NPCs and China.

[Kaiser Kirk]

This is an outline to let people know how I am proceeding.
I've said much of this before...that doesn't stop me from doing it again.

Snip's Tier design is continued
This provides the outline for the relative strength the NPCs are choosing to put in various parts of their budget. Tracking "current" status for all the NPCs is not a feasible workload.   

Diplomacy

Due to current events, this is my second focus.

Step One : NPC profiles and Histories.
Partially done for : Aztec, Berber, Deccan, Rajasthan, Laskmanavati.
Just Ideas for China, Maya, 5 Nations, Golden Horde.  Not started for Ethiopia & Thailand.
Step Two : Strategic Picture – what are their interests.
Step Three : I need to devise a tracking sheet and scale system.
Then I can start assigning + or – points for various PC activities to indicate the NPC viewpoint.

For example: Parthia has occupied the shoreline and islands opposite Thailand. That should alarm Thailand, and be a large minus. A previous history of good relations should reduce that impact.

Step 4: Make them interactive.

"BIG" decisions may be made by the Mod reaching out to a couple uninvolved players.
Still debating that.

Navies

Due to current events involving China,  this is my first focus.

Currently
For now, if an NPC Navy is suddenly needed,
player encyclopedias will be searched, ships copied and renamed.
I plan to look at how players have built their fleets (Capital:Cruiser:Destroyer) to get the ratios for the NPCs to use.

Future
As we move forward, each Game Year, I would like to hold little competitions for some of the NPCs to design the lead ship in their main classes in the next year. 

That ship and $/BP to build it+profit will likely be awarded the winning designer.   
If that's a guest not a player, they just get an 'Well Done'.

So in 1913, we would take designs for the 1914 laydown ships.
Those would be (1910+4) : Horde, Ethiopia and 5 Nations.

Ship Building Years
1910 Horde, Ethiopia, 5 Nations
1909 China, Deccan, Berber
1908 Azteca, Laksmanavati, Thai
1907 Rajasthan, Maya

These would apply in 4 year intervals backwards and forwards.

Example, Azteca would have design years of 1893, 1899, 1903, 1907, 1911, 1915, ...

The number of Each Class built over the 4 year period would not be given.
After 20 years the ship will be placed in reserve or scrapped.

This would help fill the NPC encyclopedias and give the players some information as to 'what is over there', while allowing Snip's Tier design of relative strength to be used if there is a war involving the NPC.

Also, if there's a need to add a player to one of them, there won't be a 'surprise fleet'.
They will be expected to use the existing encyclopedia and specify how many of which were built.

[Kaiser Kirk]

Currently
For now, if an NPC Navy is suddenly needed,
player encyclopedias will be searched, ships copied and renamed.
I plan to look at how players have built their fleets (Capital:Cruiser:Destroyer) to get the ratios for the NPCs to use.

Future

So in 1913, we would take designs for the 1914 laydown ships.
Those would be (1910+4) : Horde, Ethiopia and 5 Nations.

Ship Building Years
1910 Horde, Ethiopia, 5 Nations
1909 China, Deccan, Berber
1908 Azteca, Laksmanavati, Thai
1907 Rajasthan, Maya

These would apply in 4 year intervals backwards and forwards.

Example, Azteca would have design years of 1893, 1899, 1903, 1907, 1911, 1915, ...

I gave this a try last night for a little while.

Player ships tend to cluster around technology, and the 1905+ capital ships tend to be a bit too advanced.

I think I will have to allow the "1907" of above to be more like 1905 to 1907... and use older designs than the laydown date.
That will fit the Tier design of having the vessels be slightly behind the times.

[Jefgte]

Future
As we move forward, each Game Year, I would like to hold little competitions for some of the NPCs to design the lead ship in their main classes in the next year...
...
Ship Building Years
1910 Horde, Ethiopia, 5 Nations
1909 China, Deccan, Berber
1908 Azteca, Laksmanavati, Thai
1907 Rajasthan, Maya

To have consistent fleets, it would be wise to define the artillery calibers standardized by fleet.
For example:
China uses German artillery
Ethiopia uses USA artillery.

Reference to Naval Weapons of course.

[Kaiser Kirk]

To have consistent fleets, it would be wise to define the artillery calibers standardized by fleet.
For example:
China uses German artillery
Ethiopia uses USA artillery.

Reference to Naval Weapons of course.

I agree.

NavWeaps is an excellent source.  Unfortunately those guns may not have the right shell weight or Muzzle Energy to fit our rules.

Originally I was going to specify Player navies as the source of Naval weapons.

Logi's ballistics tool : https://www.navalism.org/index.php/topic,6016.0.html gives a way to convert guns from our Research into results.

The problem with either the historical weapons, or the Player guns, is having a valid springsharp that uses them, of the right year, and the right class.

This is an exploration of how to do this well and easily. 

Comments/ Input are very welcome.

[Kaiser Kirk]

I don't yet know how to move stuff, and I'm busy trying to write up the conflicts from colonial expansion.

Do you need an actual SS3 report to look at? Maybe just pull stats from OTL ships (Wikipedia)?

Good question - can have discussion like this over in the NPCs and China thread- kinda what it's for.
This for trying to fill the 1909 ship design holes.

But it is a good question that others should see.

The answer - think of the times you've tried to sim RL vessel...
A fair number are close.
A fair number are way off. You can have much better or worse results.
Armor is rarely explained well.
Engine power : Ton varies drastically from our standards.
Seakeeping is unknown.
Gun tech and Shell weights are wrong.

Plus, a base rule here is you need an SS design, and it needs to fit our rules.
I'd like to adhere to that.

[Kaiser Kirk]

Fleets :

Last week I startd taking the naval summary from the turns, and placing them in a combined fleet spreadsheet.

Chipping away at it, I've unified the  Class types, and been able to add up figures.
While I know I mixed some things, the error should be minor.

The end goal is that the percentages assigned the classes / architectures will help guide how the NPC fleet tonnage is arranged.

Total Naval tonnage paid for : 3,464,182 tons
Of that tonnage

Class       # Hulls         Tonnage          %
AC               58             653,879          19%
BB               79          1,205,506          35%
CD               18               96,615           3%
PC              139             588,040         17%
SC               63              212,634          6%
GB             320              118,669          3%
DD             689              362,629        10%
TB              685               75,826          2%
SS              184               64,175          2%
ML                18               18,700       0.5%
MS                38                 7454        0.2%
AUX            157             240,227        1.7%


Things I found interesting :
1) We have more BB/BC ships than the smaller ACs.
2) Over 1/3 of our tonnage is in BB/BCs.
3) there are over 1300 DDs and TB/MTBs
4) there are nearly 200 submarines, while the Parthians are experimenting with just a couple. I was going to wait for the 1910 version to decide they were worth it.
5) Many countries have minelaying cruisers, only 3 countries have minelayers.
6) While 3 have minelayers, only 2 have mine sweepers. Parthia has 63% of the world's minesweeper Tonnage, the Norse the rest.. but all of Parthia's are ocean going, while half the Norse are tiny coastal ones.
7) Parthia's destroyers tend to be slower, but very long ranged compared to most. Their most recent class though looks quite decent, though I messed up the gun position description.

[Desertfox]

That is a hell of a lot of submarines... :o

Looking at my fleet, I'm right on the money with BB/BCs and ACs, light on cruisers and destroyers, and massive on auxiliaries. Do I really have half the world's tonnage on mine-layers and almost half on auxiliaries (did you multiply the aux tonnage by .25?)? And I completely forgot minesweepers... *facepalm*

AC   88,200   22%
BB   165,800   42%
CD   0      0
PC   46,000   12%
SC   19,200   5%
GB   5,600   1%
DD   39,840   10%
TB   0      0
SS   0      0
ML   9,000   2%
MS   0      0
AUX   24,800   6%

[Kaiser Kirk]

I was trying to figure out how folks allocated their BP, so the actual cost paid for the Auxs is what mattered.
So yes, divided by 4.

Hence the term 'total naval tonnage paid'... one of those things obvious to and opaque to others.

Anyhow, Japan now may have passed Parthia for largest Aux tonnage. A lot of folks didn't invest much in them.  Parthia does have a couple new ones partially built.

Well Japan has mine-laying capability, and like all but the Norse and Parthians... no dedicated ships, stocks of paravanes and trained crew on how to actually go about demining things..but you have the theory.

Since mines were used extensively in the Horde-Chinese war, I have planned to equip the Chinese with minesweepers.
That's a work in progress. I realized today I have to double check and probably redesign 1908+ ships to make sure no oil-fired burners.

[Desertfox]

That makes more sense, I didn't think I had half the worlds auxiliaries. Japanese Navy now looks more top heavy, 2/3rds of it is BBs and ACs.

While it makes sense for China to have minesweepers (seeing I have half the world's mine-laying tonnage), I'm not sure a Horde-Chinese War makes a lot of sense, especially with China winning the Sino-Japanese War, China is too strong to give up Port Arthur. 

[Kaiser Kirk]

Like I said previously,...a couple times now... unless the history has been changed, we presume a similar event happened with the powers now holding that territory.
In some cases - the Spanish American War, there is no plausible USA... so no war.
In this case, there is a Horde where Russia is, and an owner of Korea who's in the game - China.
So It happened.
For some reason the Horde had claimed the peninsula and had put whatever navy they had there.
The Chinese evicted them.

[Desertfox]

When I took over Japan I was given the impression that historical Tsushima couldn't have happened because the Horde was too weak at sea, and instead the Russo-Japanese War was replaced with a much smaller Horde-Japanese conflict over Sakhalin?

Port Arthur historically was the direct result of the Sino-Japanese War that here has a completely different ending. I'm just finding it really hard to see how a victorious China that just took over all of Korea, gives up such a strategic port so close to its capital to an enemy country who doesn't really have a significant navy. At most I could see the Horde taking a port on the east coast of Korea (maybe as far south as Pusan) in the chaos of the war, but China could easily retake that with land forces alone.

[Kaiser Kirk]

Look.
Real simple - we haven't written it out.
So something happened.


What exactly I don't know, and in the big picture, it does not matter.

That war had nighttime torpedo boat attacks, mines, the Sevastopol  demonstrating torpedo nets, the effectiveness of large bore artillery, the hazards of fire.
If we know the war took place - regardless of if even was a battle at Tsushima, those 'lessons' can be taken from it.

So, we done with this ?

[Kaiser Kirk]

This is a little delayed,
Busy Wednesday, gave myself Thursday 'off', and wound up working Friday.

At this point - at the brink of War, Japan needs to know the actual numbers and classes of vessels in the Chinese fleet.
We know it for every player, but until the brink of war, it is unknown for the NPCs.
So, Japan needs that knowledge to help decide how far to push the Jeju island/ Okinawa situations.

A spreadsheet with the chinese fleet and hull #s is attached.

Chinese fleet is formed tonnage wise.
I need to organize where the ships ARE, post which PC classes are being USED, and put up a DD

I'm going to do some shopping and then go through the various PMs when I get back.

In the meantime I will post the DD and here is a synopsis of the Chinese fleet:

Notes about Chinese Fleets :

The original intention was to come up with a general process for this and future NPCs.
That was not possible as I had to also honor the restrictions focused on Japan, which is effectively a T1 NPC at this point.

For capital ships, that required some scratch built vessels.
For 1908+ builds, it meant avoiding oil firing.  Parthian ships both had the desired range, and were easy for me to convert the DD (now posted) and I simply switched to earlier PC.

The initial plan was simply evenly spread tonnage over years and allocate by type.
Then I looked at Japan again, and they have 15% of tonnage 1908-1912.
So I limited the Chinese to that.

Handwaving : I am going to grant the Capital ship architecture and Cruiser vessels torpedo nets, regardless of if they are spec'd out.  Most Class Designs are 'before' the Chinese Lay down date, and so should have slightly smaller, lighter engines than shown. 

Chinese Fleet Raw Statistics

1893-1897 : 27%
1898-1903 : 30%
1904-1907 : 34%
1908-1912 : 10%

Total Tonnage : 784 below maximum

Capital Ship Architecture :  Target 58%, have 59%.

Cruiser Architecture : Target : 27%, have 25%

Destroyer Architecture : Target 13%, have 12%

Submarines : NPC are far behind on Submarines, none present. Tonnage to capital ships.

MW : Target 0.75%, have 1.5%

Aux : Target 2%, have 3%.

In the end, the fleet trended older.  Due to the historic 4 Chinese fleets, and many ports, extra Aux/MW seemed needed for that.
Overall, it took tracking an fiddling to get close to the targets. 
Given fixed hull sizes to choose from, staying exactly in the class+year brackets did not work, so I wound up with Architecture and 4 years prior to date.

These are real close. I'm pleased.

The next time we need an NPC fleet, hopefully the classes will be posted already. If not I now have a combined fleets master list.

[Kaiser Kirk]

So Desertfox requested, and I provided, a list of Chinese fleet bases.
I went off the historical 4 chinese fleets, expanded for their ownership of Korea and Vietnam.
I specified main and secondary bases, cruiser squadrons and some Torpedo Boat stations.

I really should have made the Chinese fleet first.

The fleet winds up rather dispersed, with it's scout cruisers in nominally independent squadrons.
Not the best arrangement.

The stronger and more modern units are in the Northern two fleets, while the Southern fleet - which previously faced Thailand and the unorganized areas  of Indonesia, is the weakest.

The Russo-Japanese war is  in N7 the Horde-Sino war.
During the Korean unrest in 1894, not only did the Japanese get invited in by the rebels but so did the Horde, who then duplicated the Russian actions of 1897.  The Horde spent a decade creating a warm water port and a navy to go with it. On land they fortified and slowly destabilizing Korea. Lease not renewed, they were forcibly evicted 1904 with surprise fall attack led by torpedo boats. The war featured offensive mining as well. The Horde took horrendous losses trying to wage offensive war against Chinese fortifications Manchuria in the winter of 1904-1905, and the siege of Port Arthur ended in 1905. The remaining horde squadron broke out and  tried to run for Vladisvastok, loading coal on it's decks to they could steam at nearly full speed the entire distance. The Chinese had placed their blockading cruisers at  Weihaiwei, but stationed their main fleet at Pusan to prevent the two Horde squadrons from uniting. They intercept at Tsushima.

All the lessons of the war remain the same. Except it happened between the major land power in the world- the Golden Horde, and a second real "power"- China. So it may have been taken more seriously as a warning on modern land warfare.

As such the Chinese fleet has minesweepers at every port to ensure the channel is open as the ships leave, some dedicated minelayers for both offensive and defensive minelaying, and torpedo boat bases are maintained, as is practice at night attack.  Gunboats serve as pickets at many harbor entrances.  While the fleets and squadrons remain separate commands, they no longer operate completely separate from each other. Joint maneuvers, competitions, and transfer of vessels occurs.