Kommandant Flauschige

On most of the higher missions I often have enough tech / funds to build a almost-full 18in gun BB with maxed-out gunnery buffs in Shipyard. It's rather variable whether there's high or low accuracy, but even without performing the 'wiggle', my ships can, at long range, usually plow a lot of AP into them by about the 5th salvo. As I usually play at 5x speed for the sake of convenience, the long 18in reload doesn't bother me. Also since the 18in are so large I just pop in as many of the next highest calibre guns, and I'm not certain, but I THINK they're getting slightly less accuracy than the 18 inchers, although I almost always engage at long range, so there might be just raw gun range involved there too. There was only one mission, the one where you escort 2x TR against 3x CA, where my guns shot so bad they only hit the target about 3x throughout the entire mission. I have no idea what it was (and since the 2nd objective was to have 100% of TR survive I won anyway), but in no other battle did I ever get that bad accuracy. To be fair the enemy CA's didn't have that great accuracy either, but by armor was not enough to stop their barrage, and my pre-dreadnought went down after about an hour's worth of fighting.

Thanks for the prompt reply! I think that the level abovementioned kind of... well... shows rather clearly the misbalancing of the tech, in my opinion. I also note, with relation to 'all lessons of naval design'... Isn't naval design's greatest objective to make a ship that can fight effectively as possible? Upon that principle I can assume that using whichever technique you like, so long as it works (or has been proven to work), will guarantee the greatest amount of success. Now, for me, my technique putting the maximum allowable number of guns of the largest allowable calibre on my ship has gotten me through almost all of the missions where you can use any BC's or BB's. Very good point about H.M.S. Dreadnought, though. One of my favorite parts about UA:D is simply bypassing all those centuries of naval action that made the technological and design progression possible and simply design ships as modern as I can (advanced Fire Control, ALL guns along the centerline, etc, etc.).

I've played through slightly over half of the Academy missions, and one of the most delightful missions was "The Modern Battleship". It puts you up against a few CL's, a few CA's, about 5 DD's, and 2 dreadnoughts. I was allowed to put 2x triple 18in turrets, 1 fore and one aft, plus, for the sole reason that there wasn't enough space on the deck for more 18inchers, I popped in 2x triple 15in turrets, superimposed behind the 18in ones. In addition there were a few assorted 8in and 6in turrets placed here and there. Now, by putting the ship through a gunnery-aimed refit, I could semi-accurately land hits at the maximum range of my guns. That allowed me to start firing at the enemy far, FAR before they had time to even detect me. I was able to utterly wreck a CA, 2x DD's, and a BB before I was spotted. I simply kept blazing away, and soon had sunk all but two destroyers. At that point I'd run out of ammo for all of my main battery guns, but as I was given enough displacement in the Shipyard to slap the Moon onto the fantail and still get decent mileage, I had used that to its fullest, boosting up my speed to the max. That meant I could make about 36kts, which subsequently meant I could dodge any and all torpedoes that even glanced in my direction. My secondaries, kitted out with Auto-Reloading and Hydraulic Turrets, soon sent the last of the impotent enemy to Davy Jone's Locker. I finished off the mission with roughly 98% structural damage and 80% flooding. Oh, did I mention I had a twenty-inch-thick belt? All of this leads me to make a... shall we say... informed point that a bit too much displacement was handed out for the mission. Thoughts?

IJN Zapang kind of sounds like the IJN's response to the HMS Agincourt... "Oh, so, you think that many guns is impressive?" *takes 50m long roll of blueprints out of briefcase* "Well, look at THIS!" *picture of IJN Zapang*

Speaking of pre-dreadnoughts, can anybody give me some tips for the Pre-Dreadnoughts v.s. Dreadnoughts Academy mission? I've tried to go with my usual equation of As Many of the Biggest Guns Possible + High TNT + Super-Heavy Shells + Auto-Reloading + Electrical Turret Rotation = Victory (most of the time), BUT As that is essentially trying to modernize pre-dreadnoughts into BB's, it doesn't seem to have worked very well (also probably because you can fit max 2x main battery turrets on those hulls and max 11-12in guns).

If you've ever played Killerfish Games's turn-based Atlantic Fleet and/or Pacific Fleet, then you should be rather frustrated with the abovementioned mechanic... I played through the Battle of the Atlantic mode, and since I'd sunk so many of the British capital ships so early on, about 60% of their convoys were only escorted by 1 - 2 DD's. If I was playing in, say, a Graf Spee, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, or basically anything with 11in guns or above, I could simply switch to HE and with even a near miss I would usually destroy at least one module on the ship. Also, Atlantic Fleet's 'sinking mechanic' basically revolved around hits below the waterline, although DD's seemed to be an exception to that rule in that even one to three main battery hits would sink it instantly. I've also noted that when looking at the damage reports popping up overhead the ships that TB's can take around... maybe... 5000 struc.dmg. before sinking, or, alternatively, about 5x Flooding due to their CA-grade bulkheads.

In which mission it happened? I was doing the Dreadnoughts v.s. Modern Heavy Cruisers mission. How much time passed since start of mission? I'm not exactly sure, but all my guns were firing and I'd already sunk one CA, so I'd guess 10-15 minutes. How many other missions were played before crashing? None. I had opened up the game and immediately selected that mission. How many ships were engaged for you and enemy (Many/Few/A specific nbr. if you remember)? There were two battlecruisers and two heavy cruisers. What was the distance between engaging ships (close/medium/long range)? As almost all of my many secondaries were missing, I'd say long range. Which speed boost you used? Non-applicable. My BB was going at 36 kts. Were there a lot of gun shootings, or few (e.g all main guns firing plus secondaries)? Every single one of my secondaries were blazing away. Have you ever experienced this error-message outside of a mission? If yes, where (Main Menu, Custom Battle etc.)? No, never.