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July 1900 as Qing and managed to win my first two wars with Japan and pulled ahead of them in terms of economy and tonnage. Lucked into researching Quality 0 9-inch guns so rolling out the first domestically produced Chinese CAs. A little slower than I'd like but should hopefully be fairly dangerous to all the late Victorian protected cruisers still sailing around.![]() Japanese losses in exchange for one CA, three CLs and nine DDs. ![]()
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# ? Jun 4, 2024 01:40 |
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when should I start phasing out torpedo bombers?
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Stairmaster posted:when should I start phasing out torpedo bombers? I think when you get missiles, but missiles seem to be rather weak in terms of killing stuff.
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Dive bombers get the ability to carry torpedoes at some point, usually well before missiles. At that point a dedicated torpedo bomber becomes kind of pointless.
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wins32767 posted:I think when you get missiles, but missiles seem to be rather weak in terms of killing stuff. They're more about causing fires and blowing things off the topside of a ship unless you go for the diving missile technology/doctrine which converts them to below the waterline/torpedo hits but it also makes them a fair bit more unreliable so it's not always worth it. Once everyone is building lighter ships covered with missiles/flammable aluminum hulls they tend to get a bit more deadly when they hit (although with countermeasures/CIWS/SAMs being able to shoot them down it balances out). But early on because missiles are treated like giant HE shells something heavy like a BB can tank a fair number of missiles and keep going. Early in the missile age of my last game I nailed one with 12 Heavy SSM hits and it kept trucking along until my own BB put a number of 16 inch shells through it. That being said the missiles managed to knock out all four of its turrets, it's radar, and caused engine damage which left it as a sitting duck for those shells so they're still pretty devastating.
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I continue to have the same problem with RTW 3 that I did with 2... namely that I cruise along fine through the early game, making my battleships with armor designed to be immune to their own guns and such, then the number of options explode and I have no idea what I'm doing. It probably hurts me that I've never been big on military history so wanting to create my favorite 30s British cruiser design or whatever plays no part in RTW for me; I'm trying to play it as basically a historical Aurora 4x and it's clearly meant from the ground up to be about modeling historical warship designs. Other than that... I'm a little disappointed in the division editor. It's an improvement, and it helps a bit with organization, but I was hoping for something I could use to easily keep track of and order around larger fleets and it doesn't work that well for that. I think it would be much better if the division editor included information like class, location, and status without exploding the view (at least assuming all ships in the division were the same, otherwise it could just show "-" or whatever), and maybe had a higher tier organization called a fleet and the ability to drag and drop divisions into it. So I could put the 1st Carrier div, 2nd Heavy Cruiser div, and 4th Destroyer div in the "1st Carrier Fleet" or whatever, and if they were all in the Caribbean it would show "Caribbean" in the location tab for that fleet instead of just being blank. Who knows, maybe that will be patched in later. I can hope, anyways.
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Ugh, all of your ships look good and it makes me sick
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Bremen posted:I continue to have the same problem with RTW 3 that I did with 2... namely that I cruise along fine through the early game, making my battleships with armor designed to be immune to their own guns and such, then the number of options explode and I have no idea what I'm doing. It probably hurts me that I've never been big on military history so wanting to create my favorite 30s British cruiser design or whatever plays no part in RTW for me; I'm trying to play it as basically a historical Aurora 4x and it's clearly meant from the ground up to be about modeling historical warship designs. For someone like you I really suggest using the auto design option. It will spit out a mostly workable design for you, but then you can edit it as you see fit. This lets you sort of play around with the options you currently have for each different ship class without overwhelming you at the outset. Edit. I almost always use auto design, then immediately strip out all of the fittings and the equipment and guns/weapons I want. Not for the reason I am suggesting for you, but even though they've made it easier in RTW3, I have always been absolutely terrible at doing the aesthetic part like adding funnels, lines, an super structure. Using the auto option adds all of that poo poo for you. The only time this does not work is when I am trying to design a standard 4 turret dreadnought and the game gives me an all forward armament design. ZombieLenin fucked around with this message at 23:13 on May 29, 2023 |
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I use auto design the same way. It also didn't do so well with making cheap 200 t corvettes for trade protection (ordered by the dozen), the ascetics of the 1,500 t auto design on the shrunken hull would have lines going out over the back of the boat. I just imagined them as some sort of mine-sweeping gear. I love all forward armament - why would you go a four turret design over all forward? Obviously not so good trying to run away or gain distance but if you never run, your turrets are never in the blind spot.
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Historically, I think the rear-biased bridge and superstructure resulted in undesirable seakeeping characteristics. Wind would cause much more uncommanded rotation than it would in conventional designs. At least, I recall reading that about the Nelsons, I don't know if it is inherent to the concept across eras and tonnage. In game, the risk is similar to using quad and triple turret: putting your eggs in fewer baskets means any single damage event or malfunction could knock out a higher volume of the ship's firepower than if they were separated out into more turrets.
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Counterpoint: All forward turrets looks really cool
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It does look like a battleship doing a John Woo action-movie slide across the ocean, blazing away with guns in both hands. I can't disagree with you there.
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Roumba posted:Historically, I think the rear-biased bridge and superstructure resulted in undesirable seakeeping characteristics. Wind would cause much more uncommanded rotation than it would in conventional designs. At least, I recall reading that about the Nelsons, I don't know if it is inherent to the concept across eras and tonnage. That was a (much?) more pronounced factor in the Nelsons since they crammed in the third turret instead of leaving it at two like the original plan or the Richelieus etc. Also the french famously put in a heavy wall down the middle of their quads to alleviate some of the knock-out risks. The debate at the time pretty much went exactly like every caustic online nerd debate does, a bunch of people made up their minds based on team-sports and aesthetics and then reached for tortured arguments to hide behind. It makes reading about it challenging
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I am guessing an all-rear arrangement isn't actually plausible because the rear needs to have the propellers?
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OddObserver posted:I am guessing an all-rear arrangement isn't actually plausible because the rear needs to have the propellers? No technical reason it's impossible (see, e.g., Wyoming and Arkansas with four turrets abaft the funnels), but designers value forward arcs more than aft arcs. Sort of similar to how rare AFVs with rear-facing guns are. IIRC a bridge placed about 40% back from the bow is considered ideal for seakeeping, so the more extreme arrangements like the Nelsons do mess with that quite a bit.
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Bremen posted:Other than that... I'm a little disappointed in the division editor. It's an improvement, and it helps a bit with organization, but I was hoping for something I could use to easily keep track of and order around larger fleets and it doesn't work that well for that. I think it would be much better if the division editor included information like class, location, and status without exploding the view (at least assuming all ships in the division were the same, otherwise it could just show "-" or whatever), and maybe had a higher tier organization called a fleet and the ability to drag and drop divisions into it. So I could put the 1st Carrier div, 2nd Heavy Cruiser div, and 4th Destroyer div in the "1st Carrier Fleet" or whatever, and if they were all in the Caribbean it would show "Caribbean" in the location tab for that fleet instead of just being blank. Who knows, maybe that will be patched in later. I can hope, anyways. This sort of already works at least in terms of movement. If you have 1st Cruiser Division scouting for 1st Battle Division, and a Destroyer Division supporting each, you only have to move 1st Battle Division to the Carribean to have all the ships in the other divisions follow. I agree that having a proper multi-level view would help a lot unless you are able to visualize the command structure at all times. Hell, just let me move Divisions around in the list instead of ordering by type. Unrelated, but I just had my first battle in the missile age (early 50ies), and out of 200+ missiles fired by both sides, one hit. Kinda underwhelming all around. Together with the radar guided AA making air attacks with bombs or torpedoes very costly (and ineffective since attacks get broken up and few hits are scored), I uhhh...don't really have a good plan to win battles anymore? I guess I should have spent the late 40ies building up a battleship fleet after the shift towards carrier warfare in the 30ies?
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Electric Wrigglies posted:I use auto design the same way. It also didn't do so well with making cheap 200 t corvettes for trade protection (ordered by the dozen), the ascetics of the 1,500 t auto design on the shrunken hull would have lines going out over the back of the boat. I just imagined them as some sort of mine-sweeping gear. There isn't anything wrong with all forward armament, honestly; however, I sometimes decline to build all forward armament ships for roleplaying reasons mostly. It's just a good example of where using auto-design to build the aesthetic elements of a ship can sometimes fail you. It also works in reverse, of course. If you're trying to build an all forward armament ship sometimes the auto-designer does not want to cooperate. Basically, auto-design is great for the artistically inept like myself, but has limitations. ArchangeI posted:This sort of already works at least in terms of movement. If you have 1st Cruiser Division scouting for 1st Battle Division, and a Destroyer Division supporting each, you only have to move 1st Battle Division to the Carribean to have all the ships in the other divisions follow. I agree that having a proper multi-level view would help a lot unless you are able to visualize the command structure at all times. Hell, just let me move Divisions around in the list instead of ordering by type. Eventually by the time the games end date approaches, battles turn into missile spam and lots of missiles hit. My biggest complaint though for the missile period is aircraft. Even if I have cruise missiles with ranges of 100 miles, if I order an airstrike from a carrier the aircraft seen to fly right over the top of their target so they get shot by both the enemies SAMs and radar guided AA, then fire their missiles. Routinely I find entire carrier wings effectively wiped out after a single battle. ZombieLenin fucked around with this message at 21:25 on May 30, 2023 |
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OpenlyEvilJello posted:No technical reason it's impossible (see, e.g., Wyoming and Arkansas with four turrets abaft the funnels), but designers value forward arcs more than aft arcs. Sort of similar to how rare AFVs with rear-facing guns are. The location of the bridge isn’t a huge deal for seakeeping - most merchant ships nowadays have the bridge all the way after - but there’s other drawbacks. You get a huge blind spot ahead, which makes navigating tighter waters more annoying (especially if there’s tugs and patrol boats and escorts flitting about) for one. If anything, it probably didn’t catch on because as someone else mentioned you don’t have any weapon coverage aft.
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All guns forward was mostly done to keep the citadel length down, if you don't have to abide by severe size restrictions, by treaty, canal or drydock limitations, you can just have an ABY layout like everyone else. On the other hand a pair of quads up front looks good. Also we should probably go for a thread title change.
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FrozenVent posted:The location of the bridge isn’t a huge deal for seakeeping - most merchant ships nowadays have the bridge all the way after - but there’s other drawbacks. You get a huge blind spot ahead, which makes navigating tighter waters more annoying (especially if there’s tugs and patrol boats and escorts flitting about) for one. I'ma stick with DK Brown's assessment over yours, no offense. It's a much bigger deal for small ships like ASW escorts (and I think he discusses it in his book on them, rather than The Grand Fleet or Warrior to Dreadnought) and it has to do with the effect of the ship's motion in 3D space on the decision-making ability of the officers, especially the vertical accelerations IIRC. I am by no means arguing that it's the only or even an important reason why all-forward armaments were not more widely adopted. I think when the Brits were working on the KGV design, they decided that, with technological advances (esp. in propulsion) since the Nelsons, the all-forward arrangement no longer provided enough savings to merit loss of the stern arcs.
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OddObserver posted:I am guessing an all-rear arrangement isn't actually plausible because the rear needs to have the propellers? There's no additional weight savings calculation like with the all-forward design, but in-game the rear X mount position is lighter than the equivalent forward B mount and usually gets research a year or two earlier. I've built some BBs/BCs with a 2x3x3 AXY arrangement to squeeze in an extra knot or additional armor. In general they work reasonably well although they're pretty limited in a pure stern chase if they aren't fast enough to overtake their target and bring the rear guns to bear.
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OpenlyEvilJello posted:It's a much bigger deal for small ships like ASW escorts (and I think he discusses it in his book on them, rather than The Grand Fleet or Warrior to Dreadnought) and it has to do with the effect of the ship's motion in 3D space on the decision-making ability of the officers, especially the vertical accelerations IIRC. We’re talking battleships though. I’m not sure what vertical acceleration you’re discussing - heave due to pitch? If you’re pitching enough that your longitudinal position is going to have an impact on how much pitch is affecting you you’re probably not fighting. Beside the vertical motion due to pitch would be minimal since the citadel would be right around the LCF on something sleek like a battleship (granted the forward turrets and magasine would drag that further forward than on an ABY but heh).
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and besides, it was quite common for escorts to be all forward main armament, the British Battle class was two twin mounts forward and the Daring class was one twin mount forward. If your main armament was dual purpose, I think there was a greater tendency to preserve the all-round arc of AY mounting (and not due to seakeeping or pitching), otherwise all forward was common. As missiles replaced the main armament for AA work, the main gun armament tends towards being all forward again.
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SIGSEGV posted:Also we should probably go for a thread title change. *200 anti-ship missiles approaching the Thread!* -- Rule The Waves 3 - now more waves Or just Rule the Waves 3 - now with missile waves
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Rule the waves 3: steam stokers exhausted?
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Rule the Waves 3: Now with Missile and Steam (same UI though)
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Rule the Waves 3: Steam and Iron, on Steam.
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The best feeling is when you're behind on tech so the naval treaty comes in and cuts off the dreadnought race before it even starts, limiting main guns to 10"
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Rule The Waves 3: UNSIGHTED has been hit by a missile
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Rule the Waves 3: heavy missiles in flight, afternoon action report delight
ThisIsJohnWayne fucked around with this message at 17:43 on May 31, 2023 |
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Hot Naval action from Oscar Wilde to YMCA in Rule the Waves 3
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I want to clarify my position here because, looking back, it got muddled quick. First things first, what I was trying to do was raise an interesting, rarely acknowledged factor in warship design, not make a slam-dunk argument for or against anything. I mean, how often do bridge ergonomics even come up on the internet? But also, when I was thinking about this, it was specifically in the context of the "why no all-aft armament?" question. And like, clearly, the big reason is that being able to shoot forward is important—see also how 2-A-1 is vastly more common than 1-A-2 or how Dreadnought gets the wing turrets for the possibility of end-on fire. But I do wonder whether, in a hypothetical extreme "all-aft" design featuring more than two aft-facing turrets, constraints on deck area would end up pushing the command spaces farther forward than is optimal for operation. If you wind up with a battleship that looks like one of those oil-rig service ships, is that going to be a drag on command? Anyway, I got snarky because I felt dismissed out of hand and/or context and that was annoying. Then I had anxiety about that all night because sad brains. Now we're here. Apologies if I was jerky about it. Fun note, just last night I read that conning Nelson and Rodney took some getting used to because the ships' pivoting point was forward of the bridge, which is unusual. Friedman, Norman. The British Battleship 1906-1946 (p. 62). Pen and Sword. Kindle Edition. posted:The compass platform was the level below [the flag bridge] (note the bulges for the chart tables). US visitors found the view aft from the compass platform (navigating bridge) decidedly restricted, but were told that the pivoting point of the ship was about at ‘B’ turret and that anything which came abreast the bridge could be passed clear unless the rudder was put hard over towards it (one officer said that manoeuvring was confusing because the pivoting point was well forward of the bridge).
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Panzeh posted:The best feeling is when you're behind on tech so the naval treaty comes in and cuts off the dreadnought race before it even starts, limiting main guns to 10" No, the best feeling is reading the alliance situation wrong, ending up in a war with three major powers, getting a harsh peace treaty limiting you to 12ktons and 8 inch guns for 20 years, and having a disarmament conference pop next turn, where you force everyone to adhere to the same rules.
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ArchangeI posted:No, the best feeling is reading the alliance situation wrong, ending up in a war with three major powers, getting a harsh peace treaty limiting you to 12ktons and 8 inch guns for 20 years, and having a disarmament conference pop next turn, where you force everyone to adhere to the same rules. I literally did this in my current (and first) game of RTW3, after stomping on Austria-Hungary with British help, the British allied with Austria-Hungary and stomped me back. I yolo'ed my entire predreadnought battleline into them and played the campaign out after my defeat. It put me in a decent position to modernize my fleet and still screw everyone else's build projects over with the disarmament conference. I'm in the 1930s and I've brought Italy back with a modernized battle line and a strong carrier wing. Time to go fight France now that those cowards aren't allied with Britain anymore! Edit: Turn off the Automatically Delete Obsolete Ship Files in case you want to savescum (For wholesome reasons like starting a war, not avoiding a defeat!) KlavoHunter fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Jun 1, 2023 |
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So I got Italy down to 4CV, 2CL, and 10DD, so what does the AI do? Well, it put the fleet carriers basically unescorted into the Adriatic, with the expected outcome:![]() (Also once I actually got anti-missile defense, AI firing off all the SAMs in anti-ship mode turned into a bad idea..)
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Reading through the manual of RTW3 and ran into this bit:quote:Normal accommodation will be sufficient for ships during most of the game. Those are...certainly some assumptions.
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loving kids these days.
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Aka veterans of WW2 and Boomers in that time period
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my man did not know about the ice cream machines on us navy ships
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# ? Jun 4, 2024 01:40 |
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It’d make more sense to have a crew malus related to the age of the ship or time since last refit, but what do I know.
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