Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Patrick Hunt]

That Master and Veteran will also be needed for the projects that team is working on.

Have some faith UR the teams will be fine as they are.

[3_14159]

@UR: I think that's a misunderstanding. I believe that a specialized team's best usage is to do a project within their speciality. Since they pause for a year while specializing, we need to only add specialities where that's necessary. Those are, I believe, guns, navy and aerospace.
Additionally, what are the effects of specializing? Nadaka's game had, if I remember this correctly, those engineers functioning as a level higher when designing for specialities.
I want one team to design aircraft and related, one team to design guns and related and one to design ships and related. The rest are completely free to choose.
Changing the master and veteran for a novice does sound good, however.
On second thought, I'd add a specialization for either your delta or eta team, but otherwise, sounds good.
That is assuming, of course, that specialization works per engineer and not per team.

@ebbor: Rules question: What does specializing do to the engineers?

[10ebbor10]

It is too slow and should be on a schedule with votes after the designs to decrease the chance of the first suggestions getting the most votes

Separating votes from designs would slow the game even more.  In order to be fair, it means leaving at least 2 24 hour periods, one for designs, and one for votes.

What should change? In a war yearly turns are just a bit too... slow. No military react like that! The war should move on whether we are fighting in the war room or not.
What do you think of the battle pace* A bit faster. less than 50 planes down for a year is very sporadic fighting I suppose.

That's the problem I was worrying most about. Effectively, the war progresses at month intervals, while the game processes at yearly intervals. The results are a long and drawn out war. It's a situation I'll try to resolve, though it'll still be unnaturally slow.

I'm thinking the main point of the war for them is for those islands, so they are not cut into two halves. Once they got their wargoal they are trying to ramp up our war exhaustion. Lets see what kind of Casus Belli they are having.

Our former Monarchs have fled to Moldavia*, because they're related to their monarchy. There's henceforth a difference between the Moldavian, and the Royal interests. Royals want to restore themselves to the throne, but will settle for the island. Moldavians were primarly interested in those small island, but will take Crow's Isle if they can.

*It's also were most of our former fleet fled too.

The Shark, for example, has a Production time of 1 month. Does that mean if we had a fifty ton dock, we could produce one per month, and a hundred ton dock would produce two (parallel) per month? With the drydock producing half the amount?
That would mean that our dockyard could produce nearly three hundred per year if we had the capacity for it.

Idea: Let's do a secondary version of the shark with no 40mm gun and if necessary no MGs. Their anti-air power will be nullified, but we can build much much more and the new version would be faster, too.

Yup.

And the reason you didn't do that automatically was because I didn't think of it. On a side note, torpedo's, while not counted, are not infinite either.

I would even think about making the shark with wood, while trying to improve the engine reliability, as well as removing the naval gun component. Hell they are our equivalent to PT boats, designed to be produced on the fly quickly in a war. All they need to do is to throw torps, retreat, rinse and repeat. Why complicate it?

Only question: Old torpedo or new one? The old one has a higher range meaning more survivability (4600m vs 2000m) and higher speed, while the new one probably has higher firepower and less weight.
My tendency is to use the old one due to the higher speed, meaning easier hitting faster targets from further away.

The old one's warhead weights as much as the new one. It still has the advantage in explosiveness; though the new one is much more efficient.

Don't think a sub can sport snorkels that long to be honest.

It can't. Snorts are only used at periscope depth, and almost always while going very slow, or being immobile. High speeds can cause the snort to collapse under the drag. Additionally, snorts were not in widespread use until mid WWII, because before a surfaced submarine was both faster and harder to detect. Radar was not widespread, while sonar was. Additionally, a surfaced submarine could use radio and radar easily.

I doubt that we can train large teams, it sounds kinda unbalancing. Even if we can, sending all our best engineers to train for one year, when we are at war... doesn't make me happy

Our teams are not fine, if we'll send gamma to train now, we'll have only four teams, one of them are 100% novices

Also, aeroteam lacks experience and has too many novices... expect flaws in designs. Can we afford this now?

You can train large teams at once. However, what you can't do, is split 2 teams up, or merge teams of different specializations. I don't want to track the specialization status of each engineer.

Note: I'm however contemplating to change the training system. Rather than training teams, you train master engineers/ or specialists.

@ebbor: Rules question: What does specializing do to the engineers?

It gives them a bonus for projects relevant to their specialization.

[3_14159]

Thanks for all of the answers!

First, game-related:
Proposal of Engineer organization (Team names completely new!)
A: Large, unspecialized team: Non-aircraft large projects
B (currently delta): Large, aircraft-specialized team: Design aircraft.
C: Medium, Gun-specialized team (currently gamma): Design guns.
And two 5-engineer teams doing medium projects.


And now, game mechanics related:
- Separating the votes would mean a slow-down of the game. Currently, I believe there is no significant vote disparity that requires fixing.
- The pacing is a problem with the game type itself, I guess. Doing a smaller-scale resolution means our researches are basically useless - for example, all of WW2 would fit inside 5-7turns (depending on your definition of WW2). The current situation results in a war with extremely fast advancement, but less fighting. Turning this into, for example, month-long blocks with more prototypes would alleviate the issue, but would slow the real-world pacing far more.
- On the 'torpedoes cost something, too' front. I was thinking a bit about game mechanics, and the way I would handle this would be to assign a required 'supply' or maintenance cost for any system. For example, this would represent the ammunition for a rifle, or the diesel consumed, or the maintenance parts to keep it operational. Factories would be required to produce said points. This would, of course, be another increase in complexity and upkeep for you.

[Aseaheru]

On the new "counter proposal", A new sub is not a counter proposal, it is a design. My idea behind the proposal is that the Cod here is based off of a real live variant of an attack sub. I proposed the modifications due to the idea that deckguns are not that hard to install (atleast small ones, 4-6 pounders) and the ship is wide enough to add additional tubes simply.
And with all that extra space formerly used for cargo, thats plenty of space to put the new stored needed.

[3_14159]

On that I disagree.
A proposal can be a supportive or a counter proposal. I chose counter-proposal because I did not want the original one, and it is in fact another proposal than number 2.
Basically, the difference is: 2 says we take the old submarine and modify it, 2.1 says we develop a new one.

Why do I want to develop a new one? Currently, we have the Cod transport submarine. It's pretty well designed, but is slow, cannot really dive (30m?) and has a large cargo area. This means it looks something like that:
<torp|cargo1|bridge|cargo2|engine>8
Modifying it by adding a deck cannon and more torpedo tubes still means it has the disadvantages of lacking dive and the large cargo area (which can be filled with torpedoes, true). We cannot just delete the room from the finished design.
I therefore believe that a custom-built attack submarine will be much more efficient that a Cod variant.

I see it this way: Attacking single merchantmen is not their main purpose (which is what they'd need a deck gun for), but attacking convoys or warships and then evading attack. They need to dive deep for that, though.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

What I agree is that deck gun is useless in against with that kind of enemy, but cod design is fixable by converting part of cargo space into a new engine room and\or fuel tanks, replace petrol engines with normal diesel and replace the second part of cargo space with mines, mining submarines can do some funny tricks

[Aseaheru]

I sorta saw the cod as
power-crew-bridge-cargo-morecargo-torpedos

Also, we have plans to replace the power plants already. The thing should be wide enough and high enough for more tubes, and that cargo space will do nicely for more crew, stores and armament. As for c=armor, it is a relativity simple matter to choose what material the outer hull is made outof, or to go with the resilient trait we have the option for now. You also must think that as it is now we have a grand total of twenty personnel on it, and that is why i am not in favor of having it hunt merchants on the way back from the isle.

[3_14159]

Yes, the cod is changeable to a better attack sub design - but I think the better way would be to build a new one. Why?

The main question is what to use the cargo area for (as wasting it is pretty useless), and if we can increase the diving depth.
First, cargo area. I've heard the following ideas for now: Engine room/fuel tanks, mines, crew, armament.
Engine room/fuel tanks: This is nice, but we currently have a hundred and twenty tons of batteries already. So, it's either 30-something hours at current speed or decreasing that time and increasing speed. Advantage for the cod.
Mines: We need a mining sub  (or it would be practical, at least), but this takes capacities away from the main role of attacking shipping, both due to lost tonnage and lost time when laying mines or hunting ships.
Crew: What for? Unless we try to board the enemy ships (bad idea, more on that later), we don't need it.
Armament: More torpedoes are nice, true, considering we currently have only ten available total. But somewhen we must choose between attacking better, or doing several worse attacks between resupplying.

Boarding: It's a bad idea, in short. Long version: Encountering a lone merchant is basically the only way this works (armed escort ships means we can't). This then requires the sub to close in to the target, get to the surface and send men on there.
If the other ship is escorted, you lose the sub. If it calls for support and support is closeby, you lose the sub. If it's called but further away, they board the ship right back. So it's fairly unlikely that ship's going to make it back to us.
Hunting merchantmen means torpedoeing them.

Armour: I think the problem with armour is that it requires a resilient hull and structural support inside. This could prove more complicated.

[Aseaheru]

A crew of twenty, with two of them officers, is not enough for a warship. You would need atleast forty for a vessel of that size, along with there gear, food, etc. Boarding will still be out, but with a larger crew firing torpedoes (I think that six men per tube is not unheard of) would be faster. So part of the cargo hold(perhaps most of it) would have to be for crew.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Twenty is enough for 300t something sub, more crew is not needed.

Cod is a very odd design with it's huge batteries, but we need better engines for surfaced speed...

[Aseaheru]

We are working on that.

And we are gonna need more officers atleast.

[evilcherry]

I guess the Cod can, in a pinch, be converted to a minelayer. But I don't think (or want) it would be anywhere near a priority.

We can draw examples from RL designs. Both WW1 and WW2 German U-Boats used some form of naval cannon, with WWII ones armed with the almost ubiquitous 88mm.
Aside for AA use they are also projecting a reasonable threat for commercial shipping to surrender before a shot is fired.


p.s. I still want some kind of resolution on the Naval Aviation proposal.

[Aseaheru]

**s could take out tanks, so I can see why merchants would shit there pants at one.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

We need subs not for commerce raiding but for hunting enemy cruisers\destroyers... whatever deck guns will not be useful at, as soon as sub surface near an enemy vessel to engage in gunfight it's dead

Designs should come from our strategical goals, IMO our current strategical goals are

1) Maintain supply of our island
2) Reduce enemy navy (especially ships that can shore bombard) or at least make them scared enough to not enter our waters ,
3) Provide our land forces with some kind of land combat advantage when enemy starts the landings
4) Win the skies

I fail to see, how proposed changes of cod help can with the goals...

BTW you know what I hate most? When people propose design, it get voted, but no one ever tries to actually start producing them, SMG is a good example here... It can provide additional advantage to our land forces but doubt it will be produced

PS. 88mm guns on U-boats have nothing to do with 88mm flak, and had zero AA role