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In Progress Let's Play: Rule The Waves

tindrli

Arcane
Joined
Jan 5, 2011
Messages
4,465
Location
Dragodol
Mr. @Dayyālu does history knows name of a :troll: mastermind behind those steam proppelled subs?

The K-class submarines were a class of steam-propelled submarines of the Royal Navy designed in 1913. Intended as large, fast vessels with the endurance and speed to operate with the battle fleet, they gained notoriety and the nickname of "Kalamity class", for being involved in many accidents. Of the 18 built, none was lost through enemy action but six sank in accidents. Only one ever engaged an enemy vessel, hitting a U-boat amidships though the torpedo failed to explode.
 

Baardhaas

Cipher
Patron
Joined
Dec 1, 2014
Messages
576
Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here
Baardhaas , I know you like 'em with a bit of meat, but this is worrying.
Most excellent! A destroyer worthy of the designation 'DD'.

Mr. @Dayyālu does history knows name of a :troll: mastermind behind those steam proppelled subs?
Rumor has it that it was the man in this pic, his name remains a mystery though.
1327121341_2027_FT0_cajun_yacht_small.jpg
 

Dayyālu

Arcane
Joined
Jul 1, 2012
Messages
4,466
Location
Shaper Crypt
These updates are too short. When is shit gonna start happening?

:negative: It's a year par update, and I'm lazy

Next turn, if we are quite lucky.

War with England could have been obtained since 1902, but an endless parade of Britons raping my innocent Russian booty would not have been "fun". "Shit gonna happen" in 1904 or 1905 for sure, my bloodthirsty German friend.

Often, you get a war, then 4-5 years of peace, then another war. In most games, you get 5 to 6 military conflicts.
 
Joined
Mar 10, 2011
Messages
1,160
Thanks for reminding me this game exists. Finally pulled trigger and bought the game. Pretty damn expensive for someone not used to paying in dollars or euro but worth the money anyway. I've been playing as Japan and by the "end" of the game in 1925 I've managed to make them easily 3rd power in the world (hard to compete with Britain and US on historical funds).
So while we're waiting for OP to deliver how about I'll showcase some of my late game designs?

LSjKSat.png


First pair of Fuji class battleships was delivered in 1925, just in time to completely smash Russian navy which attacked me while I was busy invading French colonies. In just two engagements Russians lost all of their capital ships (and majority of smaller ones too) while I lost grand total of 2 destroyers. I'll be upgrading those with advanced director pretty soon.

Ajx1UyW.png


After war has ended (with my victory of course) and all Fuji class BB's were delivered I decided to use my funds to refresh my line-up of lighter ships. Compared to my previous somewhat old design this one can bear 50% more guns in a broadside thanks to triple mount turrets, also thanks to superimposed turret in front it can still bring equivalent of broadside of the old design while chasing.
Another big change is moving torpedo tubes above deck, this lets them use them without having to slow down and there is simply more of them too. Also mines.

iQRCnl3.png


New destroyer. Same speed and torpedo tubes as previous design but compared to 4 4inch guns this one has whole lot more guns and again superimposed turret in front. This is light cruiser level of firepower on a destroyer. I foresee many small engagements going my way in the future.

Once I'm done with those I'll be looking to lay down new battle cruisers since my Kurama class as oldest capital ship build domestically is getting long in the tooth. I even have design prepared, I just need to free up funds.

BTW here is nice let's play series where I first discovered this game: https://youtu.be/TZafbFhmQgE
 

Dayyālu

Arcane
Joined
Jul 1, 2012
Messages
4,466
Location
Shaper Crypt
Very nice. I hope to get a update up this evening or tomorrow morning (and I'll play 1904&05 together if it means to get a good war going for my bored public).

If we can compare endgame designs, this is what I got for my last US game (ended in 1925 after beating savagely Germany a ton of times):

aox7GhT.jpg


My last BB design, built for the "Big Guns All Day Every Day" strategy. Should have removed the two Torpedo Tubes, but I was lazy and I liked a bit of flexibility. This one was designed to engage everything from range. Never got the chance of use 'em, though. I know I'm terrible with names, "(type) Model - 0X Year of Design" is a nice scheme, however.

UxD9HpA.jpg


This one instead was a mainstay for the midgame/lategame and the class got a lot of kills (you can notice the experience stars on this one, a pre-dread battleship even). I don't know, instead of building battlecruisers bulding fast CA to hunt those CL formations proved efficient. 10 inch guns can engage everything short of BB with a good chance to sink. The Torpedo Tubes are always there as a last resort, I think I never used them in all the battles. Torpedoin' is for Destroyers, Big Guns do the real work.

SIymprd.jpg


Destroyer guns are not worth it, and they are mostly escorts for the big ones. Give 'em some torpedoes and hope they don't fuck up too bad.

It's nice to notice that I focused mostly on guns while you built ships with a lot of torpedoes and even mines (while I left mines to specialized Minesweeper vessels). Different playstyles breed different ships. And torpedoes never gave me much luck or loot!

 
Joined
Mar 10, 2011
Messages
1,160
I had a lot of success with my armoured cruisers early in the game, some of them had 5+ stars (scrapped them only fairly recently when they simply couldn't keep up with new ships any more), well they kind of had to be good because I opted to start without any B's (then later on I was lucky to get treaty with UK so I could safely buy pair from them, just to help with defending against blockades).

Unlike AI I treat my battle cruisers essentially like upgunned CA's I don't build them BB huge and expensive. The point is to have enough speed and armor to hunt down any cruisers and still have big enough guns to be useful in bigger engagements. Eh I'll post pic when I'll get around to building my new BC's. They are likely going to be around 20000 displacement and use my quality 1 12 inch guns.

I disagree on usefulness of guns on DD's. Without decent firepower they aren't particularly good at screening your big ships from other DD's executing flotilla attacks, one simply does not hit destroyer with a torpedo (ok it does happen but rather rarely). 4-5 inch guns are also going to be useful against light cruisers in smaller engagements, again good luck trying to score hit with torps. IMHO torps are mainly useful for finishing off big ships and in poor visibility. It of course helps that as Japan you have bonus for torpedo research. I sank quite a few ships with them, later on even scored some long range hits on ships that were still moving (muh torp training). Of course you can use destroyers in small numbers just as torpedo boats, but outside of finishing dead in the water ships and scaring off BC's while your cruisers retreat they will be useless, which isn't necessarily bad thing if for instance you opt to use large fleet of light cruisers for among other things screening for capital ships. If anything you can't complain about options in this game. I also love emergent gameplay you're getting here, anything from geography to rng throwing events at you to what rng will give you in research breakthroughs will significantly affect your game.

For this LP I'd say you should prioritize machinery (among other stuff like ship design ofc) research to get oil firing ASAP. It will help you build long range ships that don't suck. Man they really screwed you over by picking Russia imo hardest nation to play. Easy to get blockaded not to mention how hard it will be to defend your asian ports. If you plan to build any B's, BB's soon maybe try doing some short range port defenders? But then again they will be dead weight if you get into war with Japs. Hard to say.
 

PocketMine

Savant
Patron
Joined
Apr 14, 2014
Messages
185
Location
Land of lóve
Serpent in the Staglands Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech
We can design such things, but sadly we can't choose such a peculiar form and the game will get insane in trying to categorize it for AI use (it believes it's a Pre-Dread Battleship). Furthermore, to get it "right" we need to add 2000 tons to the stock 2500 of the historical Novgorod.

Novgorod was first and smallest ship. Livadia Popov's third ship had 4500t displacement and he planed to build 4th ship with 8x 12inch batteries and displacement of 11000t when new tsar sacked him. Anyway that book is exagerating all "worst" ships weaknesess. Both Novgorod and Vice Admiral Popov served over 30 years.

I want to be the Captain if you decide to build one of those round ships.+M
 

Dayyālu

Arcane
Joined
Jul 1, 2012
Messages
4,466
Location
Shaper Crypt
Happy 1903, folks.

ts2v8AB.gif


gTDyrLN.gif


The endless march of Russian Science continues. Dock expansions too, to build better and stronger ships.

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The endless march of Russian Corruption continues. Stern refusals too, to get a more prestigious and proper Admiralty.

g4MEfTx.gif


Periscopes! In the Real World, Naval periscopes were invented in the middle of the 19th century, but only in the first years of the 20th century we got sub periscopes. Today, it's amostly an outdated tech, as our subs employ a thing called "photonic mast", that does not require the space of a conventional periscope.

0Yy7dI9.gif


Fuck you, Germany. Our best spy, after managing to escape from the Japanese rape fetishists, got another hit.

ZUZMbP2.gif



Our first batch of Submarines is ready. I'll order the building of some more, to keep reasonable numbers. Plus, Coastal Subs are somewhat cheap. See, you would see this if I did not fail to save up the screenshot and had to use a 1905 one. No Sir, no mistake here.

lzxoHEf.gif


Ach. Our spineless diplomats agreed to a Treaty. THIS IS GREAT FOR US.

As you see, a Treaty forces all nations to limit their ships for years to a limited tonnage and gun quality. This is good for us, as nations with bigger docks cannot build bigger ships and we can focus on more coherent designs without worrying for the Germans or the US to drop a 24k tons BB on us. This will impact in this timeline on the BB design, however, as our Dreadnaught ships will need far more years to reach the seas. It's a very interesting result of the RNG, and it will make the match more fun.

The inspiration for this event is the grandaddy of all the Naval Treaties, the Washington Naval Treaty of 1921-22, that gave to the post WW1 powers some stability, avoid a new retarded "battleship&battlecruisers" arms race between the US, Britain and Japan. The Treaty was somewhat harsh on ship development, and killed at last the battleship arms race that was on since the beginning of the 20th century. In exchange, there was a boom of "Treaty Cruisers", under 10k tons and with 8inch guns.

Japan felt that the treaty was unfair, and Italy was also fucked a bit by the details. It's no surprise that, governed by fascist of nationalist governements, both Italy and Japan denounced and abandoned the treaty in the mid-30.

Back to the game, WE LAUGH

ev9jYOw.gif


France, the poor thing, has to scrap two brand new battleships. The pain

WSLv93Q.gif


BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Our Eustafi Class, being of 18k tons and with 12inch guns, is completely safe. As John Romero would say, Suck it Down, US.

89iGQHb.gif


New Tech developments.

6GRGDvq.gif


I check the Almanac and notice that we are keeping up nicely with the other power, bar with Germany that started to build FIVE NEW BATTLESHIPS. They have the biggest budget after Britain, but there is no way they are going to keep up with that.

2SkZlsT.gif


Our spies get the plans of the new British Armoured Cruisers. We are a bit behind, it's noticeable. At least we are faster, and this lets us decide the tempo of the engagement or even if we want to engage at all.

HurG63V.gif


I redesign a bit the Eustafi Class to keep it up with the times and order a new one. Germany's building spree is worrying, even if our budget takes a hit. Of course, the next month we get the Central Firing tech (and I lose the screenshot AGAIN). Whatevs, we'll get the option to mount the new one when the ship is almost done.

As no war and things happened in this year, as promised WE GO FORTH.

1904!

wzLHwzv.gif


Did I say that I love our Autocratic government? The Tsar is wise and led by God.

8GGU4a5.gif


Goddammit Russian economy is always shit, no matter the era. We should centralize everything and let the Tsar choose what to build every five years or so. I bet it would work better. Guaranteed.

On the other hand, now Germany and Japan hate us almost as Britain. Progress!

dqPiDo4.gif


BXf5CQK.gif


The invisible hand of the Tsar guides our research and our economy.


EynTTzD.gif


I bet it's the Germans. It's always the Germans. And Germany now hates us as much as Britain. War looms in the horizon.

RUAmswj.gif


Another tension hit with Germany. I redeploy part of the Pacific Fleet to Europe, war WILL happen.

sxy5oXa.gif


Our new ships will be ready for the Germans to rush out of the kelp forests, screaming as they always do.

SCB1N3S.gif


Someone is joking. No mercy against the Krauts. The Tsar is with us on this one.

rCaWdFQ.gif


We can. Trust me. We even have budget to build new ships now.

And we reach January 1905.

Several things needs to be said: we are marching full force for a war against Germany. IF we don't fuck up too bad, we can with this. Germany is a power comparable with us in ship numbers, and their new battleships will not be ready in time for the upcoming war. They have an edge in tech, but we have an edge in flexibility with a far bigger Sub Force (and Germany lacks ASW tech).

Furthermore, we have extra funds and we can choose if waste them in building new ships (that wont be ready in time for war) or in extra training. I don't know, honestly, what would be the better choice. Some of our designs are getting quite old (particularly the Light Cruisers and the Armoured Cruisers) and some refitting could be in order, but the war is near and our budget just now stabilized from economical growth and by the end of the works on the new Eustafi class.

Next year we'll get your beloved war, my subordinates. I'll hope you will happy. If I get the German army on Leningrad Sankt-Peterburg I'm gonna employ you as ballast for the subs. Ahh, didn't I tell you that the engine simulates even land warfare, in a RNG fashion?

I'm sorry if some images seems to be borked or doubled, my (lack of a proper) image capturing software is showing and I should improve it. Sorry!
 
Joined
Mar 10, 2011
Messages
1,160
Do training but gunnery only, instead of building new ships focus on retrofitting what you already have with better fire control. With your monthly surplus you'd be able to afford like 2 light cruisers and chances are they will arrive too late to even make a difference.
 

Baardhaas

Cipher
Patron
Joined
Dec 1, 2014
Messages
576
Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here
With the new limitation it seems that right now is a good time to crank out some 18.000 ton ships, without them being obsolete as soon as they are ready. If your tech allows it, you can be upgrade them later.

edit: What happens if the new vessels turn out te be rather chubby, are you forced to scrap them?
 
Unwanted

Endlösung

Unwanted
Joined
May 1, 2016
Messages
340
Moar ships. Its the russian way.

Is our research outperforming? And why?
 

Dayyālu

Arcane
Joined
Jul 1, 2012
Messages
4,466
Location
Shaper Crypt
1905.

5sZ35Dc.jpg


JohnTheRevelator , I never dared to touch the ammunition doctrine. Did you find something suboptimal in the stock use? Just asking!

bCVsztq.jpg


We follow the counsel of wiser minds, and we improve training and rebuild our Pervenets Class with better firing systems. It's expensive as hell, but we should manage to keep up fittingly with our reserves. The upgrade of the Imperator Petr Veliki will prove far more difficult and costly, as they are a far shittier design. Far, far shittier. Damned the autodesign system for Legacy Fleets.

I hope the Germans will leave us four months more of peace.

pNMX33y.jpg


We can't afford another Battleship now. With sorrow in our hearts, we Decline.

Uuaen3u.jpg


I wonder.... those Nipponese are truly corrupt and unwholesome beings. Who knows what they do in the secret of their lairs? I mean, maybe they are all like RK47 and live full of sorrows and pain. I mean, look at them!

jhwvdi.jpg


You can almost feel the pain in ther souls, only mitigated by the loyalty to their Emperor. One day we'll get to the reckoning, and see what God-Emperor in this planes has the biggest dick. For now, we will check what Caesar is the most hardcore, against teh Germans.

XxWyFgC.jpg


Should I even care?

wP8D3ol.jpg


The Tsar, in his wisdom, thinks that sport that bridge different people and avoid conflict. We disagree, saying that shooting drowning Germans or Japanese is the only proper sport of men and kings alike. Our opinion, though.

ZD5Y0YI.jpg


No doubt this will end up in the hands of the Krauts, but we need the money to keep up the rebuilding. It will work, I guess.

JBX7Dqi.jpg


*Sobs* I lead a navy of overweight daughters. The shame.

Ahh, yes, this is our first Minesweeper (MS). By manual definition, they are

Minesweeper (MS)
(This definition actually includes all kinds of minor combatants without torpedoes). Displacement less than 1800 and belt armour 2 inches or less. Gun calibre can be maximum of 6 inches. Cannot have torpedoes.

Minesweepers, well, sweep for mines. Mines are quite dangerous for our bigger ships, and the role of Minesweepers is essential to avoid embarassing losses. The tech race between mine tech and minesweeping tech in our Real World is fairly interesting, and another of those "less known" parts of naval warfare. The first minesweepers in our world appeared pretty much in this age during the Russo-Japanese war, employing former torpedo boats.

Mine-laying ships where, funnily enough, more lethal than battleships. For example,

Amur1898-1904.jpg


On May 15, 1904, the Russian minelayer Amur planted a 50-mine minefield off Port Arthur and succeeded in sinking the Japanese battleships Hatsuse and Yashima.

Impressive.

MgLhPFY.jpg


Our Battleships finish the rebuilding. Good. Grimwulf proves he's not good only at cutting meat and drinking. He will soon have to fight for his life and position, like a true Russian. Or something.

xiuAGwT.jpg


Yes, Tsar. You are right. Time to finish this. We go to war.

1024px-HMS_Dreadnought_%281911%29_profile_drawing.png


And in the same glorious turn, we get the Tech to build Dreadnoughts (BB). AND I LOST THE SCREENSHOT. This new kind of ship will revolutionize warfare and luckily everyone can't built them too big or too new thanks to the treaty. I'll explain what Dreads are more in detail when we get to design them. Dare I say, they are the single most important tech we get in the early game , bar subs. The main thing that you should notice is that we now can get three or more centreline turrets. This is relevant, and will help increasing dramatically the firepower.

And of course....

U2M8MH1.jpg


GLORIOUS WAR, WAR. YOU WANTED WAR? WE GET WAR.

cMnsXfY.jpg


We get immediately our first battle, a Cruiser skirmish.

qCRxWas.jpg


And we are lucky as hell (in before Battleship), as the first fight is a small Cruiser skirmish where we lead a single ship. All the space to explain how the combat system works, and the chance of getting first blood on the Germans. But this will have to wait for the next update, hopefully this evening.

The combat system is not too complex (if you automatize some things) but it will require some.... text to be properly explained. Stay with me, Cabinet, things are getting now hot.
 
Joined
Mar 10, 2011
Messages
1,160
Those rebuilds look rather expensive for just fire control. Did you also replace machinery/guns or something?

or more centreline turrets
You jumped straight to 4 centerlines? That's pretty damn nice, not just for BB's. Though with 18000 size limit I'm not sure you'll be able to fit in 4 main turrets on BB.

JohnTheRevelator , I never dared to touch the ammunition doctrine. Did you find something suboptimal in the stock use? Just asking!
Well I'm not exactly seasoned expert. I doubt I have more games under my belt than you. I did try to mess with ammo settings. From time to time I just go through most used guns on my ships check what kind of penetration with my current ammo tech I can expect compare it with armour on relevant designs and set it to AP if it should pen and HE otherwise. Later on when you get SAP ammo I like to set it on big guns to shoot cruisers. For initial settings I usually change big guns to shoot HE at dreadnoughts at range, AP shouldn't be able to pen anyway and I've read on the forum starting fires on early battleships can have explosive results. Later with improved range and elevation on guns you probably should switch back to AP since plunging fire becomes a thing.
 

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