For those struggling with The First Casemates: CSS Virginia...

[killjoy1941]

This one was frustrating because it's well, fairly realistic. Rather, I should say it was until I turned back the clock a few centuries.

Here's what you do:

1. Choose "Speed" as your bonus going into the scenario.
2. Max out your displacement, speed, and bulkheads.
3. Max out your propulsion techs.
4. Add your towers, three funnels, and one 8" gun.
5. Use up your remaining displacement by adding belt or belt extended armor and put the odd last few tons into the tower.
6. Start the battle.
7. Forget your gun - ram the Monitor.
8. Win.

I tried it twice and it takes about five minutes. You win every time because I'm pretty sure ramming takes relative displacement into account, so the lighter Monitor always sinks first. The most difficult part is calculating the ramming run to strike amidships, but a bow or stern hit should just mean you have a slower target to strike for the next attempt. Hopefully this helps a few people who want to complete it and haven't. 🙂

[Dannavy85]

I guess both ships tried that during the actual Chesapeake fight but they couldn't get a proper alignment and weren't that fast to make any real damage. I can imagine watching the fight from Sules Point must have been like watching paint dry. 

[killjoy1941]

8 hours ago, Dannavy85 said:

I guess both ships tried that during the actual Chesapeake fight but they couldn't get a proper alignment and weren't that fast to make any real damage. I can imagine watching the fight from Sules Point must have been like watching paint dry. 

Monitor wasn't equipped to ram, but Virginia was. I don't think she tried to ram the Monitor, but she did ram the Cumberland the previous day. 🙂

[Cpt.Hissy]

Alternative path:
7. Forget your gun - ram the Monitor.
8. See your ionclad stop dead because auto-evasion.
9. Struggle for hours, bail, uninstall

[killjoy1941]

17 hours ago, Cpt.Hissy said:

Alternative path:
7. Forget your gun - ram the Monitor.
8. See your ionclad stop dead because auto-evasion.
9. Struggle for hours, bail, uninstall

That doesn't happen. I've done it twice. 😉

[Stormnet]

This design reliably takes out the monitor without ramming or massive exploitation. Choose Speed. The complete armor scheme doesnt show up, but belt and belt extended are gonna be your main focus on armor (make sure to add 9 cm of sec armor). Use your speed to get close to it and make sure your side is facing him (to allow more guns to fire at the same time). Your main trick is to stay close, and use your superior rate of fire to take him out.

Note: I made a small change that doesnt show up in the pic where I replaced the front 25 cm for a pair of 20 cm and took out just a few mm of armor out, as it has a too low fire rate to be useful, and is facing only fowards, while the 20 cm can fire while you close in oblique to the monitor.

 

In my experience, the monitor likes to come to a standstill when you come close. Come side by side with him and stop. Make use of your thick armor (he is gonna get some crits on you though) but your bigger fire rate will pound him out.