Please post your "solutions" to Naval Academy missions.

[HailCOBRALA]

ANY academy missions would be helpful. I was able to beat most of them my last save, but now im having a little difficulty. The AI designed is a little helpful but I'd like to hear your designs. 

[Evil4Zerggin]

Time to post my most disgusting Naval Academy design, the naked secondary battleship. This is for "Russian fleet in dilemma".

• The Russian Super Battleship I has the highest base Resistance of all hulls available in a Naval Academy mission at 109.
• By stacking maximum resistance modifiers (Balanced Techs option, max Torpedo Belt and Hull Bottom, Turtleback citadel), we can reach -93% Gun Damage.
• Then we stack reductions to flash fire and detonation chance until they reach 0%.
• Together, these allow us to take all the armor off our ship, apart from the minimum 8" belt. I have free weight that I could have used to leave some on, especially the conning tower which seems to get hit more this patch, but I wanted the ship to look as ridiculous as possible.
• Since the objective of this mission is to sink a flat number of enemy ships, you only need to kill the smaller ships. So I put as many 8" secondaries as possible. Using fewer turrets with less crowded arcs probably would have worked better, but again, I wanted the ship to look as ridiculous as possible.

I don't claim this ship is optimal at all, but it works well enough while being completely absurd.

Edited September 24, 2021 by Evil4Zerggin

[Commander Reed]

I don't mean to be rude, but this thread is absolutely stupid. The entire point of this game is to be creative with your designs - but you just want to take the easy way by asking the community to give you their designs that worked out?

Yeah, that pretty much defeats the point of the game at this point. 

[neph]

Near Jutland: single torpedo launchers are objectively the best torpedo system in the game. Lighter per tube than any other & faster reloads? yes please. With a low displacement design you can put 20" oxygen torps on a destroyer hull & get 10 of them. Makes very short work of those battlecruisers. Take the torpedo tech.

 

 

[neph]

Defend your convoy: Minimum displacement pocket battleships. Don't need to be fast, but 28 kt isn't awful per se. You're going to want good accuracy bonuses & a lot of armor. Pretty punchy, does the trick.

 

[neph]

Destroy a full fleet: Again, minimum displacement is worth it if it means you can have two of something! Make a pair of proto-richelieus. Don't use casemates they suck. Can go ham on the armor. Dreadnought IV has abornomally high resistance anyways.

Those are the only odd ones I've got. Everything is pretty bog standard, just get a good process for making design decisions & few of the missions are very difficult. Don't waste your displacement on silly things just because it's there.

[Evil4Zerggin]

7 hours ago, neph said:

low displacement design

Indeed, a ship's "hit points" are proportional to tonnage + 5000, so larger DDs are not much more durable than smaller ones even on an individual basis. Using lots of smaller DDs will make it harder for the enemy to get rid of them.

[HailCOBRALA]

Thank you for all the designs guys! We can treat this is a collaborative effort. If anyone has any problems with certain missions, post them here and we'll try and help out with what worked. I've got a few solutions but still having issues with specific missions. 

[HailCOBRALA]

19 hours ago, Evil4Zerggin said:

Indeed, a ship's "hit points" are proportional to tonnage + 5000, so larger DDs are not much more durable than smaller ones even on an individual basis. Using lots of smaller DDs will make it harder for the enemy to get rid of them.

Yup, this seems to be my workaround for a few missions as well. Can't get a tough enough DD with the money? Just get a TON of smaller ones with a TON of torps. Just sank 3 BCs with 5 DDs and NO loses. 

[AurumCorvus]

For "Rise of the Heavy Cruiser", this design was awesome. It felt powerful, maneuverable, and tough as a battleship. Armor settings were: 7" mid-belt, 3" mid-deck, 1" fore & aft decks, 7" conning tower. Guns had 8.2" & 3.2" armor and 1.1" & 0.9" armor. Due to the high resistance values of the ship, it takes only 29% gun damage and 26% torpedo damage. Not to mention: It's perfectly balanced, as-is. No fancy tricks necessary.

The well-spaced, all-forward main armament was super easy to align with the enemy. Though there are a few moments during torpedo evasion you can't fire at all, for most of the turns you can bring your entire main armament to bear, which makes negates the main disadvantage of a torpedo turn-away. The 4" secondary scares off any destroyers that are curious enough to investigate, and were super effective because, during a torpedo turn-away, they can bring most of their weight to punish the torpedo launching ship, especially DDs (and wounded CAs).

[HailCOBRALA]

On 9/24/2021 at 2:25 PM, neph said:

Destroy a full fleet: Again, minimum displacement is worth it if it means you can have two of something! Make a pair of proto-richelieus. Don't use casemates they suck. Can go ham on the armor. Dreadnought IV has abornomally high resistance anyways.

 

Those are the only odd ones I've got. Everything is pretty bog standard, just get a good process for making design decisions & few of the missions are very difficult. Don't waste your displacement on silly things just because it's there.

Can confirm. This design worked AMAZING! I love the fact that other peoples creative designs can force this old gamers own creative thinking back into gear. 

[neph]

21 hours ago, AurumCorvus said:

For "Rise of the Heavy Cruiser", this design was awesome. It felt powerful, maneuverable, and tough as a battleship. Armor settings were: 7" mid-belt, 3" mid-deck, 1" fore & aft decks, 7" conning tower. Guns had 8.2" & 3.2" armor and 1.1" & 0.9" armor. Due to the high resistance values of the ship, it takes only 29% gun damage and 26% torpedo damage. Not to mention: It's perfectly balanced, as-is. No fancy tricks necessary.

The well-spaced, all-forward main armament was super easy to align with the enemy. Though there are a few moments during torpedo evasion you can't fire at all, for most of the turns you can bring your entire main armament to bear, which makes negates the main disadvantage of a torpedo turn-away. The 4" secondary scares off any destroyers that are curious enough to investigate, and were super effective because, during a torpedo turn-away, they can bring most of their weight to punish the torpedo launching ship, especially DDs (and wounded CAs).

How funny! We had nearly the exact same solution--but I had more armor/less resist stacking & went for 4x3 10" superheavies w/ 4" secondaries instead of 3x3 11" superheavies w/ 4" secondaries. Also did Krupp III instead of IV & ungeared instaed of g turbs. The difference: these go 34 kts instead of 28... and I have two of these! An easy rout.

Edited September 28, 2021 by neph

[neph]

"The Modern Battleship" is a challenge now, and I got seriously stalled on it for a while. Here's why:

a) Partial pens are dangerous now. Under a sufficient volume of 7-9" fire, it won't matter how thick your 20" belt is. Eventually, those partial pens will start adding up and your structure will go down the tubes, you'll start incurring unsustainable crew losses, and you will no longer be able to hit anything. This is an even faster decline into ruin if you're getting partial penned by 14-15" fire.

b) The AI designs substantially more survivable ships than before. Odds are high you're not going to be killing things by opening a couple of holes with your 16" broadside & watching enemy BBs flood & sink. You're going to have to slowly beat the crud out of the enemy dreadnoughts until they die under structure damage (or die from flooding at 5% structure, so a moot point anyways).

c) There are a lot of escorts. Wander too close, and you'll see 20-40 (!) torpedoes in the water. Again, quick route to structure/accuracy death. This also precludes memes like torpedo BBs.

Thus, we've got a handful of incompatible requirements. We need to kill the enemy BBs--their high caliber fire (yes, they'll bring guns comparable to your own) is too dangerous to our armor & superstructure (note: you CANNOT lose your towers/funnels or the accuracy penalties will murder you. Armor your superstructure well).I find that superheavy shells (note that the nerf to heavy/superheavy accuracy also works against us here) or otherwise snipery builds aren't good enough--penning their armor won't be a problem, but actually doing enough damage to kill them by structure death will take between 20-50 good hits depending on their build. However, with three of them to kill, we've got to kill them relatively efficiently or we'll run out of shells. We need to get pretty close, enough to have ~10% accuracy if we want to have a chance to kill them. However, once you're that close you're going to be ruined by a hail of midcaliber fire. Their BBs have a lot of 7-8" guns, and their CA line will have an absurd number of 7-9" guns. You'll be in deep structure before you know it, and that's assuming you don't get torpedo'd to hell & back before then.

As a result, here's what you've got to do, and you've got to do it fast--before you get partial pen'd to death.

1) Pick off destroyers at range while exchanging high caliber fire with the enemy BB line. There's usually one BB with a lot of guns & less armor--target this one first. Their DDs will try to rush you. Without escorting CAs, you're going to have to pack your own midcaliber battery. I found that a painful number of 8" guns was required to clear the DDs fast enough to not have to juke torpedos/waste too much time & take too much structure damage.

2) Close range--and I mean close it. Get within 5 km of the enemy BBs. Why? if you hang out in the 12-15 km range you'll still get pelted by midcaliber first & you still won't kill the enemy BBs fast enough. Get right up against them and wreck them as fast as you can.

3) Even with all BBs & most of the DDs gone, you're still going to have to kill CAs. Don't do this first--there's too many of them & they'll keep range enough that you'll only bag 3 or so of them before you get partial pen'd. If you do this after the BBs are dead, this is the easiest part though.

So what's the problem? The problem is even with a ton of armor & increased shells, you're going to run out of both structure & ammo before the CAs are dead. What's the solution?

Bring another BB. Another BB represents twice the HP & twice the shells. Let me make it clear: this is one mission that ABSOLUTELY REQUIRES multiple minimum-displacement vessels, and accordingly is worth taking the extra funds. It's nearly 50% more money, and is worth it even though you're going to have to use Mk 1 guns. With the extra funds, it's trivial to get two nice BBs with good crew (although you could get 3 easily & 4 with a bit of effort if you want untrained crew--might be worth trying). Use the Russian hull for the resistance & combo it with torpedo protection/multiple hulls (which bizarrely improves your resistance & thus reduces your gun damage taken modifier). Put a heavy secondary battery on. Armor your superstructure decently. Skimp on nothing that improves accuracy (except for the towers; second-best is good enough. Those things are expensive, and cost is our limiting factor if we want multiple BBs). Swear at the restrictive Mount 2 errors. Pray a lot & keep range until you know it's safe--then close it as fast as you can. You'll probably end up with one useless vessel in 20% structure but hey, that's what the other one's for. Good luck.

Edited September 28, 2021 by neph

[LoSboccacc]

Idk I solved "The Modern Battleship" with a bog standard Yamowa, optimized for hitting - 16" mark 3, super heavy, all the long range bonus tower, veterans etc.

Note however that the enemy vary a lot, I've seen anything from 13" to 16" guns generated for this mission BBs, so sometime they're just pushovers.

[AurumCorvus]

On 9/27/2021 at 11:22 PM, neph said:

...

1) Pick off destroyers at range while exchanging high caliber fire with the enemy BB line. There's usually one BB with a lot of guns & less armor--target this one first. Their DDs will try to rush you. Without escorting CAs, you're going to have to pack your own midcaliber battery. I found that a painful number of 8" guns was required to clear the DDs fast enough to not have to juke torpedos/waste too much time & take too much structure damage.

2) Close range--and I mean close it. Get within 5 km of the enemy BBs. Why? if you hang out in the 12-15 km range you'll still get pelted by midcaliber first & you still won't kill the enemy BBs fast enough. Get right up against them and wreck them as fast as you can.

3) Even with all BBs & most of the DDs gone, you're still going to have to kill CAs. Don't do this first--there's too many of them & they'll keep range enough that you'll only bag 3 or so of them before you get partial pen'd. If you do this after the BBs are dead, this is the easiest part though.

Love your plan, and absolutely nothing wrong with it. Just expanding on it with some differences other people can take:

1) Unlike my earlier post on stacking resist, forget it here. Go for Krupp I and go for inches on your turrets. I personally had a huge problem with closing the range too fast and getting flash-fired by CA guns, so I went opposite and tried to get really heavily armored main guns.

2) Forget trading fire with the BBs initially. Train your Mark 3 16" battery on the destroyers in the initial part of the battle and just sink them outright once you have a 1% probability. This is most effective in the initial part of the battle, because they haven't gone to full screen or loose formation. This means that even your misses will cause other DDs to sink, and with a 16" shell that means one or two hits depending on how well the AI designed the AI (the DDs I faced required 1 1/2 of a shell, so basically 2). Your considerations may change if you have Mark 1 stuff.

3) Bring a good set of above deck torpedoes. Because when you close the range with the BBs/CAs, these things are killers, especially if you can cross the T and send these down the entire enemy line. Even if you can't, this can be a free kill against a BB while you kill another (say, you fire at the 1st in line, and torpedo the 2nd in line).

4) CAs are really, really dangerous and shouldn't be underestimated. Yes, your battleship in able to blow them into smithereens, but you need to be careful, because your BBs are on their last legs at this point.

5) If a DD is broadsiding you, don't wait for the torpedo notification. Just u-turn and double back to avoid those damn things. Also, why haven't you already sunk the bastards yet? It doesn't matter if you have a better accuracy on another ship, DDs have good speed and will sneak up on you in the heat of battle.

6) If a CA has an above deck torpedo set, treat it like a DD. Sink it, first priority (after the DDs, because it doesn't have the speed), unless it is on the opposite side of the fleet. One of the enemy CAs had 4 tube torpedo set, but it was at the end of a 3 ship division that was following a 3 ship BB line. Was it going to come close? No. Your opinion may vary on underwater torpedo mounts.

7) Finally, one of my big differences with neph is on the more money v boost technology. I advocate boost tech because of one crucial tech: Gen 2 Radar. The accuracy bonus is huge and is your tool for having enough rounds to actually win the scenario.

Also, my own design. 16" main belt, 2.5 other belts, 6.1 mid deck, 1 other decks, 14 conning tower, 1.2 superstructure. Guns were 18 & 5, 0.5 & 0.3. Crew training was 49 (I was really annoyed by the fact that 50 was too much in costs).

[HailCOBRALA]

BARELY got them with this guy. As others have been saying, those CAs can batter the crap out of your poor BB. I was fortunate that the enemy BBs got so close. My 16" made short work of them. The DDs didn't really threaten me. I took a bunch of torp hits but was able to shrug them off, and quickly wiped them out. As like the BBs, the CAs got too close and I picked them off one by one. My armour was almost gone by that time but the 8" weren't really killing me like the BBs were. This design is probably not the greatest, but got the job done! 

Edited September 29, 2021 by HailCOBRALA

[LoSboccacc]

my "near jutland" solution, like most solution with destroyers involved, is absolute torpedo boat spam. 7 destroyer x squadron, 1 squadron x bc, with one squadron in reserve screening.

[Skeksis]

...

Edited November 9, 2021 by Skeksis

[AurumCorvus]

So, two designs. The more useful one is the all-forward BB. This one is from "France v Germany" where the target is a H-class, but also works in other missions where you don't have to worry so much about preserving your own ships. The idea is to have a fast ship that can rapidly close the distance and firing your main guns into the enemy number at literally point blank range. No, not exaggerating there. I was about to start ramming the H-class when I killed it. However, it also works in "Payback Time" and the general concept is fine with the right mission objectives (which is trade half of the turrets for oodles of closing speed). Feel free to use 4 gun turrets as the accuracy penalty (which is offset by your rapid closing) is vastly outweighed by the benefits of an extra pair/quartet/sextet of shells. Also, build multiple ships and put them into "Line Abreast" while charging, for a lot more firepower than you would expect. In fact, Line Abreast can have all your battleships firing all their forward guns at a very high accuracy rate, perfect for knocking out enemy battleships. It might even become my go-to BB design for nations that might be cash-strapped when the campaign comes out, as it is a very good equalizer ship.

The other design is a "Large Cruiser" or battlecruiser design from "Cruisers Needed". I just wanted to show it off for the ridiculousness of fitting 18" guns on that hull. Also, I would not want to be the enemy battleship commander that has to deal with these things given the high speed (36kn) and the ridiculous damage potential (6x18"). It was like a 4 v 1 fight with battleship caliber weapons, that I very quickly won.

[neph]

"Heavy Duty": What do you do when the enemy brings 16 20" guns? You bring more of your own. Minimum-displacement high resistance 20" small battleship. In hindsight, I'd kill the entire 8" secondary battery (I though I'd have to get close on this one), upgrade the superstructure to the second level one, and put more 20" on. As far as I can tell, nothing else works. You just gotta duke it out at 30 km.

Revised design (untested, but should be even better)

[HailCOBRALA]

Was finally able to finish "Search and Destroy" with this beauty. Went with Recon as the tech and stayed wayyy the heck away from the DDs. Let YOUR DDs take the brunt of the torps but also expect to take a few torps and design accordingly. The 16 inch should take the enemy BBs and any other ship that gets in the way fairly quickly. 

[neph]

1 hour ago, HailCOBRALA said:

Was finally able to finish "Search and Destroy" with this beauty. Went with Recon as the tech and stayed wayyy the heck away from the DDs. Let YOUR DDs take the brunt of the torps but also expect to take a few torps and design accordingly. The 16 inch should take the enemy BBs and any other ship that gets in the way fairly quickly. 

what in the AI-designer heck is that abomination???? can you not fit Y turret on that tower barbette????

[HailCOBRALA]

13 minutes ago, neph said:

what in the AI-designer heck is that abomination???? can you not fit Y turret on that tower barbette????

For some reason.. no. 

[AurumCorvus]

55 minutes ago, neph said:

what in the AI-designer heck is that abomination???? can you not fit Y turret on that tower barbette????

Nope, you can only fit 12s or 13s on that (can't remember which, and honestly, it might be even lower caliber). You can sometimes sneak in a higher caliber 4-gun turret due to their more generic design in certain occasions (some of the US (or maybe Germany) BB's smaller/earlier main towers had this issue in earlier builds with 18s-20s, might still be there).

Honestly, in this scenario, I generally take the smaller sec tower that doesn't try to give you a barbette and snuggle up the actual barbette to the tower.

[AurumCorvus]

On 10/8/2021 at 3:41 PM, neph said:

"Heavy Duty": What do you do when the enemy brings 16 20" guns? You bring more of your own. Minimum-displacement high resistance 20" small battleship. In hindsight, I'd kill the entire 8" secondary battery (I though I'd have to get close on this one), upgrade the superstructure to the second level one, and put more 20" on. As far as I can tell, nothing else works. You just gotta duke it out at 30 km.

....

Revised design (untested, but should be even better)

Revised design (tested and is even better).*

In fact, I dropped the 5" and 2" turrets, as well as some armor (Krupp I and less inches) to get my crew training up to 90. Tube II/TNT II, with auto and super heavy shells (standard ammo amount). SV rangefinder and Gen 2 radar. Minimum bulkheads w/ no citadel or anti-torpedo protection as well. The design is a beast in line abreast. Heavy and accurate gunfire quickly disables the super battleship pretty easily. In fact, I'd give it even odds at being able to sink everything in the scenario if it continued after the super BB was sunk.