Mission 10 - Either I Suck or the Balance Does

[Erebus]

Like the title suggests, I'm new to the game and certainly not an expert on naval combat, but I've been having a lot of trouble with mission 10 in defeating the 3 heavy cruisers. I've found battleships to be extremely underpowered, and get picked off easily by the cruisers. I remember someone on the forums saying they used a mix of 13-inch guns, heavy armour and 19-knot speed, so I tried that and got picked apart. That led me to sacrificing almost everything but armour, and resulted in the screenshot posted here. I still got picked off and sunk before one of my guns even got a hit. I could be wrong, but is one of the benefits of a battleship its longer range accuracy? Should it be the case that cruisers can pick off a battleship from long distance without take any damage itself? 

I can post a video of my attempt in battle if that helps. I've tried several approaches, including handing over the control to the AI, but nothing has worked. I figured I'd post this because this makes battleships almost useless with their near-zero accuracy. Either that, or I'm doing something wrong that makes them useless instead. 
 

[Teckelmaster]

Hello, 

my last run through that mission was actually before the last hotfix, that time it was actually pretty easy with the BB setup. Right now, smaller ships and smaller calibers are so overpowered (in my oppinion), that you might want to change tactics. It will be difficult using one BB, i would actually try to outgun the computer with cruiser, which will not be easy also. Sorry, but that is all i got.

Teckelmaster out

[Evil4Zerggin]

It does seem to have gotten much harder than before. It seems like the enemy cruisers have grossly better tech than you judging from their speed, accuracy, and armor bonus %. Enemy designs are randomized so you may get something different each time. IMX they do tend to skimp a little on armor, so hope they draw smaller guns and keep them at arm's length. 8" secondaries on BBs will help with getting enough long-range firepower to overcome your tech disadvantage.

Edited December 21, 2019 by Evil4Zerggin

[Jans]

In the scenario of one battleship againts four destroyers there is clearly an imbalance. I designed the battleship specifically as a destroyer killer. 4x11" main guns (to save weight for the smaller guns) + 14x7" + 14x4". Thefore my broadside was a total of 14 guns of 7" and 4" calibre. My battleship fired like a machine gun almost never hitting anything. At a combat distance of 2.5 km on average this is not reallistic. If both ships maintain a steady course as it was the case the battleship director system should find the mark not later than in the tenth salvo in the worst of cases (I am assuming the battle is taking place with 1905 to 1910 technology, this is not clear in the scenario). This was the first problem. 

I was using HE ammunition. With this, even an 11" near miss shell creates an explosion that affects the superstructure, possibly the hull and certainly the exposed crew of a destroyer. Eventually there where hits, and many wrong things happened in my opinion. Those destroyers seem to be small units of 500 to 700 metric tonnes (again assuming 1905 to 1910 technology). However I needed more than ten impacts to really cripple one of such units. Remember some of those impacts correspond to 7" (175mm) HE rounds. The hull is penetrated, upper structures damaged, conducts of the chimneys broken (affecting efficiency of engines), fire started on several places, engines, boilers and pumps damaged, bulkheads bent of broken, pipes, electric and hydraulic circuits cut off, and a point is reached where fire cannot be contained (particullarly on those times where firefighting systems where primitive), flooding cannot be stopped and the destroyer either sinks, burns or at least stop being funcionall and retires from the battle (if it can do so). However there where destroyers with 75% damage on superstructure and 70% damage on the hull (flooding) that remained fully operative, running at full speed (totally impossible with such level of damage) and firing back.

And on the other side of the battle, the battleship was receiving an average of 1 to 5 impacts per second of 4" and smaller shells that cripled the battleship to a 50%. The battleship ended with severe flooding caused by 4" shells penetrating somehow an 11" of armoured belt, fire everywhere, the main towers, also with 11" frontal armour, broken down sometimes. Of course the fire director system of the destroyers, that should be far far more simply than that aboard a battleship and should have been seriously affected by the severe motion of the ships (rolling and heaving) was extremenly precise. My feeling is that 40 to 50% of their shots where actual hits. 

The power of the destroyers was awesome. I have described the scenario where I won. On the first two tries the destroyers almost sunk me by gunfire alone. 

 

 

[arkhangelsk]

Ok, just tried it. My conclusion is you just S... er, I mean, you might want to consider adjusting tactics or your ship design. Or maybe your enemies' ship just happened to be good. Because I just threw the pre-hotfix design at the scenario. While I will never consider myself good enough to make "demonstration videos", for what its worth here's the ship I used and photos of the battle:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/zXFnSryo5MrkU3mk8

Though they have indeed upped the little guns to stupid extents in this hotfix, I stayed far enough from them they didn't seem to hurt me very much. If I have one gripe, it's the AI - what at they doing closing the enemy cruisers to shoot at them! Run away! Because of this, I nearly lost the game as one of them ate a torpedo.

Edited December 22, 2019 by arkhangelsk
Oh, it's the Alpha 3 design

[RedParadize]

@Erebus I just redid it to make sure my old strategy still hold. It does, but with a twist.

What you have now is a single BB. That is just 4 good guns you have there. I would suggest going for cheaper ship, lesser everything exept guns and tower. You can easily double up firepower and almost guarantee that the opening of the battle will favor you.

There is a extra reason to do this, since last patch armor combat value is not quite what it was, guns are more accurate and have much more penetrative power. Do not expect to be able to make effective armor for now.

[Jans]

In general my feeling is that the AI hits much harder and much luckier than I do. Not more frecuently though. I had a battle where four battleships with 16" guns where pounding the hell out of an equal size and armour enemy battleship. I was hitting it repeteadly but without effect. I tried both HE and AP, it did not matter. After 30 minutes or so all my battleships where seriously damaged and this single enemy had received just something below 20% of damage. 

[Jans]

I just tried scenario 10. I insist the AI is way overpowered. On one particular salvo one of the cruisers achived 7 hits!!. All of them made damage. Al three cruisers had 8" guns as main armament. I had 13" inches armour in turrets and belt. 8" on the extended belt. 3" on the deck. My broadside was 4x11" + 6x8", the idea being having a lot of guns shooting to compensate their superior numbers. Not using too high calibers allowed me higher rate of fire than it would be case if I had used 13" guns, tempting as they where.... I also had high speed. I maneouvered the ship frecuently to shake off their firing solutions, etc. In 22 minutes the battleship is sunk by cruisers and the three cruisers are intact. 

 

 

[arkhangelsk]

Hint number 1. Try bigger guns because they will do more in one hit.

Hint number 2. Try staying close to 5000m because they really OPed the close in performance of little guns this hotfix and they will murder you at close range. It might also work to exploit this but I was too lazy to change my ship to a post hotfix config and it still worked.

Hint number 3: Try keeping to cruise speed and forget maneuver. Concentrate on hitting the enemy.