Campaign - Newbie Help

[Fraasbioroid]

I've recently picked up this game and am enjoying it, but am struggling with the campaign. I'm playing as the British as I assumed that would be easier (given British Naval power at the time)

However in the Campaign I keep facing the following issues:

 

1. The Germans always start out with a much larger navy than me. I'm not sure why. It's not like I am only building Battleships, they have more ships that me in every class

2. I always seem outgunned - I know number of guns isn't the be all and end all - and I always make sure my weight distribution is even etc. However I struggle to have enough firepower, both to win firefights and to hold off torpedo boats or quickly damage merchants. The battleship in particular seems to have way fewer guns that the Germans manage, even with a bigger displacement. Am I doing something wrong? I have been putting a large double turret and front and back but after that only have room for casemate guns.

3. I keep losing huge amounts of transports is "random events" (ie not ones where I get to defend them in a battle). I assume this is because I don't have enough ships to patrol.

I am able to hold my own in the actual battles, mainly by relying on light cruisers with torpedos (also managed to sink a BB in the 4 TP vs 1 BB fight) but am getting ground down in the overall economy.

 

Any advise would be appreciated!

 

Thanks

 

Fraser

 

[Tycondero]

The only advise I can give is that you should try to build better ships and combine your ships in a task force. This should allow you to win most engagements by just having the number advantage. Really, as GB prevailing over your enemies shouldn't be that difficult. You have the highest naval budget and the best tech. 

[Norbert Sattler]

1) The AI tends to build cheap ships, which naturally means they can afford them in greater number. I usually end up with superior, but much more costly ships that can... and also regularly have to stand up to superior numbers of enemies.

2) Pre-Dreadnoughts generally have only two slots for main guns with very few exceptions, so nothing that can be done about that.

3) To reduce the number of losses to convoy raiding, the only things you can do it set more ships to Sea Control (by default ships are set to In Being when built) and well... build more ships and/or sink enemy ships. Also your ships can only protect convoys within their range. If the enemy has longer range than you, they'll sink your transports outside of the protective cordon.

If you are playing the beta patch, you can send taskforces to the areas where you lose the transports to protect them better.

 

I would suggest to always use all three research priority points. If you don't, your research will be spread evenly on all things, most nobably the current not-yet implemented stuff like submarines. I usually keep range-finders and big-guns prioritized and switch the third around as per the situation.

I also tend to give my ships at least as much main-belt as the size of their own guns (except on DD and TB), with the extended belt at about half the main belt.

In the early campaigns, you can pretty much ignore deck armour, since the accuracy of the 1890 and 1900 ships is so poor there's practically no chance anyone will hit at the ranges where deck armour matters. Better to invest the saved weight into either bigger guns, more belt armour or reducing the displacement of the ship.

Speaking of displacement: If you have your ship the way you like it and are left with unused weight, you don't necessarily have to pile on "unnecessary" stuff, but can also reduce the displacement of the ships. Smaller ships are cheaper, more manouverable and harder to hit, but with the downside of being less resilient when they are hit.

I also tend to keep my bulkheads at many or maximum. Standard and below leaves them just too vulnerable.

Keeping speed up helps in various ways, since it makes you harder to hit, allows you to escape from battles you do not want to fight and makes it less likely the enemy can run from you. But the higher the speed, the higher the weight/knot cost curve goes up, so don't overdo it too much. At the very start of an 1890 campaign I usually build my BBs to 19 kn, which usually gives me the edge over the AI, but without losing too much weight to propulsion.

On the right of the deisgn screen, there are a few menu points collapsed by default. The bottom-most one contains the engine efficiency, with which you can figure out how many funnels are optimal for your current design. Too few funnels (and subsequently low engine efficiency) will result in the same top-speed, but much slower acceleration. And too many funnels are just a waste of weight.

When selecting funnels also look at how much funnel capacity they give per ton. Often enough the smallest ones are the most efficient, if you have enough room for the necessary numbers.

 

If you are playing the beta patch I also highly advise you to stay away from Austria-Hungary. They have by far in the worst state at the start and have the most difficult position on the map, because they'll be ganged upon by all three of the enemy factions and only gain the ability to start building any BBs 1/2 a year in due to their tiny starting shipyard.

Edited March 1, 2022 by Norbert Sattler

[Iuvenalis]

Some things I've found:

-Don't always make the biggest, most powerful ship design. Particularly with pre-dreadnoughts where you can generally fit 2 main battery turrets max, you're often better off building more smaller ships. Often, building a 8,000t BB vs a 10,000t BB might only give you 1 or 2 two extra secondary guns on the broadside, but you can field more of the 8k ton ships for the same cost which will put more big guns in the fleet for the same money. 

-Bigger guns aren't always better. Particularly again in the early campaigns, mounting the biggest guns isn't always the best strategy. Firstly, pay attention to the accuracy tables. In the 1890s, ignore anything over 5000m. You won't be fighting there. Heck, often you don't even SEE them at that range. For BBs 12's are often the sweet spot for accuracy in the early campaigns. That extra damage boost you get for a 13" gun isn't worth a dime if it isn't hitting. Also, on light cruisers those 7's can be tempting, but I almost always go for 6's. They're heavy enough to punch through most CAs and can still bang up BBs but you can generally fit way more of them, especially if you use a centerline mounting.

-I put half my ships on sea control and half on in being. I honestly don't know the mechanics behind this setting, but it seems to work out well for me. Also, I leave the home ports blank and let the computer auto assign.

-Max out your finance tab allocations. Always, always, always, leave your transports allocation maxed. Then max our your troop training, as there is nothing worse than launching your brand new class of ships only to lack the crew to run them. (It also increases crew quality up to Trained, which is a big boon.) Max research if you can, but sometimes you may need to dial it back to 70% or 80%. Yes, this reduces your budget, but if you work within these constraints you'll have a steadier flow of funds and not find yourself lacking crew.

-GO fast! Speed is incredibly important. Accuracy bonuses for cruising speed are relative to your own design speed. But the accuracy penalty when targeting a fast ship is absolute. If your 1890 BB can go 20kts and cruise at say 16kts, but your enemy has a design speed of 16kts and cruises at 12kts, you'll be able to maintain higher speed giving your enemies a bigger accuracy penalty while maintaining your own bonus. This is a huge advantage.

-GO fast... with torpedoes! Particularly in 1890 and 1900, and even in 1910 to a lesser extent, gun accuracy is kind of trash. You absolutely want to max out your underwater torpedo launchers in your early ships. (Skip the extra reloads, leave standard) Get the biggest size available and make your ships fast for their time. In 1890, a 24kt CL can easily charge a 17kt BB and land a couple torpedoes. I've found to be way more effective than gunfire. (Dont forget to give your CLs decent armor so light guns dont rip them apart) Also, turn your torpedoes off, and then switch to aggressive when you're ready to fire. Keep in mind it takes them a few seconds to rotate and aim, but you'll be able to get in closer to drastically increase your chance to hit. Also, when doing this, don't group ships. Control them individually. Also remember that the rudder slider will let you make sharper turns than setting a course, so if you're dodging their torp, or just trying to turn so your next side, front or rear can get a 2nd shot in on the same run, use the slider.

-Adapt your ship type allocation to your playstyle, not your enemy's numbers.  It can seem like you should try to match the enemy ship for ship in each type, but this isn't always the best strategy. With my above emphasis on speed and torpedoes for example, I'll usually go light on BBs, and depending on my nation and what kind of CAs I can build, I may either over allocate CAs, or go light on them too, instead relying on legions of light cruisers, DDs and TBs. So the enemy might have 5 BBs, 9CAs, 12CLs, 19TBs. I might build 3BBs, 7CAs, 25CLs and 25 TBs. The great number of hulls in the water, even though they are lighter, seems to keep my merchants safer as well, though again I don't know the mechanics behind it.

Good luck and remember too, this game is about experimenting. Try things, make mistakes, start again, and discover what works for you and you find the most fun!

[Fraasbioroid]

Thanks so much for the detailed replies. 
 

After reading these I checked and I had my entire fleet as fleet in being which probably explains my issues with transports. I switched most of them to sea control and had noticeably fewer transports being sunk. 
 

I also realised I had missed that light cruisers can fit secondary guns on their hulls near the middle of the ship - this upped their firepower especially at short ranges.

 

After observing enemy ships I realised they had far lighter armour than mine which must explain how they managed to field so many. In several battles I was able to “one shot” a ship due to a secondary explosion. They never did this to me so I am assuming their lack of armour was to blame.

 

I’m doing much better in the campaign now thanks but do have a few follow up questions:

 

I can see the enemy ships top speed. Is there a way to see how fast they are going? A few times I am chasing fleeing ships which I have damaged in some way and was not sure how to tell if they were slow enough to be worth chasing.

 

Is there a way to see enemy ship max range? It might be useful to compare my range to theirs as a benchmark

 

Thanks again.

 

 

[Somhairle]

Enemy range? Not that I've found or seen where anyone else has found, outside a few that seem to know how to parse the game files, which I cannot.

Current speed? Sure. When in battle there will be 'cards' for the enemy ships (or groups if more than 1 of each class is present) in the top left of the screen next to the shot data. If you expand them by clicking the arrow, and then hover your cursor over the ships, it will show their current speed in a pop up.

[slightlytreasonous]

you can mouse over the weapons reload when you select a ship to see their range once its identified, and you can also see the enemy range bands before identifying them

Edited March 3, 2022 by slightlytreasonous

[neph]

CLs are your friend. make a bunch of high-range ones with hello kittyloads of torpedoes & 4" guns. All they got to do is kill unarmored things FAST with guns (this includes TBs, other CLs, and most importantly, transports) and kill armored things with torpedoes. Throw in some BBs for taste, but again, make them cheap. The more ships, the easier it is to blockade the enemy.

Also, remember, you have no need for deck armor heavier than 0.1". It's 1890, nobody's going to hit your deck. Max out main belt armor and leave everything else to almost literally nothing. Overpens will be your friend!

Edited March 4, 2022 by neph

[Spitfire_97]

The AI ship designer also has a tendency to over-gun their ships. I've seen light cruisers with 7 inch guns in the wing turrets. Quite often those guns can't rotate properly because they're too large. Also the weight they spend on guns leaves them with a) basic towers which reduces their accuracy and damage control, and b) ridiculous weight offsets which makes it impossible for them to hit anything. All I'm saying is don't be intimidated if your enemy seems to have twice as many barrels as you, chances are they won't be able to use them anyway

[Norbert Sattler]

Actually I haven't seen any of those poorly placed wing guns in the 1.05. Before that there were definitely lots of turrets that could barely manage a 90° firing angle, but apparently not any longer.

[Somhairle]

23 hours ago, slightlytreasonous said:

you can mouse over the weapons reload when you select a ship to see their range once its identified, and you can also see the enemy range bands before identifying them

I though he was referring to travel range, action radius, whatever you call it, not firing range.

[Fraasbioroid]

Thanks again everyone.  Following this advice I was able to win the 1890 campaign.

Playing 1900 now and I was very excited about my light cruiser design only to discover they keep missing. I notice I am getting a large penalty to hit from “stability”. Is there anything I can do to improve this.

 

Lastly am finding enemy destroyers hard to deal with. What’s the best approach here? Light cruisers with lots of small guns? I tried using destroyers of my own to “bait” their torpedos which seemed to work ok but a few times the enemy torpedoes which missed ended up hitting a battleship miles away after I lost track of them.

 

I took your advice and had very little deck armour. What year do I start having to worry about that.

[slightlytreasonous]

6 hours ago, Fraasbioroid said:

Thanks again everyone.  Following this advice I was able to win the 1890 campaign.

Playing 1900 now and I was very excited about my light cruiser design only to discover they keep missing. I notice I am getting a large penalty to hit from “stability”. Is there anything I can do to improve this.

 

Lastly am finding enemy destroyers hard to deal with. What’s the best approach here? Light cruisers with lots of small guns? I tried using destroyers of my own to “bait” their torpedos which seemed to work ok but a few times the enemy torpedoes which missed ended up hitting a battleship miles away after I lost track of them.

 

I took your advice and had very little deck armour. What year do I start having to worry about that.

Stability is based mainly off the hull itself, you can increase beam or decrease draft to improve it, if youre on the beta.  If not, there isnt a whole lot you can do apart from optimizing pitch/roll/offsets.   Although it does improve, eventually.

 

I always play in 1940 so i cant say much of relevance about making destroyers easier to kill, but my sub capital tactic is too always try to get into a knife fight.  I prefer a gunnery focus to deliver the killing blow, skimping on armor but not general protection.  In 1940 its always worked really well, but I dont know so much about in the earlier years.

 

Torpedoes also have infinite range once fired, so always make sure no ships might wander into the area.

[Norbert Sattler]

Torpedoes do not have infinite range. They travel roughly three times their supposed range before self-destructing, which might as well be infinite in 1940, but is very much not with early ones.