In Progress Let's Play: Rule The Waves

[Comte]

MOAR!!!!!

The ‘New Mexico’-class battleship USS ‘Mississippi’ fires a Terrier surface-to-air missile in the early 1950s. USS Mississippi was launched in 1917.

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

Very nice. Germans are dropping steel in water faster than they are T levels.

War with the Pinku-kun when though?

 

[Endlösung]

I want to be a Bi!

 

[Dayyālu]

Let's Play Rule The Waves: Historical Revisionism Edition

From the shores of the Bismarck Arcipelago to the coasts of Africa, Russian navy troops fight on. What the heck

"Firmly in control", we have a single old CL there, the Germans can't spare even a single ship it seems.

The Germans are tired of war. We? Not even one point of unrest.

Our subs sink four freighters, and our ACW patrols catch a Teutonic fish. Good month for the sub warfare front.

A group of German Destroyers try, under the cover of bad weather, a torpedo run on our docks in Riga. Our patrols catch them, and in a short firefight one of our Zvonki class is heavily damaged by some good German shooting, but one of their 900 tons DD slows down and get two torpedoes. Good catch nonetheless.

Work on the Eustafi will be over next month, and the Pacific Fleet ships have reached the Baltic. They are in a sorry state, but an extra B plus CAs and escorts is what is needed to blockade the Germans. Table have again turned against the Teutons.

In before the Eustafi takes a torpedo next engagement

As I said.

Our scientists report us discoveries on Diesel Engines, HE explosive performance and overall tactical improvements. Our budget is well spent, I guess. On the foreign spies department, shortages of food are causing again widespread demonstrations in Germany. Let's break them again.

The Eustafi is an experiment: a 18k tons pre-dread with 14 inches guns in single turrets. Should have a punch, and fire with superior RoF and precision.

Should.

Under the waves Russia ruuuuuleeeees

We lose a sub due to German ACW, but they lose five merchant ships in a month. And we sink another sub. Brutal UW war indeed.

Gotta love UW war. Pity I can't command my subs directly. Maybe in the next game? When we get Air also? Can't wait.

One of our Mercury class cruisers, during a random patrol sweep, gets near a neutral freighter. The captain gets suspicious and dammit, we get one of the German Armoured Merchant Cruisers. 60 mines even, I don't want to think what could have happened to our smaller vessels!

Let's sink the treacherous bastard.

After a quick exchange, out 8inch guns make short work of the unarmoured ship.

Following our policies! A point of Unrest for more budget. Fair trade, I say.

Total war, best war.

There are rumours of mutinies in the German fleet. Furthermore, their limited actions in the last two months could mean they are running low of fuel thanks to our blockade. We need to endure just a little bit more....

Months of warfare for two hills, three natives and a sausage factory. Can't wait for the games about the "Russian-German Warfare in South Africa, 1915". Skirmish ruleset for the Orthodox natives included.

"YOU MISBEGOTTEN RETARD! EVERYONE KNOWS THAT IT WAS THE 313th Corps THAT MADE LANDFALL IN February 1915, AND THEY LACKED MACHINEGUN SUPPORT! THIS LIST IS FULL OF CRAP AND THE AUTHORS ARE HACKS! No respect for historical accuracy!"

"I find the weapon lists for Native Weapons subpar. Why so? African warriors had excellent fire discipline, check this link"

"The lack of a disclaimer at the beginning of the book clearly recognizing both the German and the Russian war crimes on the natives is worrying. As a 1/10 descendant of South African ancestry, I'm offended by the lack of respect."

"Я понятия не имею о том, что я печатаю! Без понятия!"

.... sorry, mind wandered a bit. Yes, we failed a coastal raid. Shit weather, you see. We failed to find even a single Merchant ship (not that the blockade helps) and the German patrols were nowhere to be found.

how

Ok, this was not what we had in mind. An Augustus does not kill a Caesar. Goddammit we have started something I don't like, well, at least we won the war, no?

First, we get a brand new German BB as a trophy. I almost wanted to take the German BC, but we need more a new BB to replace our losses.

We occupy all the German colonies during the collapse. They are worth jack shit, but we don't have to mantain them (an old CL is good enough for foreign service there) and we get some money. Maybe I should design some good ships for Foreign Service instead of employing rusted hulks full of drunk Siberians.

Endlösung gets a German ship, renamed Madagaskar II. This is weirdly fitting, I guess. The Pommern class is kinda of a good vessel, even, and getting it for free restores some of our Dreadnought balance.

We'll need to restore some ships, mothball others, and I guess it's time to build more subs (we lost just two in the war, but goddammit they are effective) and to retire some 20-years old ships.

The new German government is not commies, unluckily. Simply a limited democracy on the continental model, with a Chancellor and things. For us, things won't change a lot, and also....

"Without doubt we can say that it was the harsh conditions imposed by the Russians to cause Edmund Hitler's rise to power. It has been often pointed out that the Tsar did not want a bloody coup, and that we need to give the responsabilities for the war of '39 not on the German people, but on the bloodthirsty Russian military, particularly in the Admiralty, a true den of iniquity as we will see. Thus, we can say, that in a way Russia caused the death of twenty millio...."

Sorreh, today I'm kinda dizzy.

But, wait a sec

wait a sec

WAIT A SEC

THE TIME HAS COME


If we plan this well, we can teach the Nipponese a lesson. If we don't have a crisis with the Britons or anything else. AT LAST

NEXT TIME, WE SEE WHAT THE JAPS HAVE IN STORE FOR US

A Skoda coastal gun in Austro-Hungarian service. On the left, the Author's hand, sadly proving that I'm white

 

[Endlösung]

Pommern, the Beautiful!

 

[Baardhaas]

Well, that was a short but fruitfull war with the Krauts. And a 29k tons BB is not bad at all. What possessions can we realistically expect to take from the Japs?

 

[Dayyālu]

Well, that was a short but fruitfull war with the Krauts. And a 29k tons BB is not bad at all. What possessions can we realistically expect to take from the Japs?

Formosa and Korea. I'll make a small write-up about our timeline Japan, but honestly a war against it is kinda shooting fishes in a barrel. We managed to break a European nation as Germany in ten months despite them having some sweet tech advantages, I don't expect Japan to endure much.

I'll plan to set up a Pacific Fleet soon and give our Baltic Northern European fleet some rest.

All said and done, to be truly dangerous for us we need to see: an alliance of smaller powers (France+Germany could fuck up us bad) or start antagonizing Britain or the US (both superior to us in tech).

Sadly, Russia is still Russia, and we got a sweet tech deal with the British alliance, but our docks are small. We need to invest more, as the Germans have for example 40k tons docks to our 33k.

 

[Storyfag]

Well, that was lulzworthy. Would have been lulzier had the new government turned out to be commie, but eh, can't have everything.

 

[Beastro]

Subs are too random to rely on.

When the weather gets bad or night comes play extremely defensively and micro by manually sending your destroyers to charge towards the enemy. They'll run out of sight and revert back to AI control and come back, so you need to keep repeating it. Doing it is worth it as it accomplishes two things 1: it the AI knows what destroyer charges do and turns away so you can disengage if you need to or just keep them away until things improve, and 2: while they may know in the moment until the DDs are spotted they charge in and at close distances get butchered by DD torps.

It's for that reason to pay attention to when a battle is set in the day and if close to dusk to pretty much avoid fighting with the rest of your ships and just do that.

I had such a battle at dusk as Japan around your time in-game and sent my hordes of DDs out and would up sinking 7 BCs and 2 BBs as even missed torps managed to find their way into someone.

In my US and now Japan games I've found myself leaning more towards a very US/Japanese hybrid fleet of capital ships supported largely by large amounts of very large, torp armed DDs with cruisers used for foreign stationing and raider/anti-raider work (which the way the game mechanics work means most raiders get the best chances to kill enemy ships, so it's a good idea to send out powerful raiders to do simply that - unlike normal battles the enemy can't refuse them and if you have the faster/more power warship you'll win every time). The mechanics of the game work by forcing a fight at the start of every battle (notice that you can't even control your ships until you spot an enemy), so for scouting all you need is the manually controlled BC squadron you're given as DDs will do much of the job screening and charging to keep the enemy spotted.

The only downside to using DDs a lot is that you'll lose tons of them. Of the dozens of one class I produced before my recent war with the US, France and Russia (I was backed by Britain) only about 8 remained after the end of the war and my recent class got halved when I lost 12 in my opening sneak attack on the British Far East force (Japanese sneak attack is sickeningly good with powerful DDs, the only downside is your BBs start so far from your initial attacking DDs you can't control them so the outer enemy ships soak up too much while the rest go untouched and can fight back).

 

[Beastro]

BTW, anyone have an idea which folder controls max displacement? I wanna go 18inch guns as the Japs and fuck if I'm going to let them restrict me to 52,000 tons for them.

 

[CaptainCoxwaggle]

There used to be a max displacement option but it was removed because the ship designer simply went out of wack with such massive ships, and it was outside the bounds of the games timeline anyway.

Might I suggest using the Number 13 Class for a 18 inch gan Jap Battleship? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_13-class_battleship

 

[CaptainCoxwaggle]

Also unfortunately I don't believe RTW has a communist government, only Liberal Democracy, Limited Democracy, Autocracy, and Eastern.

Liberal Democracy seems to gain dissent quickly, and are difficult to collapse in revolutions, Autocracy gains dissent slowly but has difficulty reducing it and are very vulnerable to revolutions, Limited Democracy is a balance of the two. Eastern (or more accurately Japanese) gain dissent slowly, and also seem to be completely immune to mutiny and revolution.

As an additional touch Autocracy and Eastern are allowed to cheat 10% extra tonnage when a naval treaty is in effect.

 

[Beastro]

There used to be a max displacement option but it was removed because the ship designer simply went out of wack with such massive ships, and it was outside the bounds of the games timeline anyway.

Might I suggest using the Number 13 Class for a 18 inch gan Jap Battleship? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_13-class_battleship

I thought there might have been something in the files to fiddle with, like changing the value of regions to allow them to be taken in peace settlements.

Already made one, I'm into the 30s and wanting to make a Yamato that isn't a glass cannon. Fortunately 27 knots and triple turrets leaves a lot of room open to make a decent ship.

 

[Dayyālu]

Let's Play Rule the Waves: System Shock 1 Torpedoed my LP

Hey. We all admit that SS1 is a great game. You don't? You don't pardon your poor, old Dayyalu for trying to finish one of the great classics of vydia history?

Whatevs, let's get this rolling again. We have nipponese to rape.

Ok. We need to modernize our fleet and prepare to the conflict with Japan. I am completely certain of the final victory, but there are some details of our battlefleet that must be adressed.

First of all, our B fleet is old as fuck. And our Destroyer fleet has a ton of antediluvian ships that can't be trusted any more. It's time to start a massive building project to get our D cover up to 1916 standards, with 1500 ton creatures. We have enough money to do so.

We have EIGHTEEN obsolete destroyers. A order of at least nine 1500 tonners is needed.

The Vidni class is thus born. 34 knots. Eight torpedo tubes, 4inch guns. Do you know that the newer version of RTW now adds Torpedo boats as defences? They are a bit like the subs, under AI control when you defend your coasts.

Buy the game, it's good.

We order nine of the machines. It costs us a million Tsar bucks of negative income even with mothballin' older ships and placing in reserve fleet others, but that simply means we'll have to balance the building times. And I guess starting to scrap some of the older ships.

Awesome, I guess. We don't have any ships with 14 inches guns, yet. A month later we get Improvet Triple Gun mounts, that can make a nice combo for what I presume will be our last class of BB in this playthrough.

The world starts scrapping a shitton of ships. Germany and Austria in particular are getting rid of all their 1899 class Destroyers and Bs.

We should do the same, I think. Not now, but later.

AK 47s FOR EVERYONE, as the Ancients said. More budget, more tension.

Balkan Wars: we have no idea who we are even backing anymore. But they are all loyal subject of the Orthodox church, I guess

We get a tension hit with Germany. NO NO NO NO, I WANT JAPAN FUCKERS NO

Pictured: the New German Government. Some things never change even in alternate timelines


A scandal regarding German dignitaries of the new government? Liberal democracies are truly morally bankrupt. Luckily we can use this to avoid hostilities with the Krauts. YES, the rules we had should direct us to maximize tension, but we want to fuck the Japs or not?

I say we want.

The scrapping mania continues worldwide, with Britain scrapping older Bs and the US scrapping their last CAs. We'll do the same with some of our older ships. After we build the new ones, of course. We will not be surprised with our pants down.

New tech.

We get the blueprints of the new US main battleship. I'm not impressed. Bar the array of 14 inch guns the project seems to be kinda mediocre.

Our new BC is commissioned into the Navy! It's the chance to scrap one of our older CAs. Nowadays they are more of a liablility than anything else. The Quintus, one of our older CAs, gets scrapped and the new Izmail class inherits name and captain.

With a BC out of the docks, we start renewing some older Bs by giving them Directors, changing machinery and switching old 12 inch double turrets with excellent quality 14 inch single turrets.

Our new nine Destroyers are ready, and we scrap the 15 years old 400 tons ones. Generation change, I say.

Four new submarines are added to the fleet, building time 18 months.

The Quintus II is ready.

Do you know that the new imgur update has made uploading images for this LP almost a smooth experience? Impressive, I may say.

And its crew gets tested as we decide to show the world the POWER of the Russian Navy.

Austria reads it as an insult. AuSTRIA?!?!?!?!?! WHAT?

I don't want to go to war against Austria, I want Japan

As the new ships gets out of the dock, we order six more 1500 tons Destroyers. This peace will let us rebuild and prepare.

We tech up, we trade with Britain, we rebuild ships....

The Britons sell us huge 16 inch guns, even if their quality is not the best....

That, on the other hand, is NOT the Author, as this is an image from the random Nets. Still impressive, though.

*salivates*

Gimme another...simply another chance...to shine....

The yellow bastards manage to ruin the paint of one of our magnificent ships. This cannot stand. We have to protest. Don't we?

YES! YES! YES!

Almost....almost....

I sound like the script of a 80' porn movie.

The second BC is now operative, and tensions with Japan hit a new high. That said, things are proceeding smoothly. For our future plans, some extra CL will be needed, but we now must choose what to build, as we have the resources to start a new program:

1) A new generation of Battleships.

2) A new generation of Battlecruisers.

A) Let's go for 16 inches guns. Fuck quality, Bigger is Better. And the Japanese will understand this too well.

B) Quality. 12-14 inches guns are more reliable. It's skill that matters.

The AI is kinda big on BCs in this playthrough, it seems. And don't worry, WE WILL HAVE YOUR WAR WITH JAPAN. I will do a micro update about them shortly.

And I'm sorry for the lack of updates for a week or two, I got hooked on System Shock 1 and ... well... got lazy. Won't happen again, I promise!

 

[Baardhaas]

Good to see another update!

1 A

 

[Beastro]

Early small destroyers actually have some use later on I find. You can set them to CP/ASW freeing up newer ships for fighting while they're so small and out of date they're dirt cheap.

Go 16 inchers. You can upgrade the quality later.

It's hard if the AI is going with BCs because you'll encounter them a lot and they'll eat your raiding cruisers alive, especially the older, slower ones. that can't try to escape. Might be good to open the almanac and post a SS of the fleet lay outs as you might need more BBs nonetheless to keep up if fleet actions take place.

 

[Luka-boy]

1 A

14 inches are great in the early game, but you want something bigger for the late game. 16-18 inches with at least quality 0 and decent enough crews can wreck anything.

 

[Grimwulf]

1А

Russo-Japanese war is so close, I can already see their armies.

 

[Kalin]

 

[Endlösung]

16 inches of raw girth up the ass!

Do you know that the new imgur update has made uploading images for this LP almost a smooth experience?

Do you know that there are tools to do the chores, for example ShareX? You were uploading the pics with the Imgur's native UI and grabbing links from there...?

 

[Dreaad]

Dayyālu this LP is pretty great man.

 

[Dayyālu]

Do you know that there are tools to do the chores, for example ShareX? You were uploading the pics with the Imgur's native UI and grabbing links from there...?

No I did not (thanks!)

This LP is written employing Russian Tech, thus alcohol, depression, and a twenty years old version of Paint

Early small destroyers actually have some use later on I find. You can set them to CP/ASW freeing up newer ships for fighting while they're so small and out of date they're dirt cheap.

Go 16 inchers. You can upgrade the quality later.

It's hard if the AI is going with BCs because you'll encounter them a lot and they'll eat your raiding cruisers alive, especially the older, slower ones. that can't try to escape. Might be good to open the almanac and post a SS of the fleet lay outs as you might need more BBs nonetheless to keep up if fleet actions take place.

I'd prefer at this point to build 500-600 tons Patrol Destroyers instead of relying on 400 tons pieces of scrap. But yeh, I think I'll let the 500 tonners in the roster to be patrol ships.

As you can see, we are falling a bit behind the other powers (thanks to losing two BBs in the wars). France and great Britain are big on BCs, and the US and Germany rely more on BBs. Our next war can be against anyone, so I don't know what to focus on clearly.

We are "Very advanced" in tech - thanks to trading with Britain - and our Sub fleet is the biggest one. 21 subs with four more incoming, while Austria, the only one following us in mass sub building, has 12. And I don't care much about Austria, tbh.

Japan has a small fleet compared to ours. And their tech is inferior. They have an huge dock size, though, almost 10k tons more than us and the biggest in the world. What for, I ask, as they aren't building 40k tons BBs. A direct conflict would be organizing a good Pacific Fleet, sending our best ships. If we can manage to avoid dreaded surprise attacks we can easily blockade them and crush them in a direct confrontation.

Their navy is small but up to date, it seems. Compared to pretty much everyone else, as the world at large (bar Germany) tries to keep even 1899 Cruisers on the roster. Pity is our Bs are probably superior to anything they can field bar Capships thanks to refits and superior tech.

Maybe not. If they had numbers, they could be a harsh foe. Comparing their new Kongo class with the Izmail show us a comparable ship, bar in armour. their bite is even a bit heavier, with 13 inchers.

 

[Storyfag]

Also,
1A

 

[Comte]

1A

 

[Beastro]

As you can see, we are falling a bit behind the other powers (thanks to losing two BBs in the wars). France and great Britain are big on BCs, and the US and Germany rely more on BBs. Our next war can be against anyone, so I don't know what to focus on clearly.

We are "Very advanced" in tech - thanks to trading with Britain - and our Sub fleet is the biggest one. 21 subs with four more incoming, while Austria, the only one following us in mass sub building, has 12. And I don't care much about Austria, tbh.

You're not that too far behind. The way the battle mechanics work you can easily narrow the field in combat by selectively picking and choosing capital ship battles and choosing the right moment to go in and wipe the floor with them. Like with most AI, it's usually best to go into a battle slightly, or even heavily, outnumbered to have a chance of getting kills in before retreating, since the AI never fight you outnumbered. They'd rather lose the war and territory from invasions until they collapse than sending 2 BBs against 5.

The only faction I'd actually really be wary of would be France. They can concentrate those BCs and you run into them all the time, since they're treated as cruisers in battles, meaning you'll see them in anti-raiding pop up battles, cruiser battles, convoy escort/attack, etc. BBs only are involved in fleet battles, so if someone has a ton more than you, you can still avoid combat with them so long as they can't blockade you. That's what France will do with only one BB and no Bs.

You'll wipe the floor with Japan, they don't even have CAs, so once the BCs and CLs are dead you can dominate the trade war. Germany would be easy to handle, America too. They split their navy and the US often seems reluctant to send a large fleet to blockade you, since they lack bases in your home regions and a damaged ship in a region without a base gets interned.

My advice would be to work towards getting a convoy defense or attack battle happening with Japan, then try to draw their BCs into chasing you while you manually charge your DDs at them to try and get some torpedo hits in. You have a large DD margin and can afford to lose a few. Once they're dead you have the chance opportunity of setting a BC to raid so that their CLs will get sucked into unavoidable battles and meet it, which risks your BC being interned or scuttled from random events that come with raiding. The other alternative is to skip that and hope the BCs will get the intercept mission. You could leave your CLs in Europe so it's always the BC that gets the intercepts, but you CLs are probably suitable for the job.

Other than that, I'd recommend that once their battle fleet is neutralized than you maintain you force of Pre-Dreads in South East Asia to maximize your chance of invading Formosa so you can grab both of their colonies in one war (South Korea has a value of 6, Formosa 5). All you need to do for that is move ships back a forth from SEA and NEA every so often once they get an asterisk by their status.