed in CA (armored enough to be "immune" to 12" guns, relatively fast at 21k, long range and able to endure operation in poor logistical constexts "Colonial Duty"). With enough TP DDs distributed around my possessionszones, and most of my CA stacked up in Northeast Asia (initially at a substantial over taxing on port infrastructure, but at par with port services by end of war), I was able to keep their home waters in blockade for most of the war. Their raiders kept picking off my merchants in other regions on the order of average 15 vp per turn, but after 18 or 20 months the accumulation of all those months of ~200 to 240 VP for blockade + a dozen or more large victories (and no real defeats) in Northeast Asia engagements put me at about a 16,000 to 6,000 VP advantage and they were suffering strikes and riots. They finally agreed to surrender on German terms after about the 7th or 8th peace conference and we gained Formosa.
Now granted, I'm a newcomer to the series and probably have 5% or 1% as much experience as OP with this game and preceding games. So I don't mean to suggest that his/her views are wrong. But so far my take is: basic system is good, maybe just needs some tweaking or feature accessorization. The "operational doctrine" templates thing I mentioned above seems like a good thing to contemplate if it isn't too ahistorical.
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Post by aeson on Jan 9, 2020 13:24:53 GMT -6
I had now 2 raider engagements with me as hunter that started with both ships more or less starting very very very nearby or beside and my ship without any speed. Should that simulate a control situation performed by the hunter on a camouflaged AMC? Yes.
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Post by rodentnavy on Jan 10, 2020 9:02:33 GMT -6
Having played the game a bit more, gained more understanding of game mechanics, and observed how a couple wars work, I would have to say, I don't share OPs "Ultimate Frustration" with how the battle generator works. Seems like, if you keep a reasonable distribution of ships in important zones, you can be fairly confident you'll have reasonable OBs when engagements are generated. That is more difficult to do in some instances than in others, and of course the fact it is random does add _some_ frustration to it. Seems to me the current system is good overall. It may deserve a bit of tweaking or some accessory features, but a good basic design. I think the real issue is that once you have played a dozen campaigns the battle generator will not feel random but in fact sadly predictable. Say you have three modern and one obsolete light cruisers in a region, which do you think is going to be selected for missions? This is even more aggravating if you have two modern heavy cruisers in addition to your light cruisers, the foe has no light cruisers and only a somewhat old and flaky CA that would not enjoy meeting one of your heavies, would struggle against two of your modern light cruisers working together but will eat for breakfast any lone light cruiser that attempts to close with it and can catch your old obsolete CL without breaking into flank speed. I have just had an early game war with the US as GB much like that. Their CAs did not want to face my armoured cruisers even when they were more modern. In fact a perfectly fine US CA failed rather abysmally against two 4 inch gunned protected cruisers, the British ships scored plenty of hits but could not penetrate anything vital but the AI ran up some points and fled to port and it all failed horribly when the third class cruisers bumped into the remaining US merchant and reversed the points scores. There is a feeling and I cannot shake because I have based too many tactical engagements on the assumption that the AI is counting the points of damage it inflicts on me and will often disengage a somewhat risky fight once it has run up a points advantage. The first time I played according to that assumption was in RTW1 when a clash of squadrons each based around CLs and DDs screening and scouting for a single battlecruiser. Once the AI battlecruiser had scored enough points it withdrew, leaving its scout CL to get gobbled up. I had known that would happen and positioned my BC accordingly to be across the path of the CL back to its squadron. A tactical choice that would not have worked had the enemy capital ship remained in contact. Otherwise you could take a war I had as Spain against Germany. Spain is inevitably blockaded but all the fleet actions take place close to Germany's North Sea ports. That was not merely the AI trying for its customary unfair advantage but would has also (in RL) have broken the blockade as the German fleet simply would not have been there to intercept neutral ships headed to Spain. That sort of thing gets immersion breaking. The list of examples from my own experience is long and other players could easily add their own. Now players will tolerate things that are not exactly realistic if it happens to both sides. They will tolerate bad luck if it can happen to both sides. It all becomes a frustration because it does not. Now I do you like your doctrine idea and you are not the first to suggest it but something is long overdue about being done with the battle selector. I do not mind CLs seeing a lot of action, they did historically but they have been abused long enough.
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Post by anthropoid on Jan 10, 2020 13:39:22 GMT -6
Having played the game a bit more, gained more understanding of game mechanics, and observed how a couple wars work, I would have to say, I don't share OPs "Ultimate Frustration" with how the battle generator works. Seems like, if you keep a reasonable distribution of ships in important zones, you can be fairly confident you'll have reasonable OBs when engagements are generated. That is more difficult to do in some instances than in others, and of course the fact it is random does add _some_ frustration to it. Seems to me the current system is good overall. It may deserve a bit of tweaking or some accessory features, but a good basic design. I think the real issue is that once you have played a dozen campaigns the battle generator will not feel random but in fact sadly predictable. Say you have three modern and one obsolete light cruisers in a region, which do you think is going to be selected for missions? This is even more aggravating if you have two modern heavy cruisers in addition to your light cruisers, the foe has no light cruisers and only a somewhat old and flaky CA that would not enjoy meeting one of your heavies, would struggle against two of your modern light cruisers working together but will eat for breakfast any lone light cruiser that attempts to close with it and can catch your old obsolete CL without breaking into flank speed. I have just had an early game war with the US as GB much like that. Their CAs did not want to face my armoured cruisers even when they were more modern. In fact a perfectly fine US CA failed rather abysmally against two 4 inch gunned protected cruisers, the British ships scored plenty of hits but could not penetrate anything vital but the AI ran up some points and fled to port and it all failed horribly when the third class cruisers bumped into the remaining US merchant and reversed the points scores. There is a feeling and I cannot shake because I have based too many tactical engagements on the assumption that the AI is counting the points of damage it inflicts on me and will often disengage a somewhat risky fight once it has run up a points advantage. The first time I played according to that assumption was in RTW1 when a clash of squadrons each based around CLs and DDs screening and scouting for a single battlecruiser. Once the AI battlecruiser had scored enough points it withdrew, leaving its scout CL to get gobbled up. I had known that would happen and positioned my BC accordingly to be across the path of the CL back to its squadron. A tactical choice that would not have worked had the enemy capital ship remained in contact. Otherwise you could take a war I had as Spain against Germany. Spain is inevitably blockaded but all the fleet actions take place close to Germany's North Sea ports. That was not merely the AI trying for its customary unfair advantage but would has also (in RL) have broken the blockade as the German fleet simply would not have been there to intercept neutral ships headed to Spain. That sort of thing gets immersion breaking. The list of examples from my own experience is long and other players could easily add their own. Now players will tolerate things that are not exactly realistic if it happens to both sides. They will tolerate bad luck if it can happen to both sides. It all becomes a frustration because it does not. Now I do you like your doctrine idea and you are not the first to suggest it but something is long overdue about being done with the battle selector. I do not mind CLs seeing a lot of action, they did historically but they have been abused long enough. I hear ya, and I'm already seeing what you are talking about. The sad truth is: the player should NOT feel motivated to NOT have older ships on hand simply because the RNG prefers to put weaker entities into the battles. On the other hand, based on my own experiences programming (limited and sporadic) I have considerable empathy for Mr. Miller. This stuff is NOT easy to create. One thing "we" (I was only superficially and briefly involved but I was involved so . . .) on a team that worked on a different game I can neither confirm or deny the name of (NDA and all) but which covered a similar time frame and also covered lots of naval combat, were doing (not my idea): there was an "A.I." guy (I hate to use that term but I will for brevity) who basically was a scripter and was very well read in the nitty-gritty history of the war. He would write up pseudo code description that described specific operations for the bad guy nation (the one most players tended to play against in singleplayer) and these would include date frames (earliest, middle, latest date), explicit objectives (10,000 supply points in Guam, at least 6 DDs, 2 CAs, and 1 CVL in Rabaul, that sort of thing), and a sequence of preparatory steps, ready states and execution sequences. As you can see, this is already a bit more complicated than the operational considerations in this game. Anyway, these combined with a reasonable amount of "cheating" for the A.I. meant that the thing was pretty passable as an opponent. Just like everything in programming, if you break it down into small pieces and then get each cog in the machine to work with the one next to it you're off to a good start and you just keep building up from there. What might this sort of approach mean for a game like this? Well, just spit-balling . . . each position might have two or more "Strategic Paths" it could "choose" early in the game, and each of those paths might have splits in them that were at least in part decided by player actions. Each of those splits might have a set of operational objectives that would then have subsidiary build priorities, diplomatic actions or whatever. These then would also relate to actual pre-war dispositions and likely operational actions during a war. That is a ton of work for one guy though, and given the scope and production resources of the game, the current system is pretty damn good. ADDIT: I just reread what you wrote and what I wrote and it probably seems like the "operational" and even strategic level stuff I'm talking about doesn't make sense for how battle tactics would play out. I guess what I'm getting at is: tactics should be the sensible downstream result of strategy with operations as the intermediary that sets up a force to carry out strategy through tactics. At present, it is not clear that the computer controlled positions have much in the way of distinctive strategies either at the level of national peace time policy and action, or at the level of "diplomacy by other means." IF some semblance of "A.I. Strategy" and in particular at least some degree of national distinctiveness in strategy (a war against Russia should feel a bit distinctive to a war against the U.S. eh?) then the terms for programming differential tactics might also become more clear. I don't see an inherent problem with the "A.I." gaming points, just that it shouldn't feel like the ONLY trick it has up its sleeve? Probably just a bunch of rambling of no use, but maybe of some . . .
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Post by anthropoid on Jan 10, 2020 13:52:38 GMT -6
As I read about the game and did a couple learning plays, the general operating procedure I have come up with is: Don't build CLs! and DDs are just cannon fodder / TP slot fillers. My navy is very CA heavy, fast enough to catch Bs and BBs and TRs, armored enough to stand some chance against those bigger guns but not so much as to be impervious. Long range and colonial service (in order to be able to stay on blockade duty for long stretches without too much degradation, even in zones with 10 base support), and necessarily bare bones in firepower. Even for Germany, I don't think that is a particular "historical" approach, but so far it worked great in a war against Japan ca 1905-1908. Add as many short range big gun ships as can be afforded to hold the fort back in home waters. My second war with Italy is proving a bit more challenging (torpedoes have started flying around, which changes the game), but I think it will eventually carry the day against the Italians too. The tiresome thing I've encountered is: I'm blockading Med with like 300% of Italian fleet in their home waters. They've got their navy split into about 5 pieces. A tiny piece over in SE Asia, a small piece in Indian Ocean, a medium sized piece in Med, and the bulk (65% or so of their total tonnage) is lurking in Southern Africa, and seemingly bopping around looking for an engagement? Not sure. So in that context, one of my modern CAs "Spandau Class" of which I currently possess one (currently building them to replace my older "CA Schwentine model, which is much the same in speed, range, endurance and armor but less displacement, smaller main guns and fewer of them). This ship was stationed on AF in Northern Europe (pretty dang sure), not TP. Somehow IT, instead of the 12 or 13 older CAs that are actually in the Med blockading Italy was the one to engage a raider trying to break out, which is weird but not the main point. The "tiresome" part was how the battle played out. I basically had to micromanage chasing an Italian CA which was slower, but slightly heavier armed for about 45 minute He seemed to want to allow me to close in to <7500 yd, either because more of his guns could come into play, or torpedoes (which I don't use on anything but DDs). So I was constantly cranking up to 24k then back down to 15 then 16, then 17, then 21, then 24 . . . repeat for 45 minutes, all while shift-clicking all over the place to chase him down. Even though CA Pisa went down with all hands, and CA Spandau made it home to Germany with only 2 months of damage to repair, I want to say the actual war VP allocation was Friendly: ~700, and Foe: ~350. Cannot recall for sure, but that seems about what it was. That to me seems . . . "odd" that just by virtue of causing some damage, and despite losing an expensive capital ship with all hands Italy got much in the way of war VP out of it. Maybe it isn't wildly odd, but a bit strange at first glance anyway.
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Post by dorn on Jan 10, 2020 14:38:42 GMT -6
I would mention 2 things related you mentioned.
1. colonial service It has effect on calculation of foreign station requirement, nothing more. So it has no effect on having ship in area outside your ports.
2. secondary armament of your cruiser If your secondary armament is larger caliber than 6", flash fire can occur. So if you use such larger secondary armament, you should take this risk or armour secondary armament reasonable. In your case, you take risk that penetrating hit of main caliber of CAs can destroy your gun and blow up ship if flash fire occurs.
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Post by anthropoid on Jan 10, 2020 14:49:55 GMT -6
I could've swore I encountered something in the manual saying (or at least suggesting) that colonial service made a ship more resilient to operating without sufficient base support. A quick search on "colonial service" string cannot find anything other than
I probably just read more into that bolded part than was intended.
Good to know!
Re: secondaries, I guess 4.5" isn't really enough given the 8" on the other vitals. The actual meaning of "immune" seems to be a bit variable and even misleading I guess? As an example, my first CA designed by opening up a design in GB putting 13" guns in it and then armoring it enough to be "immune" at about 5000 yards. But then that was in 1899, and I guess gun quality and AP tech achieved change the values in that Gun Data table? And then of course the "chinks" in the armor (belt extended, deck extended, secondaries, turret tops), some of which (esp secondaries and turret tops) cover "stuff" that tends to go boom when penetrated.
Thanks for the tip! Back to the drawing boards!
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Post by dorn on Jan 10, 2020 16:02:24 GMT -6
I could've swore I encountered something in the manual saying (or at least suggesting) that colonial service made a ship more resilient to operating without sufficient base support. A quick search on "colonial service" string cannot find anything other than I probably just read more into that bolded part than was intended. Good to know! Re: secondaries, I guess 4.5" isn't really enough given the 8" on the other vitals. The actual meaning of "immune" seems to be a bit variable and even misleading I guess? As an example, my first CA designed by opening up a design in GB putting 13" guns in it and then armoring it enough to be "immune" at about 5000 yards. But then that was in 1899, and I guess gun quality and AP tech achieved change the values in that Gun Data table? And then of course the "chinks" in the armor (belt extended, deck extended, secondaries, turret tops), some of which (esp secondaries and turret tops) cover "stuff" that tends to go boom when penetrated. Thanks for the tip! Back to the drawing boards! There is another disadvantage to have two large caliber types on ships firing at one target. It decrease accuracy of firing as it is difficult to distinuish splashes.
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Post by aeson on Jan 10, 2020 16:37:03 GMT -6
There is another disadvantage to have two large caliber types on ships firing at one target. It decrease accuracy of firing as it is difficult to distinuish splashes. Compounding this, secondary guns are under local control (until the development and deployment of secondary directors, at any rate), which means that they're usually not that effective outside of relatively short-range engagements but will still penalize the accuracy of heavier main battery guns at longer engagement ranges if they're engaging the same target. That's not to say that a heavier secondary battery is necessarily worse than a lighter secondary battery, but heavy main / heavy secondary / light tertiary layouts are generally more niche than the conventional heavy main / light secondary (/ lighter tertiary) layouts.
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Post by anthropoid on Jan 10, 2020 16:44:08 GMT -6
I could've swore I encountered something in the manual saying (or at least suggesting) that colonial service made a ship more resilient to operating without sufficient base support. A quick search on "colonial service" string cannot find anything other than I probably just read more into that bolded part than was intended. Good to know! Re: secondaries, I guess 4.5" isn't really enough given the 8" on the other vitals. The actual meaning of "immune" seems to be a bit variable and even misleading I guess? As an example, my first CA designed by opening up a design in GB putting 13" guns in it and then armoring it enough to be "immune" at about 5000 yards. But then that was in 1899, and I guess gun quality and AP tech achieved change the values in that Gun Data table? And then of course the "chinks" in the armor (belt extended, deck extended, secondaries, turret tops), some of which (esp secondaries and turret tops) cover "stuff" that tends to go boom when penetrated. Thanks for the tip! Back to the drawing boards! There is another disadvantage to have two large caliber types on ships firing at one target. It decrease accuracy of firing as it is difficult to distinuish splashes. My understanding was that this disadvantage was a result of having two different calibers firing at the same target PERIOD. So having any secondaries that are in range of a target being fired on by primaries is problematic, whether they are 3" or 9" That was my understanding of why dreadnoughts evolved in the first place. Is that not true? With this in mind, and given turret configurations and budgetary constraints, etc. more firepower at the cost of some lost accuracy across a larger spectrum of ranges seemed like a reasonable tradeoff. When I open up CA Spandau with 10" primaries gun data it says "range 15,480." When I open up CL Fulla with 6" primaries it says 11200 yards. 60% caliber but 72.3% range. It may be that the range is reduced in secondary configuration, but I haven't noticed a good way to observe that in the design interface. This strikes me as evoking two choices: (1) Eliminate any sizable secondaries and have less overall firepower ostensibly with some improvement in accuracy; (2) Accept some lost accuracy for the sake of increased firepower at range. So this leads me to conclude that: even early game when turrets are limited, it might be a better design to just GET RID of all secondaries altogether? Put a couple of midships broadsiders on it and and MAYBE some 2" tertiaries?
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Post by rodentnavy on Jan 10, 2020 17:09:29 GMT -6
As I read about the game and did a couple learning plays, the general operating procedure I have come up with is: Don't build CLs! and DDs are just cannon fodder / TP slot fillers. My navy is very CA heavy, fast enough to catch Bs and BBs and TRs, armored enough to stand some chance against those bigger guns but not so much as to be impervious. Long range and colonial service (in order to be able to stay on blockade duty for long stretches without too much degradation, even in zones with 10 base support), and necessarily bare bones in firepower. Even for Germany, I don't think that is a particular "historical" approach, but so far it worked great in a war against Japan ca 1905-1908. Add as many short range big gun ships as can be afforded to hold the fort back in home waters. My second war with Italy is proving a bit more challenging (torpedoes have started flying around, which changes the game), but I think it will eventually carry the day against the Italians too. The tiresome thing I've encountered is: I'm blockading Med with like 300% of Italian fleet in their home waters. They've got their navy split into about 5 pieces. A tiny piece over in SE Asia, a small piece in Indian Ocean, a medium sized piece in Med, and the bulk (65% or so of their total tonnage) is lurking in Southern Africa, and seemingly bopping around looking for an engagement? Not sure. So in that context, one of my modern CAs "Spandau Class" of which I currently possess one (currently building them to replace my older "CA Schwentine model, which is much the same in speed, range, endurance and armor but less displacement, smaller main guns and fewer of them). This ship was stationed on AF in Northern Europe (pretty dang sure), not TP. Somehow IT, instead of the 12 or 13 older CAs that are actually in the Med blockading Italy was the one to engage a raider trying to break out, which is weird but not the main point. The "tiresome" part was how the battle played out. I basically had to micromanage chasing an Italian CA which was slower, but slightly heavier armed for about 45 minute He seemed to want to allow me to close in to <7500 yd, either because more of his guns could come into play, or torpedoes (which I don't use on anything but DDs). So I was constantly cranking up to 24k then back down to 15 then 16, then 17, then 21, then 24 . . . repeat for 45 minutes, all while shift-clicking all over the place to chase him down. Even though CA Pisa went down with all hands, and CA Spandau made it home to Germany with only 2 months of damage to repair, I want to say the actual war VP allocation was Friendly: ~700, and Foe: ~350. Cannot recall for sure, but that seems about what it was. That to me seems . . . "odd" that just by virtue of causing some damage, and despite losing an expensive capital ship with all hands Italy got much in the way of war VP out of it. Maybe it isn't wildly odd, but a bit strange at first glance anyway. Hum yeah CLs in this game suffer from the operational level abuse of the battle generator which is a shame as they are very useful. Many players when playing smaller nations design cheap long range, reliable engined CLs as swarm raiders which can starve even the giants like GB and the US into submission with their prolific merchant murder while in peace time handling colonial policing. Destroyers are just insanely useful and you can never have enough DDs and should take a moment to laugh at the AI nations that forget this. Old destroyers can run Trade Protection and kill subs and occasionally torpedo coastal intruders which is always amusing when you fifty year old boat cripples an enemy fast battleship. Do not forget corvettes as they might only do trade protection but they respawn if sunk in battle (which is odd but a game thing) . Going back to destroyers with the fleet as well as screening in battle they also stop quite so many sub torpedoes finding your ships outside of mission so try and keep a good force of Active Fleet DDs. Also remember when the enemy spotters notify Admiral Ai of your flotilla attack flag he keeps well clear which can often get your precious major units the chance to break contact or make it to safe port or similar. As to odd decision to launch a round the world cruise in the middle of the war this does seem a very game thing. Many AI nations will do this. The exceptions are Germany who prefers to fight its wars with armoured or heavy cruisers while its capital ships cower at home and Russia who actually seeks fleet battles as long as the odds are not too appalling.
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Post by aeson on Jan 10, 2020 19:27:49 GMT -6
So this leads me to conclude that: even early game when turrets are limited, it might be a better design to just GET RID of all secondaries altogether? I'd say go ahead and try it. I don't think it's a particularly good idea - a decent 5" or 6" secondary battery is a major component of the offensive potential of a conventional B or a large CA in engagements against peer opponents in the early game, and a weak secondary/tertiary armament suggests that the design would be particularly vulnerable to destroyer-launched torpedo attacks, which can be problematic even early on - but weird things can be fun to play around with even if they don't really work, and it at least means doing something other than building essentially the same ships again. I would be cautious of equating heavier guns with superior range, armor penetration, or firepower. The determining factors in practical engagement range are far more often fire control systems and weather conditions than maximum gun range - it doesn't make that much practical difference whether my gun's maximum range is 30,000 yards or 40,000 yards if my fire control systems won't let me reliably hit a target beyond 10,000 or 15,000 yards or if even good visibility conditions won't normally let me see a target beyond 25,000 yards - and the practical value of superior armor penetration is heavily dependent upon the target I'm engaging - it doesn't make much difference whether my gun can penetrate 3" or 6" of belt armor at practical engagement ranges when what I'm shooting at has a 9" main belt with 2" extensions, for example, but if my target instead has a 5" main belt with 2" extensions the gun with superior armor penetration has a clear advantage.
As to firepower - that's a pretty involved question, because, yes, a larger shell will in general carry a larger bursting charge and penetrate more armor than a smaller shell ... but light guns fire faster than heavy guns and you can generally fit more of them onto a ship of a given displacement. Does a 10" gun offer "more firepower" than a 6" gun? Probably yes. Do X 10" guns offer "more firepower" than Y 6" guns, where X and Y are natural numbers such that X < Y? That's quite a bit harder to answer, but of the two questions it's by far the more important, because most of the time you're not deciding between designs with equal numbers of 6" and 10" guns but rather between one design with X 10" guns and another similar design that instead has Y 6" guns. It's also one that has a significant degree of target-dependency, because in practice heavier guns tend to be better when the lighter guns cannot penetrate the target's armor at expected engagement ranges while the heavier guns can whereas lighter guns tend to be better when either both or neither they and the heavier guns can penetrate the target's armor at expected engagement ranges, regardless of whether or not X heavy guns offer more theoretical firepower than Y light guns.
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Post by anthropoid on Jan 10, 2020 20:35:12 GMT -6
Thanks aeson! Interesting stuff. Nice to find a game that tries to model all this stuff!
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Post by dorn on Jan 10, 2020 23:07:55 GMT -6
I would say that if you have 2 different caliber on ship, it is better to have them for different target. Having 9" and 10" battery is not so good because both batteries will probably target same ships making both batteries less accurate and having one single battery is much better. If you use 9" with 6" battery it has much more sence as both batteries are primary against different targets. This means that at long range only one battery is firing and at shorter ranges smaller caliber battery can still have effects on unarmoured or less armoured part of ships if both batteries fire at one target.
Try to destroy CL target (scout) with main battery of heavy guns. You will need a lot of ammo to do it at long range. It is much pratical do it with smaller caliber guns as enemy CL cannot jeopardize heavily armoured battleship by guns, only by torpedoes.
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Post by Fredrik W on Jan 11, 2020 9:21:50 GMT -6
I think the real issue is that once you have played a dozen campaigns the battle generator will not feel random but in fact sadly predictable. Say you have three modern and one obsolete light cruisers in a region, which do you think is going to be selected for missions? This is even more aggravating if you have two modern heavy cruisers in addition to your light cruisers, the foe has no light cruisers and only a somewhat old and flaky CA that would not enjoy meeting one of your heavies, would struggle against two of your modern light cruisers working together but will eat for breakfast any lone light cruiser that attempts to close with it and can catch your old obsolete CL without breaking into flank speed. I have just had an early game war with the US as GB much like that. Their CAs did not want to face my armoured cruisers even when they were more modern. In fact a perfectly fine US CA failed rather abysmally against two 4 inch gunned protected cruisers, the British ships scored plenty of hits but could not penetrate anything vital but the AI ran up some points and fled to port and it all failed horribly when the third class cruisers bumped into the remaining US merchant and reversed the points scores. There is a feeling and I cannot shake because I have based too many tactical engagements on the assumption that the AI is counting the points of damage it inflicts on me and will often disengage a somewhat risky fight once it has run up a points advantage. The first time I played according to that assumption was in RTW1 when a clash of squadrons each based around CLs and DDs screening and scouting for a single battlecruiser. Once the AI battlecruiser had scored enough points it withdrew, leaving its scout CL to get gobbled up. I had known that would happen and positioned my BC accordingly to be across the path of the CL back to its squadron. A tactical choice that would not have worked had the enemy capital ship remained in contact. Otherwise you could take a war I had as Spain against Germany. Spain is inevitably blockaded but all the fleet actions take place close to Germany's North Sea ports. That was not merely the AI trying for its customary unfair advantage but would has also (in RL) have broken the blockade as the German fleet simply would not have been there to intercept neutral ships headed to Spain. That sort of thing gets immersion breaking. The list of examples from my own experience is long and other players could easily add their own. Now players will tolerate things that are not exactly realistic if it happens to both sides. They will tolerate bad luck if it can happen to both sides. It all becomes a frustration because it does not. Now I do you like your doctrine idea and you are not the first to suggest it but something is long overdue about being done with the battle selector. I do not mind CLs seeing a lot of action, they did historically but they have been abused long enough. I hear ya, and I'm already seeing what you are talking about. The sad truth is: the player should NOT feel motivated to NOT have older ships on hand simply because the RNG prefers to put weaker entities into the battles. On the other hand, based on my own experiences programming (limited and sporadic) I have considerable empathy for Mr. Miller. This stuff is NOT easy to create. One thing "we" (I was only superficially and briefly involved but I was involved so . . .) on a team that worked on a different game I can neither confirm or deny the name of (NDA and all) but which covered a similar time frame and also covered lots of naval combat, were doing (not my idea): there was an "A.I." guy (I hate to use that term but I will for brevity) who basically was a scripter and was very well read in the nitty-gritty history of the war. He would write up pseudo code description that described specific operations for the bad guy nation (the one most players tended to play against in singleplayer) and these would include date frames (earliest, middle, latest date), explicit objectives (10,000 supply points in Guam, at least 6 DDs, 2 CAs, and 1 CVL in Rabaul, that sort of thing), and a sequence of preparatory steps, ready states and execution sequences. As you can see, this is already a bit more complicated than the operational considerations in this game. Anyway, these combined with a reasonable amount of "cheating" for the A.I. meant that the thing was pretty passable as an opponent. Just like everything in programming, if you break it down into small pieces and then get each cog in the machine to work with the one next to it you're off to a good start and you just keep building up from there. What might this sort of approach mean for a game like this? Well, just spit-balling . . . each position might have two or more "Strategic Paths" it could "choose" early in the game, and each of those paths might have splits in them that were at least in part decided by player actions. Each of those splits might have a set of operational objectives that would then have subsidiary build priorities, diplomatic actions or whatever. These then would also relate to actual pre-war dispositions and likely operational actions during a war. That is a ton of work for one guy though, and given the scope and production resources of the game, the current system is pretty damn good. ADDIT: I just reread what you wrote and what I wrote and it probably seems like the "operational" and even strategic level stuff I'm talking about doesn't make sense for how battle tactics would play out. I guess what I'm getting at is: tactics should be the sensible downstream result of strategy with operations as the intermediary that sets up a force to carry out strategy through tactics. At present, it is not clear that the computer controlled positions have much in the way of distinctive strategies either at the level of national peace time policy and action, or at the level of "diplomacy by other means." IF some semblance of "A.I. Strategy" and in particular at least some degree of national distinctiveness in strategy (a war against Russia should feel a bit distinctive to a war against the U.S. eh?) then the terms for programming differential tactics might also become more clear. I don't see an inherent problem with the "A.I." gaming points, just that it shouldn't feel like the ONLY trick it has up its sleeve? Probably just a bunch of rambling of no use, but maybe of some . . . The battle generator has a bias towards selecting newer ships for battles. I appreciate that you do not feel that way, but that is the way it is coded. There is of course always a chance/risk that if you keep older ships in active status, they will get selected in a battle. If you don't want them to be engaged, scrap them or put them in reserve.
As for the tactical AI counting VP:s. No, it doesn't do that. What it does is that it constantly evaluates several parameters like own strength, enemy known strength, ammo remaining, damage etc. The AI will generally disengage when it has a large proportion of its ships damaged , is low on ammo or feels outnumbered. It will not disengage based on VP status.
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