Lastreaumont

A nice DD, but a little too light concerning guns and torpedoes, isn't she?

Small remark about ship design. French campaign 1930, Light cruiser V hull, Impossible to place rear tower IV to VI, even with max beam.

I think it could be nice to be able to adjust ammunition quantity for each gun caliber. My small ships (CL, DD, TB) often end battles with plenty of ammunitions (or sunk, but this is another problem :-) ), even with low ammunition quantity option. My big ships (CA, BC, BB) often end big battles with no ammunition left for main guns if I don't build them with high ammunition quantity option, but they still have plenty of ammunition for their secondary guns, especially the smaller ones. It can be quite frustratic to flee a battle you dominate juste because your ships run out of ammo, but maybe this happened into history. I'm not a specialist. Does someone know if some historical naval battles ended because of missing of ammunitions?

I noticed the same passion of the AI for torpedo cruisers. So I use small (i.e. easier to manage) fleets of BC, optimised to kill cruisers at moderate range. And because you'll do the torpedo swarm dodge dance all the battle, you'll need BC with quick rotating turrets, capable of 360° rotation. If I start the battle with too many ships, I leave a part of them doing circles in water until they stop, far away from the ennemy, and go to the battle with the others. When my 1st wave is too damaged or run out of ammunition, I order a retreat and continue the battle with my 2nd wave.

It happened to me on a french 1940 campaign. I did 3 big battles against Austria. At the end of the 1st, Austria had my VP, but on the 2 others, VP were distributed correctly. Note: I restarted the game between 1st and 2nd, but not between 2nd and 3rd.

A minimalist and elegant design, maybe a little too much. 2x2 406mm for a 70000t battleship, it looks like "Fire power" prefered to stay at home. :-)

I remember I read a message about the autoresolve that said it was a dirty full random process for now and we should use it at our own risk, but I can't find this message anymore. Maybe my memory sank into the abyss.

I thought about this and I returned back all my task forces to port. And, miracle, I started to have some battles. So, thanks for the idea. :-)

According to displayed ports capacities, I feel there is maybe one or two extra ships into austrian ports. 😄 Another detail: displayed VP between me and Germany are inverted.

I have the same problem too. This is my third campaign playing France (1st in 1890, end in 1902, 2nd in 1900, end in 1905 and 3td in 1900, still playing in 1909). Total of 26 years of campaign, with less than 10 battles. I have some fleets waiting in front of ennemy ports. All my ships are in "sea control". What should I do to meet ennemy ships?

Prototype for a mixed BB-CV maybe. :-)

And if all of this was just a question about names? As far as I'm concerned, game design classes are just design classes. I care about their names just as guidelines, not about historical meaning or role of ships designed with. I choose one or another depending of their available options for the ship I want to have. If the light cruiser I want to create must be a heavy cruiser for the game, no problem, I build her with the heavy cruiser design class but for me she remains a light cruiser. Problems may come when the game will consider specific ships roles corresponding to their game design classes. But now it doesn't seem to be the case.

IMHO there is another advantage for the BC: a better ability to dodge torpedoes. This is an important quality in actual campaign mode, where torpedoes are the most dangerous weapon for player ships. In the last campaigns I played (1920, 1930 or 1940), I completely abandonned BB construction, focusing on various BC designs as main ships. BC are mainly polyvalent, another good quality, when you can't build task forces with complementary ships. My 4 main BC templates are: - big hull with many (5x3) intermediate caliber (305mm to 356mm, according to best available mark level) guns - big hull with some (4x2 or 3x3) big caliber (356mm to 406mm, according to best available mark 3 or mark 4) guns - big hull with few (2x3) biggest caliber (457mm) guns (not often built, rarely more than 1, this template is more for fun than for efficiency) - small hull with few (2x3, sometimes 3x3) intermediate caliber (305mm or 330mm) guns For the 3 first templates, the spirit is fast battleships. For the last template, the spirit is heavy heavy cruiser. With these, I have all the main ships I want. So why should I build more expansive and clumsy BB when I can have BC that can fight with efficiency against ennemy BB, but also against all other ships types? Power projection? Maybe. But, excepted during campaigns with no battles for months (this happened to me few patches ago), I had time to "project" ennemy power projection underwater with my battlecruisers before the naval blocus becomes a real problem.

I agree. Battles with more than 2 ships to manage are very complicated, especially when they start to split off. And this always happends because of swarm torpedoes dodging. Worst situation comes when your ships are separated enough so, when you follow one, the other is too far away and the little yellow sign for torpedoes detection isn't displayed. This happened to me last evening when I did a very hard battle (1930, Germany, hard mode, random opponent, build my own ships) 3BC + 1DD vs 1BB + 1BC + 2CA + 5CL + 4DD. My DD doesn't count (retreating from start, to prevent destruction). The management of each BC was very painful, always switching from one to another to command turns to anticipate torpedoes launchs. I was in the beginning of my campaign, so it took an eternity to my cadet crews to hit and sunk the ennemy. Paradoxically battles become easier later in the campaign, when crews become veteran. They hit the ennemy harder without necessity to come too close, so less torpedoes dodging to do, often from a greater distance (with more space between torpedoes), and ennemy ships have less time to reload. So, I support the idea of the option of a continuous marker for detected torpedoes.

As far as I'm concerned, I think there is no need of a "fire torpedo button". When I started to play the game, I had this problem of not launched torpedoes. So I looked for why and try to understand the process, to see what could be possible without this "fire torpedo button". Here is the result of my investigations: 1 - You need to have a firing solution into the firing angle of your torpedoe launcher to have a fire. 2 - It is very difficult to estimate if 1 is ok or not, even with experience. 3 - the best way to make 1 true is to start to turn just after changing from disabled torpedoes to aggressive torpedoe launch 4 - the torpedoes launchers need time to rotate before firing 5 - don't do very strong turns with your ship: some ships (especially small ones) can turn faster than their torpedoes launchers. 6 - when you design your ship, take care that firing angles of your torpedoes launchers are compatible with how you wanna use them. With some practice you can do things like: on a ship with 2 side deck torpedoes launchers, one with a firing angle more oriented to front and the other one more oriented to rear, you can launch during a turn with one, the other or the two torpedoes launchers, just by choosing when you enable/disable the torpedo launch.

I'm pleased to know they exist because I never see one. Maybe my fleets aren't big enough to trigger this type of event.

To choose my main guns caliber, I take care about the associated Mark level. I often choose the highest caliber for a given Mark level. All the main turrets are the same (caliber and guns number). To choose my secondaries, I take care about max range and weight. Result is often some triple 178 or 152mm, completed with dual 127 or 102 or 76mm, depending of available slots. I'm far away to use all the allowed mounting points, because of weight of course, and I like to have turrets with large firing angles. Also, especially for main turrets, I try to give them the full 360° rotation capability, to reduce rotation time when I'll perform swarm torpedoes dodging dance figures during battle. On current game versions (up to 1.03 included), I also use some 51mm secondary guns to balance my ship, abusing of their enormous weight balance effect comparing to their weight.

I'm a little more generous on armor thickness. (maybe too much?) For a 1920 BB design (and sometimes for BC too, because I often use heavy armored BC instead of BB), I use following values: Main Turrets sides: 410mm Main Turrets top: same as Main Deck. Main belt: 410mm. Fore/aft belt: 150 to 250mm. Main deck: 150 to 200mm. Fore/aft deck: half of main deck's value. Superstructure: 40 to 60mm. Conning tower: 410mm. Armor quality: always best available Bulkheads: many Speed: 30kn or higher No main side turrets

I always build my own fleet too, and play only in 1920 and after. Fleet heart is some SOTA, big, fast and well armored BC. They are more very fast battleships than real BC. I add also few heavy gunboat DD. If I still have money, I build 2 or 3 CA, with a design similar to the german pocket battleships, but faster and better armored. All ships have good speed, to run after fleeing AI. I don't build BB, because of the shipyard tonnage limitation, which is often very low compared to BB hulls maximum tonnage. Sometimes I start to build a BB during the campaign, when I rise the shipyard size high enough, but I never have time too acheive the construction before the end of the campaign.

I had a similar engagement last evening. 10 german DD ambushed my britain BC at short range. Luckily the range wasn't as short as your's (maybe because I played a 1920 campaign), so I had enough time to start an evasive manoeuver to dodge the torpedoes swarm. But after this very hot beginning, it became a turkey hunt for my BC which sank the majority of the DD. I agree about the good point for the AI behaviour: very agressive in the beginning to try to take advantage of the spawn situation and start to retrait when realize the target was a bit too strong. I liked playing this destroyer ambush, but I think it can become very frustating with too disadvantageous spawn situation.

Top view of a nice "never enough guns french battle cruiser". 😊

I tried to unlock all the starting dates also on my laptop. It works. :-)

My personnal taste goes to later periods (1920 and 1930), with lots of options to build big expensive ships, deadly torpedoes swarms to dodge, long range detection and precise guns.

A little experience to confirm my hypothesis about a mismatch between lateral and longitudinal somewhere in the calculation of the weight offset. My intuition tells me the turret near the edge of the hull should have more impact than the other one, but its impact is only 2.5% versus 3.6% for the other turret, as shown on my screenshots extracts. Test done with german heavy cruiser hull II, 3x127mm turrets, 1940 custom battle, v0.96.

I purchased the game directly on your website. Does that mean I'll have to get entangled with this sh.t of Steam when I'd like to play, instead of only our actual launcher?