Dayyālu
Arcane
Unnnngh.
Ok.
Let's get the interface over quick. Maybe no one will care, but muh *autism* requires a proper order.
The section in red is the Log&Random shit tabs. We have there our Order of Battle, our Log (that will give us the results of shooting and the messages for the ships) the objective&report tabs. Everything is pretty much what it says on the tin.
Blue. All the usual random crap with zooming, save games ad exit. Quite relevant to our interests are the three circles that we can enable, Spotting Range, Firing Range and Torpedo Range, from the bigger to the smaller. All the Ranges are influenced by the sea and climatic conditions, so if you are lucky you can get in the middle of the enemy formation in a dark and stormy night without even knowing it. Once I lost a DD 'cause in the night a CL rammed it. Sad story.
Green. Despite it being "animated" in real time, the game is pretty much turn-based. Every turn the game checks direction, fire and random stuff, and the result is animated. We can set up the speed of the animation and the amount of turns we want to play in a single go, from 1 to continous. We can even check the Almanac if we are curious about our opposition's ships.
In brown, the wind&sea conditions. As I said, essential.
Last, the most important tab, down on the left, in yellow. That little set of commands is for speed, direction and targeting.
We are playing in Rear Admiral Mode.
Rear admiral's mode: The player can put any divisions in his force on manual or AI control as long as they are within sight of the force flagship. The player can give target orders to divisions. Victory points will be reduced by 10%.
Bluntly put, we can give direct orders only to our Flag Division or to ships in line-of-sight. Admiral mode is even more hardcore, with us giving orders only to our Flag division.
I'm lazy and I like to avoid micro, so Rear Admiral mode is perfect for me.
In this scenario, we have a Cruiser fight. There are other friendly forces in this area, but they are AI controlled and will proceed to kill themselves without our direct supervision. We command the Azova, a 1904 Armoured Cruiser, one of our lastest models.
23 knots of speed in this age is nothing to scoff at, and the main weapons are of relatively good quality for the age. Plus the secondaries are 8 inch, enough to make a dent on older CAs. The worrying thing is crew quality, set at -1. Russkies are tough, but Poor Literacy strikes again.
I guess we can simply move on and see if we get any enemy ships. The weather is Cloudy, but that should not be such a big problem. It's 10.35 in the morning, so the night will not catch up with us soon.
Let's go. For Tsar, God and Russia.
Well, it begins.
When we spot the ship, we are given full control on speed and direction. Time to discover what it is. We increase the speed, and the men ready the guns. As soon as we are sure that it speaks Hundesprache , we open fire.
It's a German CL, a light cruiser of the Nymphe class. Must be a 1899 design, it's slow and poorly armed. In other terms, prey. FULL FORWARD,OPEN FIRE WHEN IN RANGE.
The CL turns tail and runs. Little problem. We are faster. More worrying are the reports from other ships, one of our Destroyers has identified a enemy CA nearby. A more fitting foe, but I am worried for my recon units. Again, they are outside of our control and we can't even see them, only receive the radio reports in the log.
After roughly one hour of hunt, the Nymphe class has lost much of its advantage. It's only a matter of time before one of our guns get a lucky shot in and the Cruiser will be ours. We gotta get that shot in and we have received no further info from our Destroyers. Imagine the laughs if we are found by the German CA.
After several hours of dueling and hunting, the enemy CL gets near the coasts of Sweden. No one has managed to get a hit on the other, and that's not very surprising considering both ships are at full speed, under fire and our crew is, well, subpar. Our hit chance is a magnificent 1,93%, but don't worry, in the Real World even at Jutland (a target rich enviroment) the hit ration was from 4% to 5%. What a waste of the Taxpayers' money.
First blood to the Germans. Several of their hits reach us, damaging our secondary batteries. Drat.
We return the favour. And our bite is a bit.... stronger.
After two hours of dueling, the returing fire from the German cruiser has slackened. Despite our problematic hit ratio, several of our guns have found the enemy's flanks and they are now slowing down. The Cruiser Division of the Captains Baardhaas and Kalin have came to join in the feast, as far as I can see. Good.
But I fear there will be no need. Another hit, and the Nymphe halts. You can see that many of her turrets are destroyed (black) or non-operational (grey). It's time to give a mercy kill to this Naiad (Ahaha, get it? it's a Sea Nymph! So it's a Naia... Ok. I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry.).
With her rudder damaged, the Nymphe beaches. Some kind gentlemen rush to help her out of the predicament (freakin' kill-stealing bastards, hope you get a torpedo).
The German ship is now under a hurrican of fire. One of the peculiarities of the engine is that sunk ships do not immediately explode or sink in a bunch of random pixels. They stay there, burning. You can never be sure if they are dead or if the pixelmen inside are still screaming, waiting for you to be dumb and unleash a last avenging torpedo. It's not like I lost a Cruiser once to that, nooo.
Around 18:00, a light rain starts to fall. The Nymphe is nothing but a burning husk (the triangle symbol signals when a ship is nothing but scrap). We order to get away from the coast, our job here is done. Just seven hours for a fight, exciting!
The Scenario Length is an artificial amount of time before the tac maps ends. OF course, if you are in shooting distance, the match will not stop until you lose contact. On the other side, if you fail to get contact with the enemy at the beginning the game can choose to avoid wasting your time and end a battle sooner.
Holy Mother of Jesus. As you can see, the scenario summary tells us the number of ships in the area. The Germans outnumbered us , but failed to bring all their forces together, and we managed to gain a minor prize before retreating. Remember guys, no radar and no airplane recon. Stuff was difficult in this era.
Minor Victory!
This is our prey, the Thetis. As you saw in the summary, we got extra points by rescuing the sailors from the wreck. Being a good Russian pays.
Sweet, sweet victory points. And we are Blockaded. Fuck.
Well, I'll explain the small details of War and how we are fucked in the next update. In the meantime, enjoy the sweet taste of victory, Codex. It won't last long.
Ok.
Let's get the interface over quick. Maybe no one will care, but muh *autism* requires a proper order.
The section in red is the Log&Random shit tabs. We have there our Order of Battle, our Log (that will give us the results of shooting and the messages for the ships) the objective&report tabs. Everything is pretty much what it says on the tin.
Blue. All the usual random crap with zooming, save games ad exit. Quite relevant to our interests are the three circles that we can enable, Spotting Range, Firing Range and Torpedo Range, from the bigger to the smaller. All the Ranges are influenced by the sea and climatic conditions, so if you are lucky you can get in the middle of the enemy formation in a dark and stormy night without even knowing it. Once I lost a DD 'cause in the night a CL rammed it. Sad story.
Green. Despite it being "animated" in real time, the game is pretty much turn-based. Every turn the game checks direction, fire and random stuff, and the result is animated. We can set up the speed of the animation and the amount of turns we want to play in a single go, from 1 to continous. We can even check the Almanac if we are curious about our opposition's ships.
In brown, the wind&sea conditions. As I said, essential.
Last, the most important tab, down on the left, in yellow. That little set of commands is for speed, direction and targeting.
We are playing in Rear Admiral Mode.
Rear admiral's mode: The player can put any divisions in his force on manual or AI control as long as they are within sight of the force flagship. The player can give target orders to divisions. Victory points will be reduced by 10%.
Bluntly put, we can give direct orders only to our Flag Division or to ships in line-of-sight. Admiral mode is even more hardcore, with us giving orders only to our Flag division.
I'm lazy and I like to avoid micro, so Rear Admiral mode is perfect for me.
In this scenario, we have a Cruiser fight. There are other friendly forces in this area, but they are AI controlled and will proceed to kill themselves without our direct supervision. We command the Azova, a 1904 Armoured Cruiser, one of our lastest models.
23 knots of speed in this age is nothing to scoff at, and the main weapons are of relatively good quality for the age. Plus the secondaries are 8 inch, enough to make a dent on older CAs. The worrying thing is crew quality, set at -1. Russkies are tough, but Poor Literacy strikes again.
I guess we can simply move on and see if we get any enemy ships. The weather is Cloudy, but that should not be such a big problem. It's 10.35 in the morning, so the night will not catch up with us soon.
Let's go. For Tsar, God and Russia.
Well, it begins.
When we spot the ship, we are given full control on speed and direction. Time to discover what it is. We increase the speed, and the men ready the guns. As soon as we are sure that it speaks Hundesprache , we open fire.
It's a German CL, a light cruiser of the Nymphe class. Must be a 1899 design, it's slow and poorly armed. In other terms, prey. FULL FORWARD,OPEN FIRE WHEN IN RANGE.
The CL turns tail and runs. Little problem. We are faster. More worrying are the reports from other ships, one of our Destroyers has identified a enemy CA nearby. A more fitting foe, but I am worried for my recon units. Again, they are outside of our control and we can't even see them, only receive the radio reports in the log.
After roughly one hour of hunt, the Nymphe class has lost much of its advantage. It's only a matter of time before one of our guns get a lucky shot in and the Cruiser will be ours. We gotta get that shot in and we have received no further info from our Destroyers. Imagine the laughs if we are found by the German CA.
After several hours of dueling and hunting, the enemy CL gets near the coasts of Sweden. No one has managed to get a hit on the other, and that's not very surprising considering both ships are at full speed, under fire and our crew is, well, subpar. Our hit chance is a magnificent 1,93%, but don't worry, in the Real World even at Jutland (a target rich enviroment) the hit ration was from 4% to 5%. What a waste of the Taxpayers' money.
First blood to the Germans. Several of their hits reach us, damaging our secondary batteries. Drat.
We return the favour. And our bite is a bit.... stronger.
After two hours of dueling, the returing fire from the German cruiser has slackened. Despite our problematic hit ratio, several of our guns have found the enemy's flanks and they are now slowing down. The Cruiser Division of the Captains Baardhaas and Kalin have came to join in the feast, as far as I can see. Good.
But I fear there will be no need. Another hit, and the Nymphe halts. You can see that many of her turrets are destroyed (black) or non-operational (grey). It's time to give a mercy kill to this Naiad (Ahaha, get it? it's a Sea Nymph! So it's a Naia... Ok. I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry.).
With her rudder damaged, the Nymphe beaches. Some kind gentlemen rush to help her out of the predicament (freakin' kill-stealing bastards, hope you get a torpedo).
The German ship is now under a hurrican of fire. One of the peculiarities of the engine is that sunk ships do not immediately explode or sink in a bunch of random pixels. They stay there, burning. You can never be sure if they are dead or if the pixelmen inside are still screaming, waiting for you to be dumb and unleash a last avenging torpedo. It's not like I lost a Cruiser once to that, nooo.
Around 18:00, a light rain starts to fall. The Nymphe is nothing but a burning husk (the triangle symbol signals when a ship is nothing but scrap). We order to get away from the coast, our job here is done. Just seven hours for a fight, exciting!
The Scenario Length is an artificial amount of time before the tac maps ends. OF course, if you are in shooting distance, the match will not stop until you lose contact. On the other side, if you fail to get contact with the enemy at the beginning the game can choose to avoid wasting your time and end a battle sooner.
Holy Mother of Jesus. As you can see, the scenario summary tells us the number of ships in the area. The Germans outnumbered us , but failed to bring all their forces together, and we managed to gain a minor prize before retreating. Remember guys, no radar and no airplane recon. Stuff was difficult in this era.
Minor Victory!
This is our prey, the Thetis. As you saw in the summary, we got extra points by rescuing the sailors from the wreck. Being a good Russian pays.
Sweet, sweet victory points. And we are Blockaded. Fuck.
Well, I'll explain the small details of War and how we are fucked in the next update. In the meantime, enjoy the sweet taste of victory, Codex. It won't last long.
