Rule The Waves 3 - A Graphical Experiment - Complete

How should our bases be arranged? 12F (night CAP, escorts), 12LJF (day CAP), 12MPB (Reconnaissance, ASW), XMB where X is remaining slots

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Reorganising the Air Arm
With the advent of jet aircraft, we have an opportunity to completely re-orient our air bases, and thus we do, in the following ways:
- Dunkerque, our largest and most well established air base, has 24 fighters - half jets and half props -, 12 flying boats, the floatplane training squadron and 64 medium bombers arranged into four squadrons of sixteen.
- Brest, our second largest air base, has the same arrangement of fighters and patrol planes and 44 medium bombers in two squadrons of sixteen and a single smaller squadron of twelve.
- Cherbourg, Nice, Toulon and Cagliari - our sixty plane airbases - have 24 fighters, 12 patrol planes and 24 medium bombers in two squadrons of twelve.
- Our forty aircraft airbases - La Rochelle, Tunis, Olbia and Heraklion - will not receive jet fighters, instead receiving 12 prop fighters, 12 patrol planes and sixteen medium bombers.
- Durazzo, Djibouti and Cam Ranh Bay are our smallest overseas airbases, each of which has eight fighters for defence and twelve flying boats for patrol and attack.

Our first contact with the Austro-Hungarian fleet comes in August, moments before nightfall, as extended scouts protecting a convoy through the Med find a pair of modern cruisers hunting. Fortunately the small engagement has little impact on either side, but while returning to base, the aging protected cruiser Lavoisier is torpedoed by a submarine and sinks. These thirty-year old cruisers were not designed with modern war in mind and have long been relegated to convoy escort, but it is still a shame to lose one. What luck then that the Armee reports moderate successes along the front and releases additional funds back to the Navy.

Nantes is intercepted by a German cruiser while raiding, another Breslau. Two hours into the engagement, the small cruiser is burning, while the Nantes's temperamental engines were limited her to 25 knots. Breslau is sunk not long after and Nantes returns to port for moderate repairs. A month later Nantes encounters a pair of enhanced Breslau's serving with the Austrian Navy as the Budweis. Neither Armoured Cruiser survives until nightfall.

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Fuel Problems
The French Navy is not the only one struggling to fuel their raiders. The Japanese Super Cruiser Shiribeshi seeks a neutral port in the Indian Ocean after running short of fuel. Meanwhile we manage our most successful month yet, sinking eight enemy submarines over the month up from seven in November.

We are offered a new dive bomber model, the Potez 223 - it is a manoeuvrable, rugged, plane armed with a pair of fixed cannons which can carry either a 1400lb bomb to 530km, or a 600lb bomb or a torpedo out to 700km. It is potentially the best attacker we've ever been offered especially for a carrier launched aircraft.

Dunkerque (the cruiser, not the air base) is intercepted by a previously unseen Austrian armoured cruiser, the Kaiser Karl VI. Her 250mm guns could be a threat, but she barely gets a chance to use them -she sinks forty minutes after she is spotted by the Dunkerque's look outs.

We are now twenty-four months into a war with Germany, Japan and Austria-Hungary. We have almost achieved parity in submarine forces due to capable work by our anti-submarine air and sea forces, reducing the enemy submarine forces to just eighty boats from a wartime high of nearly 110, while construction has increased our numbers to almost sixty. Raiders have not only sunk a prodigious amount of enemy shipping, but also a series of armoured and protected cruisers which have run afoul of the Jeune Ecole. While we have spent most of this war blockaded, we are nonetheless making our position clear and refusing to give in with this war. We will break our enemies if they refuse to back down, it's just a question of how long they are willing to take it for.

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The World as it Stands

Tensions around the world are burning. Britain is ready to go to war with its old ally. The Soviets, despite abandoning us, is preparing to face the Germans or the Japanese at any moment. Spain, an enemy we had planned to face in war, looks ready to start a fight with the next person to look at them funny. Despite all this, we are still currently alone.

Thus far this war has been fought with submarines and escorts. However, in the next few months we should have the budget for a new class of surface warfare vessel. What should it be?
[ ] A new Super Cruiser
[ ] A new Battleship
[ ] A new Protected Cruiser
[ ] Something else entirely.

What should it be? A new Super Cruiser

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A New Super Cruiser
We design a new ship to take us into the future of ship design. Many points have been made about the (moderate) failures of the Vengeur, Colosse and other all-forwards designs especially when they are so often pressed into functioning as raiders. So the ship will be designed with the following capabilities:
- A new oil fired powerplant producing up to 180,000 horsepower will propel the sleek cruiser design at up to thirty-two knots at flank speed, with a cruise speed of around 18-22 knots.
- 310mm of belt armour inclined to increase thickness against plunging fire, with closer to 350mm on the turret sides and conning tower, which will provide an immunity zone against even even 450mm guns at around 20 kilometres. This should provide protection against even the most heavily armed enemy ships. She will also be fitted with the best torpedo protection that we can design.
- Ten of the newest 375mm guns arranged into two enlarged quad turrets of similar design to the previous Super Cruisers and a single super firing twin turret. While smaller in barrel diameter than many of our enemies ships these guns have excellent armour penetration at long range without being overly heavy. These will be guided by a new director system which uses advanced electro-optical systems for absolute accuracy.
- Her secondary armament will consist of twelve auto-loaded, dual purpose 150mm guns mounted in twin turrets, taken directly from our cruiser designs, and a tertiary battery of autoloading 75mm guns that are also capable of anti-aircraft fire. These will be supported by almost fifty machine guns and cannons with four anti-aircraft directors in order to protect this massive ship against air attack.
- She will also carry two float planes in a hanger for scouting, launched from a midships catapult.
This Triomphante-class of Super Cruiser will be the largest and most capable warship we have built to date.

Of course the war does not stop just because we have a new ship to lay down. We lose a destroyer and three submarines, sinking a submarine and damaging an Armoured Cruiser in return. Then we receive frustrating news - the enemy plans to invade Corsica. We do not necessarily have the sea forces to repel them, but they are well within the range of our land based aircraft. At 10am on the 13th of May the invasion convoy is sighted and both old and modern Super Cruisera move to intercept. The Olbian air squadrons draw first blood, fast medium bombers skimming the surface of the sea and dropping torpedoes that streak into enemy formations. The Indomptable forces the Austrian Super Cruiser squadron to turn away, firing her aging 300mm guns with a vengeance.

The Cagliari squadrons are next, reporting at least another hit. A knife fight at eight kilometres develops between aging French ships and Austrian Super Cruisers. The depleted TB squadron from Protecteur reports a torpedo hit on an enemy carrier. First sight of the actual naval transports occurs from the lookouts on the Indomptable at just before 1400 hours. Sadly, Captain Prouhet pushes the old ship too close and she burns down before the end of the day. The flag is transferred to the modern all-forwards Super Cruiser Dunkerque to continue the engagement. The enemy ships are pinned against Tuscany, suffering badly for their attempted approaches, but it is not an easy day for the French either. Protecteur, that aging small carrier, sinks after repeated enemy air attacks.

As night falls, the French squadrons attempt to lick their wounds while still warding off any Austrian approach. Dunkerque and Nantes, heavily damaged but committed to patrolling the approaches, find a troop ship in the dark and sink her without qualms. A second is found and sunk before the Austrians can respond, though both Super Cruisers are set alight and Nantes is torpedoed. The latter lags behind and is caught by the enemy fleet and sunk, though not before a third troop ship is sunk.

It is a very bad day for France, and a less bad but still ruinous day for Austria. Their invasion attempt failed, but the defence fleet was decimated in the process. We will not be able to move more units into the area until the blockade of our Home Waters is averted. We did, at least, so heavily damage their two fleet carriers that they will be without them for some time as they are repaired.

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Continuing the war
Four older super cruisers are ordered onto raider duty in the North Sea and Scipion is almost immediately intercepted attempting to run the blockade. Scipion does not survive the battle. We do at least welcome several new ships into the fleet, the slower-than-expected protected cruiser Bouvet and the new Republique Francais-class carrier Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The latter will carry an air group of thirty-two fighters, thirty-two dive bombers (which can be pressed into torpedo carrying duties) and eighteen torpedo bombers.

Not every battle goes against us, however. An Austro-Hungarian Super Cruiser moves into the Bay of Biscay to hunt our merchants and is sunk in short order by two older ships of our own that are pressed into defending a convoy. We follow this success up by laying down the first of our Triomphante-class Super Cruisers. She will cost more than six million francs a month for almost three years and she will be the finest ship ever sailed by the Marine Nationale. We lay down a second in September, the Indomptable memorialised in a new ship.

We also welcome a new Patrol Aircraft into the fleet, the Liore et Olivier LeO.226. While it does not significantly outrange or outpace the previous generation, its payload is remarkable with up to 8,000lbs carried in an internal bay which is four times the previous generation. It will make for an excellent patrol and reconnaissance platform, and will also enable us to conduct better, higher duration anti-submarine patrols.

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It is October of 1946. We have been at war for thirty months, and there is no sign of it slowing down. We can continue to conduct this war if we are pressed too, but should we be pressed to?
[ ] We should find a way out of this war as soon as possible, for the good of the people.
[ ] We should seek a white peace, nothing less.
[ ] We can win this war... somehow.