balance Small vessels underpowered.

[TAKTCOM]

2 hours ago, Steeltrap said:

As I used to say in WoWS, there's a reason nations built battleships even if that game left you wondering why they didn't simply conquer the world with fire starting DDs and CLs, LOL.

The campaign, however, is going to introduce issues of logistics and budgets, and those ought to have very large effects. 

Also you can't send battleship to a raid/protect merchant ships. Well, technically you can, yes Bismarck?

[WafflesToo]

16 hours ago, Steeltrap said:

As I used to say in WoWS, there's a reason nations built battleships even if that game left you wondering why they didn't simply conquer the world with fire starting DDs and CLs, LOL.

This is why I giggle whenever I hear anyone talk about how "Realistic" WoWS is; (sorry, I grew up playing the, "Great Naval Battles" series; yes, all five of them.  Fun, but doesn't hold a candle to those old games for realism).

Back on subject; as Steeltrap pointed out, we might be judging the forest by the look of a tree.  Battleships are likely going to dominate tactically but there's going to be lots of jobs for cruisers and destroyers to do both strategically and operationally.  Light and Heavy cruisers will be needed for commerce-raiding and protection missions, as well as to maintain your national presence on foreign holdings.  Destroyers and other small craft are ideal for coastal patrols and ASW work, tactically as screening ships to help protect your mission units by for spotting (and occasionally absorbing) torpedo attacks.  All of the light craft will be good for operational scouting to locate and shadow hostiles so you can get your battlefleet in position.

Battleships are too expensive, take too long to build, and cost too much to operate to expect them to be capable of doing everything and being everywhere.

...of course, all of this gets thrown out the window if the dev-team decide to make this "Masters of Orion: High-Seas edition".  If that happens then I can accurately predict two things:

#1) The game strategy will be dominated by doom-fleets.

#2) I will sorely regret having preordered the game.

Edited November 7, 2019 by WafflesToo

[Hellstrike]

While Doomstacks are certainly annoying, a lot of the major battles boiled down to that. Just look at Jutland, Midway (Carrier Doomstacks) or the later Pacific operations by the USN. Doomstacks meeting would be the successful conclusion of a "decisive battle" doctrine, something which has historical roots. On the other hand, the game ought to force you to maintain several smaller fleets in addition to your big stick, to patrol, escort, hunt subs and so on.

[WafflesToo]

An operation the size of Jutland only happened once; but a whole lot of smaller operations took place throughout the war period (mostly involving cruisers, as the battleships were largely tied up making faces at one another across the north sea)

[Tankaxe]

Note that once Battlecruisers hit the scene they made armored cruisers virtually obselete and most nations had stopped production of such ships to focus on building battlecruisers. so the only thing that would remain relevant is Mass produced light cruisers and destroyers to cover regions and screen the battlefleet  

Light and heavy cruisers were only a thing because of the Washington naval treaty and without it cruisers would just be further enlarged Battlecruisers.

While the player can also make enlarged armored cruisers as some sort of 'anti-cruiser cruiser' the time and money they'll take would give other nations an advantage in the Battlecruiser race.

So either way it's quite realistic that BC and BBs are stronger against weaker opponents and their main duty's is protecting and projecting force with numbers

[WafflesToo]

At what point did I say otherwise?  My argument wasn't that they should be on-par-with my argument was that they still had a role to play outside of the large fleet actions

[Spitfire109]

Its fully reasonable in my mind for a battleship to be able to handle three or so lesser vessels, its what they were made for. But if I've got like Eight heavy cruisers all with 8inch guns and maybe toros? I expect all but the greatest of battleships to suffer.

[Latur Husky]

Well, small vessels needs some accuracy buffs for sure, so that battle between two light cruisers can eventually be resolved before mission timer runs out or they both run out of ammunition. I do agree though that small vessels shouldn't be a match to larger and heavier vessels if it comes to a gunfight.

Edited November 7, 2019 by Asthaven

[Steeltrap]

6 hours ago, Hellstrike said:

While Doomstacks are certainly annoying, a lot of the major battles boiled down to that. Just look at Jutland, Midway (Carrier Doomstacks) or the later Pacific operations by the USN. Doomstacks meeting would be the successful conclusion of a "decisive battle" doctrine, something which has historical roots. On the other hand, the game ought to force you to maintain several smaller fleets in addition to your big stick, to patrol, escort, hunt subs and so on.

 

6 hours ago, WafflesToo said:

An operation the size of Jutland only happened once; but a whole lot of smaller operations took place throughout the war period (mostly involving cruisers, as the battleships were largely tied up making faces at one another across the north sea)

Jutland is interesting in part because it's the end result of a lot of actions, as WafflesToo said, where the Germans were trying to lure parts of the RN out in the hope of defeating them in detail.

What they did NOT want was a confrontation between the complete fleets because they knew they were greatly outnumbered, plus the RN had some units the Germans couldn't match one on one, particularly the Queen Elizabeth class (as an aside, surely one of the most effective BB classes ever built in terms of providing bang for their bucks over 2 wars).

As for doomstacks, they're somewhat inevitable as you're going to want to concentrate force to achieve whatever it is you've decided is the most strategically valuable task. It then comes down to risk v reward, and also what you can't afford NOT to be doing.

Might've been Frederick the Great who said words to the effect of "if you try to defend everything you risk defending nothing", and the UK sort of forgot that in some respects in their doomed mission to Singapore. That mission was never going to succeed, and they threw away two heavy units, including one of their most modern battleships, that most certainly could have been far more valuable elsewhere; certainly they don't do you much good sunk, and the loss of their crews hurts.

In short, a rather complicated balancing act, which is exactly as it ought to be. Will be very interesting to see what challenges the broader campaign setup brings.

[Steeltrap]

4 hours ago, Spitfire109 said:

Its fully reasonable in my mind for a battleship to be able to handle three or so lesser vessels, its what they were made for. But if I've got like Eight heavy cruisers all with 8inch guns and maybe toros? I expect all but the greatest of battleships to suffer.

Against those odds I think it's really going to come down to the conditions (sea state, visibility, time of day) and thus the engagement range.

Worst case for the CAs would be something like an Iowa class, as you'd not be able to close the range on her; I believe it's true that the Iowa class was the only BB known to have had to slow down in heavy seas so its DD escort could keep up, lol. As an interesting aside, it was also true that they found in the Pacific that HMS Vanguard was able to keep pace with Iowa in moderate or heavier seas as the Vanguard apparently had superior seakeeping qualities.

If the CAs are able to close the range so their guns can hit, however, then any BB is going to have a bad day. I'd probably still prefer to be on the BB than the CA being shot at, though, as the BB can more or less knock out (technically even sink, although unlikely) any CA with a relatively small number of hits; the example I used to use back in WoWS Alpha when I was criticising the ludicrous damage model was what Graf Spee managed against the RN in the battle of the River Plate, and that's using "only" 11" guns.

In general, though, you're not going to want your capital ship to be taking on the next highest type ofcapital ship unless you have little choice or there's a significant numbers/tech advantage on your side.

[Spitfire109]

18 minutes ago, Steeltrap said:

Against those odds I think it's really going to come down to the conditions (sea state, visibility, time of day) and thus the engagement range.

Worst case for the CAs would be something like an Iowa class, as you'd not be able to close the range on her; I believe it's true that the Iowa class was the only BB known to have had to slow down in heavy seas so its DD escort could keep up, lol. As an interesting aside, it was also true that they found in the Pacific that HMS Vanguard was able to keep pace with Iowa in moderate or heavier seas as the Vanguard apparently had superior seakeeping qualities.

If the CAs are able to close the range so their guns can hit, however, then any BB is going to have a bad day. I'd probably still prefer to be on the BB than the CA being shot at, though, as the BB can more or less knock out (technically even sink, although unlikely) any CA with a relatively small number of hits; the example I used to use back in WoWS Alpha when I was criticising the ludicrous damage model was what Graf Spee managed against the RN in the battle of the River Plate, and that's using "only" 11" guns.

In general, though, you're not going to want your capital ship to be taking on the next highest type ofcapital ship unless you have little choice or there's a significant numbers/tech advantage on your side.

In the case of Iowa youd need cruisers of equal caliber. Des Moinse class or Baltimore class Cruisers, truly state of the art ships for their time. While say something like a Pensacola Class would get devastated by an Iowa. That's just the nature of Naval warfare is the Newsest boat is usually well above the ones before it in some cases. Like HMS Dreadnought vs any Pre Dreadnought, or USS Iowa vs maybe IJN Kongo.

[WafflesToo]

13 hours ago, Spitfire109 said:

In the case of Iowa youd need cruisers of equal caliber. Des Moinse class or Baltimore class Cruisers, truly state of the art ships for their time. While say something like a Pensacola Class would get devastated by an Iowa. That's just the nature of Naval warfare is the Newsest boat is usually well above the ones before it in some cases. Like HMS Dreadnought vs any Pre Dreadnought, or USS Iowa vs maybe IJN Kongo.

"Naval Strategy is Build Strategy"

[Angus MacDuff]

A good historical reference is the Graf Spee, granted a pocket Battleship, against a Heavy Cruiser and two Light Cruisers.  While she was not defeated, she was forced to retire with damage. 

[Steeltrap]

11 hours ago, Angus MacDuff said:

A good historical reference is the Graf Spee, granted a pocket Battleship, against a Heavy Cruiser and two Light Cruisers.  While she was not defeated, she was forced to retire with damage. 

Well "Pocket Battleship" was a newspaper term. Basically a diesel powered (ought to give better range, reliability and much more immediate response from economical speed to high speed, important for a raider) oversized heavy cruiser.

I've always used that as an example of how the performance of shells is not linear with diameter, rather it increases dramatically, another thing the dopey WoWS system thoroughly misleads people about. I get that it's "arcade", but I do worry people think they know something about naval combat of the period after playing that game, lol, when about the only thing correct in it are the ship models (which, to be fair, are done very well).

Step up from 8" to 11" is very significant, and even an apparently small numerical increase can hide the true difference, such as between the USN's 14" and their later 16" 45s and 50s.

[Steeltrap]

On 11/8/2019 at 1:41 PM, Spitfire109 said:

In the case of Iowa youd need cruisers of equal caliber. Des Moinse class or Baltimore class Cruisers, truly state of the art ships for their time. While say something like a Pensacola Class would get devastated by an Iowa. That's just the nature of Naval warfare is the Newsest boat is usually well above the ones before it in some cases. Like HMS Dreadnought vs any Pre Dreadnought, or USS Iowa vs maybe IJN Kongo.

Absolutely, just was making the point about many different factors that would influence likely results. Relative tech obviously shifts things in favour of the better, so if you're the cruisers the last thing you want is to be taking on a battleship that also has higher gen tech.

Even if you can catch it, are you sure you want to? 😲

 

[Cairo1]

People are throwing around A lot of Tropes, Thinks like Doom stacks, I will only build battleships, modernity, so on and so forth. What everyone is Ignoring is how actual nations have to deal with buildup design and strategy.

Keep in mind first Ships cost money, not just ships, or materials but also work forces, and more importantly perhaps Slipways. I think when we talk about this games the most important conflicts to draw reference from are the 1st Sino-Japanese war, The Spanish American War, and the Russo-Japanese war. These conflicts should be able to fill most bills when it comes to questions or postulates.

In regard to all battleship fleets VS the perceived plebeian anything else, consider the battle of Tsushima the 11 Russian battleship with a mixture of 10 inch and 12 inch guns faced a force of 4 Japanese battleships with only 12 inch guns, and an obsolete Ironclad. Japan however had 8 armored cruisers and 15 protected cruisers (some modern, some obsolete), while Russia had only 3 Armored cruisers, and 5 other Cruisers most of which obsolete. Despite having the heavy ship numbers The Russian fleet was annihilated. Good maneuvering and gunnery won the day, not sheer armor and firepower.

Something else to think about is cost, and capability. Many great powers of this era hardly had either the financial means, the technology, or the slipways to build 1st rate warships. China bought her Battleships from Germany, Japan from England, Russia from the US and England, both Germany and Italy could hardly afford large warships, France was hard for torpedos as she too could barely afford pre-dreadnoughts, Austria Hungary had no idea what they were doing and made flawed broken ships. But all of these nations built up cruisers destroyers gunboats, as big expensive projects cant simply be waited for.

For some reason everyone seems to be pretty keen on talking about 1930s and 40s era ships when those times were dominated by aircraft rendering ship to ship surface warfare something of a rarity, when compared to the damage caused by carriers and subs alike. less we forget that american subs sank more Japanese ships then any other type. I think we should instead think about mentioned conflicts and battles like Jutland, and the Santiago bay, rather then the 1st or 2nd night battle of the Solomon Islands.

For everyone who poo poos Torpedo boats, and protected cruisers, I recommend you read up on theory, and strategy from before WW1 as you may be shocked to see the mighty English navy tremble at the though of a few french destroyers.

[Diabolic_Wave]

1 hour ago, Cairo1 said:

In regard to all battleship fleets VS the perceived plebeian anything else, consider the battle of Tsushima the 11 Russian battleship with a mixture of 10 inch and 12 inch guns faced a force of 4 Japanese battleships with only 12 inch guns, and an obsolete Ironclad. Japan however had 8 armored cruisers and 15 protected cruisers (some modern, some obsolete), while Russia had only 3 Armored cruisers, and 5 other Cruisers most of which obsolete. Despite having the heavy ship numbers The Russian fleet was annihilated. Good maneuvering and gunnery won the day, not sheer armor and firepower.

A lot of the problem is probably that you can't achieve good gunnery with small guns particularly often. Especially in the Semi-Dreadnought mission, the light cruisers have a terrible time hitting anything. I'm pretty sure that if they managed to consistently hit the Semi-dreadnought, we'd see situations where good maneuvering could work better.

Perhaps make it possible to straight up lose lock? That way, if a cruiser managed to get out of lock, it'd be able to reacquire lock sooner as well by way of higher ROF.

[Hellstrike]

3 hours ago, Cairo1 said:

For some reason everyone seems to be pretty keen on talking about 1930s and 40s era ships when those times were dominated by aircraft rendering ship to ship surface warfare something of a rarity, when compared to the damage caused by carriers and subs alike. less we forget that american subs sank more Japanese ships then any other type. I think we should instead think about mentioned conflicts and battles like Jutland, and the Santiago bay, rather then the 1st or 2nd night battle of the Solomon Islands.

That's because currently it is impossible to say how building/playing in that era will work out since we don't have a mission to try it out. There are a few missions which give us a taste of BBs vs BBs, but nothing to try nighttime raids, torp soup from your heavy cruisers or even proper heavy cruisers to begin with. There is no hull or mission where you could accurately recreate a Des Miones or even a Pensacola and take on a few period typical ships. Therefore people theory-craft because the unknown is always tempting.

3 hours ago, Cairo1 said:

Good maneuvering and gunnery won the day, not sheer armor and firepower.

I agree that the balance should not be centered around doomstacks, although they will end up being a valid tactic if you are the smaller force and have no choice but to concentrate your forces (eg Austria Hungary trying to gain control of the Adriatic).

 

3 hours ago, Cairo1 said:

What everyone is Ignoring is how actual nations have to deal with buildup design and strategy.

I think that the benefit of hindsight will influence a lot of players here though. We know what worked and what did not. We get to try our ideas in the naval academy. Historical Admialities did not have that insight, they had to figure stuff out on their own. For example, we will know that dreadnoughts will come before we even get to the 1890s, so we will probably avoid building many capital ships in the years before and favour more future-proof designs of smaller vessels (eg scout/light cruisers) or leave space for upgrades (eg turreted secondaries and later on DP guns).

[Cptbarney]

Just now, Hellstrike said:

That's because currently it is impossible to say how building/playing in that era will work out since we don't have a mission to try it out. There are a few missions which give us a taste of BBs vs BBs, but nothing to try nighttime raids, torp soup from your heavy cruisers or even proper heavy cruisers to begin with. There is no hull or mission where you could accurately recreate a Des Miones or even a Pensacola and take on a few period typical ships. Therefore people theory-craft because the unknown is always tempting.

I agree that the balance should not be centered around doomstacks, although they will end up being a valid tactic if you are the smaller force and have no choice but to concentrate your forces (eg Austria Hungary trying to gain control of the Adriatic).

 

I think that the benefit of hindsight will influence a lot of players here though. We know what worked and what did not. We get to try our ideas in the naval academy. Historical Admialities did not have that insight, they had to figure stuff out on their own. For example, we will know that dreadnoughts will come before we even get to the 1890s, so we will probably avoid building many capital ships in the years before and favour more future-proof designs of smaller vessels (eg scout/light cruisers) or leave space for upgrades (eg turreted secondaries and later on DP guns).

I would night fights actually, makes me wonder how the devs would implement those and what kind of mechanics they would change, adjust, make to introduce an interesting way of fighting.

I think doomstacks will be inevitable but then at the same time due to soo much rng theres a chance that doomstack could become weak and even die off (although not as consistent some may like). Guess it depends how much tactics will influence fleets in general among design choices.

[Cairo1]

I was actually rather shocked by the "modern battleship" mission, I frankly did not expect to see ship designs from the late thirties, but not from the late twenties for that matter, Its not that I have a problem with 18 inch guns, The No.13 class were to carry those and she was pre-treaty, Its more that I had expected too see the tail end of WW1 be the cap of the games time scope. While I would like to see observation blimps, i don't really want to see aircraft. 

I would really like to see night battles too the Search lights cutting away the darkness the risk and passion of the daring ship that spots drawing fire, its a romantic scene to me.

 

Another Neat Pic, 1 like to the first to name her, and tell how they knew.

[Tammuz]

I do agree that small guns in general seem pretty weak even vs lightly or unarmored targets.

 

with that being said, no small guns shouldnt be able to be used en masse to defeat armor.

 

the ADVANTAGE of the smaller ships historically, which hopefully will come out in the campaign version of the game, is cost:

 

so taking the Iowa vs Fletcher example: 1 Iowa class battleship costs as much to build as 16.66667 fletcher class destroyers.  Also takes much longer to build, can only be built at a big ship yard, etc.  Which probably explains why the USA only ended up building 4 Iowa class BBs compared to 175 fletcher class DDs

 

If anything, they need to add the major historical drawback to torpedo deck-mounts and thats torpedo ammo detonations.

Edited November 12, 2019 by Tammuz

[Steeltrap]

On 11/12/2019 at 5:07 PM, Cairo1 said:

I was actually rather shocked by the "modern battleship" mission, I frankly did not expect to see ship designs from the late thirties, but not from the late twenties for that matter, Its not that I have a problem with 18 inch guns, The No.13 class were to carry those and she was pre-treaty, Its more that I had expected too see the tail end of WW1 be the cap of the games time scope. While I would like to see observation blimps, i don't really want to see aircraft. 

I would really like to see night battles too the Search lights cutting away the darkness the risk and passion of the daring ship that spots drawing fire, its a romantic scene to me.

 

Another Neat Pic, 1 like to the first to name her, and tell how they knew.

I'm going to go with Akebono, DD-52, of the second group of Fubuki class known as Ayanami. launched Nov 1930, completed 31 July 1931 (specifics according to wiki).

As to how I knew, I didn't specifically. But I could see it was Japanese, possibly a Fubuki as they're famous as being viewed by some as "the first modern DD", so a little bit of searching here and there found me the corresponding black and white original and thus wasn't hard to get the specific details after that.

I'm by no means an expert on small ships, however.

Found a colourised one of Sagiri, DD-50 (2 ships earlier) too, also of the same class/subclass and completed 6 months earlier. She had 10 on her bows, so presumably that had something to do with divisional numbering etc.

I agree, both this and the other I found were very good images. Sad when you think what happened to each of them, Sagiri torpedoed by a Dutch sub on Dec 24th 1941 and Akebono bombed at Cavite base by US air raid 13 November 1944 while alongside the Yugumo class Akishimo, setting both ablaze and sinking the next day following an explosion on Akishimo.

Edited November 13, 2019 by Steeltrap
minor additions/amendments

[Diabolic_Wave]

3 hours ago, Steeltrap said:

I'm going to go with Akebono, DD-52

The Katakana on the side says 'Akebono', if that helps.

[Steeltrap]

4 hours ago, Diabolic_Wave said:

The Katakana on the side says 'Akebono', if that helps.

LMAO, that's cheating!

🙈

[Cairo1]

Steeltrap get it, Akebono is the correct answer, I was hoping other then looking from back Images or from the easy option reading the Katakana, the give away would be the air intakes on the exhaust funnels or the 7 on the hull indicating Des-div.7 Akebono, Sazanami and Ushio. There are actually slight differences between the first batch of Ayanamis, and the second half of the batch, which bare likeness to the Akatsukis, but their tiny fore funnel is the give away.

I recommend a read on Des,div.7 as they all had interesting careers especially Ushio the only ship in the pearl harbor attack force to survive the war, Also notable for rescuing numerous crews of both Allied, and Japanese ships, Shelling Wake Island, and saving a flaming Akebono despite orders to abandon her and, enormous danger to herself.