Replicating: Battle of the River Plate, Battle of the Denmark Strait (findings)

[fsp]

I tried replicating two famous WW2 battles, with mixed results:

Battle of the River Plate
Player: Germany (1 CA)
Ship I built
Pretty much copied the Deutschland class, had to settle for 5" secondaries though.
11" Mk5 guns

AI: Britain (1 CA, 2 CL)
1 CA (Exeter): This one arrived with 6 11" Mk3 guns. Maximum bulkheads.
2 CL (Ajax, Achilles): light designs with 5" guns.

Both, CA and CLs were way too slow compared to RL models (around 23 knots).

How the battle unfolded
I started hitting the "Exeter" early on at around 12km. Focused on the CA, ignored the CL. Heavily damaged CA, which tried to run when at around 70 % of structure (I support this, was a wise decision). The two CLs closed in under a smoke screen and tried to torpedoe "Graf Spee". I dodged the torpedoes which allowed the "Exeter" to gain distance on me. When the CLs came out of the smoke screen at around 6 km, my main batteries made quick work of them. I then followed the "Exeter" (which would have escaped had it not been for her slow speed) and sunk her. While I was only lightly damaged, I spent so much ammunition that I would have been in a huge problem had there been another fight later on in a "campaign".

I found this battle highly satisfactory and very close to the historical one.

Battle of the Denmark strait
Player: Britain (1 BB, 1 BC)
Ship I built
I wanted to build the Hood and see if I could get her sunk.
So I went for a BC with 8 x 15" Mk 3 guns.

I gave myself 1930s tech to simulate a middle ground between the 1920s BC Hood and the 1940s BB Prince of Wales. 
The Germans were given 1940s tech.

At 44,000 tons, I was able to easily replicate the Hood's capabilities. I gave her historical armor at Krupp IV, 30 knots, only hydraulic turrets, the best FC and radar but only standard bulkheads and cordite I as propellant as well as Barbette I, trying to set her up for a fatal ammo explosion. However, as I still had lots of unspent tonnage left, she was also given citadel IV. At the end I still had around 7,000 unspent tonnage left.

Ship the AI built for me: BB Prince of Wales
I had no influence on this one. I expected a ship better and bigger than the historical counterpart and I got it:
61,700 ton monster
4 x 3 16" Mk3 
Armor 2.6-18.2 at 98 %
28 knots
Bulkheads: maximum
Initially, I was ok with that, as I expected the German ship with its 1940 techs to maybe even sport 17" or 18" guns.

AI: Germany (1 BB, 1 CA)
1 BB Bismarck
58,000 tons
4 x 3 14" Mk 4
Armor 2.3-16.5 at 88 %
22 knots
Bulkheads: few

Not sure what happend here, why the AI chose such a small caliber and so few bulkheads. How did it spend all that tonnage? Certainly not on speed.

1 CA Prinz Eugen
10,500 tons
2 x 3 8" Mk 4
0.7-8.1 at 98 %
Bulkheads: minimum

The AI did ok with the hull it chose, but that hull was very old, it still had casemate guns.

How the battle unfolded
Hood started to get early hits on "Bismarck" at ranges of 20km+, even earlier than "Prince of Wales". "Bismarck" didn't hit anything for a long time (I suspect I had better FC and radar on Hood than Bismarck had) and went down to about 75 % structure before the first hits landed on Hood. "Bismarck" chose Hood as target and when the hits landed at around 15 km, they started to hurt. Wonder how it would have gone with 15 " guns for "Bismarck". 

I then positioned Hood (67 structure) behind PoW, which prompted "Bismarck" to fire at PoW for a while, before switching back to Hood. About 35 minutes into battle, PoW started hitting hard. "Bismarck" started running at around 40 % structure. Had PoW close in, while keeping Hood (55 % structure) at a distance.

"Bismarck" sank 78 minutes into battle with Pow at 84 % structure (9km distance) and Hood still at 55% (14 km). Both ships then focused on PE which had been undamaged up until that point. She was gone within eight minutes, mainly due to hits from PoW.

I expected the battle to be lopsided, as BB/BC v BB/CA probably is in a game such as this. I was not happy with the BB the German AI built though.

Bonus: Jutland
Tried to replicate Jutland. This did not work out well, as there simply were too many ships and frame rate was atrocious (AMD Ryzen 5 2600, GeForce RTX 2070). Nevertheless left it running for around 15 minutes. Battle Cruisers were in deep trouble.

Conclusion/TLDR

Custom Battles should:
- allow you to specify a tonnage limit
- allow you to specify a maximum/minimum main gun size for both sides
- allow you to design all the ships in a fleet, not just one type
- allow you to design BOTH fleets (think Steel Panthers by SSI/Matrix Games, where you can compose the enemy force and then have the AI play it in a custom battle)

Huge Battles:
I am not sure the AI on both sides will handle ships well in those. The ships I leave to the AI usually do decently with RTW 2. I don't think they are doing well in this game, prompting me to micromanage. I am pleased with how the AI handles torpedo runs for your DD flotillas in RTW 2 and with CLs. The DD/CL AI here still needs a lot of work.

In a big battle (20v20, 30v30) you would probably focus on CAs and BBs/BCs, with the CLs and DDs left to the AI, only occasionally micromanaging those. This is why I think DD/CL AI especially needs to be worked on.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 17, 2019 by fsp

[RAMJB]

In a few minutes I'll be linking here a video to my last custom battle. Wanted to do a 1BB&2DDs vs 1BB&2DDs scenario. 1935, 20km start.

To make things interesting I restricted myself to WT limits. meaning, 35k tons max, no guns beyond 15''. So I designed such a ship and went into battle.

I won't spoil what the AI brought to that battle. You'll have to see to believe XD. All I know is that I don't remember the last time time I laughed that much while getting my ass so absolutely crushingly and completely whooped by a game XD.

Edited December 17, 2019 by RAMJB

[RAMJB]

I wasn't kidding... XDDDD