Don't accept a battle when you have a distinct disadvantage. For
example, if you are sailing around with one battleship, one cruiser and two
destroyers, you don't accept combat with a task force of six battleships.

If you are forced into a situation where you have to fight a superior
force, try to escape from the battle. The Royal Navy has a tradition of
taking on impossible odds, but you don't have to follow that tradition
because nobody, other than yourself, will know that you ran away.
Also, running away means you can fight again. Ships that are sitting at the
bottom of the Atlantic don't fight very well; they only make a good home for
trident wielders.

In all battles, it is more important to maximise enemy damage and
minimise your own ships' damage. This is especially important if you are
playing as the Deutsches Kriegsmarine. The RN has a superiority of about
5:1 in all classes of ships from destroyer upwards. If you lose one ship,
you must sink five RN ships just to balance the books. (This comment
doesn't take into account the ships sent abroad because of extended RN
commitments. If you take that into account, then one German loss equals
about three to four RN losses).

The tactics outlined here apply mainly to campaign battles. I much
prefer these battles because you can control what ships are involved.
I have also included a few "cheats" that you can try out. I hesitate to call
them cheats because they are actually limitations in the AI routines in the
programme and I merely take advantage of them.

Limitations of the RN AI.
-------------------------

1) The task forces sent out to combat the German squadrons are not very well
thought out. As an example, if you send out the Hipper, the RN AI's
normal response will be two battleships, one or two cruisers and perhaps
a destroyer or two. I use this limitation by setting up two task forces,
one consist of a German cruiser and the other consists of four
battleships, one cruiser and two destroyers. (You'll note that if you
combine these two forces you have the maximum allowed eight-ship task
force). I send the cruiser somewhere up north between Bergen and Tromso
and wait until it is discovered. I then send the second squadron to join
this lonely ship and promptly turn round and attack the RN squadron.
The usual result is:

British squadron:
Completely destroyed, (i.e. sunk).

German squadron:
One damaged battleship (20 to 60 days to repair);
Two damaged cruisers (40 to 510 days total to repair); and
One damaged destroyer (20 days to repair).

In other words, for a grand total of 80 to about 600 "ship-days" in
dry-dock, I have sunk three, (sometimes four), RN cruisers and
battleships. Not a bad days work. I'll admit that this usually means I
have lost the use of one cruiser for, (sometimes), up to 18 months but it
will be available in 18 months.

You may have noticed a few overriding principles of warfare in the above,
i.e. "do the unexpected" and "overwhelming superiority". Unfortunately,
the AI in GNBNA cannot learn from the above example and falls into my
trap every time.

2) Another problem with the RN's AI is poor usage of aircraft carriers.
The carriers are nearly always left near Scapa Flow, Liverpool or Plymouth.
I have never seen one in the middle of the Atlantic. If you want to try
and take on a carrier in the campaign, you have to sneak up the east
coast of England, hoping that you don't get spotted, and attack with a
task force that has a maximum speed of more than 30 knots. 30 knots and
less means that the RN force will either try and shadow or evade your
task force. It can be done, but I have found that it is generally not
worth the trouble because the AI makes such poor use of the carriers,
they might as well have been left out of the game.

3) The RN's AI also seems unable to move ships from one harbour to another.
I've looked into some save files when the war is nearly finished and most
of the AI's ships were sitting in Liverpool, either being repaired or
with repairs complete.

The Limitations of the DKM AI.
------------------------------

1) The DKM AI will nearly always put newly built ships into dry-dock.
I suppose this is because it takes 25 days to wait for the ship to be 100%
effect but only 20 days if you go into dry-dock. (Actually, I think the
AI puts all ships with an effectiveness of less than 80% into repairs).
Putting the ships into dry-dock has the disadvantage that the RAF could
bomb them. This can mean that they get bombed so often, they never sail
again. (This may have reflected the war as it really was but it doesn't
do much for the game).

2) The DKM will almost always send out three or four ship task forces. (I
once had a DKM task force of eight ships but that was only once). As the
British Sea Lord, this makes life easy for you because you have many more
ships with which to attack. The only real problem is that the German
task forces are usually sailing along at 28 to 32 knots and you have no
hope of catching them with your battleships. (Well, not strictly
speaking true, you can attack with aircraft from the carriers and after
one or two air attacks, one or more German vessels will have received
engine damage and then you can catch up).

General comments about battles
------------------------------

Remember that every battle is different but they all follow general
rules. I have run through a normal battle, at least, normal for me.
Each battle follows a fairly predictable pattern. In the discussion below,
I have assumed that I am playing as the Germans and have stumbled across a RN
task force. My task force consists of 4 battleships, 2 cruisers and
2 destroyers. The RN task force consists of 2 battleships, 1 cruiser and
2 destroyers.

The battle starts at extreme range but I can see all enemy battleships
from my battleships and both the RN cruiser and my own cruisers are out of
range.

My first step is to prepare all aircraft for launching. Don't forget to
launch them when the 20 minutes are up and make sure each enemy ship get the
attention of at least one aircraft.

The next step is to set up my weapons. I do this by going through every
ship and locking the scope, (clicking on the "L"). On all ships, except for
my first battleship, I set the weapons to fire automatically. I set the
first enemy battleship to be primary target for my first and third
battleships, with the second enemy battleship to be secondary target.
My second and fourth battleships will engage the second enemy battleship as
their primary target and the first enemy battleship as the secondary
battleship. This way, I am engaging both RN battleships with two
battleships.

The next step is to set up my formation. The fastest battleship becomes
my squadron leader and all other ships are set to follow this ship.
This formation produces an extended line but is easier to control.

The next step is to determine my own formations' heading. I do this by
noting the firing angle between my primary battleship and the target.
I then select a heading of 30 to 35 degrees to the left or right of this
direct line and set my primary battleships heading to this new course.
If the angle is less than 30 degrees, your secondary weapons cannot fire at the
target and also you cannot use all your main guns to engage the enemy.

Last step is to let the battle start.

Once the battle has started, keep a note of your ships that receive hits
and check that they are not seriously damaged. When one of them receives
very serious damage, take it out of you line and set in onto a course that
will eventually take it out of the battle.

If your primary battleship starts losing speed due to damage, change the
formation so that it starts following your second battleship and move your
primary battleship out of the line. The AI tends to fire at the nearest
ship that is easiest to sink, so, by shuffling your formation, you can
spread damage around.

From your first cruiser, keep an eye out for when you can start firing at
the enemy cruiser. Don't fire at the battleships, at long range most shells
won't cause any damage. Once your cruisers can engage the RN cruiser, set
them both to firing at the RN cruiser.

Keep track of your battleships' secondary weapons. When the RN
destroyers are in range, at least one of your secondary emplacements will
start firing at the destroyers. Pause the game and set all secondary guns
to fire at one of the RN destroyers.

Do the same for the second battleship; only don't fire at the same
destroyer you are attacking with the first battleship. The enemy destroyers
will eventually receive sufficient damage to either destroy their torpedoes
or slow them down enough so that they cannot fire their torpedoes at you.
If they are sitting dead in the water, they cannot get a good torpedo firing
position. You'll know when the destroyers cannot fire their torpedoes,
because they turn away from your formation. Don't forget that you might
have damaged the torpedo mount as opposed to having destroyed it.

By this time, about 15 minutes will have passed and your own ships will
more than likely be getting hit although you will be dealing out more damage
that you are receiving. It is now time to compare your heading with the
direction of fire. If the angle is more than 45 degrees, reduce the angle
to 30 degrees. From this point in the battle until when the RN destroyers
are close enough to fire their torpedoes, your main task is to keep the
firing angle to about 30 to 35 degrees.

In case you didn't understand what I mean about the 30-degree firing
angle, I'll give you an example:

The battle starts and your heading is 41 degrees. The RN battleship you
are firing at is at 202 degrees. You will want to change your course so
that you are closing at an offset of 30 degrees. You can either head to 172
degrees or 232 degrees, (202 + 30 = 232 or 202 - 30 = 172). To turn to 172
degrees means a turn of 131 degrees but a turn to 232 means a left turn of
169 degrees, (360 - 191 = 169). This left turn also means that your front
guns will not be firing for part of the turn. To get to the optimum firing
angle, set you lead ship to turn to 172 degrees. Once the ship reaches a
heading of about 135 degrees, check the firing angle again and make
adjustments accordingly. It is very important to make sure that your
heading and firing angle are between 30 and 150 degrees of each other!

The next stage of the battle is to get closer to your enemy and make sure
that you don't take too much damage. Usually, with an almost two to one
superiority, you will be in a good position when the RN destroyers start
deploying for torpedo attacks. When they do fire their torpedoes, set the
secondary weapons that were firing manually, (i.e. your first and second
battleships), back to automatic fire. The destroyers have used their most
potent weapon and are no longer such a threat.

Of course, you will have to avoid the torpedoes, but if you go to the
bridge of all effected ships, (press F2), and give them hard rudder away
from the torpedoes, you should be able to avoid all the torpedoes.

Naturally, your formation will be broken, but once the torpedoes are
avoided, you can rebuild the formation. Don't forget that with the hard
rudder, your main guns cannot fire. If you have set the guns to automatic
fire, this is not a problem, because they will start spotting again when you
straighten the formation. If you prefer to fire the guns manually, you'll
have to go to each ship and set up the firing patterns yourself.

After the destroyers have fired their torpedoes, I generally find that
the battle turns into a mopping up operation. This is because I always have
superiority in vessels when I have a battle in GNBNA. If I'm playing as
Germany, I don't leave harbour until I have a very good task force and if
I'm play as First Sea Lord, I always take on the German raiders with
overwhelming numbers of battleships.

In general, don't waste your battleships main guns on the enemy
destroyers unless there are no cruisers or battleships left to fight.

Once you have pounded the enemy battleships, send in the destroyers to
finish them off. The battleships in GNBNA are very difficult to sink with
only gunfire. Also, don't forget that some of the German battleships and
all the cruisers carry torpedoes. If you have a RN battleship dead in the
water, expend your battleships' or cruisers' torpedoes before sending in the
destroyers.

I played a battle like this last night and the results were:

British squadron of two battleships, one cruiser and two destroyers; all sunk.

German squadron:

One battleship in dry-dock for 20 days;
One battleship in dry-dock for 89 days;
One cruiser in dry-dock for 490 days;
One cruiser in dry-dock for 20 days; and
One destroyer in dry-dock for 20 days.

Personally, I think five damaged ships is a good trade for five sunk. If
you're playing a campaign as the Germans, you only need to do this five or
six times and you have won the game without sinking any Merchant Navy ships.
You can leave the merchants to the U-Boat arm; after all they should also do
something.

Remember...
-----------

Also remember, if you are playing the Kriegsmarine, you might have to
engage some patrolling cruisers on your way back to Kiel. Always try and
keep some ammunition for this eventuality.

Another thing to remember as the Kriegsmarine, you dictate the pace of
the battles. The RN will sit in Scapa Flow until a German battle squadron
is sighted and then the RN will sally forth with sufficient force to destroy
this squadron. If you use the "cheat" I described above, you can conduct
the entire war in the North Sea, without ever attack a convoy, and you'll be
very pleased with your decisive victory.

Have fun,

Geoff May.
20. Oktober 1999