Transport crews

[Aceituna]

This might be a pointless topic because we still don't know how exactly will crew work but I would like to suggest it anyway.

Transport ships are not controllable by player so I assume that we will not be able to build them neither train their crews. So i guess that transports will have some fixed crew stats that will be same for every transport in-game.

This brings me to my point: Few months ago i read two books about German auxiliary cruisers (one about all active german auxiliary cruisers in both world wars while each of them received own long chapter and the second one was specifically abou Raider 16-Atlantis). Both these books mentioned that when allied merchant ship refused to surrender (and in-case it was armed) their crews shoot their weapons terribly unaccurate. They were so inaccurate that thay could barely hit the auxiliary cruiser which is big and quite slow (althrough it was very close). Not to mention that orders  for the cannon crews often came to them misrepresented.

So i think that transport ships should get a huge debuff for accuracy.

Edited June 5, 2020 by Aceituna

[Norbert Sattler]

I agree.

And speaking of auxiliary cruisers: Will ships like the Kondor & Co have a place in the campaign too?
They did play some role in both World Wars after all.

[DougToss]

RTW 1 & 2 handle auxiliary ships will. Built only in wartime, and with very limited modifications compared to a merchant hull. 

That's a great way to do it. It's not too hard of a thing to add a 3" gun to a tramp steamer, just don't expect too much from it. 

[Aceituna]

I would like to see auxiliary cruiser in game but I think that if we want to use them the same way as Germany did (as raiders) it should work the same way as submarines (they wouldn't be present in battles but their score would be auto-calculated) because they were supposed to (if possible) force the enemy merchant ships to surrender without fight instead of just sinking them.

[DougToss]

Sure. Throw in a random chance of encountering a Q-ship or enemy AMC or protected cruiser and otherwise leave the result to a dice roll. That's a clever solution.