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Post by aeson on May 9, 2020 12:36:05 GMT -6
For instance, I've had a battle generator mix two battleship groups as follows: - Div1 BB1 (26 knots) - Div1 BB2 (26 knots) - Div1 BB3 (21 knots) - Div2 BB4 (26 knots) - Div2 BB5 (21 knots) - Div2 BB6 (21 knots) Does that make any sense to anyone? If they're in the same force, then that's only slightly inconvenient; maintaining the integrity of the battle line is usually preferable to splitting it up, so the faster ships are limited by the speed of the slower ships even if the divisions are internally uniform, and if you really want to make use of the faster ships' speed then setting the division speed to 25 knots or whatever will make the game to split out the ships that cannot keep up after a little while. Additionally, if you're playing Admiral's Mode or leave subordinate divisions under AI control, then having a fast division within a slow force isn't very useful because you cannot control it separately from the rest of the force; to a lesser extent, that's true even on Rear Admiral's mode while manually controlling at least some subordinate divisions, because you're only able to control divisions within sighting range of the flagship. As such, while it would be preferable to have the divisions be internally uniform, having them mixed like that is not in my opinion a significant issue.
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Post by DrunkSailor on May 9, 2020 13:45:19 GMT -6
Throwing my own two cents, whatever it's worth: I don't mind slow and fast ships being grouped together (well, I mind, but I don't find it a bad game mechanic!). What I mind, and I think Drunken minds, and many other people mind, is when the game groups slow ships of a class with fast ships of a class, when there are other ships available. For instance, I've had a battle generator mix two battleship groups as follows: - Div1 BB1 (26 knots) - Div1 BB2 (26 knots) - Div1 BB3 (21 knots) - Div2 BB4 (26 knots) - Div2 BB5 (21 knots) - Div2 BB6 (21 knots) Does that make any sense to anyone? Besides the speed difference, which was significant, the point is they are different ship types with different roles - at least to you it were all BBs.
What I minded even more is the fact that my BCs are no more than 9.5" belt (even late game ones) and they have increased deck up to 6" with the idea that they scout, they remain afar from the enemy main battle line (using their guns with whatever effect they can from far away) and if and when the enemy retreats they use their superior speed to chase down enemy ships which since they retreat they can bear only their aft gun turrets - while my BCs (thanks to their speed) can maintain a constant position aft while simultaneously maneuvering to keep crossing the enemy T from behind.
Imagine now BCs of 34-35kn with next to nothing belt armor (since the idea is to have deck armor and remain far away) to be mixed with BBs of 26-27kn with 16.5" belt (BBs meant to fight from close distances to maximize the accuracy and shell penetration).
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Post by skoggatt on May 9, 2020 19:20:12 GMT -6
Throwing my own two cents, whatever it's worth: I don't mind slow and fast ships being grouped together (well, I mind, but I don't find it a bad game mechanic!). What I mind, and I think Drunken minds, and many other people mind, is when the game groups slow ships of a class with fast ships of a class, when there are other ships available. For instance, I've had a battle generator mix two battleship groups as follows: - Div1 BB1 (26 knots) - Div1 BB2 (26 knots) - Div1 BB3 (21 knots) - Div2 BB4 (26 knots) - Div2 BB5 (21 knots) - Div2 BB6 (21 knots) Does that make any sense to anyone? I have this happen all the time. Even worse, I often see multiple battleship divisions slowed down to 18 knots because the generator was kind enough to give each one it's own pre-dreadnought to tow around. If we don't get manual construction of our divisions in the future, the generator should at least try and group pre-dreadnoughts desperately from dreadnoughts, and group faster battleships together in a "fast battleship" division like the QEs at Jutland. As it stands, I find myself always following the same design philosophy with battleships: keeping a standard slow battle speed so all of my ships can operate together. Putting together a single division of fast ships like the British did is a waste since you can't group those ships together to take advantage of that speed. This also makes the random events nerfing a ship class's speed on completion really punishing since it effectively slows down your entire battle fleet.
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Post by christian on May 10, 2020 0:32:37 GMT -6
Throwing my own two cents, whatever it's worth: I don't mind slow and fast ships being grouped together (well, I mind, but I don't find it a bad game mechanic!). What I mind, and I think Drunken minds, and many other people mind, is when the game groups slow ships of a class with fast ships of a class, when there are other ships available. For instance, I've had a battle generator mix two battleship groups as follows: - Div1 BB1 (26 knots) - Div1 BB2 (26 knots) - Div1 BB3 (21 knots) - Div2 BB4 (26 knots) - Div2 BB5 (21 knots) - Div2 BB6 (21 knots) Does that make any sense to anyone? i still find it very irratating as i often build 20-22 knot BBs up to the 40s while my BCs are 32-34 knots which often means i get a whole 1/3rd of the speed cut off because the battle generator decided to do the big yikes on me i have actually lost a battle before due to this as my ships were too slow to run away and go encircled (when normally i use the BCs to encircle them) and my BCs who got too close suffered extreme losses compared to my BBs i cant use my BCs as BCs when they are 1/3rd slower than they should be
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Post by tortugapower on May 10, 2020 13:42:13 GMT -6
If they're in the same force, then that's only slightly inconvenient; maintaining the integrity of the battle line is usually preferable to splitting it up, so the faster ships are limited by the speed of the slower ships even if the divisions are internally uniform, and if you really want to make use of the faster ships' speed then setting the division speed to 25 knots or whatever will make the game to split out the ships that cannot keep up after a little while. Additionally, if you're playing Admiral's Mode or leave subordinate divisions under AI control, then having a fast division within a slow force isn't very useful because you cannot control it separately from the rest of the force; to a lesser extent, that's true even on Rear Admiral's mode while manually controlling at least some subordinate divisions, because you're only able to control divisions within sighting range of the flagship. As such, while it would be preferable to have the divisions be internally uniform, having them mixed like that is not in my opinion a significant issue.
As others mentioned, if you invested huge money to get a capital ship up to X speed, starting a battle with one hand behind your back because of division grouping is very frustrating.
About the trick you mention, I'm not sure if you use it or if you play on Admiral mode, but it has the following serious drawbacks:
- if coal burning, it forces you to exhaust your stokers before battle - sometimes you don't have time to separate ships before battle - when forming a combat line, if the trailing ship gets close enough it will reattach
A bundle of frustration all around!
In any case, I don't think the proper solution to the division organizer is to force the player to do weird gamey tricks to solve it. So it's helpful for people to know about (better than nothing), but I wouldn't say that the underlying issue is a no-issue because of it.
Cheers.
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Post by tortugapower on May 10, 2020 13:51:31 GMT -6
I just laughed to myself thinking of the comedy of the situation: Imagine, just prior to entering combat, a captain adjusts speed to max. He keeps looking at the older (friendly) ship behind him, struggling to keep up. Below deck, the stokers are nearly collapsing from exhaustion on both ships. Finally, the first captain sees the older ship adjust course. "Finally, we've got her to detach!" ...Not what you want from what is otherwise a great and wonderfully immersive combat simulation environment
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Post by aeson on May 10, 2020 14:11:02 GMT -6
About the trick you mention, I'm not sure if you use it or if you play on Admiral mode, but it has the following serious drawbacks: - if coal burning, it forces you to exhaust your stokers before battle - sometimes you don't have time to separate ships before battle - when forming a combat line, if the trailing ship gets close enough it will reattach There is no good reason to force the divisions to split up prior to the engagement unless you just want to lose the slow ships completely; you do not need the fast ships to be in a separate fast division when you're cruising, the game will reattach ships to their original divisions if given the opportunity, and the fast ships will pull away from the slow ships just as well mid-battle as beforehand unless they take crippling damage, in which case they wouldn't be able to make use of their speed anyways.
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Post by tortugapower on May 11, 2020 10:18:58 GMT -6
aeson It's great if this issue doesn't bother you or good fortune if you haven't been bitten by it. It's good feedback that this is not an issue which bothers everyone. Maybe this is a good use of the forum voting poll to see who it affects, and development resources can be prioritized accordingly. I can't tell (because this is the internet where everything is misinterpreted), but to clarify: is your stance more severe, that this is not an issue at all? Of course there are reasons to want divisions to be grouped by speed. You'll have to use your imagination if you haven't encountered any good reason yourself. Here's one: same grouping as I mentioned before (3x 26kn, 3x 21 kn). My scout fleet (e.g. 1x CA) detects 2x enemy BCs. My destroyers make contact with 2x inferior BBs. I want my 26kn ships to chase after the BCs while my 21kn ships engage the BBs. This cannot be done with my initial grouping. Also, examples involving escorting CLs: I want this CL class to escort this faster group, but I don't want to force the CLs to separate using that trick (because of all the drawbacks it entails). Anyway, there are infinite scenarios you can concoct where you might have good reason to want divisions to be matched with speed. Cheers.
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Post by christian on May 11, 2020 13:26:40 GMT -6
aeson It's great if this issue doesn't bother you or good fortune if you haven't been bitten by it. It's good feedback that this is not an issue which bothers everyone. Maybe this is a good use of the forum voting poll to see who it affects, and development resources can be prioritized accordingly. I can't tell (because this is the internet where everything is misinterpreted), but to clarify: is your stance more severe, that this is not an issue at all? Of course there are reasons to want divisions to be grouped by speed. You'll have to use your imagination if you haven't encountered any good reason yourself. Here's one: same grouping as I mentioned before (3x 26kn, 3x 21 kn). My scout fleet (e.g. 1x CA) detects 2x enemy BCs. My destroyers make contact with 2x inferior BBs. I want my 26kn ships to chase after the BCs while my 21kn ships engage the BBs. This cannot be done with my initial grouping. Also, examples involving escorting CLs: I want this CL class to escort this faster group, but I don't want to force the CLs to separate using that trick (because of all the drawbacks it entails). Anyway, there are infinite scenarios you can concoct where you might have good reason to want divisions to be matched with speed. Cheers. also have experienced a couple times where i could have chased their BC fleet down with my numerically supperior BCs but them being with my BBs prevented them from doing so and having to use my BCs in battleline and the entire enemy BC fleet being able to escape also very annoying for when you finally sink the BBs but you need and want to sink their CAs CLs and BCs and your BCs cant chase due to being grouped with BBs as tortuga said a poll would be nice
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Post by tortugapower on May 12, 2020 2:36:01 GMT -6
also have experienced a couple times where i could have chased their BC fleet down with my numerically supperior BCs but them being with my BBs prevented them from doing so and having to use my BCs in battleline and the entire enemy BC fleet being able to escape also very annoying for when you finally sink the BBs but you need and want to sink their CAs CLs and BCs and your BCs cant chase due to being grouped with BBs as tortuga said a poll would be nice Hi christian. I agree those cases are annoying. Drunken's situation with BCs and BBs mixing also seems unusual -- in fact, I didn't know they could do that!
I think in both of your cases you can use the trick of forcing your ships to manually move faster than their squad maximum and probably achieve what you want. So at least there is a solution.
(I still think it makes for bad and immersion-breaking gameplay to be forced to use the detach trick, but I want to acknowledge that at least there is a workaround, however poor it is.)
The times that I find the division speed mismatch the worst is when there are two time-sensitive objectives that you want to achieve, and you would need your ships to be acting in unison to achieve both simultaneously. In these situations, even the detach trick will not work.
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Post by christian on May 12, 2020 3:01:00 GMT -6
also have experienced a couple times where i could have chased their BC fleet down with my numerically supperior BCs but them being with my BBs prevented them from doing so and having to use my BCs in battleline and the entire enemy BC fleet being able to escape also very annoying for when you finally sink the BBs but you need and want to sink their CAs CLs and BCs and your BCs cant chase due to being grouped with BBs as tortuga said a poll would be nice Hi christian. I agree those cases are annoying. Drunken's situation with BCs and BBs mixing also seems unusual -- in fact, I didn't know they could do that!
I think in both of your cases you can use the trick of forcing your ships to manually move faster than their squad maximum and probably achieve what you want. So at least there is a solution.
(I still think it makes for bad and immersion-breaking gameplay to be forced to use the detach trick, but I want to acknowledge that at least there is a workaround, however poor it is.)
The times that I find the division speed mismatch the worst is when there are two time-sensitive objectives that you want to achieve, and you would need your ships to be acting in unison to achieve both simultaneously. In these situations, even the detach trick will not work. was unaware you could use the speed thing to force detach can you reattach to another BC division with detached BCs ? i still believe its something which needs to be fixed despite there being a "workaround" which most likely very few know about
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Post by DrunkSailor on May 12, 2020 4:41:31 GMT -6
was unaware you could use the speed thing to force detach can you reattach to another BC division with detached BCs ? i still believe its something which needs to be fixed despite there being a "workaround" which most likely very few know about Once you manage to detach slow ships using the max speed you always have the danger they might reattach if they find themselves close enough to the leading ship of the original division.
To avoid this happening, once the slow ships detach you can edit them and make them as "Core" to another division, click the AI to take control just for one moment (in order the change of leading division to take effect), return them back to your control after and they will follow the new division. You can also use this trick to make them independent.
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Post by christian on May 14, 2020 1:38:04 GMT -6
was unaware you could use the speed thing to force detach can you reattach to another BC division with detached BCs ? i still believe its something which needs to be fixed despite there being a "workaround" which most likely very few know about Once you manage to detach slow ships using the max speed you always have the danger they might reattach if they find themselves close enough to the leading ship of the original division.
To avoid this happening, once the slow ships detach you can edit them and make them as "Core" to another division, click the AI to take control just for one moment (in order the change of leading division to take effect), return them back to your control after and they will follow the new division. You can also use this trick to make them independent.
thx alot this might make me actually invest in BCs again
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Post by polyarmus on May 14, 2020 2:12:37 GMT -6
I cannot accept this case as a simple mismatch (as it indeed has happened historically) since there are 2 BBs and 2 BCs present, both originating from the same place and I do not see why they should have been divided in two divisions of 1 BB and 1 BC each. The mismatch spartyon mentions has nothing to do with the current issue. It is just a mismatch in naval strength between the two fleets. My complain was not about such a thing. The mismatch rimbecano gives as example is closer but still, in his example there were only two capital ships and they were put in one division. Here to the example I gave there are two capital ships from each class, originating from the same area, put in two divisions. You approach it from the point of view of omnipresent arm chair general, who has 100% control of his forces, which is the usual, but highly unrealistic situation in ordinary strategic game. I think you have to look at it with a bit more imagination. Take in account, that the battle is 1 action per month. For sure, it was not the only activity your ships did in the period. RtW2 simply "simulates" the ongoing activity, uncertainty and chaos of waging war. For example, what if: 2nd May: aerial search sighted enemy fleet at see. All available forces tasked to pursue - 2 BB and 1 BC (second BC of the division away at the time, transporting prime minister for international conference). 1 BB of the battleship division was not able to take to see due to (repeated) turbine issue, BB + BC departed. 5th May: BC returned from diplomatic mission 6th May: sighting not confirmed, the fleet is returning home 7th May: repeated sighting, all available forces tasked to pursue - task force at see, that is BB + BC reverses course, reserve task force, that is BB + BC sets sail. The task forces were supposed to meet and face the enemy together, unfortunately bad weather precluded coordinated action.
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Post by christian on May 14, 2020 4:05:43 GMT -6
I cannot accept this case as a simple mismatch (as it indeed has happened historically) since there are 2 BBs and 2 BCs present, both originating from the same place and I do not see why they should have been divided in two divisions of 1 BB and 1 BC each. The mismatch spartyon mentions has nothing to do with the current issue. It is just a mismatch in naval strength between the two fleets. My complain was not about such a thing. The mismatch rimbecano gives as example is closer but still, in his example there were only two capital ships and they were put in one division. Here to the example I gave there are two capital ships from each class, originating from the same area, put in two divisions. You approach it from the point of view of omnipresent arm chair general, who has 100% control of his forces, which is the usual, but highly unrealistic situation in ordinary strategic game. I think you have to look at it with a bit more imagination. Take in account, that the battle is 1 action per month. For sure, it was not the only activity your ships did in the period. RtW2 simply "simulates" the ongoing activity, uncertainty and chaos of waging war. For example, what if: 2nd May: aerial search sighted enemy fleet at see. All available forces tasked to pursue - 2 BB and 1 BC (second BC of the division away at the time, transporting prime minister for international conference). 1 BB of the battleship division was not able to take to see due to (repeated) turbine issue, BB + BC departed. 5th May: BC returned from diplomatic mission 6th May: sighting not confirmed, the fleet is returning home 7th May: repeated sighting, all available forces tasked to pursue - task force at see, that is BB + BC reverses course, reserve task force, that is BB + BC sets sail. The task forces were supposed to meet and face the enemy together, unfortunately bad weather precluded coordinated action. in that case we should still have the ability to split the BB and BC if needed if you for example want the BC to chase and your BB is too slow or you want the BC to run while the BB tries to slow them down to minimize losses you are the admiral you have control of this fleet there is no reason why you should not be able to have control over your fleet if the admiral cant decide how his ships form up in combat then who can ?
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