So this is our mighty Empire at game start.
We have two home regions, the Caribbean and the American East Coast. We can only be blockaded in the Caribbean region, but we will lose VPs and our country will complain if we abandon the East Coast.
Our mighty starting fleet as previously shown.
The Bs are
really on the slow side but with good guns, four 12’’ each, but somewhat low armour.
The CAs are basically good cruiser killers but with their 6’’ gun calibre they should stay the heck away from any competitor CA unless they can outnumber it.
Our CLs are good destroyer killers but not great against other cruisers, except the two MacRae class who have 6’’ guns.
Our destroyers are perfectly valid little torpedo boat, with tiny pea-shooters to scare away wandering sea-gulls and three torpedoes each to kill giant hulks of floating steel.
Now normally, my typical strategy in early wars is to make a lot of DDs and seek out night engagements where they can overwhelm the crappy secondaries of the enemy and put torps into them. Now sure, early torpedoes are pretty weak, but battleships tend to have enough armour to completely shrug off their own shells at any ranges while a single torpedo is a death sentence resulting in a lot of sunk cheap DDs but a bunch of dead and sinking expensive battleships.
So I design a new class of Destroyers, the Rat Pack in honour of ValeVelKal. Its role will be to charge in during night engagement and torp the US BBs.
In RTW, as the CSA we will mainly have to fight in both the North American East Coast and the Caribbean regions. Therefore, we will need ships that can transition at will between the two regions in case of war (short range ships can’t do that in times of war) but as they both count as Home regions we don’t take penalties from having cramped ships in either of them.
Later on, we’ll want ships that can fight anywhere near our bases, including foreign stations as you bet we will spread our empire around the world. But for the present time, we will only fight in our two home regions so we can definitively get away with it, especially with cheap expendable DDs.
What’s that you say, I should check what the enemy fleets have? Fine, let’s have a look:
We are just behind the US in capital ships, but superior in DDs. Ok, now let me look at their ships individually.
7’’ OF BELT ARMOR??? ON ALL THEIR BATTLESHIPS???
Ok, change of plan. We will fight them in daylight mano a mano, their puny armour won’t stand a chance against our shells…hi hi hi….
In lieu of the latest news this is our research, with high priority given to AP shells to take advantage of their weak armour.
Since we already have more DD than the US and that our strategy has changed from night torping to day shelling I cancel the Rat Pack program and the crappy Bs the AI had started building and order this beauty from GB’s yard.
Ok, spying to high on the US and GB, let’s get this rolling.
Our first event!
Meh, I have no intention of starting a war against Germany at this point, so I push for an international force for the free budget increase coming from increased tension but they can have that sand pile for all I care.
Nope, the Anglos are building our ships, the Anglos are our friends and they always have. Or at least until we can make better ships locally.
The year of the Lord, 1901
Meh, I generally don’t use 7’’ guns, but potentially early game you can make a decent Light Cruiser like this with them:
Something to think of in the near future maybe as we don’t have the money for that right now.
Go away Germany, we can’t even fight each other at this point.
Free Varnaa
Yeeees, more dakka for the dakka god
You know what, the Alabamas are getting finished I’ll go ahead and make that CL I was talking about before.
LOADS more dakka compared to its predecessors
Year of the Lord 1902
The frogs have big boomsticks and I want them, yes sir!
Yes sir, in case of a war against the US I am certain that our navy will single-handedly decide the issue.
Year of the Lord 1903
Oh my, you’re not gonna make me fight all those guys at the same time RNGesus, are you?
Welp, time to go into heightened training I guess
Gunnery since as I said the US ships armour is made of paper and Night Fighting because it happens more often than you would think and it’s really bad when your crews can’t figure out that that ship that’s spewing death and destruction at you is an enemy until they can see the white of their eyes.
Heeeeeeeeeeeell no (but hell yeah as that allows me to raise tensions with the US and only the US)
In fact I’ll park my fleet on the American East Coast now, I heard Norfolk is lovely this time of year.
Year of the Lord 1904
Now that the Alabamas (three of them) are finished and that we’ve researched 12’’ quality zero I design a new Battleship, the last of our pre-dreadnoughts until Dayyalu gets to tear his hair out tring to decide if he should build that new BB now or wait
just one more month until that
one crucial research is finished.
Even MOAR DAKKA
Wait, what's that I hear coming from our parliament? Cries of havoc? Of dogs of war let loose?
HELL YEAH, GIVE IT TO ME BABY!!!!!!
YES!!!!!!
YEEEEEEES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
..And I'm spent
) as that guarantees two turns each at a minimum.
. We should have voted on that
. Speaking of which, are we going for "historical efficiency of tech" or did you randomize that as well ?
