Change UK Foreign Stations

[oldpop2000]

I would like to suggest that only five UK foreign stations be required to have ships assigned to it. This would correspond to Admiral Fisher's changes in 1905. He remove 150 ships, only stationing ships at the following locations:

Dover
Gibraltar
Cape
Singapore
Alexandria

The reason is that with wireless technology and cables, it was easy to signal one of these locations and move the faster ships now being built to cover a zone of dispute. Singapore can cover the Far East; Gibraltar can cover western Mediterranean and the coast of France and bulge of Africa; Cape can cover eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean with Alexandria covering eastern Mediterranean, Red Sea and the Bosporus and assisting in coverage of the Indian Ocean.

We could examine other nations like the US, France, Russia and Germany possibly for similar changes. My opinion is that you cannot cover everything. The UK knew it and so did many other nations.

[rob06waves2018]

Yes please. The UK foreign stations requirement is not entirely historical. If the RN had to spread themselves out as widely as the game demands, decolonisation would have happened far earlier! The strategy basically relied on reputation keeping countries in check long enough to reinforce the 1/2 gunboats with a cruiser squadron from a few hundred miles away.

For reference, the entire African Station of 1932 consisted of 2 C-class cruisers of ~5,000t and 4 sloops. This patrolled from a base at the Cape of Good Hope. The same Cape, incidentally, which requires 24,000t on station throughout the game, assuming no aquisitions in the area and ignoring the fact that the patrol area extended far further from the base. Also, the game budget is not capable of holding the same numbers of ships as in real life, the ~12,000t of real life should be closer to 8,000t in game.

This of course was only possible due to far larger fleets based at Gibraltar. Therefore, Oldpop's idea makes a lot of sense.

For interest, my source was fleetorganization.com/1932rnintro.html

[oldpop2000]

Sept 30, 2020 16:04:54 GMT -6 rob06waves2018 said:

Yes please. The UK foreign stations requirement is not entirely historical. If the RN had to spread themselves out as widely as the game demands, decolonisation would have happened far earlier! The strategy basically relied on reputation keeping countries in check long enough to reinforce the 1/2 gunboats with a cruiser squadron from a few hundred miles away.

For reference, the entire African Station of 1932 consisted of 2 C-class cruisers of ~5,000t and 4 sloops. This patrolled from a base at the Cape of Good Hope. The same Cape, incidentally, which requires 24,000t on station throughout the game, assuming no aquisitions in the area and ignoring the fact that the patrol area extended far further from the base. Also, the game budget is not capable of holding the same numbers of ships as in real life, the ~12,000t of real life should be closer to 8,000t in game.

This of course was only possible due to far larger fleets based at Gibraltar. Therefore, Oldpop's idea makes a lot of sense.

For interest, my source was fleetorganization.com/1932rnintro.html

Thanks for the link, I needed it for other work and ideas. Anyway, thanks for the support. I think it will make the game more interesting and thoughtful.