SES Jutland is out

[Bis71]

Actually, you can use either "Task Force" to control everything or use "click & drag" to control multiple divisions.

[CaptHawkeye]

If you try to give a "Turn by Succession" order while in Task Force mode the entire fleet will end up in a stupid mess as they all turn into each other. The problem isn't direction finding it's distance keeping which none of the ships are inclined to do themselves.

[Bis71]

Originally Posted by CaptHawkeye

If you try to give a "Turn by Succession" order while in Task Force mode the entire fleet will end up in a stupid mess as they all turn into each other. The problem isn't direction finding it's distance keeping which none of the ships are inclined to do themselves.

True, but then you can use the "Guide on" order to try to sort things outt. The problem may be that fleet actions don't start with an overll "Enemy sighted" command that would give divisions a template for coordinated movement. Such a command would be nice.

[CaptHawkeye]

"Guide on" only makes ships follow eachother single file. It astounds me that the developers didn't set it to mean "maintain distance and direction from X ship". I guess they figured you needed to have a "Form New Division" command twice.

[MoToM]

You can issue the Guide on command to the lead ship of one formation to follow the tail ship of another formation.

Just started a new German campaign, overly aggresive, split the HSF into three and patrolled lower north sea together.
Having them split worked a treat.
The British BattleCruiser fleet engaged one of the smaller offshoots at around 3am and didn't notice the other two formations creeping up from the south.
After a slightly confused clash only one BC escaped for the loss of a number of DD's and only one BB for me.

The North Sea is now mine.

[Bis71]

Don't you just love it when a plan comes together?

[Lempereur1]

Here are a couple of Great Screeens from some Jutland Gamers...

[Lempereur1]

This one is awesome sunset. www.stormeaglestudios.com

[Lempereur1]

Direct Hit! www.stormeaglestudios.com

[Lempereur1]

This is a great shot from above looking down. www.stormeaglestudios.com

[Lempereur1]

This is an excellent shot of a night battle with flares. www.stormeaglestudios.com

[Lempereur1]

An excellent shot of a Battlecruiser under fire. www.stormeaglestudios.com

[Lempereur1]

All fo the above shots were posted by Jutland Gamers using the Jutalnd Pro Edition.
None have been retouched or altered in any way.

We will be featuring a user best screen shots on our website shortly.

Jim Rose
Kapellmeister
StormEagleStudios.com

[Lempereur1]

One more great Evening shot.

[Bullethead]

Well, this seems to be the most recent thread and I gotta start somewhere, so here goes....

Originally Posted by TheSatyr

What seems to be the accepted reasoning these days for the loss of the indefatigable,Queen Mary and Invincible is simply a real bad decision made by the Battle Cruiser Force. In general,the ships of the BCF had poor gunnery standards when it came to accuracy. Unlike the Grand Fleet they rarely did any gunnery practice. So they tried to make up for it by increasing their rate of fire,and they did that by throwing out all safety precautions. They left the magazine doors open,they stacked cordite and shells in and around the turrets and well,that is a disaster waiting to happen.

While this is, as you say, a generally accepted argument, I find a lot of fault in it. The root cause of the problem was that Brit cordite burned so fast even when uncontained that it was for all intents and purposes an explosion. OTOH, the German propellant just burned, never generating the gas overpressures necessary to tear a ship apart. I cite just 2 of quite a few examples:

At Jutland, when Lion's Q turret burned out, it was only the 8 charges in the hoists and approved waiting positions that ignited some few minutes after the hit. There wasn't a huge pile of exposed cordite, the magazine doors were closed, and part of Q turret was already missing so their was a way for the gas pressure to vent. Despite all this, however, these few charges created enough overpressure to seriously distort the magazine bulkheads and doors, which would have allowed flash into the magazines and blown the ship, had not the magazines already been flooded by that time.

OTOH, at Dogger Bank, Seydlitz had 2 turrets burn out, with MANY more charges exposed than there should have been, and the magazine doors open. Charges in the magazine actually ignited. However, there was zero overpressure, just a big fire. The only concern the Germans had was that the heat would eventually cook off the HE in the adjacent shell rooms, but they had the fire out before that happened.

So, the evidence points to the Brits blowing up if they got sparks in the powder train between gun and magazine, even if they followed all their safety precautions. Germans were much less likely to blow up, but still did occasionally. However, all German explosions do seem to have been from HE in their shells, not from their propellant.

What we did in Jutland, therefore, was put in an option for you. It's called an "advanced critical hit" or ACH. The one in question gives the Brits a 20% chance of blowing up if they suffer a penetration of a main turret if you enable it. If you turn this off, then everybody has an equal, but low, chance of blowing up occasionally. We feel that having this on is more realistic, but that having it off makes MP games work better.

BTW, the 20% chance of explosion on a main turret penetration is actually a bit lower than it was in real life. If you dig through Campbell's Jutland: An Analysis of the Fighting, you'll find it was closer to 30% in real life.

It wouldn't have mattered how thick the armor was on those BCs. Once a turret took a hit and the ammo and cordite cooked off,the flash fire would have an unblocked path to the magazine.

This is especially true in WW1. Contrary to popular belief, there really wasn't much plunging fire then, even at long range. In 1916, only a couple of German ships had even 16^ main gun elevation--most had 13.5^--and the Brits weren't much better. As a result, the angle of fall even at long range wasn't more than about 20-30^, which the thin decks of the time pretty much were able to handle. The main damage at Jutland was done to vertical armor: belts, turrets, barbettes, etc.