The Fun Factor

[Harv]

Now that I've logged quite a few hours with DG, I'm finding less and less reason to keep playing the campaign. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but the battles seem to be of 4 types...

1. I want to engage but the enemy runs away.
2. The enemy wants to engage, but I run away.
3. It's dark and a knife fight in a phone booth ensues.
4. Some poor merchant gets chased down and sunk/captured.

Of these four only the battles in the dark are what I would call entertaining, and overall the campaign just seems to be lacking what I call the "fun factor". Individual scenarios and generated battles are challenging and can be fun, however I have yet to experience more than a couple of campaign fights that resemble anything like them.

Like I say maybe it's just me, but I was really hoping the campaign would draw me in for hours at a time, but so far that just hasn't happened yet. Any hints, tips or suggestions on how to add the "fun" to it?

Harv

[Sheik Yerbouti]

Each to his own. I find the campaign to be very addictive, and don't care that much about individual scenarios (for learning they are useful of course).

[WallysWorld]

That's what playing the campaign is about.

Engage when you have the advantage, run when you don't. Managing my task forces and trying to ensure that they are positioned where they can do the most amount of damage to the enemy is half the enjoyment I get out of DG. The other half is watching my forces clobber the enemy. If I'm lucky, that is.

[Bullethead]

Like I say maybe it's just me, but I was really hoping the campaign would draw me in for hours at a time, but so far that just hasn't happened yet. Any hints, tips or suggestions on how to add the "fun" to it?

I really like the campaign. I've only played a couple of tactical battles, one to learn the interface and one while waiting for a patch for a bug that had put a temporary halt to my campaign. Every other minute of my life since the game came out (or so it seems :D ) has been in the campaign.

I like the campaign because it's quite different from the campaigns of most other naval sims. This is because of the period in which DG is set, when the capabilities of ships were very different than they were at any other time. Actually, Nelson's navy had more in common with the fleets of WW1 and WW2 than any of them did with the RJW fleets. Anyway, because of this, the way to enjoy the campaign is to rid yourself of preconceptions based on campaigns (real and in games) in other eras and accept DG's on its own merits.

The #1 thing you have to get over is any desire to see large battles frequently. Even forget, or at least redefine, the term "decisive battle". Neither side's objective is to destroy the other's fleet, and in fact both sides can win if the BBs never leave port. The only thing that matters is how many merchants the Russians can stop. So a "decisive battle" in the DG campaign might be a small cruiser action, but if it takes out several Russian cruisers, it will have a decisive effect on the outcome of the war.

The DG campaign is all about the sides having different objectives and different means to pursue them. Neither side can command the sea, because neither side is strong enough to be everywhere at once and no ship can stay at sea very long anyway.

For the Russians, the only ships that really matter for the 1st 2/3 or so of the game are the cruisers. The Russians MUST continually hunt down merchants with the cruisers or they will lose, simple as that. Meanwhile, their starting battlefleet isn't up to meeting Togo under most conditions, so spends most of the game in port. Maybe they come out once in a while to try to destroy Chin Yen if she comes too close, but otherwise they just sit and defensively mine Port Arthur. Only when 2PacRon finally arrives can the Russians seek a battlefleet action with confidence.

The IJN, OTOH, would really like to force the Port Arthur fleet out to fight, before 2PacRon arrives. After all, they can usually take them. And the sooner that's done, the more time they have to heal up before 2PacRon arrives. However, the Japanese have absolutely no means of forcing the Russians to fight through direct player/naval action. They can tempt them with weak targets close to Port Arthur, but if the Russians don't take the bait, there'll be no fight. The only way to force the Russians out to fight is through success in the land campaign, with the IJA eventually driving the Russians out of Port Arthur. And the only way to do that is to get most of the merchants through. Thus, the real #1 goal of the IJN is to take out the Russian cruisers. The more of them that die, the more merchants get through. And that means that sooner or later, the Russian fleet will come out, either to raid for itself or when forced from home. But in the meantime, for the IJN, it's really all about killing cruisers in small batches.

But that means the IJN has to hunt them down. This period is also rather unique (for a major naval war) in having no convoys, which makes things more difficult for the IJN. After all, convoys would protect the merchants and force the Russian cruisers to fight the escort, which hopefully would be strong enough to kill or main the raiders. But no convoys is realistic, a function of the technology of the day. In those days, there were no subs or planes, only surface raiders. And only ships of cruiser size and above had the range to be effective as raiders. This meant that any escort unit would have to be composed of a minimum of 3-4 good cruisers, to have the force to defeat 1 or 2 raiding cruisers, plus have the range for the job. And because a convoy system requires multiple escort units, the cost of providing them was quite prohibitive, especially if you wanted to maintain sufficient cruisers for your battlefleet. But the raiding side couldn't affort to have many raiders, either, so the number of raiders was rather low, and most merchants should get through. This is why merchants go it solo in the RJW.

Thus, it's all cat-and-mouse for most of the campaign. The Russians have to be sneaky and deceptive to kill merchants and avoid getting caught, while the Japanese have to be devious and willing to accept disproportionate combat losses in cruiser actions to rid the seas of the Russian raider. I find this exciting from the Russian side and mentally challenging from the IJN side. I really enjoy it, either side ;).

[saddletank]

Who said "war is days and days of complete boredom followed by a few minutes of total terror"?

DG is like that some days. Yes, the campaign management and 'non-battles' can become dull and a little frustrating if you let them but the occasional hour or two of total mayhem when both sides decide to fight really makes up for the quiet times :)