I'm going to pause the AAR for a good long while due to other activities. Back later when possible!
Cheers,
mrchuck

1891, Nov:
State of the forces. We are laughably weak, but I notice that of the remaining 7 Russian Bs, 4 are still in the Baltic, the other three are scattered over the Atlantic and Indian oceans and may well arrive piecemeal.
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Could be an opportunity here to destroy them in detail ...

0503: Closing and taking damage. The payoff: torpedoed the B.
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Handing out more of the same. Another fish into the B. Probably doomed.
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The CA turned out to be a second B. Got a torp into that one too.
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Scorecard. Izumo (24 kts) turned out to be very handy ...

1891, August. Opening moves.
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They have 2x B and various cruisers in theatre. No operations this month. Extra training in night fighting and torpedo warfare commenced.
1891, Sept. Fleet action.
Intel reports enemy movements off Hokkaido. Moving to intercept with everything we have ...

Finally, ships under construction. Usually these are pretty medicocre and I scrap them to build CLs until the docks are bigger. This time though...
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We've contracted Italian yards to build us a couple of Ferraris--24kt CAs. More out of curiosity as to how they'll perform, I'll keep ...

Evening all,
I decided to do a Japan AAR this week to accompany the mammoth Germany one I made previously. This time, I've started it from the beginning of the campaign.

Once again, there will be no restarts from save unless unavoidable e.g. if there is a crash--though these are few and far between ...

1. Fleet morale.

This never seems to go higher than 1, and usually times out after a while, usually all happening in peacetime from what I've experienced. So most of the time, it's irrelevant.

It should go up 1 after every major victory, the more so if the VP ratio is high e.g. > 2:1 or something ...

There seem to be various factors at play:

Speed--less than 9 is good, even less if damage is severe and you can get away with it
Age of ship
level of TP
damage control training. Not doing it? Why not?
Sea state
enemy torpedo/mine tech
Don't forget random.

I don't think you can entirely rule it out ...

Definitely true, seen this many times, but protected cruiser scheme only. This appears to have very relaxed rules, the tradeoff being it's not very good. If you're interested in the possibilities, check them out--quite weird and wonderful.

Bear in mind though that there are tonnage limits on ROF ...

I don't think that's feasible. AI has a move before you can calculate this. Things may turn up from adjacent regions, or ships finishing WU depending. And for that matter, AI could possibly move things out as well. If yr force superiority is only just enough, an inconvenient mine or SS attack could ...

I'm inclined to agree with WLROO on this, at least as the problem is stated.

However...there is always a however...this decision doesn't need to be made on the fly for each and every battle. Rather than simply reject an unconventional design, the devs could let people have a bit of fun with this ...

The example given by wlroo pretty much highlights the problem--Outrageous, Uproarious and Spurious DID get built, and while they were in the main bad designs that didn't work all that well, they went into service nonetheless.

Similarly with the pocket battleships. In game terms these would be BCs ...

Clearing the battle area won't do you much good if you sink the ship in the process.

There is a matrix of considerations to take into account which humans are pretty good at, and the game AI isn't. Certainly get clear, but also take into account flooding levels and current flotation damage. There ...

Not sure I like the idea of an auto-resolve. For me at least, the attraction of the game is designing the ships within the current available tech and budget, and then seeing how they go against the computer opponents--after engineering a war against them, or alternatively, being stuck with a war you ...

Been thinking about a better way of doing Fleet Organisation after playing USA for a while. With this one, as with GB, you will at some point need to deal with global commitments out of various bases/areas. At the moment this is quite fiddly and difficult to maintain.

Would it be possible in a ...

I'm trying a compromise solution, which is to assign the DDs to divisions but not subordinate them to anything and leave them as Independent.

This seems to work reasonably well.

I suppose the point is to mange the evolution of your naval forces in line with technology, economics and your strategy.

Consider 'chasing ships around in circles' to be less of an arcade game, more of discovering whether your designs are any good or not vs. what the AI comes up with.

Granted the ...

One small update to this. I have found, more or less by accident, that the game does a better job of managing DD divisions that I do.

So I've modified how I use FO:
--put everything bigger than a DD into a division as before, with associated roles and lead assignments
--Just leave the DDs as a ...

Anyone else noticed that when you detach a ship due to damage, the AI seems to do everything possible to make sure it DOESN'T get home?
--speed to squadron max, regardless of flooding
--wandering around the battle area in every direction EXCEPT towards port and safety?
--heading towards the nearest ...

I tried changing every occurrence of the objective I could find, to the one plausible value I found in the sac file. This turned out to be the right place, and there were batteries there.

However, the transports were still trundling off to the NW for a walking tour if Inner Mongolia when I started ...