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[NickAragua]

Sounds like a shipyard expansion is a good call right now during a relatively peaceful period.

Not sure how I feel about destroyers vs subs. Since we're talking about WWI era subs, their effectiveness was... somewhat marginal from what I recall. We're not talking nuclear powered modern subs or even U-Boats here. But it'll still be useful to have some. So I'd say go for the subs.

[Karlito]

Shipyard expansion only costs one payment $2000, much less than a battleship. Always be expanding the dockyards. Also the Trident hurts me. I would recommend not using quality -2 main guns, and also increasing the number of secondary guns.

[Knave]

Bonjour mes ami!

I will also vote for shipyard expansion.
Do we have any good barrels that are better than than -2?
leaning towards coastal subs at the moment, but don't have strong feelings either way at the moment.

Onwards towards war with Italy!

[EuchreJack]

Shipyard expansion only costs one payment $2000, much less than a battleship. Always be expanding the dockyards. Also the Trident hurts me. I would recommend not using quality -2 main guns, and also increasing the number of secondary guns.

While I agree, the ship has been laid down, so might as well build a few of the lemons while we wait for better tech.  One hopes not to use their semi-dreadnoughts anyways.  And keep that shipyard expanding whenever you can spare the $2000.

I was reading about Coastal Defense vessels, and you should consider building some for the upcoming war with Italy.  Their navy is the same size as ours, yet they can pool it all into the Mediterranean whereas France has to split their navy between that and the Northern Atlantic.  We need something to hold the Atlantic while the good ships blockade the Italians.  Try one of our current Armored Cruisers with a Short range engine, priority speed, maybe strip out a couple secondary guns.  Should be a good deal cheaper.

[Hanzoku]

Shipyard Expansion - as others have pointed out, its considerably less expensive then you thought. Shipyard expansion should ALWAYS be running.

Small ship budget - Build some submarines, its nice to have that advantage over other nations.

Armored Cruisers - No. Why waste budget on floating targets? build more battleships or light cruisers instead.

@EuchreJack: I normally just detail destroyers to coastal defense duty. In the first game, it was entirely based on number of vessels, not on tonnage/ability, and it was normally a flat 20 vessels give or take. Later in the game I had a class of minesweeper/layers for the same duty.

[King Zultan]

I agree with everyone else about expanding the shipyard.

And I say build some submarines.

[Fishbreath]

A brief addendum, since tensions are running high with Italy: what should our diplomatic strategy be? And, if it comes to that, what should our war strategy be?

On diplomacy: are we ready for a war with Italy? If so, should we aim for starting one soon? We have an advantage in naval tonnage right now, but some of ours is tied up waving the flag in overseas possessions, and the Italians are building more. In another two years, we'll be much closer on battleship tonnage, but the Italians likely will have launched a bunch more armored cruisers. (Granted, armored cruisers that aren't appreciably faster than our battleships, and apt to get wrecked if they show up to a fight with the battleships.)

If we decide to avoid war, should we accept budget cuts to do so, or aim to limit tensions only insofar as it doesn't hurt our future plans?

On war: should war break out, how should we approach it? We'll probably have some submarines at some point. Should we push commerce raiding? We have a lot of fast cruisers and, for that matter, fast battleships. Commerce raiding leads to more single-ship and small-group actions, where our superior individual designs will weigh more heavily, as well as providing victory points in its own right. Or, should we aim for a fleet battle? Our ships are fast, and since our battle line has heavy secondary batteries, we can control the range and fight from outside the enemy's effective secondary battery range while our own can still be brought to bear.

[EuchreJack]

Shipyard Expansion - as others have pointed out, its considerably less expensive then you thought. Shipyard expansion should ALWAYS be running.

Small ship budget - Build some submarines, its nice to have that advantage over other nations.

Armored Cruisers - No. Why waste budget on floating targets? build more battleships or light cruisers instead.

@EuchreJack: I normally just detail destroyers to coastal defense duty. In the first game, it was entirely based on number of vessels, not on tonnage/ability, and it was normally a flat 20 vessels give or take. Later in the game I had a class of minesweeper/layers for the same duty.

In this game, blockade strength is weighted by vessel.  Destroyers are worth 1 point, Pre-Dreadnoughts 8 points I think.  Take from that what you will.  Good point on Armored Cruisers, they're a dinosaur at this point.  I'm rather fond of cheap battleships, but I'll avoid advocating for my rather controversial ultra-cheap battleship strategy.  A few cheaper battleships to hold the North Atlantic along with a swarm of destroyers should be sufficient to keep the Italians from sneaking a blockade on us.

Fishbreath, good luck forcing a Fleet Battle.  Just get enough raw ship numbers to blockade, make sure you are happy with your Light Cruisers fighting anything the Italians have (sounds like you are), and make sure your destroyers have sufficient guns and ammo for when they inevitably draw shore bombardment duty (I'm pretty sure they do currently).

War in 2-3 years would be ideal.  War now...less ideal.

[Fishbreath]

Let's get right to it.

June 1902

Lalande, a Tage, joins the navy, scientists invent the six-foot rangefinder, and naval engineers work out that double bottoms are a good plan (stolen from the Americans).

Strikes delay the construction of Suffren by one month.



Jeers from the naval engineering community lead the Ministère de la Marine to hastily release a slightly more traditional design, with 12" main guns and six 10" secondaries. It loses 200 tons and gains a bit of extra armor in the bargain.

Designers play around with some armored cruiser designs, but the naval community eventually rejects the idea.

July 1902



An opportunity arises to hack off our other Mediterranean neighbors. With the budget increase, I lay down another pair of Chateaurenaults, for a total of four under construction.

Italy commissions one of the armored cruisers our spies stole the details of, and invents the early coastal submarine.

August 1902

In response to our hacking off, Austria-Hungary increases its naval spending.

Italy is building more coastal batteries in the Mediterranean, a 6" and an 11". The latter might someday cause us trouble.

Coastal batteries might be worth investing in at some point—not for the guns themselves, but because, I believe, the amount of coastal fortification you have increases the extent and density of your defensive minefields.

September 1902

We lay down Trident, first of her class. Linois (a light cruiser) and Epieu (a destroyer) enter service.

October 1902

Tensions with Italy are at the breaking point. War is likely, if any events go in such a fashion as to push us any further.

Italy's naval budget goes up, and they lay down another armored cruiser.

Our budget, annoyingly, goes slightly down.

November 1902

The Italians are busy this month.

January 1903

We completed research into improved face-hardening, which will improve our future ships' armor.

March 1903

The new naval minister wants 15 destroyers under construction, and is willing to bump the budget a bit to achieve that, so I take the deal.

April 1904



April 1904: Battle of Crete



The first sea action of la Marine nationale opens on a calm April morning in overcast weather, as the Italians happen upon a French cruiser squadron steaming west-southwest Crete. Visibility should be excellent.

On our side are the two Gueydons based in the Mediterranean, Bruix and Montcalm, six Tages, and seven Fauconneaus. Italy has more cruisers than that in this region, but it remains to be seen how many will come out to play. The sun is rising behind us, which gives our ships a bit of an edge if a battle happens early.

In the event that it looks bad, our squadron, with a speed of 23 knots, should be able to outrun the Italians, the only difficulty being the relative lack of sea room here in the Middle Sea.

5:00

The light cruisers assigned to scouting fan out for a better view.

5:21



The light cruiser Lalande spots a ship ahead. I order a turn to the north-northwest to avoid closing too quickly.

5:24

The light cruisers spot a half dozen ships. I increase the squadron's speed to 20 knots and pull the scouting force in to screen the armored cruisers.

Two minutes later, Lalande identifies one of the light cruisers as a Salerno class. It bristles with small-caliber guns.



5:27

The light cruisers begin to identify the Italian battle line, which looks to comprise at least four armored cruisers. The squadron stays at 20 knots, pending identification, but we're probably running.

5:31

Another Italian light cruiser is identified as part of the Nino Bixio class, which is a Salerno without dual-purpose guns.

One minute later, wireless signals from a light cruiser identify one of the enemy ships as a Carlo Alberto-class armored cruiser.



Because the Italians accepted a lower speed, their cruisers get more guns. Because we decided on a higher speed, we don't need to face them, and Bruix leads Montcalm in a turn east, in pursuit of the better part of valor.

5:36



It's the right move. Look at that swarm of slow, poorly-armored cruisers!

5:44



This, however, is quite a light cruiser. 6600 tons, 10 6" guns? Wild. At least it's slow.

6:06

The Italian battle line cruises past our stern and turns away. The heavy cruisers come about to see if we can't maybe dispose of a shadowing light cruiser before they come back.

7:36

The red circles represent the range of our cruisers' main batteries. The larger gray circles represent the edge of their visual range.

I was wary of some manner of trap, but the only ships we can see are the two light cruisers ahead of us, which will shortly be in range. I'm still prepared to run if the rest of the Italian squadron makes an appearance, but it's looking like we might draw first blood.

7:39

Lalande is the first to open fire.

8:36

The two Italian light cruisers are joined by a third.

Also, it takes us nearly an hour to score a hit: Lalande lands a blow from about 5500 yards.

9:30

The Italian cruiser turns away from its allies, and our fleet sets off in pursuit.

10:29

Regrettably, the Salerno-class target is still alive three hours after the first shot, though burning and badly damaged.

11:17

With the Italian cruiser dead in the water, our ships take one more run past it to ensure it goes under, and depart to the west.

16:35



The scenario ends, as our ships and the enemy's are far apart. La Marine nationale acquitted itself relatively well in the face of a superior force, escaping serious damage and sinking an enemy ship.

Bruix won the gunnery medal for the day, with a 2.25% hit rate.

April 1903 (cont'd)



The war cancels the naval minister's ambition for more destroyers, but a new class is in order anyway. These new Francisques don't sacrifice anything from the preceding Fauconneaus, and have a two-knot speed advantage on them.

Time for wartime dispositions. The Gueydons in the Mediterranean are made commerce raiders. Because of their speed, they're practically invincible unless caught entirely off guard.

A pair of Chateaurenaults are coming next month. They'll go on trade protection for a few months, relieving two Tages currently filling that role, until some corvettes currently under construction can take over.

May 1903

A bevy of technologies arrive this month, but none of them are dramatic improvements—lots of slow-and-gradual stuff.

The Italians raid the Northern European coast with three armored cruisers. Three destroyers sally to meet them, but the two forces don't meet.

Because we don't have any armored cruisers, the Italians win a bunch of dominance-of-the-sea victories around the Mediterranean. (If the game thinks a battle should happen and one side can't field appropriate forces, the other side wins by default, as though the under-equipped side had declined battle.) Our commerce raiders and evasion of their coastal raid earn us about the same number of victory points, and in this second month of the war, the tally is 751-623 for the home team.

On the upside, the Chauteaurenault class exceeds its design speed in trials, and hits the same 24-knot mark our existing light cruisers do.

June 1903



Well now. I can live with those odds.

June 1903: The Battle of Bordighera

A leisurely five-hour cruise from Toulon, we encounter the enemy fleet at 8:18 p.m., on a southwesterly course.



The enemy battleships almost immediately turn away.

20:48

After a half an hour of ineffective firing, darkness falls over the Mediterranean.

I'm of a mind to push onward toward the Italian fleet. We have a huge speed advantage, are evenly matched in guns, and have more destroyers (since we're operating close to our bases). Night fights are bloody, but I think we can make something out of this one.

21:41



Running side-by-side with a trio of perhaps-cruisers-perhaps-battleships at 4,000 yard, Solferino, La République, and Magenta score hit after hit on one of them.

22:51

The Italians bug out toward La Spezia, having dealt some damage to our battleships, and taken some in return. All told, not a bad little battle. La République had a bit of a scare losing electric power and then catching fire, but got both problems under control by 11:30 p.m.

The damage tally calls it a marginal Italian victory. I believe it's on the strength of Italian gunnery—we scored a lot of hits, but most of them were with the secondary and tertiary batteries on the battleships. The Italians did better with their heavy guns.

July 1903

The government is asking whether to seek peace. I figure we'll let it go a while longer—they aren't that far ahead, and we'll have some submarines joining the fight soon.

July's battle is a convoy fight. We have a three-ship battle division, three light cruisers, and a bevy of destroyers. Conditions are good, with a moderate breeze, and the sun is high overhead.

Italy brings a similar force: three battleships, a pair of armored cruisers, and some destroyers.

As before, the red circle is the selected squadron's gun range, and the gray circle is what it can see. Battle Division 5, the lead squadron in the battle line, is selected. Because Light Cruiser Division 10 is out in front of the fleet a little ways, I can still see the transports making their way east by south.

As you probably can't make out, it's a tense situation. Let's break it down a bit.

First, as I mentioned, it's a daylight battle, so I can't rely on sunset to mask my convoy from the depredations of the Italian squadron. Second, and of equal importance, the Italians have two squadrons which could seriously threaten the convoy: the battleship squadron, center-left in the picture above, and a cruiser squadron, to their battleships' southeast.

At the moment of this screenshot, the two battleship squadrons are having an ineffectual gunnery duel—at that range, around 6,000 yards, nobody really expects to hit much. That fight is happening about 30,000 yards west of the transports; I let the Italians pull me off of the convoy, since their cruisers were shadowing their battleships. Eventually, the cruisers peeled off and headed back for the convoy, at which point the speed of the French battle line paid off—we could make it back to the convoy quickly enough to prevent the Italians from doing very much damage to it.

Unfortunately, I didn't take many pictures of what was by far the most exciting battle to date. The Italians did heavy damage to one of our destroyers, but we did more damage to their ships generally than they did to ours, and they'll likely be in the dockyards for a month or two.

Rumors of war-weariness and protests reach our spies in Rome.

August 1903

Another fleet battle off the south of France. This time, the Italians bring six battleships to our four (two are in for maintenance). OUt fleet exchanges desultory fire with the Italian van, then falls back on the minefields at Toulon.

September 1903

The French fleet launches a raid on Italian coastal shipping. Unfortunately, before the sixty-mile seach line comes upon any merchants, it comes upon an Italian cruiser squadron, quickly reverses course, and makes it back to the French coast with no losses, briefly stopping to bombard a shore battery.

October 1903

We decline a cruiser action in the northwestern Mediterranean, and accept a battleship brawl in the early morning of the 17th.

This one looks more favorable than most: the ships involved are four French battleships against, by all appearances, two Italian battleships and three armored cruisers.



On closer inspection, it appears the ratio is flipped: two armored cruisers and three battleships. Still not bad odds, and the Italians have turned to run for it.

Not all of the Italians make it. The most reliable weapons on our Les Républiques (the 5" tertiary guns) slow down one light cruiser enough for our ships to fall on it. A second Italian light cruiser appears to the south of our force as we're leaving the battlefield. Quick thinking by your admiral, who detaches a light cruiser squadron to run down this second target, wins the day.

After seven months of war, the tally stands at 2,774-2,732, just barely in favor of the home team.

With some of our cash cushion, French shipyards work on kitting out a pair of armed merchant cruisers to raid Italian shipping.

November 1903



The Italian fleet sorties on the 5th, and at 10:46 a.m., the French fleet is there to meet it. It's the whole French fleet this time, too, all six battleships.

Although the Italians have five battleships and two armored cruisers to our six battleships, they nevertheless turn tail after a brief exchange of fire, during which their gunnery proves more accurate than ours (as has been the case for this entire war).

Sinking a destroyer unlucky enough to take a hit from a 13" shell, the French fleet turns northward to bombard a shore battery on the coast near Imperia—the battleship guns should make short work of that, at least—and then perhaps eastward to see if any Italian shipping is at sea.

It isn't, so we go home.

December 1903

A raid on the Italian west coast produces no results and a few hundred victory points for the Italians. Owing to the relatively successful battles over the last few months, and the Italians declining battle a few times, the war score stands at 3,794-3,198.

January 1904

A new year sees an Italian armored cruiser fail to prosecute a night attack on a convoy, driven off by a pair of Tages and a plucky destroyer flotilla. There are reports of widespread civil disturbance in Italy. If we stay the course a bit longer, I think we'll be in good shape.

February 1904

A large Italian convoy escapes an attack by French light cruisers. Italy regains a small lead in the victory point rankings.

Our submarines make their first major contribution, torpedoing an Italian armored cruiser (but, alas, not sinking it).

March 1904

One year into the war, the Italians put out peace feelers, and the civilian government agrees. The Navy acquitted itself relatively well, sinking three enemy light cruisers and three destroyers in exchange for the loss of one destroyer of its own.



It's only entering construction as the war ends, but to combat the new Italian 24-knot light cruisers, the Ministry of the Navy solicits designs for a 25-knot light cruiser, the Isly class. They'll begin to replace the Tages over time.

Lessons from the War

In no particular order...

• I probably shouldn't have ignored armed merchant cruisers and small corvettes in my previous RTW2 games. Since they're converted civilian ships (liners and trawlers, respectively), they only take four months to build, and they're a good way to quickly bulk up a navy so you can use your warships for war, rather than trade protection.
• Our lack of powerful armored cruisers is a bit of a problem at the moment.
• French gunnery was atrocious—the main batteries on our La Républiques were only good for about one hit every 150 rounds in good conditions. The Italian battleships shot better with their heavy guns.
• The Italian 12" guns outrange our 13" -2-quality guns, which makes the redesign of the Tridents to use 12" guns look even better.
• French commerce raiders served admirably, sinking merchants at about a 2-1 rate over their Italian counterparts.
• The Gueydons, with their high speed but small guns, are extremely useful for hunting light cruisers, but not much good at fighting armored cruisers themselves.
• The Italians fought this war with extreme cowardice. One-to-one, I think their 1900-era battleships are superior to ours, and they often ran away when they had numerical superiority.

May 1904

Something marvelous happens. French naval thinkers take a drag on their cigarettes, sip their red wine, and ponder: what if we built ships with three centerline turrets?

The way to a dreadnought battleship is open. The money isn't there just yet, but a Trident finishes in eight months, and I think that's the time to get one going in the yards.

Two-Year Report: Diplomacy



The war with Italy has drawn to a close, and tensions are low. Intelligence remains focused on the Italians and, to a lesser degree, the Austrians.

Two-Year Report: The Fleet





At present, we have a world-class fleet of light cruisers and destroyers, to the point that we can consider putting some into the reserve fleet, or mothballing or retiring them altogether. We're a bit over-budget at the moment, but I haven't canceled any wartime shipbuilds yet, either.

Our battleship fleet is solidly middle of the road. We can't challenge the three largest powers, but we can meet any of the other three on equal terms.

As for shipbuilding priorities, I have two thoughts. One: join the British in the dreadnought era (or perhaps the jupiter era, as they've begun work on the world's first new-style battleship, HMS Jupiter) with a dreadnought battleship of our own. Two: instead, start by building a dreadnought cruiser (a battle-cruiser, if you will), to help counter everyone else's massive advantage in armored cruiser count.

If we start with a battlecruiser, the question is, what do we sacrifice? Battleships try to balance speed, protection, and firepower. Battlecruisers sacrifice one of those three to gain an edge in the other two. Historically, the Royal Navy went with firepower and speed over protection, while the Germans went with speed and protection. (You could presumably sacrifice speed for firepower and protection, but I think you'd just end up with a slightly slower battleship in that case.)

Two-Year Report: Meta

I realize that this entry is a bit hard to follow, jumping around from battle to battle in several different styles. I was so pumped about getting to a war that I kind of forgot to walk through a battle from a gameplay perspective. I'll try to rectify that next time a war comes up, making heavier use of the after-action report map mode, and perhaps taking a bit more time to explain how the game handles battles.

[Haspen]

As usual from big wars of the period: lots of big guys posturing and exchanging missed hits while the small guys raid the poor fishing villages on the coasts

[Karlito]

Alas the poor Trident, already obsolete before she has even left the docks.

I'd put in a vote for a fast battle cruiser to supplement our excellent light forces. Long live le Jeune École!

[Hanzoku]

I agree, let's build a battlecruiser (speed, firepower) first, and then follow it on with a BB-style battleship. Generally maintain a 2-1 production schedule between battlecruisers and battleships.

Also, invest in enhanced gunnery training for the fleet. In the first game, it takes a year before it goes into effect once you start paying for it, so we can hold off until tensions start building and invest then. Once invested, I found it best to just keep paying, even in peacetime.

[Knave]

That was a great write-up, very in-depth. must have taken a bit to write out! Très Bien!

I'm aboard the firepower/speed battlecruiser. If we're fast enough, no one will hit them, right?

[EuchreJack]

I never really like Battlecruisers, and we need a Dreadnought, so I'll vote for that.
With our navy, the battlecruisers would end up entangled in the main battle line, looking like battleships but sinking like light cruisers.

[Fishbreath]

We return with another two-year stretch. (Or, at least, hopefully two years. I have company coming over on Saturday, which is my usual play-the-game day. We'll see how far I get.)

Goals for this entry include designing a battlecruiser (circa early 1905), keeping the naval budget more or less balanced, rebuilding our older battleships to use better fire control, and pushing for moderate tensions with Italy and/or Austria-Hungary to permit us to build more ships.

June 1904

To start with, I place a few ships into reserve fleet status, which cuts their upkeep in half but reduces their maximum crew quality to 'Fair'. (Ordinarily, the maximum is 'Good'. I don't recall offhand if specialized training increases the maximum to 'Elite'.) Given that I don't expect any wars in the immediate future, we can afford to.

Another Francisque-class destroyer comes off the ways, completing our initial buy of seven. I could scrap some of the Fauconneaus, but destroyer upkeep is so cheap that it's hardly worth the effort.

Finally, I start the rebuild process for the La Républiques, updating them from central rangefinding to central firing. The history of battleship fire control is the history of centralizing more parts of the process. Central rangefinding moves the rangefinding away from the individual guns and to a central position, which can be elevated above the guns' smoke and also made more delicate and (therefore) more precise.


Believe it or not, this photograph is of a ship firing using smokeless powder. Clearly 'smoke less', not 'smokeless'.

Central firing moves the triggering of the guns to a central location, which helps eliminate errors in timing.

Finally, director firing lays the guns automatically—the turret crew no longer controls azimuth and elevation.

August 1904



July passes quietly. The British are still building pre-dreadnoughts—and pre-dreadnoughts which will be a much greater liability in the future naval era than our Tridents.

Italy, too, is refitting its battleships with central firing.

October 1904

The first La République completes her refit.

At the same time, the first design studies on the Duquesne-class battlecruiser begin.



Tallying the votes across all the places where this AAR is running, German-style battlecruisers won the day. This 24-knot ship mounts six 11" guns, a secondary battery of 6" guns (+1 quality), and a tertiary battery of 2" guns (+1 quality). (A gun of +1 quality is approximately equivalent in range and penetration to a 0-quality gun with a caliber one inch larger.) She has a 10" armored belt, and tips the scales at a hair over 18,000 tons.

In other news...



I was flipping through the almanac to see where we're going to land in the dreadnought race (second to get one under construction, it looks like!), and found that the Austrians call this a battleship. We have to have a war with them.

January 1905

We elect to refit the Tridents with central firing before they even come down the ways, which saves us a rebuild cycle on them.

February 1905

The first Duquesne's keel is laid. She should be ready in early 1908.

The lack of any budget-increasing events has been a bit of a bummer. I'm considering mothballing some of the light cruiser force to free up some more money. As it is, we're building one Trident, one Chauteaurenault, one of the new Isly light cruisers, and one Duquesne, and still losing money. Ideally, I'd be able to rebuild a La République with better fire control while still keeping up on the dreadnought program.

Advanced gunnery training is a stretch goal, but the budget is too tight to permit it right now.

March 1905

Given that our light cruiser fleet is still enormous compared to everyone except for Great Britain, I decide that putting a few in mothballs (it'll take about a year to bring them back to combat strength) is acceptable to keep the battleships rolling. Especially now that we're building replacement fleet light cruisers, keeping all the Tages at 100% operational capacity isn't as important.

April 1905

A new government wants to cut arms expenditure. I protest loudly and receive a small bump in the naval budget. There are now three La Républiques rebuilding at the same time. (Also, it's a little cheaper than it appears at first—you don't pay regular maintenance on ships under rebuild.)

June 1905



Nothing bad can possibly come of this. We stand behind our ally and reap the budgetary rewards.

Upside: we can afford the refit on the rest of the La Républiques. Downside: tensions are up with Germany, who we really can't fight on even terms.

September 1905

Thinking they're being helpful, the government votes to increase naval spending given tensions with Germany, which... raises tensions with Germany.

October 1905

The French public raises 50 million francs for a battleship. We lay down one Duquesne because our last pre-dreadnought Trident completes, and one Duquesne with the funds the public so helpfully collected for us.

Six-gun ships are nice, but I'd like to push to eight soon.

November 1905

Thanks to our dreadnought-building program, Britain is forced to raise spending to keep its navy preeminent.

December 1905



The Americans sell us the rights to steam turbine technology, which we'll take, thank you very much.

Propulsion is one place where Rule the Waves elides a little bit of detail. Steam turbines, in the game, represent a simple decrease in the weight of a ship's machinery. This is a bit of a simplification.

Shipboard steam propulsion starts with evaporators. Salt, as you're probably aware, is corrosive, and salt and steam are worse than either in isolation. Marine boilers and condensers demand fresh water, so steamships have to produce fresh water from the materials at hand—heat and seawater. Evaporators distill seawater to fresh water, which is then fed into the boilers.

Boilers do what they say on the tin, turning fuel (in this era, coal or oil) and fresh water into high-pressure steam. The volume of steam a ship's boilers produce determines how fast it can turn its engines.

In our early-20th-century timeframe of interest, there were two types of engine of note. The first is the multiple-expansion engine, most frequently the triple-expansion type. Steam flows into three cylinders of increasing size, driving a piston in each cylinder. Increasing the size of the cylinder at each step means that each cylinder generates substantially similar force—as the steam flows through the engine, its pressure goes down, so giving it a larger area to act on counters that effect.

The second type is the steam turbine, demonstrated in dramatic fashion by the Turbinia, which showed up at the Navy Review during Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, and proceeded to outrun the fastest vessels the Royal Navy could send to chase it down. From this beginning, turbines eventually made it into most of the world's warships by about 1910. (At the end of this tangent, I actually back up my assertion that the elision of detail is important.) Like all turbines, steam turbines are essentially pinwheels writ large—blow through it, or force high-pressure steam through it, and it rotates.

Finally, after steam passes through the engine, it arrives at the condensers, which turn it back into fresh water for recycling through the system again. Reusing water means that the evaporators don't have to work as hard (although 'not as hard' still translates to 'tons per hour', in this context). When condensers break, steam-powered ships are unable to generate as much steam (since they have to wait for the evaporators, rather than using water they already have), which slows them down.

Anyway, all that to say that the US Navy, in the early days of steam turbines, waffled between turbines and the older triple-expansion engines. Why? Because turbines are only very efficient near full power, and triple-expansion engines, though larger and bulkier, can run at cruise power much more effectively. As late as USS Oklahoma (laid down 1910, commissioned 1916), the Navy built ships with triple-expansion engines, because for they had better range for a given weight of fuel, and we Americans didn't build fast battleships until the North Carolina-class in the late 30s. Other American ships (and other shipbuilding nations) experimented with a smaller cruise turbine, which would push the ship at cruise speed when running at full power.

In Rule the Waves 2, you don't get the choice. You just pick a fuel type and an engine focus (from Speed, Reliability, or neither).

February 1906

An uprising in China presents us with the chance to reduce tensions with Germany, which we gratefully take.

May 1906

Germany takes advantage of our softness and sends a force to occupy Angola, which produces very little of note.

Two-Year Report: Diplomacy



Aside from the aforementioned tensions with Germany, things are quiet enough. Italy is making noise again, and building a few more battleships to boot.

Two-Year Report: The Fleet





Speaking of which, the fleet report! We're currently operating at a deficit of 1,553 kilofrancs, but the first batch of ships will finish before we run dry (a new light cruiser and the first Duquesne).

Right now, we look pretty good in the Mediterranean Throwdown Power Rankings. We have a small edge over Italy right now in battleships, and given that our battlecruisers are armored well enough to stand in the line of battle, we'll maintain that edge even given the predreadnoughts they're still building.

We're behind in armored cruisers, as ever, but the battlecruisers are, in part, intended to fix that.

Our huge superiority in light cruisers gives us advantages in the commerce raiding game—we can detach a bunch of them to go sink merchants without much fear of losing them or falling behind our chosen opponents in attached-to-the-fleet strength. Ditto destroyers; they're a great way to fill the trade protection quota while corvettes build. On the downside, we're a little behind now on submarines. Should we think about building more?

That said, I think there might be room in the schedule and the budget for an updated Chateaurenault class. The Gueydons, which are filling the larger part of our foreign obligations, are expensive to maintain, especially away from home waters. A class of foreign station light cruisers, with medium or long range and equipped for colonial service (the latter makes a ship count for 150% its tonnage when determining how much you have vs. how much you need on a foreign station), would fill the gap nicely. We could mothball or even scrap a Gueydon or two, and put the savings into more shipbuilding.

Another option might be to put some money toward a class of coastal monitors—ships with, say, a pair of large-caliber turreted guns, low speed and short range, and a ton of armor. With some of those, we could limit the ability of foes to blockade our North Atlantic or Mediterranean coasts without diverting units from the main fleet.

Of course, there's also room for a class of proper battleship-style dreadnoughts—something with 22-knot speed, a bit more armor, and 8 or 10 guns. (The only reason the Duquesnes are six-gun ships is because we don't have the technology yet to put more than three turrets on a ship such that all of them can fire at a broadside enemy. There are two technologies that allow that: 4+ centerline turrets, and cross-deck firing for wing turrets.) These three Duquesnes will likely be the only three, as well, given that we have steam turbine technology now, and that leads to large weight savings at higher speeds.

Of course, if we wanted to stick with a six-gun ship, we also just developed 14", quality -1 naval guns, which would go nicely on a dreadnought, or perhaps on those aforementioned coastal monitors.

Meta

I won't be able to do my usual weekend play-through, so next week's update might slip a bit, or perhaps cover less time.