A quick review of the starting positions. The British have 7 BCs followed by 29 BBs, and are supposed to destroy the German fleet. The Germans have 14 BBs followed by 3 BBs and 2 BCs and are supposed to escape.
Kotori: ANav assigned me to command the BCF, with 7 battlecruisers, and two battleship divisions in the Grand Fleet. When the battle began, the major units were already on our intended course, so no major moves were required there. A number of the Grand Fleet destroyers were ordered forward to reinforce the BCF, but a signaling error caused chaos in the GF requiring most of the battleships to stop their engines while the destroyers steered clear.
Gascan: I was given command of the back half of the High Seas Fleet: 7 older dreadnoughts and their escorts. Since I was in the back of the line, I had very few movement orders to make, so I was able to spend much of the time looking around, taking a few screenshots and videos. Paladin had the front half of the HSF and the scouts (he later handed these off to rgreat). Rgreat and Von der Tann split up the Scouting Force in back.
Gascan: The first thing we did was turn west to bring the two forces together. The SF sailed northeast to catch some of the Brit scouts, and the HSF turned north to fall in with the SF.
Kotori: On first contact with the enemy, our cruiser and destroyer forces immediately began aggressive "investigating" of the German fleet. Tanyrhiew took shameless advantage of the British numerical cruiser superiority to simultaneously bar the enemy scouts from our own positions and investigate their main forces. Since our primary objective was to cut off the German retreat, ANav and I continued moving both the BCF and GF towards the Point, in the hopes of forcing a decisive action while we outnumbered their battleships by over 2-to-1. Scouting elements from the Grand Fleet in the south and west soon came into contact with German capital ships. Brynpinzgauer, Tanyrhiew
German view:
British view:
Gascan: Rather than fall in with the battle line, the SF charged ahead to attack some ACs directly to the north. This also involved a torpedo attack by the escorting destroyers.
Kotori: Brynpinzgauer, commanding the AC detachment from the GF, soon came under attack from a swarm of torpedo-boats. At first this seemed absurd, as Bryn's ACs chewed through the torpedo-boats like me through a bowl of M&Ms, but we soon found out the truth. It must have been a clever German plan to lure Bryn in with the Torpedo-boats, because he had barely finished his delicious snack when shells from the German capital ships began falling around him.
Gascan: The torpedo attack was easily fended off by the ACs. The HSF turned NNE while the SF moved to engage the ACs.
Kotori: By this point in time, we knew from our forward scouts that the HSF was almost in position for us to spring our own trap. The GF was almost in position for its role in the trap, so ANav issued the order to assume battle formation. It wouldn't be a grand fleet battle without some confusion and problems, so one of the battleships in the middle of the formation decided to "guide on" the lead ship in the line, and attempted to sail right past the rest of the fleet to assume its place in line. It was right about then that ANav's computer decided it had had enough of war, and gave him the dreaded Blue Screen of DEATH.
Gascan: We noticed the Brit scouts separating and began to get suspicious that they were clearing the firing range.
Kotori: With ANav out of the game, overall command of the fleet fell to me. After some quick re-organizing (there were only three British players left), I figured out how to overcome ANav's line-of-battle problem. By forming the last ship of the main battle line into its own independently guiding division, I convinced the second half of the battle fleet to form into line behind it. The battle line had united into one solid force, and the back half was just straightening out and returning to 21 knots when my own computer turned a scary shade of blue and died a horrible death. Yep, BSOD crash.
Gascan: Assuming that the GF was N or NE of us on a roughly SE course, we turned E to close the range and engage. During this time the SF engaged and destroyed the Brit ACs. At this point Paladin was having difficulty issuing orders, and everyone reported lag trouble while Kotori was syncing after rejoining the game.
Kotori: Knowing how overwhelming the battle was with three players on the British side, I resolved to help my teammates by re-joining the battle. To my surprise, it worked; but then came time to pay the piper, and the massive download required to re-sync my computer with the rest of the battle took nearly 45 minutes, causing massive lag and command/control problems for many of the other players. Moral of the story: if you're dropped from a MP game, don't rejoin. The lag issues you cause outweigh practically any benefit you can provide.
Gascan: We spotted the GF broken up into small groups of BBs in a rough line and concentrated our fire on the two nearest. Shortly before Kotori finished syncing, Paladin had to quit due to the lag making the game unplayable for him.
Kotori: I'm not sure what happened between when I BSOD'd and when I finished re-synching, but the GF was scattered into a number of small groups, and the BCF ended up almost 20 kilometers behind the main battle. When these widely dispersed forces came into range of the HSF, the result was, predictably, pretty bad.
rgreat took control of the front of the HSF and ordered us to turn around to engage the R class ships at the back of the Brit "line". Just before the turn and during the beginning we sank two British BBs, inflicted medium damage on at least two others, and moderate damage on a several more. At this point we called off the battle because it was down to Kotori vs rgreat and I.
Kotori: I don't think I need to make any comment here. I was still trying to find where half my battleships
were at this point. Worrying about what to do with them was a long way in the future.
In the end, it was a Humiliating Defeat for the British, who had lost a number of ACs and a couple of BBs to sink some DD flotillas and inflict some minor damage on HSF BBs before the battle was ended early. I highly suggest that everyone who participated submit your game logs to SES, especially ANav, who suffered a Blue Screen of Death, and Kotori, who also suffered a BSOD but was able to rejoin and resync and play to the end.