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[piratejoe]

Refit and Repair, Nemorland
Looking for the core thread?

Today is another rainy day while you calmly relax in a nice and warm steamship with a roof over you as it slowly docks at the port you will be living at for the foreseeable future. This will be where the future ships of the navy will be conceived, designed, built, and launched before sailing proudly. Of course, hopefully you won't need to actually use these ships, but its of extreme importance to have them with the rising tensions coming from that oppressive tyranny of a nation that calls itself Sothweg. After all, were that to happen the freedom we fought for would be lost, replaced by another tyrant.

Best not to think of that...Or at least use those thoughts to drive you to create only the best designs for the Navy...Its nice to see that the military is getting a major reformation in these times. Speaking of time, its likely only a matter of it until those Sothwegs declare war on us. Best expand our navy to be able to free their people from their chains and allow them to embrace democracy and kick their king out...Though, thats getting ahead of ourselves.


Now, you are to make a flag to fly proudly above your ships and pick a few perks. After, you are to design a legacy fleet using four turns, with the design finished on the same turn automatically. After these four turns, you may spend a number of PP on the ships you designed before the first normal turn starts, followed by the first turn at war. Feel free to give a fancy name for the Navy as well, if you desire.

Spoiler: National Perks. (click to show/hide)

Major Naval Power. (Start with extra PP, Ships, and an extra pre game turn.)
Rapid Economic Growth (Stable and quicker increase in PP)
Small Shipyards(Start with 4K displacement shipyards instead of 7K)
Some Corruption(Captain skill levels are...not always accurate, among other things.)
Poor Education(Crews and captains are less skilled and some research is harder)

Spoiler: Starting Technology (click to show/hide)

Naval
Early 2/3/4/5/6/7/9/10/12 inch guns
Triple-expansion engines.
Steel hull construction.
Single Casemates.
Single and Double gun turrets.
Basic Steel making techniques.
Basic Damage control techniques.

Marines
Defensive guns (Uses same calibers as naval guns)
Rosemary 85 Rifle (Basic Bolt Action Rifle)
Holly 8 (Basic Revolver)

Spoiler: Ships (Will be updated throughout the war) (click to show/hide)

None, currently.

Spoiler: Sunk, Scrapped, or otherwise lost ships. (click to show/hide)

The Septum & Corseque of the Spear class. Lost on the 2nd of August.

Pregame Turn 1, Design Phase.

[Shadowclaw777]

I feel as though Night Fighting, Rapid Economic Growth, and Advanced Shipbuilding Industry +,  and Hidden Flaws, Some Corruption -. Would be the best bet unless their is strategy that involves Major Naval Power

[Man of Paper]

-3 Newly Created Navy
-1 Small Shipyards
-1 Some Corruption
+2 Attention to Detail
+3 Technology Leader

-3 Interservice Rivalry
-1 Some Corruption
+1 Skilled Marines
+1 Advanced/Efficient Shipbuilding
+2 Night Fighting

Small and Advanced should give us a technological edge, so if we lean into that it could reduce the impact of losing a pre-game turn and the smaller shipyards won't be quite a heavy hit. The SemiModern Vikings is for funsies because I like not listening to the GM's warnings, and the flavor could be fun.

[Vostok]

I'm tempted to go for tech leader, but it's expensive as fuck and there really isn't a way to get it without dropping something else, and ASI/REG feel like they'd go a long way to overtaking tech leader if given enough time.

As for crew skills, it depends on what we want to do. Would night fighting be more optimized for cruiser/destroyer action and a torpedo heavy thing? If we want to go for a battleship heavy route, it might make more sense to go with gunnery.

Edit: Maybe we could swap the marines from ASAN out for the rapid PP growth? PP gives *options* for offsetting our loss of a turn etc.

[Jilladilla]

Right. Before we start picking perks and flaws let's think about just what we want our Navy to look like... Granted, we started in 1890 and with how fast time is going to pass (4 turns per year, 40 turns per decade), we aren't getting advanced anything anytime soon. So keep that in mind.

For instance, if we want to stick primarily with light forces with cruisers being our largest ships, then the Small Shipyards flaw would impede us all that much, although if we'd rather try to build the biggest, meanest ship on the sea, then that would obviously be counter-productive.

[Kashyyk]

I'm against [Newly Created Navy] as a flaw regardless of our plan, as then we'll constantly be playing catch up, and it will be massively worse if Sothweg chooses [Major Naval Power].

My personal preference is a large ship doctrine, with torpedo boat squadrons and some submarines, but I know others feel otherwise. Thus the following:

+1 Rapid Economic Growth
+1 Advanced Shipbuilding Industry
-1 Lackluster Marines
-1 Some Corruption

Alternatively, for a go-hard-or-go-home sort of play:

+3 Major Naval Power
+2 Attention to Detail
-2 Major Corruption
-2 Poor Education
-1 Lackluster Marines

Both of these will allow us to pay attention to both large and small ships as needed, without out locking us out of either.

[Vostok]

If we actually want large ships, we really need to go with the 10kt perk--predreadnoughts were clocking in at 11kt+ for most designs I'm finding and armored cruisers are in the same general ballpark. At 7kt, you're looking at the heavier protected cruisers like the U.S.S. Brooklyn (C-12) or the H.M.S. Edgar. You can build armored cruisers at this displacement (the RN had a class at 5-6kt), but for some reason these don't come up very often.

+3 Major Naval Power
+1 Large Shipyards
-1 Minor Corruption
-2 Poor Education
-1 Lackluster Marines

Poor Education might be a dealbreaker if it ends up being an overall debuff to research (they end up catching up and overtaking in technology eventually because we can't research worth shit), but apart from that this could be fun.

Edit: After some thought, we probably don't want major corruption *and* poor education going together like that. Seems like a good way to end up with downright illiterate officers and a design bureau with 30% of the staff not knowing basic physics. Plan has been revised to dump rapid econ. growth in exchange for reducing corruption to minor. Should help somewhat with that problem.

[Aseaheru]

 Took me a bit to find the thing. Anyways, heres my suggestion fer starting setup.

Rapid Economic Growth (+1)
Skilled Marines (+1)
Night Fighting (+2)
Small Shipyards (-1)
Newly Created Navy (-3)

 Rationale: Marines and night fighting will never go away as being useful. Rapid economic growth is just awesome. Starting in 1890, a 4kt dockyard isint a problem as even coastal defense ships(read, light battleships) are about that size. Newly Created navy is bad, yes, but poor education, major corruption, interservice warfare and hidden flaws are far, far worse.

 As fer what I want to do, I have one word, just one word. Swarms of small ships. Monitors for hammering their battle barges, airships to keep tabs and otherwise scout, and swarms of TBs and TBDs to do most damage and land marines on their ships. Afterall, if we capture their big boats, we dont need to build big boats.

 Large shipyards really isint needed, 10kt in 1890 means you can build anything designed for about the next ten years, so its a bit of a waste. If you really dont want to be limited to 4kt, 7kt means we can build battleships(if you must have the boring things) just fine.

[Vostok]

As fer what I want to do, I have one word, just one word. Swarms of small ships. Monitors for hammering their battle barges, airships to keep tabs and otherwise scout, and swarms of TBs and TBDs to do most damage and land marines on their ships. Afterall, if we capture their big boats, we dont need to build big boats.

 Large shipyards really isint needed, 10kt in 1890 means you can build anything designed for about the next ten years, so its a bit of a waste. If you really dont want to be limited to 4kt, 7kt means we can build battleships(if you must have the boring things) just fine.

Can monitors actually survive much of anything in a straight up fight? The Roberts class had all of 4-5 inches of belt and likely didn't have much in the way of blue-water capability, so I'm skeptical of their value against proper battleships. As for 7kt battleships, I...honestly haven't seen a single seriousface predreadnought at that displacement. The British ships on the Wikipedia list were consistently in the mid-teens for anything packing 12" guns or larger. Even with 10k, we're looking at the Centurion-class, which were second-class battleships carrying a 10" main battery. We can probably get away with more gun if we reduce the range (not like we're sailing across the Atlantic or anything given the archipelago setting), but it's still quite limiting.

But yeah, we probably don't *need* to go with large shipyards right off the bat--those could be built later. If we were to do Rapid Economic Growth and Major Naval Power, we're probably guaranteed to have a PP lead for quite some time unless the other side does something drastic, which would tie up valuable action slots and work in our favor anyways.

+3 Major Naval Power
+1 Large Shipyards
-1 Minor Corruption
-2 Poor Education
-1 Lackluster Marines

[Aseaheru]

 I was mostly looking at Mediterranean battleships, so that might be why they have lower deplacement. But, as an example, the Habsburg-class was built in 1900 and displaced 8kt, mounting three 9.5"  guns and the usual massive pile of pre-dreadnaught secondaries. Its larger cousins, the Erzherzog Karl-class, was just over 10kt getting an extra 9.5" gun.

 As for monitors against battleships, well, if they have the range advantage, absolutely.

[Vostok]

Well, would they actually have a range advantage if everybody uses the same guns and fire control? Even if you somehow get somewhat improved engagement distances, what's keeping the faster and more protected battleships (not a sentence I ever thought I'd write, but OK) from just closing the distance before you can put a dent in them?

Edit: We aren't even going to get better ranges just by getting larger guns--the 16.25" from the RN was getting about the same max ranges as the 13.5" and 10" guns. I suspect the limiting factor is actual fire control and not ballistics.

[Aseaheru]

 Fire control, followed by power burn time coupled with barrel length. Most developments in naval gun propellant where to actually slow the burn rate and produce more gas. But yes, fire control is the most important system.

[Vostok]

The point was, unless you went out of your way to invest in GFCS and better guns, you weren't going to automagically get better monitors that can cheerfuly bombard predreads to death using superior range.

And the predreads still have an advantage in that they are a) better protected b) more mobile and c) bristling in secondaries that will mulch you at normal 1890s ranges. Personally, instead of investing so much into making actually competitive monitors, I would strongly prefer going with actual pre-dreadnoughts. It just takes less work to make them competitive against other predreadnoughts.

Anyhow, as proposed in the Discord:

+3 Major Naval Power
+1 Advanced Shipbuilding Industry
+1 Rapid Econ Growth
-3 Hidden flaws
-2 Poor Education

And my current preferred plan:

+3 Major Naval Power
+1 Rapid Econ Growth
-1 Minor Corruption
-2 Poor Education
-1 Lackluster Marines

It dodges the whole Hidden Flaw thing (I find that one highly concerning but can live with it if need be), which is good. I personally don't think that lackluster Marines are too much of an issue, given how a) we could iron it out given time if we really needed to and b) without Interservice Rivalry we *should* be able to work reasonably closely with Army dudes, which would offset the issue somewhat. Still not perfect as a plan, but I think Hidden Flaws is the greater evil.

[Jilladilla]

(Warning: This post was composed over the course of a lot of time. I don't expect it to be totally coherent anymore.)

You know, I'm a bit surprised there isn't as much love for Small Shipyards. It's very much a flaw one can grow out of (and the one with the most obvious route towards doing so); I mean yes if both of us constantly grow our yards, we'll be at a constant size disadvantage, but bigger ships are obviously more expensive; and in this day and age when torpedo defenses and damage control techniques are fairly primitive.... Well. I wouldn't necessarily want to put that much investment into such a ship that could be downed by a cheeky torpedo boat/torpedo boat destroyer/submarine, heck even a cruiser getting into a good spot and then planting a few torpedoes into its side.

I just don't wanna have our main focus be chasing down the cash blackhole that is the Battleship race. It's very expensive to stay constantly up to date with those after all... I mean, yes like I've said before it'll be nice to have something that can punch back against their battle line, but we don't have to match them on the capital ships. We can settle for Coastal Defense Ships. Think mini-Predreads that aren't all that fast (but not too slow) and can't go that far, but actually have guns and armor. (Here's a link to one that would be modern in the game's time, note its tonnage) They'll work for defense purposes and can slug it out with their battleline if they try hitting us with it. Let them sink their money into early predreads that'll go obsolete soon enough, and lets focus on more cost effective solutions for slaying their giants and straining their economy.

Yes, I want to do small ship spam. This early in the years we can actually utilize Coastal Defense Ships as a viable alternative, for defensive purposes at least. Idea being take Small Shipyards for the point, and Rapid Economic Growth, and use CDS's and raiding to hold them back until we work our way out of being small and into being an economic powerhouse. Other traits are up for further discussion of course.

[Vostok]

You actually make a good point about small shipyards—they are definitely easier to work around than some of the other options. I’m not enthused about being limited to 4kt early on, but it’s workable.

+3 Major Naval Power
+1 Rapid Econ Growth
-1 Minor Corruption
-2 Poor Education
-1 Small Shipyards