RULE THE WA/v/ES: FUCK SUBMARINES (EXCEPT WOLFGIRLS) EDITION

RULE THE WA/v/ES: FUCK SUBMARINES (EXCEPT WOLFGIRLS) EDITION

First thread:
Second thread:

OP has returned for the third thread of the third season of Rule the Wa/v/es, the Holla Forums Plays series where Holla Forums attempts to manage the affairs of a major naval power in the early twentieth century. For those who are just joining us, Rule the Waves is a mild/moderately autistic game where you play as the head of a nation's Navy. You manage your fleet construction, give orders in battle (depending on difficulty) and make policy decisions. Complicating the whole process is the endless struggle to balance the budget, adapt to your rivals designs, satisfy the politicians and deal with the fact that your glorious new Battle-cruiser will likely be obsolete before it's completed.

PREVIOUSLY…
After several tension-raising events, France and Russia announced that they were jointly declaring war upon us. While Russia did not have the capability to directly engage us in the Mediterranean, they committed most of their cruiser force to raiding our merchant shipping. France on the other hand, was eager to get her revenge for being defeated in 1904, and engaged us furiously. Just off the coast of our borders, our fleets met in the night. Clever torpedo runs by our Mighty Faggot class DDs led to the sinking of three French battleships. While this was a devastating blow to the French, it did not knock them out of the war.

Two years later, just off the coast of Malta, the modern French Dreadnought Redoutable caught a pair of our legacy battleships escorting a convoy and tore them apart. Immediately in response, we launched a massive raid on the harbor of Nice and engaged the French battle line with our own. Our light cruisers Bari and Marsala, led by Spaghetti Hauler, ran a near-suicidal torpedo attack on the French battle line, and managed to hit the Redoutable with a single torpedo which detonated it's ammunition magazine, sinking it within an instant.

Even then, the French/Russo alliance refused to back down, and instead switched to mass submarine warfare. Merchant shipping suffered horribly, and we lost many ships to torpedo attacks. A plan to collapse Russia by allowing a revolutionary safe passage backfired and gave rise to socialists within our nation. This, combined with the shortages imposed by French submarine warfare and five years of war, brought our nation to the very edge of revolution.

In a desperate bid to rally our people, our Battle-cruisers Pax Romana and Italia il Audace engaged the French Battle-cruisers Dunkerque and Duquesne off the Northern coast of Sicily. Despite being outgunned and taking heavy damage, our last-ditch effort resulted in the destruction of both, leaving the French Navy with only a single true Capital ship remaining. With renewed resolve to continue the fight, our forces soldiered on. France threw in the towel and we claimed the island of Cosica, as well as the Falkands, which rebelled against Britain before being taken by France.

Now we stand in the post-war reconstruction era. Many elements of our fleet are outdated and must be replaced, others may be fit to be refitted.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO PARTICIPATE
I run almost all major policy decisions past Holla Forums before implementing them, only resolving them myself if they're very minor or Holla Forums has already given feedback on what they want to do. As such, I will often ask for opinions on political events. But in addition, the following things can be adjusted and should be brought up often

As of now this is largely balanced, with some emphasis on researching new guns
Right now we're only training gunnery to keep costs low to finance our new BCs. We can add either Night Fighting or Torpedo Warfare to our training regiments
"Can we design a cruiser to be used as a long-range raider, but still be able to fight on it's own"
"Build more subs/DDs/a new Capital
No ship will be allowed to die without a name, so I ask for Holla Forums to christen them
"ur a fgt"

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_cruiser_Kitakami
pastebin.com/k22Sqs82
pastebin.com/t3qs7NY1
childrenofadeadearth.com/
navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-067.htm
pastebin.com/U3mUHDJd
pastebin.com/WBPyhrVL
pastebin.com/TBFegYk9
pastebin.com/zVrJhPMN
pastebin.com/tVuqV7NL
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

First order of business
Our CA fleet is somewhat outdated, although still servicable. We could take several steps to improve it.
Built in the same spirit as our Mussolini's Lahmbroghini-class CA, these ships would carry heavy armaments, allowing them to devestate any opposing cruiser while still being able to contribute to the battle line. Downsides of this would be the high cost, which would limit the number that could be built, plus a inherent lack of survivability against true capitals.
Carrying a moderate armament of 7-9 inch guns, these ships would act as heavy screens and counter-raiders. They would, however, be of little use against enemy capital ships. Somewhat less expensive, although if survivabilty through speed is required, that cost will be driven up.
OP's personal preference, we could replace the machinery on the Mussolini's Lahmbroghini classes, and use that saved weight to increase her top speed to 27kts as well as improve her fire control.
Perhaps we think that the age of the CA has passed, and instead focus our efforts on true Battle-cruisers or Dreadnoughts.

Everyone except for Great Britain has BCs of around 30,000 tons. We may need to build BCs of similar size to fight against them in time, though perhaps not right now. Scrap or refit our Bs before they become coffins.

Also, could you show the schematics for the refitted Napoli? I'd like to see how it looks now.

Here you go.

ML refits for the immediate future, followed by/alongside the new pocket battleships. We can wait a bit on starting the latter hoping for new technology letting us squeeze a little bit more in there with a new projection, in particular the more compressed aft superfiring arrangement and fore superfiring arrangement. If we finish the refits before getting these, we'll use the current projections' turret arrangement and whatever miscellaneous improvements we'll have by then.

A compromise cruiser design won't have longevity, but going full bore into exclusive battlecruiser production will be too substantial an expense for the moment, especially as we're having protests towards our recently decent budget. Cutting back immediate expenditures to build a surplus fund for future expenditures would be a very wise balance the current unrest, so pocket battleships are the compromise we can afford in quality and cost.


Well. She's slow as molasses and lacking shell output, but sixteen inch guns make for a decent chance to turn something far more expensive into paste before she goes down.

We can also now build minelaying subs, and our MTB squadrons are beginning to be completed.

We can build minelaying subs and above water torpedoes on CLs now, as our new MTB squads come online across most of our holdings.

8ch pls work

Alright, looks like things have stabilized. What's the merit of minelaying subs, exactly? Are they just the cheapest but most fragile & fickle way to get minefields out compared to using (spare) DD/CL displacement to cram in mines? May as well grab a handful, since mines have been a source of persistent misery.


CL deck tubes, praise RNGesus. Can we amend the Nino Bixo with the superior tube arrangement for mid-production refit/future production?

We could probably stand to build some new CLs since most of what we have are ancient. I think we've torpedo'd more things with CLs than we have with DDs, so a heavy destroyer type setup with sanic speed and deck torpedos could work quite well.

Sorry for the delay, 8ch refused to show your post. Here's the rebuild with improved fire control, speed and improved 10in guns.

So this is the power of Holla Forums's upgraded servers.

Can we stick an extra FC position on it? It's got 382 extra weight.

She can paste her contemporary, minimum-armor battlecruisers at just a bit under 12,000 meters for a fraction of the cost. That's very nice. The only problem with that is closing enough without getting smashed by battlecruiser guns, but it's still good. Go ahead with the rebuild, and keep checking back on her successor to brush up as technology arises until the refits are done or close to it and production ought to start. Nino Bixo amendment projection next?

Nelson-class user, where you at?


We've got a pair in production as of now, basically a scaled down but equivalent version of our last generation CLs.


Basically just a different way to lay mines while also getting the benefits of a sub. As for the CLs, we can change their torp configuration once they come out of production.


Afraid that's a bug when reviewing a design currently under rebuild, it's actually only got about 3 extra tons unused.


Same problem. Thanks for the upgrade.

And the first choice of the day, do we want to swap notes with the Germans?

Of course.

IT'S TIME.

To resummarize down the last Nelson writeup to a more reasonable length; project two designs, one in true Nelson formula, one with a single aft turret in addition to the three fore ones to see if you still get a weight saving over two fore/two aft, and see whether it's really worth it rather than going full Nelson or the conventional layout. Whether you project a battlecruiser or a fast battleship depends purely on what we can afford and what we have a shortage of, but I imagine we'd want to go for a max-armor battlecruiser, the 12 inch armor of which should be competitive for a little bit longer. If we can aim for a fast battleship after all, we should stick in the best belt & deck armor we can get away with without making speed or displacement too excessively expensive. Guns should be triples in the 14-16 inch range, of the highest quality between them rather than caliber, since once you reach this range it isn't quite as necessary to go for the bigger calibres due to historical AI armor schemes, even if building 17-18 inch gun super battleships is love and life. Speed needs to be fast enough to compete with contemporary designs at our current machinery level and improvable to match future designs when we tech up or finally get oil firing. Secondaries are the usual 5-6 inchers, quality over caliber. Tertiaries are afterthought or absent; don't stick them on over more fire control. Double turret secondaries if technology's improved enough for them to be viable.


Germany is our best chance to get a regional ally who can help us break out of the Med, since we scorned the US early on. Definitely go ahead with the deal.

Here's what a Nelson-style would work out to be, assuming we don't go totally overboard and try to keep the cost down. We also get a look at what the newest French battle-cruiser will turn out to be, and swap some tech with Germany.

Hi, OP
And so you converted me to your faith.
I've got a few questions, but first-my current strategy:
First pic won me war with russia(got Kmchatka and Korea), second pic is why russian revolution suceeded in 1909. Third pic is the latest iteration of the first one and forth pic was too late to the party, my first non-legacy capital, currently 3 of them(I've also got 1 russian ship in reparations and it does not deserve to be shown); fifth pic is it's new screen.
Q1: am I a nigger despite being a slav?
Q2: what are my chances against 15" brits?
Q3: should I fit everything I can with mines?

Is there an advantage to using the all-or-nothing armour style over the more standard ones? I've noticed you seem to use it most of the time.

Time to make some rape cruisers.

Do we want more Wolfgirls? Our newest CLs roll off the production line, we'll swap out their torpedoes ASAP.


Assuming you're on regular tech advancement, that thing is begging to be torn apart by a BC. Add to the fact that you're only getting a 50% firepower increase over a traditional fore/aft style CA, while doubling the tonnage, at 2.4M a turn, it worries me you'll lose it too soon.


It's much more weight effective at protecting the vitals of the ship. Sloped deck will give better overall protection, but at the cost of much more weight.

The Nelson looks good. Is the pseudo-Nelson (3-1 fore-aft) impossible or just not worth the weight & cost for the extra turret? Either way, immediate production as soon as our pocket ship & screen expansion is through is probably wise, as she'll handily outclass the Marseille. How soon will the Marseille be done, since we'll want to have ours out around the same time? And can we squeeze in an extra knot of speed to make sure she can catch/escape her opposite without damage coming into the equation & insulate a little against 'didn't reach design speed' maluses?

Agree to half the number or the total based on what we can afford. Half & half coastal/medium range split.

Sure, let's build them.

Triple torpedos makes me think it's time for a new class of DDs.

More wolfgirls. Just more. Pls.

And speaking of dat thing, it just engaged 2 CAs with no survivors. Though notes taken, next time I see a proper BC I won't even engage, just send torpedo gunmeat. Everything is trained for night ops and torp warfare, taking notes from shovelfight you had last thread.

Apologizes for the delay, I fucked up the design 3 times in a row. 6 more wolfgirls are in production, even split between the designs. Our turrets are going to be much less jam worthy, so that's extremely helpful. Oh, and would you look at that, Austria took Albania…

Oh, for fucks sake


That training will serve you well. We're actually only training gunnery at the moment, we came out on top there despite it.

5x3 triple tube center mounts, no guns.

He is not wrong, if we are operating in enemy coastal waters, but Wolfgirl breeding should not suffer.

I hope that ships can be rechristened, considering the typo. Either way, I'd like to add Risorgimento to the capital name list, either for this battlecruiser or our next fast battleship.


I mean, we wanted more screens anyways. Our doctrine is pretty clear that light torpedo screens are best screens because of the sheer up-punching capacity. If the budget is thin, we'll give him Mighty Faggots Mk. II, or maybe III, with fresh new torpedo mounts and minimal gunnery. If the budget and tech allows, we should consider making a larger torpedo destroyer with the tonnage to finally mount a couple five or six-inch guns to bully other destroyers in counterraid operations. Once again, half or full order as budget allows.

I wonder, is this the same naval secretary that was demanding subs, or did he get the revolving door treatment and was already replaced by a guy advocating a different kind of torpedo slinger? Not that the distinction is made ingame, but it makes me snicker.

Give it a single aft gun that fits and a couple high-quality secondaries so it won't be absolutely defenceless when pulling out.

Maybe he opened a second book in his life.

And let it suffer it's name, pray the merchant god that popular subscription finance us it's immediate replacement with even better puppy-kickers.

...

Shall we?

Well. It's a good thing we've been embarking on budget-but-quality solutions before the budget slash, right? The MK III looks good.


ROME-BERLIN AXIS

What could possibly go wrong

I'd instead support any route that lets you ally the bongs. Germany has a small navy.

Since we don't have direct control over alliance proposals, we take it.

I propose an experimental destroyer design, for when "i want to slightly screen these ships" isn't enough.

Proposed are following specifications:
30 knots minimum
9 torpedo tubes in 3 mounts
Decent but not overboard armament
Whatever displacement is needed to meet these

Purpose:
Expensive destroyers meant for absolute impenetrable screening against ships that we want to disengage from, or want to move away from us ASAP, as well as maximum rape torpedo volley boats should the enemy ever be stupid enough to get their capitals too close.
If their size makes them prone to being hit in a large fight, they can be kept on the far side of the line of battle, to emerge when extra screening is desired.
Basically ensurance that we can mark at least one area as "no baguette (or whoever else we boot out of the Meds) allowed" with confidence.
Additionally they could get cheeky kills on convoy attacks where the convoy is too heavily guarded to simply go in and rape, achieved hopefully by firing off all torpedoes at maximum range and retreating, ensuring we get at least one shot at sinking some even if we don't take the fight at all.


Proposed class name is Brezza Dell'isola
They would be able to get to where they need to be fast and do their job even faster, for example in the case of one of our capitals being crippled, we could attempt to protect it with a wave of torpedoes fired in their general direction.
Production run would be just a few of them, due to their specialist purpose and likely decently high cost. A squadron of 4 maybe?

If we are abandoning super cheap suicide screens and going for more quality destroyers overall, maybe scrap that idea and turn it into 2 light cruisers with minimum tonnage and massive (18 TT broadside?) torpedo armament followed by at least 27 knots of speed.

More name suggestions for any ship:
Consegna Veloce (anything fast)
Bruciatore Di Rana
Palle Papali
(correct grammar/being funny in italian not guaranteed)


Or just do this instead now that we have a 9 DD requirement, i probably took too long writing this out.

Fuggin gommies


While right now I'm desperately trying to keep our finances in the black, that does seem like a perfectly workable class of DD. Speaking of which, I do need more names, as this newest line of DDs we've had to build has depleted my stock of suggestions.

If only "all of the above" were an option.

Gommies be gommies, they make for good entertainment. Bitch in Naval league.

If we allied with the Eternal Anglo or America, it'd be too easy and wouldn't be any fun. And in the first case we wouldn't ever get 100% control of the Med. We're gonna get our Mare Nostrum and our lion's share of Africa and we're gonna cry tears of blood getting there. Besides, Germany is one of the best second-runners to the big Anglo two, and together we can very probably compete against either of the two with some buildup.


I'm continually unaverse to a larger torpedo-gun destroyer or extra light recon cruiser, if it's possible. If we can squeeze a couple of the former in amongst the budget ships or after they're done, I'd be happy.

So you want a pocket Kitakami?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_cruiser_Kitakami


If the Navy League option can get our budget back in exchange for tension, go for it. Otherwise, definitely go for suppressing gommies, because these fuckers have gone too far. If suppression can REALLY reverse this bullshit unrest-raising budget-slashing dickery, then go for it even at expense to our budget. I am making a note to NEVER allow commies to escape when I get around to my own playthrough. Completely hamstringing your future budget & unrest levels in exchange for a possible, not guaranteed revolutionary knockout is not worth it.

What do Italian torpedo tubes sound like when they fire?

Dago wop wop wop

Go for the Naval League, it can't hurt that much, and having money is never bad
As for names, I'm thinking of:
Digiorno's Delivery's
Penne alla Putanesca
Anchovy
Tony Pajamas
Biggus Dichus
Pineapple Pizza
Pasta Fazooli
I'm shit at thinking up names, no big surprise.

Evaluate my new generation of screens pls.

Gommies gifted me victory over Russia, so you might be biased. You just need underwater superiority to ensure enemy get's bolshevismed first.

...

Our intelligence communities get a peek at Austria's newest Dreadnought, she's pretty decent. Oh, and this asshole is back, and we're just barely done finishing the first line.


Personally, guns are my lowest priority when it comes to DD. That being said, that's because I like a DD that can perform multiple torpedo runs.

Kaitens are shown here in third pic. Will redo them for triple torpedoes when can.

Britain seems to think partial armor and 15" are somehow compatible. They will be loaded with SAP and spammed en masse to screen these shits, designed basically to make some responce to popular subscription prompt.

It's a bit big for its mixed armament & low torpedo, especially for the era. Secondaries on destroyers should always be an afterthought, anything up to six inches is very good for dealing with destroyers and a single decent sized main battery will make secondaries mostly pointless.


If we still have relics to scrap & replace, give him half the number. Otherwise, we need to tell him off, assuming we'll still have a net prestige positive from the previous affirmatives after the prestige hit we're likely to take. It's not that he's wrong, it's just that we probably already have a decent light screen count for now and need to start focusing on larger screens & counterraiders.

What is our current ship count, including auxilliaries like Q-ships, minesweepers and subs? Additionally, what is our current minesweeper design? They've been left as an afterthought this whole time, but the manual shows that they're a manually designed class. A proper gunboat that can engage most effectively in ASW on the cheap compared to our line DDs while still performing minesweeping duties and maybe being able to tell DD raiders to fuck off. Something with five to six inch guns. With good range & accomodations, so we preferentially can send them to the colonies.

Were our minesweepers performing so poorly in the second pasta-baguette war because they're extremely obsolete?

I tend to go for speed and torpedos over heavy armament and secondaries, so I don't like your design.

4 Inch guns is plenty for DDs, and anything over 900 tons is a waste of time and money for such a disposable ship. You'll learn through combat with them, the higher the displacement the higher the loss to your VPs when one goes down, and DDs die like flies if you use them manually as OP does.

I've taken the 'half' route, and also gone ahead and scrapped the unconverted legacy Bs. We've got two main MS designs, one the bare minimum and once a bit more advanced. Ignore the Speed 0, that's a display bug. Now, do we want to preserve this ship for prestige points?

yes, preserve it, the money is minuscule anyway.

Basically that was exactly what i had in mind. A bit of nip influence but without going all out should ensure we can make good use our (quite decent i believe? other than of course the broken cannelloni tubes we got for the night fight against the french BCs) torpedoes.

now this is an interesting subject.


Definitely keep it

Things are quiet on the seas, tensions are all pretty low.


This class is all yours user.


Afraid we already had an Anchovy. Had.

Who are we going to bully? And let's be honest, it's either France or Austria.

Have the austrians ever done anything to us? If not, bully the frogs yet again, I don't think they have much of a navy after getting BTFO'd twice, and 3 is always a nice number

Preserve it. I imagine the prestige will be more useful to spend later than a small amount of budget lost to a mothballed tub.

Our light screen count looks competitive enough. We should continue construction of a single modern budget screen & modern quality screen at a time to keep filling things out, but otherwise avoid further large screen constructional efforts except as events dictate.

The 200 tonner is basically filler, and its ability to actually fulfill its offscreen duties let alone survive a fight is questionable, but they'll still be useful to keep on hand, and maybe to make a modernized run of. We should devise a 1000-displacement middleweight MS and a max displacement 1800 MS to better fill out our ASW capabilties, then produce a handful.

Beside that, I don't know what we ought to do at the moment. How's the cruiser refit coming? Should we embark on new light cruisers, or set to the new pocket battleships? I imagine fresh capitals are out of the question until we get some extra budget. What do you advise, admiral?


I would be very interested in night fighter torpedo spammers, when we can spare the resources from our more generalist lines.


With that tech, it looks like we're due for another round of general refits. I hope they're short for the addition of a fire director.


France we just kicked the shit out of and would be easy pickings in round 2. Austria has a somewhat discouraging number of actually good ships, though, which is very worrying, since we just spent a lot of blood cutting one regional competitor down to size. Since it's uncertain, the choice really comes down to in-universe thinking, and since France is out of commission for a while, Austria is the likely near-future competitor. Hopefully they have a shit ASW component so that we can give them the same treatment France gave us. How do our lineups compare, in number & modernity?


We bullied Austria really hard to cut our teeth, as I recall.

Definitely frogs, bullying Austria may upset our kraut friendos.

I'm not so sure about that. We've diverged historically and early, so I imagine Germany & Austria aren't allied. Beside that, they're our traditional enemy in addition to France, both ingame and during the unification of Italy. In the latter case, the Austrians were openly so, while the French were realpoliticking around, half-supporting, half-hamstringing all the way.

Definitely France, they still have multiple colonies to take while Austra only has rodos.

Should I chreisten it Giganigga, or Expensive Cofffin?

Expensive Coffin tbh

It's been 5 years since we kicked the frogs down, they didn't get hit with budget cuts as hard as we did and have risen from the ashes of all the Bs we destroyed with modern, high calibre ships. Austria has also been enjoying a good budget, and has a pair of damn good CAs. That being said, their capital lines are oversized for what they bring to the party.


They also now own Albania, as mentioned here


As of now, these budget cuts have us only barely funding our newest BC. We're actually the poorest in budget of all the nations.

That's an Expensive Coffin.

Fucking commies screwed us hard

To avoid a repeat of last war, whats the submarine situation.

It will come with against enemy torp carriers.

Note taken.

Even if we wanted to bully France it doesn't look like that's a realistic outcome.

Wolfgirl warfare here we come!

Less than ideal.

We're back where we goddamn started and France got the phoenix treatment just as I predicted. Worse, they're going all in on capitals so it appears, with no CA in service. God damn. We DO have Germany on our side now, which keeps things in our favor to a fair degree, but either war looks like an unpleasant affair. We very frankly ought to beat down Austria first, just because that is the more reasonable proposition. And that still puts us against a lot of dreadnoughts and fast battleships. They have a lot more ships in general, but the guns are thankfully lesser.

I'm not certain which will remove the most commie influence, I'll leave it to Holla Forums.

Let's try #2

#2. They get one chance. If they fuck us again it's 200% suppression from here on.

Push money underwater, let them commit incest if nesessary. 30 SSCs send 5 ruskie ships to the bottom a month in my first war.

Second option.

While our tech agreement has expired with Germany, the UK wants to enter into one.

I'd really prefer not to give them a leg up on light warfare. Also, disconcerting that our tension is raising to lukewarm levels across the board, even with our ally.

Does britain have triple turrets yet? If they obtain ours, that could be VERY dangerous if we ever hope to boot them out of OUR Mediterranean.
If they already have them already, maybe.

yes, accept. A war with GB would be game-ending for us, and they probably have great shipbuilding techniques. They're probably only interested in MTBs and those are dirt cheap anyway.

They do. I recall seeing a BB of theirs that had 12 x 15 inch guns, the only downside of it was it seemed that it didn't have B or X turrets.

GB is a bit peeved, but it's France who's really getting their panties in a bunch. Not because of any direct action, just general tensions rising.


Sorry user, declined right before you posted.

Accept. We need every advantage we can get if we want to win a war against navies with 150% of our funding.

REMOVE BAGUETTE

Pick whatever will throw tensions down. We really do not want WW II in the 1920s at this juncture, Britain and France are too close in tension level. We've already seen what happened with Russia.

What do MTBs do anyway? I get that they show up in battles, but do they actually aggressively try to torpedo enemies in their area?

Would it be a possibility trying to lure the enemy into the straits between Sicily and the mainland, or Sardinia and Corsica, with MTBs waiting for them?

Lower tensions, we can beat france in a second war if we pick our battles but we can't beat france and britain at the same time.

Caesar's Palace is done, and we're running a healthy surplus. What should we focus construction efforts on?


This is the first time I've played the updated version, which is why I was so unprepared for the SS spam. In theory, yes, that's how they work.

And as such, Japanese-Frog war starts.
Yes, this thing was first in it's class and it sunk another ship in war with russia.

While we could engage in a proper battleship race, with a more heavily armored BB follow-on to Caesar's Palace, our current budget situation demands less premium solutions for the time being. While I'm increasingly skeptical about our pocket battleship projections as time goes on, they will still be useful in the commercial war and as a counter to enemy light cruisers; more importantly, we need a torpedo cruiser design, stat. Something that can completely ruin a battleline with just a few on hand, and will survive fire better than our destroyers. We need an Italian Kitakami; since we cannot close the batteship gap credibly, instead we will create one through shock torpedo assault!

T A D P O L E S

This. Let's slap a shitton of torpedo mounts on a CL and shit them out.

Will this satisfy your Kitakami fantasy?

Is that even legal?

Oh yes. How many can we make?

Hey OP, I think you've got the wrong theatre, the orient is 2 knots out.

8 inchers with only 1.5 inches of armor. Hopefully their turrets won't blow up before they release a salvo or two.

This is a good point. Increasing the displacement a little to give them sealed 2.5 inch turrets or converting to a 6-inch monobattery instead of 8 inchers would be wise.

I'd prefer reducing the size of their cannons and increasing turret armor to 2.5 inches, without increasing displacement. Our Paper-mache cruisers wouldn't be doing much damage with the cannons anyways.

I've increased displacement 100t in exchange for 4inches of turret armor, which should prevent most DDs from blowing it up.


Three in production as of now. Four if we take this offer.

Habeeb it.

Take the offer. We need these as a trump card in the next war.

Since we seem to be going all in on torpedo warfare shouldn't we start training our crews with it?

Bully?

On one hand we might not be able to increase tensions with france alone without pissing off britain if we don't take this
On the other we might be able to do just that, and we risk the bongs being sufficiently pissed off at this as well.

Regardless, we still have Germany as an ally now, with decently low tensions, who knows what their tension level will be by the time we do get a war?

Remember the last coffin? Well, it won the war with frogs and as such, a new succsessor has been laid down.

The relevant ones, yes. It can get a bit pricey, but it makes sense for our torpedo ships.


France. I would've said Austria, but we already increased tensions, and I don't want us to fight both. Since we're in this pickle, we should take the opportunity to increase the disparity between France & Britain's tension levels, make a dual war declaration less likely by these parties or France & Austria less likely. We need to beat France back down, fast, with Germany's help. After that we can deal with Austria.

Also, for the duration of the war when it starts- at this juncture I'm sure it WILL start- I strongly advise we swap from cruiser rules to fleet support. I'm normally happy enough with cruiser rules, but we cannot afford a crises from neutral merchant damage.

Point the finger at France

Any options that come to reduce or prevent the escalation of tensions with Britain DO take though.

Has the time come?

Sasuga Japan

Second option to buy some time for girls to grow.

Assuming it increases tension enough to get our war straight away or VERY soon, option 2. They're so close to the edge, and presumably option 2 will reduce our tension level with everyone else.

user, Kamikaze and suicide bombing are different concepts.

Who cares if it is used for beating down things set dead in the water by 1901 torpedo carriers?

I hope you like exploding.

Well, at least enemy won't escape knife fights at night.

Frogs have 12 inches at max, I outrange them.

You've got the proper sequence backwards. Guns stop ships then torpedoes sink them.

But notes taken, next iteration will have armor.

Well that's interesting. Wanna try colonization, or is it much too risky at this point?

I recall you saying the same thing last time and then continuing to do stupid shit.

Send a force, time for war.

Activate it.

Does France have any colonies in the area?

Adventurism will push France over the edge, but we'll also have another colony in Asia to police, and tensions will raise worryingly with other powers. Go for it, but I worry about the potential long-term ramifications.

Too far from home, especially without guaranteed access to the Suez Canal.

Sons, time to take up your fathers arms and continue his fight.

...

Take it

Their screens are shit, even if we must be VERY cautious about our capital ship placement until we know precisely what we're up against. Now is the time.

Does it have oil?


Actually no, second pic is my fleet workhorse and it's newest iteration.


Pls help me resist temptation.

France's Subs spook me though, we need to build a fuckload of Mine Sweepers soon.

Agreed. Show the French the meaning of elan and crush them while half their fleet is inactive.

France backs down from the fight, but next month we take this one. And right of the bat we spot an French ship.

Almost instantly a 5" round pings off of Caesar's super-firing turret. The rest of the fleet is mobilizing, but she'll be on her own for a while.

And now quadruple turrets. Pls, save me from this temptation.

...

The French BC takes several hits from Caesar's Palace, and turn tail, likely towards the fleet it's scouting for. Caesar is likely going to have to evade torpedoes from that DD, so she'll get away, but we've struck the first real blow in this engagement.

Noice.
Do you approve of this shit?

Hounded by Caesar, the Tourville moves south, right where Bersagliere and Sonofucktherestofthatname are waiting for it.


I mean, it's clearly a suicide unit, but I worry that past 1910 it's going to be much too slow to actually catch anything with those fish. Plus, at 300t, it'll die if anything looks at it funny.

Needs more speed tbh

Also there's no point putting one torpedo on each side, instead put one torpedo mount in like the Q position, then give it one aft 3 inch gun, that way you can keep the same tonnage but drastically improve its capability.

Bersagliere misses, but we've got two more CLs that follow up after her. Ave Caesar and Chef Boyardee have both closed to about 11km, and start pouring their fire into the mix. While we've basically abandoned the merchants, if we score this BC their deaths with be peanuts compared to what we'll earn.

Ah, that'd be them then.

Had an option to go +1 knot or +1 gun, went +1 gun. Dubs decide on option for 40+ production run.

As the Tourville-class appears to be limping, I've chosen to send a force consisting on Italia il Audace, Pax Romana, Estonia and the Mighty Faggot Mk.2 to keep on her, while our main battle line trades fire with the Marengo.

Estonia is still alive?

Well, the rest of France's fleet has arrived. We may want to wrap this up quickly.


Yes, she's served with distinction, playing a key role in the sinking of the French battle-cruiser Duquesne. Don't jinx it.

You really need to put as much torpedos as phisically possible on a ship.

Also, I still don't see "I'll Grande Cazzo di Italia"!

...

Things start to get a bit dicey. Pax Romana has taken a hard hit to her hull and is flooding rather badly. Should we turn the fleet around, or just send a wave of Faggots after the closing Tourvilles to keep them busy?


see
Must have missed that name, I'll get it worked in.

Go down the middle. Fighting retreat and dump fish in the direction of the enemy. As long as they suffer more damage, this is our victory.

Faggots gotta fag, they are outdated anyway.

Faced with a wave of Faggots rushing towards them, the Tourvilles turn away. As Pax Romana is having trouble handling her flooding, I'm diverting some of the Mussolini's Lamborghinis to cover her. Meanwhile our Dreadnoughts continue to exchange fire with the Marengo.

Sir, I would like to have a talk with your ammoracks. May you be so kind as to show my gunners where to find them?

These 15" rounds are starting to get to us. While they're not hitting often, they are hitting us where it hurts. Even so, the combined firepower of three of our capitals is wearing the Marengo down, she's lost much of her speed.

How old her design is by now? And pls battle overview.

She's got a neat little pack of screens, but we have more. Once she's really slowing, we ought to put our fish in the water and then turn away from the DDs that will likely do the same.I also suggest zig-zagging away & toward the Marengo with our own capitals, assuming impact angle matters for belt armor.

We're currently split into three main groups, a decent force of DDs making runs on the French BCs, a weakened force that's mostly trying to repair while still throwing out supporting fire, and our main battle line engaging the Marengo. The benefit to this is we're occupying the entire enemy force with separate targets. The bad news is that any once of these engagements could go very wrong very quickly.


Nearly two decades I think. She was laid down in 1904, launched in 1907. It's 1924 as of right now.


Understood and yes it does.

Wouldn't this completely ruin gunnery? Unless the zig-zags are very wide or very shallow we will basically be performing evasive maneuvers while trying to shoot straight.

Well given that the modern Estonian navy is just a handful of second-hand British Minesweepers that's not the world's greatest achievement.

If we're turning faster than our turrets can compensate, yes. So I should add the caveat, 'zig-zag as much as our gunnery will allow.' We don't want to close with the enemy, but we also absolutely don't want to be flatly broadside on, meaning we need to approach, then pull away, to keep our armor effectiveness as high as it can be.

Our northern force of DDs forces the French BCs to turn away again, and sweeps around to cut off the Marengo's escape. Their DD screens attempt to do the same, but our large amount of CLs force them away with a hail of 3-6 inch quick firing guns. Now the only thing left to do is tighten the noose and score some torpedo hits.

God damn Palle Papali. That was some angle. More torps to finish her or rely on our gunnery?

Torps our guns are needed on the other dreadnought and battlecruisers

Torpedoes are cheap, the free resupply post-battle kind of cheap. Screens less so. Capital ships indescribably so. Put a couple more fish in, and if that means we're missing enough torpedoes that we can't put another thinner-skinned one down as quick or definitely, that's fine, as we'll make sure this one is dead and doesn't put any more rounds into us and give a BC the HMS Hood treatment as she goes.

Is this enough?

I swear this wasn't friendly fire. It may have been friendly fire.

Yeah. Even though I don't have an appreciation of the relative speeds of the ship & torpedoes, yeah, that's probably enough. Just hoping the screens don't take any of them.


Well. She had submerged torpedo tubes. It was going to happen sooner or later. RIP in pieces.

topkek, can we find out which ship did that and rename it Compagno Coglione?

Well, the French fleet seems to have fucked off, so we meet back up with our Merchants at Sicily, who seem unharmed. Other than Sono Pazzi Questi Romani, who it turns out was torpedoed by an enemy DD, we sustained no losses. As usual, anybody we want to take a detailed look at?

The principal capitals and any seeming ship of distinction in the other classes. Just a quick skim.

A dead BB and a crippled BC in exchange for medium capital damage at worst is very nice. Especially when that's one of two fast battleships they had finished & christened last we checked, giving us either advantage or parity with the remainder. How are our ASW efforts doing? And how goes the front further north, is Germany pulling some weight?

In the face of war we've gotten a massive budget increase, where do we want to send it?


Marengo
pastebin.com/k22Sqs82
Tourville
pastebin.com/t3qs7NY1
Germany has their entire fleet in Northern Europe, so France is almost certainly blockaded. Give it a year or two and they'll be begging for peace.

Never mind, make that 3 months.

Queue up replacements for any recent screen, sub, general auxilliary losses with modern or follow-on cutting edge designs. Expand CL production, and finally lay down our new CA pocket battleships if we hadn't already done so & finished them (and maybe even if we have) modified with the newest superfiring arrangements to save weight. If after that's done we have a glut of budget left, project a fast BB derived from Caesar's Palace. Armor it to a degree that it has some future proofing against enemy guns, keep it fast enough to run apace with our battlecruisers, and cram whatever we can into her in terms of useful bits & bobs.


Hard terms. We'll either let her off cheap in ships in exchange for colonies or take her for all she's worth.

Okay.

Well shit. Go for Senegal, Madagascar and Middle congo to optimize our vps.
On two side notes:
- Why can't we take Brittany or Lyon yet? Is it cause they're core provinces?
- Add a couple of names to the list:
Totò Sapore
Pizzeria Bella Napoli
Minghia
Natale a Silent Hill

Oh. Well, that was easy. I would say to snap up Algeria, but that means a point left out. So instead we'll take the rest of her sub-Saharan African possessions; Madagascar, Senegal and the Middle Congo. We gain a new sea zone to police with two of these in West Africa, but we share it with Germany, so it's not so bad, and Madagascar neatly rounds out our East African possessions.

Next war we should try to get the army to invade algeria

I'd say build 2 Modern BBs. Either early dreadnought design with a few either 3 or 4 12in guns, moderate armor, enough speed to at least keep up with smaller ships such as BCs and CAs, and around 8 or 10 4in guns for enemy screens. Add torpedo if you feel like, but I'm not sure how fast it'll be with all the armaments and the tech we have.

Whoops, for

user, we're already in what was the OTL interwar era, and just about at the end of the 'proper' game time. It's 1924. It's also set to a slower tech rate- I think it was 80%- but with variant tech, meaning we're kind of clipping into the 30s doctrinally & constructionally. Early dreadnoughts have gone the way of the dodo, we have a single one clipping around because we haven't had enough reason to scrap it and another kept as a museum ship.

In what may have been the shortest war I've ever see, Italy is now kangs an shiiet, forcing France entirely out of Africa with the exception of Algeria. Special thanks to Germany's 9 BBs and 4 BCs, who no doubt showed themselves and caused Frenchman to immediately run up their national flag.


Unfortunately we've now lost that budget bump because peace was declared. We're still much higher than before, but it isn't as major.


Home territories are off-limits, yeah.

Guess I missed a thread or two. Thanks.

NEIN NEIN NEIN
The whole point of this game is the destruction of the Angles and Saxon barbarians. Britain must fall.
You'd better christen a Mare Nostrum class dreadnaught asap, user.

Aw hell yea. Now to go show those sausage suckers in Australia what's what, eh? Faggots with their dingoes and kangaroos in the middle of Europe.

Our security arrangement with Germany expires, they make no attempt to renew it.

Continue? Y/N?

Regardless, gotta head to bed, my work week starts tomorrow.

Yes, let's adhere to their plans. We don't want their armies marching into our cores, do we?

So when they lose all their colonies, do we get the option to take home territories?
Also I'm getting rather shaken by how much our borders have overextended, we oughta tone it down with the warring to stabilize the country and wait for another Franco-Anglo misstep.

May I ask you a favor?
Can you shill Children Of A Dead Earth with a link in next OP?
childrenofadeadearth.com/
Yest, shit works not just as in trailer, it works much better now. No DRM included/

I'd like to continue, and Sleep tight.


No. We're only the head admiral of the navy.

Budget slash or no, adhere to the same general plan, albeit in steps so as not to break the bank. One step at a time. We've won handily, after all.

Looking at the map, I see a bit of a problem in that we share three sea zones with Britain, two of which are colonial. Pocket battleships are nice for deterring raiders, smashing cruisers, and maybe wolfpacking on some poorer-designed early to middle era battlecruisers, but even with Germany on our side, I imagine our colonial forces would've been hard pressed if Britain steams in some of their surplus dreadnoughts. This especially so now that Germany has happily drifted out from our alliance, leaving us alone for the time being.

Could we draw up an actual pocket BB? Good armor, good speed, 14-15 inch guns, some kind of compact standard battleship that can overcome or compete with most of Britain's own while still giving her best a run for their money with support. Something we can use to project force more readily, as a fair few of our battleships are regional-ranged and thus stuck in the future battle for the Med. This without breaking the bank as the future-proofed maximum battleship I requested in the now telescopedly scuttled expansion plan probably would, though obviously still having some staying power. Beside being necessary for the precarious balancing act against Britain in the future, they'll be very useful in the nearer future for aiding in smashing Austria in half to be finally rid of one of our regional competitors.


I'm happy to keep going if you are. We have unfinished business, after all, and with the way the political trends have been going ingame, I don't think jingoist expansionism & revanchism are going away any time soon, so it wouldn't be right to stop now. Italy has her empire, but she still has to keep it. And with the turmoil of the socialist movements plus our compromise speech with them, plus the timeframe, I have to imagine the Duce is soon to be putting his feet up in Rome, quite prepared to wrest the keys of the Mediterranean from Britain's hands.

The problem, if you look at Great Britain's capital line, is that their individual capitals are simply built well enough that a 'pocket' design is unlikely to beat one, even 1 on 1, and they have enough that you're likely to encounter them together. Here's an example of me trying to keep the cost of a BB down through the size. I'll be honest, with Great Britain I don't think we can guarantee a win through anything less than a monumentally successful massive (as in Xbox huge) suicide torpedo run.

Sorry for not updating earlier, but social unrest has vanished with this victory, as has international tensions.

Even a Nelson design can't use the weight efficiently enough to make a standard battleship viable? Not even a little bit? Or is it that no aft turret will make running from the quicker stuff awkward?

I suppose that settles things. Next thread, we need to beat up Austria- which will be a knockdown fight, since she's got a lot of leftover early dreadnoughts & newer ones as I recall and is no longer a pushover- and try to court Germany again, someone, anyone, who can give us some numbers to close the gap with Britain. Maybe even make a deal with the devil and take France under our wing. And then keep spamming screens while building one cutting edge capital at a time.

Take a peek at the British capital classes' armor if you don't mind, though. A fair few are a decade to a decade and a half old, slow, and not incredibly well armed, plus they have torpedo rooms. All of them. Even the most modern ones! I think a Nelson design, with enough tonnage to not get slagged by the best of their ships and to handily outrun, gun & armor the worse ones, perhaps 35,000 as a maximum- it's not a 'pocket' ship anymore save relative to the 40,000+ designs that I imagine are soon to come into vogue if they haven't already outside Britain's latest Rodney class- might tip the scales in our favor in combination with our current doctrine of attrition when at disadvantage, spectacular destruction when at advantage, and a heavier dreadnought of either 3-1 semi-Nelson or 2-2 conventional fore/aft arrangement to compete with their best and most modern ships. Certainly, if we can combine a favorable construction & doctrine with an ally to take some hits from us, winning a war against Britain is not out of the question.

Gun Penetration Values (British made)

So most of their line is reasonably proof against pretty much everything we have except the Chef Boyardee, at least beltwise. If we have to fight Great Britain, swarms of destroyers with night fighting training might be the way to go.

18" are a waste. How do their 14-16" guns compare to ours?

...

Fug

Mass submarine and TB with torpedo-heavy DDs?

They have 17 capital ships, subs aren't going to fix that. I don't think that even the world's most ridiculously one-sided night fight could put us on top in a long war, they can blockade us just by existing.

Plain wrong. This is 2 years after last franco-japanese war ended. Guess why they had second revolution in a row? And where did their BB advantage went?

What I'm deriving from this is that Britain has a very large number of reasonably threatening 14 inch guns on every capital ship they have, probably with good fire control retrofitted in, even the shittiest and most obsolete ones. And some very mean 16 inch guns that will paste us at anything other than some very particular impact angles & ranges, with us diagonally bow or aft-on and with at least 3 inches of deck armor. I'm also deriving that of these, all of them have sub-Battlecruiser maximum belts except the very modernmost, which are an inch thicker. All of them are very vulnerable to their own guns broadside-on, and likewise to ours. This is mitigated by the fact that we are similarly vulnerable at the moment, but still. It would be very interesting to hear what our 10 inch guns are performing at and whether the ships using them can bully or at worst trade tonnage with the older ships, if gunnery isn't so good that we won't come into reach fast enough with our cruisers.

Well, we already made an Italian Kitakami. Why not an Italian Yamato or H-42? Assuming they're available on a tech purchase basis and not merely when using British drydocks to license produce, buy the design while we have the chance, I say. Otherwise, might want to feel things out a little before we dedicate the resources to foreign production, even if tension is at an all time low. Either way, the next capital ships we project- and eventually produce- will incorporate the most obnoxiously powerful and longest-ranged of guns, with deck & turret roof armor specifically built to counter plunging fire from the best British guns in service at all ranges with 6 inches thickness (5 if we have to cheap out, as that will still keep us well protected at 20,000 meters, thought it also really depends on how far we're engaging now and in the conceivable future with meaningful hits actually being made) and as much belt & turret armor as we can afford to defend against them closer in, though the belt will be improved by religious angled or straight-on engagement; projections to be made are at 35K, 40K and 45K tons, for standard, compromise and mainline battleship each; we'll determine which design(s) to produce and when when they're actually projected. Turrets will be a conventionally arranged 3-4x triple or double (or mixed?) as displacement of each design allows, the sheer size of the guns means it isn't essential to cram as many as possible per turret to get more salvo weight, keeping the design armored and relatively balanced is more important. And hitting the enemy most accurately with our spaghettinukes to make the most of the shells available.

The concept in short is simple; we will finally incorporate the superior gunnery-and-disengagement concept at the fast battleship level in the next generation, tearing apart their semi-obsolete ships well outside their effective engagement range with overgunned and heavily protected battleships forming the core of a new battlegroup, while the most obsolete are snuffed by our currently modern ships, counter-raiders and torpedo screens. Meanwhile, when their best ships are crippled, we will close bow-on to the closest safe range and silence them with our fire, then sink them with closing action by torpedo screens. If it comes to a close-in engagement between our best ships, we pray that we get the better gunnery rolls since we will be mutually butterarmored, and fall back on the usual torpedo shock attacks. All this fancy concepting is obviously hampered by our miserably inconsistent, incoherent budget, but we have to at least conceive of what we need before we determine if we can get it and go from there.

Wait for a few more anons to phone in tommorrow on the big memeguns, if you ask me. But I think they're the way to go, in addition to the current course of torpedo tonnage trading. It's getting harder bit by bit to get the most out of those runs, and unlike France who we've been beating on continually, the final boss is unlikely to have a shortage of screens to dissuade this habit of ours. Hell, Austria probably won't. So we need to also consider the big battleship engagement angle, which will be forced on us with the current order of battle. We need to make the leap to quality over quantity and finally break the shackles of regionally-focused interim design. And get an ally to provide us quantity at the same time.

France had to cross five sea zones to get to you while leaving enough tonnage at home to keep their own country safe. Great Britain is right fucking next door to the Mediterranean and they control both exits.

The V centerline superfiring saves weight because it costs the same as an aft or a fore turret. Only ever use the X turret if you're autistic about aesthetics or want to build a historic design. The V superimposed is also useful for interwar CL designs because you can give the 2 aft positions with the V firing over them and not violate the 2 turret limit on a protected cruiser scheme.

Speaking of 2100 ton designs, what do you fags think of something like this? My reasoning for it is to be able to defeat DDs handily while being able to outrun all enemy CLs that could intercept it whilst it's raiding. I think I'll slap some Torpedoes on it later when I get that capability and it can serve as a large DD essentially.

I'm pretty sure any gun larger than 6" gets a penalty when firing at destroyers.

I read those guns as 7" somehow. I'm going to bed.

I like it in theory. I was advocating some kind of recon cruiser for much of the playthrough, but other things that I and others advocated took substantial priority earlier on, and onwards, and the technology simply didn't manifest before a fat destroyer/extra light CL wasn't really the order of the day anymore. But as notes, upping from DD to CL weight class is probably a dangerous affair, since you're now a credible target for main guns without being much more durable. Still, you could probably get some work out of the design in the earlier eras of the game, which is when I assume you're building it.

Wait a second, looking at the logs of the Marengo…

Did the french torpedo themselves?

While the miniturization isn't quite there to get what you asked for, I was able to get pretty close by reducing armor half an inch and dropping the secondaries a calibre. Alternatively, we could drop the director for a less complicated fire control and keep a better armament.


Huh.

It can happen. As an interesting side note during WW2 the standard US torpedo was so bad they occasionally circled around and sunk the submarines that launched them.

Actually if the UK has low belt armour we'd probably be better off skimping on deck/turret top armour and investing in belt ourselves. The closer two ships are the more often they hit belt rather than deck and we could just rape the British ships from ranges too close to have deck armour matter.

That happened to pretty much every side. I'm wondering if RtW2 is going to have sound homing torpedoes

You're underselling how bad the Mark 14 torpedo was.

Torpedoes until about 1930 worked on the principle of physically striking the ship and using the incompressable nature of water to violently inject a large volume of explosive-turned-nitrogen gas into the side of the ship, where it would displace things like steel and crewmen in unkind ways and leave a very large hole in the ship below the waterline. Torpedo damage is easy to identify because the edges of the hole are usually bent outwards rather than inwards by the force of the gas expanding inside the hull.

By 1930, magnetic fusing became a very hot and secret concept in both the US and Germany. The idea was that rather than use the gas as a destructive force, you would use a magnetic fuse to detonate the torpedo directly beneath the center of a ship, displacing the water supporting it and causing the ship to break its own back. Less immediately destructive, but it's nearly impossible to armor a ship against its own weight and a ship with a broken back is as useless as one at the bottom of the ocean.

The problem was, this idea was so incredibly top secret that neither nation tested their torpedoes properly. Germany never tested theirs in the Baltic Sea and once the war started they found to their dismay that the large amount of iron ore in the seabed made the magnetic sensors very unreliable. The US Navy's Bureau of Ordnance was steeply underfunded and never actually tested a live torpedo at all, instead using concrete filler instead of explosive so the torpedo would be reusable and firing it into nets rather than a target ship, and their testing was conducted in a lake in Ohio.

This led to a few problems going undetected until the war started:

In practice, the torpedo was abysmal. Every problem helped conceal another. The magnetic fuse detonated torpedoes too early, too late, or not at all. When they were disabled against direct orders; the admiralty had been convinced by the Bureau of Ordnance that all their submarine captains were simply incompetent. The disabling of the magnetic fuses was carried out while underway by dragging a torpedo into the crew quarters and destroying the magnetic pistol with a hammer, the heavier weight caused torpedoes to run too deep to strike the ship and the gaskets caused premature detonations to continue anyway. The depth sensor was investigated and fixed, which only caused them to run even deeper. Captains through experimentation found out that you had to set them to run at a depth of zero feet to properly strike a ship, at which point the firing pin would frequently snap. The lack of contact detonation was investigated and attributed to circle running caused by the faulty gyroscope, so a second gyroscope was added that would detonate the torpedo if it made a greater than 180 degree course change to protect the submarines. This turned into a problem of its own, because a torpedo that failed to launch would remain active in the tube and could self-destruct itself days later when the submarine turned for home, which is probably responsible for the loss of at least one US sub.

Through 1943 the Bureau of Ordnance remained steadfast in their accusation that the torpedoes worked fine and it was the captains at fault. Submarine captains had become increasingly suspicious and resentful of this accusation and began to carry out their own experiments while on patrol, with crude disablement of various parts of the torpedoes and rigorous testing conducted against the more helpless Japanese ships they encountered. These experiments were recorded, compiled, and passed to Pacific Command, who were convinced to disable the magnetic fuse in late June 1943. With the magnetic fuse no longer providing camouflage, investigations conducted by Pacific Submarine Command discovered the faulty gaskets from continued premature detonations and the weak firing pin from the continued failures to detonate, which was corrected first by ordering submarines to take glancing shots rather than ideal broadside ones to reduce the stress on the pin and later by replacement with a different type of firing pin altogether.

By the start of 1944, despite the best efforts of the Bureau of Ordnance, it was a functioning torpedo.

The problem is that armoring our belt to a thickness where we can credibly avoid any horizontal damage means exceptional vulnerability to plunging fire, meaning we have to close, meaning we have to get in the range of their screens' torpedoes; putting battleships into the tonnage trade equation is NOT in our favor, we need to build BBs that will stand the test of time as we simply can't afford to build too many, even if we contrive a standard battleship that's 'just enough' to outclass their older middleweights and hopefully be well-commanded or luck out against the heavyweights.

We need to find a middle road focusing on the deck to keep at a reasonable reach until we're advantaged enough to close in and finish them, with the belt & turrets increased as much as possible while adhering to this ethic so we can avoid catastrophic damage from enemy hits and hopefully bounce shells at an angle or bow-on. Going with the German Baltic layout will force us to close and eat torpedoes, which even with more modern protection is a bad idea. Going Iowa style with a strong deck and not incredible belt will get us picked apart if the enemy closes with us or strikes us at an unfavorable horizontal angle. Therefore, we need a strong enough deck for semi-extreme ranges and a strong but probably not foolproof when flat belt, in order to keep the speed necessary to avoid being caught by the enemy.

Thanks for the detail user, I'd heard the basics but not the specifics. Standard bureaucratic fuck up then why is US Military procurement always been such a fucking mess?

I'm not stating to completely skimp on deck armour or get into knife fighting range user but we can drop it to half the recommended thickness and get 50% closer than normal without entering torpedo range. Of course we'd be closer to their DDs but that just requires our Cls and DDs to be effective screens.
I just don't think we'll ever be able to out-range any relevant nation unless we start building ships abroad for bigger calibre guns.

Do you happen to know some about how the Long Lance and other nip torpedoes realistically perform? Are they truly perfect wonder work superweapons of the torpedo world? (other than the special equipment needed on ships to even use them deal)


Did you consider that increasing our effective armor thickness by angling, by sailing towards or away from them, also eliminates our relative velocity, likely making us easier to hit at shallow trajectories? I'm not sure how much this matters with the gun accuracy that varied technology decided on, but it could potentially result in some serious hits to the deck and superstructure if we aren't very careful about the ranging and timing.

The secret is that everyone's procurement is a mess 90% of the time, you just hear about the US's problems a lot because they're the funniest.

Admiral user has returned with a proposal for debate. I present to you the 'High Angle Attack Dreadnought". A combination of outdated ideas and modern necessity, the design of it takes into account two primary ideas
1) Sloped armor means the belt benefits from the deck armor
2) Rounds striking at an angle have reduced penetrating ability
Thus, it can be reasonably assumed that a British round striking the belt will have to not only piece 22.5 inches of armor, it's penetrative ability will be dampened if we attack at an angle. Our turret layout is designed to take advantage of this, allowing us to keep a significant angle while still keeping most of our guns on target. Obviously, this would be a massively expensive undertaking, using mostly unproven ideas, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

Seriously, tell me I'm fucking retarded for this, because I'm certain this is a terrible idea.

If it's stupid but works, it ain't stupid.
I'm too curious to see how it'll work out to tell you 'no'.

It aint a terrible idea if it works user.

Make one and drill the fuck out of it. Only one way to find out.

It all depends on what the current engagement range is as to what we should armor ourselves at and balance around. But if we go for the 18 inch guns, at-range engagement seems natural, hence my thinking.

That's rather what the concept was designed around, although it would preferably be by buying the tech outright rather than building it in their yard, if possible. Follow the reply chain back to OP; 'British gun manufacturers are advertising 18in guns.'


You do have a point. But flat-on engagement means straight hits to the belt that would be simply impossible to account for; even at the farthest non-maximum ranges (save the 15in at 25,000 where it narrowly loses out) any British gun can penetrate the 12 inch belt of our most modern battlecruisers, and any can smash straight through any of our ships' belts to date even at 15,000 meters, while the larger two guns go further to 20,000. The choice is possibly eating superstructure hits and pinging rounds off the deck & belt side for some damage, or getting a freak citadel in a long broadside engagement after a lot of misses. Rock and a hard place, user.


I mean… What is the math behind sloped deck versus all-or-nothing? If it's 6 inches effective in spite of the thickness, that does guarantee both vertical & horizontal defense against 14 inch guns at 12,000 to maybe 10,000 meters, 15 inch guns to 15,000 to maybe 13,000 meters, and 16 inch guns out to somewhere between 20,000 & 15,000. The displacement is also huge. Turtleback armor WAS used throughout the 30s for modern ships and does have its merits, even if it isn't as good for straight plunging fire down the centerline. The German H-classes had turtleback armor, various cruisers had them, some Japanese battleships.

Can those crossfire guns fire directly forward? If so, I'm all for it, even if it's ten thousand tons heavier than what I thought was our reasonable maximum using native production. Just amend the design to use the full 54,000 displacement available to get extra turret top armor, then turret face armor, then deck armor. And turret armor if it can be managed, because those will go horrifically boom. I'm very skeptical of the short/cramped arrangement, we need to cram range & accomodations so it can break out of the Med if Britain denies to fight it and instead starts ravishing our colonies. If we sacrifice a tiny bit of pure belt armor for these net improvement shiftings, it'll be worth it.

I wonder what America will think we're going to be doing with this thing. Probably just to police our home waters, I'm sure.

I don't think we can even afford that fucking thing. Design-wise, how would such heavy belt armor play out with decent (though not exceptional) turret armor? What I see happening is most of our turrets getting shot to shit by a line of less-armored but far more numerous and upgunned enemy line. Our ship may make it back to port, but I don't see it doing enough damage to sink any of the enemy's before it has to withdraw. Build it anyways, since we're past 1925 and I'm curious how it'll turn out.

Since it's looking more likely that we'll need an ally if we hope to take on Great Britain, I've gone ahead and drawn up plans for a more tempered Dreadnought. It'll still be the biggest we have, but more suited to combating regional neighbors and general purpose without totally breaking the bank, as well as having some higher quality guns I bought off the US. If we drop the main gun calibre down to 15", we can reduce displacement to 38000, and cost to 4.2M a month.

As much as I'd like to, the per-month cost is over double of our surplus, and the total build cost would take up over 1 year of our budget in total. So unless we get into a war with someone else and lose tonnage, she'll likely not see the sea. I'll put it only hold since we've still got 24 years to go.

They were genuinely world-beating torpedoes performance-wise, the Type 93 had four times the range of the Mark 14 and at higher speeds with a max range of 40km at 36kts, and it carried a warhead 25% heavier. The problem was they accomplished it by using a volatile pure oxygen propellant and the IJN paid the price for it more than once.

For example, the Battle off Samar where the heaviest surface fleet the IJN had assembled during the war (4 battleships, 6 heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, eleven destroyers) went to interdict US landings on the Phillippines and encountered a small group of 7 escort destroyers and 6 escort carriers and lost in what was probably the most unlikely naval battle in history. The heavy cruiser IJN Chōkai 15751 tons, 35.5kt, 5" belt, 1.5" deck, 10x8" main battery, 4x5" secondary battery, 66x25mm + 36x13mm AA was completely disabled by a single 5" shell fired by the single tailgun of the escort carrier CVE White Plains which struck and detonated an eight-tube deck mount full of Long Lances and the heavy cruiser IJN Suzuya 13670 tons, 35.5kt, 5.5" belt, 1.5" deck, 10x8" main battery, 4x5" secondary battery, 4x40mm AA was destroyed by a near miss from a 250lb bomb that caused the Long Lances in one of her torpedo tubes to explode.

They were also pretty sensitive to mishandling, it wasn't hard to accidentally make them travel erratically.

The reason Japan committed to such a double-edged weapon was because the Washington Naval Treaty guaranteed that they would have a tonnage deficit in a war against the US, and the Decisive Battle doctrine that they came up with to try to work around this specified that this deficit must be closed before the USN could fully cross the Pacific with a massed torpedo attack at the critical point as the chosen tool. The idea didn't work out because the US took a slow island-hopping approach that never committed too much in one place where it was in a position to be smashed, US industry was strong enough to make good on losses within a year or so even if the IJN's dream battle had happened, and IJN torpedo gunnery was just a little too poor to accomplish the number of hits that the IJN command had determined was necessary for the strategy to succeed source: navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-067.htm

I mean to plug "Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors" by James Hornfischer as an enjoyable book about the Battle off Samar, in case anyone wants to do some further reading.

Quality 1 16" guns are going to be useful forever, let's stick with them. Maybe we should shed some of the belt to add more to the deck, we're reaching the point in the game where a belt will always be penetrable.

What about a monitor type warship?

8x16" I think is plenty, we can save on the armament now because our fire control is getting to the point that'll make shots alot more accurate, which means we're going to need alot more armor. What is the quality of all our guns could we get a quick overview?


I've experimented with B types in the late-game, really slow with decent armament and heavy armor, the problem is their low speed makes them sitting ducks and easy VP for the enemy. Useful in real life, useless in this game. It's too bad naval invasions aren't more involved, would be really cool if we had to actually bombard beaches before an invasion, or if invasions were more involved.

If HOI wasn't pozzed we would have something like this in the game.

Tensions are low, no real harm is waving our dick around is there?


Just a little to vulnerable. I've actually got our Napoli on coastal patrol when we're at war, to reduce the chances she gets throw into combat against modern battleships.


Afraid I put her into production right before your post. Here's our guns, and we just got improved 4", but I didn't feel like remaking the image.

I'm not sure about what britain is likely to do, but IF they decide to bring their big shiny dreadnoughts into the Meds, could we exploit the relatively small, cramped size of the area (compared to open sea sectors like the Pacific or around Africa) to set up an obnoxious amount of MTB ambushes? If we can make the Meds a deathtrap of mines, MTBs and torpedo ships we might be able to level out the disadvantage we are at, and grant us several places that we can more safely retreat to if things don't go our way during battle.
Would AMCs full of mines be viable to make massive minefields? I'm not sure how cheap they are for tonnage but i assume it's cheaper than making more cruisers with as many mines as will fit.


i'm not sure that's possible at war, given Britain controls both Suez and Gibraltar

The weak must fear the strong. get your ship back.

While I'd have to mothball some ships to free up the capital, are we interested in another capital?

Very much so.

Our second I'll Grande Cazzo di Italia-class, Totò Sapore is in production. Is it time to bully Austria?

yeah take Rhodes and Albania in one war.

Much like in my Chinese comic books, France proves if you fuck someone long and hard enough, they'll love you.

I want to bully them even harder now but sure let's take it

It would keep them off our backs if GB ever comes knocking.

While I'm sure many old men have wept bitter tears at the news, we are now allied with France. While doing what we can to raise tensions with Austria, Russia gets butthurt again. While this won't put them over the edge (probably), are we ready to enter the final stage of Operation Piss of the Austrians?

Probably the case.

Do it.

Genuinely interested in whether or not this would work. Would be a fun thing to test in a game maybe.

IT'S TIME. Italian futurists and French futurists, unite! They can keep Algeria & get some fresh new colonies as long as they help us fuck Austria & Britain.


Eat shit, Austria, get out of Albania & the Dardanelles.

Activate it? I've taken the liberty of building a fuckton of MTB squadrons in Italy, although I'll admit I don't know if they appear on both coasts equally or just one side.

Put the boot to them.

ACTIVATE IT

Time to go hunting.

...

Rather concerningly, it appears our newest BC is unable to attend this raid. Shall I assume we're gonna play this one safe?

How new are their dreadnoughts?

When the Nation asks, the Navy Answers!

If we are close to the shore of Italy or anywhere else where we have MTBs, let's use this chance to see if we can lead them there and gauge their usefulness.

I sincerely hope we can smash some of their dreadnoughts in timely fashion. The semi-obsolete ones are bothersome enough, the modern ones make me chafe at the odds. Having twice their count of destroyers to spend does evens the odds more than the tonnage might make you think, though…


Play it safe. Gun them down at range if it most benefits us, cut them down in close if it most benefits us, cut and run if it most benefits us. The usual.


They had a mix similar to Britain on a smaller scale. Some decent but varyingly thin-skinned older ones, and some genuinely disquieting high-displacement ones with good gunnery & armor that we need to sink with fish.

Yeah we should play it safe then.

So, about that playing it safe…I sent our Cruisers and DDs along to coast to find merchants in the night, and ran across a pair of Coastal batteries. Forgetting that batteries got buffed in this patch, I moved to engage them. Biggus Dickus got moderatly fucked up, but was able to limp out of range. I've sent her back to Italy, she should be fine. That being said, Consegna Veloce wasn't as lucky.

Oh, and Lotsa Spaghetti finds someone out in the night. Let's hope it's something she can deal with.

The lonely ship ends up being a merchant, which is quickly dispatched. Pax Romana and Italia move past to paste the coastal battery, but I'm worried about remaining off the coast at night and decide to head back. On the post battle screen, we can see what we could have encountered has we searched a bit more.

Unfortunate. But better that we escape catastrophe in this case than hunt down one battlecruiser.

This one might work out a bit more in our favor, since it'll be off our coast. Go for it?

Go for it.

That's a more pleasing arrangement, go for it.

Warship availability continues to be a bitch, as Italia il Audace is the only capital of ours on station. Reading up on the MTB, they are apparently a night and fair weather force, so we'll have to see how true that is. Regretably, it's morning here now.

While we patrol north, some of our coastal defense DDs begin reporting Austrian ships just outside our harbor of Bari. We turn and begin steaming towards the threat, and soon Austrian warships appear. While we'll need to gather more information first, they appear to be out in stronger force than us.

8ch pls

We get IDs on the Austrian fleet. Their BC appears roughly equvilent to ours, although differently armored and faster. What worries me is the quantity of Sankt Georg Class CAs, which seem like our Mussolini's Lamborghini, but more modern. I ask the Admiralty, how should we approach this?

Their BC's deck is thicker than ours, if we're going to stick around we should do it at closer range.

Some of their ships seem quite happy to charge. Engage at angle steaming towards, then away if we start getting too close to fish range, cut up their approaching screens while exchanging fire with our capital opposites at a less dodgy plunging fire-y range. If an opening presents itself, we'll poise ourselves more offensively, but as it is we should seek to open them up rather than charge into the maw of their pseudo-capitals & torpedoes.

Seeming to take a page out of our battle tactics, the Austrian DDs rush forward, forcing us to turn away in anticipation of a wave of torpedoes. While none seem to hit, Bersagliere has taken several hits and has lost most of her speed.

With much of our fleet taking varying levels of damage, I've decided to gamble on a defensive storm of torpedoes. The Biggus Dickus-class CLs seem capable of firing off a spread of three each pass, so hopefully one or two will hit something valuable. Meanwhile, the usual DD rushes take place.

Likely by approaching from the Steiermarks bow, Baguette Eater and Mighty Faggot Mk.3 manage to avoid all incoming fire and launch a brace of fish.

The Mighty Faggot scores one hit with her fish, with Baguette Eater following up with her aft tube. The Austrians immediately let Faggot know their displeasure and she quickly sinks The next wave of DDs is ready to exploit this once the right opening arrives.

It's rare I actually see a fore or aft tube hit.

We've put two torpedoes in her and she's limping East. Should we force the issue or call it good and regroup for a retreat?

That went a lot better than I was expecting it to

Our BC's looking healthy, put them all on the bottom.

I would wait until we've dumped the rest of our multi-tube fish into their battle line and they seem in total disorder and the big uns dead, but I approve of hounding their remaining screens & cruisers to death with ranged BC & cruiser fire once the threat of things that can credibly kill us outside of enemy torpedo range- which we won't cross into- dissipate.

Another multi-angle wave goes out, and she's limping bad. That being said, there's still enough CAs that approaching it is difficult.

Well, as far as standard duties go, killing CLs & other more obsolete cruisers is what our CAs are for. And though the Austrian CAs are meaner than ours, killing CAs & obsolete Bs is what our battlecruisers are for. Smash the CAs from a distance with Italia il Audace and bleed the screens while Steiermark flounders, making sure to be careful about our angles, and everything should come together naturally.

After firing a nearly dozen torpedoes, one finally sinks itself into the Steiermark, although White Flag Hunter finally meets her end. At this point I'm fairly sure she's doomed, so it now a matter of how much more we want to risk in running down cruisers.

We've got one hour until dusk, play it safe but don't let them out for free.

Forgot to post this, it's the condition of our primary fighting ships in this battle. The original MLCA is unharmed.

Pull away & around and let Steiermark sink as we regroup. Once she's done for or we've maneuvered favorably to get safely around her before she sinks outright, and assuming the battle mechanics allow, attempt to chase down the rest of the semi-capitals. If we have any fish left, sling them into the hairball of enemy destroyers & cruisers, since any follow-on engagement will be at range destruction of cruisers and we won't get another chance to expend them.

Dusk is 2 hours and 45 minutes away.

Oh, even better.

The Steiermark is alive, but just barely. She's moving at about 2-5kts, but the rest of her fleet has abandoned her, splitting into two groups. Current plan is to move on the southerly group, since our harbor lies just beyond it and we have some small ships that need to dock due to flooding.

Oh, even better.

SHOW THEM OUR BIG DICKS!

Please be careful not to get spitefully citadeled while passing by. Mind the range.

Holy shit, what a server upgrade.

Anyways, as we move to split the Austrians, Italia makes sure that the Steiermark is dead, then our cruisers begin trading fire with theirs. Unfortunately, the 9in guns of the Austrians are actually pretty accurate, and after taking several to the superstructure I deem it's best to let them go.

As usual, anything people want to see, just ask.

Did it win?

That's some good shit.

How about the logs for the BC and Mussolini's Lamborghini

Good news, I found our MTBs. Bad news…on the West Coast. Oh, and France appears to have most of their fleet still in reserve, so that's a big help. How do we feel about this Cruiser battle?


Austrians show no lost subs, so presumably just forced it under.


Italia il Audace
pastebin.com/U3mUHDJd

Steiermark
pastebin.com/WBPyhrVL

Mussolini's Lamborghini
pastebin.com/TBFegYk9

La Famiglia
pastebin.com/zVrJhPMN

We can take it. Austrians may have some numbers but we've got much better gun's.

Yeah, we got this.

Time to murder some CAs

Uh oh.

At this point, we rather don't. Our capitals are par with each other, but as the last engagement shows, the Austrians flatly stole our frankly neglected pocket battleship concept- except with bullshit paper levels of armor, who knows why- and made it a lot nicer with triple turrets & hyperaccurate nine inch guns.


If we take it, take it slow and steady. They have better pocket battleships than we do, but we have althistory Italian guts. Suicidal amounts of guts. And torpedoes. And-


- battlecruisers. Oh. Well, this'll be something. Just watch out for the fish, I suppose?

After dispatching a CL, we turn and give chase to the Sankt Georg Class CA and it's partner. Landing some hits, we move to - oh look, friends.

Night falls though, so I move to find the last CL. And we do, at very close range, with torpedoes in the water. Time to pray.

God help us, this is the worst, most ironic name for this exact situation! Who could have predicted this would happen? Who, I ask?

We managed to dodge that torpedo and immediately paste that CL. The other CA was already caught by our BBs, Chef Boyardee took 28 6-9" hits, including 12 of them within two minutes.

pastebin.com/tVuqV7NL

Forgot the pastebin.

Was it because NPC ships did all the killing?

The Kaiser Karl VI put up a good fight. Hits to the rudder and bridge.

It does appear, however, that there's one of our BCs doing something out on the other side up north.


Honestly, I think that was a bug, I didn't even notice the objective, and don't prioritize it normally, since ship kills rack up the points much faster.

We sunk four ships user, not one. Actually that looks like a bug to me, unless it was looking for a dead merchant ship only but it doesn't look like any of those were deployed.

Did we just dunk almost another capital ship's worth of tonnage in cruisers in a single engagement with one battlecruiser? You weren't kidding when you said BCs cause pocket battleships to start getting pigeonholed out of the battleline into raider status in the late/post game.


Take it slow while we try to ascertain the location & nature of the enemy. The game might've decided to be a cunt and stick us against twice our weight with this thin of a lineup. Especially after getting so favorable an engagement just before. It feels karmically off.

Poking our nose into the sea after some contact reports, we come across a small group of cruisers just like the ones we killed earlier. Time for more points it looks like.


A pair of our BBs were in the area commanded by the AI, they took one of the CAs out. But for all practical purposes, except as part of a battle line pocket battleships get fucked by BCs.

Pax Romana's racking up the battle stars.

We give chase but the Austrians flee back to their shitty little country and night falls before we can catch them. I'd just like to take this time to point out that the battle map in this game is, or at least convincingly simulates, a globe. If we zoom out you can see how the season affects the angle the sun comes across the world, so while it's about night here, in the English Channel it's only just now begi-

Holy Jesus…

WHAT IS THAT?

WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?


Yes, although age is getting to her, she's pretty slow by modern standards. We'll have to see what a refit can do.

Exactly… who does that sub belong to, and why can we see it? Is that ours? Is it France's? Is it doing what I think it's doing? Because if so I don't like it.

In seriousness, are you memeing on us or is the game doing what I will euphemistically call post-1925 things? Shed light on this mystery.

Calling it a night there folks.


That's one of our mid-range subs, which apparently thinks that the English fucking Channel is a good place to hunt Austrian warships.

It's gotta be ours, right? Why is it patrolling the English Channel instead of like Gibraltar?


Night lad

In true Italian fashion, when the going gets rough, migrate to England to make quick bucks at inexpensive pubs.

Rule the Wa/v/es: Imperial Russian Navy edition when? I wanna see anons bickering about which fleet gets priority - Pacific, Baltic or Black sea.

Well folk, I was gonna give a general war situation update, but apparently Austria would rather keep it's navy instead of it's colonies. Shall I assume hard terms?


One of the weaknesses of RtW is it's strategic zone, which are a bit to broad for my taste. The Black Sea isn't simulated, so we'd just be arguing over the Pacific and Baltic fleets.


Sorry, but RtW caps designs at 52,000, since it's supposed to cut off at 1925.

Hard terms.

Hard terms. Also, what exactly do you mean by saying "strategic zone is too broad for my taste"? You mean "Russia is too big to be fun"?

I think he means the sea zones could be split down into more distinct entities. Instead of having one big zone for the Mediterranean, they could have one for the Suez Canal, one by the Strait of Gibraltar, another for the Black Sea/Bosphorus Strait, and then a general Mediterranean zone.

Oh, makes sense.

OP here mobileposting, in the hospital for my grandfather. Updae wont be till later.
t

More along the lines that I feel they could have split the regions up much more. Would also make ranges more important if long range ships could reinforce nearby zones.

Peace talks fall through and France proves they're a powerful ally. Now, do we want to try this thing again? If not, what battles would we most be interested in fighting out?

Jesus Christ France, get it together. The possibility of Austria getting a BB-slanted line to our BC-slanted line is worrisome, but they're starting to run out of heavier screens, which makes me think the same old tricks are going to do just fine.

So, on the downside we're again only in control of one of our older BCs. The upside is that Pax Romana is patrolling this area of the coast, so we'll have her help, albeit under AI control.

Hmm, 4,000m visual distance in the day and (supposesdly) enemy capitals off our shore. Sounds like a job for a bunch of Faggots.

Oh hello.

Spam fish, avoid fish, proceed with gunnery bullying of whatever is left. I probably didn't need to actively say as much, but I felt I may as well.

You know, I'd try to narrate what's happening, but just look at this. It's a mess. Short story shorter, we get two torpedoes in the CA for the cost of some of our DDs, then call it a day and disengage.

Love posting an update, going to make food, then coming back to find out it wants another captcha

Ah, a Fleet Battle, we can make this work for us. Go?

Give it a go.

Austria refuses to show for that fleet battle or the next, so we end up taking a cruiser battle, since that last one went so well. Even better, we get a torpedo cruiser and two semi-modern BCs.

We find a single Austrian CL, but to manages to break line of sight and heads North, presumably for Valona. We've got some subs lurking in the area, so we'll move that way and hopefully run into something worth killing.

Well, that could have gone better.

Hey, at least our never forgetting to apply the best contemporary torpedo defense is paying off, right? Machinery's fixed and she isn't flooding too bad.

We take a convoy escort in which absolutely nothing happens. We've got a lot of cash burning a hole in our pocket, do we want to invest in another capital ship? If so, should we go for a pair of good but no extreme designs, or a single 'superbattleship'?

Two newer dreadnoughts would be nice if we can get a reasonably good design out of that much cash.

While we might have to pause one of them for a few months, these seem doable while being displacing 2,000 less tons. If we drop some of the secondary armament, we can get it down quite a bit farther.

Should have typed: "2,000 less tons than the I'll Grande Cazzo Di Italia".

First design looks preferable. Is there any way to get a 5" deck, dropping the caliber of our secondaries maybe?

An inch of deck armor weights about 1,000, so I had to also increase the tonnage a bit.

Looks good to me.

Secondary flash chance scales heavily based on gun caliber, right? Would it be worth dropping down to 4" and cutting some armor to get back up to 18-24 secondary guns?

Secondary turret armor*

IIRC, only guns above 6" can trigger ship-killing flash fires. Most of the weight comes from the armor. And I try to keep it above 4" for anti-CL duties.

Good point. How much armor would we have to drop from secondaries to get 18 5"?

Half-inch should do the trick.

Alternatively, by dropping the aft gun to a double turret, we can equip 16" guns for the same displacement.

15 inches is probably more than enough, but 16 inches will give us substantially more killing power at a far range and more wiggle room when having to smash through angled armor. Go for it. My only regret is that the two double turrets will make converting to extra-large guns in a refit unviable, since anything below doubles at this point is less than wise.

Well, I guess that works. The Mediterranean is now almost entirely Italian.

Now what?

Pick on Britain and make the entire Mediterranean except Algeria Italian.

Continue construction, in preparation for the war with Britain. Observe Franco-British construction, and take a peek at the Germans, too. Maybe finally start pocket battleship construction to replace our aging CAs, while continuing incremental improvements of our modern screen classes in new production & refits.


I'd advise against picking on them straight away, but considering our alliance with France won't last forever, perhaps it's best to dive right in whle we can still make use of it.

Will this fit what you're looking for in a pocket battleship?

And here's some of the nation fleet info you were looking fore.

The deck & turret top maybe needs to be more rough & tumble to prevent its getting punched through by equivalent/larger guns if it has to run fast and far and the enemy goes for plunging rather than horizontal fire. It's obviously not going to survive against main battleline elements if focused, but a tiny bit more tonnage to let her eat a freak mid-range plunging hit by a 14-15 inch gun on escape and take superstructure damage or bounce rather than get immediately citadel'd seems wise. 3-4 inches, as your discretion dictates. I personally lean towards 3. We don't have a lot of production to spare, so what we do make needs to be qualitatively better if we aren't being forced to make an interim design to fill things out in the short term, as I've long held.

France is clearly less helpful than we'd like at this point, with how much damage we did to her. But valuable to close the gap with Britain. Courting Germany again would definitely put us on top, but we can't do more than keep tensions down & cross our fingers on that one.

Hmm, this is what I managed to put together, but I'm not sure about the cost. I'd call any further anons to provide their thoughts on the matter.

I'm less concerned about the cost, and more that the time to construct appears to be almost two and a half years. It's only three more months over the original, but it's still less than pleasant how much waiting we'll be stuck on.

I would say there's no point having the secondary battery so well protected, either go for 1 inch double mounts or no armor single mounts then increase the ammo with what's left over.

Have we developed oil firing yet? By the time oil firing comes around the engine priority being set to speed is not nearly as bad as it is in legacy builds since endurance increases so much.

So, apologizes, but I managed to forget that CAs and BBs must be built with the most advanced torpedo defense. After taking that weight, I had to drop the speed by one and prioritize engine speed to keep 29.

We're deep in the machinery tree with oil firing, so I don't imagine it'll result in breakdowns. The only thing I worry about is fragility under fire, but with a just below minimum-battlecruiser belt, she should be alright against everything in her class and below. It's an acceptable trade.

One is in production, and of course we get tech breakthroughs right after. Despite the budget slash, we're still in the black. Now, how big is our dick?

The spiciest meataball

We're still allied with France, should we try and push Britain over the edge?

Dammit, forgot the image.

If the chances are good for us to get Britain over the edge before our alliance expires, keep going for it, restraining only if we've got some construction soon to finish that we'd prefer done rather than undone. How is our construction schedule?

With the first Minghia just having finished.

Please for the love of God don't hold a Disarmament conference.

Uh oh.

Since thread seems pretty dead/past bump limit, I'll call it there for tonight.

That's bad. On the other hand, Germany looks very amenable if the behind-the-scenes diplo event rolls would be more timely.

Wait, did we loose Lotsa Spagheti?

The new thread will start of interestingly, that's for sure. Things are all falling into place.


I'll post a full casualty list in the new thread. And yes, we did.

Hopefully you can get an extra ally. Don't know if it's just through scripted events, though try to get in an alliance with another country other than France, then, when the time is right and we have enough faggots to blot out the sun, go into a world war against Britain. America would be a very good one since their interests are directly conflicting with Britain's in the Pacific, but I wouldn't mind if the Germans or Russians put pressure on their home fronts.
Our next possible gain should be Malta, without a doubt. It would cut off British supplies between Western Europe and the Middle East and would make future war efforts against Britain much easier. This does however pose the problem of us being too centralized and having a border too expanded to cover effectively.

I'm not sure if the game is nearly that simulative that Malta would be of import. If we get a hard term peace treaty, we need to snatch the Sinai so that we aren't cut off from our eastern colonies. Or, if Gibraltar acts as a similar cut-off province, maybe that should be first if our western colonies are more valuable than the eastern ones. Rather depends.

As implied above, we already have that, because we have major colonies at both ends of Africa, one of which we will be definitely cut off from in the event of war with Britain unless the army really pulls its weight and seizes the Sinai early, and the other which we'll maybe cut off from in similar fashion except with no easy Army pull-through, since Gibraltar would be an amphibious operation.