[NGTM-1R]

So the AI's new build-to-match-player stuff?

It's actually interesting, in that they will put armor over their obvious weaknesses, but it also causes them to struggle in other ways. If you have a massive destroyer force, the AI will build up a large number of destroyers; if you build 10" CAs, the AI will build some that are supposed to fight yours; etc.

If you commit early to battlecruisers in a major way, the AI will build a lot of battlecruisers.

It may not have enough left to build battleships, though. That's happened to most of the AI nations in my current game, who outnumber me in battlecruisers but god ****ing help them if they ever have to fight a fleet action, because my battleship superiority will eat them alive.

[StarSlayer]

Can you refit and modernize existing hulls to keep them competitive or do you need to retire and replace with new classes?

I imagine it would be fun to have some ships like the QEs or Kongōs that can stay in action for most of the game.

[NGTM-1R]

Yes...with some caveats. It's actually an essential mechanic.

Ships get old and become "obsolete", marked with an "(O)" on your roster. If you leave them like that, they eventually get sold off as having become too decrepit.

The solution is to rebuild them. Now, you don't even have to change anything; you can just refit them as they already are, it takes a couple months. Think of it as a dockyard availability in USN terms.

You can also change things up. The biggie is that you can replace their machinery, bringing it up to modern spec in terms of weight usage and changing their speed if desired. You can change their secondary battery from casemates into turrets or the other way around and alter its size. You can rebuild their turrets for more armor, though not the ship itself. Triple turrets can be turned into doubles or doubles into singles of a larger gun size, to an arcanely defined point. (Or doubles into triples of a smaller gun size, though I'm not sure who'd ever use that.) Older, worse guns can be replaced with newer, superior-quality models. You can also upgrade the ship's main battery fire-control, which will be main reason you do refits anyways, or apply increased elevation to its main battery, or add directors to its secondary battery.

However this doesn't allow you to change the base tonnage or range of the ship, or alter its number of main battery turrets. Machinery replacement is extremely expensive, often half as much as the ship cost new, sometimes as much as two-thirds. These take from four to eleven months. As a general rule, you may not ever rebuild a ship's machinery in game, unless you're in the midst of a naval treaty building freeze and it happens to exceed treaty max, or you've got a really old class of light battlecruisers but scrapping is impractical for tonnage reasons.

[NGTM-1R]

So if somebody says they're playing RTW on hard mode, it's probably not a reference to the game's difficulty settings.

Each nation in Rule The Waves has advantages and disadvantages. The US, for example, gets bonuses to a couple techs early, a flat bonus to research, and has a superior chance of positive economic events from just budget windfalls to private shipbuilding expanding your max dock size without you having to spend a dime. They also have the second best starter budget in the game and decent starter dock sizes and guns.

Some nations aren't so lucky. Opinions on "most screwed" differ, but of the base nations there are three obvious losers: Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Italy. These are playing RTW on Hard Mode.

The easiest of them, in my opinion, is Austria-Hungary. This is because their negatives are balanced by a positive: having no overseas possessions their ships can sacrifice range and crew accommodation for combat performance, ensuring individual unit superiority. They also get a bonus to triple turrets and torpedo tech.

In return you're tied with Japan for smallest starter budget in the game, your max gun size at start is 11", your starter dock size is 2k tons smaller than either of your neighbors, and Italy already hates your guts. If anybody more serious than France looks at you funny, prepare to close your eyes, bend over, and think of Franz Ferdinand unless you're really good.

Middle of the road is Italy. Your budget is okay, so's your dock size and choice of guns, you actually get a bonus triple turrets and to ship design to reflect that Alberto Cuniberti was one of the smarter naval architects of his time and predicted HMS Dreadnought before 1900.

In return you take a penalty to crew training and research from Uneducated, reflecting the low literacy rate in Italy, you have some overseas possessions in West Africa to defend but at least they're nearby, and because OTO doesn't exist yet and your shipbuilding contracts are badly written until the Fifties you pay more money for your ships to the crooked bastards at Ansaldo. You are also going to spend most of the game hoping to God Germany, the Brits, and the US don't notice you.

Russia is the most difficult. You have France budget, Italy shipyards, Austrian guns. The Black Sea Fleet is not a thing, either, so you're lucky that way in not having to manage three separate fleets on your budget.

You have to defend Siberia and Manchuria, which are on the other side of the world from all your other crap, you have the same Uneducated penalty as Italy but no tech bonuses worth a damn, you have the Undeveloped Shipbuilding Industry penalty Japan does, meaning expanding it costs more and your ships have a high chance of delays effecting their construction and costing you money, and finally you get Inconsistent Naval Policy which means the government will demand you build things from submarines to battleships because they say so. A lot. And **** with your budget. A lot.

Japan, despite their disadvantages with budget, shipbuilding, and starter guns, isn't as difficult as any of these primarily because they're far away from everyone and the only people they're likely to offend early on who have the local bases to be dangerous are Russia; nobody else has big enough bases local to Northeast Asia to sustain a blockade. They also get torpedo tech bonuses and a special "Surprise Attack" scenario at war start where they get to attack people at anchor for an early advantage. (That's right, Japan gets to Pearl Harbor people without even using aircraft carriers.)

[Mammothtank]

Can you gain and lose territory and if you can how does that work?

[The E]

Is the russian AI ever tempted to reenact the Battle of Tsushima?

[NGTM-1R]

Can you gain and lose territory and if you can how does that work?

Yes. Locations in the game are divided into home and colonies. Home locations can't be lost by any means. Colonies can. (Some of the in-game possessions are surprising, too; Maine is considered one.) They can also be lost two ways. The first is in a peace deal, they can be given to the other side; however there's a cap on size and number (each possession is worth x points, you only get 4 to 10 points to take depending on how the enemy offered terms) inherent to this, so British India or Sicily aren't taken in peace deals, but various islands or African nations can be.

The second way is invasion. If you or your enemy establish local supremacy of naval power, then the game uses an arcane formula and decides based on the result and some random chance that the side with naval supremacy is launching an invasion, or several invasions. Land combat is abstracted and you can work to support it but have no real control. Over the course of several month-long strategic turns the invasion will succeed or fail, and the possession will flip to the invader if it does succeed.

Rapid territorial gain is usually by invasion rather than peace deals, due to the built-in caps on the latter.

Is the russian AI ever tempted to reenact the Battle of Tsushima?

The strategic forces that caused Tsushima are there. So in a real sense yes. If you play as Japan then you either have your Tsushima moment where you punch somebody in the nuts and climb over them to become a world power, or you probably lose the game. Russia is definitely the easiest to do this to.

[StarSlayer]

The strategic forces that caused Tsushima are there. So in a real sense yes. If you play as Japan then you either have your Tsushima moment where you punch somebody in the nuts and climb over them to become a world power, or you probably lose the game. Russia is definitely the easiest to do this to.

Does the game model the wear and tear experienced by long unsupported deployments as experienced by the Second Pacific Squadron?

[NGTM-1R]

Does the game model the wear and tear experienced by long unsupported deployments as experienced by the Second Pacific Squadron?

Yes!

Each region has a basing capacity. If you have no basing capacity in that region or you exceed it, your ships will develop an asterisk next to their status over time; for a medium-range normal-accommodations ship this usually takes a couple months.

Once it happens though the ship will perform at a worse level in combat representing crew fatigue, generally dropping a level in crew Quality (crew quality is either Poor, Fair, Good, or Elite). It is also at greatly increased risk of mechanical breakdown. At best, a mechanical breakdown will put it in the dockyard for a month if it's in an area with friendly bases. The other alternative is the ship is interned until the war is over as it was forced to seek repairs in a neutral port. (This can happen even in areas with friendly bases, though usually not in areas where you have a Home Region.) In combat, a mechanical breakdown usually means a bearings overheat but can sometimes be serious boiler troubles; both cause the ship to lose speed, but boiler issues mean repairs or internment.

If a ship sustains more than superficial combat damage in an area without friendly bases, it is also likely to end up getting interned as it seeks repairs in a neutral port.

Finally, there is the dreaded double asterisk. You won't see it much unless you build ships with Short Range and then send them on world cruises, like the Second Pacific Squadron was. This reduces the crew quality to Poor regardless of what it was and caps a ship to 2/3rds of its maximum speed. A severe mechanical breakdown is almost assured if you try to maintain that speed for any length of time.

[NGTM-1R]

I'm playing a game as Austria-Hungary using the minimal fleet size.

This basically means you'll be surprised to see more than three capital ships in the same place and makes cheap ships much more viable.

The KuK Kriegsmarine has only ever had one armored cruiser. This was originally the 10k-ton SMS Kasierin und Koingin Maria Theresia, armed with a pair of 10" twins and 5" secondaries. During the first war with Italy, she was the navy's sword and shield, earning seven battle stars and sinking the CAs RM Vittor Pesanti and RM Carlo Alberto as well as several light cruisers before she was sunk in a duel with Italy's first battlecruiser, the RM Lepanto. Lepanto did not survive the battle either; badly damaged by the Austrian ship's 10" guns, the Leopard-class destroyers that were escorting Maria Theresia swarmed and sank her with torpedoes.

After the loss of Maria Theresia, the KuK Kriegsmarine built a replacement ship, the 13k-ton SMS Sankt Georg. Sankt Georg was in response to similar French ships and actually masses as much as the KuK Kriegsmarine's predreadnought class, the Kaisers. In the ongoing second war with Italy, Sankt Georg sunk the CA RM Marco Polo, did better than the battlecruiser SMS Kantern during their fight with Italian battlecruiser RM Giuseppe Garibaldi, and has terrorized the Adriatic coast with multiple shore bombardments and raids on Italian shipping. In multiple fleet actions Sankt Georg can be found playing the role of a linenschiff behind either battlecruiser SMS Lissa or predreadnought SMS Kaiser; she is in every sense she is one of the capital ships of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

At least until I get better battlecruisers.

[NGTM-1R]

I bring you the story of SMS Kärnten and SMS Tirol, the little battlecruisers that could.

I'm playing a game as Austria-Hungary, at the minimum fleet size, so pretty much nobody has more than a tiny number of capital ships at a time. My second class of battlecruisers are 22k ton, 12" twins, AXY, 28 knot top speed. Kärnten and Tirol are separated by four years despite their identical design, since I barely have the budget to build a single capital ship at any one time and the Navy minister kept demanding submarines or destroyers or something.

Honestly my initial impression of Kärnten was that I had a pretty derpy ship on my hands. She got chased off by Italian armored cruisers a couple times, and usually came off worse against the lone Italian BC. Meanwhile while my last armored cruiser, SMS Sankt Georg, was wrecking faces. Still, by the time of my third war with Italy (I had five of those) they were starting to get competent, splattering a few cruisers in raider interceptions, and they sank the two Italian Giuseppe Garibaldi-class BCs in separate actions, but they'd been able to gang up on them, so that wasn't too impressive. My next war was very short, because Italy was still at high unrest and collapsed early.

By the time of the fifth war I was desperately trying to get more modern ships out but didn't have the budget to do so without delays. Italy had an axial-design 12x 15" gun ship at 35600 tons (the RM Vittor Pesanti), a 12x 13" gun ABXY ship at 27200 tons (the RM Guilio Cesare), and a 45k-ton 8x 15" gun ABXY ship (the RM Marco Polo). I still had only the Kärnten and the Tirol, because I'd had to build a battleship to ensure France wouldn't kill me in a fleet action during a war scare.

I shouldn't have bothered building anything else.

First, Vittor Pesanti. They engaged off Rhodes, and Tirol took a bad hit early in the engagement that damaged her machinery, so she fell behind. Kärnten hung on, having knocked out a couple of the poorly armored turrets on the Vittor Pesanti, causing it to try and turn away. But Kärnten was faster, and kept hanging off the Italian BC's stern where it couldn't return fire. Eventually the Vittor Pesanti turned around, though, and put some shells into Kärnten that disabled her turrets and damaged her engineering spaces. Welp, so much for this fight-then a surprise 12" salvo punches through Vittor Pesanti's deck and wrecks its machinery. Tirol has gotten its damaged machinery put back back together and rejoined the fight. Tirol charges in to point-blank range and absolutely wrecks Vittor Pesanti for having the temerity to touch her sistership.

Guilio Cesare attacks a convoy off Zara a few months later. Kärnten and Tirol charge to the rescue and pin Guilio Cesare against the shoreline, then take her apart. I realized afterwards that they hadn't even been scratched in the process.

Finally, all that's left (almost literally after my CL pair sank the entire Italian destroyer force in a single battle) is the Marco Polo. She outmasses the two scrappy KuK ships put together. She's vastly better armored and four knots faster. During a bombardment of Arcona, Marco Polo's attempt to interfere gets her slapped around pretty badly and forced to hide in port while Kärnten and Tirol rain shells on the city and its shore batteries. Three months later off Durazzo Kärnten takes on Marco Polo alone and, despite being badly damaged, forces the bigger ship to turn away. Tirol gets her turn in a convoy fight off Spalato, where she actually kills Marco Polo's electrical power and causes the bigger ship to go dead in the water with a hit at long range, but isn't able to seal the deal before the Italian battlecruiser gets steam back up and runs away. Off Albania a bloodbath of a fight sees everyone involved limping back to port with heavy damage.

Finally, during a coastal raid on Venice, I have the brand-new SMS Sankt Georg The Second, my 45k-ton battlecruiser with 9 15" guns, and she finds Marco Polo defending. Marco Polo turns and runs for it rather than fight something that's actually in her weight class. Though not before putting a shot through Sankt Georg's belt that limited her to 12 knots.

Oh hey there's a squadron marker for an Austro-Hungarian battlecruiser squadron and Marco Polo is headed right for it.

Most of the fight took place out of my view. By the time Sankt Georg limped up, Marco Polo was on fire and barely making 5 knots in the direction of Acona, Tirol was limping away towards Pola at 11 knots with only her A turret working and it didn't bear on the target, and Kärnten had all her main battery turrets blown off but was circling Marco Polo at 15 knots and showering the Italian battlecruiser with secondary battery fire. I can only assume that her captain was screaming something like "That mother****er is not getting away this time!" and exhorting his casemate gunners "I don't care what it takes, make the damn thing stop so we can ram!"

Sankt Georg obligingly finished Marco Polo off, completing the work of the Little Battlecruisers That Could. The next month the Italian government collapsed for the third time, and three months later it clicked over to 1926, ending the game.

[StarSlayer]

Considering their accomplishments those battlecruisers would be considered crack ships, is this reflected in game?  Do the crew and officers of successful ships get buffed based off that experience?

[NGTM-1R]

Considering their accomplishments those battlecruisers would be considered crack ships, is this reflected in game?  Do the crew and officers of successful ships get buffed based off that experience?

Yes. Most crews are rated merely Fair or Good. It's genuinely hard to get a ship to Elite, and the game appears to internally track experience higher even if it doesn't say so. A ship like those two battlecruisers, or Sankt Georg The First, is capable of performing sometimes-freakish feats. Combined with the game's training system, if you're having the fleet do intensive training, it can get much worse.

In mechanical terms, the crew improves at doing things like limiting flooding, fighting fire, and hitting targets. They also get bonuses to critical hit chance and, though it's unconfirmed, most people think there's a small bonus to penetration. Tirol's dumping all over Marco Polo with a critical hit that left the Italian dead in the water is an example; it's possible to play a half-dozen games of RTW and not see that particular critical come up. (One of the best ways of telling if you're fighting an elite enemy crew in a raider battle is by the way your ship's combat ability starts to degrade quickly from the crits. It's not terribly useful, but the only other way, the enemy ship having a very high VP value when dead, is even less so.) At the end Kärnten was averaging 10-15% hit rate at 20000 yards, which is practically black magic considering she was using 1920s optical direction. Tirol was still managing 7% average hit rate at the same range, which would be a pretty good record for aimed salvos even in early 1943 with radar fire control.

[NGTM-1R]

Ally battles are abstracted. You never do join ops, or the like. They fight their own little battles and you get some VP for their ops, and if they can blockade, you get credit. Sometimes it tells you about them.

Like this one.



This is particularly extreme considering it's a minesweeper that apparently sank a predread, but a fight like this where one side loses DD and the other a B are actually a running joke in the game's fandom.

[The E]

That's some civ-style "Tanks vs Spearmen" hilariousness.

[StarSlayer]

This is particularly extreme considering it's a minesweeper that apparently sank a predread, but a fight like this where one side loses DD and the other a B are actually a running joke in the game's fandom.

I assume it took its inspiration from the romanticized version of the sinking of SMS Friedrich Carl from that Russian film about Kolchak.

[NGTM-1R]

I present to you the ship that sank the British Empire, USS Constellation.



Constellation is a Block Two Valley Forge class, armed with three quad turrets with 17" guns in main battery, four quad turrets of 5" guns for secondary, and several AA mounts. In comparison to the Block One ships her primary advantage is the superior performance of her main guns, but she also has improved torpedo protection and slightly better armor on her deck. Constellation is hardly unique, however; she was part of the largest class of USN battlecruisers, running to 36 ships counting the Block One Valley Forges. Compared to others of her type around the world she was significantly more heavily armed and slightly slower, as well as six to ten thousand tons heavier.

She also sank six battlecruisers and a pair of battleships in a single action.

It is 1942, and the United States and Germany have been at war with the British for twenty-six months. The might of the USN has swept the Eastern Seaboard clean and the British are struggling to hold their last possessions in the Caribbean. American and British destroyers and gunboats duel daily in the waters of San Juan De Funca Strait before returning to Seattle, Vancouver, and Esquimalt. American battlecruisers make night sweeps off the coast of New Zealand, where there is talk of an American invasion. British light cruisers raid in the Strait of Luzon. An American battlecruiser bombards Port Stanley in the Falklands, wrecking it. The First Division of the AIF is cut off at Weihaiwei in China by American blockade forces while two divisions of Marines are en route to take it from them.

The Kaiserliche Marine transferred before the war began to Africa to prevent it being trapped, similarly fights on both coasts against the British. Then, the unthinkable happens; worried by the sudden shift of power in the world, the French and Russians declare war to contain the Americans and hopefully push the Germans out of the war. Japan, feeling equally threatened, almost declares for the British as well before cooler heads point out that the Americans could easily crush them before any of their allies could help.

Germany is not entirely unprepared, but needs American war material and reinforcements. Massing at the new American posession of Saint John's, Newfoundland, a massive convoy under the escort of eight American battlecruisers, four battleships, a dozen light cruisers, and twenty-nine destroyers sets out for Europe. (There were thirty DDs originally, but USS Truxtun hit a mine.) The British naturally intercept.

Battlecruiser Division 7, Constellation, Constitution, Oriskany, and Guam, are in the lead scouting position when the two forces make contact. Turning to starboard they present broadsides at 22000 yards and engage the British force, consisting of 42000-ton Inflexible-class battlecruisers supported by a pair of 46000-ton Benbow-class battleships with destroyer support, buying time for the convoy to turn away and the other American heavies to come up in support. Constellation takes a bad hit almost immediately, a low-probability belt armor hit from a British 16" gun at that range which damages her boiler uptakes, slowing her to 18 knots. The other ships maintain formation and angle away from the British, and a moment later HMS Conqueror explodes, a 17" superheavy AP round from Constellation burrowing through her after turret roof and the flash detonating her magazines. Next to go is the poorly-named HMS Invincible, whose thin barbette armor and 2" deck are unable to protect her from another 17" round from Constellation, blowing her apart. Oriskany is hit by two 16" shells against her B turret's faceplate; the shells detonate without penetrating but her barrels are gouged by fragments, rendering the guns inoperable. HMS Tiger falls out of formation, hit by Constitution in the engine room. Then Constellation takes a hit that robs her of all electrical power and goes dead in the water at the same moment Guam is holed below the water line by three shells.

Battlecruiser Division 7 turns away, leaving crippled Constellation to her fate and hoping to link up with Battlecruiser Division 5 and Battleship Division 2. The British close in, firing at her fleeing sisters and leaving it to their destroyers to finish the crippled American.

Then Constellation comes to life again, her crew having not only repaired the electrical faults but her earlier engine damage. First to suffer is HMS Benbow, her 14" belt no protection at only fifteen thousand yards. An American shell penetrates her magazines and she explodes. Next is HMS Inflexible, whose after turrets are annihilated by American shells, starting fires that reach her magazines a minute later and destroy her. HMS Jed and HMS Wear, destroyers, are killed by Constellation's secondaries, but put a half-dozen torpedoes into the American battlecruiser.

Constellation has the finest torpedo protection system ever made, and the target angle is bad. The torpedoes hurt her, but fail to stop her. HMS Carysfort, a light cruiser, is blown apart by the after turret. Constellation turns to present her broadside, limping at 12 knots but with her combat systems intact, and HMS Queen Mary has her engineering spaces blown apart by 17" shells. Unfortunate DD HMS Wolverine is killed before she launches torpedoes, frightening off the other destroyers. The British turn and run as the other ships of Battlecruiser Division 7 come up. Limping HMS Tiger has her conning tower blown off by six 17" shells at 18000 yards, going dead in the water. HMS New Zealand loses power after a lucky hit at 20000 yards and is clobbered to death by the other ships of the division before she can fix the problem. Finally HMS Revenge, at 24000 yards, is hit in the roof on both after turrets and blows up.

The losses here force the British to recall forces from Southeast Asia to replace them, knocking the first domino down as the RN's global commitments become too much. Eight bloody years of war later, Russia has been knocked out of the war after America and Germany reduced Saint Petersburg to charred ashes with a bombardment, and America annexed Sahkalin and Kamchatka to the new state of Alaska. The British and French possessions in Southeast Asia have been invaded and taken, save for Australia and New Zealand, and New Zealand is the scene of fierce fighting as the Americans have invaded. American troops have landed on Ceylon. German and American soldiers are within twenty miles of Paris and knocking France out of the war as well.

Constellation made it possible. And in the new version of the song, America Rules The Waves.

[NGTM-1R]

So I've decided to play Japan. This is actually my first time, though I've paid close attention to several other people's playthroughs of Japan.

Let's meet the Imperial Japanese Navy.


The Iki-class predreadnoughts were built in United States yards, as Japan's starting yards are barely big enough to build a decent armored cruiser. This order, and that for the Asama-class armored cruisers, was a fortunate decision and ultimately paved the way for an alliance with the United States that has greatly benefited the fledgling IJN. There are six of them. In most ways the Ikis are compromises. They have decent but not great speed and armor, and are somewhat outgunned by most other predreads which use 6" secondaries and 3" tertiaries rather than a unified 5" secondary battery.  That said, they're a solid base to start with.


Sagami and her sistership Suwo are semidreadnaughts, and comparatively quite powerful for the type, though a little thinly armored for my taste (about even with most AI ships). They're also a couple knots faster than most of their peers. Also ordered from the United States.


The Asama-class were ordered from the US as well and are rent-a-cop versions of my usual early CAs. They're a little weak on armor but relatively powerful in guns and average in most other ways. Bethlehem Steel got rich off this class, considering I ordered eight of them before switching to the followon Azumas.


Azuma and Kasuga are a different matter. 3000 more tons, a heavy 8" secondary battery, an extra knot of speed; these ships are to battlecruisers what semidreadnaughts are to battleships. They were the first heavy IJN ships built in Japan.


The Izumi-class protected cruisers are exceptionally heavy, fast, and powerful for protected cruisers, and I have high hopes for them. I have 8 of them.


Itsukushima and Suma are a slightly more modern Izumi, trading a pair of 5" guns for a knot of speed.


Finally, the 36 ships of the Hakaze-class are basic early-game DDs, slightly more optimized than the average AI design, but the difference isn't that much.

Despite some war scares with the UK among others (god please don't let me fight the Brits), my first war will be with...France, it seems, in Southeast Asia. Banzai!

[NGTM-1R]

War is boring.

Itsukushima and Suma scuffled with the French armored cruiser Jeanne D'Arc in Tsushima Straits, which was a moral victory for the protected cruisers in giving as good as they got, but it was a brief action at night when they passed each other, and then nobody could find the other side after that. The good news is France had no bases in Northeast Asia, so Jeanne D'Arc ended up interned from her damage.

Iwate and Furutaka, Asama-class ships, had a similar scuffle with the predreadnaught Colbert near the Gotō Islands. In this case though, nobody actually landed a hit.

Unebi, an Izumi-class raiding off what will one day be Vietnam, had a slapfight with the CA Kleber, which badly damaged Unebi. At one point she was reduced to only 1 knot of speed. But Kleber was unable to seal the deal, constantly missing the crippled Unebi, and eventually she got back up to 10 knots and was saved by nightfall.

The first serious action of the war takes place off Takao, Formosa (you know it as Kaoshiung, Taiwan), where super-CA Kasuga, Itsukushima and Suwa, and some DDs take on a group of French ships lead, once again, by the hapless Kleber. It takes place at dusk, which means the engagement has to be pressed closely early on, a dangerous thing to do because of torpedoes. Ironically it doesn't work out too badly. A French light cruiser limps gets shot up by Kasuga and manages to limp away when Itsukushima and Suwa switch to AI control and try to form on Kasuga again because they were out of signals range. Kleber gets into close combat with the ridiculously powerful Kasuga and is sunk. Then the torpedo menace happens to Kasuga from one of the French DDs, but she's not too badly damaged, and turns and leisurely sails back to Takao. A storm breaks out, and the French DDs, which tangled with my DDs, then my CLs, and finally Kasuga, all sink from storm-related flooding combined with their previous damage. The last French ship, a light cruiser, spends the rest of the scenario length shooting at and missing its bombardment target.

The Tage, a 7" gunned protected cruiser and France's most powerful ship of the type, spends 10 hours (602 minutes before nightfall broke contact) in a long-range running gun battle with my own Izumi-class Chiyoda, and fails to score a single hit. The Chiyoda got twelve, four 6" and eight 5".

The Marine Nationale desperately needs to do some gunnery training.

[NGTM-1R]

Latouche-Treville, having apparently listened, has a semi-respectable duel with Asuma-class Iwate off Sasebo. Both ships are fairly seriously damaged, Iwate mostly by a lucky underwater torpedo tube launch, but Iwate has a port to return to. Latouche-Treville does not, and founders before she can reach a neutral port and be interned. (I'm a bit surprised, she was still making 15 knots when I turned away and returning fire.)

Unebi, fresh from repairs, encounters the Tage. The two ships trade minor damage in a thirty-minute battle before nightfall. Still, it's off the Goto Islands, again, so there's no place for Tage to get repairs and she's interned. (Or not, judging from later actions. INTELLLLLIGENCEEEE!) I swear I'm going to win this war because the entire Marine Nationale is going to end up interned. DesDiv 2 then has a case of **** to the brain and loses contact with the formation, and Asakaze gets a bit shot up by the Tage while wandering around in the dark but successfully breaks contact and scampers back to port.

Furutaka hunts down and kills the CA Dupliex with a lucky rudder hit that leaves her spinning helplessly in place at 15 knots for most of the fight.

There's an inconclusive destroyer brawl off the northern tip of Formosa, which I win mainly because it was over one of my convoys and they failed to hurt it. The second part took place in a squall, which made it...chaotic, but no torpedoes found their mark, either way. I did finally learn that yes, convoys are actually headed to a port, and will enter it if they have a chance. I've never had one quite reach the port before to find out.

Unebi once again stern-chases a French CL, but this one is a 4"-gunned small cruiser, and makes the mistake of turning to fight when fire is opened. The much more heavily gunned Unebi sinks it easily in a duel.

Finally, the Amagiri-class destroyers, my next-gen ships, start to join the fleet. They're not hugely superior, with one more torpedo tube and slightly larger guns, and on trials they came in under design speed. (Yes, that is a thing that can happen to you.)


France is not having fun anymore. They've started refusing battles consistently, even small ones, and three turns running I've gotten reports of strikes and demonstrations in France, which means they're at high unrest. I'm actually winning, bit by tiny bit. Unebi, which is by now the fightingest ship in the IJN, fights off another raid on the Tsushima Straits area in company with class lead Izumi. The French turn and run the moment they spot her, which is weird considering the Bruix, leading them, was actually a CA.

The Americans are also contributing usefully, sinking a few French ships and raiding around Vietnam themselves. Itsukushima sinks the Sfax, which is a mini-Tage-class, armed with 7" guns. It's a tough fight, with the Sfax's gunners proving to be better than any others in the war so far. Kasuga and Yakumo beat up the Gueydon, which puts a torpedo into Kasuga, continuing the tradition. Yakamo sinks the French CA. Izumo fights the Dupetit-Thomars, takes some damage, then retreats to the American base at Manila for repairs, while the French ship does likewise retreating to Vietnam.

Then I suffer my first actual loss, as the Tage, having finally learned how to aim, sinks my CL Yaeyama with some lucky gunnery from her 7" guns. Another raider intercept in the Palawan Passage ends with a pair of my CLs running for their lives from a French CA. Well. That escalated quickly. Before it turns into a trend, Izumi sinks the light cruiser Linois, putting an end to the French experiment with putting on 7" guns at only 3500 tons. She finishes the French ship with a torpedo, thus beginning the long and glorious tradition of IJN torpedo warfare.

The war ends with France making no concessions, much to my annoyance, my despite having nearly twice their VPs.

But tensions with them remain high. I might get another shot at them soon enough.