>start game>USA>immediately design 8,000 ton light cruiser, 15,000 ton armoured cruiserTime to game.
>>1795763Go play Spain.
>start game>turn everything to megaslow>heavier-than-air flight to superslow>germany>spend 400 years fighting Italy
>>1795950>germany>fighting ItalyGod I hate that it's never worth the trouble having to sail down to the mediterranean. Russia and France are simpler targets.
>>1795950are you having fun designing 30k ton pre-dreads?
>>1796034I take Corsica and Rhodes and never ever let them go no matter what. Makes life easier all around. >>1796079Who knows anymore, but it's my GOTY so far.
>>1795763I like making the most armored and heavily gunned BB's known to mankind. But they get sunk in the first big battle. What am i doing wrong?
Fun to have Anglo-French wars every decade like it’s the 18th century, except with jet aircraft and missile boat swarms.
>>1796335Are you losing your gucci BBs to torpedoes or to being overwhelmed by superior numbers?
>>1795950Fap fap fap fap
>no one has posted their ships in this threadSHAMEFUR DISPRAY!actually, no, Shogun 2 sucked. People only latched onto it because it was a slight improvement over Empire and Napoleon. Rome is still the ruler of TWAnyways, am I the only one who plays with delayed airplane tech? Planes are GAY
>>1796589both
>>1796607I need to reinstall RtW1 with the 18+ mod again. I lost most of the images of silly ships I made with it.
>>1796659To keep your super battleships safe from torpedoes you absolutely have to respect enemy light forces. The AI is cunning with torpedoes. Never sail in a straight line when enemy destroyers are in torpedo range and never chase the enemy in low visibility (night, bad weather) until you get radar technology. Remember: the destroyer can see your big battleship in the dark easier than you can see them and they will launch before you know they are even there.As for being outnumbered: you need to build enough hulls with enough gun barrels that the enemy can't focus fire your best ships with a horde of trashboats. Your return fire needs to have enough volume to it so that you don't eat ten hits for every one you deal back.
>>1795763Its pretty sad that passion projects like RTW, Shadow Empire, Starsector etc is only way we can get a good games now. Its either indie jank which takes a decade to finish or old games from now on.
>>1796798Gotta go fast as well, if you're slow enough that the AI can force the engagement, you'll always have to deal with them running you down with superior numbers. Either way, if you're aggressive, or severely outnumbered, you'll end up taking damage. Surviving is all that matters in the underdog situation, and a couple 16in+ hits can knock out a CA or slow a BB down enough for you to manually switch fire and either ignore it or send your own DDs and CLs to mop it up. Some ships are just plain unlucky though, her sister hadn't taken nearly this much damage.
>>1796607How does that thing not instantly explode when shot at? 12" turret armor isn't going to stop a peer capital ship and 2" secondary armor on secondaries that can flashfire is just begging to get KO'd by a stray 6" round.
I love this game but only the pre-Dread to early Dread era. Just let me make over armored cruisers that can wade into the thick of it.
>>1798358Gives me an idea to make a mod that pushes all of the torpedo range techs to much later dates so we can enjoy some proper gun brawls for longer.
Which countries can safely order ships from Britain without having them stolen on the slipways in 1890? So far my experience is that Germany can almost never do it, USA and France can but there's still a risk, and Japan can almost always build in Britain. But what about Italy, A-H, Spain, Russia, and China? (haven't played any of those much yet)
>>1796812ive been working on my attempt of a improved victoria 2 game for around 4 months now, im constantly in a flux of "in the zone" and "why bother" i wish i had more consistency, but some parts will take me weeks to finish so ill get burned out doing that and need a while to come back to it. I can see why indie stuff takes so long.
>>1799714There is no hard rule for it. It's solely tension related. Germany only is worse of because they compete with britain in their home waters. Just try to keep tensions low and hope they don't get into a war with others.
>>1799714I've only had ships taken while not at war with that country once, France stole a while line of Bs and a big CA from me after I went to war with the UK in the late 1890s. I was fucking pissed, but it ultimately made the run more interesting
>>1795763Been considering getting this game, but the geopolitical aspect looks underbaked.
Going to play for the first time since 2 released, how do I remember all the shit I forgot?Also, tips for Japan as well as the post-1950 shit?
>>1800938What the actual fuck is with the AI trying to ram me nonstop?
>>1800999Checked, and completely based AI, just ram them back
>>1801373Don't misunderstand, I love ramming too, but I only plan on doing that when I'm losing, not when easily raping the entire enemy fleet without any losses on my side.
>>1801491Sounds like you put the AI in that spot then. Either way, if you're under 1000 yards they seem to go for it, especially earlier on, just don't cross in front of them, circle back and let the gunners on the other side get some practice
>>1801579Unless its night, then sometimes weird things happen. >Just after 22:00 see blue dots in-between me and La Corona after a long running fight against superior French numbers>Damn the Torpedoes, Full speed ahead>Charge straight through the French line>7 hits at 58 yardsBest performance from -2 11in guns I've ever seen
>>1795763Are there any good mods?
>>1801632Mods pretty much only affect the nations available, variations on ship restrictions and the map somewhat. What were you thinking about, graphics?
>>1801638I was thinking more a campaign that places during the 1800's or where the British wins the war of Independence.
Real life=video game?!
My only problem with this game is there’s no soundtrack, what do anons listen to whilst gaming?
So I had a weird war with the British I’m Japan, I spent alot of money on having a good cruiser force my battleships are very outgunned by theirs but I haven’t lost any yet. But every cruiser battle is just a total massacre I totally wiped them several times they had 75 DD’s in south east Asia and are now down to 10. Even though every fleet battle I have to withdraw because their BB’s are far too strong
>see this approach your fleetwhat do?
>>1796812>Shadow Empire>good gamesighit can be fun game and idea is neat but its really badly designed and i don't even mention graphics and ui that may be ugly but are tolerable(for me)
>>1806497fire nuclear torpedoes
Missiles, blind fire radar, and aircraft really allows for a disgusting capital ship kill count
Is it just me or has the bug with invasions still not been fixed? The one where your landing craft swirl around meaninglessly while sucking eachother off, instead of, you know, going to the landing area and fucking landing. I remember this being in the original release of RTW2 and that was my first fucking time playing the game!>>1806497Run to port like a little bitch and pray to God that I won't lose too many ships.
>>1806781I believe you have to destroy the land batteries at the invasion zone first.
Why can’t I save my refit designs? Do I have to build the ship in the old style and refit it later seems abit odd that I can’t just build the same hull with my better tech
How come the turns get really slow during massive battles when the game is this simple
Can you armor your ship to protect against missiles? How thick do they need to be and using which armor scheme
what kind of research priority do you usually go for? I always set fire control and machinery to high, and then depending on what kind of priority I want I set either guns/ap/he to high, or torps/light forces. Everything else on low. Airships get ignored, heavier than air and AA to medium when it rolls around, electronics and missiles to high when they start to appear
>>1808581i don't think sothe missile cruiser armor scheme is literally 0 armor
>>1808581I wouldn't bother. HSSM can penetrate 15" of belt armor, and even if you make a BB with enough armor the chances are the missile will just hit your superstructure and do massive damage and fires anyway. Just load up your fleet with SAMs, countermeasures, and make sure your carriers are providing CAP to your battleline and pray to RNGesus you don't get hit.
>>1804986this, on repeathttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyANbT-rQFc
>>1806791There's no requirement to destroy the batteries, you just need x transports to survive after reaching the invasion point (the red circles). The real bug is that the invasion point and batteries are often inside a bay or something with an imaginary no-crossing line at the mouth so you can't actually get close enough to shoot at the shore batteries, especially when the game gives you a bunch of CLs and DDs to guard the convoy instead of your capitals. The only solution is to set speed to ~2 knots and troll back and forth hoping to attract shore fire to enable enough transports to survive as they park at the invasion point and get shot at by the shore batteries.Do those boomer fucks still update this game? Haven't touched it in a year.
>set naval mines to unlock in 1970>set dive bombers and aerial torpedoes to unlock in 1970>set submarines to unlock in 1970>launch rtw3.exevgh
>>1795763How autistic do you need to be to enjoy this?
>>1809859at least a little bit autistic, this is not a normie friendly game, but it has a lot of mechanical depth and can be very rewarding (if occasionally frustrating) game to master, it also helps a lot if you like boats
>>1809666Checked and yes, they constantly drop little updates that ruin map changes, and the only good tool to get the coords for the map is from rtw1
>>1805301Deck armor is a meme anyway. 2 inches max.
Been seeing a lot of players complain about late game air power, saying things like its too expensive and it gets slaughtered by SAMs, but weirdly that has not been my experience in my most recent campaign. From 1970 to 1990 I was consistently able to attack enemy fleets with attack jets (JA) without suffering big losses. Now granted, heavy investment into carriers and jets was my plan, late game battles involved me throwing 300 JA and 200 HJF from 10 supercarriers at the enemy in a single strike, but I'd generally lose less than 10 planes per strike and they enemy would take catastrophic damage to their battleline and/or carrier force. In longer battles I'd even throw the JA in with quad bomb loads and still not suffer the kind of losses I see people complain about. It does make me wonder if there is a tipping point where the enemy becomes so overwhelmed that they can't fight back effectively, where I think a lot of players do repeated smaller strikes, feeding what little planes they have into the meatgrinder for little gain. 10 supercarriers is horrendously expensive to maintain I will admit though, but my 10 carriers sent far more tonnage to the bottom than my battleline did in the final 20 years of the campaign. Currently working on a Austria-Hungary and a UK campaign, will report back when they get to the jet and missile age with more results (when I get there, might be a while).
>>1809930The "Coordinate Strike" button is hard for a lot of people to figure out. I always throw my entire deckload of carriers out the first time I have a good idea where they are at. Yes, I have watched 300 planes fly out into the ocean without result, but when they hit, they hit hard. I agree that I think the AA gets spread too thin at a point, though I've not played till the 60s yet.
How do I know what to build in order to effectively compete with rival nations? I'm Austria 1890 start and I know Italy are going to be the main enemy. They've got 2 battleships with another 2 building, and I've got 1 with 1 more on its way. Not a navy guy, so I'm not knowledgeable like I would be if it was tanks.
>>1811420Battleships are a meme in 1890, build a cruiser that can do 17+ knots with the largest -1 gun you have unlocked and enough belt armor to slug it out with anything fast enough to keep up with you and raid their merchants without mercy
>>1810268>The "Coordinate Strike" button is hard for a lot of people to figure out.Isn't that the button that for most of the game, if not selected, the game will ask you if you intended to not select it? And then when you select it, the game will remind you that you haven't developed the ability to coordinate strikes yet and demand that you unselect it? Not sure how anybody could forget that it exists.
>>1811564This any good?
>>18123312 inch guns are useless.
>>1812331Needs more firepower. 19th century combat is all about the "hail of steel" because accuracy sucks, so you have to compensate by slinging more rounds. For example this is one of the first ships I built in my Austria-Hungary game that I've played from 1890 to 1927 so far. Note the very numerous secondary and tertiary guns. Those are what will be doing most of the work until fire control gets decent. Also, main battery turrets are the most explody parts of the ship and therefore should be the best protected part of the ship. Secondary guns 6 inch and below don't flashfire when hit so they don't need as much armor. Your main battery would be better off in a 2x2 arrangement, that would give you a four gun broadside, right now you only get three with one of your guns always pointing in the wrong direction. Cramped accommodation is fine if the ship never leaves your home zone, if sent abroad it gets a debuff. Finally, as the other poster mentioned: 2 inch guns are terrible. Low range, low damage. 3 inch guns are still kinda bad but so much better for barely any extra weight. 4 inch guns are the smallest caliber that can fire AP or HE rounds, making them even more versatile as tertiary guns.
>>1812384>[secondary and tertiary guns] are what will be doing most of the work until fire control gets decent.Why would secondary and tertiary guns be better than primary guns? The AI happily designs CLs with 12+ 6" primary guns.
>>1812511A few reasons.1) 6 inch secondary guns don't flashfire, 6 inch main battery guns can flashfire meaning you need to devote a lot of armor weight to protect them or risk instantly losing the ship. Secbat guns can be left lightly armored meaning you can safely cram more of them on your ship per ton.2) before your fire control techs start rolling in your mainbat has no accuracy advantage over secbat, and that advantage gets reset when secondary directors are unlocked, meaning you need higher tier fire control before the advantage really starts swinging back to mainbat3) secondary guns don't have to do ladder or ranging shots, they go straight to "deliberate fire", giving them an initial advantage in accuracy and rate of fire4) secondary guns don't jamNow this is all somewhat focused on 1890s ship design. These are the reasons 1890s meta ships go so hard on secondary/tertiary batteries. Eventually main battery overtakes secondary battery, about 1905 for battleships (the dreadnought race), 1918 for CA (improved director and superfiring turrets), and 1925 for CL (triple turrets). But those are 15-35 years into the game.
>>1805301Based. You don't need 2 inch decks on cruisers>but muh splintersShoot them before they shoot you.
>>1812511In addition to what's already been said I like using as many secondary and tertiary guns as I can fit and setting them at 20/80 AP to HE. The big main battery guns that are big enough to pen are too inaccurate to actually be useful and they're -2 meaning they can't be upgraded later. I'd rather have 2x2 8 inch guns on my Bs and CAs so I can fit more secondary and tertiary guns and aim to start as many fires as I can on enemy ships.
Should I get this game or Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts?
>>1815390Depends on what you want from a game. RTW3 is drier and more realistic while UAD is more gamey and cinematic. RTW3 covers naval warfare much more comprehensively, including features lacking in UAD like aircraft carriers and missiles, while UAD focuses exclusively on big gun surface combat with a kind of romantic timeline where dreadnoughts rule into the 1960s. Both games are really light on 4x features, but for map painting UAD has a slight edge. Tactically speaking RTW3 is much more dynamic, having features like terrain, ports, minefields, and nearby airbases to deal with, while battles in UAD always take place in an endless open ocean. If you are really averse to taking a risk on one or the other, neither game has any DRM to speak of. You can find pirate copies of the latest patch for both really easily. Just try before you buy. I played my first campaign of Rule the Waves 3 on a pirated version, liked it so much I bought it legit. I also own UAD and have quite bit of time in both. Hope this helps.
>>1815390RTW3's strength is ship design Ultimate Admiral's strength is having 3D battles. It's not a perfect comparison but it's the old "CK2 with Total War combat line". I personally think RTW3's battles are simulated better but watching a 20km shot arc in has its own gameplay value. Both have AI that will make your ships make questionable decisions but RTW3 has captain mode which mitigates that somewhat. I also recommend pirating both if it meant picking one to purchase. RTW3 is very much for you or not for you.
How does a light/medium/heavy missile affect its damage?Should I spam heavy SSM or should I have a mix of SSMWhy should I use light SAM if medium SAM also protects nearby ships
>>1816222For surface to surface missiles you get Heavy SSM much earlier so you will naturally have a lot of those in your fleet, but once you get Medium SSM you can fit more of those on each ship so spam those. MSSM has nearly the same range as HSSM and still does a lot of damage on hit. Now for Surface to Air missiles its very different. MSAM is the "do everything" missile, but requires a 1965 tech to attack ships and a 1970 tech to intercept missiles. LSAM is the best at intercepting missiles and can do it the earliest. Your most valuable ships should have some LSAM especially before 1970. Don't use LSAM for area defense, the radius is tiny. HSAM is the best at disrupting incoming airstrikes because its the first in the air defense sequence. It also does more damage against ships than MSAM, but HSAM can never intercept missiles. So basically its MSAM anywhere you can fit it, LSAM on the ships that need the most protection, and HSAM on dedicated air defense ships or if you want a large magazine of ghetto SSMs.
>>1816239it would also appear that HSAM can attack planes that are simply flying too close and not just what is attacking your formation, in this screenshot I wasn't being attacked by planes at all, which is weird because I've seen other players claim that HSAM only fires in response to direct attacks but I see them fire at nearby aircraft all the time
>>1816818Good luck anon. Do those tiny CLs work in battle at all, or are you just trying to bolster blockade defense?
>>1818100They're completely useless in battle but give 4 blockade value for 10,500 and can generate enough VPs through raiding to offset blockade VPs. A bit cheesy and unrealistic that 3 of them have more blockade value than a comparable costing 12,000 ton B which could kill 20 of them without breaking a sweat. But I like to imagine that the entire crew take turns loading the stokers, the gunners are trained to aim at merchant ships and the captains are given maps of shipping lanes and a list of neutral ports.
>>1797020CSA? How do you add mods
>>1818163Yeah, these things are great, just don’t forget to make loads of AMCs when the war starts.
>>1815390I like UAD better because I cannot find a dark mode for RTW3
>>1815390Honestly they both annoy me when I can't recreate historical ships.
>>1819305Go to the RTW2 forum, everything is there. Modding is easy, just dump the files into the folder, and you can even go in to mapdata or whatever and open them in notepad. There's all sorts of them floating around, new nations and such, they're not all compatible, but usually are fine
Is it possible to give start dates aside from 1900 the option to build your own legacy fleet?
Is this how submarines are supposed to work?
>>1834462And then after that battle...
>>1834462>>1834466Philadelphia Experiment moment
>>1834462You're supposed to set the submarine tech unlock date to 1990 and forget they exist.
>>1806520BBs become a liability at some pointI made the mistake of leaving my BCs detached in a sort of last hurrah once. They had spent the 40s and even early early 50s raping enemy carrier forces. Then the missiles got good and suddenly my detached BCs ate 5 missiles on spotting and promptly died
average 50s refit BB (originally built 1938), had to cut down an awful lot of secondaries just to fit these 4 missiles
>>1838321Eventually it is mandatory to have your destroyers between the enemy and anything you don't want getting hit with SSMs. I learned a hard lesson recently where the enemy had 8 total HSSM in their fleet and somehow landed 7 of them on my BC that was leading the charge. Instant KO.
I want a mech game like this.
Is there anything in the vein of RTW for age of sail era naval combat?
This game looks like a spreadsheet.I know nothing about it beyond this, and boats.Should i consider picking it up and playing it at work? I could get away with it at quiet times.
>>1845229If you like naval stuff, you'll dig it. It's quite extensive regarding the designing of ships.>at work You can pause and save battles, and you return to then later.
>>1845229It looks great as a bullshit thing for work, especially with the design screen or album up.
>>1845452>>1845743Is there a portable version or crack? Steam is blocked at work. I guess I'd want a demo or crack first too before I buy to see if I like it.
>>1846736It's on the usual place.
I did a fleet exercise to see how my CVs perform against a surface group and they accidentally sunk their support BC with 8 torpedo hits
>>1797020>Independancelmao dixiecucks can't even spell
just got to the jet and missile age for the first timejesus christ how horrifying
I just managed to beat 1958 USA so hard they became communist I guess I won the game as Japan.
What the fuck is this even? Excel spreadsheet? Fuck off!
>>1850727go play an Ubisoft game
i assume you can run this on a potato by the looks. how about Linux compatibility? just wondering if I could play on my ~2012 laptop with ubuntu 24.04
>>1853538>i assume you can run this on a potatoYou CAN but large fleet battles will be pretty slow because it needs to calculate every single ship. Luckily the battles are 2D so it'll just be slow, not stuttery like playing total war on a laptop
Has anyone gotten their missile corvettes added to battles? I got the tech, made a bunch of little speedy dudes with a dozen HSSMs, but they've never shown up in battle. I know half the techs didn't do anything for the longest time, so maybe the battle generator is bugged for it?
>>1853538worked perfectly on my Debian with Wine 8
So how about that DLC announcement?
>>1795763>playing first game, USA 1890 start, now 1940s>Standard budget drawdown after war ends>Budget in the red, so I halt construction on some ships, scrap older ones as well as half the destroyers still on the slipway>Get a slight surplus and move to next turn>They cut my budget even more due to low tension>Ok, bring research down, put the older ships I still want to save into mothballs. >Have 40 fund budget surplus at the end of the month, with about 1,000 in the bank>Congress cuts my budget again (I now have about 55k per year to defend mid 1940s America and some decent colonial possessions) >can’t scrap anymore big ships without loosing prestige. President won’t let me mothball anymore ships>Budget slightly negative, but able to eat into my savings, hoping for an opportunity or something to raise tension and budget>next turn>game breaking budget cut gives me a NEGATIVE GROSS budget for the year >I have -2000 funds per month BEFORE any of my expenses are taken into account>Game gives me an error code and will not let me advance to next turnI uninstalled the game after this, but redownloaded it a week later.
>play 1890s germany>a master of ship design in steel and steam age, absolutely obliterate the navies of all major powers, britain included>globe spanning colonial empire>pax germania, thousand year reich confirmed>someone invents a dreadnought>start losing battles>start losing more battles>losing every battle>have no modern ships, desperately trying to build competent dreadnoughts but it turns out reducing everyone else's navy to 0 right before dreadnoughts just gave them a huge leg up with no legacy fleet to pay for>lose colonies>lose more colonies>finally get one decent dreadnought and two BCs out, but best gun I had was 12"s>basically obsolete the minute they roll off the docks, can't compete with any peer battleships>LOSE MORE COLONIES>armistice naval treaty scraps two brand new battleships 2 and 4 months before completion, stuck with my already out dated and outgunned dreadnoughts from 25 years agofair germania.... what could have been...
>>1862794>building your own ships instead of sucking off a different country with better guns so you can steal their techs
>>1862811every SINGLE time I try to use foreign docks my ship gets yoinked
>>1863105Maybe don’t piss off the people building your shit
>>1863346they can steal your shit if they end up in a war with another AI too
How good can lighter than air aviation get?
>>1863448I've had one actually hit a ship with a bomb.
>>1863785That's great, but I'm more curious if there are advancements in it that wouldn't have happened in our world, like if I put it at high forever will I eventually get insanely advanced airships or what
>>1863788lighter than air techs only go from 1911 to 1926, and around 1935 the game starts complaining about you having obsolete airships in service, eventually planes start to massively outperform airships so you should switch over at some point
>>1798554how would I go about doing this? what file do I have to change to affect tech unlock dates? I want to push out torpedo techs and make submarines fucking nonexistent, what a stupid mechanic>nice fight, but your battleship got torpedoed offscreen :)
>>1863962It's like the first thing you'll see on the modding forum, just open the tech file in notepad++ and change the relevant tech dates to the 1980s or something. I only play no-sub games.
>>1864042what is the tech file
>>1863962>>1864042kwab
>>1864118bro I have checked the forums I have looked everywhere I AM RETARDED please help me what is the file called and where is it located
I wish there was steam workshop support for this. It seems like it would be very easy for people to make mods for it.
>>1864140It's called researchareas.dat.
>>1795763huh this is a game actually?
>>1864275No it’s ironic
>>1864275nah its just a bunch of guys playing a practical joke with excel spreadsheets
>turn on coordinated strike>now takes like 4 hours for the aircraft to reach the destination while the targets are long goneso do I just send out smaller strike groups, go for dozens of carriers for maximum deckage instead of a few supercarriers, wait till like the late 40s/early 50s for better CV operating, or just eat shit and send them one at a time?
>>1795763>eagerly anticipate RTW3>still doesn't have a dark modeNope. Not staring at a white spread sheet for hours.
>>1867066Turn on the lights in your room, gremlin. Didn't your mom tell you that sitting in the dark all day is bad for your eyes?
i downloaded the third game to try it out. i know matrix games have autistic manuals but i'm going in blind because if i tell myself i need to consult the manual then my autism will demand i read everything and i'll end up getting bored before i even play. the ship designer reminds me a lot of aurora4x so i feel like i'm going to have fun, and thankfully it looks like there's enough automation tools for design and battles that i can ease myself into it over time
>>1868602Let us know what you think. We want a full report. Seriously.
this game is great as long as you turn off submarines and delay torpedo tech by 30 years and turn tech speed to 10% and turn tech variability to high and turn heavier than air development to very slow
>>1871623i went with us for the first game and didn't know what i was doing for the first 20 years but thankfully there were enough "let the AI control it" features to get me through design and battles so i could get a feel for everything without being that overwhelmed. took some territory from early wars with russia, germany, and britain but starting around 1910 technology kept accelerating and i felt like my ships were perpetually outdated. the logistics of transporting new ships to central fleet locations was annoying, and i always forgot to overhaul a lot of ships so 2/3 of my fleet was (O)utdatedall my progress has slowly been undone since the 1930s since i'm basically permanently at war with germany, japan, and britain and i can't seem to keep enough big ships out since they're either outdated and useless, being sunk, or being built. i definitely think the introduction of air units was the turning since i haven't gotten around to figuring out how to effectively use planes while the AI is good at throwing waves of torpedo bombers at me. haven't gotten to guided anti ship missiles yet but i feel like that would be the end of me. overall i had a lot of fun and want to start a new campaign with a smaller nation that only has to fight on one ocean to see if i can do better with fleet command and maintenance
>>1871963I HIGHLY recommend trying a game at 10-20% tech speed, will give you plenty of time to figure your way through the major technological periods, and also keeps your ships from being obsolete for a bit longer.there is a BIG paradigm shift that happens once the first dreads roll out, as is to be expected. your entire surface fleet is essentially obsolete overnight, the AI will aggressively build new battleships and battlecruisers and you need to do the same. your pre-dread battleships are as good as scrap at that point, don't pay for their upkeep if you don't have to.
>>1872184>there is a BIG paradigm shift that happens once the first dreads roll out, as is to be expected.aaaaghhhh not a ship that goes 21 knots instead of 20 and has 4x slow-firing, inaccurate main guns instead of 2x, the paradigm has shifted completely, nothing makes sense and it's driving me insane! help me niggerman!
>>1872341FUCK YOU you piece of shit there are BATTLESHIPS faster than my heavy cruisers with central firing that actually enables their main guns to hit somethingHOW CAN MY FLEET OF 4x7" 24x6" 6x5" HEAVY CRUISERS THAT DO 20 KNOTS EVEN COMPETE?
>>1872568You can take the prestige losing choices to prevent wars, I think it only really matters under 18 prestige. Having more or less successfully played Spain, it's worth it to cuck out occasionally, especially if there's a naval treaty.The 1890 'I'll build battlecruisers before anyone else' bump only lasts so long. Also, colonies are less good than reparations, early on. Economic growth is a fixed percentage, so if you can pad you base with reparations, it helps.
>>1872568When you're designing those monstrosities, remove some guns and make.them.go ~22 instead. It's that simple.
>>1872568with those stats you might as well spam a few light cruisers instead
>Convoy defense mission 1919>Night time>battleship div, 2 CA divs, 1 CL div and 3 DD divs in battle. Assigned to the BB is one of the destroyers as screens>Battle starts, only my BB div is near the convoy, and there are 2 scout forces of the other divisions way out in the middle of nowhere. Even the DD screen assigned to the battleships is on the opposite side of the convoy>battleships (under the forced ai control) run straight into the enemy task force>I can finally assume control>Eat torpedoes almost immediately. Flooding makes speed even worse>Both the battleships founder within 30 minutesI’d uninstall, but I know I’d be back within a week
>>1873545>ends task in the task managernothin personnel kid
>>1873545Skill issue
>>1873545>building anything larger than CAshit doctrine
>>1873707>building CAsshit doctrine
>>1873711CAs are great. The heaviest vessel type that's relevant all the way from 1890 to 1970. If the game would let me never build capital ships and do a pure CA/CL/DD navy, I would.
>>1873725CAs suck ass. They're not heavily gunned enough to do anything against battleships and aren't armored enough to survive against them (unless you spend way too much money on them), and their speed advantage is negated by BCs and FBBs anyways. You might as well just build a bunch of CLs because they're cheaper and faster and cause more fires and shoot down more planes due to DP guns and missiles anyways.
>CAs suck because they can't stand in the line against much larger, heavier, more expensive vesselsAh, the old "all classes suck" approach.
>>1873742At least other classes are good at things. Bs and BBs have big guns and big armor, FBBs and BCs can chase down fleeing ships, carriers have planes, AVs can scout when you don't have a carrier, CLs and DDs go fast, dodge heavy guns, spam torpedoes, light things on fire, and shoot down planes. What use are CAs? They're not good at anything, except maybe for conversion into shitty carriers, but old battleships and AVs can do that too.
>>1873754CAs are good at winning cruiser battles, the battle generator's favorite type.
>>1873757You mean BCs, right?
>>1873760Nope. CA. That's the topic of conversation if you read the reply chain.
>>1873772Sorry for being unclear, I'm the anon who thinks CAs suck, and I was trying to imply that I think BCs are better at cruiser battles than CAs.Except for the early game where BCs haven't been invented yet, I guess.What are your CA designs for WW1 and WW2 eras anyways that you think they're better than BCs with 16 inch guns?
>>1873776>you think they're better than BCs with 16 inch guns?What do you think a BC with 16" guns does well? The only thing you need guns of that size for is standing on the line against enemy BBs, which is a foolish use of a BC. In terms of fighting CLs, CAs, and BCs, CAs have perfectly sized guns (faster firing, can carry lots of ammunition), are fast, and cheap enough to deploy en mass in full-sized squadrons. I would say CAs do pretty much everything as well as a big-gun BC, except the one thing I don't want my BCs to do anyway.
>>1873778They can destroy CAs while staying far out of range of their 10" guns. Longer range guns also let you chase or flee from the enemy while lobbing shots longer.
>>1873788>They can destroy CAs while staying far out of range of their 10" guns.I could say the same of any larger->smaller class pairing, and the response would always be "the smaller class would be faster and control the engagement". This somehow doesn't apply to BC->CA?
>>1873806CAs only are like 2kts faster than BCs at the same tech level unless you're barely armoring them, and then at that rate you might as well just build a bunch of CLs.
Is this another wargame for babies? Ha ha. Do you like watching the pretty ship formations sail? The dark smoke circles?These dumbed down toy soldier games are laughable. There is not strategy. There is tactics at best. Compared to a true grand strategy game like HoI 4 they are closer to Rainbow 6.
>>1873725retard alertyour dumb idea would actually work because the game counts CAs as capital ships (which is also why they're dogshit, they will be targeted by the enemy battle line despite being made of paper)CAs are useful for cheesing the game with gay builds like this >>1872568but are immediately worthless when battlecruisers come along (and battlecruisers are also worthless once battleships can go 28+ knots)
>>1874100>would actually work because the game counts CAs as capital shipsIt doesn't work because they don't count as "battleships" which is what the political leader demands.
>>1873760Only enemy BC's, because the battle generator has decided the enemy's BC's are allowed to participate in almost every cruiser battle but mine can only participate in large fleet battles sometimes.
It's 1958. The 7th Fleet sails out from Fort Bayard to engage with the Royal Navy out of Hong Kong. This is the third war between America and her mother country (and the first since Canada and the Caribbean were liberated and joined our most perfection union). The untested, super-dreadnaught New York, the remaining battleship and flagship of the USN is sailing out to meet them, joined by the five Constellation battlecruiser sisters.Is this the most cost-effective strategy? No, but freedom isn't free.
>>1874457
>>1874458
>>1874459
>>1874436Just don't build CAs so your BCs are forced to participate!
>>1874436>>1874526unironically this, one more reason CAs are relegated to the dumpsterthe very CONCEPT of a CA makes no sense when BCs are possible. a CA is meant to be a long range independently operating vessel capable of DEFEATING ANYTHING IT ENCOUNTERS OTHER THAN A BATTLESHIP while being FASTER THAN ANY BATTLESHIP IT ENCOUNTERSthat is what a battlecruiser is, it is literally the evolution of the design
>>187445875,000 bleemin tim tams and it only carries 17 inchie winchies and makes 26 knotty wottieswhat a waste
Is there a better ship for completely obliterating the pre-dreadnought era? This is for Mediterranean use only
>>1874731and a demonstration of their bullshit
>>1874720I don't disagree. It's my first playthrough so I let the AI design her. She was cutting edge for the 1940s when I laid her down, but budget cuts delayed her launch until the 50s because I'm an idiot.
>Nuclear navy since the 1950’s>Could have it earlier in game depending on research priorities>Would add interesting mechanics and late game doctrines>No nuclear propulsion optionI cry
>>1874731Personally I prefer going for 8 in main guns and 4 in tertiaries, even it's not as good.
>>1795763Is it even worth it to use a narrow belt?
>>1875727It can be. Narrow belt makes hits to the belt (B) less likely and hits to other parts of the ship more likely, particularly the belt extended (BE), while lowering the total weight of B and BE armor. So if you're planning on a heavily armored BE, like a B=BE setup, you might as well use narrow belt. Another side effect of shrinking the belt is that it actually lowers the chance of taking flooding hits if your armor isn't enough to prevent penetration. You do take more hits to areas that result in structure damage though. For example CLs can't armor themselves enough to stop most incoming fire so making them less likely to flood out helps with survivability (if their structure gets torn up detach them and send them home, can't do that if they flood out). For ships that are designed to tank you don't want narrow belt because you want as many shells hitting your belt as possible, where they are most likely to fail to penetrate.
>>1875727with a narrow belt you can pretty much make belt extended the same thickness for an equal weight, and belt extended covers an absolutely stupid amount of critical hit conditions, its absurd
>>1875727>>1875954uniform thickness narrow belt (belt is the same as belt extended on narrow, ideally with sloped deck configuration) is far and away the best armor setup in the game. for some reason AON will still allow engine room hits through BE, which is precisely the fucking opposite of what AON is even designed to do
>early war against France>all fighting in the Caribbean, the only location with shared possessions>every battle results in a +1 prestige major victory at the cost of one of my CAsIf I keep winning battles like this I'm going to lose the war.
>>1874458Tech Variation is one hell of a drug. I love when you can get super battleships duking it out before carriers make the game play in a way I don't appreciate as much.
>>1876244>2" deckGet Hood'd.
Does making destroyers "long" range do anything to prevent the "unable to participate" event? I'm fighting France from Iceland and the majority of destroyers won't show up, every time.
>>1876105as whom?stop losing ships if you can't afford to, its better to retreat than lose an expensive ship in most cases
>>1876244what is this protection scheme my brother in christyour turrets should be the thickest armor of all, do you want those 20" 10,000 pound shells to go up in a flash fire? conning tower should be similar to turret
>>1876519Compromises had to be made to get the thing out in '32.
>>1876658could have probably had belt at 14 and turetts and CT at 15 which would have made a lot more sense
TWO INCH FUCKING DECKi bet the turret tops are also 2 inches
>>1795763Any good guides for total noobs?Im kinda tempted to try this game because i like the naval autism..
Why are cruiser actions always 2 of my CLs and 3 of my DDs against 3 enemy CAs and supporting forces? Even though I have many more ships in the area according to the battle screen.
>>1876519>conning tower should be similar to turretWhy? I see bridge destroyed probably twice per game, is that really worth wasting all that tonnage on CT armor?
>>1874750Not to argue against big CAs being superior, but a lot of Austrian Bs are 7000tn fodder, CLs can do them in.
>>1876712Anything more than 2 inches for the deck is a waste of tonnage.
>>1877155T. Admiral Beatty
are there any good vanilla+ mods? stuff that like improves the ai or gameplay
Something that extends the time period out to year 2000 level technology would be nice.Also as another anon said, nuclear propulsion for ships could be an interesting mechanic: high initial cost, low maintenance cost, heavier machinery (might even out if you account for not needing to store fuel), always having extreme long range, reactor SCRAM mechanic, reactor damage, and maybe even needing to construct special dock facilities to construct/maintain nuclear powered vessels. VLS systems would also be a major upgrade for CG and DDG. Would also be quite interesting to have earlier time periods as well. All the way back to the mid 1800’s when iron clads and monitors were first becoming a thing. Starting at that date with varying tech progression/variation setting could provide near endless replay-ability. Gameplay wise, I would like to see a way to - over long time periods - change the characteristics of your nation. For example an uneducated nation, could become educated, then well educated, if the research budget stays high enough. A well developed ship building industry could become less efficient if the navy doesn’t order enough new ships. Of course, these changes should take decades to come into effect, but expanding the scope of the game’s time period would make this a very rewarding and equally punishing mechanic.Steam workshop support would be a massive upgrade.
>>1877155AP round says "hello"22 02:34 18 in 18461 yds Engine room hit D* (BB Fuckyocouch, AP)
Hahahaha how the F is plunging fire real hahaha just sail toward the enemy like close the range.
>>1878260>Local super-dreadnought not so tough since getting kited
>>1795763How can I make it so we stay in the dreadnough era for decades?
>>1878589Slow aircraft development or edit the aircraft techs entirely.
How do I save edit? My save game folder only has file placeholders. Is this because I’m using steam?
>>1878699Saves got moved to Documents/My Games/Rule the Waves 3
>>1878589See, I'm the complete opposite. I want to see more missile combat and the game expanded to the modern era.
>>1878786I just like building ridiculously sized battleships, but in game it seems like their period of operation is pretty short. I want 50 years of dreadnoughts
>>1878802Just build them anyway :)
opinions on RTW vs UA: Dreadnoughts? i've been thinking about picking one of them up. the nice graphics of UA are neat, but if the combat/strategy is shite im not sure it would be worth
>>1878935There's strategy? I've never known it.
>>1878935I'm trying RTW because I was disappointed with UA:D's lackluster ship design and combat simulation. I like RTW's ship design more, more freedom and meaningful choices, while the tactical simulation seems about equal to me (to UA:D's shame since it's full 3D but still dice rolls). I can't compare the strategic aspect because I've never played a campaign in Admiral.
>>1878935>UApirate before you buy it because a 30 ship battle was running at 15 fps in my system
>>1878589tech speed at 10%, slow aircraft development tickedyou will barely discover CVs by 1970
Does this game have dark mode yet or are they saving that for a dlc?
>>1879768>dark modeno last time i checked steam forums dev said they are working on porting the game to a new engine, but judging by the pace they are doing things i would not expect it soon.
>>1878935UAD devs don't deserve your money. The game is half baked, an unfinished mess.>terrible optimization, noticeable input lag just trying to interact with menus>terrible UI in every aspect. Split a ship off from the fleet? Can't interact with that fleet anymore this turn, cause it's icon is now underneath and unclickable. Sent a ship to port? Nope, you clicked the wrong pixel.>terrible battle AI. Battles are like shooting fish in a barrel. You can park out of range, and they'll just sail in circles crashing into eachother.>even worse strategy AI. On the highest difficulty where everyone gets unlimited money, they can't build up a fleet of more than a few BB's because constantly scrapping ships for no reason and constantly being at war with every other AI nation.>there's nothing challenging or interesting. Wars are a nuisance and boring. You can completely blockade nations until they collapse with a few obsolete torpedo boats because they're utterly incapable of doing anything about it.>most of the time you're just waiting. Takes 2 hours to start campaign (gotta generate dem garbage ships that will be scrapped in a few turns!). Wait time between turns can be several minutes. You'll spend the first 100+ turns doing literally nothing and winning, because you're massively rewarded for being at peace and severely punished for being at war (+10% gdp growth vs -10%)
>>1879777>on porting the game to a new engineGlobal real time with pause would be fun..
>>1880202>Global real time with pausebattles already are real time with pause
>>1880315Incorrect. From the manual:
>>1880877 there will always have to be a unit measure for a calculation tick to occur, retardo
>>1880315Thats why i said GLOBAL.With one big world map like CMANO instead of Risk style map.
>>1881044So every game is real time then? Are you dense? Over a single minute, a WW1 battlecruiser could sail a kilometer and fire two salvoes, one-minute ticks are not even close to real time.
>>1881076do you consider paradox games real time? they have daily and monthly ticks, for all intents and purposes TURNS, and yet if you don't pause it flows in a real time mannercompare that to something like the strategy map portion of total warwhich one is a battle in RTW more similar to?
>>1881105>do you consider paradox games real time?No, why would I? Does anyone think they're RTS games? They're obviously turn based, it can only give the illusion of real time while you're not microing, because , with units moving in 50 km steps, the spatial scale is even larger than the temporal one. When two armies fail to meet in the same province by one day in EU4, it surely doesn't feel like "real time".Anyway you're comparing apples to oranges. RTW battles have nothing to do with the strategic map of EU4 or Total War. In a Total War battle, which is the appropriate comparison, the simulation advances faster than the eye can see and the units move and act smoothly. A soldier couldn't possibly make a step or swing a sword twice in a fraction of a second. Yes, there's a minimum time, but how would you even know how short it is?In RTW actions are clearly executed in one minute steps, which the game itself calls "turns". Anything that takes less than a minute to determine has to be simulated separately or given a random probability. This means you can't actually "see" what is going on, which is the whole difference. How do you know if your ship should have been hit by a torpedo, if it effectively teleports by some distance every turn/minute, without being able to steer or change speed? If two ships hit each other in the same turn, how do you know who should have got the first strike, and maybe avoid being hit in return?There's a clear difference between real time and turn based, and RTW doesn't even pretend to be real time.
>>1881152>This means you can't actually "see" what is going on, which is the whole difference. How do you know if your ship should have been hit by a torpedo, if it effectively teleports by some distance every turn/minute, without being able to steer or change speed? If two ships hit each other in the same turn, how do you know who should have got the first strike, and maybe avoid being hit in return?all of this is viewable and simulated, you simply can't input new orders within those one minute intervals. ships can fire torpedos, target and fire, reload and fire again, and initiate turns or changes in speed within those intervals
>>1881183>you simply can't input new orders within those one minute intervalsSo you give input at fixed intervals and the result plays out in between, isn't that the definition of turn based? And if everything was simulated in real time as you say, then what would be the point of one minute turns? They could make the whole game real time tomorrow, without the need of a new engine. Even if it was simulated like that, it would still not be viewable, you only see what happened after the turn has already passed.
How do I get efficient trade protection? I lost a war to unrest just because every month I'd lose 18 convoys to British raiders in my home zone (Med sea). I had anti-sub corvettes, destroyers, old and new cruisers on TP, but even with my newest heavy cruisers I kept losing 5 merchants per month, specifically to enemy CLs.Do I just keep my whole fleet on trade protection?Funnily enough when I reloaded the save to see what I could do differently the war ended immediately with the enemy coalition getting couped instead.
>Be me Italy 1935>At war with France>Manage to completely eliminate all French capital ships>Invading Corsica >Will invade Tunisia the moment that’s done.>also at war with Japan, but they haven’t done shit>I have over 3x VP>Option to make peace with no concessions comes up>Wtf no we have them right where we want them and are grabbing Corsica as we speak>parlemento goes for peace without reparations anywaysNext war, I’m purposefully throwing so that DVCE can rise to power.
>>1881241You can cope and larp as you losing the land war. You Are Italy after all.
>>1881241>>1881309I rage quit when this happens through end task and just load up the save from right before that RNG bullshit>A peace without concessions when I am up 30,000 VPs, have the enemy blockaded, and have boots on the ground actively invading overseas possessions
>>1881241I feel you, spent the whole 3 years Great War trying to invade French Algeria as Italy, only for Germany to take it in the peace deal.
>>1881311Do you reload when you lose battles too? Little Timmy upset that his toy battleship sank? Boo hoo.
>something didn't go my way in one of the twenty wars I'm going to fight in the game>I didn't secure the piece of clay that the game is going to make me give up in twenty years anyway >so I'll quit and loadWhy not just edit the save to get all the clay and reparations you want?Why even play?
I'll reroll rng bullshit all I want and you can't stop me
>move these uninteresting ships around by the dozens with your battle fleet in order to not get rng fucked by this wholly uninteresting game mechanicnow that's what i call gameplay
>>1795763Is there are any justifiable reason why the GUI has to look like something from early 00s?
>>1881311>>1881241>military getting fucked in the ass by the traitors in governmentTale as old as time.
>>1881599Sovl.
>>1881599It's smart business to leave some content for future dlc packs.
>>1881599It looks like it was coded in visual basic.In any case, it's a niche game with a small developer base. Ergo, the same reason why dorf fort looks like the matrix.
>>1881652>why dorf fort looks like the matrixHave you been under a rock for the past few years?
>>1881655I fucking wish. Reality sucks right now.
>clicks 5 times in Windows 2000 interfaceUgh so clunky, why must me the player suffer so!>clicks 5 times in modern minimalist interfaceAh, such a fresh, streamlined experience!
>>1881652>muh graphicsIts sovful, much better than some forced 3d shit or moder IOS copy nr 194928
Do you guys generate your ships' pictures? I wish the tool had more options.
>>1881684it's not soulful at all, it's just low-effort. some SOVL would have background textures for the menus and maps, an appropriately naval font, some artwork for the headers and buttons and so on.RTW is just Visual Basic defaults. a UI designer has never gone anywhere near this program. there is slightly more soul than a Microsoft Access database.
>>1881726how do you get it to work? it never did anything for me
>8 cruisers on trade protection out of 4 needed>Austria-Hungary still manages to sink 5-8 merchants a month with their 4 raiders>before subs existI don't get it, but at least my new, state-of-the-art armored cruisers seem to be doing a better job.>>1882195Pic related.
>>1882195I believe you have to do it by hand.
>>1882263>>1882430looks like it works now, before when i clicked the "generate" button it did nothing
I love fighting brutal war after brutal war, always blockaded 3:1, winning hopeless battles against swarms of bathtubs, so I can eke out a white peace.I'm sure it's forging my nation's spirit and next time it will be different, we'll become a real empire.
I heard you can get airships with parasite fighters in this game, can you make these viable? And can there be parasite bombers? And lastly, can they be improved like normal aircraft with jet engines and the line? If so, I know what I'll be doing. Aerial aircraft carriers are the most based thing around, and they never saw any real service (zveno project doesnt count, but is cool too)
Where do I see my museum ships?
>>1883976>can you make these viableno>and can there be parasite bombersno>can they be improved like normal aircraftnothe tech stops advancing around 1925
>>1883455hahaha white peace goes brrrr
>>1885582I really wish there was an option to coup my pussy-ass government.
>>1883468>subs and airplanes kinda suck. Wouldn’t mind just focusing on battleships until the 1970s.I started in 1890 with research rate 90 and slower aircraft, now it's 1920 and still haven't seen a single airplane, though submarines are definitely becoming relevant. I don't know if you can get rid of those in vanilla.>>1883708Looking beautiful, are those modded graphics?I for one am slowly replacing event pictures that aren't ships with 2D girls.
>>1883468Set research to 10% and slow aircraft development and you wont have an aircraft carrier in a battle until 1975subs you cant really get rid of without editing your tech file and erasing them from reality
can you randomly generate map and factions(or setup custom one)?
>>1886349>can you randomly generate mapNo, it's hardcoded.>or setup custom factionYes, there's a tool for it but I've never tried it.
>>1877089I nearly always skip conning tower armour,waste of tonnage in my opinion.
>>1877089>>1887395Bro your crew quality?
can unrest generate solely from having too much budget? I remember a run as france where I took every budget option possible and there would be turns where no events would happen but unrest went up
>>1887470Yes, if your budget is too high in comparison to your national resources unrest can increase.
>>1887395I don't know, conning tower hits are not that rare in my experience, so the trade off seems worth it.I just did a quick fleet exercise with two battleships and there was one secondary battery hit on the CT out of 60 or so in total.
This game needs a battle replay feature, if only for when it's so bad I start advancing 5 minutes at a time and praying, instead of actually looking at hits and incoming shells.
Just had my entire battle line torpedoed out of battle. None were sunk, but they’re out of action for 3-5 months.
>>1887896Is your ASW fleet that bad?
>>1885815>I for one am slowly replacing event pictures that aren't ships with 2D girls.
>>1887943I had almost 1.5 times the required number of ships on TP, and a full division of new DDs screening the core. Just a combination of shitty RNG and the enemy coalition having 100+ SS for me to fend off I guess.
>>1887967>I had almost 1.5 times the required number of ships on TPIf I recall correctly, the manual states that it's the ASW ships that are *not* on trade protection duty that count against your naval ships getting torped (instead of your merchantmen). Although>shitty RNGis a plausible explanation as any. Even with a whole 4 enemy subs in my home zone, I managed to lose an old CL to them.I also wish coastal batteries weren't able to pick out my small ships at night when I can't see them. One would think the guns firing would reveal their own position on the shore, but apparently that's not how it works.
How to download RTW III for free?
>>1795763How do I git gud?
>>1888119https://www.microsoft.com/it-it/microsoft-365/try
>>1888119cs.rin.ru>>1883455I just savescum>>1881458You just build 600 ton corvettes and put them on transport protection duty,minesweeping is automated.
>>1888223>20" guns>3" deckLet's see if it pays off for them.
>>1888239how many inches of deck armor do I need to survive a 500 kg bomb?
>>1888245If it's dropped from high altitude, 4 or 5 inches according to my calculations.
Rule the Spreadsheets III
>>1888239>airship actually does something besides spottingHoly shit
>>1888373Yeah it was trying to bomb an enemy battleship that was already dead in the water, but instead it near missed one of my own 600 ton torpedo boats that happened to be close by. I couldn't even be mad.
>>1888239>them
>>1888245More than you can afford, pal.
If I theoretically had the ability to make a 200,000 ton battleship and could max every single facet of its armor would it be UNSINKABRU?
>>1888475good luck i'm behind 7 billion torpedo boats
>>1888476owari da...
>>1888475>dies to aircraft>gets torpedo by a sub>hits a mine
>Sink entire French convoy of 16 transports as well as a number of CLs and DDs>worst loss is heavy damage on one of my CAs>Minor victoryWhat the fuck game
>>1887967One destroyer division per battle division isn't going to cut it. You need about three screening ships per capital ship. I typically have a light cruiser division and two destroyer divisions screening each battle/carrier division and it definitely seems to cut down on the amount of random sub events.>>1888475Unfortunately no. Torpedoes do not care about armor and the armor you can apply doesn't ever cover the whole ship. You can always take hits to the unarmored superstructure or hull. Not to mention you can still burn to death from sustained HE fire or missiles. There is no such thing as an unsinkable ship (even when making cheaty ships), throw enough crap at it and eventually it will succumb.
O mighty veterans and exalted naval high-lords of the boundless seas, I, a mere fledgling upon these vast waters, humbly present myself before your esteemed presence. I seek your wisdom and benevolent guidance as I embark upon this seafaring journey. Pray, where might I best commence my humble beginnings? Furthermore, might you share the specifications of your venerable computers, O supreme warlords of the waves?
>>1888456 (You)(plural)>>1888575>naval invasion battle>sink 2 enemy BBs and lose 1>invasion fails>>1888661>where might I best commence my humble beginningsI myself am a beginner, to learn the ropes I watched a brief tutorial series by a bald boomer on YouTube, it was exhaustive at least for the early game. There's also a manual in the game files.>might you share the specifications of your venerable computersIt's a cheap toaster without a graphics card, the game runs fine.
>>1888717>invasion battle>Finland>invasion destination is that one bay where your ship's ai refuses to go so you can't shell the shitty 4inch batteries>your TRs sail in there anyway and get sunkgod i need CVs soon
>>1888554>aircrafthow you gonna get through 16 inches of deck armor BITCHunfortunately my dream isn't achievable in 1935, but who knows what might be feasible by 1970
What should be my training priorities as Germany, Jan 1935? Was this the wrong choice?
>>1888799>Vessel's name: *Budget Annihilator.*
>>1888808>35train for damage con and torps
>>1888808>>1888811damage control always but night fighting is definitely the way to go before radar is ubiquitous
>>1888808>>1888817Okie dokie, but my reasoning for going with gunnery priority was this: hasn’t ‘poor’ gunnery always been the Achilles' heel of the German navy? For example, German gunnery was somewhat poor or inferior during the Jutland clash.
>>1888819gunnery is extremely expensive for what you get, but honestly its not bad. the problem is you can only have two, and becoming ONE WITH THE NIGHT is an enormous bonus while damage control is morel likely to save you expensive ships in the long run. I like to do night fighting and gunnery in the steel and steam era
;_;
>>1888878>>1888810Why isn't there a budget overdraft facility? Also, how to pressurize OKW and the Führer himself or additional funding. Screw the Luftwaffe and the Wehrmacht, I need die Billionen $$$.
>>1888799>329 sailors on a 90000 ton ship>only one gun>cramped accomodationsFinally, the Battle Monitor.>>1888817>damage control alwaysI've been running only gunnery training so far, but in the last war I almost lost a battleship to a single small caliber shell that started a fire, so I'm definitely going to give damage control a run.
>>1888799>sinks
Which propulsion method offers the 'signature look of superiority'? 1. Diesel2. Gas Turbine3. Coal + Vertical Triple Expansion4. Coal +Turbine5. Oil + Turbine
>>1888951diesel
What percentage of the yearly budget do you guys spend on research? What would be the recommended figure for a novice? I'm currently allocating 11%.
>>188896212 is the max, but honestly it doesn't make much of a difference from 8 if you're a poor nation. increasing your income is the bigger determinant of research speed
>>1888962I always allocate the max.
>>1888951Oil + Turbine is the master race. Triple expansion coal is for the brainlets, diesel for the plebians.
What do y’all listen to when playing this. I like this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=3zRfv2PqRPI&list=PL59B7A506BF2CFF20
>>1889154https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCBxI9yKLgw
>>1888817I hate night fighting because it seems to increase the rate of night battles, and those are such a fucking chore
>>1889193It does.
>>1889193Night fights are great when you're a poor nation. Night battles plus torpedoes make a CL a match for a BC.
>>1888799remove the upper belt and maybe it will work
>>1888124By starting as America.
is a "jeune ecole" doctrine possible in this game? i want to swarm my enemies with torpedo boats
>>1888941You will never be a real naval power. You have no naval history, you have no naval traditions, you have no real strategic interests for a global navy. You are a land power twisted by politics and colonial ambitions into a crude arms race you'll never win.All the "validation" you get is two-faced and half-hearted. Behind your back other great powers mock you. Your ministers are disgusted and ashamed by you, your "allies" laugh at your policies behind closed doors.The general staff are utterly repulsed by you. Decades of military history have allowed them to sniff out pointless pet projects with incredible efficiency. Even naval laws that "pass" look wasteful and pointless to your citizens. Your admiralty is a dead giveaway. And even if you manage to build a division of dreadnoughts, they will never be deployed the second they realize you have no screening elements.You will never be able to project power. You try to posture yourself as a great naval power every single year and tell yourself it's going to work out, but deep inside you know that a naval blockade will be forced upon you, ready to strangle you out like a vine.Eventually it will be too much to bear - you'll provoke an international incident, draw attention of the other great powers, and plunge the world into a war. The Kaiser/Führer will defund you, heartbroken but relieved that they no longer have to fund something taking up important resources yet yielding only disappointment. They'll mothball most ships, and every country for the rest of eternity will know you for your submarines. Your high seas fleet will decay into coastal defense, and all that will remain of your legacy is a navy that is can only operate near your shores.This is your fate. This is what you chose. There is no turning back.
>>1890129Once you get torpedoes on CL you probably could. Night & Torpedo Trainings. If you only have CLs, they're going to be what you get in every fight.
Now, this might seem bit out of the place to say all this in a thread devoted to naval might and full of admirals and high sealords—albeit armchair ones—but I'll proceed with it anyway. Infantry has always been the queen of the battle, with both Artillery and tanks rightfully contesting the title of the king of battle. Whereas the iron vessels of the sea have solely been employed to dishonourably pillage, loot, and terrorize the native populace of the oppressed colonies, all the behemoth battles wherein the fate of humanity itself hung in balance or was in peril were brought to a conclusion by the strength of arms on the battlefield.While naval might is somewhat important, yes, sailing around in floatable, buoyant steel boxes, laying landmines in a mischievous, cowardly manner, sneaking under the depths of water to fire upon the enemy, or using cannons—a serious waste of resources—to hit an enemy many nautical miles away is cowardly and dishonourable at best. True glory and honour have always belonged to the land forces that battle it out and, by sheer dint of merit and immense toil, win/defend the holy soil in honour of their motherland.
>sheer dint of meritAre you sure you speak English?
A shart of twinklesThe foop of folly
>>1890846i witnessed this post
>>1890395>dishonourable at best.there is no such thing as honour in war
>>1890847sssshhh you didn't see anything
>>1890129between like 1910 and like 1940not torpedo boats per say but that's when peak torpedo DD/CL is, and going full long lancers is worth it that said, you basically have to bully the AI into behaving
in my experienceI may be wrong
>>1891707Once SAMs come out, CVs are worthless.
>der mighty Kriegsmarine
>>1892277I thought the Bismarck didn't have her swastikas present when she was deployed for Operation Rheinübung
>>1892432You can see the underwater swastika projector suspended to the right of the bridge..
>>1892432It's a painting.
I need mods.
>>1892432Painted over, maybe with something like coal ash which would wash off.
First war against the Brits is over, I scrapped pre-dreadnoughts and assorted rust buckets, am planning a modern ocean-going fleet and designing new escorts.Now I just have to resist the urge to spam raise tensions decisions and start a fresh war.
>>1892498What is your budget?
>>189272514780 monthly, but tensions are still very low.Currently building some long range cruisers and destroyers for trade protection, a few subs, and lots of fortifications and airship bases.I probably need to think about a more-than-short-ranged battle fleet next.
>>1891707dead wrong. CA is the queen of the ocean from 1890-1905
>>1892754>Buildan so many Destroyers Wait, why?Why not splurge on Light/Protected Cruiser (CL) & Heavy/Armoured Cruiser (CA) maxxing?
>>1892830Roleplaying torpedo boat melee doctrine.But actually I forgot I was already building 8 and ordered 8 more.I noticed my new light cruisers are carrying 30 mines each for some reason, so clearly I need to pay more attention. On the other hand, France is going full submarine warfare so a few more destroyer might come in handy.>Why not splurge on Light/Protected Cruiser (CL) & Heavy/Armoured Cruiser (CA) maxxing?I'm going to build at least 4 more 7000 tons light cruisers (pic related) after the current batch is done. I want a few CAs on trade protection, but I already have 3 modern ones, and a 20k tons battlecruiser.
>>1892847Nice. What distinguished names have you chosen for your mighty destroyers (DDs)?
>>1892851I have to admit that my custom naming lists only go down to scout cruisers.For now I'm satisfied with the historical series the game gives you for DDs and smaller, aside from correcting the occasional overflow in a different theme. The latest built class (Fulmine) got names of lightnings and winds, the next one (Tigre) will be named after big cats.
THE BURGER FEARS THE SAMURAI
>>1893276Nice job, I rarely if ever manage a decisive fleet victory that early. Assuming it generates a fleet battle at all.
>>1893276Stop using mods, Yamato.
>>1795763>play italy>have a massive active fleet in the med>+8 battleships>converted cruiser carriers>buttloads of destroyers>all my battles are cruiser vs cruiser scenarioshow the fuck do i fix this, i even put the fleet size up and it keeps happening
>>1893341Are fleet battles and battleship engagements not generating at all, or is the enemy just declining them? Do they have battleships in the Mediterranean at all? Try and invade some enemy possession to force an invasion battle.
I saw this just went on sale on Steam and was thinking of picking it up. How well does it handle Carrier warfare?
>>1893554No idea.
>>1893554I like it, but I'm also a retard who just discovered special squadrons exist.
>>1893554Perfectly fine, if you like the Japanese experience. Occasionally, you get bodied out of nowhere, occasionally, one carrier can destroy 4 CVs. Or >>1893573 Spain, Italy and A-H
>>1894418This but it's 20 destroyers when I have 40 already.
>>1894418kek
>>1894418>Naval secretary wants me to build 10 submarines ok whatev just get some SSCs on order>2 turns later the PM decides I should build 18 DDs insteadAAAAAAAAAAA
How advances the illustrious dominion over the boundless waves, esteemed admirals?
>>1896573With a terrible engagement against the Austrian navy, in the first month of war. A modern cruiser division, escorted by scouts and three destroyers flotillas, was tasked with raiding enemy coastal shipping. The expected opposition was a couple light cruisers.As usual for a night mission, contact with the enemy was sudden and violent, with screens detecting a large force sailing in the opposite direction little more than 2 miles away. The ensuing melee saw an enemy 20000 ton battlecruiser (!) hit by three torpedoes and promptly sunk, while the rest of the enemy fleet turned away and fled. Could have been a quick and flawless victory, but after giving orders to head back to port, the clearly exhilarated commander changes his mind and decides instead to hunt for the enemy merchant vessels, surely left defenseless in the night by the cowardly Austrians.Turns out that the enemy, too, had not in fact gone home, and was still on patrol an equal force of destroyers and light cruisers. The second blind fight was much more unfortunate, with 2 heavy cruisers sunk by 4 enemy torpedoes, and the third one miraculously surviving a couple more (and limping back home at a speed of 3 knots). This cost the enemy two light cruisers and a few destroyers, sunk by heavy caliber fire, destroyer attacks, or finished off by lurking submarines, but no matter how the national news spin it, it was a case of disastrously bad leadership.Lessons of war: next time I'll see that my main force doesn't outrun its own screens while maneuvering at night.
>>1896803Until I get radar blind-firing I simply refuse to engage at night with anything heavier than a CL
>>1893366>>1893341>>1893280Consider checking that you have this enabled
>>1897629Just spam disposable DDs and CLs to soak up enemy torpedoes and to launch more of your own bro.
>>1897629Avoid this (>>1897763). Always (for your own personal profit & delight) do precisely the opposite of what /vst/ says.
Daily reminder that torPEDOS are a scourge on my beautiful pre-heavier than air naval warfare and users of these devices will be damned to hell.
>>1897912In theory I appreciate them for closing the big ship > medium ship > small ship triangle, in practice my light cruisers get nailed by photonic torpedoes while steaming at 30 knots, but 8 of my destroyers can't hit a stationary BB. Still, (((airplanes))) are worse.
>>1897912>edit research files and set torpedo and submarine technologies to 1970>10% tech speed>1890 start dateyup, its gaming time
>>1898078What's the point of destroyers then?
>>1898104good point, forgot to set those to 1970 as well. corvettes only.
>>1898108I hope you're actually playing like this now, i want to know how it goes.
>>1898152I played one through to 1970, I think aircraft carriers only showed up in like '55 and radar in '60Was beautiful
I'm new. Read the manual. Watched some vids. But I'm struggling in combat.I did an 1890 start as Italy with a very small navy. Designed a new ship, set more CLs to build. I took Albania through an event and eventually I'm at war with France.I can't win battles. I try to keep my sides pointed at the enemies, but in what appears to be even match (roughly equivalent guns and armour, both of us fielding a CL and a CA), my ships take more hits, in worst places.I pretty much just point the divisions to broadside the enemy, try to stay either side, or circle them. Am I supposed to be doing more?
>>1898412In the early years, be downwind of them and bring more/better ships.Very Small navy size might be a challenging game, as you'll barely be able to field anything.
>>1898412Right click your ships during battle to open up their information panel. There should be a button like "hit chance" or something like that that you hit to see what's modifying your chance-to-hit. See what's negatively affecting your ships and try to minimize that.
>>1898426>>1898431Ah. It's the wind blowing smoke in the way. Thanks
>>1898412The keys to winning 1890s battles are crew quality and fielding lots of guns. Base accuracy is pure trash until your fire control research rolls in so crew quality is where most of your hit percentage will come from. Don't worry too much about wasting money by keeping key ships on active fleet because once the dreadnought race starts everyone gets a hard reset (kind of like real life, I appreciate that about this game). To get more guns into your fleet quickly you can refit your starting 1889 ships with the +500 tons bulging and use that free space to add as many 6/5/4 inch guns as you can. Any new ship you lay down should be bristling with seconday and tertiary guns, pic related. I tend to scrap anything that's under construction in Jan 1890 and start with fresh, proper builds. Another thing that's not readily apparent to newer players is how important Belt Extended (BE) armor is. It covers several critical locations so its not a good place to skimp on armor to save weight. Ships with heavy BE armor are much tougher than ships without it, they take fewer engine disables and flooding hits. Once you get to about 1905 or so the build strategy starts to change rapidly but hopefully my advice here will get you there.
why can't you design your navy on the 1920 start? is it because you're post-dreadnought and well-designed ships will last you until the 40s?
>>1891752Nigga what? This game needs a PVP mode just to demonstrate how WRONG some people are.
>>1898445Thanks anon, I'll give this a try.This is a pretty fun game, even if it's too autistic for me.
>>1898505dont listen to that retard, if you want to win 1890 until the first proper dread comes around build a new CA that has 4x7, 18x6 14x5 and as much belt as you can fit on it while still doing 20 knotsthat will beat literally any ship you encounter, and if you have a couple of them you can sink 4-5 enemy battleships without much effort
>>1898494Yes, we could easily demonstrate how overpowered SAMs are. All we have right now is fleet exercises which are good but not perfect.
Is there anything more to battle than just adjusting the heading? I can do what I can to keep the smoke away, but I get the same result: the enemy seems to get equal hits to me.So it's a bit like we're just slugging it out. Not sure why we're even moving. Easier to park, face each other, and see who the RNG favours.I usually set my CL div to A.I. screen and control the B div myself. If I have a CA it's normally set to A.I. core or scout. Maybe I should manually control these? All of this is Rear-Admiral mode, should I do Captain? Will controlling torpedoes make a difference?Does the gameplay change much with more tech? DESU, there doesn't feel like a lot of strategy to this game. It would be okay if the battles were faster, but right now there's a battle every time I end turn and each battle takes forever, it's just boring.So, I feel like I'm missing something in these battles. Because right now they're not fun, I can't see any strategy, and they take too long.
>>1898831>Is there anything more to battle than just adjusting the heading?You can also adjust speed :^)>Not sure why we're even moving. Easier to park, face each other, and see who the RNG favours.If you just parked your battle line, the enemy would cut in front of you, concentrate all its fire on the closest ship, sink it, and then repeat. So you want to outmaneuver the enemy, and have as many of your ships firing on as few targets as possible. If an enemy ship falls out of line you want to finish it off, cutting it off from the main fleet, ordering a flotilla attack etc., and defend your own from the same tactics.Still, I'd say "slugging it out" and "RNG" are part of the core experience. Many shots are fired, very few hit, some of those may cause critical damage and decide a battle, it's just the nature of big gun battleship warfare. You need to optimize the odds in your favour.>I usually set my CL div to A.I. screen and control the B div myself.As far as I know ships set to Screen will stand between your battle line and the enemy, and that gets in the way of accurate fire. You should (not) see a penalty like "X ships fouling the range" in the chance to hit window. To place them out of the way but still close by you use the Support role.>f I have a CA it's normally set to A.I. core or scout. Maybe I should manually control these?In the pre-dreadnought era armoured cruisers are also second-rate battleships since medium caliber batteries still do most of the work. So having them as Core to your battleship division should work fine. Of course if you micromanage every single division and ship, you'll have an easier time (es. having two lines of ship firing at the enemy from both sides), but personally I play Admiral mode.
>>1898831The issue with giving general advice is that it can be extremely dependent upon the year and tech progress of your situation. In a pre-DD age I find CLs to be entirely viable as torpedo attack craft, combined with attempts to split enemy battle lines by constantly closing with their mid point followed by an aggressive turn inwards. But attempt that 5 years later and you'll get butchered on the approach. 10 years on and you won't even get to that range before you're crippled.Your issue could be any number of things, from range to ship design to tactics. But if 1890s combat isn't doing it for you, holding out for 1910s or later combat might be something you love. Or do a 1935 start and see how carrier battles suit you.
>>1898875>In a pre-DD age I find CLs to be entirely viable as torpedo attack craftHow do you get Torpedoes on CLs before unlocking Destroyers? That seems like an improbable tech variation.
>>1898887Submerged torpedo tubes are 1889 tech Anon
>>18988311890 is a shit start honestly, battles are just slogs until post-dreadnoughts start rolling out
>>1898889>>1898831just build bullshit 10,000 ton CAs with this configuration>>1898674and you can sink the entire world's pre-dreadnought navy in the 15 years from 1890 to 1905 then start losing because you don't actually know how to build a ship for modern gunnery
>>1898888Forgot about those. I wouldn't consider submerged tube CLs to be an effective torpedo force but I play admiral so nobody is an effective torpedo force.
>>1898871>>1898875So basically the battles are just an RNG simulator with bias based on what you've researched and built?I guess I can just auto-complete the battles, but then this game is really a very poor man's Paradox game.There's no appeal left in this game. Battles are boring and bereft of any tactics. The "strategy" boils down to "keep research up to date" and "build better ships".Help me understand. From what I can tell, this game isn't very strategic. There's lots of buttons and complexity, but it's all RNG. Wide as an ocean and as deep as a puddle.
>So basically the battles are just an RNG simulator>I guess I can just auto-complete the battlesAre you in the right thread?>The "strategy" boils down to "keep research up to date" and "build better ships".Whether you are or aren't in the right thread, are you implying that this isn't the best strategy in any applicable game?
>>1899039There are other games with better strategy. Keep in mind, strategy comes from making decisions, but there are so few meaningful decisions to make in RTW3.For example, in RTW3, technology is random. You don't get to make a choice on research. Sure, you set an expenditure, and low/medium/high, but there's no reason for you to manipulate anything, not really. Maybe spend a little more? But the low/medium/high is nonsense because there's no way to anticipate what you want to be ahead or behind in.That's because who you're at war with is RNG and you've got fuck all say. Considering the number of opponents, it's obvious from the outside that you'll be up against most of them eventually. So the only course is to set all tech to medium. Maybe adjust them here and there, but you'd likely get as much success changing nothing.Then there's the "strategic" campaign side of the game. No diplomacy. Just painful random events that have no narrative background (yet try to half-ass a vague narrative). Why not just have a popup that asks, "Increase tension, Increase budget and tension, Do nothing"?But these are basically RNG so another decision (i.e. what makes the strategy in a strategy game) is taken from you.I guess it's interesting to design your own ships, but at the end of the day, the tactics are so non-existent it doesn't seem to matter. You either have more guns and armour or you don't. Then end.And, as I already said, the guns and armour numbers are just increased randomly after clicking "next turn".Abilities of commanders is random, not influenced by combat.Let's contrast to something like HOI4. Far more decisions. You make all decisions, they're not taken away from you. There's lots of numbers that go up or down, just like RTW3, but you control them explicitly. The random events have an established narrative backdrop too.I know narrative isn't important in a pure strategy game, but RTW3 opened itself to criticism in this regard by having random events.
>>1899046In HOI4, you choose the abilities of commanders, they develop in directions according to their battles.You have far more tactical control, to the point where the macro-tactics blend smoothly into the strategic layer.I could go on but I won't for now. I really want to be wrong about RTW3. I really do. But I just don't see a good strategy game, I see an RNG where you click the heading of your units for no good reason.
>>1899039>Are you in the right thread?Probably not.
>>1899046Naval strategy is build strategy. The tactics you want to use should influence the ships you build and the ships you build will dictate what tactics you can employ effectively. Its a feedback loop with enough nuance to argue about all day. You obviously are not proficient enough with Rule the Waves to even know where depth lies in the game. If its not your jam that's fine, but calling RTW3 shallow just makes you look foolish.
For real though can you actually autocomplete battles? It might be fun to see how the AI employs my carefully crafted metafleets.
>>1899046Okay, but, if we are to believe that HoI4 is somehow better at these things, they are different games all together. You are not the omnipotent god of a nation looking at a list of decisions or focuses knowing full well the outcome of the path you've chosen. Let's not forget that HoI4 RNG in the Austria and Turkey paths was hated forever. In RTW, you are the commander of the navy, sorta like one of those portraits you assign to a pink stack in HoI4 then forget about. But, do not forget, getting Hortler in charge is not actually the goal, and nor do all strategy games need that level of interaction. Is Gary Grigsby's War in the East not a strategy game because you can't get Himmler in charge?Maybe, you should just go back to naval bombers and invading England in 1936.
>>1899049Explain where the strategy is. I want to be proven wrong.If my builds determine the tactics... Where are these tactics employed? I'm still just pointing my ships in directions.>>1899052You've not really addressed anything I said. Where's the strategy in random tech upgrades, building ships with whatever the latest tech is, and watching them circle each other on a battle map.Honestly. I feel like I'm not seeing something you all are. Give me an example of where a decision I make in RTW3 has an impact, and where I see that impact?
>>1899054What impact do you want to make? You manage a budget, design the ships, fight the battles directly, and even have choice on foreign policy via the events. How is that not making an impact? How is setting the budget, considering RNG, not making an impact on investment? How is designing the ships, fighting the battles with, at minimum, the same level of involvement as HoI land battles, not impactful? Since the tech tree in HoI4 is fixed, and the best answers are often already known, where's the strategy in that at all? You never get the chance to have an out of pocket advantage, for instance. Going back to my first question, what impact do you want to make?
>>1899067Oh, and the point I was, admittedly drunkenly, trying to make here >>1899052 was that HoI4 has a very different level of abstraction and focus, but has similar, if not greater, levels of nonsense. In fact, some ways, it's worse.
>>1899067>what impact do you want to haveMaybe impact was the wrong word.Maybe I should ask, how does focusing exclusively on torpedoes affect the game?How does building bigger armour, less guns impact the tactics?How about more smaller guns over less bigger guns?These are genuine questions I have when playing.
>>1899078Well, they have impact in battles, naturally. I've played,with the highest tech variance, and been surprised when my armor was better than everyone, but the Brits had 16" guns in 1912. You build the best ship you can with the tech you have. The 1890 start is the least that, since you can build a big CA and meme your way through. But if you play on, it gets a lot more difficult, for instance, in my last game, the question of dropping the armor I wanted vrs the guns I wanted and the timing of getting tonnage I want in service all came together to make an unsatisfactory ship. But, it was a ship that I had, I could have waited and had nothing.Mechanically, Major Tech focuses can get bogged down, but otherwise, you can have long-lance style torps or dive bombers before anyone else. If you have big armor, but can't close to a range your smaller guns hit hard, it doesn't matter. The AI will, somewhat incompetently, whittle your ship away. As the timeline goes on, the preponderance of guns shifts, a big 12500 CA that mopped up the world in 1895 won't be shit in 1905 when it's 3kn slower than anything and they have -1 vs -2 guns, hitting you 4000 yards further out.
>>1899078>>1899086And, even if this isn't your game, keep loving boats anon
>>1899086Thanks.I think this guy has explained the problems really well.https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198010497076/recommended/2008100/
>>1899051yeah, there's a button that autoruns the battle and doesn't pause for notifications. you could also set every division to AI control. i find that the AI is beyond retarded with my fleets compared to other AI fleets for some reason
>>1899096I think the Steam review is fair. I don't think it is fair to compare this game to HOI4. Two different types of game. I feel like this was meant to be more of a solitaire paper and pen style war game experience to some degree.
I think most of the criticism given is valid but not well-founded.RTW isn't a Paradox-style game nor does it want to be in my opinion. There is little narrative and that's a good thing; the game is already giving you a disproportionately large role in your country's decisions and fortunes. The tactical side is very far from being perfect, but what do you expect it to look like? Do you want to shoot the guns yourself like in World of Warships? What else is there to a naval battle except maneuvering and positioning?Technology being random is a good design decision. Certainly better than HOI4 research, what with timing inventions to the day, ignoring entire branches, juggling slots and so on. I won't say it's a great system, but it works, the point of tech progress isn't necessarily to let you rush whatever minmaxed build you want, but to force you to scrap obsolete ships and build new and better ones in a timely manner.The question of how your build strategy determines your tactics is a good one. The review in >>1899096 highlights the greatest problem with the game which is the lack of operational/organic decision making. But anon seems to be dissatisfied with the strategic-tactical side of things most of all.
>>1898003Torpedoes are most likely to hit if they are launched at 2 and at 10 o'clock to the enemy ship's movement direction. There's a The way the AI works is there's a random chance for them to decide to evade (turn away) if there's small enemy ship close to them, especially at 1-2 and 10-11 o clock, while if you play anything like me you're probably trying to chase enemy ships down, so enemy torpedoes have a much better firing solution than yours AND you're probably not doing a bunch of wiggles to dodge torpedoes so that's why the AI seems to get more torpedo hits.
>>1899078Let me relate a story. I played an 1890 game as China. If you haven't played them, it's basically "asian twink dominated by big white cocks simulator", as every European nation helps themselves to your colonies, threatening war if you object. By 1895 I was in a war against the United States, Germany, France, Britain and Russia, which all ended with Germany backing out then a white peace. But I had adopted a build strategy of small but fast torpedo armed cruisers. And when an American fleet of of modern predreads came to kill off my antique ironclads, those cruisers exploited the limited firing arcs and slow reload speed of large guns in this time period to close the distance, perform head on attacks and by the end of the battle I had sunk or crippled half the American battle line.Why was I able to achieve this disproportionate victory? It was because I had chosen to focus my research and construction efforts to enhance these capabilities in exchange for accepting that I'd never compete in a battleship arms race. I used tactics that meant that the role my ironclads held in battle was essentially to survive and allow the cruisers to do their job, allowing my forces to hit far, far above their own weight class. I identified the weaknesses of the ships of the period, I designed ships meant to exploit that weakness and then leveraged that strength against them. But less than a decade later it all fell apart. Fire control tech advanced, gun tech got better, and the 22kt cruisers that had laid the Americans low earlier were now horrifically vulnerable and ineffective. And having ignored the rest of my fleet in favor of this doctrine, I had nothing to compete with on the world stage .Can you appreciate the elements at play here? How tech, build strategy, personal doctrine and tactics all come together? Because to me it seems like you aren't grasping what the game is presenting to you, or know how to engage with it.
>>1899547Thanks. This helps me understand a bit more.I suppose my next question is how do you analyse the situation?One of the flaws I see in RTW3 is the information. I'm not a naval expert, so I'm not sure how to determine the firing arcs of guns, range etc, and where there's a weakness.Does the game present this somewhere, or is it something I need to know ahead of time?Your recounting sounds very interesting. Really cool. I'd like to hear more. I'm still playing the game, trying as Italy right now, but I continue to suffer constant defeat to the French and Germans. Basically everyone out-builds me, which I guess is my own fault for focusing on big battleships rather than lots of AC.
>>1899555Checked.>I'm not sure how to determine the firing arcs of guns, range etcIn the ship design screen, there's a button to display the firing arcs of turrets and torpedoes in the top left, and another to show "Gun data" above the main guns list. It has maximum range, penetration values for vertical and horizontal armor, and immunity range.In the battle screen the top bar has buttons to display gun and torpedo range of the selected ships as circles. In the bottom bar, you can see a "distance" value that measures how far the ship is from where you're pointing at on the map.>Really cool. I'd like to hear more.Same, sounds like an interesting campaign.
>>1899046>Does the game present this somewhere, or is it something I need to know ahead of time?The issue is that naval combat is often alot less intuitive than it appears. In the 1890s the sub-1% hitrate is pretty damn true to history, because they were firing iron-sighted muzzle loading cannons on unstabilized boats base on rangefinding of "looks about 2km or so". I went into the original RtW knowing about jack and shit about naval warfare, so my first campaign (also as Italy) had me creating absolutely retarded designs. In my mind this is a point in your experience with this game to treasure, because you're following in the historical footsteps of actual naval engineers, who had to figure this shit out as they went.>Basically everyone out-builds me, which I guess is my own fault for focusing on big battleships rather than lots of ACFinding the balance between building the best, building 'good enough' designs to shore up numbers and maintaining your fleet readiness is a challenge, without a doubt>I'd like to hear moreAsk and you shall receive, I've been running a RtW campaign on /k/ for the last year: https://desuarchive.org/k/search/subject/Plays%20Rule%20the%20Waves/>I suppose my next question is how do you analyse the situation?Let's look at just the battleships of our fleet in picrelated. Now, it's not marked on this picture but Battle Division 1 is armed with 14" main guns, all the other BDs have 16" guns. BD 2 and 3 are both made up of fast battleships, so they operate together great - same speed, same gun size. But while 1 and 4 share the same slow speed, they don't share a gun caliber. If I keep them together, then either I waste much of the extra range of the 16" gun ships, or the 14" guns are out of range. But if I also can't just have BD4 operate with the fast divisions, because then the tonnage they devote to large engines is wasted. Despite having 8 battleships, half of them are practically incompatible with one another on the battlefield.
>>1899572>>1899585Thank you both.In regards to the arc. How can I use this to my advantage? I've putting guns on the fire and aft centreline, and that appears to cover all angles. It's a little unclear at what distance the arcs cross, but eyeballing it doesn't seem like it's very far, at least not far enough to matter.And then subsequent is how to determine arc of enemy boats, and how I might use this to my advantage?For the armour and gun penetration values. Am I reading it correctly, that at range 1000 yards my gun can penetrate 5 inches of armour? If that's right... Seems like in the early years most ships are immune to most guns?I've some other questions. Torpedoes never fire. I've gotten a few upgraded torpedo tech but the AI doesn't like using them I guess? I'm within range and stay within range for a long time, but none launch.With the armour and gun ranges and penetration etc. Have I got this right? I want to stay outside the range where their guns can hurt me, but within the range where my guns can hurt them. Therefore... My guns, sights, and armour should be the focus of my research?I also unlocked destroyers, but they're capped at 300 weight. I built eight, lots of torpedoes, few small calibre guns, but they seem totally ineffective. They're great at being sunk. Am I missing their value here? May be related to the next question.Should I be Admiral, Rear Admiral, or Captain? Admiral seems more my speed, but I feel like I might be missing out on the applying the ships the right way.Final question, as Italy, I have everything stationed in Mediterranean. Yet, when battles start, sometimes I just have a couple CL and DD involved. Where's my battleships? I feel a bit powerless to be able to launch sorties or intercept reports etc.Sorry for all the questions. Like I say, I really want to like this game and am trying to play it for what it is. But a lot of it is a little impenetrable.
>>1899585Thanks for linking to the campaign. Good info.
>>1899611>firing arcsEarly on you should just think about crossing the enemy T so you fire broadsides with all your guns while the enemy can only respond with their fore or aft guns. You can also zoom in on enemy ships to see which of their guns are disabled to decide whether you want to be on their front, rear, left, or right.When superimposed guns and triple turrets get unlocked you'll also have to decide whether you want more guns firing forward or backwards or just concentrating on maximizing broadsides, because the weights of some turrets are different and it depends on if you expect the ship to be mostly chasing the enemy, running from the enemy, or shooting broadsides.>penetrationEarly on penetration is low so some people like to adjust their ammo doctrine to use HE shells to set heavily armored ships on fire. Also, most battles in game will be cruiser actions and 5in penetration penetrates most cruiser armor. By the 1910s however AP penetration increases rapidly though so your battleships start staying further and further away.>torpedoesEarly on torpedoes are so slow and short ranged that the only times they hit anything are when the enemy is already crippled or you're in knife-fighting range, traveling in a straight line. Later on they're much more effective. Also pls read this >>1899423>destroyersEarly destroyers are cheap and can be useful for soaking up enemy torpedoes, making enemy stay away, or for trade protection. You can build bigger ones later.>Admiral, Rear Admiral, or CaptainI play Admiral because I'm lazy. Some people like the other modes but it's a LOT of clicking.> Where's my battleships?Most naval actions irl are skirmishes and large fleet battles are rare. You can go into settings and check "large battle preference" if you want though. I don't recommend it because it's much easier to whittling down enemy cruisers or lone battleships in them and you can get a bunch of fleet battles back to back while your ships are repairing.
Something Rear Admiral or Captain mode can do is to drive destroyers up to the enemy battleship line to make the AI scared of torpedoes so they'll turn away. This will make fewer of their guns point at your battleship line, giving you some extra ticks of advantage. Also in convoy raiding battles you can split your forces in 2, one to engage the enemy escorts away and a few extra ships to destroy the convoy.Or in fleet battles you can detach a few ships to take out a slow, damaged enemy battleship while the rest of the fleet continues to fight it out.There's lots of things you can do!
>>1899611>In regards to the arc. How can I use this to my advantage?So, for the typical predreadnought battleship (pair of big guns fore and aft, with various secondaries), yes all angles are covered by at least one pair. But what needs considering is the effectiveness of the ships weapons on a given angle. If a predread is head on to another ship, that's only two guns, plus maybe a secondary or two (the more broadside you are the more sec guns can fire). But those big guns are only able to fire once every couple minutes, and when you consider how ranging worked back then (a pair of binoculars, looking for shell splashes and adjusting for that), you can quickly see why long broadside duels became the norm.>Seems like in the early years most ships are immune to most guns?Arms and armor have been in a constant race against one another for all of history, and in the 1890s armor was winning. Remember at this time unarmored ships with sailing rigs were still a thing>Torpedoes never fireTorps can be difficult to understand in early years, because I promise you you're overestimating your tech with them. The first torpedo tech (which usually unlocks mid 1890s) is this>Torpedoes now have range@speed 600@24/1600@14What that means is that your torpedoes have two firing settings: either they can go 600 yards at a speed of 24kts, or 1,600 yards at 14kts. The blue ring you see on the battle map (if you have it enabled), is the long and slow setting. At 14kts, nearly any undamaged ship is just going to outrun the thing. And a ship moving at 18kts will move father in a turn than the 600 yard range can travel at fast speed. Short version: for early torpedoes you NEED to be out in front to get a viable launch solution
>>1899611>Am I missing [destroyers] value here?They're fragile, without a doubt, but what it means is they need to be very carefully handled. The average battleship will easily have a dozen smallish caliber guns that are designed to fuck them ready to go, so attempting to charge them in is suicide. Keep them sheltered behind your main force waiting for an enemy ship to become a straggler, or have them head out far ahead of the fight then turn to charge head on, exploiting the lack of fore/aft secondary guns on ships. Whatever you do, minimize the time they spending catching flak.Another element that you probably are missing, understandably so, is how long it takes ship to get up to speed. Even your DDs are three hundred TONs of steel pushing through water, it can take 20-30 minutes for them to work up to their max speed, since it's not just pressing down on a gas pedal; you have to get the coal fired burners going hotter to build up the pressure. Worse still, the smaller the ship the more it's affected by sea state, so in a storm those DDs may actually be slower than a battleship.>Should I be Admiral, Rear Admiral, or Captain?Frankly, I always play Captain as that lets you micro your stuff. I just play with a few houserules like not borg-minding all my ships to a enemy in the dead of night in 1892, since that's entirely unrealistic.>Where's my battleships?While history loves the big battleships, most of the fighting was done by smaller units. Battleships were massive pains in the ass to supply and keep running. A coal fired ship took ages to fill up, so any ship that pulled into port could spend hours or days resupplying. If you want big battles, there is a setting that will cause the battle generator to favor them in the settings menu.
Also, to address some things you said earlier about there being no strategy, let's use the early dreadnought age as an example.In picrelated we have a typical timeline of how your battleships might evolve. You start with a typical predread: it's go a couple big turrets and some smaller guns to shoot at smaller boats. Then you decide to make those smaller guns bigger, making what's commonly called a semi-dreadnought. You get the tech more main battery wing turrets, and slap a couple of those on your next design. Then you unlock '3 centerline turrets', so actually lets do another design with just the centerline ones so we can eliminate a turret and invest that weight in other stuff. Or wait, maybe we do the wing turrets and the 3 centerlines at the same time. Oh what's that - you just got cross-deck fire, now you can have the wing turrets rotate all the way around and fire across the deck to the other side of the ship, let's make sure that's on the next design! Actually, now we can put all 4 on the centerline so we'll make the next ship that way. And then you get the research for mounting the turrets superimposed so they can fire over the one in front of them. All good, right? Each design of ours was better and more efficient than the last, what's the problem? Well, all of those techs that I mentioned unlock under standard game rules in about 5 years. Now consider that it usually takes about 3 years to build a battleship. Are you going to be building new battleships every 8-10 months? No way your budget can handle that. If you lay down a predread and get 3+ centerline turrets, are you going to complete that "obsolete-before-it-finished-building" predread, or scrap it and use the money to build a modern design? What if you'd like to have cross-deck firing wing turrets, but your scientists keep having trouble with it and it gets delayed? What if you tell yourself you're going to wait, then war comes against France, who didn't delay and has semidreads and you don't?
>>1899656And all of this is just considering turret placement tech. Consider how your choice of when/what to build might be impacted by the sudden arrival of triple turrets, or different engines, or a new gun caliber. What's better: having eight 12" guns or six 14" guns? Or should you just jack up the tonnage and go with eight 14" guns? Do you want your ships to be able to outrun the enemy, if so what are you willing to sacrifice for that? How well armored are you going, and are you focusing just on the vitals or do you want to try and preserve more of the ship? Is choosing speed-focused worth the increased chance of an engine breakdown to shave off the weight needed to get those 6" secondary guns mounted?If you check out any of the RtW communities, you'll find that apart from a few autists most people agree there isn't any "correct" answer. It's all highly dependent upon your individual situation and what you want to try and focus on.
Finally, read the manual
>>1899633>>1899638>>1899643>>1899646>>1899656>>1899662Thank you all. This opens up the game a bit more for me.The RNG nature is still a bit of a disappointment. But I see this isn't supposed to be a game where you decide who to go to war to etc (though odd you can choose invasion targets). I'll play it for what it is.>>1899666Checked and yes, I'll read it again
