Questions about the Campaign

[pad152]

Questions about the Campaign

Reading the docs that came with the demo I have some questions about the campaign.

1. There is mention of minelaying, but no mention of mine sweeping. Is there a way to sweep or clear mines?

2. How many minelayers does each side have?

3. Coastal guns and bombardment missions, can you bombard emeny ships in ports and/or coastal guns?

4. Repair times for ships in ports?

5. Are there any types of ship upgrades during the ship campaign?

6. Why no troop movement? Even Great Naval Battle allowed you to transport troops.

[NormKoger]

Good questions...
1. There is mention of minelaying, but no mention of mine sweeping. Is there a way to sweep or clear mines?
2. How many minelayers does each side have?
Minesweeping in the RJW was accomplished, for the most part, by small boats. Small meaning _expendable_. Even laying mines was a dangerous business. Both the Russians and Japanese lost ships to their own mines in minelaying operations. Things will be different when we move to WWI, but for this campaign it turns out that the best way to model minesweeping was to assign rates of decay based upon whether or not mines are in the vicinity of a naval base (thus, subject to active sweeping efforts). Minesweeping in this game is automatic. Your role as player is limited to mine laying, and if you are satisfied with keeping the approaches to your bases mined, even that is automatic. If you don't send your minelaying assets out on missions, they will merrily mine away - increasing your local friendly fields to the maximum and then maintaining them there.

The Russians have a couple of minelayers: Amur and Yenisey, and some of their battleships can also serve as minelayers. The Japanese get one converted minelayer (Korea Maru) in April of '04. Other than that, all of the destroyers can carry a few mines. I believe the ship info popups in the task force management screen give mine capacities. Task force mine capacities are also indicated in the task force popups. Mines are one of the few areas where the Russians have a serious advantage. The Japanese are heavily dependent upon destroyers for minelaying, which limits them to dropping off 30 or 40 mines at a time if they use a destroyer division. Even Korea Maru can only carry 30 mines. The Russian Amur and Yenisey can drop off 500 at a time. Sneaking them out and mining the Assan Basin and the Eliots would make it quite difficult for the Japanese to keep a watch on Port Arthur.
3. Coastal guns and bombardment missions, can you bombard enemy ships in ports and/or coastal guns?
I had originally intended to do this. After all, such bombardments did occur in the RJW. But when I really looked into the issue, it became apparent that absolutely nothing of any value was accomplished by these bombardments in the RJW. And unlike WWI, where German bombardments of English coastal towns will have serious political effects, there really isn't any reason for coastal bombardments. Without any "reward" for conducting bombardments, I realized that players were extremely unlikely to engage in them - so I decided to skip on bombardments for the moment. I may add them in a future campaign variant, particularly as the engine evolves to handle WWI.
Repair times for ships in ports?
Looking at the documentation, I see that I need to make a couple of small changes to the description of repairs.

Full documentation probably isn't worthwhile. The game logic tries to simulate actual repairs, which is a complicated business. All players really need (or want) to know is that damage is repaired only when a task for is at rest, that small ships are repaired more rapidly than large ships, and that the destroyed weapon repair is based on daily random checks against the size of the weapon - with the chance of repair being very low for large weapons.

A few details: "Permanent" flooding damage is repaired at an approximate rate of 100 tons per day. Although damage is presented to you in terms of percentage, it is actually tracked in terms of "damaged tons" internally. Things like destroyers, if they survive to be repaired, are repaired quickly. Heavily damaged battleships can take months. Weapons repair is based on the size of the weapon. "Destroyed" small weapons are replaced quickly, but large weapons (like battleship main guns) may be out of commission for the duration of the war. There is a random factor, compared to the weight of the shell. Unlike the slow, steady repair of flooding damage, weapon repair is a hit or miss affair. So in practical terms, it makes sense to keep large ships at rest to repair flooding damage but there is no real accumulation of repair for weapons. It is always possible for any weapon to be restored from destroyed status, but if it hasn't happened by the time any accumulated permanent flooding damage has been repaired you may as well feel free to use the ship as is - there's no telling when the big guns might be repaired.

Are there any types of ship upgrades during the ship campaign?
No, not really. Korea Maru is actually an upgrade, so I suppose it qualifies in a way. But that is handled as a reinforcement. There are a few ships that appear after the war begins.
Why no troop movement?
Troops are definitely moving, but they are going where the generals want. As naval commander, your role would be limited to following orders - issuing orders to transports to move from port to port. It did not really seem like a fun thing for players to have to deal with. Except for the initial landings at Chemulpo (which have already occurred as the campaign begins), Japanese troop movements were generally accomplished on a ship by ship basis (no convoys). That's why the Russians were able to inflict some fairly painful losses on the Japanese army by intercepting transports at sea - not a Japanese warship in sight. Troops convoys are an interesting issue. The belief in the first part of the century was that transports were safer moving individually. This did not really change until the latter half of WWI. Halpern's "A Naval History of World War I" has quite a bit of detail on the early 20th century arguments about convoys. In some ways, given the benefit of several years of intensive analysis, books on WWI shed more light on the RJW than RJW books do.

The short answer though, for this game, is that the players' roles in troop and supply transport in the RJW are doctrinally limited to maintaining or contesting control of transport lanes.

[philbill]

I just started a campaign as the Japanese.
The game jumped to a battle between a russian gunboat and an auxillary cruiser of mine. bit of a mismatch so i ran for port. survived a jammed rudder and made it to nearly the anchor area. up comes a dialogue and says the battle has ended. I could not exit the battle without exiting the game. there were only buttons in options to return and that took me back to the battle. When I finally exited the battle it exited the game?
Very frustrating, did i miss something?
Phil

[NormKoger]

...did i miss something?

When a battle ends, you get the dialog telling you about it. After you close the dialog, you can look around - the clock is stopped. It's pretty much like the situation after a non-campaign battle. There is a "Return to Campaign" button in the main control flyout (the buttons that drop down from screen upper right). Selecting that should return you to the campaign.

[philbill]

Hi Norm,
I had clicked the return to campaign button but for some reason on that game it was taking me back to the view campaign map. Started a new one and all is OK now.
Regards
Phil

[Silencer]

There is a random factor, compared to the weight of the shell. Unlike the slow, steady repair of flooding damage, weapon repair is a hit or miss affair. So in practical terms, it makes sense to keep large ships at rest to repair flooding damage but there is no real accumulation of repair for weapons. It is always possible for any weapon to be restored from destroyed status, but if it hasn't happened by the time any accumulated permanent flooding damage has been repaired you may as well feel free to use the ship as is - there's no telling when the big guns might be repaired.


question:

is this for Damaged weapons AND destroyed weapons?
Meaning, I understand that when example a Main turret is destroyed, it will take a long time to repair/replace this weapon mount.
but let's say it damaged (control-function is damaged by a lucky hit), does this also take as long as destroyed?

[Neutrino 123]

Nope. Damaged weapons are repaired fairly quickly. Sometimes, they are even repaired within a battle.

[Dogbert]

Is there a way to get the detailed ship data from within the campaign game?