Dead of Winter - 5th BS Variant

Von der Tann

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This Sunday's battle was originally supposed to be a Big Battle, with a fight the size of Jutland. The scenario of choice was to be Showdown off Terschelling, but since we were only seven players, we agreed to do something a little bit smaller. So we decided to do Dead of Winter instead, which had been quite entertaining the previous week when the Royal Navy was about to give the Kaisers finest the slip, but we were hampered by too many people dropping.

Once again, I took command of the German fleet, while Invincible was in charge of the Royal Navy. Fighting with me were Anav and saddletank, while Invincible teamed up with Rich M, Bryn and First Sea Lord. I took charge of the battle fleet, while Anav set his flag on the battlecruisers and saddletank had a command made up of many cruisers and torpedo boats. Initially, I drove the battle fleet escorts myself, but handed most of them over to saddletank later, as I needed to concentrate on the battleships and command. ACH settings were fixed this time, and due to the great number of British ships armed with 15" guns and an expected pitched battle in low visibility conditions, I chose to leave the Greenboys at home, but the No Smoking signs in the RN magazines were observed.

At first, I was at the rear of the action and could only see what was going on through the ships of my fellow players, The battle line was forming up as usual, with Bayern falling in line behind the Königs and followed by the Helgolands, while the Nassaus were in the rear. After sending out scouts in various directions, it became clear that the Royal Navy was racing to get past the Norwegian coast this time and didn't try to go round the back, This was particularly helped by the fact that, despite severe rain and fog, the visibility just kept on rising. Pretty soon, we could see most of the British battle force steering towards N, and Anavs battlecruisers were doing their very best to stop them. His BC were hit quite severely, several turrets were lost, and most ships were only good to make 22 kts after the RN vanguard was finished with them. Similar events were taking place when König got into range of the enemy, and despite the bad weather, visibility continued to rise and rise, so the Royal Navy got to use its range advantage. Although no turrets were lost, König was showing more than 70% flooding on the starboard side and had to leave the line without having the opportunity to retaliate. Limping away with 15 kts, she was retreating towards W.

After Markgraf assumed the role of lead ship, a course change to 000° was ordered, after our BL had tried to close the range on a course of 20°. The remaining Königs were still getting pounded with 15" shells, but with little effect. Around the same time, we spotted the British battlecruisers with their escorts heading south, where they engaged our rearmost ships in a battle and were probably trying to get us between two fires by passing south of us. Saddletank was there with his escorts and kept enemy destroyers at bay, while the Nassaus were leaving the battle line and took up the fight with the battlecruisers. Despite being rather slow and undergunned, their long-reaching 28cm guns proved adequate in keeping the splendid cats and the Renown class BC at bay. Their robust construction served them well against the heavy calibres of the BC, and when the capital ships were beyond their range, they directed their fire against destroyers and cruisers with some effect. As the main BL still had little to shoot at, they took it out on a passing formation of CL, all except for Bayern, which was the only ship able to return the well-aimed 15" fire.

Further ahead, Anavs battleruisers were still fighting on and took numerous hits, but not without dishing out as well. The first British ship to be lost was Agincourt, followed by Marlborough and Benbow, all of them going down to catastrophic magazine eruptions despite poor ammo handling turned off. The British battlecruisers, on the other hand, wer holding out well despite many hits, even the thin-skinned R class BC showed little sign of damage. Their escorts were not so lucky, however, and several DD and CL were lost in the 28cm fire of the Nassaus. König, after repairing some damage and being able to do 18 kts again, joined in and proved to be a valuable addition. The battle line now chose to retreat from the British line, as there was little chance of catching them with the lead ships being pummelled with 15" fire and unable to answer, and so we turned to 220° and strolled back towards Kiel. The RN battle force kept going and left the battlefleid, while the BC were slowly overtaking our southern forces.

The visibility on this cold midwinter afternoon had now reached a crystal-clear quality- Despite rain pouring down and fog wallowing over the water, we got up to 36 km. This is to be called uncanny, and this sort of thing shouldn't happen...

As there was little chance of getting another action, we called it a day there. The game was considered a modest victory for the Germans with much damage taken but few ships lost, while the Royal Navy had to leave no less than five BB behind (two of which sank after the battle), apart from many DD and two CL.

Well done, gentlemen! A good battle with unexpected turns of events, shame the low visibility thing didn't work out at all.
 

saddletank

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It was, from my perspective an extremely enjoyable battle, aside from the oddness as VdT has noted, of uncannily clear visibility while the scene on my computer screen looked like the inside of one of those smoking compartments (that are now a thing of the past) on old trains on a very wet day. At first I panicked somewhat at the sheer number of DD units I was given since I do not enjoy DD combat due to the way SES models it (they seem far too fragile for my taste) but as long as I picked sensible headings and moderate speeds for them I found I could set them running in useful directions and leave them for 10 or 20 minutes at a time while most of my early game was spent organising the CL and DD screen of II.SG into a couple of useful formations, trying to find the enemy and getting some DDs out the way of our battle line.

Having seen how well the RN team did last week by sneaking round the back while remaining mostly hidden I sent IV.SG towards the south where a weak DD screen of ours consisting of two older half-flotillas were bringing up the rear. This turned out to be a highly fortuitous move, as, with the addition of the Graudenz torpedoboat leader I found myself with 5 CLs to face off the RNs 1st LCS of 4 Galateas. Its rare to have CL superiority as the KM and I made the most of it, pulling in the two old TB half-flotillas and turning a third one around to come south to assist just in time to meet a destroyer attack by First Sea Lord who sent in about 8 or 9 M Class with a FL and 1st LCS. against VdT's Nassaus and limping Konig.

The extremely good visibility worked very much in the KM's favour in this battle I think. Despite the middle of the game action's clarity allowing the 15" gunned RN ships to shoot at extreme range, towards the closing stages the effect of the 36km visibility was in the German's favour as it was easy to keep II.SG in visual touch but well out of gun range to watch the RN BBs heading on 310 while also seeing what the BCF was up to in the south.

The 'end game' of the action was two quite separated actions some 20-30km apart. The Nassaus and Koing being screed by IV.SG and 3 half-flotillas of torpedoboats in the south while I.SG and II.SG and a stronger DD screen watched the RN BBs withdrawing NNW. In the middle the KM BBs reversed course and had we continued they may have been sufficient to drive the RN BC force further and further south.

I had my first ever MP game losses today - 3 torpedoboats were sunk but we drove off the enemy destroyer attack with much heavier losses. I counted 6 DDs and 1 FL sunk and 1 CL though I think most of this work was done by the Nassaus.

Apart from the weird visibility issue which I ran some tests on afterwards and decided we'd get a more subtle and demanding battle if we started the game clock between 2 and 2.5 hours later, I enjoyed this game very much, even if I did 'forget' the odd DD flotilla here and there. I also played this game with the minimap almost always off. I just brought it up once or twice when I desperately needed to set one or two flotillas on the right bearing so I could forget them for a while. I thought that without the minimap the game would be horribly confusing with that many divisions to command but in fact I found it much more immersive and it made me pay closer attention to what everyone around me was doing so it was, in the end, the right decision.
 

Von der Tann

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I had rather hoped for the visibility to stay low, as the KM mostly has a main battery range about 2000 to 4000 m shorter than those of their opponents, which is largely responsible for the boring old "stay just out of range" routine. Another reason, however, is the fact that the distance from any given ship to a target can easily be measured with the game engine. Some uncertainty in this matter might be welcome, and as the German and British range finders showed differences in their performance, it might be the perfect excuse to introduce even more realism.
 

saddletank

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I agree, it would be good to do away with the laser designators SES' version of the ships are armed with, and those rather too useful blue and red minimap circles.

Mousing over a target and being told it is "estimated range 20000m" or "estimated range 15000m" would be better.

Optionally the host of an MP game being able to turn off the minimap and even the satnav style rangefinders would be useful too.
 

Von der Tann

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I find the minimap quite useful, although I seldom use it to the full extent of its capability. It is of limited use for details anyway, as individual ships are hard to make out and it remains sketchy even in its largest version. I merely use it to gain a quick overview of the action, which is extremely useful for command purposes, and it may well have a real-life counterpart on the flag bridge, with officers shoving little markers around like in that famous Battle of Britain movie. But I second the call for the possibility of limited range finders.

By the way: could we PLEASE get rid of the colour yellow for ship indicators? It renders your own ships almost invisible in most conditions.
 

saddletank

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By the way: could we PLEASE get rid of the colour yellow for ship indicators? It renders your own ships almost invisible in most conditions.
Worth raising a ticket for? A medium green or a much darker yellow would help.
 

Von der Tann

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Already did a long time ago, along with a few other MP suggestions. I did start a ticket on the visibility issue, though - I hope theris an easy solution.
 

saddletank

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Those MP issues you raised, has a patch been issued since then but your points were not addressed?
 

Von der Tann

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Yes. Nothing has changed, except the stability of the games - which means a lot already, of course. I expect the focus group are the campaigners, as there are few people who ever dare to multi-play... I am not aware of any other group doing this.
 

saddletank

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*nods* and we are only a dozen or so people so it's hardly worth SES' time to put effort into improving the MP experience.
 
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