RAMJB
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Posts posted by RAMJB
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Well I don't really count the combined triple expansion/Turbine ships as "combined powerplant" per se, though of course nominally it is. Both are steam powered powerplants in essence, then the actual machinery that converts the steam power into mechanic energy is different, but at the core the principle is the same. Use boilers to create steam, use steam to create power. I mean by that standard even "normal" turbine powerplants would be combined ones ,as some shafts would be ran by high pressure turbines and some others by low pressure ones...yet in the end they're not combined powerplants at all, are they? ;).
All the attempts at making a combined steam/diesel powerplant, of which as you mention there were some (though have to admit I had no idea about Chitose having something like that too) were little more than experimental proofs of concept, and they didn't go very well at all. True combined powerplants didn't really become viable until well after WW2 was over, that's the point I'm trying to illustrate here :). -
4 hours ago, IronKaputt said:
Isn't the same goes for diesels too?
As Reaper Jack mentioned, the Deutschlands were diesel powered large warships, and actually historically significant enough as to make the inclusion of diesel as an option mandatory (if it was missing there'd be legion of people demanding the option to use diesels ;)). And of course the "H" battleships were never completed but they had been laid down by the beginning of the war, and they were diesel powered too.
A significant number of large merchant ships used during WW2 used diesel propulsion aswell. Understandable, as the main advantage of a diesel powerplant was mostly range. In fact that was their main selling point, more than reliability. That the Deutschlands ended up being much more reliable than the Hipper's was more a fault of the heavy cruiser than out of some inherent extraordinary reliability trait of the panzerschiffen.
The Hipper class was an engineer nightmare because it's steam propulsion used ultra-high pressure boilers, which were a brand new technology at the time, which of course translated into having serious teething troubles and the inevitable reliability problems associated with all such kind of very new tech in an applied field as warfare.
As a result the Hippers had machineries that were a pain in the butt to keep operational, a handful to maintain, and had the nasty habit of breaking down. Same story with the Twins. But a normal, conventional pressure, steam powerplant wasn't any less reliable than diesels might have been.
Of course there's also the lots of submarines (some of them truly massive) that used diesel-electric propulsion. Not exactly the same and of course it involves submarines, something this game doesn't make the player design (thankfully), but there's that too. -
7 hours ago, IronKaputt said:
So does the 100+ kiloton warships. H-class was planned with steam/diesel propulsion (and so did Yamato at the first place).
The first gas-turbine-powered naval vessel was the Royal Navy's Motor Gun Boat MGB 2009 (formerly MGB 509) converted in 1947(c), no?
And don't forget, that's alternative history game, and unlike (unfortunately) nuclear propulsion, it's not even post-40s tech.
The first use of marine gas turbines (and in the meantime combined propulsion) in a proper warship (as opposed to a small canoe) was a 1960s british frigate.
that a small Motor Gun Boat did test the propulsion as a proof of concept in the late 1940s changes nothing. Turbinia tested steam turbines in 1895 and nobody will demand steam turbines in the tech trees by that date, because they didn't become a thing for larger ships until 11 years later (and then only because Dreadnought was so rushed).
same thing here. Gas turbines might have been present in very small ship testbeds in the late 40s, but they're a post-battleship cold war era propulsion system - out of the historical scope of a game like this.
As for the combined diesel propulsion, it was a proposed thing even before WWI. One of the Kaisers was intended to have steam turbines geared to the two external propellers and a diesel linked to the centerline one. Turns out, Germany couldn't produce diesels of the required power, the ship (PrinzRegent Luitpold maybe? can't remember top of my head) ended up commissioned with only two shafts as a result.
WW2 projects like H or Yamato might have considered combined propulsions at times during their design procedures. Neither of them reached the final design stage with them. H was to be fully diesel powered, Yamato final design (and as built) was fully steam turbine powered. So, there goes the idea again...
There were very good reason why those "combined solutions" didn't happen when they were proposed historically, and that actual combined powerplants in large warships never were a thing until the mid-60s, having them here would make little or no sense as a result. But if you insist on it then sure, include them...
But then do so with all the attached downsides that caused those proposals to never actually happen. And then they won't happen here either because nobody will use them...and then what's the point of having them then?. Let the developers focus their efforts on useful things, not on curio stuff that was proposed historically but that never flew because it wasn't really practical at the time. -
44 minutes ago, IronKaputt said:
Any plans for gas turbines and combined propulsions?
Those are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay post-battleship era technologies.
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On 5/8/2020 at 1:34 PM, HusariuS said:
True, but that doesn't change the fact of ability to create warships with 500mm belt armor xD
EDIT: With Krupp IV armor type!
They're not ships with 500mm of belt armor.
They're ships with the equivalent protection level as 500mm of belt armor of the most basic type would provide compared with the (much thinner) actual plate of a much better armor quality you're using. Completely different things, they do make sense, and they're neither unbalanced nor unhistoric. Historically there were huge leaps of protection quality each time a new advance in armor technology was achieved.
to put it in perspective: In a period of less than 15 years you went from battleships with 18 inches of belt armor to ships with belts of 12 inches of belt armor, yet actually better protected against penetrations. And that was just the transition to Harvey armor. Then came Krupp-pattern armor plate (which was even stronger) and then the progressive improvements on the basics of the Krupp method, the use of Krupp cemented, different kinds of face hardening, introduction of structural steel armor (this was mostly the US with STS though), etc.
But remember that you're seeing -in game- is equivalent armor thickness: it says how thick your armor is calculated on terms of how thick your armor plate is when calculated with the protective capabilities of the basic armor tech. The actual armor thicknesses you're putting on are much thinner.
Why does the game do that?. Because it has to do it somehow. 12 inches of harvey armor do not have the same protective capability than 12 inches of Krupp Cemented armor. The game has to handle it somehow, and the way it does it may seem strange, misleading or counterintuitive, but it's neither of them at all once you get wind of what's going on.
The armoring system is in need of a rework indeed, but from the aspect of armor layouts and distribution - not from the calculation of thicknesses. And maybe labelling the different post-krupp armor techs as something more than "Krupp I, II, etc", but that one would be for flavor mostly, because on a practical sense, and in that aspect, the system that's in place works well.-
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One of the things that was keeping me from making videos of the game was the fix to the excessive speeds (not to mention, at far too early stages) that you saw in the battles. Good news indeed, was really needed ;).
The other thing that's keeping me from making videos of the game is that there's no news about an overhaul of the armor layout system that produces ships were, for instance, the "armor belt" of the designer might aswell be swapped by "hull armor", magazines aren't always covered by your thickest armor, and has the effect of making the armored ends of ships so unrealistically armored that they make WarGaming-like "bow in" tactics look like a sensible representation of naval tactics.Not to mention that it ruins the use of AP and force the use of HE when it makes no historical sense at all. Still waiting for some word about that side of the game to come. The current armor system is a gamebreaking feature for me, as much as the unrealistic speeds achievable were.
For the record, it's not that I'm not making videos because of a "if you don't introduce this thing I'm talking about, I won't make stuff of it", but because the excessive speeds and the ultra-simplistic armor models make up for...let's say, very unrealistic battles that I had a very hard time making constructive criticism about. There's just so many times you can say "this is because this is early stage, it'll get changed somewhere down the line" without becoming tremendously repetitive
, and I only want to showcase the game when what's seen in the videos showcases it very positively for fans of the genre...
Because people like me, who have an interest in naval history, when they see a 41knot battlecruiser with a 13 inch armored belt that covers it from waterline to freeboard and laughs at you shooting AP at strong angles, they're going to raise an eyebrow and not feel very interested. And I want people to like what they see so they buy the game ;).-
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On 4/15/2020 at 7:34 AM, Steeltrap said:
My recollection is her TDS succeeded in preventing any damage making it through the armour scheme inboard of the TDS. In other words, the TDS area flooded, but nothing else. Isn't that more or less the definition of a successful TDS?
Circunstancial.
Registered and confirmed torpedo hits on Bismarck were three aerial torpedoes from Swordfish planes, and couple from Dorsetshire when she was on her last gasps and sinking. Rodney claimed a torpedo hit on Bismarck, but this was never confirmed and most sources consider it highly unlikely.
Now, two of the three aerial torpedo hits did strike Bismarck's TDS and the TDS contained the blasts. Nothing inordinarily unexpected here, Swordfish torpedoes were 18'' units with quite small warheads and extremely limited ability to do much to any modern battleship TDS other than causing flooding on the void spaces of the TDS (and forcing according counterflooding to keep the list neutral). The surprise here would've been that those torpedoes would actually do something to her, given their very limited damaging potential. So that Bismarck's TDS held them is no proof of it being excellent - it's proof that it wasn't desperately flawed.
the third swordfish torpedo hit happened on the rudders, well out of the TDS and with well known results. None of it is relevant at the time of discussing Bismarck's TDS system.
Now, to Dorsetshire's impacts. Those were straight up 21'' naval torpedoes with quite large warheads and had Bismarck's TDS held against them well, it'd been proof of a good quality TDS indeed.
The problem is that those impacts didn't happen on the TDS. By the time they hit the german warship Bismarck was already more than decks awash, she had parts of her deck already submerged as she was listing. There's this famous drawing of the known damage suffered by Bismarck by the time she sank, produced out of eyewitness accounts and the expeditions to her wreck:
It's impossible to not notice the gaping holes on her port side more or less at the same placement of her catapult. Reportedly those gaping holes were the result of Dorsetshire's torpedo hits hitting the already underwater deck of the by that time heavily listing ship.
Which obviously means those hits didn't happen on the TDS. Which also means Bismarck's TDS couldn't hold their effects, and which means whatever damage those 21'' torpedoes did has nothing to do with how good or bad that TDS was.
In pure engineering terms the Bismarck class battleships had exactly the same TDS the Twins had, only as deeper as Bismarck's bigger beam would allow. Of course more depth meant a better TDS but the problem is that the starting point was not a good one. Scharnhorst class' underwater protection system was mediocre at best, as the torpedo and mine impacts the ships of the class suffered proved (acasta's hit caused 2500 tons of flooding on her own hitting straight into said TDS and jammed a turret, as mentioned avobe, but it also destroyed one shaft, threw another one out of line and sent her to the repair dock for six months, just to name one instance - not a good performance by any reasonable measurement).
Bismarck had a better (deeper) TDS, but keeping in mind how innefective that layout proved to be on Scharnhorst, I wouldn't hold a candle for it to do THAT much better than Scharnhorst or Gneisenau did when they suffered underwater damage. Better, for sure...but MUCH better, unlikely. And the Twins were quite bad in that regard, as I already mentioned.-
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On 4/10/2020 at 9:14 PM, madham82 said:
What point are you trying to make here? All I said was to punch through the empty/flooded space of a torpedo bulge, then make it through the actual belt armor to hit centrally located main magazines and cause an explosion is beyond remote.
Yet there are multiple instances of big battleships ordering the flooding of their own magazines to cancel out the danger of a magazine going off due to a torpedo impact. One famous instance was Scharnhorst when she was hit by Acasta; the blast not only caused extensive flooding but jammed Caesar and produced a lot of smoke. The crew feared something had caught fire and the order was issued to preventively flood the turret's magazine because of the risk of detonation. Though it was reversed shortly thereafter when it was certified no fire was ongoing.
Unlike many opinions seen around here ,a magazine going off due to the damage caused by a torpedo hit was a real threat and possibility, even in big ships with big torpedo defence systems. Was it likely?. On ships with big beams and good enough TDSs it wouldn't be likely, no. Was it possible even then?. Certainly it was.
As for cruiser TDSs, some of them had torpedo bulkheads and some sort of layered protection. But even then they were terribly vulnerable - one of the key features of any TDS was depth, and cruisers, being far less beamy than battleships, never had any kind of really effective TDS with enough depth to significantly reduce torpedo damage. -
On 4/15/2020 at 2:45 PM, Malkor said:
Yes and no. You wrote that all you need is 18pdr until you get a 4th or 3rd rate ship.
My 18pdr standard is for for lategame (last couple american independence chapters).
By midgame (anytime before that) 12pdrs are plenty powerful to get things done with no big sweat, giving you plenty of time to access Industry 3. I personally never found myself feeling I needed them sooner.
As for not standing a chance against a 3rd rate with 12 pdrs alone....even 9pdr desaguliers do a number on them if hitting those things from the rear. Which should be your focus, pin the rate (wishfully pointed upwind) with your biggest strongest frigate firing canister to his decks from his broadside(and have some other ship ready to jump in when it has to pull out, which it probably will at some point), and have another guy parked behind rear ending him 24/7. You can even use the guy "Pinning" it to shoot at it's foremast - if it goes down the rate is going to be like a dead brick on the water. If it doesn't (and with 12pdr you need several hits so a bit of luck), nothing big lost because what's really hurting him is the raking fire that comes from the rear.
Big lineship or not, nothing stands well against a sustained barrage of rear end roundshot fire because crew casualties just skyrocket in no time (and then it's time to board). I've had 6th rates doing absolute massacres to those ships using long 9pdr guns. 5th rates with 12pdrs do even better, so obviously do 18pdr when they're available.
Incidentally the large range of the long guns is a blessing for that scenario. The longer the range, the more time you can pound dat ass before it moves out of range. I'd rather take the 200 extra yards of the 18pdr range than the hitting power of the 24 pdrs. That's a lot of extra flexibility, a lot of extra ships potentially being in range to pound that ass whenever it's faced their way.
I let the razees and lineships do the heavy pounding - the standard frigates I use for flanking, rear ending and long range support, and for that, extra range beats anything else.
If your plan to fight the 3rd rate is to assault it from the board at close range then yes, of course, you'll need those congreves. But I strongly object to any battle plan that involves sustained broadside fights with frigates against a 3rd rate. The key to win those engagements is maneouver and pounding him from the ass. And for that you need range. -
1 - No. Usually being upwind is a big bonus. You control the distance of the engagement (enemy can't come upwind for you), you control the moment you want to move in for a boarding (it's really hard to close in with an enemy upwind from you). Add to that that if you're downwind the wind lists your ship away from the enemy, and you're showing a lot more lower hull to the enemy, which if impacted will cause serious flooding once the list recedes. Not sure if this last one is implemented in the game, though.
Being downwind has a place - when you're trying to run away from the enemy. Other than that, there's little good in being there.
2 - Depends. If your ships are heavier than the enemy and have stronger guns, it's not a bad thing to do. If not...yeah, well, then it's not a good idea.
3- you're also dealing double damage to him, just more spread. Depends on the scenario you want to put as much focused lead on an enemy ship as you can so going both sides is very inneficient. But there are scenarios where that's not the case, you just want to weaken him enough for a later boarding. Another scenario is an actual boarding, you can do a 2vs1 boarding by going down both the enemy's sides and hook him with both ships simultaneously. And yes, those boardings are VERY nasty for the target ship.
4- No. Just no. If ship rate is superior to your ships first you have to ensure you engage him in a several vs 1 scenario. Then look for his rear like mad and rake the hell out of him as many times as you can. With round shot. Good round shot rakes from a 5th rate can perfectly delete 20-30 sailors from a 3rd rate in a single go. Takes skill and a bit of luck, but after repeated rakes the ship will be ripe for a boarding. Grape is only useful if you're stuck on his side and can't get to the rear.
5- Pretty much. Sail damage is for me a side effect, I never go for it intentionally. If you want to kill the enemy's ability to move, go for his masts. You'll need big enough guns firing round shot and manually target them masts tho. Usually the best one to kill a target's ability to turn is the foremast. If what you want is to slow him down, go for the mainmast. Losing the mizzen hurts speed a bit but is not as big of a deal as losing either of the other two.
6- Rudder damage is 99% of the times the result of a rake. If you're raking the enemy focus on keeping the position so you can keep on doing so. Rudder damage is a side effect. To kill a ship's ability to turn well the best bet is to bring down his foremast, as already said. Turning (specially against the wind) relies a lot on foremast yard movement...lose that mast, lose those yards, the ability to maneouver is seriously impaired.
7- Relying on AI-priorities to gain in-battle advantages can be useful - but is also very risky and adds another layer of complexity to an already complex matter. On top of your own ship sailing, maneouvering, targetting, etc, you'll need to keep awareness of placing ships in the proper spots for the AI to "hook" on a given one, which in most scenarios means putting ships in tactically not that sound positions. Too much of a bother, and too little a return. Better to use proper positioning and maneouver and ignore AI targetting priorities altogether.
8- Carronades are tremendously situational because they're just not flexible enough. If you're not directly on top of the enemy they don't do much. I personally load them on the upper deck of the razees, and on maybe one 5th class I design as a "bulwark" to just go in and smash face close in. But other than that specialist role, I don't use them at all. Range is too much valuable to give up - there's nothing more frustrating than seeing an enemy rate giving you his ass all the time, but you can't capitalize on that because your guns lack the range.
9- Haven't noticed that myself. Then again I move a lot my ships and switch targets a lot as I maneouver, so I'm too busy doing my own stuff as to notice what the AI is doing. But I've never had any special feeling that they tended to "hook up" on a target in particular - except for scenarios where it made sense. So I can't really tell.
FInally, I'm seriously slacking on it but I'll eventually make a let's play of this game. Contrary to (I think) most of the population of this game, I don't like land battles of the musket era. I find them boring, repetitive and uninteresting (none of that is fault of the game), but I love the naval part and, well, ships being one of my passions I know what I'm doing. I do explain all I do when I do it, so I guess that might help...
Really I should shake off the lazyness and get it done lol. -
It's intentional. Ardent's lower decks don't have the weigh allowance to load standard iron 32pdr guns. Too heavy for the deck. Brass you can (most optimal choice imo), so you can congreves and carronades (both too limited to be the most powerful deck of a 3rd rate). I think that it can load the french guns is an oversight nor a bug - those are heavy as heck and it shouldn't be possible to mount them in there.
Keep in mind the Ardent is in there to represent the old 68 gun 3rd rate, which was pretty much rendered obsolete by the brand new 74 gun classes (the ones represented by Bellona). Those older ships usually didn't carry guns that big even in the lower deck. -
Well, yes, they're unlocked through the Industry III tech. But it has nothing to do with the Congreve guns at all, that was my point.
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On 4/9/2020 at 6:07 AM, Malkor said:
The Congreves are in the second tech branch for the british campaign but in the last branch for the US campaign. Which makes it very hard to get those but at the same time it is very important because otherwise you will still be using 12pdr when you're about to do the Battle at Yarmouth where the first SOL shows up.
Upper deck: 6pdr long (Desagulliers).
Lower deck: 18pdr Brass (Woolwhich)
6th rates get 9pdr longs. Those gun's penetration is no joke, and the range is very helpful at the time of taking rake shots on bigger ships while keeping a reasonable security range.
With second tier of carriages you get more than enough weight for a couple good upgrades (I usually go with copper hull and reload) and a good number on sailors on almost all 5th rates. A handful of those alongside your 6th rates is far more than enough to blast the rear end of that 3rd rate until it's boardable. You don't need congreves. In fact you don't need anything bigger than a 18pdr until you start getting Razeés and SOLs.
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5 minutes ago, ThatOneBounced said:
I stand corrected, but still proves the point that she was still blind to ships around her
And I'll have to insist that it makes little difference.
One year before two fully combat ready german battleships had faced two assaulting british destroyers and took their merry time in sinking them both. In plain daylight and clear skies, and after having hit a carrier from 23km of distance (meaning, they were on top of their game), the encounter took hours before those ships were sunk, and not before some pretty damaging torpedo hits had happened.
I don't see why Bismarck would've fared much better alone vs four, be it at day or night. But that's besides the point: DDs weren't easy target for battleships. That's what it all boils down to.
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4 minutes ago, ThatOneBounced said:
Bismark itself severely damaged her own radar so she can't target the ships around her
Bismarck's radar was nothing but a rangefinding aid for her optical rangefinders, and her optical rangefinders were actually more accurate. It was a decimetric wavelenght set with very limited resolution, and incapable of true blind firing.
Germany didn't have any blindfire capable radar until they began manufacturing centimetric sets by 1945, and by that stage it was only a theoretical capability, as by that time all the big units of the kriegsmarine were either in the bottom of the sea or unseaworthy at port.
Besides, that radar was used to assist main battery firing solutions. I've seen absolutely nothing that implies it was in any way involved in secondary gun firing solutions.
At any rate, the night encounter with the destroyers would've ended exactly the same way as it did, with or without radar. Also, it's not the only instance of surface encounters where destroyers and big fighting ships were involved that points out anything other than destroyers being quite difficult targets. The Twins vs Ardent&Acasta, Hipper vs Glownworm, Scharnhorst vs the repeated DD attacks in the initial stages of North Cape, Guadalcanal, etc - all give similar conclusions as the Bismarck vs DDs night encounter. -
Hm...Maybe it's time for me to dig my claws into this one and make a let's play of it.
Held back from doing it because I've been mostly out of the loop for a while. And also for this game in particular because I generally dislike the land side of the game (not the game's fault, I just find musket era combat boring and uninteresting in general) and it's a quite large part of it, no way to avoid that.
But I can see how and why the naval side can and will confuse the newcomer because of the nature of age of sail combat not being something that's really out there for the non-initiate to understand. In general people always commend my LPs as being very informative about the game I'm playing, so if that might help newcomers, I'll think about it.
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1 hour ago, pandakraut said:
They are indicators to let you know how close you are to being able to board. Left to right: matching speeds, distance between ships, angle between ships. If all 3 are green then the grapples will probably be able to pull the enemy ship in and allow boarding to start.
You don't need them to be green. One green, two on yellow usually will cause a boarding. Those icons actually represent more the ability of the given ship to hook up the target ship with boarding hooks and drag it closer for a boarding action than anything else. All green means they're going to have a field day dragging it close. As long as nothing is red, the less green you have the slower the process will be.
All yellow means it's mostly a stalemate, the boarder won't be able to force it closer, but the target won't get free of the hooking ropes. One red without at least one green, or more than one red without any green means the target ship will break the hook lines if they get deployed, and move away.
Note that in either of those cases if the ships actually reach a position for a boarding (because their own issued movement orders, or else, like another ship pushing one of them into position), the boarding will happen anyway. I've had succesful boardings triggered even with two red meters because of that.
At least that's how it works according to my observation.-
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I don't like it. Rageboarding is an one-dimensional solution to a multiple layered problem that comes at quite a hefty cost. but that I don't like it doesn't mean that isn't legit and should be "fixed". You can't fix what isn't broken in the first place, wether you like or not.
I have done it in the past, yes. A fair guess is that everyone has. My first playthroughs in the sea were much forced through boardings on unsoftened ships, but that's before I became accustomed to the game's controls, nuances and representation of many different things. Once I became familiar with them, I became confortable enough to use more tactically evolved solutions to the same problems (having a lot more fun in the process, needless to say).
Finally those "free" ships you talk about can get equally without rageboarding. That a possible solution for the problem of fighting the enemy doesn't involve boarding it from the get go doesn't mean there won't be a boarding later on during the battle...or that the target won't surrender.
Either way you'll capture it. That money you win by spending rep on taking control of trophys and selling them you can do it anyway if you use a different approach. Those "Free" ships would be yours anyway (most, at least), and you could get them "cheaper". I don't have that 6 SOL lineup you talk about, but that's not because I didn't capture them. I did but I didn't keep them, I sent them back to the admiralty or paid the admiralty point price to sell some and futher improve my existing lineup. In general I never keep more than one 3rd rate and one razee in my active lineups, the rest of the mix made out of 5th, 6th and 7th rates. More than that becomes overkill, unnecessary, and a massive burden on your upkeep costs.
At any rate and once more, the large lineup of trophies doesn't compensate for the vast ammount of resources you'll spend on renewing wasted crews and officers in rageboarding, those you won't have if you look for different, more tactically refined solutions that would yield the same trophies anyway.
If you win battles through skill and not force, your crews experience will be higher across the board (as you're not losing a massive ammount of it with each battle), so will be officers. Money wise you'll spend more on repairs (as battles will drag longer in average), but that's a lot less costly than replacing crews. Tactically wise you'll be able to field ships with heavier guns or more maneouverable ships (using the tonnage you don't spend in massed crews in bigger guns, or freeing it), and have a better choice of ship upgrades that make for better rounded combat capabilities (as with the rageboarding option one slot should permanently be the boarding tools, reducing the flexibility on the rest), making for a stronger, more capable, and far more flexible force.
You can see "rageboarding" is not a tactic I find very attractive. But once more that's simple, and that it cancels a lot of tactical challenges other doctrines force on the player, doesn't mean it shouldn't work, as it comes with a big penalty attached to it and is far less resource efficient than winning battles with other means (which include capture - just not after a couple grape volleys to then board).-
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On 3/26/2020 at 5:47 PM, Koro said:
I've played through both of the campaigns now using mostly brute force to capture all enemy ships in every battle.
Historically it was far more likely for a defeated ship to be captured than sunk - both because of boardings and because straight up surrendering. There's nothing wrong with that.
There's nothing wrong with you rageboarding everyone at your heart's content if that's your "tactic". You're compromising in other areas if you go for that route (insanely expensive in the long run because of officers, crew and equipment replacements, possibly boarding equipment instead of other combat oriented ones, crews filled to the max meaning less weight for bigger guns, and a forced compromise in the ship's top speed and maneouverability, long term crew experience going off the drain after losing 60% of it's numbers in each rageboarding action, etc). Is that optimal?. No. Does that work?. Yes. It's a doctrine that demands a lot of tactical thinking in order to get going?. No.
Does any of that mean it should not be allowed?.Hell no.
Wether you perceive it or not you're paying a cost in other areas for being strong in a particular one - that one being boarding. That doing so allows you to mindlessly board everyone without even taking your time to softening them up first doesn't come for free, as even if you don't notice it, you'll be paying a price for it (and a hefty one at that). Which means, it's working as it should.
Is it a "cheap" tactic?. Well that depends: you know, in military terms, human wave mass attacks were a thing too. Were they "cheap tactics"?. Well not in terms of actual human life costs - but hell they could be really effective (ask the wehrmacht in the Eastern Front). It's not a subtle way of waging war, has the same finesse as a wood chopping axe and is as elaborate as a wooden shoe. Even nowadays there's a lot of disdain for commanders that indulged in the old tactic of "sending more men to the front that bullets had the enemy". While the tactical criticism is right one can hardly discuss it's effectivity - as long as you have a lot more men to throw to the grinder than the enemy you don't necessarily need to be subtle when doing it in order to win. You can discuss the methodology and it's morale, but you can't discuss the results.
Same here. The "rageboarding" doctrine is what most people do because they have a tremendously limited knowledge of actual viable tactics of the age of sail- and this one is the "path of less resistance" so to speak.You only need to learn to point your ships to the nearest one with less crews, and board. No need to pull fancy maneouvers, evolved tactics or advanced thinking. It's only natural that people who don't know better go that route.
That doesn't mean it should be somehow "penalized". Because that same route, while being the "simplest" in tactical terms, It's also the "path with extraordinary costs" as you're going to be spending fortunes to replace crews and officers after each battle when you could just be using solid tactics to force surrenders instead of going for boardings against fully crewed ships with topped off morale. Not to mention that again, you're compromising your ship's loadouts and maneouverability by filling them to the brim with crewmen for those boarding.
Al of which means it should be possible to go that route. As long as if it means you're paying the according price. And the game is perfectly correct in allowing it because it forces you to pay that price.
TL:DR: rageboarding is "easy" but far from optimal. Brute force in military history has been used a lot of times to great effect. I don't see why it shouldn't be allowed here at all, as going that route forces you to compromise in many other areas - as it should be the case.-
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4 hours ago, Charlie1957 said:
Thank you for a most articulate tactics description
The advice you've been given is either strategic management of the battlerating system (To spawn easier ships) or brute force approach (rageboarding) which is both incredibly expensive (massive crew losses guaranteed, possibly including several expensive officers) and risky (if you don't time the boarding PERFECTLY right you'll end up with the enemy capturing a couple of your ships). It's advice, and valuable, but I wouldn't call that tactical per se.
Against big ships you can fight, and you can win, and you can prevail even with much smaller ships, if you have the numbers. Of course you're going to need a respectable degree of firepower on your side, but a couple 5th rates could, and should, bring a 3rd rate to it's knees. Not without a hefty cost in damage and crew losses, but can be done. three 5th rates or a couple 5th rates and a 6th, or something like that, it should be a guaranteed capture - and without involving "rageboarding" (meaning, just going for an all out boarding from the get go).
See- Big ships have two things going for them - tremendous planking (only the heaviest guns will go through the broadside even at close range) and spectacular firepower. If you settle for a board to board fight you're going to lose - and in spectacular fashion.
They lack in two aspects. General turning ability, and specially so, really clumsy when close hauled (wind coming from either or it's front quarters, let alone directly from the front). It's easy to outmaneouver them if you know what you're doing.
And finally they have the same issue every ship of the era had - a very vulnerable ass which no gun has problems going through, mixed with the carnage raking from the rear causes on all ships. Not joking here, round shot volleys from a 6th rate with 9pdr long guns from the rear end of a SOL can easily kill a couple dozen sailors while causing structural damage, floodings, and gun loss.
All this translates in maneouvering your ships so at least one is constantly at the rear of the enemy unleashing at his rear nonstop, the others going for the foremast (if you manage to bring that sucker down and manage to force the enemy against the wind, he'll be stuck there for a LONG while making your rear-ending a much easier effort), and then focus firing grape from all angles posible.
Ideally you want your toughest ships to be the ones attracting the fire from the enemy. They're going to get chewed up and take a hell of a beating, but that's part of the deal: you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs after all. As long as you have someone on his rear unleashing volley after volley, that as stated can (and will) kill far more than a dozen guys per go, the enemy's crew losses will begin to mount up in no time, and there's a really high chance once they're low enough, and specially so if they have no nearby support, that they just strike colors outright (surrendering the ship for you to take it with a boarding party). If they don't surrender, once they're low enough, time to go and step on board and take by the sword what they won't give up by surrendering.
some advices on firing from the rear:
1- keep some distance, you don't want to be board-to-butt (but if you're forced there, its still a better place than out of his rear arc)
2- account for his turning specially when the enemy is moving towards the wind. The closer hauled he comes, the more time he'll take to turn, the more time you have to unleash
3- account for the wind, as when you're going upwind you won't be able to move forward to keep position at his rear. Plan your moves accordingly, bid your time until the time to tack is right, and regain position behind him.
4- USE HOLD FIRE. I can't stress that enough. Ideal rake is 90º off the enemy stern, from maybe half a ship's lenght distance, and opening up as the enemy's rear is alligned with the firing ships' center. That'll give you the most guns that will send shot right across the enemy's lenght (a pure rake), as the guns in the extreme bow and rear will come at angle and cause less damage (one of the reasons why keeping some distance is needed - to reduce those angles). Literally the difference from a demolishing round shot raking volley at the stern of a ship causing 35 crew losses, several guns being knocked down and a supressed ship (crew shock), from a mostly mild botched one that maybe kills half a dozen men an does little else, is holding fire for an extra 5-10 seconds until the geometry is right.
5- Fire round shot. Specially so if the guns involved have limited range or are light. Grape at max distance from the rear (and if you're in the correct raking position you'll be near that max range) doesnt' do a lot because it's a lot more innacurate. If you're REALLY close to the enemy (closer than needed and advised) it can be a good option though, as I've seen truly terrifying grape rakes from the rear in the game - they're a lot harder to achieve though.
Also change to grape raking if you notice the enemy structure is going down fast and you don't want to sink it; it can happen if the enemy is stubborn enough to not surrender before that you can actually go through all it's structure firing from the rear - yes, rakes are THAT powerful.
Now go out there and grab some SOLs...they're not easy, you won't grab them for free (repair costs are going to be high, specially because those heavy guns of theirs tend to crush some masts in the process), but it's doable with a little bit of skill and know-how.-
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11 hours ago, pandakraut said:
FYI the shown limits can be exceeded in almost every battle currently. The limits were effectively removed except for PoIs and battles like Valcour Island because players were complaining that they never got to use their 3rd rates when they captured them very early in the campaign.
Great to hear that someone is still winning battles sticking to the BR limits though.
Not talking about battles, but about missions. The grey icons where you put ships from turn to turn. Those have hard limits and in most of them 100 points is the max you can assign. Which is a perfect fit for a 6th and a 7th rate.
In battle I don't give much thought to BRs or anything like that. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to use 3rd rates, right? ;). I'm not overly focused on maxing out on big ships however. For instance I sold my Ardent as soon as I got the Bellona. One 3rd rate is far more than enough to do the heavylifting for the whole of the campaign (besides, I also already had a Razee, which is an absolute monster of a ship, almost as good as a 3rd rate because what it loses in firepower it wins in maneouverability), so there was no point in having two of them as it'd been overkill. -
On 3/20/2020 at 6:10 PM, Skeksis said:
@RAMJB yeah you can choose how you want to fight, drag out the battle as much as you want.
My feedback is that as soon as the battle starts I switch every ship to grapeshot and then begin planning the steps on how I'm going to capture every single ship, that's exactly what I do for every battle. I'm saying that maybe that tactic should be curtail with some game mechanics.
What do you think about the last US mission? to me it seems out of place, like throughtout the campaign you build your fleet up, building towards SOLs and then suddenly you have to reverse all that acquisition and try to acquire 6th rates! waste resources, shouldn't the mission be placed around about 2.0 or 3.0 and with less enemy?
well, that's what you do, because if you do it well it works. The same it'd work if you kept round shot and used tactical advantageous movement and positions to establish firepower superiority, focus when possible, maybe demast an enemy guy or two and effectively erase them from the fight while you fight off the rest, cause surrenders, etc.
and once you end the battle you won't have to pay thousands in crew replacements (not to mention the hit in your armory) to make up for the disproportionate crew losses a mass-boarding battle mean.
Boarding is an "easier" problem-solving, you don't have to think that much. Grape the crap out of everyone, board when possible and winnable. Problem is - it's easier...it's also a HECK of a lot more expensive. Which translates into being a lot less desirable unless absolutely necessary (for instance, if the enemy has a 3rd rate and you only have frigates your best chance to win is to grape it into oblivion and then jump it with a double-board boarding...and even there blasting her ass with round shot whenever possible is a REALLY good idea)
What do I think about the last US mission?. I had no problem with it. I had four 6th rates by the time I reached that battle so I just picked three of them and went on to win the scenario. I had kept them with me all along the campaign. Alongside three 7th rates too. So when I had to face a "size limitation" battle I didn't bat an eye.
Why did I keep them? because most "missions" you have a point limit you can use to see if you accomplish them. The combo of a 40 point 7th rate and a 60 point 6th rate is 100 points, which is the max of many of those missions, and that combo gives you the max possible chances to get a positive result in those, so my 6ths were useful for that.
They also were armed with 9pdr long guns, which made them really effective mid-long range supporters for my main ships in scenarios where I could add them. My main battle force was a 74 gun SOL I had captured after it surrendered because I had raked it into oblivion after T_boning it from the front, a razée I had captured by boarding in the last stages of another battle, and a couple Hermiones that I had captured in similar circunstances. When that mission came up, and I could use none of my heavy hitters I had plenty of ships to use without having to go to the market.
So I'm OK with that mission, basically ;).
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Disagreed. While I can be on the same boat that boarding can be very effective, it doesn't mean it's the way to go, or that standard round shot is "obsolete"
On ships of the same class (variance depending on the opponents is too big to sum it up in a brief summary);
1- Grape can and will reduce your crew. Round will massacre ships sides, cause possibly massive firepower decrease through cannons being destroyed, cause a lot more crew shocks, induce floodings, cause rigging shocks (demasting) and artillery shocks.
2- Grape can and will make a boarding easier. Round (particularily so from the rear) can let you skip boarding altogether (ships surrendering when subjected to a constant hailstorm of roundshot, specially when it involves a rake or two, isn't rare at all)
3-Grape only affects crew. A good volley or two of well aimed shot at a mast's base will cripple it's rigging for good (depending on your gunnery poundage, foremast or mizzen are much more vulnerable, and the fore being destroyed seriously impairs a ship's ability to maneouver, particularily so against the wind), leaving it open to be raked into oblivion and then some. Bowsprits are very vulnerable aswell, and viable ways to cut an enemy's maneouverability significantly with low poundage guns (9 pounders or so).
4-Rear rakes are, without exception, FAR more damaging than grape ones.
5-plain obvious but important nonetheless: round shot vastly outranges grape, which means against an enemy decided to board you as long as you can keep it at arm's lenght it means a constant unchallenged rain of fire on him.
6-The heavier the broadside, the far less optimal graping is. Shooting grape with a 3rd rate is pretty much a waste of massive guns (unless you're planning to jump on board of that tasty enemy lineship to capture it, of course).
7-Grape's reliance on being on top of the enemy (at max range grape's effectivity reduces significantly) means that an enemy with double shot can absolutely SMASH your face (and your broadsides) in the second you come too close. And heavens help you if he wins your rear because in that case you're D.O.N.E.8- Grape is grape. It does what it does, and it does it good, and none of it is related with "how much "armor" the enemy has left". Grape works and works best when aimed at the decks (the expresion "sweeping the decks" comes from there), but when aimed at a hull it can, and it will, inflict some casualties and depending on how intense the volley, many, coming from the shrapnel that goes through the gunports and directly into the ship.
Armor in this game is a very abstract way to represent the structural integrity of a side and it's ability to keep heavy round shot from penetrating the planking, meaning, that your "armor" is gone doesn't mean your whole side is open to the enemy like a big window allowing for the shrapnel to go in unimpeded. A ship with no "armor" still has a wooden barrier between the guns and the crew, the same one it'll exist if the "armor" was maxed out. Making grape damage depending on "armor left" is absolutely unrealistic and completely unintuitive.9- Grape backs up one strategy, and one strategy only: boarding. Roundshot allows you for total flexibility in what you are aiming to do. Including a thorough preparation for boarding but extending to sinking the enemy, immobilizing it, forcing it to outright surrender, reduce it's firepower, etc.
10- Boarding-only ship loads means decreased maneouverability and speed due to sheer crew weight. Flexible loads lets you dance around an enemy while tearing new holes in their rear end while they can do mostly nothing to keep you at bay (not to mention open up heavier cannon poundage if you wish it so). As good as grape can be against crews, nothing beats repeated rakes with roundshot. Grape has it's place. It's also open to abuse. Up to the player to be tremendously wasteful with his resources and paying for new crews over and over and over againg for indulging in rageboarding... It can be viable, yes, but hurtful in the long term.
Now again that's 1v1 similar ship classes. Variance due to the campaign, foe sizes, own ship sizes ,etc, exists. I'm not going to say rage-boarding with grape only is not viable because it is (and it should be, if you've tailored your fleet to be unstoppable in boarding actions I see absolutely no reason whatsoever for the game to penalize you for it, it was a standard doctrine in the day, it should be here too). But it is very cost-inefficient. Sure, in some scenarios where you're vastly outnumbered an early capture can help you turn tables on the enemy for the remainder of the battle - smart boarding is rewarding. But going "boarding only"...it's not.
See, through boarding you can get a lot of captures but that'll translate in admiralty points for the most part while your crew losses will be abominable (officer losses too). Eventually you'll be using those admiralty points to purchase the ships you captured to directly SELL Them because you're out of money because your crew losses are unsustainable. Can you play that way?. Sure. Does it mean it's the ONLY way you can play?. Nope, not at all, which is good because it means that you have multiple choices in the way you shape up your forces, you tailor your doctrinal use of them on the battlefield, in order to be effective in the sea.
In my opinion nothing needs to change as I find that grape is exactly where it should be. A circunstancial ammunition to use in the final stages before a boarding action, or when by the end of the battle you have absolute superiority and you can take your time decreasing enemy crew numbers for an easy, cheap and low cost boarding...other than that, roundshot is plenty useful. I don't think anything needs to change in that particular relationship between grape and round...other than player perception ;).
Now anti-sail shot...that one I almost never use. If I go for the rigging of a ship I'm not going to punch holes in his sails, I'm going to blast away at his masts. Then again it's useful for light ships to help out against bigger ones because 6 pounders usually don't do a lot against masts, so, there's that too :).-
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On 3/8/2020 at 5:32 AM, mdesanta777 said:
Taking shots from the bow or stern should do much more damage than taking shots on the boardside, since the shot would go through much more of the ship. Raking the bow or stern was a great historial tactic in combination with crossing the T.
Shots taken from the bow or stern should not glance off the sides, they should penetrate the front, since they would hit the front of the ship not the sides. Best angling should be when a ship is at 45 degrees to the enemy, not when it is bow or stern on.
Shots fired at bow or stern should not be more inaccurate than shots fired at the sides, since almost all of the deviation stems from vertical error (ranging) instead of horizontal error.
Bow tanking should not be a thing, not in WoWS, and certainly not in this game.Taking shots from the stern is murderous already at the moment. Raking a ship from behind with a properly timed broadside does truly terrifying damage. Blasts crew, structure, guns, and (importantly) morale like there's no tomorrow.
One of the best ways to deal with a bigger ship currently for me is to double team it, one going for a board-to-board fight and the other on hot chase to it's rear, to open up his guns when appropiate and deliver a properly delivered rake. In my experience standard shot being the best option even if you're looking for a boarding as it already kills enough crew while it ensures the best accuracy, and on the top of it disables guns and causes major havoc. On the minus side, the AI knows that very well and will do whatever it can to avoid getting pounded from the rear...while looking actively for yours.
In my latest playthrough I had a 5th rate with 18 pounder brass cannons park behind a 74 gun 3rd rate I had t-boned and couldn't properly swivel his ass out of my arcs of fire. Three volleys later from his rear end (helped by focus fire by everyone around him), and the bugger dropped the flag. He still had 500-ish dudes aboard. That saved me pretty a penny in crew replacement costs because I could just drop a prize crew on him without having even had to board...not to mention that I got a nice 74 gunner to boot.
Hell I've had ships surrendering , several times, just as I was about to deliver a brutal rake, just before opening fire...so yeah the AI knows what's up with it. They'll even freakin' surrender if pushed hard enough, before taking a pounding like that.
Front rakes is a different story. In game, but it also was in history. For starters wooden thicknesses at the bow are almost equal to those on the broadsides (they are pathetically low from the rear, you can cause carnage from behind even with 4 pounders on most enemies, that's for sure not true from the front), and the bow rounded countours means a rather high chance of ricochets and bouncing round shot. In fact whenever I'm raking from the front I don't bother aiming for the hull, I'll aim for the deck trying to get guys on the deck. Accordingly my favored shot from the front is usually canister (at least as long as the bowsprit is out of the way). But that means that internal damge and structural damage is much lower, and that you're not knocking out a lot of guns. The end result is that front rakes are leagues away from being anywhere near as terrifying as rear rakes.
Which is, btw, perfectly realistic as this was the case aswell in historical engagements. Getting raked was never good, but getting raked from the front was FAR FAR FAR less bad than getting pounded from the ass.
Being raked from the front is not highly desirable but there are multiple circunstances when I would rather take my chances with an enemy shooting me from the front than from the broadside. Theres absolutely NO situation whatsoever, however, that I can imagine where I would take a shot from the rear rather than from any other angle. At all.
At any rate the mechanics you mention are already in the game, deliver proper results (if adequately done), and are highly effective.-
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, and I only want to showcase the game when what's seen in the videos showcases it very positively for fans of the genre...
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Posted · Edited by RAMJB
by that standard, neither is any of the (slavist) founding fathers of the USA. So by that standard of "removing stuff that doesn't show the ugly side", and by order of historical events, you should begin by changing your nation capital's name (and a state. And literally thousands of school names) for something else, as is named after a well known historical slave owner yet your federal capital and one of your states doesn't mention that fact about Washington..
Doesn't sound that enticing now, does it?. Of course it doesn't, because there's virtually no historical figure without a side that by today standards would be judged repulsive or at the very least highly questionable. If we were to erase, raze, change the name, and generally delete from existance any memorial, monument, or name honoring a figure of the past that had an "ugly side", then you would end in a nation with no statues nor public monuments at all. Which of course, means a nation without any memory of it's history at all. A terrifying prospect.
Selectively purging the memorials belonging to only some of them is a massive double standard and a show of hipocresy of the highest order. You either raze'em all, or raze none of them. The obvious answer is: raze none.
Judging the past by the compass of modern morals is downright stupid. Because people of the past were men of their era, and the standards and morals of their eras were different from today's. Most of the giants of humankind we revere from the past were racist, sexist, xenophobes, etc (or a combination of them all) according to modern standards. Yet we (rightly) honor them because of their good deeds, not because of those who were the result of what was normal at their time, but that now we perceive as inadequate or just awfully wrong.
Thankfully we've evolved in the sense that nowadays there's a much higher awareness of the freedom of the individual, human rights, equality of sexes, etc. Today's morals are much more evolved (and of course, better) than anytime in the past.
Not so thankfully we still haven't learned the value of learning lessons of the past, and properly remembering them without trying to rewrite them to suit our tastes, and not what happened in reality. And by destroying memorials, statues, or changing names of things because "they had an ugly side" then you're erasing the very past you should never forget.
My 0.02$.