In Progress Let's Play: Rule The Waves

[Baardhaas]

We tried to steal Cuba from them in a previous update.

Seventy years earlier. They were...ehrm.... faster.

Right, my bad, I forgot about that.

The French BC seems to lack speed to properly combat smaller cruisers, or does the main armament have sufficient range that speed is of lesser importance?

It doesn't seem to be lightly armored either, compared to your cruisers at least. Is there some rule of thumb as to what gun-caliber you need to effectively penetrate armor? Would your new cruisers 8" guns put a dent in this ship?

 

[Beastro]

The French BC seems to lack speed to properly combat smaller cruisers, or does the main armament have sufficient range that speed is of lesser importance?

It doesn't seem to be lightly armored either, compared to your cruisers at least. Is there some rule of thumb as to what gun-caliber you need to effectively penetrate armor? Would your new cruisers 8" guns put a dent in this ship?

Speed is on the lower end of the curve for BCs in the era. Von Der Tann did 26kts.

See that's the thing about Battlecruisers. People like to talk about them, but all they're talking about are British Battlecruisers and their clones, not the Germans and their Grossecruziers which had a similar, yet entirely different and very German origin.

Short sperg - Germans favoured armour over firepower, especially given their strategic circumstances against Britain and built what were essentially proto-Fast Battleships (post-Super Dreadnought battleships which retained their armour thickness without sacrificing speed, HMS Hood was the first built only being a battlecruiser as originally designed before getting redesigned after Jutland) and more comparable to the British Queen Elizabeth Class, which combined 15 inch guns with a modest speed increase and slightly reduced armour belt that became one of the mainstays of the interwar period.

German battlecruisers continually were underarmed by a generation but possessed superior armour belts almost, if not comparable to their same generation dreadnoughts made by Germany, and it showed at Jutland (just as the BCFs poor flash protection policies to increase fire rate wound up making three of their number explode in the same battle), Lutzow, the only German BC sunk during the battle was ground into the ocean while Seydlitz made it back effectively as a floating wreck that needed to have it's barrels removed to allow to it pass over the sand bar at the entrance of the Jade Bite.

The French BC there is effectively a crappy Von Der Tann. It possesses its slow speed, same number of guns 2 inches larger then VDTs while having a far weaker belt on comparable displacement. It's a first generation Battlecruiser, what the British originally called "Dreadnought Armoured Cruisers" and something quickly outclasses by second generation BCs built to fight other battlecruisers.

13 inch guns are a stupid idea on such a ship. They're overkill for hunting other cruisers and compromise other facets of the design that make it weaker in the face of other BCs.

 

[Dayyālu]

I'm happy to find someone that can explain this stuff better than me.

But more at hand in the 19th Century, the Juene Ecole caused chaos in French naval building adding to the continued flopping about and over experimentation they did that left them without an effective navy until the late 1920s.

Yeh, now I get why France has the "incoherent naval policy" rule.

And stop fucking calling it Dreadnaught. You already know it isn't the correct spelling, knock it off.

You are right, I know it but it keeps slipping!

I swear it's not on purpose!

[Short sperg

And a second point: go wild. It's not sperging if someone with more knowledge explains to us details, and it saves some work from me (for example, I have some articles and "light" history books on Jutland and British/German doctrine, but I never found the guts to write a good post, plus I'm kinda swamped lately). I never, for example, defined or explained in this thread what a Battlecruiser is (and I have not built one either).

That said, if you want to suggest even specific designs I'm up for translating them in game. We have now to design the next class of Dreadnought or of Battlecruiser, and if the posters want to suggest something I'm up for it. Or we can try to ape a real-world design, the engine is flexible.

 

[Endlösung]

I know nothing about ships and yet I feel that the armor talk is all bullshit. Even wikipedia agrees that British ammo was horrible. Would have been the same if they shot it at under-armored ships. The germans didnt sink not because they didnt get penetrated or hit enough. The german ship that sank, got hit 5 times below the belt and just took on water till it sank. If AP ammo blows on contact, you fucked up.

 

[Baardhaas]

Even wikipedia agrees that British ammo was horrible.

I just read the wiki article on the battle of Jutland. The British shells exploded prematurely, and the crews were lax with safety precautions leaving blast doors open between the turret and the ammo-storage. Quite a disgrace for the Royal Navy. I’d say the Germans got off lucky there.

I'm curious if this is simulated in game. Gun quality probably covers the ammunition effectiveness. Maybe crew quality also effects the rolls that are made to determine a critical hit.

I know nothing about ships and yet I feel that the armor talk is all bullshit.

Maybe in Jutland’s case. But I wouldn’t wave armor in general as ineffective. In game there probably is a sweet spot for your armor values relative to the offensive capabilities of your enemies vessels.

 

[Endlösung]

Yeah, should have specified that I was replying to Beastro's Jutland armor fap.

He quotes the question about rule of thumb on caliber vs armor and there is a whole internet autismo around it with old formulas, programs, Krupp experiments etc. I'd say that a 10 inch gun takes 10 inch plate frontally at medium range (Tiger 1 with 10cm frontal would get penetrated by a 10cm gun point blank). But if its 10 km out and you are hitting deck with 30 degrees, than who knows.

 

[Kalin]

I've got a 10 inch gun rite here

*grabs crotch*

 

[Baardhaas]

I've got a 10 inch gun rite here

Dayyālu, put captain Kalin on the newest sub and call it 'Muh Dick'. Any ship that turns its stern towards him will get a torpedo jammed up there faster then they can signal 'rape'.

 

[Beastro]

Yeh, now I get why France has the "incoherent naval policy" rule.

It goes deeper than that and much worse. Short story is the French effectively created a battlefleet of prototype pre-Dreadnoughts where each was different from the other and none of them worked together on a design level. They also got REAALLY fascinated by designing their battleships to fight in what turned out to be a very specific environment in the late 19th Century that made them really like the single gun, lozenge gun layout, because they expected to fight close to shore back in the days when battleships were expect to raid harbours. It was good for facing ships unexpectedly appearing from any angle, but was terrible once predreads were expected to operate more in the open ocean.

Then in the middle of that they decide to drop battleships and focus on Cruisers and the Jeune Ecole.

By WWI the crazy quilt was still fine to face the Italians, but they needed the British to face the Germans.

I know nothing about ships and yet I feel that the armor talk is all bullshit. Even wikipedia agrees that British ammo was horrible. Would have been the same if they shot it at under-armored ships. The germans didnt sink not because they didnt get penetrated or hit enough. The german ship that sank, got hit 5 times below the belt and just took on water till it sank. If AP ammo blows on contact, you fucked up.

Everyone's ammo was pretty horrible at the time, it was a part of the problem of an age with very rapid technological development for navies. One can see the same thing in aircraft from 1945-1965 - early jet aircraft were deathtraps that very regularly killed pilots because they were flying in bleeding edge tech.

Britain did get the Greenboy AP shell after Jutland, which was the best round in any navy up to WWII and remained good into it. Compare that to the US navy which continued to have crap AP that would regularly break up on contact until the eve of WWII.

The British shells exploded prematurely, and the crews were lax with safety precautions leaving blast doors open between the turret and the ammo-storage.

Cordite was very dangerous. The RN lost Vanguard in harbour during the war while the Japanese would have ships explode while tied up in both World Wars due to it.

The lax safety precautions were the result of the different basings of the Grand Fleet and Battlecruiser Fleet. The Grand Fleet was based at Scapa Flow, and so had a lot of empty harbour room to make a target range in, which they constantly practiced on throughout the war at Jellicoes insistence. The BCF was stations at Rosythe in the Firth of Forth and so was in a very busy and well built area compared to the Orkney's where Scapa was so the BCF was unable to practice while in harbour, so it's commander, Beatty, decided to make up for it by training the only way he felt his ships could, by doing loading practices and increasing his ships rate of fire, which led to them forgoing the use of flash doors and other safety procedures to do so.

Both the British and Germans were forewarned of this at Dogger Bank. The British almost like Lion and the Germans almost lost Seydlitz, but the Germans paid attention and clamped down on safety while Beatty continued his foolish. Beatty was an idiot, but was a good PR guy who went out of his way after the war to write his memoirs and guy the public thinking he was an awesome guy, while pointing the finger at Jellicoe, who was the consummate quiet, highly talented professional who everyone hated because he didn't produce a Second Trafalgar at Jutland and played the long war.

armor and there is a whole internet autismo around it with old formulas, programs, Krupp experiments etc. I'd say that a 10 inch gun takes 10 inch plate frontally at medium range (Tiger 1 with 10cm frontal would get penetrated by a 10cm gun point blank). But if its 10 km out and you are hitting deck with 30 degrees, than who knows.

There's a lot of weird stuff people get into about Immunity Zones and stuff. It's a subject people could argue about forever because naval technology very rarely gets a chance to be tested to a great length in varying circumstances they reveal all aspects of what it can and can't do. Usually you get a handful of battles every era that can produce wildly different results and aren't conclusive, so it's all left in the air for people make conclusions from.

A good example is how much of people's ideas about battle in WWI were based on the Russo-Japanese War, a war fought with predreadnoughts against two nations navy's of vastly different quality by ships that were obsolete a couple years later. Whatever could be made of the war now moot because of changes in fire control that made battle ranges go from 6000 to 10,000 yard to 16,000 to 28,000. Completely different kettles of fish and comparable to people using WWII experience with prop planes and trying to apply it to jet age aircraft (which is what happened and is a phenomenon that continues to this very day and will continue).

Much of this is the reason why the British favoured the largest possible calibre they could make, so that whatever hits they did land would be the biggest they do and hopefully cause as much damage as possible. It fit their world view and their strategic position as did the smaller, higher velocity guns while piling on armour of the Germans favoured their own.

That's ultimately a lesson that people don't realize, there is no one good design for warships. They are all built to suit each nations unique circumstances and are built first to accomplish the goals of those circumstances. All the talk of nations building "replies" to other warships is BS and PR talk to convince politicians to fund ships they need. This today is all the more apparent with internationally designed ships like the Horizon class frigates built for the French and Italians (the Brits were originally part of it, dropped out and built their own version), that ran into conflicts over what each wanted both in them and what they wanted them to do, which compromised the class and made them worse for each navy.

 

[Comte]

Wow Beastro excellent analysis.

 

[Dayyālu]

I'm curious if this is simulated in game. Gun quality probably covers the ammunition effectiveness. Maybe crew quality also effects the rolls that are made to determine a critical hit.

Maybe in Jutland’s case. But I wouldn’t wave armor in general as ineffective. In game there probably is a sweet spot for your armor values relative to the offensive capabilities of your enemies vessels.

Gun quality, ammo quality and crew quality are all simulated in-game. Mostly through the research/development tab.

See, this is our tech level:

See, there are categories for armour, AP and HE shells. By admission of the developers themselves, the advances are automatically applied to simplify things and... well, they mantain that there is no reason that someone would build a outdated ship when you have better tech.

Funnily enough, we are now the third technological power in the world, mainly thanks to the collaboration with Britain (the first) and the US (the second). German tech development and resources were a bit damaged by the lost conflict.

That said, I'm now quite curious if Beastro can suggest a model or a ship we should ape. We have up to 13 inches guns on triple turrets, a max dock size of 25'000 (30'000 if we build in Britain) and the tech to have five centerline turrets.

There is any historical ship that we can crash test as the new Flagship of the Tsarist Navy? Or we can go and try to build a Battlecruiser or two. They are kinda cheaper than proper BBs, and we have the tech for them.

The update will be incoming sunday, I fear.

 

[Baardhaas]

Gun quality, ammo quality and crew quality are all simulated in-game. Mostly through the research/development tab.

Good to see it's all taken in account.

There is any historical ship that we can crash test as the new Flagship of the Tsarist Navy?

I know next to nothing about warships from this era. But this let's play sparked my interest so I did a little reading on the subject. I'm just going ahead and spout some ideas. See whether you like them or not.

A ship that is both well armored and carries a lot of big guns while also retaining a high speed is probably not realistic within the constraints of your docks and budget. So I've got some suggestions where to cut corners.

The way I understand it, deck armor is relevant for long range battles. The longer the distance a shell has to travel, the more arched its trajectory, thus more likely to hit the ship from above. Having 1,5",3" or 5" armor on your decks seems irrelevant, a 12"shell will go through. I'd say you keep deck-armor to a minimum and put a little extra on the belt, where the majority of the hits will land.
You can have triple turrets, but if one turret gets knocked out, you lose three guns. Instead you could go for 5 centreline turrets with 2 guns each. Again you can skimp a little on the armor there. If you lose 2 out of 5 turrets you'll still have 6 guns that can fire.
Keep the secondary armament to a minimum. Let the cruisers and destroyers screen your battleship so the BB can focus on the enemy capital ships and carry more ammo for its main guns.
Speed is king. It allows you to keep up with your cruisers, chase enemies or get the hell out of there if things go awry.

To summarize:
-thick armor on the belt and conning tower, less armor on the decks, turrets and batteries.
-5 twin turrets with the largest gun you can fit (13"unless the 12" are for some reason better)
-small secondary armament
-high speed to chase enemy capital ships or get out of harms way

 

[Grimgravy]

You don't want to skimp too much on turret armor. Sometimes a hit there can blow up the whole damn ship.

 

[CaptainCoxwaggle]

Gun quality, ammo quality and crew quality are all simulated in-game. Mostly through the research/development tab.

Good to see it's all taken in account.

There is any historical ship that we can crash test as the new Flagship of the Tsarist Navy?

I know next to nothing about warships from this era. But this let's play sparked my interest so I did a little reading on the subject. I'm just going ahead and spout some ideas. See whether you like them or not.

A ship that is both well armored and carries a lot of big guns while also retaining a high speed is probably not realistic within the constraints of your docks and budget. So I've got some suggestions where to cut corners.

The way I understand it, deck armor is relevant for long range battles. The longer the distance a shell has to travel, the more arched its trajectory, thus more likely to hit the ship from above. Having 1,5",3" or 5" armor on your decks seems irrelevant, a 12"shell will go through. I'd say you keep deck-armor to a minimum and put a little extra on the belt, where the majority of the hits will land.
You can have triple turrets, but if one turret gets knocked out, you lose three guns. Instead you could go for 5 centreline turrets with 2 guns each. Again you can skimp a little on the armor there. If you lose 2 out of 5 turrets you'll still have 6 guns that can fire.
Keep the secondary armament to a minimum. Let the cruisers and destroyers screen your battleship so the BB can focus on the enemy capital ships and carry more ammo for its main guns.
Speed is king. It allows you to keep up with your cruisers, chase enemies or get the hell out of there if things go awry.

To summarize:
-thick armor on the belt and conning tower, less armor on the decks, turrets and batteries.
-5 twin turrets with the largest gun you can fit (13"unless the 12" are for some reason better)
-small secondary armament
-high speed to chase enemy capital ships or get out of harms way

Much of this is faulty information.

Plunging fire comes at a very steep angle, greatly increasing the thickness of deck armour. 4 inches can generally stop all but 18 inch shells. In addition, with sloped armour, your deck armour folds into your belt, effectively allowing you to add your deck armour to your belt armour (albeit with reduced efficiency).

The main issue with deck armour is that it is massively heavy, this can be negated by utilising an All-or-nothing armour scheme (use flat deck and no armour extended belt or extended deck), however you forgo the sloped deck advantage.

Armour at 2 inches prevents splintering, which can wreak havoc among your crew, so I suggest that your early battleships and battlecruisrs have 2 inch sloped deck armour. Fire control will be too inaccurate for plunging fire to be a credible threat early on. Later on, All-or-nothing battleships can field a 4 inch deck and a thick belt with few issues, although you can continue to make sloped deck battleships should you prefer close quarters combat with your battleships.


The vast majority of a turrets weight comes from it's armour, rather then the guns. Having numerous turrets means exponentially more weight being dedicated to turret armour rather then more guns. Triple and quad turrets do suffer from reliability and accuracy penalties early on though, so take that into consideration.

Secondary weaponry is incredibly lightweight for a battleship, and are indispensible for protecting your prized capital ships from destroyer attacks. I personally go the full 24 secondary guns in 5-6 inch calibre, and save weight by not armouring them (sticking to the principles of all-or-nothing armament). Secondary armaments also receive fire control later on from research. Tertiary guns have little use aside from gimmicks, such as pre-dreadnoughts with intermediate armaments, or if you want to double up on your low calibre weaponry in an early pre-dreadnought where large numbers of HE shells may be more effective then the nigh useless 1900s AP shells.

Keep speed ahead of your enemy, but dont overdo it, engines become exponentially more expensive and heavy, in addition rough weather can make your speed advantage completely moot. In the later stages of the game, most ships are capable of reaching 28-30 knots easily, and since the game caps the speed limit at 35 knots there is little reason to go past that point as you can no longer outrun your enemy by a large enough degree.


Armoured Cruisers become largely obsolete as soon as Battlecruisers become popular. You will even find that the AI stops building them. If a disarmament treaty gets passed though, they are the most powerful warship you are allowed to make. Focus instead on having cheap, reliable, fast, lightly armed, light cruisers instead. A good light cruiser design in itself is difficult to achieve as it needs to strike a delicate balance of outrunning Armored cruisers and battleships, while outgunning enemy light cruisers.

Alternatively you can make light cruisers completely dedicated to scouting and commerce raiding, while completely avoiding combat. They are incredibly effective until the late 1910s where they no longer have the capacity to outrun enemy ships without making themselves prohitantly expensive and submarines emerge as the superior commerce raider.

Destroyers are simple, if you are superior in capital ships, have a large amount of small guns and a few torpedoes on the centerline. If you are inferior in capital ships, have a small number of guns and a large number of torpedoes on the centerline. Build the largest destroyers you can, but do not forget to have a class of small escort destroyers designed for ASW and coastal patrols, you can even make decent escort destroyers that can serve on the frontline in a pinch at a decent cost.

 

[Beastro]

well, they mantain that there is no reason that someone would build a outdated ship when you have better tech.

One word: Congress.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi-class_battleship

Latest PreDreads are 16,000.
Everyone is moving up to building 20,000+ Dreadnoughts.
Congress' answer: demand 13,000 tonners be built that cannot do anything because they're too slow and short ranged that linger in the USN doing nothing until sold to Greece at a loss, because smaller = cheaper in their minds (Hint: Smaller is rarely, if ever cheaper with navies. Either the ships are useless when it comes their role, or if you're going for numbers, 2 slightly smaller warships are far more expensive than one larger one and are only good for covering more ground, like Britain protecting their colonial empire and convoys. It's also for that reason, and many others, that the US builds giant carriers instead of small ones like other nations, they're more bang for their buck).

That said, I'm now quite curious if Beastro can suggest a model or a ship we should ape. We have up to 13 inches guns on triple turrets, a max dock size of 25'000 (30'000 if we build in Britain) and the tech to have five centerline turrets.

There is any historical ship that we can crash test as the new Flagship of the Tsarist Navy? Or we can go and try to build a Battlecruiser or two. They are kinda cheaper than proper BBs, and we have the tech for them.

I don't know enough of the game and how simulationist it is. Like the Ganguts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangut-class_battleship) that were built historically look odd and not as good as contemporary dreadnoughts of the time, but that ignores the fact that they were specifically designed to operate in the Baltic and to use that unique environment to it's advantage, which is why they have very little super structure and non-superfiring turrets (superfiring is the term for a turret sitting above and behind another meat to shorten the hull and turret/magazine protection making the ships shorter and lighter for what they carry, a very good idea), so they could be as hard to hit as possible while still fielding as many guns as possible in what was looked on as a knife fighting environment.

It's for that reason that the layout didn't make a return in the Black Sea Dreadnoughts, but did when they decided to build a class of Baltic Battlecruisers, the Ismail class.

I also don't know what mechanics are at play in the game and I see you operating well outside the Baltic. And I don't know exactly what you want the ships to do, like do you want them for a Pacific Fleet or as a detached squadron to operate on its own.

For a baseline, I'd recommend the first British SuperDreads, The Orions which are about that size you can built, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion-class_battleship

I'd recommend modifying such a design to delete the amidships turret (limited firing archs, is very restricted in what it can do compared to what it prevents a design from accomplishing without it) reducing the armament to 8 13 inchers and putting the extra tonnage into more speed or better protection.

If you want to go super hindsight, then just have three tripe turrets, two forward, one aft, which provides the best balance of armament, weight and protection. Four twins, two turrets forward and aft have less protection because they lengthen the ship and require more equally protected which means less armour if you don't want speed to drop. More turrets also increases the chances of a turret being hit and knocked out not to mention the possibility of a magazine being penetrated. They do offer slightly superior firepower, allowing for a balance of 4 guns for each end and four guns split evenly if a battleship has to focus on two targets, on a 3 triple one target gets 6 while another only gets 3.

I also don't know if this game simulates combat enough to factor in nuanced bits of naval warfare, like the fact that a warships accuracy degrades when under fire for various reasons. Because of that it's a good idea to split fire to make sure all enemy ships are being attacked to prevent one the luxury of firing unmolested. Exs: If one ship goes again two, it's a good idea to split between both or with two fleets of multiple ships, make sure all are being attacked while having the majority of turrets focusing on one or two ships to try to work on progressively knocking each ship out.

4 triples I don't think you can pull off decently on 25,000 tons. The Austrians tried on 20,000 and their Dreadnoughts were simply too much put into a small package, the Ganguts were slightly more then 25,000, but sacrificed armour for a bit more speed and their unique turret lay out.

Still I think like the Viribus Unitis' a 25,000 ton design will be slow and/or not have great protection to pay for that extra turret (I'd rather have 9 guns and 24+ knots, which is effectively the endgame of battleship design everyone settled on, which are Fast BBs in all but name).

A good rule of thumb is to do what everyone else did back then and settle on a speed limit to build your entire fleet around, then up the speed a bit and settle on that as the new one. That way you won't have 18, 20, 24, 26 knot ships and find the faster ones stuck fighting alongside the 18 knoters making the speed irrelevant.

PreDreads seemed to settle on 18 knots as their max (which was the upper level tripe expansion engines could do do with their level of armament and protection) while Dreadnoughts and Super-Dread went to 21 and the proto-Fast battleships (Queen Elizabeths, Nagatos, and Nelsons) bumped it to 24-25 knots.

To summarize:
-thick armor on the belt and conning tower, less armor on the decks, turrets and batteries.
-5 twin turrets with the largest gun you can fit (13"unless the 12" are for some reason better)
-small secondary armament
-high speed to chase enemy capital ships or get out of harms way

Grimgravy is right, get more turret armour.

Unless you have a good fleet of destroyers and cruisers to escort your battleships its good for them to have a decent secondary to tackle smaller warships. Dreadnought had a paltry secondary armament for that reason, but the RN quickly realized their Dreads needed a decent sized amount of 4-6 inchers to deal with destroyers and cruisers on their own.

If you insist on using 5 turrets then I recommend using a modified layout like HMS Tiger had where the aft superstrutce is cut down/removed to improve the firing arcs of the "Q" turret (amidship turret):

For a battleship you'd place a turret between the two aft ones (which on Tiger was occupied by engine space below).

For speed, find out what the typical speed of your enemies is and built your ships a few knots fasters. Again, I don't know how the strategic gameplay is like, if there is any.

The USN went for one extreme where they completely ignored speed and made their fleet entirely 21knot battleships since they planned around the larger picture of knowing where battles would take place and designing their ships to battle there, in their case they expected war in the Pacific around the Philippines or Marianas so while those held out they could limber over with a super navy in other respects and smash the Japanese who either had to fight or use their speed to escape and surrender the battle to them allowing the US to their bases in the Western Pacific to then sail for Japan and press battle once more. This is typically viewed as the Mahanian view of navy warfare.

The Brits and Germans focused on a battlefleet very similar, but backed up by a fast wing of Cruisers, and then Battlecruisers. The Cruisers would scout and screen the battlefleet while the BCs protected them from ACs and BCs. As it went in WWI the Scouting forces got more action due to their speed and found themselves "tying" up the enemy: Jutland was essentially the two scouting forces meeting and deciding where the battle took place keeping other in place for their respective battlefleets to lumber towards, effectively a naval version of the old "hammer and anvil" armies using slow infantry to pin enemy armies to allow cavalry the chance to circle around and smash them from behind.

I don't know how the game plays out, but since you only have ex-German colonies in the Pacific, it sounds like you're still based out of your two main bases on the opposite sides of the world, the Baltic and Manchuria/Eastern Siberia. It means you 'll know where the enemy will attack while you can focus on choosing where to attack yourself without having to protect anything. It leaves you free to decide to choose either slow, power fleets or something with more finesse.

Were I in your place I'd recommend building a fast wing that can be easily sent to the Pacific to fight to reinforce it and harass the enemy in batteries by getting in front of them and forcing them to change their direction, but that's my bias showing.

What is your fleet disposition like atm? I get the feeling your have almost everything in the Baltic and only scraps in the Pacific, which will switch when you decide to go to war with Japan. Have you thought about eventually building a permanent Pacific Fleet?

 

[Dayyālu]

I know next to nothing about warships from this era. But this let's play sparked my interest so I did a little reading on the subject. I'm just going ahead and spout some ideas. See whether you like them or not.

Thanks for the input! We're in the same boat (and I'm the one that should be running this LP). I will try to build your design nonetheless, it's a proposal!

Well, it looks like a ship I would design. I mean, big guns all around and little thought for secondaries and torpedoes. The main problem is the turret armour. Disabling turrets is a thing (and redundant firepower is good) but as we saw a single lucky hit and we're on the Hood redux, but 8 inch armour is not incredibly low, plus the ship is fast. The secondary armament is good enough. With beastro's suggestions about turret placements, this is a working design.

Torpedo Protection 2 for reasons.

I christen this ship project Objekt 1.

Let's try our hand with Coxwaggle's design, Objekt 2.

Our triple turrets tech is mature now, and we don't have reliability problems: the full complement of 24 6-inches secondary guns gives this one quite a bite to fuck up cruisers and Destroyers trying torpedo runs. We have a 13 inches gun less than Objekt 1, but the armour is far thicker at the same speed. It looks like a solid design (even if I stole the turret placement from Beastro's suggestions!).

Armoured Cruisers become largely obsolete as soon as Battlecruisers become popular. You will even find that the AI stops building them. If a disarmament treaty gets passed though, they are the most powerful warship you are allowed to make.

Amusingly enough I had good results with late-game CAs. In some games CAs, with the advantage of numbers, can threaten BCs and even older BBs. Maybe I was merely lucky.

Destroyers are simple, if you are superior in capital ships, have a large amount of small guns and a few torpedoes on the centerline. If you are inferior in capital ships, have a small number of guns and a large number of torpedoes on the centerline. Build the largest destroyers you can, but do not forget to have a class of small escort destroyers designed for ASW and coastal patrols, you can even make decent escort destroyers that can serve on the frontline in a pinch at a decent cost.

Thanks! I admit that I'm cheap and employ for Coastal Patrols the older, no longer up to date Destroyers. A well-designed class for that job could be a good thing, though.

And then let's go for Objekt 3, Beastro's proposal. Taking the Orion as an example, with the optimal turret composition....

Well, sadly our tech is a bit behind and I'm forced to have a bit less armour than the Orion proper. In any case, it's very well armoured, particularly if compared to our past Nikolai I. Turret composition is the optimal one, that I employed even on Coxwaggle's proposal (because it seems to be a very good balance). Secondary guns are 4 inches to fight Destroyers and little else, plus three torpedo tubes. Speed is 21 knots, not a lot, but it's faster than all the Dread designs in this world bar the British ones (who also are building 21 knots battleships. God, our 23 knots Nikolai I truly is an abomination).

I like it, even if my speed freak needs would like more knots.

One word: Congress.

I don't know enough of the game and how simulationist it is.

The Baltic is quite the knife fight. But the main areas simulated by the game are the oceans and the Mediterranean, with fairly different requirements.

I also don't know what mechanics are at play in the game and I see you operating well outside the Baltic.

We could build a fleet designed specifically for the Baltic and take a defensive posture, but we are now going for a widly ahistorical route of Russia trying to gain prominence in the Northern seas. We had Baltic fights against the German Navy, but now we are blockading the French with British support. Our older models, that were built with cramped accomodations and lower speed, are suffering for this.

I also don't know if this game simulates combat enough to factor in nuanced bits of naval warfare, like the fact that a warships accuracy degrades when under fire for various reasons.

RTW gun's precision is fairly complex, and it takes into account pretty much everything from being under fire to sea conditions to smoke. One can micro every single ship if he wishes to do so (the so-called Captain's mode) but it's kinda difficult for me. I'm not that good, simply, and I trust more the AI captains.

(I'd rather have 9 guns and 24+ knots, which is effectively the endgame of battleship design everyone settled on, which are Fast BBs in all but name).

Alas, we don't have yet the tech to design this, for now.

A good rule of thumb is to do what everyone else did back then and settle on a speed limit to build your entire fleet around, then up the speed a bit and settle on that as the new one. That way you won't have 18, 20, 24, 26 knot ships and find the faster ones stuck fighting alongside the 18 knoters making the speed irrelevant.

This is one of the factors that's making me think to retire some of our Pre-Dread Bs. In battle their speed degrades further and I'm stuck with 16 knots outdated ships. But I need to build replacements first, and extra tonnage is always useful.

I don't know how the game plays out, but since you only have ex-German colonies in the Pacific, it sounds like you're still based out of your two main bases on the opposite sides of the world, the Baltic and Manchuria/Eastern Siberia. It means you 'll know where the enemy will attack while you can focus on choosing where to attack yourself without having to protect anything. It leaves you free to decide to choose either slow, power fleets or something with more finesse.

Yeh. It's commonly thought as a weakness for the Russians, but with our aggressive and bluntly put lucky career until now we have leveraged it as a strength, as we can focus our main fleets easily.

Were I in your place I'd recommend building a fast wing that can be easily sent to the Pacific to fight to reinforce it and harass the enemy in batteries by getting in front of them and forcing them to change their direction, but that's my bias showing.

What is your fleet disposition like atm? I get the feeling your have almost everything in the Baltic and only scraps in the Pacific, which will switch when you decide to go to war with Japan. Have you thought about eventually building a permanent Pacific Fleet?

Pretty much. Everything is supporting the Baltic Fleet, with a single Pre-Dread B and a CL quadron in the Pacific. The Mediterranean convoys for Algeria (I swear, Algeria, the RNG sometimes) are covered by some CLs, but the French are in a dire situation. This war is won, we should plan for the next one, and our enemies, particularly the European powers, are kinda big on Battlecruisers. Germany just finished building their insane Mecklenburg class pre-Dreads (the AI went full retard on that one, they are useless. Well, they are fittingly the equivalent of the Mississippi class you linked to me!) and are updating their fleet.

Japan has no chance in winning a war alone against us now, but the diplo mechanics seems to be bent on avoiding confrontation with them in this playthrough. A mistery.


Again, thanks everyone for the posting. It's kinda more interesting to read than my attempts at explaining concepts I understand badly. Thanks.

 

[Dreaad]

You're doing fine.

 

[Beastro]

We could build a fleet designed specifically for the Baltic and take a defensive posture, but we are now going for a widly ahistorical route of Russia trying to gain prominence in the Northern seas. We had Baltic fights against the German Navy, but now we are blockading the French with British support. Our older models, that were built with cramped accomodations and lower speed, are suffering for this.

Then it's best to begin restructuring your navy in a colonial empire one having a good battlefleet, plenty of cruisers and a decent battlecruiser force to act as a rapid reaction squadron that can be used to help the battlefleets, be the big guns on colonial station that can work well with cruisers at their own speed and generally give you a lot of flexibility.

Again, I don't know how the game works, but from history, it's best to produce capital ships in classes of pairs or trios to allow for a good amount built, but when matched with the rest of the fleet, gives a good evolutionary stair case of progress. The worst thing to face is block obsolesce, when you have 10 battleships of the same class and suddenly all of them become obsolete and worn out making you suddenly have a period of very bad weakness. That can become an addiction where you build another block to make up for it that repeats the process instead of sucking things up and accepting the weakness for a bit longer while you churn out smaller classes, slowly fill in the gap.

This is one of the factors that's making me think to retire some of our Pre-Dread Bs. In battle their speed degrades further and I'm stuck with 16 knots outdated ships. But I need to build replacements first, and extra tonnage is always useful.

You will or you'll face the the problem the Germans had with their last AC and their last Pre-Dread class. They kept Blucher around with the BCs and she slowed them down, then when they ran hard from the BCF at Dogger Land to survive, they left Blucher in their wake to get mobbed and pummeled into oblivion.

What you're facing right now is like the Germans keeping the Deutchlands around with their Dreadnoughts. They slowed the High Seas Fleet down from 21 to 19 knots and were useless in the long ranged Dreadnought fighting that took place at Jutland. Unless they're too costly to keep active, you can relegate the oldies to home patrols and escorting merchant shipping. They may be crap, but a cruiser can't match them and will keep provide enough of a distraction should a squadron of them attack a convoy.

That's how the RN used their old R class BBs in WWII. More than once Scharnhorst and Gneisenau found a convoy to attack, only to avoid it once they spotted an old R or unrefitted Queen Elizabeth amongst them. The British BB couldn't stand a chance, but being so far from home, the German battleships couldn't risk taking any damage.

Germany just finished building their insane Mecklenburg class pre-Dreads

And they clearly show the wider picture. Cheap ships do no good because a lost war is always expensive.

This war is won, we should plan for the next one, and our enemies, particularly the European powers, are kinda big on Battlecruisers.

Then it sounds like you'll have to play more Mahanian and focus on BBs mostly while possibly producing a few BCs for when you need big guns and speed. That way when it comes to battle it may be frustrating to be outrun by the enemy, but if they're mostly BCs they simply won't be able to win in a itched battle against you so you can focus on blockading. It might also be good to have some BCs around to provide something of a bait if you get the chance without leaving your cruisers helpless. Have them lure the enemy BCs toward land in a gulf and then have your battlefleet move up to block the gulf forcing the BCs to skirt passed the BBs and get mauled no matter what they do.

Also another good bit of tactical advice is to have your ships typical fight while running at and angle to the enemy, so all turrets fore and aft can fire while you keep on a course closing the distance. The same applies to torpedoes, where a frontal, at angle attack is the best, since a 90 degree one gives the enemy a chance to turn to face/face away from the torps and reduce their profile, firing at and angle from behind is in a chase pattern which means your torps have to play catch up and potentially run out of fuel.

Front at angle provides the best chance of closing the distance and hitting a cross section of the ships profile, but it's very hard to get destroyers into that position, and if the AI is smart, it should be able to predict what you're doing and alter their course to ruin the attack.

Edit: What date is it so far? Regardless, four inch secondaries might be too light. It would be good to get 5 inchers or plan your next class with them in mind.

 

[CaptainCoxwaggle]

The game quite accurately simulates the advantages of building battleships in pairs, as technology advances at such a rapid pace that your newest battleships may already be obsolete when they are finished. There is a "prototype" cost when developing a new class, however as Capital ships are expensive regardless it is generally better to make a new class to take advantage of technology. Even Britain with historical resources finds it difficult to keep more then 2 battleships under construction at the same time.

Also playing as Russia, I would strongly suggest that you take "cramped accommodations" into consideration. It provides a bit more room to squeeze an extra bit of armour or speed, and it's negative effects are not felt so long as you do not fight outside Northern Europe and your Pacific bases. Playing as Japan I find myself needing to squeeze every bit of displacement, and the crew penalties while fighting in South-East Asia are frankly not too bad.

Also you may also want to consider the engine setting for speed, which significantly reduces engine weight. You will have more reliability issues and shorter lasting engines, but if your ships spend most of their time in home regions, it's not a big maintenance issue. In battle you can travel at cruise speed and only use the extra speed for those tactical moments where it is warranted. Reliable engines allow you to run your engines at flank speed for very extended durations, but are quite weighty.

CA's can be good late game, depending on what the enemy is fielding. I've had good success with both very large CA's with numerous 10 inch guns and small anti-raider raiding CA's with a small amount of 8 inch guns and minimal armour designed to sink light cruisers capable of catching it. The main issue is that they are extremely vulnerable to battlecruisers once late game fire controls are available. Considering armoured cruisers are in the intermediate role of countering light cruisers while being vulnerable to battlecruisers, they are generally safe to cut out later on, although they remain a viable option as commerce raiders, submarines are a much cheaper and effective alternative.

With the benefit of hindsight, you might want to avoid putting underwater torpedo tubes on your battleships. They are seldom used (and cannot be even fired at speeds above 21 knots) due to their fixed positions, and are extremely hazardous should they be hit in combat. They have use early on for finishing off disabled ships, without spending inordinate times firing at flaming hulks to "secure" a kill. Real world navies likewise started removing underwater torpedoes during the 1920s. Above-water torpedoes for battleships become available later on, and may be considered.

You may want to place pre-dreads on reserve in the 1910s, and mothball them in the 1920s. I would suggest against scrapping them unless you are strapped for cash as they still make potent coastal defence ships, and at the very least serve as "weight" for both fleet battles and ingame considerations for blockades.

On a more gamey note, Torpedo Protection II should be put on all capital ships from now on. Torpedo protection III and IV are unnecessary as you should never be in a position where you are hit by more then 2-3 torpedoes, which Torpedo protection II can handle. Heavy cruisers should have Torpedo protection I due to weight constraints, although this can be sacrificed. Russians also get a pretty hefty penalty in terms of crew quality that begins degrading in the 1910s where they are brought in-line with other navies.

3 Triple turrets as Beastro mentioned is probably the best overall gun layout. Although personally I prefer a Richelieu style layout with two quad turrets forward. Also note that triple and quad turrets still suffer from slightly reduced accuracy, even with the researched tech that fixes their problems. In the real world many countries continued to favour double turrets until the 1930s in hypothetical battleship designs.

If battlecruisers are popular in Europe, I would suggest that either you consider the possibility of building a battlecruiser design that is capable of defeating them, and building one or two to serve as a deterrent to more numerous, but inferior battlecruisers (even one battlecruiser that outclasses foreign battlecruisers presents a major threat to how they deploy their battlecruisers), or focusing solely on Mahanian doctrine by investing in a larger battlefleet.

 

[Beastro]

3 Triple turrets as Beastro mentioned is probably the best overall gun layout. Although personally I prefer a Richelieu style layout with two quad turrets forward. Also note that triple and quad turrets still suffer from slightly reduced accuracy, even with the researched tech that fixes their problems. In the real world many countries continued to favour double turrets until the 1930s in hypothetical battleship designs.

Nice to see that included that little bit in!

It's not just interference from each barrel firing so close, the more cramped spaces reduce reload efficiency and other stuff.

Found the post that describes it on another board:

There's another aspect to this when dealing with ships. The efficiency of a main battery mount (assuming non-automatic guns - this does not apply to automatic weapons) is inversely proportional to the number of guns on that mount. The following data is a very rough guide.

If a single gun is taken as the baseline with a value of 1.0
A twin mount is worth roughly 1.75 of two single guns
A triple mount is worth roughly 2.5 of three single guns
A quadruple mount is worth roughly 3.125 of four single guns.

So, a ship armed with eight guns in four twin mounts is roughly equivalent to 7 single guns
A ship armed with nine guns in three triple mounts is roughly equivalent to 7.5 single guns
A ship armed with ten guns in a twin and two quads is roughly equivalent to 8 single guns
A ship armed with 12 guns in six twins is roughly equivalent to 10.5 single guns
A ship armed with 12 guns in four triples is roughly equivalent to 10.0 single guns
A ship armed with 12 guns in three quads is roughly equivalent to 9.375 guns

So, based on gunnery efficiency alone, the choice is to go for as many mounts with as few guns each as possible. Agincourt, with seven twin turrets rated as the equivalent of 12.25 single guns.

I still think quads are too extreme, especially if you go for 8 in two turrets. One bad hit and half your armament is gone.

 

[Dayyālu]

Edit: What date is it so far? Regardless, four inch secondaries might be too light. It would be good to get 5 inchers or plan your next class with them in mind.

Late 1910. Yes, the sub torpedoes on a BB design are a bad idea, methinks.

 

[Beastro]

Edit: What date is it so far? Regardless, four inch secondaries might be too light. It would be good to get 5 inchers or plan your next class with them in mind.

Late 1910. Yes, the sub torpedoes on a BB design are a bad idea, methinks.

Yeah should be going to 5 inchers by then.

Embeded tubes on BBs are just a pre-made hole waiting to be opened.

 

[Kalin]

Trump's wall in this thread. OF TEXT!

Update already and build moar cruisers!

 

[Baardhaas]

I christen this ship project Objekt 1.

Now that is one sleek looking motherfucker.

Let's try our hand with Coxwaggle's design, Objekt 2.

I really like Coxwaggle's design too. More balanced armor scheme, more secondary guns and the same speed. But, 1 less big gun and only three separate turrets.

And then let's go for Objekt 3, Beastro's proposal.

I'm a bit torn about this one. It's slower, not as well armed and only slighty better armored. But, Beastro posts all sound so sensible, like he really knows what he's talking about.

Fuck it, I vote for Object 1. If I'm lucky, the undeveloped shipbuilding industry and poor education trait might even turn it into a fatty dread.

 

[Viata]

Holy fuck, this game looks so cool. I'll be reading these 10 pages right now.