Rule the Waves 3 - 1890s Germany - 17 - Making Divisions, the Good Kind

[@aaronvogel6951]

Love to use the Division editor to move large chucks of naval power in just 3 clicks. Kinda wish the utility ships could be assigned to them as well

[@locarnus255]

The initial fleet generation also seems to be weighted. Some established nations at certain start dates seem to begin with eg fleet tonnage = 2*budget, while other "naval newcomers" start with roughly fleet tonnage = 0.5*budget. The player usually starts with newcomer naval nations and the player tendency to build quality ships just makes it harder to catch up in terms of fleet tonnage. Unfortunately treaty tonnage is strictly dependent on existing tonnage, so scrapping old ships instead of leaving them in mothball can really hurt, if you decide to play with treaties.

[@cameronmcallister7606]

The UI is a part of the game, but I feel as though the game would be made better by even just updating the UI. It doesn't need to be 4K, top tier AAA graphics, but making it more usable would improve the game by leagues. Even if the UI is a tool to lead to strategic battles, it needs to be functional.

[@Trifler500]

Main things for me would be UI Scaling and a proper Dark Mode. The ability to change the colors is nice, but 95% of the color combos leave the text unreadable.

[@KerbalRocketry]

it doesn't need to be prettier, it just needs to be more usable. often i've seen complaints about it combine the two, and other than where aesthetics makes it harder to read text it shouldn't be "fixed" just for eye candy

[@HalIOfFamer]

Literally leave it be just allow us to edit font even in minor ways and make proper dark mode and I am buying this game insta instead of pirating it as I do now.

[@Sputnikcosmonot]

I think the German cruiser force in the south Atlantic during WW1 had 5 cruisers in it. If divisions are analogous to task forces ish, or they combine into task forces, then I think 6 is a reasonable and realistic number.

[@chrisbeer5685]

Spacious accommodation is needed on the late game, because you'll eventually get an event that makes normal accommodation have similar penalties to cramped. Not sure if there's any advantage to using it before that though.

[@ralgith]

You don't need to check the validity for number of secondaries anymore. There is a "Topside load" area at the bottom that tells you what you have and what is available.

[@TortugaPower]

Thanks Ralgith! I'll adapt to using that henceforth.

[@nomar5spaulding]

The US Standard battleships were all built leading up to and during WWI. The first class of the US Standards was the Nevada Class and the Colorado Class were the last Standards. The Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and Tennessee Classes made up the rest of the Standard battleships. They were all designed with the same speed of 21 knots, with a uniform tactical diameter (this is a particular measure of a ship's turning circle, and the idea was that a uniform tactical diameter would make fleet wide manuevering in battle more more simple). The other main feature of the Standards was their armament, which was composed of 2 turrets forward and aft, and with the exception of the Colorado Class, mounting 14 inch guns (the 3 Colorados had 16" guns). Though the various 14" gun Standards carried different guns and different numbers of barrells, all the standards had the same turret layout. All the standards also used the "all or nothing" armor scheme. Most of the older US Navy dreadnought battleships had the same fleet speed of 21 knots, but ships like the New York Class are not part of the Standards because they do not share the same configuation of main battery guns, and since they weren't specifically designed with this in mind, I would expect their tactical diameters were also different.

[@Voron_Aggrav]

There's also the consideration of the Panama canal in the US Designs, as they definitely needed to be thin enough to fit through there as they had Two oceans to cover, and being able to Not have to go around Chile is a massive advantage in deployment speed

[@TortugaPower]

Thanks for the info! I didn't know about the standard turning radius (but it follows logically)

[@nomar5spaulding]

@TortugaPower Yeah that part is less well known, but if you look at things like the German battleships of WWI they were all slightly different speeds and had way different handling characteristics (particularly the early ships would lose a ton of speed in turns, like the Nassaus at flank speed would drop too like 14 knots in hard turns). It would make cohesive fleet maneuvers much more difficult.

[@Trifler500]

Considering that you only want to use your destroyers in your home territory anyway, it makes more sense to make destroyers Medium range with Cramped Accommodations than to use Short range with Normal Accommodations. Then they can reach everywhere within the home territory.

[@locarnus255]

Your focus on early coastal submarines is now also a major reason why you are slow to catch up in terms of fleet tonnage. Before WW I they historically could make sense in a very confined area (straits) with nearby bases, but not much else. In game, they are even more wasteful, since you can not put them in mothball status and they do not count anything for fleet tonnage. 80 coastal subs cost 1600 in maintenance per month! Regardless of war or peace. That is roughly the same maintenance as 15 of your Bs on reserve fleet (and about 22 Bs if half of them are mothballed).

[@FrostyThundertrod]

Did you check the AI advantage option at the start? Reducing both build and maintenance cost for the AI will have a stacking effect

[@TortugaPower]

I did not check the AI advantage (as I recall). However, maybe it's bugged and being turned on anyway

[@Trifler500]

You can immediately send the Lauterungs for a refit in the USA to get those QL 0 12" guns, so it's not all bad that they got them.

[@TortugaPower]

Unfortunately, I'll have to pay for it as a normal upgrade refit.

[@Trifler500]

@@TortugaPower That's totally not a problem. There are only four on these ships, after all.

[@jeromechan4076]

The Question is if you push for the first dreadnought do you have enough technologies to compensate for your existing poor gun quality?

[@Trifler500]

Spacious Accommodations does absolutely nothing until 1955, at which point you get a penalty for using Normal and Spacious allows you to avoid said penalty. IMO it would be nice if it did *something*, but alas.

[@1stpogo]

Benjamin Magnus said during his stream today there seems to be a bug for main gun research. He was into the mid 1930's before getting anything better than 12" guns

[@nomar5spaulding]

I had 13" guns as Germany in like 1903. They were pretty crappy, and the best guns I have are I think Q1 3" guns, Q0 6" guns, and Q-1 12" guns, but you can research guns larger than 12" way before that.

[@VeganerHippie]

Im in the 1920s and i have 16 inch Guns. How high is his tech randomisation?

[@Kalalification]

Heya Tortuga, I like that this was a chill video, nice to have a break from the frenetic pace of these wars. I also think that the 1890 start is bugged, especially for naval gun research, and that the AI budgets don't add up. Shame, because I particularly enjoy the evolution of technology across this game, it'd be nice if it was just a fair shake (with the accepted loss of VPs for Captain's Mode).

[@TortugaPower]

My perspective on this comes from experience, so hopefully the dev team is able to either better explain this (if it's intended), or fix it (if it's bugged)

[@Cryshalo]

Feels like the dam broke for the Research finally which is great to see.

[@ralgith]

British destroyers in WWII were often grouped in 6, with a leader (division CO) and a half leader (division XO) each supported by 2 others to make the six total ships.

[@leandrorabosto5800]

Tortuga, remember to refit your ships whit beter fire control

[@Starfistfc]

The UI would be so easy to upgrade...ridiculous imo its not

[@nomar5spaulding]

I've been playing as 1890 start Germany and I did a bit of a stupid yesterday. I was starting to get pretty high tensions with some countries and I got the pop up that lets you suggest to the Head of State that you form an alliance. I jumped on it and allied with the USA to help stay out of wars. Problem with that brilliant plan was that the US was at war with Spain. So yeah instantly at war with Spain. Brilliant. The war is, at least, going pretty well. The only real thorn in my side are Spain's submarines. I don't know how many they have, but they've killed one of my battleships (one of my oldest ones, but still I don't have many and I wanted that ship for stuff). Submarine torpedoes after battles have also killed 1 light cruiser and I think maybe 1 armored cruiser. I know 1 armored cruiser got torpedoed by a sub after battle and only *barely* survived. They have also killed 2 of my battleships in battle (the two that I lost, one was another of that same class of 3 oldest ones, but the other was one of my 4 newest, best battleships). Other than that I've only lost I think 2 500ton real weak destroyers, and maybe 1 armored cruiser? Meanwhile I've sunk like 10 destroyers, 3 or 4 light cruisers, like 6 armored cruisers and like 8 battleships or something. Now my steam cloud files won't sync back up, so I can't even go on to look at the results. It's been kind of a long time since I built any new ships. Right before the war started, I was doing a huge rebuild program of almost everything in my fleet, so very shortly I'm going to start building a whole new generation of CLs and CAs, plus my first 2 Dreadnought Battleships are under contruction right now. The British have 2 in service and 5 more building, but no one else has any in service yet, and are only building 1.

[@nomar5spaulding]

I've lost 2 battleships sunk in battle, 1 torpedoed and sank after battle by a submarine. I've lost one CA in battle, 1 CL in battle, and 2 DDs in battle. Spain has lost 7 battleships in battle, 6 CAs, and 10 destroyers. Not a bad score. I realize one of the CLs I thought I killed was actually a DD, but at the time it wasn't identified yet in a night battle and it pretty much instantly ate a huge blast of gunfire from like 4 of my CAs and pretty much sank immediately.

[@FritiFirecaster]

Destroyers - if he likes the new 600Ton 27 knot/medium range destroyer as his standard destroyer, what's preventing him from removing the torpedo tubes in a refit of his other existing destroyers and reclassifying them as Corvettes? Might save time and money that way and clean up/standardize his fleet some.

[@FritiFirecaster]

... May be a silly question, but why is he assigning ships to stations instead of letting Foreign Service status to them handle it in general and only assigning squadrons/ships specifically to achieve a specific goal? Seems like a lot of micro he could avoid unless I'm completely misunderstanding what Foreign Service status does?

[@jaywerner8415]

OOOO quality ZERO 9 inch guns. Time to build some more Heavy Cruisers!

[@baring9152]

destroyer divisions is 6 max. every other type is 5 max.

[@Trifler500]

In your position I would set all research categories to Low and then set Naval Guns on High, until you get -1 quality guns.

[@nichtvorhanden5928]

He needs long barrels ( a turret research first)

[@thewolfpack5290]

The UI is terrible, no one can argue that. And yet... did you give the current version of Ultimate Admiral Dreadnought a look... kinda sad how it turned out. Any other opinions here or did most already forget it?

[@TortugaPower]

I gave up trying UA:D, as every time I loaded it up, I became frustrated by what I had heard reported as progress vs the actual state of the game, and the campaign never seemed done to me.

[@explorminate]

@@TortugaPower I have a lot of fun with it.

[@thewolfpack5290]

@@explorminate ohh,

[@jaywerner8415]

I figure your next couple batches of Battleships should be BBs that can ACTUALLY MOVE out of Europe, at least try too. Send a FEW to Asia to defend Vs Japan and Russia, send a FEW to the Baltic to bulk up the defense. Might want to keep playing around with the DIV Editor to see what you CAN and CAN'T do with it. (would make a grate tutorial video too) Like I get the feeling your doing something wrong with the Divisions, its CLEARLY meant for when you have a MASSIVE fleet and when you divide your fleet into Task Forces/Divisions/Battlegroups. Certain ships have certain roles they can play (probably for AI purposes).

[@demonikus]

I suggest you to get most of the researches to low, you would also see that research budget is tied to years budget, so you might want to increase your budget as much as you can, and try to delay ani incoming wars, because the higher the tensions the bigger budget you will be able to get.

[@ARCtrooper8248]

USA baby, just right for your shipbuilding needs.

[@Trifler500]

I disagree that casemates are less accurate in this game in normal weather. They might have somewhat smaller firing arcs (no way to display them), but the accuracy within those arcs should be, and indeed seems to be, the same. I use casemates on a regular basis. Come to think of it, I don't know of any game that gives casemates an accuracy penalty under normal conditions.

[@TortugaPower]

Casemates are supposed to have worse accuracy in poor weather conditions, from what I recall

[@Trifler500]

@@TortugaPower I agree they do in poor weather. You said in the video that you thought they also have an accuracy penalty in normal weather. I was disagreeing that they have poorer accuracy in normal weather.

[@pterrok5495]

Pretty sure you could have left the fore and aft as double 12"; you just would have had to set all the wing turrets to ONE 12" gun. So a six gun broadside from the USA at 12" quality 0.

[@TortugaPower]

Ah, cool! I'll try it, it sounds plausible.

[@Trifler500]

I replied to your replies. Posting this since I've been told by several people that YT doesn't notify you of replies.