It's almost time to resume our RTW2 game, paused for the Aurora series and my move. Below, I've included the last post from our previous game, ending in January 1929. But there is one thing I'm going to change. Instead of posting every week, I'm going to go to every other week. Posting every week doesn't really give me enough time to play and write up the game while still leaving you sufficient time to think and talk over the plans for play. This will alternate with the OTs, and be on the same weekends as the virtual meetups. (Hope to see a lot of you on Sunday, by the way.)
January 1929
Gentlemen,
It has been an interesting year. First, we laid down 10 new destroyers, with twin DP 4" guns. Then the government got a weird idea that we needed more battleships, and we ended up with three new ships, which more or less got paid for due to increased tensions with Germany. Right now, we have two battleships, a carrier, and 10 destroyers about to complete, which leaves future building programs open. The best suggestion is probably to lay down more colonial CLs, as our ships of that type are rapidly growing obsolete.
Our current fleet
Ships under construction
January 1928
February 1928
We decline a Japanese offer for an alliance. 6 DD Harpon laid down. Germany commissions 2 DD, Japan 2 CL, Italy 1 KE. We begin a competition for a new floatplane scout.
March 1928
CL Emile Bertin commissions. AH lays down 3 DD, Japan 2 DD. US commissions 1 CA, 1 DD. 2 more DD Harpon laid down.
April 1928
CL Chasseloup Laubat commissions. We buy Turbo electric drive from the British. Breakthrough: Large diesel engines. AH lays down a DD, Italy a BC, Japan a DD. Germany commissions 2 CL, AH a BC, the US a CVL and 2 CAs. We lay down 2 more Harpon.
May 1928
The Prime Minister places a request before Parliment for 3 additional battleships, even though we don't particularly want them right now. We'll slow them down while the Suffrens finish, but this is going to be tight on our budget. AH lays down 2 DD and a BC, UK a CA, Japan 2 DD. UK commissions 1 CA, 1 CL, US 1 CA. The resulting battleship, Magenta, has improved torpedo protection, a slightly thicker deck, and 24 4" twin DP secondaries in place of the usual 6" battery.
June 1928
We sell the Italians Forced Circulation. Germany lays down 2 DD, UK 1 DD, US 3 DD and 1 CA. Japan commissions a CA.
July 1928
We condemn a German naval rearmament program. Breakthrough: Advanced weight saving, better 17" gun (0). UK lays down 3 DD, Japan and US 1 DD each. Germany commissions a CL, Japan a CA, US an AV and a CA. We begin a refit on BB Iena.
August 1928
Germany lays down 2 DD, AH 4 DD and a CVL, UK 1 CL and 1 DD, Japan 1 CV and 2 DD, US 2 DD. Japan commissions 3 DD.
September 1928
We select the Farman F.109 for our new floatplane scout. Germany lays down a BC and a CL, the UK 3 DD, the US 4 DD, Japan 1 DD. UK commissions 1 DD, Japan 2 DD. We take the opportunity to fit Magenta for a seaplane.
October 1928
Our spies steal the blueprints for the BC Prinz Heinrich. Breakthrough: Large scale helium production. BBs Magenta, Indomptable, and Gaulois laid down. UK lays down 2 DD, Japan 1 CVL and 2 DD, USA 4 DD. Germany and UK each commission a DD.
November 1928
We have achieved praise for building the requested number of battleships. BB Iena finishes reconstruction. Britain takes over Iceland after upheaval there, with our tacit blessing. Amusingly, the picture the game shows is a camel on a beach with a cruiser in the background. AH lays down 3 DD, Japan 1 CV, 4 DD, Italy 1 CA, UK 1 BB. UK commissions 4 DD.
December 1928
The new cruiser, which also has a single plane
The new carrier, with 34 planes
Comments
Nice to see the game resuming. Here is some discussion from back in May:
Alexander said... Obviously I agree with you about the CLs. I’d still suggest disposing of Tourville and Dunkerque, and also consider how much longer we hang on to the Devastations and Bouvets. I reckon we’ll have much more than 2k/month to play with, nearer 7k, and even more when Bearn is ready. Perhaps we could start a couple more CVs this year too?
Were the BCs we sunk in our war with Germany comparable to Prinz Heinrich? Because they look pretty fearsome - do you ever see us building something faster and more heavily armed, or will we be dependent on aircraft to slow them down?
bean said... Tourville and Dunkerque have been scrapped. The German BCs ranged from very old to a couple that were quite new, if a generation older than Prinz Heinrich. Not sure about building faster ships. Remind me to do sketches when play resumes.
Alexander said... Will do. I’m getting ahead a bit, because we’d be building cruisers and probably carriers first. Mostly I’m speculating about our requirements for battleships years in advance of us coming up with the final design. Do we opt for something more like a Montana (same speed as the rest of our battleships) or an Iowa (swap some armour and firepower for the speed to chase down e.g. Prinz Heinrich)?
It's neat to see the kind of ships that might have existed without the battleship holiday.
Did anyone ever use a turret layout like that Heinrich? I'm not really aware of all the layout trade-offs involved in turret placement, although surely rtw doesn't simulate all that?
It was proposed for the G3 battlecruiser and Lord Nelson did an illustration of that configuration for the post. It does a decent job of simulating the layout concerns, except for muzzle blast. But that's always tricky, and it usually comes close.
John, Alexander and I kicked around some ideas during the virtual meetup, and the current sketch plan is to buy another CVL, a pair of colonial cruisers, and start refits on the Rouens and later the Nancys. The Rouens will get better AA but not much else, while the Nancys get 4" DP guns. I've put sketches of the new ships up.
What does one use helium for, in the context of shipbuilding?
Inert buffer gas for welding.
Seriously, it's for the airship tech tree. Makes them better somehow. I don't really use airships, so I don't know.
@bean
Not sure if this was a big problem for airships in practice but hydrogen will diffuse into metals and significantly weaken them. Any steel exposed to hydrogen would have to be carefully coated to prevent this. I imagine helium would be a better choice as a lifting gas for this reason alone, not to mention the whole fire issue.
I don't think hydrogen embrittlement was normally a problem for airships. First, very little was made of steel because airships have to be extremely light, and aluminum was usually a better option. Second, the gas was usually contained in bags or cells inside the outer envelope, and wouldn't have been in direct contact with any metal of the structure.
Started play again. We had a colonial crisis with Germany, which saw a substantial boost in our budget. Moderate tension increase, and we’re still not in the yellow. I’ve already taken some actions (ordering a second CVL and a third CL), we still have almost 5000/month surplus, and I’d like advice on what to do with it. That’s enough for another BB, two carriers, or quite a few cruisers or destroyers. Or we could start the big rebuilds on the older BBs now. Any thoughts?
I think we're alright for DDs, and more CLs can probably wait until the current 3 are done. I'd go for a couple more CAs, but a CV or a pair of CVLs wouldn't be bad.
Finished play last night. Got several budget bumps, so the total construction work was four BCs refitted, a BB engine refit started, and 1 CV, 2 CVL, 1 CA and 3 CLs laid down. And we basically have enough to lay down another CV if we want at this point. Tension with Germany is now yellow.