Campaign Settings
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The State of the French Navy, and primary opponents:
It is January 1920, and the world is reeling from the first world war. We must reassess our allies and enemies, and prepare our large, but fairly old and obsolete fleet for future combat.
The Sizes of Global Fleets
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Large warships of the MN
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Modern Surface Units of the RM
The Italians possess a larger battlecruiser force than us, but their main battle line is still made up of a majority of older, pre-dreadnought battleships, which we expect them to phase out of service in fairly short order. The Francesco Morosini and Conte Di Cavour, pictured above, are the only super dreadnoughts they possess, versus our seven Charlemagne, Vernigaud, and Liberte class warships.
Some of their newer scouting cruisers are better equipped and faster than our own, but they lack numbers here as well, and have removed all of their pre-war armored cruisers from service.
Our powerful armored cruisers, and relatively new, and numerous scout cruisers, grant us dominance over any smaller actions in the Mediterranean
The MN’s cruiser force, which can only be countered by the battlecruisers of Italy.
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Surface units of the Reichsmarine
A quick survey of the other navies of the world.
The Imperial Japanese Navy relies on its heavily armed fleet of dreadnoughts. They only have 4 true battlecruisers, including their most powerful Izumo, pictured above. By maintaining a powerful fast fighting force of battlecruisers, we can outcompete the Japanese in scouting actions, leading to victory over their nominally more powerful battle force.
The Royal Navy possesses some 11, 8x15” armed, super-dreadnoughts like London pictured above, the most formidable fighting force in the world. They also possess the most powerful battlecruiser force in the world, including 8, 13” armed ships that can challenge any other battlecruiser afloat, with two new generation battlecruisers under construction. We have no desire to fight them, but if tensions turn for the worse we might be forced to turn to a “Jeune École” type strategy
The Spanish navy's modern fleet consists of two modified Dreadnought-like battleships of the Terrible class, and two much more powerful battlecruisers of the Vicayza class, pictured above. While they represent a lower threat to the MN, we must monitor their developments, as 4 more capital ships on the side of Italy, or as allies, could make a significant difference in an even match.
The Soviet Navy consists of 5 older battleships, although 3 larger dreadnoughts, started during WWI, are still under construction, and it remains to be seen when they will be completed.
Most interesting is their two Maxim Gorky first class cruisers, with heavy armor and a small number of heavy guns, they will be easy prey for battlecruisers, but can counter most smaller warships, forcing us to deploy heavy fleet units if we come into conflict against the Soviets.
The US Navy, as the upstart, second most powerful navy on Earth, is rapidly expanding, and their newest “Standard type” All or Nothing dreadnoughts provide a powerful battle force. Two of our dreadnoughts are also built to this design, so it will be easy to train our other crews to face them, if necessary.
The Chinese navy is centered around two fairly weak pre-dreadnought battleships, and will not be able to counter any of our forces for the foreseeable future
Organizing the Navy:
Using the division editor, I’ve placed all of our surface ships into 6 battle divisions, 6 cruiser divisions, and 9 destroyer divisions. At the moment, I’ve designated 4 destroyer divisions as (DE), to remind me they are for TP only, as smaller 500-600 ton ships with little use on the modern battlefield. Our weakest (16,000 ton) heavy surface units are organized in the 3e and 4e battle divisions. While the 3e division will be our Mediterranean reserve force(in mothball for now), the two dreadnoughts of 4e division will counter the German pre-dreadnoughts in the North Sea.
Our larger and faster armored cruisers are attached to the scouting force, while the slower ones are assigned as heavy scouts for the battle force. Similarly, our newest and fastest cruisers are covering the scouting force, while the slower ones, and two 30 knot destroyer leaders are covering the battle force, as they are designed for less extended combat.
Here, I’d like to point out a really cool feature, you can move any division using this editor menu, and it will also send every attached division to the same region. On the other hand, if you want to move a lead division without sending any attached divisions, one can go to the normal “ships-in-service” screen, select any ship in the division, hit “D”, and then all ships in the division will be selected, allowing you to change their status or move them.
I deployed the majority of the navy to the Mediterranean, while sending out one or two light cruisers from some of their divisions on foreign stations. Two older armored cruisers of 2e CA division will compose our China Squadron based out of Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam.
Global Commitments of the French Navy, 1920
New Construction
At the start of the game, we have 1 battlecruiser, 1 light cruiser, 2 seaplane tenders, and 5 destroyers under construction, all of fairly modern types shown below. Dunkerque will be the most powerful ship in the Med when it’s completed, and I intend to follow up on the AI design with an improved version. Descartes is somewhat of a step back from our other cruiser designs, but carries experimental DP AA guns instead of a 6” armament, making it a possible future proof escort given the rapid advance of naval aviation. Perhaps most useful is the 5 new destroyers, however…
As I ended the first turn, I received an estimate of escort requirements given new submarine, mine, and torpedo threats- 34 new destroyers to defend the fleet, completely invalidating my initial idea of scrapping the older 500 ton DEs.
I designed the Gabion class torpilleur, pictured above, to fill this need. As the largest, most heavily armed destroyers in our navy, they should be able to counter any contemporary surface and submarine threats. I was only able to lay down 6 within the budget, followed up by a few more as the other ships completed, so it will be a long while before we can adequately escort our large fleet of slow capital ships.
At this point, I made a few minor changes to the doctrine options, starting a new naval academy for 260 a month, switching our navy over to magnetic detonated torpedoes to hopefully get them working reliably before the next war, and switching to a floatplane search priority, as ideally our new ships will provide a powerful aerial scouting force.
I also made some changes to the game preferences, which provides a couple new options for RTW3 I think many will appreciate. Here, I’ve enabled AI control of all friendly forces to allow me to resolve combat without input if I so choose, and turned off friendly fire hits from torpedoes.
Onwards(Major Events)
September 1920: The governor of the Portuguese colony of Angola declares independence. The French destroyer leader Davout leads a small international force into the harbor of Loanda, forcing his surrender, and establishing a permanent French naval base there.
October 1920: Four Italian Carlo Mirabello class destroyers commission, larger than anything in service on our side, and packing a powerful torpedo battery.
Note the * in the intelligence boxes by the diplomacy screen-intelligence now takes time to build up, and that indicates my investment in new intelligence networks is not yet complete.
November 1920: As Italian-French tensions flare slightly, the French navy breaks ground on a naval airfield in Tunis, designed to provide scouting support for any French fleet attempting to pass between Tunisia and Sicily, which also will rely on our two newly commissioned 9,000 ton, 16 Seaplane “aircraft carriers”. At this point we have 15 Gabion class destroyers laid down, and as Dunkerque nears completion, I need to decide between new capital ships and meeting our escort requirements with another set of destroyers. Also, in the first post-war alliance, the UK has signed a defense agreement with Spain. If I can ally with one of them, that would basically spell the end for Italian ambitions. As the all-green tension map indicates, the world remains peaceful.
A New Airbase
Global Tensions
February 1921-New Battlecruisers
With the completion of our legacy fleet, we now are approaching a temporary surplus of 8,700 per month. We need new battlecruisers to match the numbers of Italy, but our limit of 13” guns and 35,000 tons could very well preclude building the new ships in French yards.
While we are maintaining good relations with the US, UK, and Japan, the Japanese are slightly behind in technology, so I’ve created a design competition between the British, American, and French yards.
All designs were required to make 30 knots, and carry sufficient armor to defeat Italian 13” guns at 15,000 yards.
The French design, Aquitaine, carries 12 13” guns in 3 Quadruple turrets, while the British design, Strasbourg, features 8 16” guns in US-made double turrets, with much heavier turret faceplates. Additionally, the British design has an inch thicker belt and a half inch thicker deck. The downside of course, is cost. Aquitaine can be finished at ~145,000 funds, while Strasbourg will cost ~175,000. Thus, while we can narrowly afford two Aquitaine class under construction at the same time, we can only afford one of the British designs, although that would give us another 3,000 a month to construct other ships(perhaps the missing destroyers). The US design, Marseille, features 2 Quadruple 16” turrets, with the weight savings from the reduction in number of turrets going to a higher speed and slightly thicker belt compared to the British design.
What do you all think? Although a capable ship, Aquitaine will still be stuck with 13” guns. At the same time, I have a certain sense of pride about not having any more French capital ships built in a foreign yard.
Design Alternatives
Aircraft Carrier Conversion
We’ve also just unlocked large aircraft carrier conversions, which allows me to show off one final feature of Rule the Waves 3 today-Auto Carrier Conversion. This lets you take any hull in the game, and convert it to a carrier, both in terms of capability and in graphics.
Here, I looked at converting one of our best battlecruisers, Gloire, into a 65 aircraft capacity aircraft carrier. Not a bad conversion, all things considered, but I’m not willing to give up a battlecruiser this capable quite yet. A conversion of the smaller Jeanne d’Arc was only able to carry 45 aircraft due to a variety of reasons, including her thicker belt armor, but I may revisit it if any of our opponents acquire aircraft carriers soon.
A proposed conversion for Gloire
As an alternative, I instead looked at converting one of our two newly completed seaplane tenders to a light carrier, as shown below. Although it will only be able to carry fighters due to its small size, it will be much cheaper, and we will still retain half of our floatplane search capability. This conversion will provide us a temporary CAP for the battle fleet and further our carrier research for when we inevitably build larger ones.
Our first light carrier
So that’s a wrap for this first AAR post, feel free to ask any questions, we’ll probably be jumping ahead to the 1930s for the next post.
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