RULE THE WA/V/ES: ROUND 3

I vote Russia. Gotta avenge the embarassment of 1905 and probably slap some Krauts in the process.

Actually, Italy sounds fun. Changing my vote for the New Roman Empire.

I demand at least one ship class or ship be named "Mario Mario", "Quattro Stagioni", "Pasta with meatballs", "Don Vitto".

Actually, any country is good as far as I'm concerned.

Guess that really shows how much some of us miss the Japs back when they were a force to be reckoned with.
R.I.P IJN Smug Animu Grill

Oh i pick the Germs, thank you very much. Let's see how far can Bismarck's assburgers takes us

Any news on Rule the Waves 2?

Voting for Italy
Lets give the britkikes and baguette eaters what for

Game is shit. It revolves around symmetrical cruiser battles. If you make the bare minimum CA and CL ships, and only make BB/B/BC's and patrol craft the game'll just give you battles where it's one of your battleships vs. a cruiser instead of cruiser vs cruiser. Makes it unplayable and unfun once you realize this, there's no actual mechanics behind it it'll always just give you equalish cruiser battles if there's cruisers in the zone with a small rng chance to have a large battle.

Go with Austria or Italy.

Alright, I'm back, although by now all the people that voted are probably gone. Nation voting has gone
So Italy it is!

Technology research rate is set to 80%, to give new ships a slightly longer period before becoming obsolete and the tech levels have been varied, so things will no doubt get ahistorical very quickly. In the interest of time, I've allowed the game to dictate our predecessors composition of our navy, he had some very interesting ideas. The Regia Marina contains absolutely no Destroyers, with a comparatively massive number of cruisers and battleships for a country our size. That being said, we do have a set that were in construction when we took command, as well as two more battleships.

Now, should we adjust our research prioritizes or begin any specialized training? And what goals are we hopefully working toward? Kicking these Baguettes out of what is clearly our Mediterranean?

MARE== ==NOSTRUM
Wouldn't it be better to first kick Austrians out?

Make the Mediterranean our pond.

Austria starts with only their home province, which you can't claim as the result of a war, so a war with Austria would only end up benefiting us in prestige and maybe claiming some of their ships. That being said, the Austrian navy is…underwhelming.

slightly off topic but is there a similar working game about commanding a single submarine? (dont even try with silent hunter)
i did played subcommander and its pretty dope, but i wonder if there are other similar out there

Yet another reason to kick Hapsburgs' inbred asses. The more prestige, the better.
> mfw I was the only one to vote for Russia
Somewhere a descendant of Romanovs has shed a single tear of dissapointment.

Both the UK and France are designing battleships with 13in guns, something that is currently beyond our capability. In addition, the destroyer line that our predecessor ordered prove incapable of reaching their advertised 28kts. Should we focus on any particular avenue of ship design? In any case, he's the current political situation.

REMOVE HABSBURG

curious, what do you find is the problem with silent hunter? personally i find it next to impossible to strike a good balance between fun and realism; either it's way too hard to chart a course without running all of your fuel dry and being stranded, or you fuck with some settings to basically have a modern nuke sub but in a ww2 setting.

not rly a problem, but i played them quite alot, and nowi look for something more minimalistic and more autistic

Do I even need to ask?

Go full strength. Make Fuck You Guns and mount them on cardboard ships. Just make them bite into the enemy's shields. Give 'em the good ol' spicy meatballa.
Establish colonies on neutral lands first and foremost, then single out the weakest of the enemies. The Suez Canal would be the ultimate fuck you to Britain, too.

Like I said, try and specialize in firepower, if possible. If not, max out whatever stat we already have high enough to compete with the other countries.

You know what to do.

I'll say what I always say in these threads; pocket ships and fast battery ships. The former for anything that can carry larger guns, carrying the most meaningful guns it can use to punch above its weight class with a sizeable secondary battery to keep the ankle biters away, and the latter for things that can't really do up-punching capacity like DDs and lower-displacement CLs, with a single huge dual purpose battery (likely 6in, I think that's the max to avoid screens getting evasion bonuses) to make the most of improving targeting technology & avoiding different-caliber-battery targeting maluses, as well as torpedoes if appropriate.

Armor on either should be as much as we can afford to slap on without losing speed, but somehow I don't think non-citadel armor is more than a garnishing bonus when guns start outpacing the ability for plate to actually deflect same-class caliber shells, so don't go overboard.

All that said, we have literally no small screens, so pocket battleships can simmer while we work on getting some DDs & minesweepers up to fill this gap.

No commies in the navy. That has never ended well for anyone who turned a blind eye to it.

Firepower it is. Worth mentioning we have a small DD complement as of now. Should we bother with coastal batteries?

I've never seen a coastal battery do anything useful.

Why bother? Unless they're freebies in between upgrading your powerful ships, I'd rather you spent it on even better and stronger guns. Slowly avalanche over the enemy instead of spreading thin.

Press F to Pay Respects

I know just said to not spread thin, but a territory in Asia could be useful. What should we do?

SEND A FORCE

As I recall, coastal batteries are pretty limited in utility due to not really upgrading in any way other than caliber, but are still nice to have now & again in hotspots. If they're relatively cheap, we can throw a couple here & there at our home province, where we're likely to throw down with the Habsburgs, baguettes & bongs in sequence.

Java means Indonesia means a clusterfuck with absolutely everybody else around our new colony. I'll abstain.

Pretty sure Java has Oil, I'd go for it.

Abstain, we want to build stronger bases of operations around our home country and the last thing we want to do is keep increasing world tension for an island that may or may not give us oil.

[insert Finish meme here] Orders?

Wait, so you did go for it then?
Anyhow, we need an ally, so I say that if it actually does help us establish a Russo-Italian axis, help Russia, otherwise mediate.

Help Russia or mediate. Whichever entails less world tension while still giving us a net benefit. Russia is a paper tiger, but would still be nicer to have her liking us than not.

Man, I must say, I really like these ghetto, w95 styled games. Is there a framework for creating them? I'd like to give it a shot.

We've decided to help Russia, and now it's time for France. What shall we do?

R E M O V E B A G U E T T E

France starts out with a pretty decent navy, don't they? But we have a funky dreadnought-centric navy with a bunch of CLs as our primary screens. How do we compare? If it's a favorable matchup, we should cockblock them through either of the above methods. Italy will have its Empire in Africa a few decades early!

War with France soon. Also put intel effort to at least low for every country.

Oh, they didn't like that. Shall we open with a convoy attack?

I didn't think one provocation would push them over. This is going to be a messy knockdown shitfest. We're kind of equal in tonnage, but they've got better secondaries to vomit plinky shells with and denser mildly higher caliber cruiser batteries. We're already a bit in over our heads, so may as well start strong or fail early. Go in.

Send our cruisers to attack their merchants.

We've got a sizable cruiser force along with some DDs, while the enemy convoy appears to mostly consist of CLs and DDs. Their CL slightly outperforms ours, but we've got numbers on our side.

NO!

Uh oh. Get in and get out, or stand and fight? Or just wait for better intel?

Attack them, leave no survivors.

Get out of there.

Our force sweeps to the south of the convoy, as the French fleet forms up just to the north, then begins to cut toward us. We've damaged several merchants, with one already sunk, as well as crippling a French DD. Should we stand our ground or call it quits?

Image 2 shows a forward 5-ship gunline of 3 CL & 2 CA against two French CA with their CL split apart from/behind them and their DD screened rather than screening. Let's fence a little more before pulling out. Our own stragglers at the tail end of the gunline should probably fall more directly away and behind the five ship gunline, depending on how far down the command chain we can order ships around..

We send our main force to retreat towards port, while a CL and DD attempt to slip behind the enemy force to finish off the merchants. Unfortunately, it might end up being a fight between our main forces.

Fortune favors the bold. Also, destruction of enemy fighting capacity is more valuable than merchant kills, although preservation of our own fighting capacity is equally important. Therefore, we should seek to win the combat by- as said above- engaging the enemy piecemeal with more of a gunline than they initially bring to bear themselves. Cross their T or tempt a splitoff.

While I would normally be happy to go for the gold, our CA's take a couple early hits. Our DDs cut across the enemy fleet, forcing them to turn away. Night begins to fall, and both sides end up splitting away. In other news, our new line of DDs once again can't meet it's design speed, leaving them horribly slow.

We traded a bad DD for a slightly better DD and more net damage to the enemy than we ourselves suffered, plus a good half dozen merchants. I'm happy with it. Now, we have a soon to be obsolete DD that can't go fast and probably can't be usefully refitted. Shall we assume that's going into nominal tonnage colonial service faster than you can say 'back to the drawing board?' Speaking of which, start fresh on a new DD class with a little more weight & hopefully no hidden flaws this time. Can we mount six inch guns to destroyers for monocaliber batteries yet?

We actually didn't lose the DD, it'll be repaired in a couple months. Is this what you had in mind for a DD?

Why? Also doesn't Italy get bonuses to torpedo stuff? We should just focus our DDs around that and put only minimal guns on them.

Oh, neat. Pardon me for skimming. And yes, that looks about right, except it's apparently overgunned. I don't know if this malus is particularly large, but if it is, can we split the design ethic into two classes, one of a DD with the largest guns with no malus possible replacing the six inch on the current design displacement (possibly as monocaliber if the largest caliber possible isn't much bigger than the 2 inch gun and thus can kind of pull double duty far shooting & spamfire) and one new design at the minimum 2600 displacement to fill the role of heavy destroyer/reconnaissance cruiser/general pocket ships' pocket ship?

Because six inch guns are the largest that can target screen ships without suffering accuracy maluses as I recall, and therefore are the best dual purpose gun for light cruiser primaries/other ship secondaries under most all circumstances. Though, when displacement is in short supply early on, having a couple knife fighting guns like the two 2-inchers that OP riveted on is also good. Beside, what's the problem with arming a heavy destroyer like a light cruiser?

A pair of our CLs catch a French CL attempting to bombard a coastal installation. Should we engage, or back off?

Our 2 CLs

Their lone CL
We might win if we get in close enough to overwhelm it with our faster firing guns.

We'll run a small production of each design, 3 heavy gunned and 3 torpedo centric.

At this point (1903), DDs are still limited to 600-700 tons. It is possible to create a class of MS that have a pretty heavy armament, but they'll almost exclusively show up as AI controlled picketships. At this point the best armament a DD can hold while being still reasonable is 4in guns. What you're thinking of would likely fall into the role of a very small CL I think.

What's going to be new in RTW2? Will it have carriers?

Go after them.

Go for it. If they're distracted by their bombardment mission, or if terrible turn of the century targeting tech favors us on the close, or both, smothering them with gunfire is very plausible.

I say nix the overgunned DD design in favor of a 4in monobattery with torpedo armament, and a torpedo destroyer with a 4in. If we really need two separate test designs.

What I didn't realize was it's late evening. Night falls right as the engagement begins, and we immediately begin exchanging hits. At the moment, we seem to be hitting them more, but with 7inchers on the Troude, it could swing at any moment.

Carriers are confirmed, it's supposed to go up to WWII era.

Both the Brindisi and Venezia have been bloodied, but the enemy CL (here misidentified as a DD), begins to flounder.

Looks like a win to me. Will we get to pick up survivors?

After 51 hits, it ends up having to come to a torpedo. Both our cruisers take light damage, mostly to guns and their crews.

Despite the Troude being practically torn apart, she's still chugging along, and both of our CLs have fired almost all of their ammo off. At this point, the entire secondary gun crews of the Brindisi have been cut down by shell splinters, and the Venezia is down to her last HE rounds. Best bet to finish this off is the fish. As for survivors, the situation will end as soon as the ship starts sinking.

And of course I forget to include our most recent choice. Should we throw the Army a bone?

It's unlikely that we'll get to keep territory this time around, so no.

I'm usually inclined to gamble on the army, since it's often not a bad chance to get some good headway for not too much cost, but I rather recognize that we're in a pretty par fight and need to leverage some kind of naval advantage. I lean towards letting them gamble, still.

One time I played Austria and had a successful war with France. It was pyrrhic but I took over Corsica and had an advantage over their fleet. The problem was that they kept destroying my convoys all over the world. I couldn't respond anywhere outside of the Mediterranean so I had a revolution and lost the war. Attrition is a big deal in this game. Having the ability to pick off enemy convoys in a place where they can't respond is important.

I'll let a roll decide. If post number is even, decline, odds, gamble.

Negative it is. And as noted, they're attacking our merchants also. Shall we take this battle?

Take it. From what I've seen, the player can usually win equal engagements vs the AI.

This is a bit awkward, since the enemy has very few cruisers in the area, but far more battleships, and a smattering of destroyers. Meanwhile, we have par battleships, but far more cruisers that're likely to get vaccuumed into a medium-scale convoy defense compared to battleships; but the AI again just doesn't have an equivalent stock of cruisers, so something else will be substituted by the matchmaking. It comes down to whether the enemy is more likely to get a destroyer swarm or a couple battleships we can't really hope to scratch. Engage with severe caution.

Sorry for the wait, had to go take a sexy shower. Frenchmen doing what they do best, they declined the attack. By the way, I NEED SHIP NAMES. Oh, and good job Army, really pulling your weight. Can we make it up in a full on Fleet Battle?

Never trust turn of the century Italian soldiery with Italian officers. I raise again the risk of the matchmaker filling our lineup with chaff while the enemy gets disproportionate battleships due to having not much other than battleships, but we really need to clinch this war with some proper enemy losses. Italia the bold! The bold!

Spaghetti Hauler, Mussolini's Lamborghini, Revenge of the Merchant of Venice, Corsica Italia for ship names.

So be it. We have the entirity of our battleship line here, with a healthy complement of cruisers and a small destroyer escort. Our scouting cruisers spot their counterparts, who turn and begin steaming towards North Africa. As of yet the main body of the French fleet has not been seen.

Niccolò Machiavelli.

And there they are. We're match almost ship for ship, although we may have a slight advantage in having a pair of CAs, their CLs hit much harder at these ranges. Weather is partly cloudy, it's just about 2PM local time with a light breeze. We won't have any weather to play to knife fighting. Of concern may be the Trident-class Bs, they're armed with 13in guns, giving them a slight edge over our 12in main batteries. If anyone has a particular tactic they'd like to espouse, now's the time.

Are we fast enough to cross their T? Because we should always cross any T we can. Otherwise, I'm not sure what we could do. Murder their screens to make way for a suicidal DD torpedo run?

We have a slight speed advantage, although it's only by a knot or two. Not enough to effectively cross the T. Add that to the fact that you're keeping their DDs behind the Bs, and we're looking unfcomfortably like a gunnery duel that seems to be turning against us.

What are our chances to pull a Japanese banzai charge & dump torpedoes into the gunline and get out without trouble? And for their DDs to friendly fire in the process with a wide spread?

Possible, albeit extremely risky with how shitty torpedoes are at this point in time. Well, fortune favors the bold.

Despite multiple attempts, none of our torpedo run attempts manage to get close enough to launch. We exchange fire the entire day, sustaining damage on most of our ships and night is just now beginning to set. Should we escape into the night, or send in our DDs and CLs to attempt torpedo attacks under night?

Probably best to cut our losses.

Night torpedo attacks best torpedo attacks. It's our best chance. At worst, we'll just cut and run after the run, same as we would have otherwise, with maybe one miracle hit by the enemy. At best, we will run away with dead capital ships for repairable damage.

As the main body of our fleet steams East, our DDs make runs out of the night to slow any chase. A couple hours later, our cruiser for stumbles upon an apparently unrelated French destroyer in the night. Other than a pair of our DDs succumbing to flooding damage, nothing much happens. Overall a loss, but a rather minor one in the big picture.

Oh, and looks like we're forced right into another one.

And they have a new battleship available, and no other ships for the fleet engagement beside the DD swarm, so it's a lockin to a line battle with tonnage out of our favor. Scout them out, find it's inevitably their whole battleship group, then night torpedo attack, preferably after murdering their screens first.

So, good news and bad news
Good news
We've got one of their battleships isolated, surrounded by most of our fleet.

Bad news
I 'lost' one of our battleships, and it's in almost the exact same scenario.

Battles make the game feel slow, especially the big and equally matched ones. Getting stuck in constant battles is one of the things that drew me away from this game. That's playing a small country with a low navy size.

Constant gunnery, combined with a couple torpedoes claims the Trident-class. With a damaged fleet, we leave a pair of DDs to cover us while retreating to La Spezia. Probably calling it a night with this update. If anyone has any other games similar they'd like to suggest, I'd love to hear them.

2 DD for a B? Looks like a victory.

Good night.

If we're talking 'tism simulators, then my pick is Crisis in the Kremlin. Hopefully now it's considered more vidya.

Very nice work. If we can repeat that a few more times we might get something nice out of it. Maybe we can already get something, frankly. Have a good rest, you deserve it.

On the subject of other games, Aurora 4x has even greater levels of spaceship designing autism, but I hear the entry level & learning curve is so absurdly high that you'd probably have to spend a couple months getting comfortable with it before bringing it for us non-player bozos to democratically fuck up if you aren't already versed in it. Steam and Iron: Great War is the same-engine predecessor to Rule the Waves which focuses on simulating the actual Great War, though it doesn't have a design aspect and focuses on strategy. If you don't mind exchanging the engineering aspects (which are a really fun part of doing a Holla Forums plays with RtW) for a larger degree of general player control (and duties) & thus things for us to vote on, one of the Hearts of Iron games could also be fun if you're familiar. As I recall, Hearts of Iron 2 has the best variety of events in vanilla and good mods for further expansion, while Hearts of Iron 3 has the highest sheer autistic levels of simulation as far as Paradox WW2 goes, both vanilla and modded. Victoria would also be an option, with better economic simulation, but more freeform & thus less flavor events and if I'm not mistaken a bit of a breakdown in military aspects through the interwar tech levels on.

What happened to the Crisis in the Kremlin thread, anyways? We had one going and it disappeared overnight a month or so ago without a followup.

Mods deemed it not vidya enough and deleted it. Last I heard they were going to decide on whether it's allowed here or not.
A shame, I was really hoping to take that thread to places. Hell, BATTLEITES were pretty good.

Night lad.

GUNS. Always research guns. Bigger guns and more accurate guns = win.

But torpedoes wouldn't hurt. Destroyers can be very useful.

Spicy Meatball
Offer You Can't Refuse
La Famiglia
Figlio di Buttana
Pax Romana
Ave Caesar

Madman.

Damn, beat me to it

Ravioli Ravioli
Berlusconi
Anchovy
Rita
Lione Italiana

f

Vento Aureo
Caesar Salad
Aglio e Olio
DIO

Good work admiral
Sleep tight and don't let the baugettes jew you at night

Bump.

Costa Concordia
Fourth Crusade
Mighty Faggot
Gaius
Aulus

Estonia

Oy cap'n, what's the situation on the territories occupied? Give us a world map please.
The diplomatic strategy should be all concerned with sucking up to Ruskies and Yanks, the former because they might come in handy if we decided to go at it against the French and their Asian colonies and the latter because we may need their assistance in a full blown European war.

Names have been added or stored for later use, thank you. Unless otherwise requested, I will generally assign names randomly, although never to a MS or Submarine. AMCs will really only be used as minelayers and have short lifespans, so they'll remain computer-named.

As you can see, the majority of our conflict centers upon the Mediterranean. While we have a pair of CLs operating in the Indian Sea protecting our colony, France does not seem particularly interested in contesting those waters. Unfortunately, while we did manage to sink a modern French battleship, almost our entire battleship line sustained some damage, so will be in dock for repairs for a month or two. I've also ordered a small trial run of coastal submarines.

Cruiser battle, yay or nay? While our CAs are roughly on par, their CLs are better suited for cruiser combat, while ours are excellent at tearing up DDs.

Dammit, forgot to post the updated names list on constructing ships.

Excellence at tearing up destroyers sounds like an excellent excuse to thin their DD numbers and then assess the worthiness of trying to actually engage with the cruisers. Just so long as there aren't any surprise french Bs. Go in.

CAN NOBODY IN THIS COUNTRY BUILD A SHIP PROPERLY?

Nothing like wait 15 minutes to make a decision only for France to pussy out.

So, we've got what looks to be about 3 DDs on our side, while they may have more just out of sight. However, we have two advantages:

I assume we fight within the battery's killzone and hope they don't land any major hits on us?

Baiting the enemy is generally the thing to do while materially disadvantaged in mobile forces. Go for it. No reason to rush into the uncertain jaws of torpedo & 2inch spam hoping for a miracle in this case, we don't have too many DDs of our own to spend right now while France has entirely too many.

While we manage to lure their DDs into the battery's killzone, the rest of their DD divisions steam past into Italian waters. As of now we're just trying to ward them off friendly merchants, our greatest ally.

And of course our already slow DD begins to develop engine problems, slowing it down to 22kts.

While we almost lose our DDs when chasing down the Hapon (see pic 3), the engagement concludes with us claiming two French DDs for nothing in return. A good trade, although it could have been a bit better. Now, how about a Fleet raid?

Looks like they don't have much left aside from those battleships and destroyers.

A fleet raid is an interesting opportunity, since we have sitting ducks we can destroy for VPs even if there isn't a good opportunity to destroy warships, save if the warships get between us and the merchants. Go for it.

That's the 'forces in area' marker, not their total available forces. Although we did thin their middleweight ships out just a bit earlier on.

France pussies out twice in a row, but they accept on their own raid. We've got a healthy complement of cruisers for this one, so it should go well.

Although it's night and visibility isn't great. Should we fight it out or just try and play around them?

How experienced are our ships? Is their gunnery any good?

We actually just got gunnery training done this month, although night fighting wasn't trained. As far as gunnery, some of our units have combat experience, others are green.

Send the CLs in, keep the CAs back.

They have big, slow guns in the dark. We have quick, nippy guns in the dark. An inaccurate exchange of lots of shells is in our favor as long as we don't go full Baltic Fleet.

Let's fight, what's the worst that could happen

While this CA slightly outpaces our CLs, we do manage to separate it from the rest of the raid. Despite pretty constant hits from 6-8in guns, it doesn't seem to be slowing down.

While having our entire fleet firing at this single cruiser isn't doing anything to improve accuracy, sheer volume of fire is paying off.

She's ground to a halt, right as we reacquire visual with the enemy task force. Should we stay to make absolutely sure she sinks, or move to engage the rest of the French?

She's probably done for. Engage them if our ships haven't taken too many hits.

If she's flooding, move to engage and/or avoid being unadvantageously engaged by the baguettes. Otherwise, we can probably afford to make sure the job is done and then skedaddle away to break more of the French' toys..

You know that moment of "oh shit, I better move our line before a torpedo comes by"?

Absorbing torpedoes in a cost-effective manner is what CLs are for tbh

A CA and a CL in exchange for a smaller CL. Pretty good exchange.

What's that, a white flag?

Crush the Gaul

With a no on the peace, we're called upon to defend Northern Sicily from a coastal raid. We've got a CA, some CLs and a force of DDs.

Although the vote already passed, I say we can continue to fight as needed. I won't offer a strong opinion either way, since the situation is still rather fluid; we may wish to continue exacting material advantage now before they can pull ahead of us with a build-up we can't match, plus grab a colony or two, but on the other hand, poor luck might create such a gap now if their Bs start pulling their weight and spoil our seizing of spoils.

Further, I say aim for a good peace with spoils and deny negotiated peace if the situation remains nominal or shifts in our favor. And keep a close eye on French shipbuilding, because I get the feeling the AI is going to be pissed about us sinking their currently modern cruisers and start building things towards the cutting edge for the rematch, likely with armor entirely proofed against our popguns. And if we can smash enough of their destroyers, it might be wise to counter this by abusing subs set to full warship-targeting fleet support.

As an aside, Installation 0 is a bit naked. We might want to stick a cheap gun or two on this tile when we can. How does planting batteries on land maps work, anyways? Is there any particularly specific control?

The French raider appear to be a pair of CLs, along with a DD escort. Seems simple, just keep the DDs at bay and gunnery duel it out.

The process is basically
I'm pretty sure they'll end up on the Northern coast, close to ports and such, although I'm not 100% sure.

Bizarrely, the French Navy apparently feels that Armed Merchants should take part in their raids. While they may pack 5in guns, they're incredibly slow and fragile, not suited for combat at all.

I mean, they're basically free victory points fed to the meatgrinder. I won't complain.

The French DDs are making the rather unwise decision to try and protect their Q-ships, so that just looks like more points headed our way.

Having torn the AMCs and DDs up, we return to our guard duty, night falls, and something steams out of the night.

Well, looks like I overestimated the amount of damage we did to the Q-ships.

Was this game time consuming to learn OP? It looks like a lot of fun. Thanks for playing for us.

Not at all, it's just a matter of learning what works and what doesn't. Your early ships are going to be horribly flawed junk heaps that you'll look upon with shame after learning how to really design a ship.

Still with us, OP? Ready and waiting.

Sorry for the long wait, I cooked dinner then a friend asked to play some vidya with me. France agrees to a cruiser action, which seems odd given how thinned out their CL/CA stock is. Sure enough, their force consists only of a single Sfax-class and a pair of DDs. Should be a reasonable fight, for sure we can destroy the DDs.

France declines a series of Fleet Battles, but accepts a convoy defense. Of note is this is the first combat the Corazziere line of DDs will see, and the entire production line is serving together in the same division. Time to see if the massively over-gunned DDs can prove themselves.

Alright. My design that is after some research basically an Insect class river gunboat gets to do… something. Are those two-inch guns in casemates? God help us.

Our DDs find a convoy escorted by French DDs, and we move to focus on the merchants as priority targets. Interestingly, the Anchovy shows up on the far side of the convoy, apparently unrelated to our attack. While her loadout is much more suited to finishing off wounded capitals, she can still lend a hand here.

While our DDs tear the merchants apart, the French DDs turn and begin to flee to the North. Thankfully, our DDs can keep pace. As far as actually hitting anything, it seems neither side is having any luck on landing hits.

Well, as far as DD operations go, the Corazziere proved…subpar. While we haven't seen how they perform at warding off CLs, against fellow DDs their low rate of fire and poor accuracy makes them pretty useless. While a good hull shot could cripple one, every hit they managed hit the superstructure.

How should we proceed here? It hits a little harder, but we've got a number edge. Night isn't too far away also.

Well, they near totally destroyed the superstructure of that other DD, that's at least medium damage, right? If the dice rolled the aim a little lower they'd be dead. That said, we maybe ought to send their asses off to Asia as China gunboats once we have a ~2000ish displacement proper heavy destroyer/recon cruiser to replace it in the six inch class and another 600-900 or 1000 displacement destroyer with 4 or 5 inch guns & torps to replace it.

Go in and knock his shit around. The more screening rustbuckets we send to the bottom, the better chance we have of swarming their old battleships with torpedo slingers sans meaningful screens.

Just to quickly sum up a few events, we fuck up a merchant convoy, likely leading to the Army actually managing to do something, and we get a bit of tech through espionage. We do get forced into a cruiser action in the Red Sea, and it doesn't quite favor us. If I may suggest, Massaua contains an 8in battery and quite a few minefields (red circles). Retreat to safety?

Forgot to mention, that French CL ran into the night, we lost it.

Retreating sounds like a good idea. Even better if they're stupid enough to follow.

Leave to fight another day. We'll be able to claim Horn of Africa later, hopefully.

How many VP do we need to enforce demands?

Retreating works out alright, although once the Frenchman see's our battery it bugs out. On the strategic map, now we get to deal with submarines. Oh, and it looks like France considers that cruiser engagement as suitable recon to launch a raid. Y/N?

It's a par engagement except for our defensive emplacement tipping the scale. I say go for it.

While we only have a single CL under our control, we do a short search before returning to defend the coastal installation. Out of the darkness comes a French ship, and oh God the situation is rapidly deteriorating.

Despite getting pretty heavily fucked, Brindisi manages to slip into the cover of night, and the French apparently don't succeed in bombarding the installation.

Worth mentioning is that we don't have any major ships in construction at the moment. Is there anything in particular people would like to see built?

Lotsa Spaghetti
Mama Luigi

On an unrelated question - how viable is spamming subs?

I approve

I'd like to see something along the lines of the super-cruisers talked about on the Rule the Waves forum proper, for which I'll link a thread regarding at the end of the post. It's a kind of middleground between heavy cruisers and battlecruisers; faster than the former (and sometimes latter) with lighter and more cruiser-appropriate gun caliber than the latter. Armor is heavier than historical heavy cruisers, letting it eat other cruisers of all classes. Weight can run between the classes in the 10-20k range, in other words, from either end of the weight pools of the bookending ship classes. It needs to be fast enough to outrun contemporary ships, though it doesn't need to push the limit; just to be fast enough that a machinery upgrade down the line will maintain this moderate speed advantage. The only thing it can't do is outrun battlecruisers depending on how fast it can run, or slap down battleships without taking some pain.

Supercruisers qualifying as heavy cruisers are great at ruling over cruiser engagements by gaming the matchmaker classification, while supercruisers that technically land in the battlecruiser class have a tendency to mangle screens & cruisers in fleet engagements before smothering battleships with fire, potentially sinking them, and then limping home with varying amounts of nonfatal damage due to their bit-above-middleweight armor. I think the class will even fit in our pseudo-historical context, too. We desperately need something resembling both proper capital ships and something to defeat the next (and current) cruiser generation, and right now, but are unlikely to have budget space to invest in both at once or either if Italian bureaucracy strikes. Therefore, pocket battleships with spamguns which will still do at least good to okay against battleships now and continue kicking the shit out of other cruisers well into the future are the answer.

nws-online.proboards.com/thread/1232/super-cruiser-discussion

It's only 1904, but would this be close to what you're looking for?

That's the stuff, yes. I'm not sure if the belt isn't a little thin, but use your discretion as to whether we should stick a bit more on.

*Tell me, is this a terrible idea or a brilliant one? Because we should go along with it either way.*

Cold waters is really good

forgot pic

They'll be good for about ten years and then they'll be dead meat because cruiser engagements will start including battlecruisers

Good news is that any battlecruiser that can do 25kt will be worth a lot more points, so if you can engineer a trade you'll usually come out ahead

As long as she feasts on French (and Austrian, and maybe Anglo) tonnage until then, it will be worth seeing the class burn like a glorious phoenix bird in the 1910s.

Right after we put our newest cruiser into production, France shits itself and demands peace. Despite us wanting to continue pushing them, the diplomats sign a peace treaty. What should we take?

Well, either way, we'll know who to blame.

Algeria è Italia!

Take one of the 3 value North African provinces and Polynesia so that we don't waste the last bit of warscore. We'll avoid tensions in Asia and use it as a storage ground for some of our funnies to fill the presumably low tonnage obligation for a single 1-value colony.

Alternatively; take Djibouti & Madagascar, to keep all our new acquisitions in one place in East Africa and kick the French out of the Horn entirely. Use your discretion.

So either a part of North Africa and Polynesia, or unite our colonies in East Africa. Anyone else wanna vote?

Well ain't that something. My vote is for Polynesia alongside Tunisia, mostly to keep the African colonies as connected as possible for the army whilst the later is just a staging ground to fuck with the Nips. Granted I don't understand shit of the game or it's mechanics, my vote is purely from a fluff perspective.

Ended up taking Tunisia and Polynesia, mostly just to keep things together while still expanding our horizons. Relationships have reset, although we are running a deficit. I've placed about a third of our battleships and cruisers in reserve. Anyways, I've got work tomorrow, so I'll have to call it there, but if we have any particular goal we'd like to work towards, throw it in for discussion.

Immediate goals:

Long-term goals:

I know I said I was gonna end it there, but I couldn't resist running it a bit. Should we forge an alliance with our former enemy?

Absolutely not. If the middle option will thoroughly snub them without butterflying treaty events into being more likely –'broader agreements' implies it might- go for it. If that isn't enough to get them to outright fuck off without also getting us stuck in with arms limitation treaties being more likely to pop up, bottom option. We just got done fucking them and are now building up for round two. We really ought not let them build up in any meaningful way with five years of unmitigated buildup.

Hell no

Oh would you look at that, Austria took over Rhodes. It would be a shame if someone curb-stomped their shitty little Navy (really, holy shit) and took that colony as a reparation.

This is mockery, they can't possibly be serious. Such an insult must be repaid.

REMOVE WIENWURST

Fucking coastal defense ships. And aren't there supposed to be three of those? Did we already smash them in thread 1?

This'll for sure be my last update tonight.
Good news and bad news. We've got a rebellion in East Africa, I've moved some ships into the area to hopefully suppress the rebels. We've finally researched the gun calibre France had at the start of our war. And speaking of France, our spy found out what they're making, they're going all out on the firepower side of things. Oh, and Great Britain is making the worlds first Battle-cruiser, at 21,400t, estimated time of commission 1909.

This is thread one. It's only 1906. Worth mentioning is that the tech advancement is slightly slowed down, so ship designs will remain relevant a bit longer.

Provoke them.

Sleep tight, Ammiraglio.

Excellent choices. It's sad that we had to settle for Polynesia instead of Corsica or Algeria though.
By the way, can we set up a base in Libya/Cyrenaica? I believe that our two main enemies in this game are the eternal Anglos and the Frogs, so we should try and corner them before they get even more bases.

Time to bully.

Ayy could some-a bambiiino posta the downloade?
Have-a thise fine exampla of americanization of l'italian youthe in returne.

As for the shiipse, you should eh builde some decent cruisseirs yes, with-a the decent guns for making enemy deade and not getting our spaghetti all soggy by dipping in the water yes, maybe add-a some guude torpedoes for your lighta cruisers if you ever plan on fighting in the suez canale.

Alrighty folks, one update before I head to work. We manage to remove rebel, our newest CA thankfully doesn't seem to have any horrible design flaw that got overlooked, and the United States is sounding us out on a military alliance. I'll be back at roughly 10-11PM PST, depending on how early I get out.

Also, forgot to mention, we're simply replacing the fire control on those Bs and increasing their ammo storage, no building brand new ones.

An alliance with the Burgers probably wouldn't help us much since their fleets are going to be in the atlantic and pacific, and nowhere near the mediterranean. Might as well save ourselves from the budget cut.

Ally yourself with the USA. They'll come in handy once we expand in the Pacific.

That's one way to be optimistic. And fuck me this thread is making me want to run another Nobunaga's Ambition game with custom portraits and strategy by Holla Forums.

I have an evil, wonderful, terrible idea. If the Courbet is not finished constructing, we should ignore an entangling alliance with America, even if it might be useful, and instead use this opportunity go for the international disarmament conference, something I would never even consider normally. And when we do, assuming the controls are fine enough, the relevant terms we'll force through will be-

And thus completely ruin the Courbet battleship project, scrapping the one they have on the slipways and any other sister ships they've already laid down, ensuring they're stuck with rustbuckets while we consider how to contrive a near-equivalent treaty battleship to spit in their face. We'll throw a huge wrench in French naval procurement and prevent them from getting the outpacing buildup we've feared, and ensure our pocket battleships and any true battleships remain very competitive or even superior. Obviously disregard if we aren't able to relatively specifically dictate the terms in question.

On the other hand, they might be able to tie up some of France's stuff in the Atlantic should we have another war.

Nice of them to shoot themselves in the foot like that.

Fuck a battleship, 16900t can buy a lot of CA.

You don't have to tell me that, I'm the one advocating semi-stopgap pocket battleships as a solution to our budget shortage and thus inability to invest everywhere as of yet. However, at least one good modern battleship with some upgrade legs would be nice to have also, at least as a projected design, as the next gen CA is 14,200 tons; compared to a 17,000 ton battleship under the ideal France-screwing treaty, that's a 71:85 tonnage ratio. You could maybe get one and 7/10ths of a more conventional armored cruiser out of that tonnage investment, or else two CLs.

Considering the immodernity of our screens, a new run of CLs with nominal but still useful deck torpedo armament (do we have deck tubes yet?) & six inch monobattery is probably a good next step as well, it's just a question of whether we want to have a trump card for fleet battles or inarguably dominate next-generation cruiser engagements first. If I recall, we had some alright pre-dreadnoughts, but the question is whether they'll be enough against French treaty battleships let alone the Courbet if we can't block it.

I never get CL deck tubes until like 1920-25 so I doubt we have them yet.

Pocket battleships are a trap, they'll be mediocre now and coffins in five years once BCs hit their stride and if you're playing on rear admiral mode they'll really fuck up your orders of battle. Pocket fast battleships can at least retire to raiding.

Using Treaties is one of the best ways to remain relevant when playing as the lesser nations, but the problem comes in with the fact we cannot dictate what the treaty entails. Only cross our fingers and hope for the best.

In this case due to the design in question not being particularly scary (it's got mixed large caliber guns which inhibit accuracy at longer ranges as well as relatively thin armor and low speed) I'd say let them build those rust buckets and keep them around for target practice. If they scrap that design we run the risk of them coming up with a more sensible design that would be harder for us to defeat.

I'd strongly advise against early CA designs. They're completely inefficient and become obsolete extremely quickly due to their facing off against faster and more powerful Battlecruisers. The idea of a heavy CA only becomes viable once good fire control technology comes out, then the higher rate of fire of the lighter guns combined with the accuracy can seriously fuck up any target.

The design in question is in this post. If 24 knots isn't a pocket fast battleship- this being the exact speed of the Queen Elizabeth class, which was the first fast battleship commissioned in 1914- when we're manufacturing this in 1906 with coal firing, and thus will get some more speed out of it with a conversion to diesel machinery somewhere down the line, I don't know what is. It'll eventually end its life when its speed isn't enough to compete in our primary frontiers in some backwoods colonial post, but will hopefully acquit itself before then.

It exists to bully other conventional cruisers with relative proofing versus their guns and rule raiding sorties, while outrunning battleships & battlecruisers if it can't wolfpack them to death, and if it can, dump fire all over them to cut them down inch by inch. I'm not sure if 7 1/2 inches is really enough to fully fulfill these roles, but it's over twice the belt armor of the Graf Spee that was conceived in a similar capacity if I'm not mistaken. As long as it avoids primary gun hits, it should be fine in the latter.

Is the mixed battery malus that big? The sheer weight of fire still spooks me when it comes to a close-in line battle with our less modern predreadnoughts, even if it's a slowboy that can't properly gunnery duel. If it came down to a knockdown fight, we'd probably have a bad time if we don't drown it in torpedoes.

Ha ha. Ha. On an unrelated note, whenever you get back OP, how's our fire control research going?

IMAGES ARE NOT FROM OUR CAMPAIGN, DON'T FREAK THE FUCK OUT
OP is back, do we have a solid yes or no on the US treaty?

We just got Central Firing, working on replacing our line ships fire control bit by bit.

International convention if you think we have a reasonable shot at killing France's battleship with treaty restrictions, yes otherwise.

I've never been able to figure out what those stars mean.

Disappointing results from the treaty. On the other hand, the whitest nation of earth reclaims territory. Also, Germany attempted to build something that cause my game to trigger half a dozen error messages, although it seems okay. We can now build 700t DDs, should we do a basic design like this or a more specialized one?

I was tempted to get an arms treaty favoring us, but since it's random with no player influence, it might end up targeting our pocket battleships instead. The US might be of aid to us, but might also get us entangled into a non-local war we have no real business or gain in.

And it's a wash anyways. For the desrtroyer, what it really depends on is how many more screens we need, and of what type. Reviewing our current arrangement, do we have a glut of either torpedo boats or gunboats? Do we have a balance?

If we have too many torpedo destroyers already, we don't really need more modern ones, and ought invest in a balanced design. On the other hand, if we have a balance already or a glut of gunboats, we should invest in torpedo slingers while they're still maximally effective due to inability for ships to reliably target them, while their minimal tonnage can cripple battleships without any macro-scale risk of enemy VP gain if they're destroyed.

In fact, whichever way we go with a proper 700 ton destroyer, we should make a line of absolutely tiny torpedo boat as far down as the 100 ton class (or however low we can go as long as it's substantially lower than what we have) to supplement the true screens, along the lines of the historical MAS & E-boots. The smallest, hardest to hit thing possible, with a 1 or 2-inch gun (I don't think a 3 inch would fit without overgun penalty on the smallest DD possible, but maybe it can?) and as many torpedos as we can fit to such a vessel, focusing most of the weapon weight balance towards the latter class obviously, with no armor and maximum speed. Their job is to hang around at either side of the line and wait for an opening in enemy screens and then go for a torpedo run, using their sheer speed & lack of target size as armor. The sheer cheapness of the minimum design also makes universal double specialist training in torpedo tactics & night fighting viable for such a ship. It worked for Italy historically and it might work for us ingame.

I think they're given for participation in a battle.

Those are battle stars if I remember right. They're appended to a ship/class when they attain merit in battle by sinking substantial enemy tonnage. I think.

I think this is the closest to a pre-Motor Torpedo Boat. It'll only be able to operate in local waters, but it should do what you want. By the way, that's a late game research milestone, we can build MTB squadrons in the same way we can build shore batteries.

Forgot to include our current fleet.

Are two torpedoes the max we can put?

I really wish we could copy that insane japanse DD with 40 torps. Fuck you filthy gajin!

We can go more than two, although that design was more going for a middle ground.

That's not quite a MTB but it is a very lovely little aviso. The cost looks good, 1,377 for each 400 tonner compared to 2,334 for each 700 tonner; it's not quite half price, but shaving off almost 1000 is pretty great. It has the same torpedo armament as the true destroyers, while cutting away all the unnecessary flab for a suicidal torpedo runner. Perfect to increase our Mediterranean screen count in a hurry.

Put both into production at let's say a 1:2 ratio of new destroyers to torpedo avisos. Hopefully, they'll do their job of wrecking twenty times their weight in tonnage and zapping merchants in raids. Since we're doing two types, go for the balanced/gun-type 700 ton destroyer design, so that it can effectively fight and destroy other screens while preserving itself. The 400 tonner will serve just fine as our main torpedo vessel.

Our new screen forces are now in production, and while we are running a deficit we have enough reserve cash to fund the new lines of ships.Now, do we care to try to delay the Dreadnought age again, or tell Russia to fuck off?

Also, I'm gonna need a bunch of DD names, I'd rather not waste noble names like 'Pax Romana' or 'DIO' on a suicide DD. Unless you guys would like that.

What does Russia care about our arms development? We have enough problems with the deficit as it is, and 'curbing our program' is likely to come in the form of scrappings or a budget slash. They should be concerned about the Baltic, not the Med. Tell them to fuck off or tempt a treaty meeting- which we may or may not successfully stall into a nonstarter- at your own peril.

For a DD name, French Correction Injection.

Some big tech increases fall into our lap. Should we start the newest line of Italian battleships? Also, the British BC is a bit underwhelming in the direct firepower sense, but overall pretty well balanced.

Their battlecruiser is a god damn fast pre-dreadnought. It's better armed than the Courbet in main guns and in not having a mixed battery malus on them (secondaries & tertiaries might interfere with each other though) and better armored than the Courbet, even if that's not very hard, faster than the Courbet, and overall nicer in every way except for being larger & thus more expensive. Fearful thing to look at. I have to wonder how their actual battleships look.

Triple turrets really couldn't come at a better time; even if we might not actually build our next modern battleship, it means we can properly project one. For the new battleship design, I say that we should go for 12 inch main guns in triple turrets (our 13 inch guns suck and the manual doesn't note their being able to trade up to 16 inch doubles in the way 12 inch guns can, so I'm very wary of them) and as many as we can fit. For all I know, this may be as low as six, or as high as twelve. Perhaps mount them in the style of the Nelson class of a totally frontal main battery & citadel, with the conning tower behind; aggressive and impossible to T-cross, though it would suffer on the retreat; I can't remember the turret position finagling necessary for this, but it is possible. A-B-L/Q I think, after quickly checking? I wonder if the Nelson arrangement saves weight ingame. Maybe leave at least one turret to the rear, especially if we can fit four of them total. Everything about the main battery design needs to be centered around destroying the French battleship fleet in a joust, chase or line battle, as without checking their long-term number game with frontloaded quality & aggressive ship destruction we will not be able to defeat them in the long run.

It should be fast enough to keep pace with our pocket battleships at at least 24 knots, and therefore should have no submerged torpedo tubes. Its secondary battery should be small enough to avoid interference with the main guns but large enough to have some punch, and thus will be six inches. Whether these secondaries are shielded against shrapnel or truly armored versus enemy secondary guns is just a matter of weight allowance; likewise, whether they are mounted in singles, doubles or triples is just a matter of which is most efficient as far as weight and overall survivability, since although multiple guns in one turret will all be lost on a disabling hit compared to multiple turrets, individual mount distribution means more armor weight per gun. The armor scheme should not be quite all-or-nothing, which is far too hindsight heavy in an already very hindsight design and with the sheer amount of smaller guns around in this era might lead to us getting pinholed to death in close through floatation damage by secondaries & tertiaries, but the scheme should still focus largely on armoring the essentials first. Since we're probably going to build just the one to start if we actually build it immediately at all, displacement is no object save our technological/constructional limits. And if our limits aren't enough to bring up a serviceable design, we should look over the merits of foreign yards and see if they can furnish what we need in this design ethic.

Is this sound?

they're importing flips because their women ain't biting it

Let's hold onto that until it's clearer that we're going to war against a stronger opponent.
Again, what's stopping you from making new colonies on gray territories?

Couple things worth mentioning

Let's hold onto that until it's clearer that we're going to war against a stronger opponent.
Remember that a Battleship takes about two-three years to build on average, and things are once again heating up with France.
Simply put, we're only in charge of managing the Navy.

We can't claim new colonies at will; we are solely in the military apparatus as admiral, and do not have direct political influence outside our own field. We have to wait until there is a political disturbance in a neutral tile, which allows us to ignore it, organize an international peacekeeping force (no idea what this does, lowers tension?) or attempt a military adventure to restore order and claim it, which may go well or terribly. Not sure if player naval presence affects the event result. As for stronger opponents, at some point we WILL face the Eternal Anglo, and in spite of a quite convincing victory in the last war, France is stiff competition simply for the fact that we aren't terribly well equipped as Italy. If you'll refer to we have overall substantially worse budget & tonnage than everyone else excepting Austria-Hungary, whose navy literally gives no shit about anything except coastal defense.

We need to be long sighted and very attentive to maintain our position and advance from it, and the first step to that is kicking the Navy into high gear- and yet doing so as cheaply as possible with a small new core of robust ships that can pull as many double duties as they can or else do one thing very well, very cheaply in support of the legacy fleet rustbuckets- and smashing our first regional foe in his baguette face over and over until he doesn't have any more colonies to steal. And also to stop operating at a deficit thanks to our garbage bureaucracy watching us bleed cash trying to match the French while thinking nothing of it; we've got something like a year and a half of reserve cash before we go into the red. Seriously, if there's some way to game things towards a budget raise, I'm all ears, OP.

Damn. If we're going to end up with a ship deprived of guns, then I suppose the weight that would've gone to more turrets could go to armor & better machinery? A fast super-dreadnought, in other words?

Right, I knew it was something along those lines. If we do this again can OP download some of the custom nations from the forums? We could try Tropico or Byzantium.

Can confirm that both ABL and ABQ in RTW save weight if you use no other turrets: Nelson Class style BBs are viable. However I think the third turret will only be able to fire either side and not forwards (certainly true of ABL, not sure of ABQ). I found this from a quick search on the RTW forums.

While we don't have access to cross-deck fire, would we be interested in this? Or should we just create a line of super Bs, with the triple turrets?

Does the game actually let you build unbalanced wing turrets without cross-deck fire?

Yes.

Oh, I thought it bitched about it.

Eight guns of 12-inch broadside is very, very nice, cross deck fire or no. Rather than emulating our contemporaries, the torpedo tubes should likely be torn out and replaced with anti-torpedo bulges if that's currently possible; if not, I'm not sure if they shouldn't still be removed, as reliable speed to select engagements and hound the enemy is key. A battleship should not be knife fighting except against a cripple that it can afford to in total safety, so it isn't any great loss. I'd much prefer to dodge a 'didn't reach design speed' flaw from the launchers. The goal is to hound & pound the enemy to death at a range which we choose, near or far, and torpedoes aren't conducive to that. Use your discretion.

Do we have non-monogun secondaries available? I assume not, considering the current layout. I have little faith in the casemate 3-inchers, so trade some of them and shift the balance in favor of the secondaries if space & weight allows. If not, I suppose there's no helping it.

Class name: Italia il Audace.

While I just put the into it's first production with some tweaks, the Austrians are offering us some rather revolutionary technology. Should we purchase it, and if so, should we build a center-line centric ship in addition, or just replace that one?

2 gun secondary turrets are possible, but with a heavy ROF penalty.

Thanks for the info.

Depends, how long and how much money would take us to develop it ourselves or steal it from other countries?
And will it actually come of use to us?

Buy it.

user that tech lets us build three turrets in the middle of the ship instead in future of having to use a compromise like

How about this? Painfully, we don't have access to torpedo protection, although we could easily do a rebuild and add bulges later on.

oh dammit, I forgot to take off the torpedoes

Why the torpedoes?

Go Iowa-style.
Speed, gun range, accuracy and just enough armor.

If you can't out-gun it, out-range it.
If you can't out-range it or out-gun it, out-run it

Can you try the Nelson-style all forward configuration?

Grande cazzo di Italia (The great dick of Italy)

Oh and we could probably drop conning tower armour a bit and bring at least 10 3in guns. They're invaluable against a destroyer rush and weight very little.

I was happy with the earlier compromise design, but saved weight and more armor with an extra broadside gun is nice. Double-aft turreting is an interesting arrangement, and I suppose is better for future proofing when/if it ends up needing to run and gun rather than slug it out; if a Nelson arrangement of all-fore guns isn't viable for whatever reason, this will do nicely. But the speed needs to be kicked up to 24 knots to be par with the pocket ships. Even one less knot might prove somehow fatal

So, after taking what you guys want into consideration, how does this look for our modern ship?

We can definitely create one of those later on, once the machinery weight drops down enough to accommodate enough speed.

After removing the torpedo tubes, we've got a tertiary armament of 24 4in guns.

Unfortunately, we don't have superimposed main gun tech, so the Nelson-style is out of our reach for now.

Non of these guns are superimposed unfortunately.

Looks good to me.

Looks good to me, we could save a bit of cash by dropping to 3in but it depends how long we want this thing to last.
Ah, that's a shame.

I approve. It can eat the Courbet and any of its predecessors for breakfast at most ranges and probably survive a fair amount of the return fire, and vomit forth enough anti-screen fire to ruin the day of any torpedo skiff or cruiser.

This is true, 6x6in and 12x4in (assuming an entire broadside, I forget if tertiaries are counted in broadsides though) will mess up and LC or DD that tries its luck.

"Oh hey bro, I see you've put down a massive amount of money on producing top of the line capital ships. Just letting you know we just figured out major leaps in shipbuilding technology that will become standard and downright mandatory within a couple years. Oh, and also we need you building 3 capitals at once. The money to sustain that construction? I'm sure you'll figure it out."

Such is always the way in RTW. Perhaps investment in a new class of BB since BCs are, in my experience, less reliant on torpedo protection. We can also bulge older capital ships on refit if we have to.

N E L S O N S T Y L E

Also fuck France, but then again the Falklands are probably worthless in terms of income value to the tune of 1-2 level and the tonnage obligation drawing them away from the main front can only work in our favor. If the Falklands are valuable after all, push for international dickery. Otherwise, ignore and wait on our battleships.

So, I'm choosing to let France take the Falkands, because once they own them we can demand it as a reparation once we beat their asses again. In addition, I'm thinking about simply ordering another Italia il Audace-class BC, so we don't have to pay the heavy up-front cost of producing a new design. That being said, we do need a dedicated Dreadnought. I'd love to go full Nelson, but right now we can only do a single superimposed on the aft itself. This design I've tried to cut the cost down a bit, but keep the good aspects. Thoughts?

How are our finances? If we're good I vote another BC, if poor the cheap BB.

Less than ideal.

The tertiary guns won't be missed too much, while having improved belt armor at lesser displacement is quite welcome. But a less armored conning tower is dismaying. It's a small target, but making it vulnerable to a larger number of guns might go a long way. Otherwise, for a parliament battleship, it'll do well enough. We'll work with what we've got.

The other option is to build another Pax Romana with an eye towards putting it into colonial or raider duty when it becomes outdated I suppose. If we update the existing design to be a little more modern and raider-focussed we can save some cash on new dev costs too.

Decided to bite the bullet on the cost. Now, how do we feel about Russia? Worth mentioning that, as far as I can tell, Russia doesn't have a way to actually maintain a fleet with the Mediterranean.

Let's try not to fight England, France, and Russia at the same time. #2

Mobilize our ships, what's Russia going to do about it?

No need to worry about Russians. Let them be.

Three way tie. Someone wanna break it?

Leave the slavs.

Ignore Russia. They're completely irrelevant to our interests, save as a potential ally somewhere down the line if we can integrate them with the likely substantially more useful Germany.

So, good news is that we don't have to be building all three of our Capitals, we can take short breaks to allow our finances to catch up. Our scientists make an interesting series of discoveries, and WHO DUNNIT?

Remain calm, provoke frogs.

IGNORE RUSSIA, THEY SAID

IT DOESN'T AFFECT US, THEY SAID

I don't know where this phantom Russia threat is coming from in the event generator, but it's getting silly. They don't have anything we want or need. Why is the tension even this high when we have no conflicting regional ambitions? Investigate the situation.

No!
Not Anchovy!

Is planting the flag worth risking war? And no, I have no idea what's up Russia's ass.

Yes. War now.

Get Cyrene ASAP. We don't give a damn about the Ruskies, if they want some, they'll come get some.

First: review Russia's fleet, since war with them is somehow assured. I suppose they're worried we'll get up to something in the mouth of the Black Sea or some nonsense.
Second: in your experience, is the amount of tension France is at enough for us to be pushed into war? Because that would be a convincing reason not to go for it. Even if Russia won't actually be able to project much into the Med, having to fight to make two peaces with them and France is probably going to be a bloody affair. It's funny how this turned out, really, since France & Russia are historical allies.

Would we risk a war with Russia and France in this case, or just France?
Either way, go for it tbh

Here's the Russian and French fleets respectively. Also, holy shit Germany, that's a fucking juggernaut.

Dammit, I should mention, it's July 1911 to give a idea of when those Capitals will be built. Our capitals are due late 1912-1913, for comparison.

Russia can't get much into the med, I wouldn't worry about them.
Slow and a bit underarmed though. Torpedo bait if you can get it in the rudder.

Alright. France is still sitting on rustbuckets & Courbet paper armory ships, and won't be getting too much farther ahead of us in the immediate future. We can probably repeat the last wars' fatal jabs as long as the Courbet don't get to feed on our own buckets. Meanwhile, Russia has a lot of actually decent looking pocket dreadnoughts, except who knows if they can reach us, since they're built pretty lean and might lack range. I think we might be able to chance it. A pocket battleship or two completed already, right? Most actions are cruiser actions, which is what I counted on when contriving them.

16 1/2 inches of belt armor in 1909ish is definitely insane. The problem is that at 19 knots it will never catch anything.

I still think you should go for Libya. When we're finished dealing with rebels/Ruskies, I'd say we should tone it down on the aggressive expansionism and just concentrate on making ships that can pierce through all enemies. Basically, let's go full Gunboats Diplomacy on the rest of the Mediterranean factions, so that if one of them chooses to attack us we can get them to fuck off from our regions asap. Also, it would be advisable to play the neutral game with Germany unless it threatens the Mediterranean or if they're being at war with multiple other countries and we can exploit their weakness. Remove rounds from our turrets if you must but make sure that each of the pellets really stings.

Also, if there's a casus belli, go for Algeria.

So it's decided then.

Gotta call it a night, it's 3:30AM and I've got work tomorrow. Should be same schedule, home around 10-11PM PST. I'm gonna go take a shower, so if anyone has any questions feel free to throw them out and I'll answer before going to bed.

See you tomorrow user, hopefully I'll be around for the thread.

IT BEGINS

Very last post before going to bed, just random points of interest.

Well aren't the diplomatic ties with the US alright according to that slider? Maybe try and get them to like us and aid us in the war. Bonus points if they help us in the Polynesian front (though to be honest we're just pushing for an Italian Mediterranean, but still, VPs will be VPs).
As the Brits are apparently pissed at us, let's try and swoop in on the French as quickly as possible. If they've left the Algerian front open, let's make a move towards those coasts so that we can occupy their harbors and make it difficult for ruskies to join them up north. If instead they're mounting massive defenses over there, try and attack whichever region between Corsica or Lyon gives us the most VPs and has the lightest defenses. By all means we need to be as offensive as possible, because our territories are all stacked onto each other and it will be harder to fend off both the French and fresh meat if they manage to stall us. Can we mobilize the ground troops as well or is it an automatic thing?

Why 2 on the rear and not the front?
It's the french who will be doing the running, not us

It gets closed during war unless you're green or allied with them I think.

Early tech allows for superimposed turrets (that is ones that can fire over ones in front) only at the rear.

This is going to be an interesting game.

What year was that in? Also, treaties fall apart when a war starts, so that's your way out.

1901. I like the treaties, though, since they force you to use different fleet designs and compositions.

OP mobileposting here, just got off of my wageslave duties, should begin in about an hour or so.

Alright, first things first, a quick review of our forces. I've taken the liberty of ensuring no ship we produce (aside from minesweepers/AMCs) will die without a name, and distributed some from my list of submissions. Please note I cut off most of our minesweepers, as they're mostly background units.

Our first engagement will be a cruiser action. Unfortunately, our new heavy cruisers aren't present, this appearing more of a scouting raid. Thankfully, night is only a few hours away, so if heavy opposition is encountered it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

We encountered an enemy CL line of roughly equal strength. Unwilling to trade shots so close to their ports, I decided to retreat to the South. After an hour or so of steaming to toward Sardinia, a unknown ship appears out of the darkness and fires on us. Afraid I just encountered their DDs in the night, I rush our DDs to cover our CLs retreat.

My reaction may have been unnecessary.

...

...

Gentlemen, mark your calendars. The entirety of the Italian battleship line is here. Half a dozen Might Faggots are here, with their brothers from the Figlio Di Buttana class. Leading this fleet into battle are several cruisers, including the Spaghetti Hauler and the Don Vitto, the only ship of their class within our ranks. And of course, our prize proto-Battlecruisers of the Mussonlini's Lamborghini class. The only thing left to do is find the French Fleet.

Our ML-CAs spot their counterparts and give chase, and just as the sun begins to set behind us the main body of the French Fleet appears. While we could attempt to force a close-range gunnery contest, I believe night is the best time for the Faggots to undergo their first true test.

We have at least some night fighting trained ships, don't we? Beside that, the enemy battle line is advantaged at range against our cruisers due to heavier guns even with the secondary malus, and in close by the weight of fire of said secondaries. Their line seems to have a bit of a screen deficit, so let's paste them in the dark.

Alright, I seem to have underestimated the aggressiveness of the French. I expected them to try and scout us out in the night, instead their battle line has flat out charged us. Within minutes we lose two Faggots, with Ravioli Ravioli getting fucking Robocopped. The good news is that doing so has allowed us to basically cross their T at point blank range, so their battle line has taken some damage already.

F

...

F

And we're finally back! 400 ton DD screens are made to die so that larger ships don't have to, so it is no great loss. In fact, the greatest loss is that they didn't get their torpedoes off before being destroyed. I just hope that their sacrifice won't be in vain. F.

Wat
So no BBs?

F
also bump limit, make a new thread when its this thread has ran its course. Let's hope we'll be doing more of these threads when the next game comes by

Clusterfuck is not the word. That being said, I'm working on isolating the Friedland and Courbet-class on the right, if we can sink them it'll make our DD losses (likely soon to include Berlusconi, she'd dead in the water) worth it.
8ch down for maintenance, gonna continue
Sure enough, we manage to separate these Bs from the main body. While most of our ships have at least some damage done to us, we're still in fighting condition. After crippling them with some more fire from our main line, our CLs and DDs sweep in to drop their fish. By the time this comes around, most of our Faggot force has been destroyed. Regrettable, but the 400t hull just cannot withstand even light hits.
Still down
Right as we're regrouping after ensuring the demise of those Bs, the rest of the French fleet steams out of the darkness. Unfortunately, at this point we've expended most of our torpedoes, I've decided, for safety's sake, that we should retreat back to port and take the win. Italia is poorly positioned though, and takes heavy damage. While we manage to shift our retreat to give her time to make emergency repairs, it does cost us some more damage to the rest of our line.
pls
Using our DDs to force the enemy line to turn away, our main fleet limps home. While most of our ships have taken varying levels of damage, the only ships we've actually lost are mostly Faggots. If anyone wants to see a particular ship's combat log, let me know, I'll stay on this page for a while.
posting still down
While I wait for 8ch to come back, I'll give a quick rundown of how I felt some of our designs went
Good in a theoretical sense, but enemy gun accuracy has improved to the point where a 3" or two is almost a certainty, and with the fragility a death sentence. DD Rita took a single 4" HE to the engine room and was brought to 95% flotation damage, without any flooding itself. That being said, they did play a very important role. They were right in the middle of the enemy fleet when we clashed, so the enemy gunners focused on them. This gave our battleships valuable time to line up several volleys, which gave us a dramatic edge.
Regrettably this wasn't a good battle for them. The close quarters and heavy enemy forces both worked against their design. That being said, I still see them working out on their own.

Again, gotta go to work. I'll be leaving the post-battle stat screen up while I'm gone. If anyone wants to see their ships battle log or an enemy ships, ask and I'll post it when I get back.

When you get back and throw together a fresh thread as we linger past bump limit, I'd like to see how Mussolini's Lamborghini (the lead ship, although I suppose looking over the others in her class present too couldn't hurt) and bloody-nosed Italia il Audace carried themselves. The Lamborghini were out of their element but still carried themselves as well as they could with a good 16 hits by the lead ship, or at least that's what I read from 'I still see them working out on their own' in addition to the more obvious meaning of their doing theoretically better in cruiser engagements, and Italia was in the dead center of our battleline when the T was crossed, and must have seen some very good action.

What an engagement. The French have lost three battleships for all time, in exchange for two of ours being at port for a while and a handful of intentionally sacrificial screens. We may already have enough bargaining power that it's not unlikely we could snatch a mid-value colony, and with France out of the war & unable to grant port rights, there'll be no ability for Russia to actually come into the picture, meaning white peace in short order. It's unfortunate that the Mighty Faggot concept of a proto-torpedo boat came too late to be used to the fullest, but the effectiveness she could levy in spite of her weaknesses is very telling. A very nice in-universe reason to justify later expansion towards heavier destroyers/recon cruisers, which can better weather a storm of screen fire and survive, and towards the submarine group-style lighter true motor torpedo boats, which will be even better suited to the role of attracting & evading fire in the midst of a battle line to bring deadly torpedo volleys to bear in close.

New thread is here.