1916 Kaiserliche Marine Campaign

[PeriscopeDepth]

1/1/1916

My plan has been decided on and will be put into motion tomorrow.

Alright, I've figured out my strategy and enough patches have come out for me to give it a go I think. I have zeppelins and U-Boats scouting around Scapa Flow for Jellicoe's Grand Fleet sortieing. I am not that concerned about Beatty's BCs, to be honest. A U-boat flotilla sent to the SW of England to try and get some merchants. I think I am going to try detaching a few CLs from Scheer's Scouting Forces and try commerce raiding off the west coast of England with them. I will of course be attempting mining and coastal bombardment off the western coast of England when my scouting assets are in place. My U-boat minelayer flotilla has set sail for a mission off of Harwich.

Will update as I go.

PD

[CaptHawkeye]

Even without Room 40 in the campaign, bear in mind that at any given time, Beatty and Jellicoe probably know where you are. The Brits don't have the Zeppelins, but they've got so many smaller units (the brits have a lot of subs too) in the North Sea that you're bound to trip over something. The moment you do, the Grand Fleet will be sprinting to catch you.

[PeriscopeDepth]

1/4/1916

Scouting forces bombard Hull in the early morning hours. HSF supporting in the distance runs into a Brit CL squadron and wrecks it in a knife fight at night. All enemy ships but two DDs sunk. HSF suffers a few DD/CL losses. I believe the Grand Fleet sortied at twilight/night in response to my heavy forces leaving port (I wonder how they knew :p), but my subs and zeppelins were unable to spot them. However, my subs reported sinking three DDs. So it looks like they came into contact with light escorts rushing by while it was dark out.

PD

[Raptor1]

Your submarines are much more successful than mine...

[PeriscopeDepth]

Originally Posted by Raptor1

Your submarines are much more successful than mine...

I think it depends how dense your area patrol is (how many hexes the patrol radius is) and how good the subs are. All my modern U-boat squadrons are patrolling near Scapa Flow, as well as a squadron (or two, I can't remember) of less capable ones. I only have one or two U-boat squadrons patrolling outside of the Scapa flow area. So I had a pretty solid patrol (4-6 boats, at least half of them my most capable) right off Scapa.

PD

[Zakalwe]

Plus, since I have PMed with one of the developers, it seems that the messages aren`t already working as they should be. He thought (but wasn`t absolutely sure) that there should be messages if ships are torpedoed or mined, when on the campaign screen. Would be a nice feature. Maybe we should add this suggestion to te support system.

Z.

[PeriscopeDepth]

Originally Posted by Zakalwe

Plus, since I have PMed with one of the developers, it seems that the messages aren`t already working as they should be. He thought (but wasn`t absolutely sure) that there should be messages if ships are torpedoed or mined, when on the campaign screen. Would be a nice feature. Maybe we should add this suggestion to te support system.

Z.

The message I got was "XX DD is sinking". I figured it had to be subs doing the sinking, as they were DDs I had noticed patrolling around Scapa.

PD

[Zakalwe]

Yeah,

that`s what I get too. But as I have heavily Mined the Dover straights from the Flander U-Boat minelayers, I`m not sure if they are torpedoed from my subs on area Patrol or from my minefields (I too mined the entries to Heligoland bay)

But as I said, with coming patches we hopefully will see Messages like "DD xx sunk by torpedo (or better U-Boat XY)" and "DD xx sunk from mines at position xx,yy)

Z.

[PeriscopeDepth]

I will start a new AAR when my new PC arrives and I have everything up and running. I'll also finally be able to run Jutland at full settings, so I will include pictures with that AAR.

PD