Reports from the front! Or... What did you do in UA: Dreadnoughts today?

[Fizwalker]

Greetings Admirals!

 

I thought, that much like KSP's thread, "What did you do today?"  that a similar thread would be interesting!

To  start,  I had a battlecruiser in my RN 1930 campaign brought into a port attack. Given that the majority of the fleet was French, I assigned them to the AI and only controlled HMS Courageous. I neatly avoided the torpedoes fired upon her and was proceeding to obliterate the light cruisers between me and the enemy battleship/battlecruiser when the game crashed.

Frustrating, but going back in to merc my opponents!

[JellyCo.]

I finally researched Hull Strengthening to the level where I expected to get access to Battleship 2, but can find no sign of it. This is disappointing.

 

Apart from that, the armoured cruisers HMS Monmouth and HMS Devonshire chased off a damaged battleship and two light cruisers and had a field day with 20 German transports.

[havaduck]

Game forced a Jutland style battle on me .......... again.

 

Lost 3 light cruisers to world of torpedoes, but they saved the BC ...... mostly.

 

Quit the campaign afterwads. My mediteranean opponent had pretty much lost half its fleet in one (very unfun) engagement.

[Suts]

Spent my day honestly frustrated with the campaign, funding is ass-backwards and completely random, some games will start off balanced, others the AI will have in excess of 20 or even 30 battleships or over 50 CAs, combined with the still appalling AI designer that puts a huge emphasis on torpedoes and giving their capital ships next to no armour, I'm feeling pretty burned out on the campaign right now.

[Plazma]

I have 2 big clashes as a German 16 vs 30 British and 17 vs 30 France. I lost 5 ships, but enemy lost summary 40 ships! Because of that I was blocked by British... and lost 10 TR... It will be hard times, because my fleet is repairing or will fight. Simply none of my ships sit in the docks idle. 

[Spitfire_97]

I tried building an ABXY layout battleship but because the tower has a useless barbette stuck to the front of it (too small for big guns, too large to fit another barbette in front of it) I just.. couldn't. So I played Minecraft instead

The reason I mention it is because this is typical of every time I've tried to start a campaign in the last few weeks. The design of ship I want to build is incompatible with the hulls and towers that come with that nation. The sad thing is, between all the different classes, there isn't a single nation or decade that doesn't have a duff hull that requires you to build a specific kind of ship. I've already built the historical designs in a previous campaign, now I wanna design something new and.. I can't 🤷‍♂️

Edited May 7, 2022 by Spitfire_97
Added more helpful information for the developers rather than just complaining

[Brygun]

Started a French campaign yesterday and today. I find it takes about 2 days to design the assorted hulls for the techs that are different each campaign. Today was the actual first month, and a bit more.

Designing French "Hotels" has been a bit different. Decided to give some of the CL and bigger ones "spacious" crew quarters as tribute to the hotel status.

Ive normally played Germany. France right now is a "two ocean" navy with both the North Sea and the Mediterranean to fight in.  

One encounter had for me 2 of 9" hotel CA attempting to go the north end of the north sea being joined by the local defense team of 5 torpedo boats. The enemy has this AI spawned nightmare of what appears to 8 of two gun 12" turrets (for, 2 per side, aft) for a 12 of 12" broadside. Plus it has ~6 CL escorts. 

First month I ran away. Second month though a double encounter with them. IT came up as an extension. Turning to flee again the DDs took a little bit to sort out their position. This was when I noticed that hedgehog of 12" BB was slightly ahead of its escort. Turned my torpedo boats around and did a "Smoking Trident" attack pattern. Wrecked the BB. Two TB were damaged and slowed with the enemy CL gaining on their reduced speed. Well now it was time to turn my CA back around. After some torpedo dodges and sinking a couple of their CL I send one CA to follow my retreating TB. One TB eventually sunk to flooding. The design was ~700 ton tiny TB with reduced features so thats not surprising. I'd like t think the CA and other TB had to the time to do a proper rescue of the crew of the slowly sinking TB. The other CA had a merry old time sinking all but one of the other CL who was too far distant to chase down.

That whole battle went from an oh crap run away from frankenstien, to the villagers lynching the monster and a beat down on his buddies.

 

 

[Fizwalker]

So, I just started a RN 1910 campaign and.... It's rough. I think my BCs are going to be more powerful than my BBs just from how the main batteries are set up..... Though the BBs are going to be far better protected. I've also setting up ships based on the smallest size/Cheapest I can reasonably get away with..... Main batteries for both types are 12 inch guns... But the BBs only have a throw weight of 6 guns per broadside where the BCs have 8 guns (centerline vs wing mounted) Then the game crashed and I'm going to either scrap that campaign and start a new one from 1920.... Or I might just redo the designs. (Haven't actually built anything yet)

 

As a note, wish I knew what my budget for my initial fleet was.....

Edited May 20, 2022 by Fizwalker

[havaduck]

I saw the new beta today and decided to give it a try. Being a little dumbfound I havent really interaced with many of the new features (like gundiameter) but I wanted to just get an impression of the continous campaign.  After the first war broke out between Ger and GB, after the peace I decided to provoke the French into a war because nothing had hapend for over 2 years already. Also the French had already pissed me off, so ....... 

It took me even longer to get a war going. If it was only this hard irl...

 

1890s campaign, Hard, the French have a hello kittyton of ships, which is good I suppose so I dont run out of stuff to kill which would be boring.

First Battle had my TB stark literally 0,3 km from their light cruisers ..... that was an instagip of  4 TBs ......

Their cruisers got out of sight, and I deced to call it a day.

 

But oh my, the TRs sunk (admittely a lot) give almost as many vp as the warships!

Thats some carnage right there. Gotta built more throw away TBs, those seem to fair pretty badly adgainst even 2", let alone geting a broadside dumped on their face.

[havaduck]

Trying the hotfix, differen time period to see if its possible to get one than more battle per year .......

Also I dont want to wait more than 2 years for war to break out.

 

I call it: "literally pissing off everyone".

 

Lets see where this goes. Last time I was careful to make itally an ally, this time I dont give a damn. 

[havaduck]

Escaping this deathtrap without loosing a single ship.

Their closest ship and mine were 0,3 km apart at the beginning.

I then dashed all the dds in, feigning torps attacks and even launching some (all misses ofc, too far away) with full evasive maneuvers and the closest DD always sporting a smoke cloud going until we were able to create some distance.

 

The AI is pretty cowardly and loves to runs away, but when it has to push into a kiting formation it either gives up or gets picked apart.

[havaduck]

Battlegenerator is busted as always. You can have smal taskforces laying around, and you still wont get a battle. You can have big one and the AI is impervious with how they just can avoid battle.

Now with if you have fast ships, thats not so much a problem, because the AI doenst understand it has to push full speed with bow in BBs and sacrificial ships on the flanks in the hopes of reducing you speed till you are doomed. It does try to encircle, yes, and if you let that happen you are doomed, but its to passive with the big ships.

 

Anyway went with a 24 knts battle fleet with A-H last time, this time with increased funds (600 mios) I went for a fast fleet with only a few 24 knts BB (mainly to test the GB echelon ships of the era ...). DDs only laid down after start, completely overguned and  very expensive CL as scouts (and torpedo bait). 30 knts BC as damage dealers. Worked out pretty well ...

 

Light cruiser Calcutta is retreating under the cover of her BCs after succesfully protecting them until all enemy DDs were dead but getting herselv finally torpedoed for no cripling damage but 21 knts wont outrun the germans anymore ......

Likewise, Battlecruiser Devastation is charging the german line one final time, drawing away their fire from the damaged Lord Warden (burned, penetrating hit large calibre hit with a flooding, single torpedo) and the Queen mary (single torpedo) that can still outrun the germans if they take no more damage.

 

Yeah, the AI doesnt really change from normal to legendary. Considing how much itself loves to force the stern chase, it itself is woefully inadequat if kited.