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Post by vvwulfen on Mar 19, 2021 15:05:39 GMT -6
Feb 1906: The German fleet brought about a major victory against the French raiding fleet that was internet on disrupting our merchant vessels. Both fleets were of comparable size: Germany 3 B 2 CA 10 DD France 3 B 3 CL Around 10 DD Losses/damage Germany 2 B light damage 1 DD Medium damage France 2 B light damage 1 CL sunk 5 DD sunk others with minor Damage Captain mode Battle ended as we lost sight of the enemy during darkness. My MK2 CA with a squadron of DD did a great job in splitting the enemy fleet and separated a CL with his 5 DD support ships while my 3 B's and the Remaining DD's then positioned themselves between the French main force and the isolated CL and its support DD's. My MK2 CA division then went on to sink the enemy CL & DD's even after darkness. I also played in very slow mode so the battle lasted quite a few hours  Now for a few questions. After leaving the battle and reading through the pop up's, there was mentioned some VP points I had gained from blockading the enemy. As Germany all my ships are in home waters and I have not been blockading the French. I am not even sure how blockade works? I do have a CA + 8 DD's on Trade Protection duty, could this be why? I also noticed you gain no prestige for this battle, despite being the chief architect and Admiral. Is this always the case? How do I initiate repairs on the few damaged ships? I have my first SS units currently being built, how best to use subs? At what point can you build can you build BC's And BB's, is it tied to date or your tech level? What role do the BC's And BB's take? Are they meant to replace the CA & B? How to replace coastal batteries 6" guns with my new 12" upgrades? Please forgive the barrage of questions, I am in sponge mode as I learn the game:) |
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Post by noshurviverse on Mar 19, 2021 15:25:57 GMT -6
After leaving the battle and reading through the pop up's, there was mentioned some VP points I had gained from blockading the enemy. As Germany all my ships are in home waters and I have not been blockading the French. I am not even sure how blockade works? I do have a CA + 8 DD's on Trade Protection duty, could this be why? Germany and France share the Northern Europe region, so long as your fleet has a substantial enough force advantage they will attempt to enforce a blockade. Trade Protection is more or less what it sounds like. Destroyers and Corvettes will patrol the coast and escort convoys, while cruisers will also attempt to hunt raiders. Prestige is generally reserved for larger engagements. A single light cruiser may not be considered "big" enough to be worthy of such praise. If a ship requires repairs, it will automatically be sent. You can tell how long it will be in by checking the column where the force stance is: AF/TP and so forth. The number indicates how long the ship will be out for, a "3" means the ship requires 3 months of repairs to be available. Subs are almost entirely autonomous. If tensions with neutral nations are high, consider adjusting your sub policy to "fleet support" or "prize rules". "Unrestricted" can put alot of stress on the enemy populace, but risks bringing neutral nations into the war. While there's some edge cases, both of those classes of ship are generally restricted by tech. For BBs, you require either "3 centerline guns" or "main battery wing turrets" to build real BBs. BCs do not require a specific tech, but the game does require you to have 2 levels of ship design before they can be built. BBs will replace Bs pretty much entirely. BCs are a bit different, as different player doctrines can give them different roles. I generally tend to make early BCs that are essentially just fast (25-27kt) Bs, before making BCs that combine high speed with major firepower at the expense of armor. Eventually my BBs and BCs converge, becoming a largely unified class of FBBs (Fast Battleships). |
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Post by vvwulfen on Mar 19, 2021 16:22:40 GMT -6
After leaving the battle and reading through the pop up's, there was mentioned some VP points I had gained from blockading the enemy. As Germany all my ships are in home waters and I have not been blockading the French. I am not even sure how blockade works? I do have a CA + 8 DD's on Trade Protection duty, could this be why? Germany and France share the Northern Europe region, so long as your fleet has a substantial enough force advantage they will attempt to enforce a blockade. Trade Protection is more or less what it sounds like. Destroyers and Corvettes will patrol the coast and escort convoys, while cruisers will also attempt to hunt raiders. Prestige is generally reserved for larger engagements. A single light cruiser may not be considered "big" enough to be worthy of such praise. If a ship requires repairs, it will automatically be sent. You can tell how long it will be in by checking the column where the force stance is: AF/TP and so forth. The number indicates how long the ship will be out for, a "3" means the ship requires 3 months of repairs to be available. Subs are almost entirely autonomous. If tensions with neutral nations are high, consider adjusting your sub policy to "fleet support" or "prize rules". "Unrestricted" can put alot of stress on the enemy populace, but risks bringing neutral nations into the war. While there's some edge cases, both of those classes of ship are generally restricted by tech. For BBs, you require either "3 centerline guns" or "main battery wing turrets" to build real BBs. BCs do not require a specific tech, but the game does require you to have 2 levels of ship design before they can be built. BBs will replace Bs pretty much entirely. BCs are a bit different, as different player doctrines can give them different roles. I generally tend to make early BCs that are essentially just fast (25-27kt) Bs, before making BCs that combine high speed with major firepower at the expense of armor. Eventually my BBs and BCs converge, becoming a largely unified class of FBBs (Fast Battleships). Many thanks for such a detailed reply, sir. I just noticed that I am able to build my first BC's. That was a pleasant surprise Will now spend a happy few hours on the first designs |
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Post by vvwulfen on Mar 19, 2021 16:26:29 GMT -6
Another quick question.
As Germany, is there any benefit or advantage to foreign expansion and colonialism?
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Post by aeson on Mar 19, 2021 20:12:23 GMT -6
Another quick question. As Germany, is there any benefit or advantage to foreign expansion and colonialism? Yes and no; it depends on what you want out of your colonial adventurism and how you're getting the colonies. Colonies are mostly useful for strategic reasons - usually, obtaining base capacity in an area where you don't have any (as Germany, you might for example want a piece of French North Africa since Mediterranean bases would be useful in a war against Italy), securing your interests (e.g. taking Guam to safeguard the Northern Marianas against potential American invasions or seizing Formosa to push Japan out of Southeast Asia), or gaining (or at least denying an enemy's) airbases in an area so as to make future operations safer (perhaps taking Honshu to deny three potential Japanese airbases which could otherwise threaten operations in the Sea of Japan or taking the Baltic States to deny three potential Russian airbases which might endanger ships in the Baltic) - but colonies do make a slight budgetary contribution and so if you can obtain them via event or invasion then there is some small economic benefit to doing so (note that taking reparations - i.e. leaving points of possessions unclaimed - is more economically valuable than taking colonies at the peace table).
I would however say that for Germany the attractions of colonial adventurism seem to me rather slim - you already have bases from which to fight wars against any opponent except Italy (though against the USA your colonies are perhaps not ideally placed since Southeast Asia and the Central Pacific aren't home areas for either Germany or the US), you probably don't want many more colonies in Northeast or Southeast Asia since you don't need them for bases and having them would likely require you to place more ships into reach of a surprise attack at the outbreak of a Japanese war, and while taking colonies in the Mediterranean would be useful for fighting a war against Italy they're probably also inconvenient to hold in the event of a war with Britain or France as you'll probably want the majority of the fleet at home to blockade France and fight the Royal Navy; moreover, the Mediterranean can be a bad place to fight a naval war once air power becomes reasonably well developed, though SAMs can counteract that to some extent towards the end of the game. As to colonies elsewhere, I suppose you can take them, but I don't see much attraction to doing so - Africa and the Indian Ocean are normally fairly quiet theaters and you're not going to be fighting anyone there who you aren't better placed to fight in Northern Europe while the North Pacific, South Pacific, and South American East Coast are normally almost irrelevant; furthermore, your initial colonial empire on the 1900 start is more than adequate to support surface raiders if you choose to pursue that course, especially since it tends to be best to use relatively disposable low-value ships for commerce raiding so that losing one to random events or minor battle damage doesn't sting too badly.
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Post by wlbjork on Mar 20, 2021 2:07:36 GMT -6
I will at this point interject, and observe that there are 2 colonies that provide benefits other than an income boost:
Egypt and Panama.
Both have canals. Panama saves you needing to travel around South America whilst Egypt saves you travelling around Africa and thus can save a month or two of transit time.
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Post by stevethecat on Mar 20, 2021 6:25:58 GMT -6
How to replace coastal batteries 6" guns with my new 12" upgrades?
As this one looks to have been missed, you can't 'replace', you can remove by going to the 'coastal fortifications' tab, right-clicking on a battery and clicking 'scrap'. You build new ones from the main map, clicking on the flag and 'build fortification'.
Just to note though, not many regard coastal fortifications too highly and once you get up to the larger calibres they become quite expensive investments for a battery that may see little use. But if you want to then go for it, you could get a bit more luck than some of my previous attempts at reinforcing areas.
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Post by wlbjork on Mar 20, 2021 6:54:57 GMT -6
I think the key to coastal fortifications is to expect them to do nothing on a tactical level.
The real benefit of these is on the strategic level, where they can force delays to invasions and conquests. Of course, the downside is that 99% of the time a colony isn't under threat of invasion so they will do nothing at all. On the other hand, they are pretty cheap compared to ships, so it comes down to a gun battery or another KE or DD.
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Post by stevethecat on Mar 20, 2021 7:14:09 GMT -6
I think the key to coastal fortifications is to expect them to do nothing on a tactical level. The real benefit of these is on the strategic level, where they can force delays to invasions and conquests. Of course, the downside is that 99% of the time a colony isn't under threat of invasion so they will do nothing at all. On the other hand, they are pretty cheap compared to ships, so it comes down to a gun battery or another KE or DD. I typically don't go any higher than 8", after that they seem just too expensive for the potential use. Depending on nation and area they can be a bit of use in the aircraft era as the game automatically adds AA guns to them as your tech increases and they can distract enemy squadrons. But that's very dependent on circumstances.
IMHO of course.
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Post by vvwulfen on Mar 20, 2021 13:10:12 GMT -6
Many thanks for the feedback all.
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