indy
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Post by indy on Dec 21, 2021 19:25:48 GMT -6
aesonMaybe pass it up the chain, but it would be really nice if we could assign ships to ‘wartime postings’ or call it ‘fleets’ or what have you, just design a mechanic whereby when need to ship off a lot of ships to a sea zone, we can just select that fleet and send it there and all the ships in that fleet go there. Because when I’m near or at war, literally dozens of ships, mostly ASW and MS ships for TP need to be spread around the globe and it’s super tedious to keep doing that each time. For example. Let’s say I want to select 12 ships and highlight and right click them right click and select form fleet. A ‘fleet’ is created that’s placed at the top of the ship list and ‘looks’ like a ship. It can be sent somewhere like a ship. And setting it to TP or what have you sets all ships in that ‘fleet’ to TP. Having that, would be a HUGE QoL upgrade. This thread made me think of this because so often I actually get up and walk away for a while at the daunting prospect of having to ‘sea zone’ around all my little ships and is a pita.
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Post by wlbjork on Dec 21, 2021 22:46:40 GMT -6
aeson Maybe pass it up the chain, but it would be really nice if we could assign ships to ‘wartime postings’ or call it ‘fleets’ or what have you, just design a mechanic whereby when need to ship off a lot of ships to a sea zone, we can just select that fleet and send it there and all the ships in that fleet go there. Because when I’m near or at war, literally dozens of ships, mostly ASW and MS ships for TP need to be spread around the globe and it’s super tedious to keep doing that each time. For example. Let’s say I want to select 12 ships and highlight and right click them right click and select form fleet. A ‘fleet’ is created that’s placed at the top of the ship list and ‘looks’ like a ship. It can be sent somewhere like a ship. And setting it to TP or what have you sets all ships in that ‘fleet’ to TP. Having that, would be a HUGE QoL upgrade. This thread made me think of this because so often I actually get up and walk away for a while at the daunting prospect of having to ‘sea zone’ around all my little ships and is a pita. If you don't have bases present it's not really necessary? If you do have bases present then you can permanently assign ASW and MSW KEs. Finally, just to check, you know you can group select with a combination of shift-click, ctrl-click and ctrl-shift-click?
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indy
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Post by indy on Dec 22, 2021 2:26:45 GMT -6
aeson Maybe pass it up the chain, but it would be really nice if we could assign ships to ‘wartime postings’ or call it ‘fleets’ or what have you, just design a mechanic whereby when need to ship off a lot of ships to a sea zone, we can just select that fleet and send it there and all the ships in that fleet go there. Because when I’m near or at war, literally dozens of ships, mostly ASW and MS ships for TP need to be spread around the globe and it’s super tedious to keep doing that each time. For example. Let’s say I want to select 12 ships and highlight and right click them right click and select form fleet. A ‘fleet’ is created that’s placed at the top of the ship list and ‘looks’ like a ship. It can be sent somewhere like a ship. And setting it to TP or what have you sets all ships in that ‘fleet’ to TP. Having that, would be a HUGE QoL upgrade. This thread made me think of this because so often I actually get up and walk away for a while at the daunting prospect of having to ‘sea zone’ around all my little ships and is a pita. If you don't have bases present it's not really necessary? If you do have bases present then you can permanently assign ASW and MSW KEs. Finally, just to check, you know you can group select with a combination of shift-click, ctrl-click and ctrl-shift-click? It’s funny how some people defend doing things the hard way. I understand change is scary. Let’s say you’re Britain, America, France, etc., Okay? Very Large fleet size, why not? You need to cover 4 sea zones with assets. Now when war breaks out, you have say... 80 ships that need to be put on TP and moved into position from being at home sea zone. So that’s scrolling thru the lists, selecting what needs to go where... clicking far more than 80 times total because you didn’t build ships in neat little blocks, you need to select via Ctrl+click because the ships are all spread out in the list. That’s tedious WORK. Now imagine setting those ships up just once via a mechanic where your fleets 1-4 are listed at the top of your shiplist. I click the fleet I want, press the move to shortcut and select where it’s going and that’s it. Do that four times and I’m done with all 80 ships. Now I won’t dread having to ctrl+click a thousand times in a game just to micromanage fleet movements in a time of war. Ideally, I could assign AI behavior to the fleets and when tensions levels get high enough vs a particular nation, those ships would automatically route themselves, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Change is frightening. I understand that. But advocating against innovation is equally frightening.
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Post by hawkeye on Dec 22, 2021 11:11:39 GMT -6
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against your suggestions, I just don't see your problem.
I mainly play Germany with a "place in the sun" house rule (i.e. take as many colonies as possible). By 1930, I usually have tons of colonies in West- and South Africa, Indian Ocean, Southeast- and Northeast Asia as well as the Mediterranean. My Foreign station requirements are covered by 1600 ton colonial KE, 900 ton ASW KE and 600 ton MS KE. They are all on station all the time.
War comes around, all colonial and ASW KE (sort by class) are put on TP. That's 6 clicks total Then another 3 clicks to select my old CA and put them on TP for anti-raider duty. Done.
I guess, if you're using the auto-FS function of the game, it _could_ be a little bit of a problem, but even then:
The ASW rating is a global value (i.e. it doesn't matter where your ASW assets are) The TP rating (in terms of having enough ships on TP) is a global value. Ships on TP so they can hunt down enemy raiders is localized, yes, but you want those in your home waters and Northern Europe anyway, since that's where most of the raiders will be. Minesweeping is also localized - but those only matter where your actual warships are, so if you move your BB/CV/CA and so on to a new region, just have those tug along.
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Post by nimrod on Dec 22, 2021 12:07:23 GMT -6
The ASW rating is a global value (i.e. it doesn't matter where your ASW assets are) The TP rating (in terms of having enough ships on TP) is a global value. Pretty sure the DLC changes those and other global assets / values to theater assets (including subs). So the new task force / division option in the DLC is I think designed to address some of the issues Indy has and that we would all have with the change in rules.
I agree with Hawkeye I don't see the issue in the current game and I think its going to be partially if not totally addressed with divsions in the DLC... (Divisions might not help with seazone movement as ships in a division can be in different seazones; but one could keep a given division in a seazone and all ships in a division could probably be switched from AF or RF to TP or whatever.)
Its pretty easy for me to to sort by ship type, class name, ASW value, tonnage, location, status by clicking the headers and then use keyboard keys as wlbjork noted to select every ship I want to do something with.
Little hint in case its been missed - organize by seazone, then select the top ship in a seazone, hold shift and select bottom ship in a seazone and all the ships in between are selected for what ever change you want to make; hold control and select any ships you want to remove from the group. If moving just go to the move screen and deselect there. Scrapping seems to be limited to one ship at a time though and ship rebuild is limited to one class at a time.
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Post by wlbjork on Dec 22, 2021 14:15:45 GMT -6
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against your suggestions, I just don't see your problem. I mainly play Germany with a "place in the sun" house rule (i.e. take as many colonies as possible). By 1930, I usually have tons of colonies in West- and South Africa, Indian Ocean, Southeast- and Northeast Asia as well as the Mediterranean. My Foreign station requirements are covered by 1600 ton colonial KE, 900 ton ASW KE and 600 ton MS KE. They are all on station all the time. War comes around, all colonial and ASW KE (sort by class) are put on TP. That's 6 clicks total Then another 3 clicks to select my old CA and put them on TP for anti-raider duty. Done. I guess, if you're using the auto-FS function of the game, it _could_ be a little bit of a problem, but even then: The ASW rating is a global value (i.e. it doesn't matter where your ASW assets are) The TP rating (in terms of having enough ships on TP) is a global value. Ships on TP so they can hunt down enemy raiders is localized, yes, but you want those in your home waters and Northern Europe anyway, since that's where most of the raiders will be. Minesweeping is also localized - but those only matter where your actual warships are, so if you move your BB/CV/CA and so on to a new region, just have those tug along. Pretty much this, though I would add that I have had 'out of zone' TP interceptions. Every sea zone with a base in starts with 5 ASW and 5 MSW KEs (all KEs are 1600t Colonial Cruisers) building up to 10 of each by mid game and aiming for 15-20 by end game. I just put all KEs on TP for convenience - it seems this makes no difference in the performance of MSW assets, whilst ASW assets can actively hunt subs when on TP duty.
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Post by aeson on Dec 22, 2021 15:10:37 GMT -6
Scrapping seems to be limited to one ship at a time though Not in the ships in service tab:
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Post by nimrod on Dec 22, 2021 18:08:48 GMT -6
Scrapping seems to be limited to one ship at a time though Not in the ships in service tab: <button disabled="" class="c-attachment-insert--linked o-btn--sm">Attachment Deleted</button>
I'm going to be an idiot again as I don't scrap much (many games its never), but I'm fairly confident that I've only been able to scrap in a home territory, and it looks like you scrapped a lot outside of NE... Might it be scrapping outside of a home territory yields no funds and I'm miss-remembering the situation???
My gut reaction is that there is some sort of trickery going on.
My brain says "thank you for the education, I'll play around with scrapping a bit".
Seriously in my current game as Russia, I tried scrapping three CLs that were nearing 40 years of age in NE and it didn't scrap all three, only the top one successfully scrapped... Might be a random Russian bug - had a ton of them, repeated failed surprise attacks by the Japanese in NEA, failed enemy attacks with the Japanese (no enemy ships showing up in the battle screen), and ship design / building and rebuilding issues involving foreign yards.
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Post by aeson on Dec 22, 2021 19:54:40 GMT -6
Might it be scrapping outside of a home territory yields no funds and I'm miss-remembering the situation???
I don't see any indication that ships scrapped in home sea zones are worth either more or less than ships scrapped overseas: Pop-ups say that scrapping the Camperdown-class battleship Royal Oak in Southern Africa will bring in 1,188 in funds and say the same for scrapping the Camperdown-class battleship Barfleur in Northern Europe; in both cases, my funds increased by the 1,188 indicated in the pop-up. If you were scrapping ships in the Ships in Service tab, then this is not behavior that I've seen in any game I've played as any power, including Russia, regardless of where in the world the ships were or how many different classes of ship were being scrapped. This is however behavior that I see in the Ships under Construction tab; did you perhaps attempt to scrap the ships while refitting them?
If not, do you have a savegame where this can be reliably reproduced?
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indy
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Posts: 118
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Post by indy on Dec 23, 2021 0:56:44 GMT -6
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against your suggestions, I just don't see your problem. I mainly play Germany with a "place in the sun" house rule (i.e. take as many colonies as possible). By 1930, I usually have tons of colonies in West- and South Africa, Indian Ocean, Southeast- and Northeast Asia as well as the Mediterranean. My Foreign station requirements are covered by 1600 ton colonial KE, 900 ton ASW KE and 600 ton MS KE. They are all on station all the time. War comes around, all colonial and ASW KE (sort by class) are put on TP. That's 6 clicks total Then another 3 clicks to select my old CA and put them on TP for anti-raider duty. Done. I guess, if you're using the auto-FS function of the game, it _could_ be a little bit of a problem, but even then: The ASW rating is a global value (i.e. it doesn't matter where your ASW assets are) The TP rating (in terms of having enough ships on TP) is a global value. Ships on TP so they can hunt down enemy raiders is localized, yes, but you want those in your home waters and Northern Europe anyway, since that's where most of the raiders will be. Minesweeping is also localized - but those only matter where your actual warships are, so if you move your BB/CV/CA and so on to a new region, just have those tug along. Pretty much this, though I would add that I have had 'out of zone' TP interceptions. Every sea zone with a base in starts with 5 ASW and 5 MSW KEs (all KEs are 1600t Colonial Cruisers) building up to 10 of each by mid game and aiming for 15-20 by end game. I just put all KEs on TP for convenience - it seems this makes no difference in the performance of MSW assets, whilst ASW assets can actively hunt subs when on TP duty. Are we playing the same game? Perhaps my understand of the game is different than yours. Perhaps I fundamentally misunderstand it. Here’s what I know, and it may be wrong. If I’m doing it wrong, enlighten me. At or before the start of war, all my TP ships are on Reserve or Mothballed in Home waters. What I do next is to make sure I move my ASW and TP ships to the sea zones that need ASW and TP. Now this decision is based on my ASSUMPTION that TP, ASW and MS are LOCAL sea zone mechanics and are not global which means for these to work in any given sea zone theses assets must be moved there. The only global constant is Foreign Service where it doesn’t matter where you locate your ships, this is done automatically. Now assuming my understanding of these mechanics is correct, here’s why having a ‘fleet’ mechanic whereby I can assign multiple ships to a ‘fleet’ which is then represented in game just like a single ship would be so hugely advantageous. I can right click on any ship and add it to this fleet. Then in a time of war, by clicking on a single ‘fleet’ and sending it to the sea zone where those assets are needed can be done with one click instead of searching thru my ship list and Shift+ctrl+Clicking my way there war after war. It’s a time sink QoL improvement. Are you guys understanding that my ship list is comprised of many different destroyers, built over time, some designed for ASW and some designed for MS that all need to be divided up into multiple sea zone coverages which makes selecting them and moving them very tedious at the start of any war to the point this is not fun to do and I dread this part of the game? Or am I doing this all wrong?
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Post by wlbjork on Dec 23, 2021 1:58:36 GMT -6
_ What we're saying is that you don't need to wait to preposition your TP ships. Place them out there and leave them permanently there, other than for refits. Each of those KEs is supplying 2,000t towards the required tonnage at a cost of just 28/turn - a bargain. At the moment, they don't have ASW vessels supporting as its Jan 1900, so no subs yet to worry about. There is a small fleet assigned to FS - about 10% of the hulls on station, to cover breakdowns and refits - but I start with minimum tonnage filled on each station, some of it with KEs. After that, it's just a case of deploying a task force to each important sea zone when war starts - of which only Japan is awkward. I just shift-select all the KEs - except those on FS - and assign them the TP role.
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indy
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Post by indy on Dec 23, 2021 8:42:23 GMT -6
_ View AttachmentWhat we're saying is that you don't need to wait to preposition your TP ships. Place them out there and leave them permanently there, other than for refits. Each of those KEs is supplying 2,000t towards the required tonnage at a cost of just 28/turn - a bargain. At the moment, they don't have ASW vessels supporting as its Jan 1900, so no subs yet to worry about. There is a small fleet assigned to FS - about 10% of the hulls on station, to cover breakdowns and refits - but I start with minimum tonnage filled on each station, some of it with KEs. After that, it's just a case of deploying a task force to each important sea zone when war starts - of which only Japan is awkward. I just shift-select all the KEs - except those on FS - and assign them the TP role. Okay, so a couple of things. First, you’re assuming my ASW and MS ships are KEs. They are not. They are mostly Destroyers I never scrap. Secondly, I have dedicated a few KEs to FS duty that stay on station. Not many, as converting old Destroyers are cheaper. Next, I’m keeping these non FS ships at home sea zone on RS or MB status to save money. And lastly, you basically are advocating for my position by saying you send task forces to where they are needed, are you confirming that TP, ASW and MS are local sea zone mechanics? If this is true, and the majority of my TP fleet is home on RS or MB status and I need to go thru the list picking them out of a non linear lineup for four or more sea zone deployments, I’m making a ton of clicks. I hope now you understand what it is I’m saying and the pita it is to have to move 80 or more ships each and every time a war breaks out. For the love of all the Admirals who have ever set sail, and for Horatio Nelson, please add fleet mechanics to the strategic map screen! aeson
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Post by jwsmith26 on Dec 23, 2021 10:26:52 GMT -6
indy , the Expansion already works as you desire. After you create divisions and assign divisional subordination you can move the entire fleet to a new location with a single order. By ordering the flag division to move, every division subordinate to the flag division is also ordered to move to the same destination. If, for instance, your organization consists of a battleship flag division that has a CL division as a subordinate, then that CL division will be moved to the same destination. If that CL division has a subordinate division of destroyers assigned, then that DD division will also be ordered to move to the new destination. This works for sub-groups below fleet level as well. Ordering the CL division to move to a new destination will also order its subordinate DD division to move to that destination. This fleet type move only works if the move order is issued while using the Division Editor. If you order ships to be moved using a different UI, such as the "Ships in service" tab, subordinated divisions will not be ordered to be moved. This allows you to choose to move entire fleets with a single order or to order individual divisions or ships to different destinations as desired. However, as regards minesweepers specifically, (in an attempt to relate this post to the OP's question :-) this process will not work for some units. Corvettes cannot be organized into divisions, so if your minesweeping force is primarily KEs you'll have to move those ships individually.
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Post by hawkeye on Dec 23, 2021 10:33:43 GMT -6
First of all, I am using a class-naming scheme, that makes it _really_ easy to sort by class and at the same time by mission. DDs are named Z-1 for 500 ton, Z-2 for 600 ton and so on Mine Sweepers are named MS-1, MS-2 and so on ASW KEs are named U-Jäger 1900, U-Jäger 1912 and so on Colonial KEs are named C-1, C-2 and so on
TP - global - with one exception, ships you want to fight enemy raiders - but those ships are cruisers, not KEs and not DDs
ASW - in the current game (i.e. not the future DLC) is completely global. You have a single rating for the entire globe and that's it.
Foreign Station - Localized requirement - met by my 1600 ton colonial KEs (plus few MS/ASW KEs for good measure) that I station where they are needed at the start of the game (or when I acquire a new colony) and I never bother with them again. Having a ship on AF is no more expensive than having it on FS, so why not put it where it is needed and having it in place already when war breaks out?
Mine sweeping - yes, it's only working in the sea zones your sweepers are in, which is why I have MS ships accompanying my colonial KEs, so they are in place from day one of a war. I also only really need them where my bigger ships go, so if need be, I grab a dozen or two of my MS-1 and send them along with my fleet.
Old DDs - I also never scrap old DDs, they are converted to ASW ships - and stay at home in reserve (or mothball) until war break out, then they are all put on TP. Their only mission is to add their ASW rating to the global ASW score.
As for refitted DDs being cheaper than KEs.
500 ton DD, refitted for ASW (rating 5): Maintenance cost of 14 600 ton DD, refitted for ASW (rating 6): Maintenance cost of 15 700 ton DD, refitted for ASW (rating 6): Maintenance cost of 20 600 ton KE minesweeper (ASW rating 3 + mine sweeping): Maintenance cost 14 900 ton KE ASW ship (ASW rating 8): Maintenance cost: 18
Come again?
As I said, I'm not against your suggestion, in fact, I'd like to be able to designate specific task-forces (mostly to ease my role-playing), but the specific reason you want this doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
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Post by aeson on Dec 23, 2021 12:40:41 GMT -6
Now this decision is based on my ASSUMPTION that TP, ASW and MS are LOCAL sea zone mechanics and are not global which means for these to work in any given sea zone theses assets must be moved there. Trade Protection is only handled locally insofar as surface raiders are concerned, and ASW is only handled locally insofar as ASW escorts (mainly destroyers) assigned to AF in the same sea zone as your more major warships reduce the likelihood that the more major warships will be torpedoed by submarines as an interturn/post-battle event. The protection of merchantmen against and the sinking of submarines is handled globally in the released version of the game; submarines are not explicitly modeled at the level of the individual sea zones and the various ships involved in convoy escort and other ASW-oriented trade protection duties likewise function globally. There's even an artifact of this visible in battle scenarios - I am fairly confident that I've seen destroyers and corvettes assigned to TP duty several sea zones away turn up as a convoy's organic escort during Convoy Defense scenarios.
Insofar as mine warfare goes, while it is true that minesweeping is local, so is minelaying, at least for the most part - defensive minefields are assumed to be laid in each sea zone by small craft operating out of ports in any possessions held by belligerent powers in the area while offensive minefields are laid by mine-equipped warships, and apart from the minelaying submarines (which are not in any specific sea zone) none of these can lay mines in any sea zone other than the one in which they are present. It is therefore very likely that by far the greatest mine threat can be found in the sea zones where the enemy's main fleets are concentrated; as you will most likely deploy your own fleets to engage their fleets, these also represent the sea zones in which by far the highest concentrations of your most valuable vessels may be found. Ships in other areas, meanwhile, face a low-level mine threat - the mine threat in most areas may very well come from nothing more than an occasional raider, or perhaps there are a few minor colonial possessions and a mine-equipped cruiser or two - but deploying minelayers to safeguard ships in these areas against this low-level mine threat is very likely to represent a nontrivial dispersion of effort away from protecting your main fleets, because you have a limited number of minesweepers in the fleet and deploying one or more to each area where you have anything at all likely necessarily involves a nontrivial fraction of them, especially as a power like Great Britain which has colonies and commitments in almost every single sea zone. If you aren't getting any benefit other than a reduction in the already-low probability of a mine strike occurring in sea zones outside of the main areas of operation from dispersing your minesweepers thusly, you really need to consider whether or not deploying your minesweepers thusly is worthwhile - especially considering that you clearly find the management overhead of doing so onerous. You're ignoring capital investment. Converting that old destroyer might cost me 50 credits whereas building a new 600t minesweeping corvette probably costs me a minimum of around 1,000 credits, so even if my old destroyer costs 20 per turn while my new corvette costs just 14 per turn in upkeep I'm still looking at nearly a decade of service before the cost of building the corvette is paid off by what I'm saving in upkeep, and on top of that if I have enough old destroyers then converting a few for minesweeping duty doesn't carry a significant cost to my ASW forces with it - especially since converting an old destroyer into a minesweeper doesn't completely remove its contribution to my ASW effort.
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