Slitherine

There has been lots of discussion about the disappointing representation of naval warfare in CTGW. Posts abound about disbandment, upkeep costs, and the inability of the AI to handle, most especially, anti-submarine warfare.

But here is another stark problem. Britain, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, and Russia all have one battleship unit at the start of the game. The quality levels of these units vary, but not by much. The reality was that Italy, France, Austria, and Russia had about 3 or 4 dreadnoughts each. But Germany had about 20, and Britain over 30.

If you wanted to really represent Dreadnought power in the game, if France, Austria, Russia, and Italy each start with 1 BB unit, Germany should have at least 6, and Britain 10!

It would be easy enough to mod the game to reflect those force levels. But imagine the upkeep costs for Great Britain: 40 PPs per turn, just for the BBs!

The more I think about it, the more I think the naval aspects of the game should have been abstracted. I have a fear that no system with actual units will work satisfactorily with a game of this scale.

If Britain had over 30 and FAIR 3 or 4 then maybe if Britain had 1 that starts off at 10 steps while FAIR get 1 that starts off at 1 step.

Samhain, good idea.

But I checked the starting setups for the scenarios and all units seem to start at 10. There doesn't seem to be a way to start a reduced-strength unit.

That's rotten. It was possible in CEAW. Ah well someone will think of a solution at some point though.

Yes, I have been thinking about this and maybe a scale of one strength point = 1 capital ship might be worth investigating a bit. So, for example, Russia built 4 dreadnoughts for the Baltic fleet and I think it was 4 for the Black Sea fleet too before 1914. So maybe, in the future, they could start the game with two dreadnought units at 4 strength points each. And if they wanted to build more dreadnoughts it would be slow and expensive for them and maybe the ceiling would be 6 strength points for that type of unit in either fleet. So the Russians could not hope to match the Germans in the Baltic (unless the German fleet was mauled by the British first), but they would be able to dominate the Turks in the Black Sea. The Turks would not have dreadnoughts but they could have a navy comprised of older battleships and support vessels (e.g. light cruisers, destroyers and torpedo boats).

There were not that many capital ships at sea in 1914. The British would warrant about 3 full strength dreadnought units, the Germans 2. The British pre-dreadnoughts tended to be used to patrol the colonies, the Germans used half a dozen of theirs at Jutland. So I don't think a scale along these lines would clutter things up too much, particularly if the support ships were represented as attachments to the capital ships rather than as separate units in their own right.

Don't forget all the combatants of the time didn't employ their battle ships all alone, they deployed them with cruisers for scouting ahead and destroyer screens, the units in the games are really more representational of Squadrons or a fleet of vessels.

A single battleship unit in the game is more like 2 or 3 squadrons of battleships/dreadnoughts a squadron of Battle cruisers and a flotilla or two of Destroyers and light cruisers. The cruiser unit is probably equal to a few of squadrons of Heavy or regular cruisers and some accompanying light cruisers squadrons and destroyer flotillas.

xriz wrote:Don't forget all the combatants of the time didn't employ their battle ships all alone, they deployed them with cruisers for scouting ahead and destroyer screens, the units in the games are really more representational of Squadrons or a fleet of vessels.

Yes, that's right. Battleships out on their own would be extremely vulnerable to the smaller ships like torpedo boats, so they needed a light cruiser/destroyer screen for protection. If you represented these smaller ships as attachments to the capital ship units in the future then the choice for the player would be - how many of these arrached units should I build. Maybe each capital ship unit would start off the game with either 1 or 2 such attachments and then the choice would be do I build a 3rd or a 4th? Apparently once the war was underway the production of really big ships tailed off quite markedly. Those already being built were finished but the emphasis switched to smaller ships and submarines as well as artillery for the army.

A single battleship unit in the game is more like 2 or 3 squadrons of battleships/dreadnoughts a squadron of Battle cruisers and a flotilla or two of Destroyers and light cruisers. The cruiser unit is probably equal to a few of squadrons of Heavy or regular cruisers and some accompanying light cruisers squadrons and destroyer flotillas.

It would be something like that, I agree. It was just that one of the developers suggested that it might be possible/desirable to include a more ship units in the game so I started to wonder about the scale involved. If you take the British navy in 1914, it might be represented as something like this with the scale at 1 strength point to 1 ship (only the capital ships and submarines would be units in their own right; all the capital ships would have some level of smaller ships attached) . . .

Dreadnoughts......................................2 units at strength 10 with 1 unit at strength 10 in production (to be completed mid 1915)
Pre-Dreadnought Battleships..................3 units at strength 10 (mainly deployed in the Mediterranean and colonies) - note there were about 40 pre-dreadnoughts in the British fleet in 1914 but the earliest class of ship (Majestic) was virtually obsolete Battle Cruisers.................................... 1 unit at strength 10
Submarines.........................................1 unit at strength 10

So, under this system at the start of the war, Britain would have 7 units (and an extra one would come in 1915) compared to the 5 they have now (1x battleship, 3x cruisers, 1x submarine) - not a massive increase in the number of units but enough to reduce the level of abstraction and to increase the historical accuracy. Most importantly, I think it might enhance the gameplay quite a bit.