Scrap the German Fleet!!!!

[stockwellpete]

I think naval warfare should resemble aerial warfare more, cruisers should have a support function just like fighterplanes, but with less range i think. Within 1-2 hexes if a ship gets attacked cruisers will come to support, subs and battleships will come within 1 hex. This will actually get you naval warfare with multiple ships involved, it will make then make sense to group ships together to attack or defend convoys. It will introduce tactics (such as attacking the flank to make sure other ships cant help.) If ships become cheaper and easier to replace, they can also be made deadlier (axis lost like 200 subs during the war and sunk about 2k allied vessels). I think subs should be a bit deadlier against cruisers early on, and cruisers should get more capable of dealing with subs the longer the game goes and the better tech they get. Upgrades for ships are also outrageously expensive (20 for just 2 defense??? for infantry you pay 2 for 2 defense).

Some very, very good ideas here, Umeu. I would be interested to hear what the developers think about them.

EDIT: historical point - I have just read that the Entente started using a convoy defence system from 1917 onwards so any tweaking of naval behaviour would have to differentiate between 1914-16 and 1917-18.

[Smirfy]

Have to say though the maritime aspect of the game is complete garbage (Apart from the coastal defence zones which was a great idea) I would be worried that tinkering might upset the rest of the game which plays extremely well, cheapening unit costs might just turn it into land warfare on blue hexs given the combat mechanics. Sure give a hefty national moral hit for disbanding that makes sense. At the end of the day there was a distant blockade, one major battle that preserved the status quo and a U Boat campaign that was rendered useless by the convoy system. So although garbage the CtGW naval model simulates the inactivity quite well though with not quite all the dynamics In other words although bad it dont get in the way of the rest of the game

[Umeu]

it does, on multiplayer anyway. making the fleets cheaper is not my preferred choice of action, because as you said naval war during ww1 wasnt that succesfull or expanded, but its also a game and players should have the option to fight the war on the seas.

the uboat campaign was effective during 1914-16, in game the frustrating part is not that its not effective but rather that there is no effective answer, there is no real way to convoy except by swarming the merchant convoy with cruisers which is not only tedious but also not cost effective.

if there will be a penalty for scrapping the fleet, then first something must change to make scrapping the fleet worthwhile. otherwise id still take 10% morale loss over certainly losing the war.

[gunnergoz1]

I concur that the naval war representation in the game is pretty weak and unimaginative. If it cannot be represented more accurately in the tactical/operational sense, better to just abstract it with zones and have production/manpower points being bled off to represent the load on the war effort. Strategic decisions in the naval theater could be represented as a cascading series of choices to be made, AI counters to them and the consequences being presented as a win/loss or draw fashion.
But given that the game is now designed and we have to deal with it as it is, I just hope for patches and add-ons that make the naval war more realistic and challenging. There definitely has to be a penalty for scrapping historical fleets if this game is supposed to be a historical simulation. If it is a sandbox game in an imaginary universe, it would be different, but I don't think that is what the designer had in mind for it.

[IainMcNeil]

I don't think we should have fleets and armies use different resource pools. It takes away all the decisions from the player about where to concentrate.

I think navies should be cheaper to maintain so that there is no incentive it disband. Maybe 0 for smaller ships and 1 for battle fleets. Maybe we also reduce the resources you get for scrapping fleets.

These simple changes will take the scrapping incentives away. It must be more cost effective to defend your Baltic convoy than it is to scrap the fleet. As soon as you solve that issue it all just falls in to place.

[stockwellpete]

I think navies should be cheaper to maintain so that there is no incentive it disband. Maybe 0 for smaller ships and 1 for battle fleets. Maybe we also reduce the resources you get for scrapping fleets.

These simple changes will take the scrapping incentives away. It must be more cost effective to defend your Baltic convoy than it is to scrap the fleet. As soon as you solve that issue it all just falls in to place.

I think there should also be a hit on national morale if you scrap your battleship unit (not cruisers or subs) - say a minus 5% hit.

[ichirou989]

I too think the naval war could use some help in this game since the way it is working now, there is little chance of the CP player to be able to compete as they did historically with their U-Boat campaign. But the idea of being able to scrap battlefleets is, IMHO, completely wrong. Anyone who has studied the period knows that it would be completely unthinkable for one of the major powers in the game to scrap their battlefleets, no matter what the potential gains might be. They were simply too much of a symbol to their respective governments and peoples, not to mention vital in the case of the British and the French to their global empires and the safety of their trade routes. So if anything, I think it would be a more historical move to simply remove the option of disbanding them entirely. Harsh I know to the gamer side of things, but it is a game trying to simulate a certain period of history and it should at least try to abide by the way things worked and were viewed at that time.

That said, something should probably be done with the naval strategic warfare side of things to try to at least match historical capabilities. Abstracting it would probably be the best way, with offboard naval boxes where both sides could allocate points to protect or interfere with the convoys, which would also be only moved about in the boxes. The downside is first a minus to those gamers who like to play around with the navies directly, and second would also require a lot of work on the part of the developers to create a whole new system, test it, and then implement it into the game. It's almost the work of either an expansion or a Commander - The Great War II project. I do like the suggestion made to increase the reaction zone for the cruisers against sub attacks. Something like that would be helpful, probably even necessary if the costs of subs are decreased. I'll have to see about modding some new sub costs into my game and see what effect it has. My initial feeling though is that it will be unbalanced since, as has also been mentioned, the subs don't seem to take as much damage as they probably should from cruisers. It's troublesome that I really want to tweak things to enhance the naval side of things, but I also don't want to end up spoiling the rest of the game.

Meaning that while I may feel that there is room for improvement in the naval part of the game, I think the rest of the game is a great deal of fun to play and well worth the investment.

[stockwellpete]

But the idea of being able to scrap battlefleets is, IMHO, completely wrong. Anyone who has studied the period knows that it would be completely unthinkable for one of the major powers in the game to scrap their battlefleets, no matter what the potential gains might be. They were simply too much of a symbol to their respective governments and peoples, not to mention vital in the case of the British and the French to their global empires and the safety of their trade routes. So if anything, I think it would be a more historical move to simply remove the option of disbanding them entirely. Harsh I know to the gamer side of things, but it is a game trying to simulate a certain period of history and it should at least try to abide by the way things worked and were viewed at that time.

I agree with this completely. It would be best to remove the ability to scrap fleets. If it is to remain in the game however, then it should really be very damaging to the player who decides to take that option.

[Smirfy]

You have a heavily abstracted wargame in which all the fleets are basically the same size which is odd to say the least but accepted. Having the sole dynamic for naval of protecting or attacking convoys (which did not exist in 1914) is pretty much a nonsense. Making units cheap when the AH ai is capable of taking Venice with battleship support will unleash a hundred player exploits when there are two right now. Making cheap units will not make sense of the Russian Cruiser squadron nor of the research panel. For me the only thing given the mechanics in place and the scale of the game is how naval influences national morale. Make it proportional to relative navel strength to simulate the various blockades UK and France v Germany and AH and Germany v Russia and no one will scrap a ship.

[Umeu]

I don't think we should have fleets and armies use different resource pools. It takes away all the decisions from the player about where to concentrate.

I think navies should be cheaper to maintain so that there is no incentive it disband. Maybe 0 for smaller ships and 1 for battle fleets. Maybe we also reduce the resources you get for scrapping fleets.

These simple changes will take the scrapping incentives away. It must be more cost effective to defend your Baltic convoy than it is to scrap the fleet. As soon as you solve that issue it all just falls in to place.

it is not so much the upkeep but more the production cost. + battleships suck vs subs, after the russian battleship has been sunk (since with new changes it wont be just scrapped anymore) there still is no reason for the germans to keep the battleship. but what has been proposed, no upkeep when in port might be a nice workaround for that.

however, most importanty is that the martial aspect gets reworked. even with the current economic mechanics 3 upkeep and 30 production for a cruiser would be worth it if you could actually defend the convoy from a sub, but you simply cannot. and that is the most frustrating part of all. and is the biggest reason why i often op to just ignore the sub because it costs me less if the sub destroys the entire convoy than if it destroys 2 pp while i pay 6 upkeep a turn for worthless protection.

[IainMcNeil]

I'd suggest making the starting fleets larger and maintenance costs much lower. Fleets didn't really get built in the space of a couple of years - you couldn't raise them like an army so making them expensive to build is fine for me as long as there are enough to play with.

[Smirfy]

I'll say again making more fleets risks creating choke points at various points on the map and making some cities undefendable

[majpalmer]

I am playing my fourth game as the Entente against the AI and a pattern is obvious.

If you position a CA to supply Antwerp when/if it gets cut off, the AI will sortie the German BB to counter. If you have the British BB, second CA, and submarine nearby, the German High Seas Fleet is toast. It's like clockwork.

I think the German naval AI needs to be "tweaked."

[stockwellpete]

I'd suggest making the starting fleets larger and maintenance costs much lower. Fleets didn't really get built in the space of a couple of years - you couldn't raise them like an army so making them expensive to build is fine for me as long as there are enough to play with.

I have been reading a bit about navies of the WW1 period today and I am a bit puzzled. According to the website Naval-History.NET France had the following ships in 1914 (the + number at the end indicates ships of that type built during the war) . . .

Battleships 25 (including 4 dreadnoughts) +3
Cruisers 36 (including 22 "armoured" cruisers) +0
Destroyers 83 +30
Submarines 55 +19
Others 3 +4 (seaplane carriers)

Yet, in the game, we do not have destroyers at all. If I have understood things correctly the armoured cruisers (or battle-cruisers as they are sometimes called) are capital ships that are very similar to battleships really (not quite as big but a bit faster). Some of the cruisers in the French fleet are described as light cruisers. If that is right then maybe the larger fleets that you are suggesting could include destroyers and these would be the ships that go after the submarines as well as supporting the main battle fleets. Cruisers could just be smaller "battleships" in the game and then players would have to think a bit more carefully about the composition of their navies as there would be an extra category of ships. This might also allow smaller naval powers such as Turkey to have some ships in the game (in 1914 Turkey had 2 battleships +1, 2 cruisers +1, 8 destroyers +0 and 0 submarines +1.

What do people think?

[Umeu]

I'd suggest making the starting fleets larger and maintenance costs much lower. Fleets didn't really get built in the space of a couple of years - you couldn't raise them like an army so making them expensive to build is fine for me as long as there are enough to play with.

that would be another option, to make them expensive to replace, and hard to lose, however not too hard because unkillable subs will ruin any game.

[Umeu]

I'd suggest making the starting fleets larger and maintenance costs much lower. Fleets didn't really get built in the space of a couple of years - you couldn't raise them like an army so making them expensive to build is fine for me as long as there are enough to play with.

I have been reading a bit about navies of the WW1 period today and I am a bit puzzled. According to the website Naval-History.NET France had the following ships in 1914 (the + number at the end indicates ships of that type built during the war) . . .

Battleships 25 (including 4 dreadnoughts) +3
Cruisers 36 (including 22 "armoured" cruisers) +0
Destroyers 83 +30
Submarines 55 +19
Others 3 +4 (seaplane carriers)

Yet, in the game, we do not have destroyers at all. If I have understood things correctly the armoured cruisers (or battle-cruisers as they are sometimes called) are capital ships that are very similar to battleships really (not quite as big but a bit faster). Some of the cruisers in the French fleet are described as light cruisers. If that is right then maybe the larger fleets that you are suggesting could include destroyers and these would be the ships that go after the submarines as well as supporting the main battle fleets. Cruisers could just be smaller "battleships" in the game and then players would have to think a bit more carefully about the composition of their navies as there would be an extra category of ships. This might also allow smaller naval powers such as Turkey to have some ships in the game (in 1914 Turkey had 2 battleships +1, 2 cruisers +1, 8 destroyers +0 and 0 submarines +1.

What do people think?

this sounds good, it still needs to be paired with a better combat system for navies tho

i would also prefer some sort of a choice or representation to resemble unlimited or limited submarine warfare. right now its automatically capped by a certain number of killed merchant convoys and only for the germans. There are two problems with that:

1) the number of killed convoy (or convoy points) is way too low, any effective submarine campaign by the germans will trigger the usa to join as early as 1915.

2) it makes the british submarine campaign in the baltic even more effective by comparison (and it already is way more effective by comparison)

either the cap for the amount of damage germans can do to the convoys has to go up by alot (and i would like it that french convoys are not included in the count) or the amount stays the same but the time it takes for usa to join after germany has reached the cap (i think its 15 points worth of dmg) should go up drastically. Right now its 4-6 turns I'm thinking more about 20 to 40, going down towards 20 with each further convoy germany sinks.

[stockwellpete]

this sounds good, it still needs to be paired with a better combat system for navies tho

I also think that it would be good to use the term "dreadnought" instead of battleship too. They are sort of iconic ships for that period. So maybe if there is an extra category of ships they might be - dreadnoughts; (battle) cruisers; destroyers and submarines.

i would also prefer some sort of a choice or representation to resemble unlimited or limited submarine warfare. right now its automatically capped by a certain number of killed merchant convoys and only for the germans. There are two problems with that:

1) the number of killed convoy (or convoy points) is way too low, any effective submarine campaign by the germans will trigger the usa to join as early as 1915.

2) it makes the british submarine campaign in the baltic even more effective by comparison (and it already is way more effective by comparison)

either the cap for the amount of damage germans can do to the convoys has to go up by alot (and i would like it that french convoys are not included in the count) or the amount stays the same but the time it takes for usa to join after germany has reached the cap (i think its 15 points worth of dmg) should go up drastically. Right now its 4-6 turns I'm thinking more about 20 to 40, going down towards 20 with each further convoy germany sinks.

Yes, I agree with this point.

[xriz]

Something with in the exiting game mechanics that may help with convoys would be to create one new commander for all the countries, or two maybe for England, a “Escort-Convoy” commander for the navy that impart bonuses only on to Transports and Merchant convoys; both a navel defensive bonus and a attack bonus against subs and maybe surface ships too.

That way the “Escort-Convoy” commander on a cruiser or battleship could be with in 1 or 2 hexes and impart the bonus onto one or more Convoy or Transports and if a convoy or transport is attacked it can also do damage back making sub attacks or all raiding riskier if there is a escort guarding the Convoy or Transport.

Reducing the upkeep costs of navel units is pretty easy to mod, just changing one of the stats to make them all 1pp for upkeep, or even 0.

[bebro]

Yet, in the game, we do not have destroyers at all. If I have understood things correctly the armoured cruisers (or battle-cruisers as they are sometimes called) are capital ships that are very similar to battleships really (not quite as big but a bit faster). Some of the cruisers in the French fleet are described as light cruisers. If that is right then maybe the larger fleets that you are suggesting could include destroyers and these would be the ships that go after the submarines as well as supporting the main battle fleets. Cruisers could just be smaller "battleships" in the game and then players would have to think a bit more carefully about the composition of their navies as there would be an extra category of ships. This might also allow smaller naval powers such as Turkey to have some ships in the game (in 1914 Turkey had 2 battleships +1, 2 cruisers +1, 8 destroyers +0 and 0 submarines +1.

What do people think?

To make matters worse some countries also had battlecruisers...but yeah, wondered about missing destroyers too, IIRC they did the bulk of ASW in WWI too

I'd like to see the naval system get an overhaul to deal a) with the upkeep/resource problem and b) to represent the historic fleet compositions a bit better and give naval warfare overall more importance. Something like scuttling all ships to gain more resources should not be a viable way, and having no fleet at all should be a problem for any bigger power.

I know it's a game, so always some kind of abstraction, but IMO the naval field was so important in that period that it should be more than just an "aside" to the warfare on land.

[Smirfy]

The game is heavily abstracted you can't expect it to model all the technical details that make up a navy.