New campaign sliders

[captainoverkill]

Howdy, I'm a long time lurker on the forum and have played the game since RTW1.

I have a couple suggestions which would improve my enjoyment of the game and maybe others. Apologies if this is a common request. If there are already mods covering this, please let me know.

1. Tactical battle frequency

I find that sometimes battles just don't happen often enough. I would like to see more cruiser actions, maybe more than one per turn. Big fleet battles maybe as well. Maybe not very realistic but I would like to play a campaign in "Insane" mode with lots of battles and skirmishes. It would be very nice to be able to adjust frequencies for fleet battles and actions separately.

This could work as a slider/modifier at the beginning of the game similar to Fleet Size.

2. Repairs duration

Right now the longest time a ship is in dock for repairs is 5/6 months for mine/sub damage. For battle damage, I've never had a ship in dock longer than 3 months (maybe 4). I like the mechanic as is but sometimes it feels like it is too short and I would like major damage to big ships to have more of an impact. Given frequency of battles (see above), having 3-4 battleships heavily damaged doesn't mean much because you are almost guaranteed to have them repaired until the next fleet battle pops up.

Historically, large ship repairs took much longer. Some examples:

    HMS Queen Elizabeth (BB) repair/refit took one year after being mined in Alexandria.

    USS New Orleans (CA) was out of action for 9 months after taking major (near fatal) damage at Tassafaronga

    USS Bunker Hill (CV) repairs took 4 months after being damaged in 1945 but the ship wasn't back in full service until 1947.

Personally, I'd like to see repairs take 3X longer than default but this could be a slider as well.

[williammiller]

Thanks for the suggestions, and welcome to the forums!

[laplace420]

As a somewhat related suggestion, how about adding a "strategic stance" setting that the player can set to one of "aggressive", "balanced", or "passive" that indicates a fleet's willingness to fight. "Aggressive" strategic stance should also make the likelihood of fleet battles higher while "passive" strategic stance should lower, but not completely eliminate, the chance of major fleet battles from happening. "Balanced" strategic stance should not increase or decrease the likelihood of major fleet battles, or combat in general, occurring.

[ludovic]

I think increasing the chance of small battles, maybe even more than 1 a turn, is an excellent idea.

I think the frequency of fleet battles is about right.  The only thing that feels off about their frequency is that degradation of pilot skills and aircraft numbers from attrition almost never happens. I send out my air strike missions with no fighter escort.  There is no downside to this. The extra hitting power of the extra attack planes by far outweighs their disadvantages versus fighters. Occasionally I lose a great percentage of my squadrons, but I only rarely am not up to near my full complement immediately, and also only rarely lose an experience level. Losing two experience levels is nearly unheard of.