Order of Battle to feature the Kriegsmarine!

[AlbertoC]

Order of Battle returns to its roots with this DLC and it expands to the icy waters of the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, pitting the Kriegsmarine against the might of the Royal Navy and its allies.

Order of Battle: Kriegsmarine features a subject rarely touched upon by other games and never with such level of detail: you will follow the German navy in its years-long campaign to challenge the Allied supremacy of the sea.

This will put you in situations which you’ve never faced before in the Order of Battle series. You will fight as the underdog and support land operations, perform convoy-raiding missions, lure enemy ships into deadly ambushes and make extensive use of submarines. Fight through historical and what-if scenarios alike and demonstrate you are the real master of the seas!

The game will feature iconic ships such as the Bismarck and the Scharnhorst, introduces a wide range of submarines, naval bombers, flying boats, gun boats, destroyers, cruisers, and it’ll be even possible to make use of the Graf Zeppelin carrier!

Kriegsmarine will start its beta soon. We are looking for willing and active beta testers to help us finding bugs and give us suggestions. We need your help, so if you’re interested click here and join the beta.
This beta will also be the first testing phase of the new skirmish mode, a much-anticipated feature in Order of Battle.

[Sleezly]

Sounds really cool

[morge4]

Very cool! Can't wait for it.

Will this also include WolfPacks stalking down Allied convoys?

[GiveWarAchance]

nice idea
I love navy, especially the German BBs.

[Andy2012]

Looks great. Looking forward to it.
9 missions is pretty short, but ze mighty German Navy didnt see that much action in WW2 in the sense of iconic battles like Kursk.
Only thing that worries me a bit: Carrier battles were awesome in OoB Pacific. But submarines were lame and sorta useless (but annoying if used against you). Battleships were also not the most useful or exciting unit. Supporting land invasions was also a side thing. And those were the things the Kriegsmarine did: submarines, Bismarck and Scharnhorst, some support. Or am I missing things?
Dont get me wrong - I dont want to badmouth a product I havent seen (and have no time and nerves to betatest). But apart from the Bismarck, the Kriegsmarine is pretty much the least iconic thing about the Germany in WW2. Okay, Wolfpacks and Das Boot.
Thinking about it, you would have to tweak submarine gameplay quite massively to make it work. But those are just my two cents, feel free to tell me I am terribly mistaken.

[morge4]

@ Andy2012

I agree the sea battles are very few for the Germans. One other Battleship not to leave out it the Admiral Graf Spee. Yes in the end destroyed but up until the demise, it was a grand raider and sunk many merchant men.

My big hope for this is Wolfpacks and Allied convoys, that is where the German Navy had it's greatest success early in the Atlantic. The latest updates have made Submarine play more interesting but I also feel it could be tweaked a bit more. Although I don't want it to become too overpowering.

[kondi754]

Looks great. Looking forward to it.
9 missions is pretty short, but ze mighty German Navy didnt see that much action in WW2 in the sense of iconic battles like Kursk.
Only thing that worries me a bit: Carrier battles were awesome in OoB Pacific. But submarines were lame and sorta useless (but annoying if used against you). Battleships were also not the most useful or exciting unit. Supporting land invasions was also a side thing. And those were the things the Kriegsmarine did: submarines, Bismarck and Scharnhorst, some support. Or am I missing things?
Dont get me wrong - I dont want to badmouth a product I havent seen (and have no time and nerves to betatest). But apart from the Bismarck, the Kriegsmarine is pretty much the least iconic thing about the Germany in WW2. Okay, Wolfpacks and Das Boot.
Thinking about it, you would have to tweak submarine gameplay quite massively to make it work. But those are just my two cents, feel free to tell me I am terribly mistaken.

I wrote about it more than a month ago.
Below my post.

Re: OOB Pacific needs some tuning.

Postby kondi754 » 13 Dec 2016 09:19

It would be a good changes but I think submarines still not be able to sink any other ship. I suggest let him have the possiblility to attack each turn (without waiting), but should have a limited number of torpedoes (suggest 7-8), and after exhausting their supply would have to sail away. It would be necessary to build "wolf pack".
I think such changes will be necessary if the devs will create a "Battle of the Atlantic" DLC. Submarines were the biggest advantage the German Kriegsmarine, and if the current solutions will remain, it would be unrealistic smashing Allied convoys.
I would prefer not to modify the statistics of surface ships.

[Andy2012]

@ Andy2012

I agree the sea battles are very few for the Germans. One other Battleship not to leave out it the Admiral Graf Spee. Yes in the end destroyed but up until the demise, it was a grand raider and sunk many merchant men.

My big hope for this is Wolfpacks and Allied convoys, that is where the German Navy had it's greatest success early in the Atlantic. The latest updates have made Submarine play more interesting but I also feel it could be tweaked a bit more. Although I don't want it to become too overpowering.

Did I miss anything here? Last time I played subs against the Japanese, they were only useful if you smuggled them past the destroyer screen (in your second playthrough) and then had maybe one or two attacks against battleships and carriers that mostly did no damage at all. With slow reloads, limited damage, limited range, slow speed and more powerful units (bombers, scout planes) available, they were useless. Or did the devs change that?

[Andy2012]

Looks great. Looking forward to it.
9 missions is pretty short, but ze mighty German Navy didnt see that much action in WW2 in the sense of iconic battles like Kursk.
Only thing that worries me a bit: Carrier battles were awesome in OoB Pacific. But submarines were lame and sorta useless (but annoying if used against you). Battleships were also not the most useful or exciting unit. Supporting land invasions was also a side thing. And those were the things the Kriegsmarine did: submarines, Bismarck and Scharnhorst, some support. Or am I missing things?
Dont get me wrong - I dont want to badmouth a product I havent seen (and have no time and nerves to betatest). But apart from the Bismarck, the Kriegsmarine is pretty much the least iconic thing about the Germany in WW2. Okay, Wolfpacks and Das Boot.
Thinking about it, you would have to tweak submarine gameplay quite massively to make it work. But those are just my two cents, feel free to tell me I am terribly mistaken.

I wrote about it more than a month ago.
Below my post.

Re: OOB Pacific needs some tuning.

Postby kondi754 » 13 Dec 2016 09:19

It would be a good changes but I think submarines still not be able to sink any other ship. I suggest let him have the possiblility to attack each turn (without waiting), but should have a limited number of torpedoes (suggest 7-8), and after exhausting their supply would have to sail away. It would be necessary to build "wolf pack".
I think such changes will be necessary if the devs will create a "Battle of the Atlantic" DLC. Submarines were the biggest advantage the German Kriegsmarine, and if the current solutions will remain, it would be unrealistic smashing Allied convoys.
I would prefer not to modify the statistics of surface ships.

Well, kondi, you are always ahead of us, arent you?

German subs will have to be faster, have more powerful attacks and wider range of vision to be any fun at all. I remember reading Das Boot (and watching the movie): Submariners had a ton of idle time in stinking steel tubes, rotting food and horrible sanitary conditions. It was mostly mind numbing. Sure, you see it from an Admiral's perspective in OoB, but making it interesting is quite a challenge.
I think volley fire (fire all four tubes at once in a shotgun pattern) would also be interesting. Hit a range of ships in convoy line at once, deal damage, finish them off with your deck gun, dive.
To be honest, if they have announced a beta test, the devs have already made all the design decisions and are just checking if all the triggers work correctly and all the event photos are there. (Not the best track record so far.) I doubt that we can influence anything so fundamental at this point.
@devs: Can you allow Paradogs Gamer to do another Beta Lets play about this? I would prefer to see some stuff in action before I buy it. I dont want to be rude, but it really helps. I was very suspicious about Blitzkrieg at first, but his videos have convinced me to make the purchase. Havent regretted it.

[Shards]

http://i.imgur.com/VN9LsfW.gif

[Andy2012]

http://i.imgur.com/VN9LsfW.gif

Thanks, but I still like to see more than a two-second gif.

[bru888]

Order of Battle: Kriegsmarine features a subject rarely touched upon by other games and never with such level of detail: you will follow the German navy in its years-long campaign to challenge the Allied supremacy of the sea.

I've enjoyed the naval warfare in other DLC, so I am looking forward to this for sure.

By the way, I agree with morge4 about beefing up submarine capability but without letting it become too overpowering. One of the reasons why I think the devs toned down subs is because they also made them too difficult to detect and battle.

I have what I think would be a simple solution. Sometimes a destroyer will pick up a sub and fire at it. The problem is, any other nearby destroyers don't see the sub; they must ping as well and be within two spaces to detect and fire. I think this is a bit unrealistic in that it would be expected for the first destroyer to relay the sub coordinates to nearby destroyers so that they could also move in for the kill. Instead, as it is, they must move close in this turn but then wait a turn, ping, and most times come up empty as the sub moves on.

It's hard to spot a sub. However, if one is spotted among a group of destroyers, it should be expected to be destroyed. You give us that capability and I can certainly go with stronger subs of my own. As it is, I tend to ignore them because they are slow and weak in this game.

[Blitz1945]

Signed up for the beta! Anxious to see this one!

[adherbal]

There will be several changes and additions to naval combat in this update. The unique nature of this DLC is an excellent opportunity for that.

I can't give too much details yet because some of the changes are still "experimental".

And yes, there will be missions specifically about wolfpacks and convoy hunting.

[ubcbeer]

Sounds great! I can't wait for it.

[Andy2012]

There will be several changes and additions to naval combat in this update. The unique nature of this DLC is an excellent opportunity for that.

I can't give too much details yet because some of the changes are still "experimental".

And yes, there will be missions specifically about wolfpacks and convoy hunting.

Experimental, huh? Okay, then the beta will last quite a long time, I guess.
After thumbing through the screenshots on the Slitherine page, I noticed that you guys reduced the convoy unit strength to 1. I guess thats one way to ensure that a torpedo hit kills them. Anything else would be ridiculous. I mean, I remember reading about torpedo attacks on destroyers in Das Boot and the submarine officers pondering how a single torpedo hit would tear "that flimsy sheet metal nutshell of a destroyer's hull apart so you wouldn't even see any sinking wreckage in the periscope, just gone. Obliteration.". I think to make it both realistic and fun (second is most important), torpedoes should be way more powerful, but small ships should have the ability to dodge them (dice roll?) same way that subs can evade depth charges. Sonar should also have longer range, but an attack on the sub be possible only the next turn. After all, a destroyer would have to kill its engines to listen and them make a bombing run with charges at full speed to avoid the blast himself. While the destroyer does his attack run and is blind, the sub dodges and dives. To be honest, I have no idea whether that would be fun to play in OoB. (Thats most important, not realism.)

[GiveWarAchance]

Graf Spee and Gneisenau would be good to have too.
Will there be the famous Battle of the River Plate between the hapless Graf Spee and the three British cruisers hunting down the poor ship? It would be a good early battle, and if the Graf Spee survives and escapes, it could join the other German ships in later battles.

[WarHomer]

Apparently there are two threads about this and this is the "live" one, so Ill repost here.

Yes this is awesome, and I´m looking forward to it.

One possible criticism though, how does this tie in with the other DLC´s?

I don´t know about everybody else, but as an old time PG/PC player much of the fun for me is the carry over of units in long campaigns. Marines, Winter War and now maybe this are relatively short campaigns and then it´s good bye to your units and this really bothers me, even to the extent that I usually don´t bother playing the last mission.

I do see the challenges to putting the German navy on the map, since most of the German fighting was on land og in the air, but couldn´t it have been done alongside the Wehrmacht campaign, maybe with a separete prestige counter for the Kriegsmarine and then every once in a while there would be a naval mission and even some land missions where you could use support from your Kriegsmarine? This could tie in well with missions in Africa and the Mediterranean, but also in Norway, Battle of Britain, the Baltic Sea and quite a few awesome "what if"-missions.

I think it would add quite a lot to the replayability and diversity of the game.

And dont forget that Germanys Plan Z at the start of the war planned for around 800 surface ships, including 4 Aircraft Carriers and 10 battleships, so with some war luck quite a nice surface navy for the Germans would not be a total fantasy.

Just my two cents.

PS. 9 missions do sound flimsy at best...

[adherbal]

how does this tie in with the other DLC´s?

Currently there is no link between KM and Blitzkrieg but we are considering to implement a way to play certain campaigns "consecutively" and have the scenarios in one affect things in the other(s). This would be a feature for after we have more land-based German campaigns however, because KM covers the entire length of the war.

dont forget that Germanys Plan Z at the start of the war

Plan Z will be a Specialization for the KM, giving extra naval budget and command points as well as unlocking two new Specializations to introduce the Graf Zeppelin carrier earlier into the war or bring the H-class battleships and O-Class battlecruisers to reality.

PS. 9 missions do sound flimsy at best...

This will be a smaller sized DLC and that will also be reflected in the price. Without going totally into the realms of fantasy there just weren't enough major historical engagements involving the Kriegsmarine so instead we decided to focus on a smaller set of missions that give an acceptable representation of the KM's involvement in the war while still offering a unique and exciting experience in every scenario.

[Andy2012]

@adherbal: Sounds reasonable. Looking forward to it.
Linking all DLCs or at least some sounds great, but you probably have to rebalance everything if you take your core with you. I mean, you could keep it the way the import tool currently works, but as somebody else around here said, without commanders, it is rather "meh". The unique personalities you add to your troops give them the feel. Nobody cares about one star or five stars experience, its the commanders.