Ship Targeting Recommendations
 

I've been wondering whether it is beneficial or detrimental to have multiple battleships target a single vessel in the enemy line.

Although the obvious benefit is that you have more weapons pointing at one target, I think I've read that the game models the confusion caused by heavy spray from shells & spotters trying to ID their own splashes, etc.

Although using multiple ships to attack one unit seems to be the better strategy (especially if I'm targeting one of the vulnerable British BC's) I haven't been able to decide on a SOP for my ships. Any thoughts?

AFAIK, there is a severe accuracy penalty when more than one ship is firing on the same target at ranges over 5k. I still haven't quite found the 'magic formula', but all in all 1-to-1 seems to be optimal for accuracy - it's the positioning of each of those 1s that is the real winning factor, either relative to weapon firing arcs or relative to environment (light/wind) conditions. In situations where forces are close to even, 1-to-1 seems to be almost a necessity. In situations where you have more ships in range than the enemy, it may be worth experimenting with firing concentrations.

In game terms, out to about 5km, there's no penalty. Beyond about 5km, 2 ships can fire on the same target with no problem, but if you use 3 or more, all of them get pretty severe accuracy penalties. There's also an accuracy penalty for being shot at yourself, due to spray and splashes obscuring your view at times.

So at the bottom line, it's usually best to engage as many enemy ships as possible. This keeps your ships from interfering with each other and also makes the most enemies less accurate with their return fire. It's not necessary to give each ship her own target manually. If you select a whole division and give the Target Free order, they will distribute their fire automatically to achieve the above situation.

Note that either way you give firing orders, your ships won't always stay on the same target. Just as in real life, they'll shift targets sometimes, due to things like not being able to see their target, or confusing their target with an adjacent enemy ship.

Now, as to the reasons for this...

In 1916, there wasn't yet a system for combining the fire of multiple ships, so each ship relied on spotter her own splashes. However, due to salvos being about 1 minute apart at 1916 ranges, it was possible for 2 ships to stagger their salvos by about 30 seconds and thus engage the same target without mutual interference.

In the latter part of the war, the RN developed a system to allow divisions of 4 ships to concentrate on the same target. That's what all those range clocks on the masts and bearing scales on the turrets were for. But that's outside the scope of our present games.

Thanks for the response!

I just finished a scenario directing the German pre-dreads and "Bayern" against the British battlecruiser force, including "Renown" and "Repulse". I assigned individual targets for most of the battle, instead of my old "ganging-up" strategy, and scored a pretty impressive victory (although this was largely due to "Renown" and "Lion" blowing up literally 5 seconds apart).

Will have another go, and see how this works out in a prolonged engagement. :ping:

Ya know, I still feel like mass fire on a single target kills it faster than distributed fire. A lot more missing true, but by the nature of artillery and the law of N^2, lots of guys missing all at once will still eventually hit something.

It does somewhat depend on the situation. If you outrange the enemy, then maybe. But if the enemy can shoot back, I think it's better to keep your fire spread out so as to distract as many enemies as possible while not hindering your own shooting.

None of these ships carry that much main battery ammo; only 80-120 round per gun or so. At long range where the above considerations come into play, you're talking an average of 1 salvo per minute or a bit less, so that's really not much combat endurance at the speed of naval battles. At such ranges, unless 1 side is Hell-bent on changing the range, the geometry isn't going to change that much in 1.5-2 hours, nor is the lighting unless the battle starts close to dusk or dawn or a storm is coming. The question therefore becomes how best to spend your limited amount of ammo.