What are you favorite ships to save at PA?

[Behemoth]

ok ok,
Honestly that is about the most Noob question I've ever asked, I mean it. But to be more specific, when you start a Campaign as the Russians before the surprise atttack, what are the best assets of that group of ship? Also assuming it's in your power to save them which ones would they be? Sorry for how noob these questions are, I'm just trying to get a handle on what the value of each class of ship is in the game overall, still a little new to the era and all. If you feel like enlightening me further towards which classes were the most lack luster and which really shined in this era I'd be bowled over with graciousness. I tend to use my games to teach myself about history in a limited fashion, as I'm sure most wargamers do. Thank you in advance.
-B

[Bullethead]

I'm just trying to get a handle on what the value of each class of ship is in the game overall...

Winning the campaign is all about how many Japanese merchants get through. The only way the Russians can win is if they stop 375k tons of merchants before the end. Therefore, battlefleet losses don't matter that much, at least for the first 3/4 or so of the campaign (the time before 2PacRon appears). Up to that point, it's all about commerce raiding. Therefore, the most important Russian ships are those that are the best commerce raiders.

What makes a good commerce raider is 1) speed (to run away from the IJN), 2) range/endurance (to stay out as long as possible and/or to go where the IJN isn't), and 3) firepower (to sink the Japanese marus, which count double tonnage).

Under these criteria, the most important Russian ships are as follows, in this order IMHO:

Lyena, Angara: excellent range to get to and stay on the Japanese east coast, where there are beaucoup neutral merchants (no need for firepower) and very few, if any, IJN warships (so their relatively low speed isn't a handicap).
Askold, Varyag, Bogatyr: excellent speed (to escape from the IJN), high firepower (kills marus quickly), and decent range. These are the ideal ships for the Korean coast and Tsushima Straits areas, where the most marus, but also the most IJN, are.
Rossya, Gromoboi, Ryurik: fast enough to escape from anything more powerful, enough firepower to kill anything else, and very good range. These are excellent for patrolling the Sea of Japan shipping lanes and serving as IJN bait, allowing the PCs above to roam free.
Novik, Boyarin: fast but weak on range and firepower. Their short range pretty much limits them to the Korean coast and Tsushima area, where they quickly run out of ammo killing 1 or 2 marus. They're really better at getting neutrals, so you might consider sending them to Vladivostok so they can afterwards roam the Sea of Japan where the neutrals are.

[SunScream]

I can't believe you have not included Bayan in that list!
The fastest armoured cruiser in the Russian fleet @ 21Kts.
Good protection, including guns in turrets and casemates, so they tend to stay functional in battle.
Range is not fabulous, but I keep her in Port Arthur to escort the more fragile raiders out to sea in case an engagement with the lighter Japanese forces ensues.

[saddletank]

It is a bonus to save Tsesarevitch as well as she is the most powerful Russian battleship but unfortunately her position in the anchorage means she almost always gets torpedoed, it's just a case of how badly. Losing one of the other Russian BBs is not crippling (Retvizan ahead of Tsesarevitch in the line is a common casualty) but losing 2 and having only 5 to face the Japanese 6 for over a year is going to limit your options. Personally I prefer to have all 7 Russian BBs in my main battle squadron as they are individually weaker than Togo's ships.

But certainly saving Askold, Angara and Novik from the night attack is very desirable. Fortunately only Novik seems to be at risk and at 25 knots the fastest cruiser in the game she is worth having. Be careful when playing as the game may give you an orange damage marker after a torpedo hit or two and you might think the ships are OK but if you check their damage details you may find flooding is exceeding pumping capacity so always check this (I missed it early on more than once - duh!). Send orange status ships into port to be safe.

[Bullethead]

I can't believe you have not included Bayan in that list! The fastest armoured cruiser in the Russian fleet @ 21Kts.
Good protection, including guns in turrets and casemates, so they tend to stay functional in battle. Range is not fabulous, but I keep her in Port Arthur to escort the more fragile raiders out to sea in case an engagement with the lighter Japanese forces ensues.

I don't have much use for Bayan in connection with commerce raiding. She's the only Russian AC at PA, and is a very weak AC with only 2x8" guns, and those don't have a good reload time. She is slower than and out-gunned by the commonly encountered Chitose PC unit, for example, not to mention being unable to fight even a single IJN AC. The only things she can defeat are things which are too slow and weak to be a threat to the raiding PCs, so I consider her useless as a breakout escort.

Diana and (in the unlikely event of her surviving the PA attack) Pallada are too slow to be effective raiders. Therefore, these cruisers stay with the battlefleet. To me, therefore, Bayan's best use is in fleet actions, leading whichever of these slow PCs survive the night attack. Bayan uses her armor to absorb the IJN fire, allowing the slow PCs to wreak havoc with their large numbers of 6" guns.

[Behemoth]

Wow! Great responses, a tech question is always a cheap way to get people to tell tips, thanks. I lost two PCs during the raid the Bogatyr and the Pallard, I wanted to know from the experts how bad I lost out. D**n I could have saved the Bogatyr from a couple of latent torps as well, I turned her into them after she went on line to shield the Askold, I thought that 4 stacker was probably a keeper, so I sacrificed the Bog., shame, I think in retrospect the Askold would have been fine.

I saved the ships in Chitose(sp?) I had the Varyag swing west of a northerly heading battlegroup with fast TPs, sent the (really well armed) gun boat Komenyet(sp?) north directly away from the enemy. When the Varyag made the turn west she was cranking at her full 23 kts, So the Asama didn't look twice at her and headed for my little gunboat which was chugging along northerly at 13kts. I'm new to this game so I wasn't sure how sophisticated the AI could be, but I tried a trick that might fool a human; I brought the speed down on the Varyag to under the Asama's top which was 18kts (so she could gain on my ship). Only then did the whole line shift on my cruiser's heading and that was all she wrote; both ships survived. Like a dummy though, after the escape I broke up the two, sent Varyag south to commerce raid and sent the Gb N to PA. A line BBs hit my little Gb just North of where they parted ways. Lesson learned: If you want a slow craft to live, keep it paired with nice juicy Fast bait. Thanks everyone for enlightening a noob.
-B

P. S. Correct me if I'm wrong but are the AIs intercept courses always lag pursuit. I may of missed it earlier but in the above example the Asama didn't pull lead on my cruiser. I'm aware that's perhaps some hefty number crunching for the Ai to perform, but I think it's not that tough to code. Maybe I'm worng and this was an isolated incident, sound off if so.

[Bullethead]

Wow! Great responses, a tech question is always a cheap way to get people to tell tips, thanks. I lost two PCs during the raid the Bogatyr and the Pallard, I wanted to know from the experts how bad I lost out.

The most important thing to success in the PA attack is the wake-up times for the Russian cruisers on the seaward row. The times are different every time you start a new campaign, but you don't know what they are until the 1st DD gets spotted. So if you really want to get off to a good start in the campaign, just keep starting over and checking wake-up times until you see at least 2 of the cruisers with times of about 1 minute, and the rest with times of no more than 4 minutes. The early risers will break up most of the incoming attack waves before they can launch effectively, so you'll likely save all your ships except Pallada, which is almost an automatic write-off, and kill all more nearly all of the DDs.

Lesson learned: If you want a slow craft to live, keep it paired with nice juicy Fast bait.

But is it worth the drawbacks of slowing the movement and reducing the range of the "fast bait"? As the Russians, I NEVER use the Patrol order--I keep my raiders constantly moving so the IJN can't bring overwhelming force to bear on them very easily. Keeping Koreyets tied to Varyag limits the campaign map speed of Varyag to 11 knots instead of the 17 knots she does alone. The slower speed makes it impossible to catch merchants going in the same direction on the campaign map. Also, the range of Varyag, as in how much ground she can cover and how long she can stay out, are limited by Koreyet's bunkers.

Correct me if I'm wrong but are the AIs intercept courses always lag pursuit. I may of missed it earlier but in the above example the Asama didn't pull lead on my cruiser.

Ah, a fellow flightsimmer :D. I'm BH3841 in Aces High; been flying since 1994 in Air Warrior.

Anyway, you're quite correct. The AI is incapable of doing lead pursuit. At best, it does pure pursuit, which is often actually slightly lag pursuit because of its reaction time. This makes it ridiculously easy for you to escape from the AI without a shot fired, when in reality the enemy would steer to intercept you and probably get off at least some long-range shots at you, even if you were faster.

[Behemoth]

"Ah, a fellow flightsimmer . I'm BH3841 in Aces High; been flying since 1994 in Air Warrior."

Ah Bullethead,
My vocabulary always betrays me, it's all angles and dangles to me. Your experience in flight sims means you must feel the same as I about the "ease" it must be to code this "Lead pursuit" behavior. I mean a flightsim plane pulls lead AND computes xy and Z, wouldn't the flat plane movement of a ship be easier to get lead out of it? FWIW, I'm not a programmer, so I really know nothing about the "ease" of anything in terms of code. I did notice the other night though, that ships appear to pull lag just enough to stay out of the majority of my cannon firing arcs perhaps I'm reading too much into what I saw.

But is it worth the drawbacks of slowing the movement and reducing the range of the "fast bait"? As the Russians, I NEVER use the Patrol order--I keep my raiders constantly moving so the IJN can't bring overwhelming force to bear on them very easily. Keeping Koreyets tied to Varyag limits the campaign map speed of Varyag to 11 knots instead of the 17 knots she does alone. The slower speed makes it impossible to catch merchants going in the same direction on the campaign map. Also, the range of Varyag, as in how much ground she can cover and how long she can stay out, are limited by Koreyet's bunkers.

Your completely correct about not running standard with such different speed/ endurance ships, I think I spake my wisdom too broadly. In the case of these two ships it was a way to bait and switch them out of the first day tight spot in Chulumpo. As escort it seems to work, though a few days ago I got some ACs to take the bait on the Varyag, then they promptly sent a squadron of TBs to finish of the Koreyets. She put on a wonderful fight, taking quite a few of them with her, but she took one too many torps in her hind quarters. It was a bit of a catch-22, if the Varyag had been with her they both would have made short work of the TBs, but then they would have had to contend with the ACs. Either way it was great chase, I love to lose spectacularly!:)

OT:
On another note, I'd love to get back into online flight sims, I have very little experience though overall with them. I had Air warrior 3 a while back but never got online with it. I like modern dog fights for what it does to my brain during/afterwards but ww2 fighters are where it's at, grace, geometry, and guns only! Thanks for the help, all.
-B

[Bullethead]

to me. Your experience in flight sims means you must feel the same as I about the "ease" it must be to code this "Lead pursuit" behavior. I mean a flightsim plane pulls lead AND computes xy and Z, wouldn't the flat plane movement of a ship be easier to get lead out of it?

Pulling lead is a necessity in many other situations, too. Everybody who's ever played football knows about using the correct "pursuit angle" to cross the field's width and intercept a ball-carrier sprinting down the opposite sideline before he scores :).

But anyway, I think the AI's inability to plot itself an intercept course or deal with landmasses intelligently is a result of the AI having been written originally and optimized for the tactical-only base product. The campaign, which is an add-on, adds numerous situations which the AI doesn't seem equipped to handle.

On the tactical-only side, you mostly have randomly generated battles that always occur out in the middle of the ocean so there's no land to worry about. Also, the forces of each side are all in 1 formation, so the only navigation decision is whether to head directly towards or away from the 1 enemy force. The historical scenarios often have several formations in different places on 1 or both sides, but they're not spread so far that it really makes a noticeable difference to the AI.

In campaign battles, however, you often have coastlines all along 1 or 2 sides of the map area, not to mention islands. Plus, at least if you're playing as the IJN, your anti-raider deployments could easily result in you having several widely separated forces essentially surrounding the AI Russians. And the AI is unable to make sense out of this sort of situation. It can't find the best escape route between your various forces, and it takes no account of the land until it runs right into it. Also, your own ships don't like to maintain full speed unless a) they're within 20kyds of the enemy, and b) are heading directly for the enemy. This makes it very difficult for you to carry out your own lead-pulling battles.

On another note, I'd love to get back into online flight sims

Try Aces High (http://www.hitechcreations.com/frindex.html) :).

[caseyjay]

On another note, I'd love to get back into online flight sims, I have very little experience though overall with them. I had Air warrior 3 a while back but never got online with it. I like modern dog fights for what it does to my brain during/afterwards but ww2 fighters are where it's at, grace, geometry, and guns only! Thanks for the help, all.

For a WWII online flight sim I'd suggest IL2 Forgotten Battles (+AEP+Pacific Fighters addons) been going a few years now but still fun .. Soon there is to be a new release Battle of Britain with a new game engine :smoke: