Tcat

Won with the 10 Destroyers. Lost 2. Was pretty cheesy about it. After the torpedos were expended I used several Destroyers as projectiles.

Squeezed a 10th Destroyer in with 3 double 18 inch torpedos if I use the extra cash option. Gonna give it a shot with that.

Lots of sacrifices to push from 3 to 9 Destroyers. 3 knots slower. No armor. from 2 triple 21 inch torpedos to 2 double 18 inch. Cramped quarters. Little training. Few bulkheads. After slicing crew costs, it was necessary to ask for some similar trims to engine costs, and to choose less technological choices in other areas. I'd be interesting to see other designs that can squeeze more into a budget that includes 9 Destroyers.

I've done well in the campaign. I've unlocked the 1940s campaigns for both Germany and Britain, playing at medium difficulty. The campaign doesn't build ships to include crew costs. The Destroyer I posted costs less than $10 mil without crew. It's over $6 mil for the standard compliment of regulars. I've considered a swarm of cheaper Destroyers. True, I thought about cramped quarters and a less trained crew to cut down on the only cost that truly rivals the cost of the engines. I might try that next. It's just a pain to manage so many ships until formations work better.

Here is my design for the destroyers. Fast. Went with near max armor around the belt and ignored deck armor, since weather conditions makes gunnery near-exclusively close-ranged. I typically balance destroyers around not making themselves brittle where they blow themselves up with ammo explosions or flash fires. Reduced ammo loads helps with that and on the gunnery side I can mitigate that a bit with the ammo load the 5 4-inchers carry. Triple torpedos would take a long time to reload anyway, and if the spread of 6 - 21 inch torpedos can cause some damage early, and my Destroyer survives the encounter intact, I'm more than happy to use the Destroyer to hunt down the enemy DDs with gunnery the rest of the mission. The uniform battery of 5- 4 inch guns is setup to succeed with 61 crew veterancy, smoke interference totally mitigated, etc, giving each gun a greater than 8.5 round per minute with decent accuracy. Honestly, not aware of a way I could approach this better.

I'm up to 34/57 completed, with successfully completing everything I've tried until I got to "Near Jutland". it's the first one I haven't found a solution for, and skipped to complete other missions. The main issue is you end up only designing a small part of your force, usually 3-5 Destroyers. You get paired with 2 AI-built Battlecruisers and must destroy 3 AI-Built Battlecruisers, with 12 enemy Destroyers reinforcing. You must destroy all 3 enemy Battlecruisers and the main rub is that you can't lose more than 70% of your Destroyers and either of your AI-Built Battlecruisers. The ideal number of Destroyers to build to be useful appears to be 3 or 5, with 3 allowing you to lose 2, and 5 allowing you to lose 3. Complicating this is the bad sea conditions. It takes time to catch up to the Battlecruisers you must destroy, and the enemy Destroyers always have a part to play, turning the battle into torpedo-alley, which can be difficult to keep tabs on. I've come close to finishing it, but it's very difficult. I've had one too many Destroyers lost just as I'm trying to sink the last Battlecruiser. I've tried rerolling the battle until I get decent Battlecruiser designs on my own side, with designs varying wildly. Some measure of crew experience, survivability, and speed is ideal for the Random BCs. My last try included 3 destroyers with 40+ knot speed with decent gunnery, to help fight of destroyers, and 2 triple torpedo launchers (no reload), to try to get early damage in on the BCs. The enemy Battlecruisers are very good at dodging torpedos though, with a combination of speed and maneuverability making them difficult to land early, vital, hits on them to shape the fight. This mission might have gotten even more difficult with the latest updates, where the enemy focus fires, almost without fail, incoming torpedo-carriers. The ships you don't design have to end up doing a lot of work and good luck if one of your BCs loses a rudder and/or an engine with a dozen enemy DDs around. Still, I do feel I could finish this if I were designing the Battlecruisers, and not the DDs.

Didn't know this was possible until I took a peek at the end of this engagement. Didn't catch this as it was happening. So, I don't know if gradual crew loss occurred or something like a devastating torpedo happened.