A Penguin Plays RULE THE WAVES

[bluepencil]

Flashback to last month:

​

Get me those intel reports!


Uggh.
And it turns out the British are copying our Furiosa-class, dang it!

Although it's three knots slower and with weaker armor in exchange for just one more gun in the broadside.
I don't think that's a fair tradeoff - it's not significantly faster than the Cruisers (24 knots!), so it's less useful as a scout and for slapping away Destroyers.

Someone must have thought "Hey, the Spanish are making these really cheap hulls, we should try that" and not understanding why we wanted those same fast cheap ships.



More yard problems present themselves.


Still, we have more than enough to keep everyone paid and happy for quite a long time so let's just move on to the next month and see what happens.






Justify your salaries, assholes!

 

[bluepencil]

Seriously you guys?
I should have just let someone else build our Light Cruisers. It may be more expensive but we could have taken off full six months in accelerated construction.


Well other than our shipbuilders continuing to be faff around, nothing much happened in September.

Next.





Seriously, why are we having this much problems with steel?!
We're not under embargo.

...

Rejecting flawed steel.

That... that's more than fair, actually.

Better wait than to build ships out of bad steel. That will cost us more in the long run.
A lost battle and a sunk ship is irrecoverable.

We can always melt bad steel and try it again.

Steel is also needed for national infrastructure, you know.


Oh boy a whole year before getting any light cruisers.

Still, looking at this chart comparing speeds, ours are probably the fastest Light Cruisers in existence.
I'm really eager to see them come out and start breaking records and get into the history books.

... huh. This is what admirals felt at the time, huh?
There are so many different possible doctrines for their burgeoning navy in the rapidly changing world of technology, that one might as well gamble in one and stick to it.


Let the results speak for themselves.

 

[bluepencil]

Ouch. That's bad because 10-inch guns are the best we can natively produce.

Fortunately we're not using 10-inch guns at all.

Our armor is designed to repel 12-inch guns.


Wait, why is everyone except Britain so angry at us all of sudden?!

...

... because porque soy Jaime Bondo.

...


Oh no this is bad. Austria-Hungary has gotten wind of our plans and are preparing to defend themselves.

On the other hand, considering that we have less ships than they do could we somehow tempt them into declaring war on us first?
Will have to think more on that later.


CS tension decreases.
US tension increases.
WHY?!


Fine. We're going to start spying on you now too.

Dammit, CSA, why do you like me so much? Stop that.
Your approval fills me with shame.


You ivory tower intellectuals better have something worth using soon or we're going to have to start the Defenestration of Madrid.
We can't afford any more slacking off!





And so ends our first year as the commander of Spain's Great Navy.

I should be praised for not getting us involved into any wars just yet while our naval forces are in such a shoddy state.

 

[Lordsservent]

A word of warning:spying on people is very expensive. So if you really need some cash, put a half to your spying programs and wait.

 

[Vejut]

Also, while I haven't played, my understanding from watching lets plays is the more spy effort you put in on a country, the more likely you are to get tension raising events with them.

 

[bluepencil]

Bwuh.


Well that was a fine way to start the new year!
Those are certainly practical outcomes for research. Good job, scientists!

Unfortunately our yardworkers and industrial suppliers are full of fail as usual.

But still, bonuses for everybody!


Oh! That's a surprise.
I was so used to hearing about construction delays from our shipbuilders that I didn't realize we could have ships finally done by next month. I can't wait!

So I won't.


ROLL NEXT!


Wow.

I don't know why ever expected anything different, to be honest.



No problems with you? Good.
Good!

(Palpatine voice) Good.


Finally we are making progress!

 

[HolyDragoon]

Not to rain on your parade, but the problems affect all ships of that particular design.

So... back to the drawing board, create and order a new design that's the same as this one, or wait for 600t destroyers.

Welcome to design problems hell.

 

[bluepencil]

I would be more angry at our information security apparatus, but that would imply we actually have any.


Is it worth accelerating construction get our Light Cruisers at around the same time?


Austria-Hungary has A LOT of Destroyers and Light Cruisers.
More importantly however, we only match them in the number of Battleships and Light Cruisers.

Even with our qualitative advantage in battlewagons, that's not enough.
We can't afford to send all battleships into the Mediterranean without leaving any in reserve in Northern Europe.

But I have a cunning plan.


Normally it would take us 32 months to build a battleship and we don't have anything better than 10-inch guns anyway.

But if we order it from Britain, we could have a battleship after 25 months, a very significant savings in time for only a slight increase in monthly costs.

It doesn't matter to me if Perfidious Albion has an idea of our ship's capabilities, because they have triple the number of battleships we have anyway.



Hm. Double turrets save weight. On the other hand, secondaries aren't very armored and knocking one out will halve broadside anti-Destroyer and Light Cruiser armament.

I'm not sure, is Narrow Belt with Main Belt and Belt Extended of equal thickness the closest thing we have to All or Nothing Armor?


Yowch! -40% Rate of Fire Penalty?!
We're sticking to single mount secondary turrets for now, even with their -20% penalty in exchange for better firing arcs.


As you can see, the Barquillo-class is actually cheap enough and able to be produced fast enough that if it weren't for its 19 knot speed it could replace our Armored Cruiser line entirely.


Once those Destroyers are out of the yard, we're going to start building.


So let's move on to the next turn and see what happens.






AN:
I am sorry to report that I am now running low on gasoline for the generator funding. Once again, any help at bhepin@gmail.com would be appreciated. Thank you.

 

[bluepencil]

Ohoho. What a windfall!


These steel shortages are of critical strategic concern and we NEED TO FIX THIS.



Though now that we've got most things out of the yard, we can go ahead with building.


(signing the check)


Boom. We're in the red again, but that's sustainable assuming our yards don't end up delaying delivery again.


Next.

 

[bluepencil]

Not to rain on your parade, but the problems affect all ships of that particular design.

So... back to the drawing board, create and order a new design that's the same as this one, or wait for 600t destroyers.

Welcome to design problems hell.

Click to shrink...

That's so Spanish.


Oh well hey're all shitbotes anyway meant to pad out patrol requirements. Once Destroyers are useful able to hit things with topedoes a new faster class will be needed anyway.

 

[bluepencil]

Good! Finally!
Do we have any more DDs building?



Oh gee whatever shall we pick?


BE DISGUSTING SHOWOFFS OF COURSE!


I mean seriously, we are Spanish. What did anyone expect would happen?




Phhrrrfft!

 

[bluepencil]

Put that aside for now.

HOW.


We have critical steel shortages and you give me this?!
How do you even manage it?!


The performance of this new 11" gun is... otherwise identical to the 12" guns we bought from the British. Huh.

That explains a lot ...

Wait, no!

Even if you did manage to match its performance, you did so with overall lighter mechanisms and less metal. That's impressive! That's seriously impressive.
We didn't just go from Quality -1 guns trying to figure things out. You went straight to Quality 0 standard, reliable, mass producible guns.

How. How did you do this?!


If we change main guns down to 11" we don't lose any armor piercing ability but free up loads of weight.



Could we use this to bump up our speed to 21 knots?


Or we could change our chase gun into a true battle turret.
Not without reducing a little of our ammo and tertiary guns load though.

I have underestimated you, mah research engineers.


But NOT the SHITTINESS of our shipyards because APPARENTLY we can't change down to a smaller caliber in the rebuild ANYWAY!


Well... considering it has identical performance, there's no point in putting our Battleships offline for ten months for a rebuild just yet.
At least with most orders done we're in the black again.

Wow that last Destroyer has been way delayed. What should have been 10 months to build is now... what? Fifteen?

This is why I have foreign nations build our ships, people! Security concerns be damned!

 

[HolyDragoon]

Hahaha, really not worth the hassle. Better to just wait and see if you can't fit them on anything better, or somehow manage to get a better quality 12'' gun. Also note that your yard capacity is less than the ship displacement... you really need to invest on that.

 

[bluepencil]

Ooh! That's important!

(Stephen Colbert voice) Give it to me!


Ooh! That's DANGEROUS.

That's a real Light Cruiser-killer there. We're going to need more Armored Cruisers ourselves to deal with it.

We don't have the budget to try that.



Very good.


But we can't even make submarines, what is this about?




That's... somewhat expensive.

Looks like they have a new standard model of Light Cruisers. With their CA being the same speed as their CL's I don't quite have a feel yet what that means for their battle line.

We need more CA's but the Barquillo class is just better for cheaper except in terms of speed.
The longer we take, the more we are forced to commit to one naval development plan, no matter how inefficient it may be.



Accelerating construction saves us 2 more months. Since we can't build any more CAs, let's get our B's out faster.



Let's move on.

 

[bluepencil]

Meh.




Comparing our fleet to Austria-Hungary, we do seem to have too few ships, don't we?

We have one more CA, but effectively only 1 active CA since we're sending the other two to faff around doing Colonial duty in Cuba and the Philippines.
A mere 2 CLs and 9 DDs with 1 more building.


Well at least we're showing some naval presence now an-
Ho-holy shite, UNITED STATES!

You added more ships? CSA, what happened to YOUR SHIPS? Where did they go?

Also, why does Italy seem to have a disproportionately huge and powerful navy for some reason?

It makes no sense that the British Empire, with more ships on active duty than anyone else on the planet, is invisible regards their naval assignments around Europe.



...

...

Well?

...

Have you ever noticed...

That spies spend a lot of time drinking in bars?


(table flip) FUNDADOR!


...

It is a cheap incentive.


THAT IS NOT YOUR JO-
Ugh economic advisor.

 

[August]

This is good but on the submarines if i remember correctly took a few years to even research and the first unlock was like some shitty coastal subs or something, so expect a few more of those useless researches i guess.

 

[bluepencil]

YOINK! No take-backsies!


Verry nice.
Very nice indeed.



WHAT, AGAIN?!

I should just scrap the thing!

But it is literally 90% dooooone....!



Eh, forget about that for now.
This is more interesting.



That improves our Adobo-class without needing to overhaul our guns.
Now we can reliably punch through other Armored Cruisers.

Of course, they would also be able to punch through our 5" armor, but there's not much we can do about that.

Any more armor thickness and we might as well be calling them Battleships.

Which has its own problems for when you have a ship that is arguably able to survive in the battle line but not able to meaningfully contribute.



Oho? That is also interesting!

(makes more notes)

Should we try to make a mixed battery ship since we haven't figured out how to make Centerline or Wing turrets just yet?
Maybe 10" main, 8" secondary?

Maybe all big-gun 11" and 10" for semi-Dreadnought?

On the other hand, losing the ROF of 5" anti-Destroyer and Light Cruiser armament to prevent eating a torpedo might not be worth it.

(scribble scribble)



Wait what?


I've been so busy it's AUGUST already?!

 

[bluepencil]

FINALLY!

Heck, I should still scrap you just on principle!

If ever you become a shipgirl, Furor Quatro, I will not tolerate lateness!


(... shite, she's gonna be known as "Four Four" isn't she? Poor Four.)


Wooooohh....!

Wooooohhhh!

WhOOOOOOOOHHHH.....!




I need to think about this.






On one flipper, if a disarmament conference is successful, tension is reduced and we get to screw over everybody imposing limits on tonnage and gun size that we are allowed to build.

Considering that the best we have is 11" guns, that would mean we could stay a lot more competitive for a lot longer.


On the other hand, Britannia is still the foremost naval power on this planet.

...

...

...

...

Uggh.

 

[bluepencil]

Clearly, there is only one good and true course of action.


YES LET US LAY DOWN THE FOUNDATIONS OF A GREAT WORLD WAR THROUGH A WEB OF DISASTROUS ALLIANCES THIS DAY.



MAXIMUM BRINKSMANSHIP!



You know what? I ain't even furious anymore.



United States didn't like that oh nooooo.

Dial down the brinksmanship.

Well, one month's delay isn't so bad. Looks like Furiosa and Fantastica will be laid down in the same month making them twin ships not just sister ships.

Let's see what's waiting in the wings.








What's an Albania?

 

[August]

DEW IT (no rly like do you know how rare it is to get these damned events like sometimes i just wanna be britian and take over the world but i can't even occupy anything cause these events don't pop up)

 

[bluepencil]

Well we're good with Italy anyway, let's just see what happens.


I DID NOT EXPECT THAT TO HAPPEN.



You are the strongest naval power in the Mediterranean, how can you still have too few cruisers?

Austria-Hungary does have a lot of Light Cruisers. And I don't know about France.
It's us who have too few cruisers.



WHY DID I DO THAT EVERYBODY HATED THAT!

Except apparently we can still do no wrong for the CSA.

Dammit why do you like us so much?!
I started this whole thing with the aims of picking a fight with you but we get this instead.


Uggh, it doesn't even give us any extra income, what's the point?

 

[bluepencil]

Seriously what even is the point to waste money taking over things around Europe?

Please no Thirty Years War All Over Again.

...

Deus Vult.

...!

I said no!

 

[bluepencil]

Huh. So Fantastica finished ahead of the Furiosa anyway.

Welcome the first of our F-class Light Cruisers, everybody!


Which South American country is this?

Is it Mexico? Not if it's Mexico.
(1821 never forgive)

Is Texas a part of the CSA in this weird parallel universe?


Oh interesting!
We'll do something about that momentarily.


As can be expected.
Big yards doing big business.

At least Austria-Hungary hasn't added anything new to their fleet yet.


You know what, since our Barquillo-class cost less than Armored Cruisers to build, let's add another one to the build order.

With our Furiosa class about to finish building, we can afford to be in the red for a while.



Roll next.

 

[bluepencil]

And Furiosa's here!
Happy Birthday!


We'll take it!


Excellent. We'll make 10 inch guns the mainstay of our Armored Cruisers.


Oh no. That's bad. We need something that can counter the donut Donau.

Okay, granted, that's actually the Barquillo-class, but the smolbotes are slow.


Well at least we're not bleeding money as much anymore.
Let's check up on the fleet.


This is weird. What happened to Italy's massive fleet?
Did they move them out somewhere?

Does Italy even have any non-Mediterranean possessions?


Anyway let's just throw together a quick DD hull and move on to next month.

Next year.

 

[bluepencil]

That sounds like a Spanish or Italian name. An Archduke?
On a Minesweeper?

Is this some sort of insult?

Also, dammit. They're stealing tech from us!
... It's a weird feeling knowing that my Spain has tech actually worth stealing.


You are such a showgirl.


Let's see it!


It's meh.



Things are getting tense but still a fairly placid start to 1902.
One more turn and all three of the Furiosa sisters will be on station.

Furiosa. Fantastica. And Fabulosa.
Pretty easy to think up their character tics as shipgirls, really.

They are the Fowerfluff Girls.

That pun is bad and you should feel bad.