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CORE Newbie Questions & Comments: Understanding the Research Tree etc

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MagooNZ

MagooNZ

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May 17, 2012
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Just started my first CORE game as USA. The colour graphics & travel guide windows are great. Before loading CORE I didnt have a clue what the travel guide is.

The research tree is enormous and so different from AoD vanilla. Is the USA only able to field 6 battalion? Armour & Mechanised division, not the 9 battalion version? or did I make a mistake somewhere early in the game and accidentally lock myself out of the 9 battalion option?

Land doctrines: Is it best to select a few lines eg Defence, Battle, and research them for the due dates and leave out all the others? Is there a guide that explains the more important research technologies for specific countries? I'm somewhat overwelmed by the enormous choice & detail about what next research techs are enabled and what research techs are disabled.

Naval Combat: Is long range carrier combat still based on sea attack/defence values rather than air attack/defence values?

Conquest/Liberation is much slower than vanilla AoD and seems far more realistic. Good to see a reduced number of province improvements that can be built off map & stacked up for future deployment.

If I recall correctly there was a USA event, a gearing up one or Pearl H, that stated a lot of Hawk slider moves, but the event only provided one Hawk move so at the start of the war the USA was still a long way from fully hawk. Also, I didnt like the gearing up events with the moves to drafted army, would have preferred standing army moves. Are these two event outcomes wad?

Overall, I have a very favourable impression of CORE. Why have I taken so long to try it out?
 
Having not played much as the USA cant give u a 100% correct answer but ill try remembering the tips i have read in the forums.

1. About the (6 bat & and 9 bat) Infantry divs just started the game up to confirm that u should locked to the 9 bat versions.
2. About the (Land doctrines) Of this this I'm am not sure but i think nearly all give bonuses to nearly all the units but bit weighted (regular inf & company vs mot & company])
3. About the sliders for USA i think the number one important is not the hawk but the interventionism slider as it will unlock more event for the USA. If u don't care about rest of the world why should react to the event of the world.
4. About the Drafting army moves it is a WAD as i believe it is meant to simulate the effects of more general draft on the army.
5. About the Hawk Slider i do know that england at lest has a event that gives u free hawk sliders but it don't give full hawk so you will need to work on it a bit.

I am writing this just as i woke up so I apologize if i have any misinformation.

And may i be the first to welcome you to core for me at lest it is the most polished/fine tuned HOI experience.
 
Almost any major nation should be locked to the military organization/structure they historically had, at least for Infantry types. Minor nations generally only have 6Bn available.
I'm not that sure with some major nations and 6/9Bn Armor/Mech, there may be a choice somewhere for those that are not that advanced in research.

For the Land doctrines choose the techs you have matching techteams, non-matched teams may take too long (especially on the large initial doctrines). USA should get soem improved teams later on.
 
I think it's possible to switch between six and nine battalion organisations (perhaps by accident) by researching the start of the other branch, which then disables the original. I'm not 100% sure about that though. If it's true, it would apply to a few other areas of the CORE research tree as well.

Carriers still work in the same way that they do in vanilla. That's hard coded, unfortunately, so not something modders can change.
 
Thanks for all your replies.
So I need to restart as USA and see if I can activate the 9Bn Armoured division. I had thought that since USA (& WAllies) historically had tanks that were inferior to SOV/GER, the 9Bn may have been blocked to the USA player.
Early on, the event choices that I selected also came with a move to Isolationism, so since I was already fully Isolationist, this had no negative consequences for me. Hence it seemed wise to avoid any slider moves to Interventionism since I would lose them in the events.
Which is the best carrier type for USA to build; fleet carrier or AD (guess this means armoured deck?). I came to the conclusion that the fleet carrier was the best model type to select.

I can see that a lot of work has gone into the CORE mod. Lots of dedicated people out there. Tremendous effort.
 
9Bn is the way to go for the US. And the isolationist slider moves are intended to make an early entry into the war more difficult. You certainly would want to make those moves, but you have to time them. It might take a couple of runs to get a good feel for the negative slider moves along the road.

And thanks for the compliment! Glad you like the fruits of our labor! :)
 
MagooNZ said:
Which is the best carrier type for USA to build; fleet carrier or AD (guess this means armoured deck?). I came to the conclusion that the fleet carrier was the best model type to select.
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I'm not sure which is better for the cost and research requirements in CORE, but I think historically that it was the British who really went in for armoured deck carriers, with the Americans building standard carriers. When Kamikazes became a real threat in the Pacific this started to become a problem, and the US came to rely on British carriers more and more in the theatre.
 
Never heard of this, the US fleet carriers suffered a lot of damage but were rarely sunk. They had their strength deck on the hangar deck while british carriers had it on the flight deck. This made british carriers heavier or smaller and somewhat top-heavy. Some were seriously damaged as well and had to be dumped afterwar because of hull damages as side effect.
 
Denniss said:
Never heard of this, the US fleet carriers suffered a lot of damage but were rarely sunk. They had their strength deck on the hangar deck while british carriers had it on the flight deck. This made british carriers heavier or smaller and somewhat top-heavy. Some were seriously damaged as well and had to be dumped afterwar because of hull damages as side effect.
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I'm pretty sure it's true, but I'll get a reference. The problem was that a Kamikaze could go straight through the flight deck of an America carrier, which put it out of action for the engagement even if it wasn't sunk, whereas they'd bounce off a British carrier.
 
Hagar said:
Glad you like the fruits of our labor! :)
Click to expand...

I do indeed like the fruits of your labour.
Still continuing this first game. GER got bitter peace. JAP got China. I'm the USA player, and havent MC'd any of the WAllies. Its 1945, I have 3 fronts with GER. Southern France which has been quiet for months. My newest front in southern GER. This came about after crossing into northern ITA, and using USA heavy bombers to pound all of southern ITA (I'm starting to get desperate, done nothing in the Pacific, lost many carriers early on, my blunder.) The middle east front. I had troops cut off in Haifa? (hills) and others on the North African front at Suez canal. GER must have 120 to 150 divs or more on the middle east front. They just attacked the Haifa surround. 76 divs vs about 48 divs. Used the USAF to drop their infrastructure in their three attacking provinces to arround 1.5%, and transported all my divs from Suez to Haifa; three times at least 6 divs at a time. But they kept on coming & I was still slowly losing this battle. Then I used the USA heavy bombers to pound their troops; interdiction & ground attack. The bombers are all cut up now, but it turned the tables. They broke off their attack after I had lost a tank division, with many other divs close to zero strength. I could easily have lost the lot. Now with about 65 divs there, Im trapped. I dont have the transports to pull them all out at the same time. Talk about experiencing Anzio. The southern GER front is very lightly defended by GER, however I dont have that many divs there to press my advantage. But surviving this GER attack may be the turning point. Losses WAllies 159k troops (ENG has a few divs in Haifa too) plus the tank div, GER 162k troops (for this one Haifa battle). I must say a pretty exciting first game .
 
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cyberpunkdreams said:
I'm pretty sure it's true, but I'll get a reference. The problem was that a Kamikaze could go straight through the flight deck of an America carrier, which put it out of action for the engagement even if it wasn't sunk, whereas they'd bounce off a British carrier.
Click to expand...

Someone, probably Dec, referred to a comprehensive analysis of this issue some time back. As I recall it indicated that while the British carriers could maintain flight operations after flight deck hits that would have shut down operations from American carriers, it came at the cost of some serious substructural deformation. Thus while the American CVs might have been put out of operation more easily they could also be returned to full operability more easily and more quickly. Together with the superior damage control and fire-fighting protocols of the US Navy this, anti-intuitively, made the US ships a better long-haul bet than their RN counterparts.
 
That, and the fact that the wooden decks were less heavy, and thus increased the number of planes the carrier could operate.
 
I don't think it was a weight thing so much as centre-of-gravity effect. Once you start armouring up your flight deck there's only a certain height you can place that deck above the waterline before it seriously compromises the stability of the ship. As a result there's less usable space available below the flight deck, so the British carriers typically had a single hangar deck (stretched to one and half later) while the American ships could squeeze in two.
 
At the risk of splitting hairs, daniel, I'm going to have to maintain my argument that it was the disposition of the weight that was the critical factor.

Compared to the structural weight of the ship, the weight of the aircraft and stores carried for them is relatively small, so the carrying capacity is not primarily determined by the displacement of the carrier but by the space available within that displacement. Thus, on a displacement of 19,800 tons the American Yorktown deployed 81 aircraft while the British Illustrious displaced 23,200 tons and shipped only 36. That difference can't be accounted for by the space taken up by the two ships' respective armour protection.

The Yorktown's main belt was 4" thick, her main deck 3" and her lower deck 1-3". The Illustrious had a 4.5" main belt, flight deck armour 1.5" to 3" thick, and 1-3" on her lower hangar deck. The key difference was that by armouring the flight deck instead of the main deck, the Illustrious pushed that armour weight higher up the ship. What's more, the British also armoured the sides of the hangar beneath the flight deck rather than leaving them relatively open as in the Yorktown, therefore further increasing armour weight at height. As I understand it, any increase in weight high in a ship reduces the metacentric height of the design making it more liable to capsize. To keep that danger within acceptable bounds, therefore, the Illustrious' flight deck could not be raised to the height of the lighter flight deck of the Yorktown. That left space below the flight deck for only a single hangar in the British ship while the American had enough room to construct a double hanger - and twice the hangar space meant twice the aircraft.
 
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I read that the Americans stored the aircraft at least partially on deck while the British shipped them all below (North Sea conditions and all that) which makes for a lot of room.

Apparently the Americans also used "open" hangars (don´t know exactly what this means, but apparently the hangar walls were more like curtains) while the British used closed hangars, which adds some more weight. Open hangars seem to have been an advantage if a bomb actually penetrated the flight deck, since the pressure would blow out on the sides.
 
Tegetthoff said:
Open hangars seem to have been an advantage if a bomb actually penetrated the flight deck, since the pressure would blow out on the sides.
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Yeah, that's a controversial one. Having an open hangar didn't minimise damage to the hangar itself - once a bomb got in it would pretty much take out everything that was located there. But it did mean that a lot of the blast effect would dissipate out of the ship rather than being directed internally so there would be damage savings there. On the other hand, the unprotected side of an open hangar did provide an avenue of entry for enemy bombs and shells. That was probably neither here nor there if these could enter via the flight deck anyway, but if you were going to the trouble of armouring that I guess you'd want to cover side access also.

You get a pretty good account of the whole deal here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armoured_flight_deck and here http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-030.htm.
 
Sorry, Teg, I neglected you previous two points - narrowness of focus can be a curse.

Yes, British doctrine did provide that all aircraft be stowed internally, not just because of operating conditions in the North Sea but because of the dangers inherent in arming and fueling aircraft on deck in the event of hostile encounters. The Brits were slow to move away from that but eventually came around to the American and Japanese practice as the size of the aircraft shipped began to increase drastically. Had they not they'd have found themselves deploying as few as 24 aircraft on the Illustrious class. It doesn't appear that they were awfully comfortable with the idea, however, until their development of the angled flight deck.

The 'open' hangar was pretty much just that. Where there were hangar walls they were curtain walls as you suggest, but if you look at pictures of the Enterprise class, for example, you'll see that there were sizeable expanses where there were no walls at all.
 
thread hijacking alert :)

@magoonZ
tech prerequisites and unlocks are a bit confusing and obscure (that's a sidefect because CORE is so awesome of course), especially when multiple tabs are involved. I have played CORE a lot and still need to look up the tech files manually in the CORE folder from time to time and that itself needs some time to get into unless you're a pro(gramer)
 
I stand justly and deservedly rebuked, lolli. The fact that you've done it so nicely only makes me feel worse.

About the only thing I can add to the advice already given is that as far as I'm aware ther's no country-specific guide to optimum research paths. The CORE tech tree is way beyond anything else out there and you need to spend time with it to appreciate the many subtle effects it produces. A bit like getting to know a good Australian shiraz - spitting it out and retasting is a really good way to start.
 
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