I've never built an AMC. Show me the er' of my ways...

[marineares]

Jan 27, 2022 18:47:03 GMT -6 jwsmith26 said:

I use AMCs to build carriers. You can build an AMC in 4 months, and immediately upon commissioning, convert it into a carrier. As long as you begin the conversion to a carrier before the war ends the ship will remain with your fleet and will not be automatically scrapped like an AMC.

In my fleet, these converted AMCs are designed with minimal speed, guns, AAA, and armor while being designed for maximum air capacity. That's because I have no intention of taking these ships to war. They are there to train pilots and serve as a holding space for carrier pilots. Without excess deck space, it is quite difficult to have carrier squadrons available and trained when a large, new carrier arrives. I prefer using experienced pilots and I'd rather not have my nice new carrier sullied by a bunch of rookie pilots, so these training carriers stay pretty active training pilots.

During war, you can protect these ships by putting them into reserve to prevent having them actively engaged. However, I must admit this is not foolproof, at least it has not been while playtesting. I've had two occasions when training carriers were yanked out of reserve by the battle generator and thrown into large battles. Surprisingly, they performed quite well, and their aircraft contributed meaningfully to the battle.

Other than as carrier seeds, I don't generally build AMCs.

How do you use training carriers? Is there some way you transfer the squadrons or is there an invisible pilot pool of sorts?

[flamedraken]

What jwsmith26 does is have squadrons based on the training carriers where they gain experience just like any other squadron deployed on his other carriers while building a new carrier. He then transfers the squadrons to the new carrier, thereby having experienced pilots ready for duty. New squadrons are then formed on the training carrier to repeat the process.

[TheOtherPoster]

Interesting idea to convert AMC into carriers to save time and money. If we don't go crazy on tonnage and speed we could get cheap escort carriers. Depending who you are playing you could use them in a war for TP or as raiders. I wonder how they would perform on those tasks

[indy]

Jan 27, 2022 21:59:04 GMT -6 jwsmith26 said:

AMCs can be built up to 26,000 tons. My two training carriers have a capacity of 72 planes each. As to extra clicking, I guess it depends on your tolerance. I prefer to fight battles with better material than can be scraped out of the reserve pool.

But the trick is the war has to end while they are under carrier conversion? What happens if the war ends AFTER you completed the conversion? Is the new Carrier AMC scrapped at the end of the war? I see now how that can be useful at that tonnage. I wasn't aware you could build a 26k ton ship in 4 months and then only spend 12 months on a conversion. That's not a bad prospect as a training carrier...

[indy]

Jan 27, 2022 23:57:58 GMT -6 noshurviverse said:

There is also the matter of ambushes. AMCs have the small chance to surprise the ship intercepting them. This means the battle begins with the intercepting ship stationary and unable to act for several minutes, and that ends up with situations like this:

I did not even know this was possible in the game. Hrmm. The trickery of it all seems alluring.

[dorn]

For purpose of training, I use regular airfields.

In case of war, it some home region airfield with free capacity or some overseas station.

During peace, I do not usually as there is no hurry.

[flamedraken]

The ships are no longer considered AMC after the conversion.

I converted two AMC during a playthrough as Japan and I kept the converted carriers for quite a few years after the war.

[JagdFlanker]

My AMC Guide

(kind of turned into a book lol)

of course you want to win every war, and the biggest win you can get is by forcing the opposition to collapse by revolution

in order to get the opposition to collapse, you need to starve the population and gradually drive up the unrest level until they overthrow the government and sue for peace

there are 2 main ways to accomplish this - either blockade the home area, or launch a massive raider campaign and sink enough enemy merchants to raise unrest.  yes there is a 3rd way where you can get the random option of sending a revolutionary there and 'hope' they overthrow the government, but that only really works if you'v already driven up unrest, and otherwise it can backfire and drive up your own unrest



in order pull off a blockade you either need a larger navy than the enemy, or you need to take the time to whittle down the enemy's navy to the point where you can start a blockade

problem is that you need at least 1 base in that sea zone, otherwise you will lose a LOT of ships to internment, which means likely only the British and USA can pull off a blockade with no home base in the area and still keep enough ships to maintain it after losing many ships to internment

blockade is the easiest way to cause a collapse since it's less 'work'



otherwise, the other option is to build raiders to cause a collapse. it is more micro, but if you can't blockade and you want (the best chance) to win the war then you gotta do what you gotta do

the big complaint is that it costs a lot to build AMCs, then all the ships get scrapped after the war so it's a big waste of money, but that's a short-term way of looking at it

building raiders is an investment - if you get the enemy to collapse, then you get points to spend either on acquiring new colonies (generally not recommended unless it helps you or hinders the enemy in the long run), or you can invest these points back into your economy (which is the best long term action)

i know the game allows you to create warship raiders and it's tempting to go that route, but in the past i'v tried every variation of using warship raiders and it's just not practical - it costs a LOT for the numbers you need, you likely don't need raiders every war so it might be a waste, and losing a raider cruiser to internment or being sunk hurts a lot more than losing a nameless cheap AMC

of course to build AMCs you need budget set aside - it costs about $5000(k) per turn for 4 turns per set of 12 (of my design) to build, so when tensions are ramping up you should look at possible opponents, decide if you might need AMCs if you get in a war, and if so either hold off on building new expensive capital ships until after the war starts and you'v built your AMCs, or save a huge pile of cash so you can build needed AMCs without going into debt

how many to raiders to build? - raiding does not work with just a few ships, you need numbers - i play on Very Large Fleets and i personally go with 72 (six groups of 12 ships), but you can go with less for smaller fleet sizes (i think i did 48 on Large Fleet size). the reason being is once i build my raider fleet at the beginning of a war i don't want to build any more for the duration, and usually by the end of the war i'l be down to 20+ AMCs remaining.  the other reason for building all the raiders i need at the start is that once i finish building all the raiders i'l need i can then use the freed up budget to build my next set of capital ships which should be completed either by the end of the current war or shortly after. once that batch of capital ships is launched i might concentrate on smaller ships until the next war so my budget isn't tied up on long construction projects (or you could halt construction on costlier building projects to build AMCs, that's less efficient but wars don't happen on a 'schedule')


how often will you need to use AMCs in a war? - depends on the country you are playing:

Japan and USA have no colonies in other home seazones so they are both most likely to need AMCs - of course USA can generally "brute force" a blockade wherever they want since they can build a massive fleet and can afford to lose ships to internment, but it's also easier to set aside budget to build AMCs which allows you to free up your fleet for colony protection/invasions/etc

Italy/Austria-Hungry/Chin China/CSA each have access to one other nation's home seazone so will likely need to use AMCs, but not necessarily in every war

the rest of the nations generally will have access to most other home areas so the decision to build AMCs will lie with whether you are able to blockade the enemy or be able to whittle down their fleet to be able to blockade

how to use AMCs - unless your AMCs are actively blockading the enemy (rare), AMCs MUST move every turn, because the very first turn that AMCs enter a seazone is their most effective turn, after that the ai sends ships in and usually your AMCs are countered.  create 1-2 death stacks of AMCs, have 1 move in and out of the enemy home area, and the other can roam around the enemy's colonies which hopefully splits up the ai's ships up

always auto-resolve raider battles - you taking control of the battle will not reduce the chance of it getting caught and sunk, it was already caught so accept that it will likely get sunk. accept only fun battles - running away in an AMC is not 'a fun battle'

the best AMC design - you want disposable and cheap, don't waste your time making it survivable since if it's caught it's likely sunk no matter how fast or well armed you make it

don't make AMCs long range, but give them reliable engines - long range is very expensive (less so with diesel, but stick to cheap), it's only benefits are they are slightly more effective at raiding and have a slightly better chance at evading, but it's not worth the cost.  reliable engines are cheap, and greatly reduce the chance of AMCs getting engine problems which reduces the chance of getting interned

give them mines - AMCs roam everywhere so might as well sow some mines as well

give them 1 floatplane - it makes AMCs better at their job.  don't bother with hangers or catapults - since you are auto-resolving battles you don't need to protect or deploy the aircraft, and again keep it CHEAP

[stww2]

That's an interesting perspective, thanks for sharing! My one quibble is that there's no real reason you should be commonly losing blockade ships to internment; as long as you rotate ships back to a sea zone where you have bases when they need maintenance (I assume that's what the asterisk associated with such vessels in the ship list means?) they should be fine. Of course, you still need the large fleet to have enough ships to maintain the blockade with only a portion of the fleet, so it doesn't affect the substance of your answer.

[director]

as long as you rotate ships back to a sea zone where you have bases when they need maintenance (I assume that's what the asterisk associated with such vessels in the ship list means?) they should be fine.

If you out-number the enemy by that much, you're going to win anyway... But you will find that shuffling ships back and forth degrades crew quality, and if a ship has a condenser failure, or suffers combat or submarine damage, then you've lost it for the duration. Constantly turning down combat will lose you more points than the blockade can give you, so trying to win a long-distance war by conventional means is usually difficult and frustrating.

On the other hand, if I put the large part of my navy in reserve and pump out submarines and AMCs, I can bring an overseas enemy to account in relatively short order while still having enough force to defend my coasts.

We all remember Admiral King's inspirational words at the start of WW21, right? "Mister President, don't build that Two Ocean Navy! Put the fleet in reserve - we can't afford the cost of running it - and just build subs and merchant cruisers. That's the surest way to bring Hitler down!" A joke, yes - but that's what the game gives us.

For AMCs I like to scale them down and speed them up - 21 knots, 4" guns, lots of mines. Don't bother with bigger guns - you can't out-shoot a destroyer, and your ship won't fire torpedoes even if the enemy is stationary off your beam.

[wlbjork]

Jan 29, 2022 10:37:57 GMT -6 stww2 said:

That's an interesting perspective, thanks for sharing! My one quibble is that there's no real reason you should be commonly losing blockade ships to internment; as long as you rotate ships back to a sea zone where you have bases when they need maintenance (I assume that's what the asterisk associated with such vessels in the ship list means?) they should be fine. Of course, you still need the large fleet to have enough ships to maintain the blockade with only a portion of the fleet, so it doesn't affect the substance of your answer.

Depend on the size of your ship list, as it can get very tricky to sort through and micro those asterisked ships (yes, those are the ones with maintenance issues, possibly also supply issues.)

Which is another point I'd make to JagdFlanker - ships with Long and Extreme Range are less likely to scuttle due to lack of fuel in my experience. I consider the extra fuel bunkerage to be a worthwhile investment, but I'd also take Reliable Engines in preference to increased range.

[JagdFlanker]

Jan 29, 2022 13:21:49 GMT -6 wlbjork said:

Jan 29, 2022 10:37:57 GMT -6 stww2 said:

That's an interesting perspective, thanks for sharing! My one quibble is that there's no real reason you should be commonly losing blockade ships to internment; as long as you rotate ships back to a sea zone where you have bases when they need maintenance (I assume that's what the asterisk associated with such vessels in the ship list means?) they should be fine. Of course, you still need the large fleet to have enough ships to maintain the blockade with only a portion of the fleet, so it doesn't affect the substance of your answer.

Which is another point I'd make to JagdFlanker - ships with Long and Extreme Range are less likely to scuttle due to lack of fuel in my experience. I consider the extra fuel bunkerage to be a worthwhile investment, but I'd also take Reliable Engines in preference to increased range.

money money money - maximum boat for minimum cash, and long/extreme range dramatically increase cost for little gain in the final result

i tried everything in every way with raiders since RtW1 and my explanation above is my final evolution as to the most efficient way to go about raiding playing this game - i'm not saying it's realistic, or makes sense, or it's how the developer intended, it's just the best way *i found* to maintain a nice (active) fleet while also keeping head-room to throw raiders out when necessary

[t3rm1dor]

Pound for pound submarines are better than AMC for raiding. Sure they may sometimes accidently sink civilians ships, but the ability to wins wars in two turns due to sinking hlf the planet shipping tonnage is something you can only achieve realistically with subs...

... However, I think AMC really shine as carriers, specially for combat duties. Carrier combat is mostly about numbers, and while AMC may not be pretty, they due their work more than fine. This ability is specially useful is you are chaining wars, as you would not have the budget otherwise to get carriers into a figth, and having 4-6 extra carriers really makes the difference.

[director]

Jan 31, 2022 9:55:18 GMT -6 t3rm1dor said:

Pound for pound submarines are better than AMC for raiding. Sure they may sometimes accidently sink civilians ships, but the ability to wins wars in two turns due to sinking hlf the planet shipping tonnage is something you can only achieve realistically with subs...

... However, I think AMC really shine as carriers, specially for combat duties. Carrier combat is mostly about numbers, and while AMC may not be pretty, they due their work more than fine. This ability is specially useful is you are chaining wars, as you would not have the budget otherwise to get carriers into a figth, and having 4-6 extra carriers really makes the difference.

I've gotten the 'liner sunk by your subs' as many as three or four times in one turn, and more than one of those turns in a row. That hit to foreign relations is not trivial - and, really, there should be some lower cap on how often it can happen per turn.

But I do agree that subs are better than AMCs. The combination, if you can afford it, is probably better than either alone... Still, I don't build AMCs post-1940.

[vonfriedman]

Since historically such large numbers of AMCs have never been seen, it would seem that the possibility of winning wars with this strategy is some sort of bug in the game, seen as a simulation of reality itself.
A missing aspect in the game is in fact the possibility of arming one's own merchant ships to defend themselves from the cheap, poorly armed AMCs we are talking about here. The organization of traffic in escorted convoys should also render the AMCs almost ineffective.