Questions from an new player

[GabbaGandalf]

first of i adore the game. its a gem. but there are some questions i have. first of i wonder how the economy works in the campaign. as austria i never really had financial problems. in peace an in war i allways made money even with an big fleet consisting only of big BBs. as japanese i can only keep my money together via designing new and expensiv destroyers for trading. even after france demolished my fleet and i had only 1 BC with about 46k tonns left i made no money at all. i have right now 46 terretories. 8 or 9 of them have oil. i have the slider for transports up to 100% since the start of the campain and still i only lose money. how can i increase it efficient and rapid? the next question is the tech. especially with cruisers. step for step i increase the tonnage my cruisers can have. right now 20k for heavy cruisers but the biggest hull unlocked only supports 15,6k. are there some hulls still missing or am i just stupid?. and my last question is about torps. i stoped using dds now cause i dont know why but torps just dont work for me. on safe they dont drop them at all no matter if i slow the ship down, get it closer, with or without fog and so on. on normal they sometimes drop then but they take there time so that the enemy ships can sink them bevore they drop. if they drop they sometimes aim at timbuktu and the spread is... well i dont understand the spread. if a quad torpedolauncher with 22 inch electric torps fires his torps at an giant 70+k tonns bb at a distance if about 8km i have the feeling the torps should swim side by side in direction of the bb. but they cross there ways and go god knows where so that if i have luck 1 torp hits. 

I would be grateful if you can help me here

[PhoenixLP44]

First of all how did you lose your entire fleet against the french?

As for the money no idea how you got there but it doesnt seem normal to loose that much money with only one ship in the fleet.

Tech is weird so just deal with having a maximum of 15.6k cruiser with a maximum limit of 20k.

Torps do have some defects which make them go in weird lines and the spread is there to compensate for bad aim I mean to hit a wider area of the ship (doesnt make much sense to only flood one compartment).

Also relating on the topic of torpedos save aim means that the ship will only fire if a hit is very likely. If you want to just go leeroy jenkins and fire them at almost max range set them to agressive.

I hope this helps somewhat.

[Panzergraf]

Are you suffering from transport losses? If you have no operational fleet, it's likely your enemies are sinking a lot of your transports each turn without you even getting a convoy battle (this will be listed in the Transport Losses tab that pops up at the start of each turn, along with there you lost them). Check your finances tab to see if you're getting a huge deficit from transport losses.

DON'T conquer a bunch of faraway islands (or take them as war reparations) before you can afford a big navy to protect their associated sea regions.

GDP growth will take a hit if you're at war. If you're also being blockaded (you said you only had one ship left, right?) it will be hit really bad, and effective GDP will be halved too.

Your GDP will grow a lot more during peace time. Use the months (or years) between wars to build up. When not at war, unless you're conquering colonies or actively trying to provoke potential enemies, just keep your ships in port and set them to "Limited". You will save a lot of money this way.

Torpedo tech will improve torpedo accuracy, and decrease dud chances.
If you're really struggling economically you can also reduce your tech budget, if only temporarily.

The tech tree is the same for all nations, but not all nations get the same hulls. So while every nation can unlock the 20k tons CA tech, not everyone has a hull that can go that large.

[Gingryu]

About the money problem: It seems to have changed in the last patch. I even struggle with the US when starting in 1890 (After wondering about Spain money problems). Normally The US caught up to the high GDP incomes at about 1920 without even going to war. Now I had to conquer half of the world to get 2/3 of Britains GDP at 1935.

I have the feeling it will be tweaked in the next patches. Since before last patch your pretty much outgrew all the other nations to easy

 

About torps: Just forget abut them until you got oxygen. AI seems to have has an improved accuracy against DDs doing torpedo runs and tends to run away from your DDs (esp. the exact time when they launch their torps).

Just use gunboat DDs for convoi protection and to attack lonely enemy DDs. befora last patch DDs were also useable to burn bigger enemy ships down with gunfire. Now you need extreme ranges and good accuracy to do so. Below 12 km range enemy capital ships will just obliterate them with the improved AI accuracy.

Also keep in mind, that ships in port can be set to "limited" to reduce cost. But that will problem mess your army logistics.

 

Keep in mind, the game is still in beta and I have a feeling that games labs is just now trying to balance economies but have overdone it in the last patch.

 

[justMike247]

sounds like you're both over-stretching and getting your priorities wrong...

 

irrespective of which country you choose, you won't have enough money, shipyard capacity, hull size or tech to build anything worth the weight of its rivets until mid campaign at the earliest... you gotta just accept that and suck it up. Learn to work within the limits imposed on you.

 

Yea, I sound like I'm lecturing... sorry about that...

 

Whatever your start budget is, right at the start of your campaign, design the biggest, baddest, most asskickin BB you can, but do it wisely... explore the guns available to you and forget about using anything that hasn't been tech-advanced beyond Mk3... Mk1's and 2's can deliver a bloody big thump, but only at point blank range... anything beyond that and all they're doing is killing fish. Once you're happy with your buttkicker, explore how many you can build of that type within your budget limits, (increase qty till the numbers turn red), then build HALF that many... you'll still need budget for suport vessels, right? When it comes to them, same principal applies until you get to DD's, then consume whatever's left in the piggy bank.

 

Don't pin your hopes on torps, period, ever... they've been nerfed to the point that even in late campaign with the tech tree max'd, you've a better chance of getting a straight answer to a question from a politician than you have of hitting/doing actual damage with a torp. That's not saying torps don't have a purpose however. For whatever reason, the AI tends to loose its cool whenever there's a bunch of torps in the water despite its super-human ability to invariably find those pesky BB sized gaps in your torp-spread, and goes into run-away mode...  That can be handy if your fleet has been optimised for max long range gunnery. You have optimised your fleet for long range gunnery, right?? Right..!! Forget about trying to do actual damage with torps and instead, use them as an "area denial" tool. Fit as many guns to your DD's as you can, and keep their smoke belching as much as possible.

 

Fleet composition... It's ALL about delivering as much thump as you can, as quickly as you can while being on the receiving end of as little thump as practicable. So... Focus on battleships. Cruisers are handy for taking out opposing support vessels provided you optimise their ammo load for spamming HE as rapidly/accurately as possible while your BIG gun ships go after the main threat (provided you can keep pace with auto-targetting overriding your selections). More/smaller guns with good accuracy are always better than fewer/bigger guns with lousy accuracy; optimise your designs/develop your tech tree accordingly. Mk1 and 2 guns are noise-makers, period.. forget about them.

 

Be wary of "allies" and their begging for you to build their ships. Their builds can rapidly fill your yard capacity. Sure, you can go beyond those limits, but the penalty for doing so is you create problems with the delivery chain; chit takes forever to build rather than the listed time on the actual design. Don't totally neglect allies, but don't give them all they're asking for, all the time; your yards oughta be at about 95% of capacity for as much time as possible, preferibly building YOUR ships, not somebody else's. If they're not happy with your service, they'll part company to subject some other country to their begging list. 

 

Don't sweat going over-budget for any meaningful period of time; you're the player, not some foreign NPC... what they gonna do, fire ya?? Never happens... relax...

 

Don't be shy when it comes to scrapping vessels with out-dated hardware. Tech's constantly evolving and you can bet yer britches that the AI's gonna be hitting you with the most optimised hulls it can generate. The only time old hulls are worth keeping is when you've grown to the point where you can throw megatons around and do some conquering; at this point, it's all about tonage, but that tonage still needs to be capable of delivering useable thumpage when necessary. Provided you got your designs right to begin with, you might get about 15-20 years useable life from a BB... it's a sliding scale thereafter with DD's usually obsolete after about 5 years.

 

If you can afford to do so, try to generate a "reserve" of small ships (CA, CL, DD) so that when your ships are hyjacked for "Missions", you can replenish from your reserve; I've learned the hard way that once the AI has its grubbies on a half dozen DD's and CL's, the only time you'll see them again is once the shooting stops, so... have spares handy.

 

How... exactly... did the Frenchies manage to kick your butt??