Cruisers are to strong in port range?

[Plaid]

Does it really make sence, that cruisers near friendly ports tend to score rolls like 6:2 against battleships, while in open sea opposite happens? Battleship unit supposed to have much superiour capital ships, and I don't think that smaller ships guarding ports and coastal batteries are so effective against dreadnaughts. Probably even results are ok for combat "cruiser near port vs battleship", but not this huge cruiser superiority. Anyone else share my point of view? Arguments for opposite are also welcome.

[stockwellpete]

We were talking about this in our game a bit, weren't we?

The first thing I would say is what do you mean by a "cruiser"? If you just mean a "light cruiser" then I agree with what you have written. Whether they were up against a dreadnought, or a pre-dreadnought battleship, then they would be outgunned and unlikely to get the better of their opponent. Of course, if it was a number of light cruisers and a lot of torpedo boats and the battleships were unescorted then torpedo hits would cause a lot of damage.

But if you were talking about recently built armoured "battle cruisers" (built just before 1914 or during the war itself) coming up against pre-dreadnoughts (in the Adriatic perhaps) then I think the current casualty rates are not too far off really.

Because of the level of abstraction it is difficult to know what the right answer is because the biggest capital ships were still very vulnerable to torpedoes.

I assume that these naval combat results near the ports assume that the defenders are able to mobilise more ships, coastal batteries etc.

[Plaid]

Yes, we had discussed this.

Trick is that it is same cruiser unit, which is easy prey for battleship unit in open sea. But in port range (which is quite extensive, for example Austrian navy considered "in port range" while bombarding Venice) they completely swap roles and now cruiser is much superiour to battleship.

[stockwellpete]

Yes, we had discussed this.

Trick is that it is same cruiser unit, which is easy prey for battleship unit in open sea. But in port range (which is quite extensive, for example Austrian navy considered "in port range" while bombarding Venice) they completely swap roles and now cruiser is much superiour to battleship.

I am at work on a break right now - just added another sentence to my reply above that might explain it a bit. Not certain though.

[xriz]

Really the issue is in the game, close to port, ie the green dot hexes, the players unit is considered to be backed up by additional coastal navel defenses, fast torpedo boats, auxiliary warships and even submarines. The type of boats or ships that don't have the range of real navel warships but can still be dangerous if used correctly and in numbers.

And don't forget, the unit counters, at least for Navel units, do not represent a single ship or even a squadron of a single type of ship but are "fleets" or "task forces" made up of a half a dozen or more squadrons of ships performing different roles for that fleet.

The Battleship unit is the Navy's main battle fleet made up 2,3,4 or so squadrons of Battleships as the basis of fire power, with a couple of squadrons and flotillas of Cruisers, Lt. Cruisers and destroyers for screening and recon.

The Cruiser unit is pretty much the same but the main fire power is coming for a core set of Cruiser squadrons, not Battleship squadrons.

This is from a US navy published book from 1986, Fleet tactics, theory and practice. It shows the ideal formation of ships that the navy's of the time thought of, they would not usually just send out a hand full of battleships into the north sea to look for the enemy, they'd send out a formation like this.

fleet.jpg (113.69 KiB) Viewed 3230 times

[stockwellpete]

Really the issue is in the game, close to port, ie the green dot hexes, the players unit is considered to be backed up by additional coastal navel defenses, fast torpedo boats, auxiliary warships and even submarines. The type of boats or ships that don't have the range of real navel warships but can still be dangerous if used correctly and in numbers.

Yes, I was reading that some of the older classes of pre-dreadnought battleships were used as coastal defence ships throughout the war.

And don't forget, the unit counters, at least for Navel units, do not represent a single ship or even a squadron of a single type of ship but are "fleets" or "task forces" made up of a half a dozen or more squadrons of ships performing different roles for that fleet.

The Battleship unit is the Navy's main battle fleet made up 2,3,4 or so squadrons of Battleships as the basis of fire power, with a couple of squadrons and flotillas of Cruisers, Lt. Cruisers and destroyers for screening and recon.

The Cruiser unit is pretty much the same but the main fire power is coming for a core set of Cruiser squadrons, not Battleship squadrons.

OK, that's interesting. I hadn't quite thought of it like that before but it makes sense. I am actually coming round to thinking that the naval aspect of this game is a lot better than some of us originally thought. I think you can find an active role for nearly all the fleets - the Russians probably need to build a cruiser unit in the Baltic before they start harassing the Germans. I read a book on Jutland recently and what came out of it very strongly was the way in which both the Briish and the German fleets used some of their ships as "bait" to try and draw the main body of battleships into a trap. And you can do this in the game too so it is quite realistic, I feel.

This is from a US navy published book from 1986, Fleet tactics, theory and practice. It shows the ideal formation of ships that the navy's of the time thought of, they would not usually just send out a hand full of battleships into the north sea to look for the enemy, they'd send out a formation like this.

fleet.jpg

Yes, well this looks very like the British formation at Jutland to me with Beatty's battle cruiser group out in front to try and draw the German dreadnoughts towards them. The thing about dreadnoughts was that they had very big guns because their main job was to knock-out enemy battleships but, unlike the pre-dreadnoughts, they did not have so many smaller guns and so were vulnerable to torpedo boats - hence the screen of destroyers you can see in the diagram.

[Aryaman]

Really the issue is in the game, close to port, ie the green dot hexes, the players unit is considered to be backed up by additional coastal navel defenses, fast torpedo boats, auxiliary warships and even submarines. The type of boats or ships that don't have the range of real navel warships but can still be dangerous if used correctly and in numbers.

And don´t forget mines. In WW1 30 Battleships were lost but not a single one was sunk by gunfire, 13 by torpedoes and 9 by mines.

[soldier]

I think the flipside of attacking in home waters is a little too high. An enemy battleship is still a problem wherever its encountered but in the green zone it suddenly turns into a destroyer. i'd prefer to see the green zone as a home team advantage not some invisible fleet that turns the situation on its head.

[stockwellpete]

I wonder if the "green dot zones" are slightly too big? For example, the Austrian navy has green dots for the entire northern Adriatic, even hexes on the Italian coastline are green dot hexes. I am not sure if that is warranted or not. What if the green dot hexes were just restricted to coastal waters and anything 2 hexes away from land would be considered "open sea" and a white dot hex?

This is a very interesting little article about German coatal defences which suggests the game has got the combat values within the green hexes just about right, I would say . . .

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... efense.htm

[Umeu]

i suppose its fine, although the adriactic might need some reworking, what you say about the green dots on the italian coast makes sense. but also the germans subs should be able to venture way further into the atlantic, right now they cant get much further than ireland and spain :S

[Myrddraal]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Germa ... _Vol_V.png

[Umeu]

well that would be fine, currently however you cant get much further than the 4th horizontal line from the left before going into the red. dots. +this map doesnt show the german subs who operated near the usa.

[Myrddraal]

If you capture Antwerp, the red dot zone is pushed back to beyond Ireland and up the north coast of Spain, which roughly corresponds to the second map (1917). Remember you can go into the red zone for short trips, as you don't immediately lose efficiency. This is historical as well, as the Belgian ports provided the Germans with important bases, much closer to the Atlantic than the north German ports.

[stockwellpete]

Just a question on submarines . . . when it says the range of a submarine is so and so nautical miles/kilometres, what does that actually mean? The German U19 class subs they had at the start of WW1 had a range of 9,700km while the U139 class of long distance subs they had available in the second half of 1918 had a range of 23,000km (is that figure correct?!). Does it mean they could stay at sea and travel that far (mainly on the surface) before they had to come back to port, or does it mean something else?

EDIT: the distance between New York and Berlin as the crow flies is 6,385km so the 1914 class of submarines could get right across to New York but they wouldn't be able to get back again without re-fuelling. More realistically they probably went a maximum of a third of the way across (about 2000km) in order to give them plenty of scope to hunt down enemy shipping before they had to turn for home. The later long distance subs seem to have been able to get right across the Atlantic and back again if they wanted to. Not sure if they did that though.

The Deutschland merchant submarine had a range of 20,000+ km that enabled it to cross the Atlantic and come back again without re-fuelling.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_sub ... eutschland