Guide: Naval Control And Double Line

[Riithi]

Did you guys notice that he caused a lot of damage to his own ships?

Hi there,

yes 2 of my ships took damage from friendly-fire, about 10% of their left-side armor. Mainly because my lines weren't perfectly staggered. The amount of damage was negligable compared to the advantage the double line gives.

On difficulty..
Both fleets were the same, 6 3rd rates all at maximum veterancy. I upped the veterancy to try to shorten the battle a bit. CPU was set to hard.

If anyone else has any questions, just ask.

-Riithi


p.s. On the setup-part you will see that my ships are not at max vet, while later in the movie they are, that is because I had missed taping the setup part at first, and used an earlier recording to cover that, beyond the setup-phase, all is from the same battle.

[zeddius]

Hi, the idea with using a double battle line is superb as you can get twice the amount of guns atleast on the enemy. However i noticed one area that could be improved. You add the ships into 2 different groups which require you to control them both during combat. What you can do instead is to arrange them into a double line formation and once you are happe with the formation simple group them all up, that way you can control the entire doble line formation in one go. I have been using this strategy for a week now and i never experienced that they crash into each other unless you force them to do extreme turns.

The idea is to group them according to the picture below




Do this simply by:

1) Group all ships and assign them to the line formation
2) Ungroup all ships
3) Take the ship at the back and put it as the first ship in line 2, that means between the 1st and 2nd ship abit to the side, and comtinue until you have them arranged in a perfect double line formation
4) Group all ships
5) Kill the enemy

By keeping a distance to the enemy you can actually make 4 ships fire at the same target, see below :



Another good advantage with this setup is that you minimize friendly fire, since a ship in the same formation will not try to fire on a hostile ship unless it has a clear field of fire.

[thebrains29]

eh, what i always do is arrange my ships in an arc like this:
. .
. .
. .

i usually just set the whole fleet bar one ship too attic what they want and control one ship (usually my favorite) and take down the enemy fleet

i never lose a ship and always win

[Jom]

What difficulty level was it played on?

It's actually fairly foolish to play on anything higher than normal difficulty. The ridiculous bonuses the AI receives ruin naval fights as you'll never get a fair fight. On expert difficulty, about 10% of the enemy's shots will dismount a cannon compared with about <5% for your own. Makes naval battles essentially impossible to win if the two teams are balanced with the same ships, no matter what tactics one uses.

[ThePinkus]

Nice and interesting tutorial!

I too came to the conclusion that arranging the fleet in lines is the best solution, especially when I proved myself that micromanaging and attack orders were perfect for making a mess...

I have tried anything from 2 to 4 lines, the latter case with a 20 ships fleets of very different ranks (e.g. 2nd to corvette) since it is my feeling omogenous lines works better (ever tried to lead corvettes by a 2nd rank?).
Most typical for me is three lines (especially with this pretty fleet of one 1st rank adm. and 18 1st+ ranks!... which of course smashed anything it faced by default).

The tactic I am using is somehow different from Yours, and I generally try to encircle the enemy line.
I start with the 3 lines close to one another, and generally not staggered, and then head straight to the enemy.
As soon as it choose a side to turn (look at the wind!) I lead the line on the same side for a T-cross (if achivable, else just to align with the enemy line), my central line follows closely (so that it is between the former and the enemy) until almost in range, then it turns to align to the enemy in reverse direction.
Meanwhile my 3rd line was heading to the enemy's tail. Depending on the number of enemy ships the 3rd would join at the tail itself (then to circle inward) or around the point where the enemy line is making the turn.

The first objective is to make the 3 lines join the engagement at (almost) the same time.

The central and 3rd line are now forming a staggered double line very similar to Yours, but reversing the enemy movement (yes, that means the leading ships are looking for damage).
Generally all the ships of the central line discharge their first on the enemy leading ship as they turn, that is enought to cripple it and this allows the first line to turn to the enemy and ahead of it, if it did not achieved a T-cross in the first place. This yields some other advantage since firing inward a circle means a more concentrated fire.
It can also happen that the enemy line brakes as its space is reduced, and sometimes extra damage is "given" the enemy just because their ships ramming each other or exploding too close to another (by the way don't get too close!).
Now some cons...
The manouvre can be tricky in a strong wind.
If the engagement lasts long enough my lines can find themselves stern to stern on the opposite side, making some deconflicting necessary... (thogh You can achive some "coreographic" show by this ;^) ).

Just my way to naval engagements...

Bye!