trouble with battles(with battleships!)

[Morick]

Hello, I recently reinstalled Distant Guns to get back into it; and even though I can beat the campaigns, I'm having problem fighting in the historical battles or comp generated ones especially when I'm using battleships. I'm basically still learning the physics and realism of the game(best I've Seen)
so my question is; what is the best way to fight with battleships? Take the battle of Weihaiwei. What is the best tactic to use assuming your commanding the Russian battleships, in terms of range and targeting? Onto the problem I'm having with battles in general; I'm having a real problem with fires on all my ships, they seem to happen very easily no matter what range I'm attacking, also are Japanese ships naturally just more accurate? it seems like my ships can't hit anything yet they get pummeled themselves, I have yet to win any major battle that I don't outnumber the enemy by a large margin like in some campaign battles if I'm lucky:). any advice would be appreciated, thanks.

[Bullethead]

Hello, I recently reinstalled Distant Guns to get back into it;

Welcome back.

any advice would be appreciated, thanks.

Russian BBs have significantly lower rates of fire than most IJN BBs, so even though both might have the same number of the same size of guns, the IJN BBs have a big firepower advantage. So just from this one thing, in a 1-on-1 fight, a Russian BB is going to take more damage than it inflicts over a given period of time. Thus, the Russians need to outnumber the IJN by a fair amount to achieve even parity in effective firepower.

Russian BB tactics need to be built around this. Maneuver so that you can concentrate the bulk of your BBs against a small number of IJN BBs. Crossing their T helps a lot because, although it makes the IJN BBs harder to hit, it halves their return firepower and puts most of their line outside of the really effective short ranges where most damage is done. But because the IRN BBs are slower, it's a challenge to make this happen sometimes :). At all costs, avoid steaming parallel and trading broadsides with an equal number of IJN, because you're sure to lose that.

Fires are the main killers of ships and you should always keep a sharp eye on the fire levels of your ships. When fires get to 30% or so, you're going to lose the ship unless you take immediate corrective action. Drop out of line, slow down, cease fire, etc., and concentrate on putting out the fire, or at least knocking it down to 10% or so. Then get that ship back in the fight. You'll often have to rotate different ships in and out of the line this way.

[Morick]

Thanks a million Bullethead for that, especially about the tactic of ceasefire,slowing et. to help lower fires and trading the ships in and out of the line, can't wait to apply this. I guess the Russian BBs are inferior to the IJN BBS and in some cases their armored cruisers (like the battle of Nigata for me). I just tried another battle at wiehaiwie and I actually won; probably because I just kept the line together and around 4000meters away. I like using these battles to train and learn before going back to the campaign and actually confronting the IJN in the open.

[Enforcer]

I did not know that ceasing fire and slowing down actually was good for firefighting in the game. To be honest, I've never noticed a difference.

Can someone elaborate?

[rgreat]

Yes, it helps.
If you order to slow down or cease fire (after your guns are actually reloaded) part of your crew became free and availiable to firefighting.

If you cease fire and set speed to 0 your firefighting ability may double.
But it will not be of much help if your ship still being shoot at.

In fact it not always needed to both drop speed to 0, and cease fire.
If your ship still have good amount of crew left and fires are not very big you can take partial measures.