Dynamic campaign

[3XFaster]

I’ve just bought this game and jumped into the dynamic campaign and I’m so confused can some one explain it to me

[Bramborough]

If you mean how the battles themselves work, that's better left to doing the single and custom missions.

The campaign is really just a long string of independent missions not really in context of each other except for always playing the same side. The persistent factors as you go along, however, are your fleet of available ships and your Renown balance.

So you start off with no ships and some Renown, which is the game's currency. What you spend to buy ships. You start with enough to buy a destroyer or two.

You can see what your first mission is. So you only need to buy a good enough ship to get the job done...which in this case is any of them. The first mission is just sinking a civilian merchant. You'll win some renown for winning that battle.

Then you can look at the next mission to see what you're up against (probably another merchant), and again you can spend renown to get whatever ship(s) you think you'll want/need to complete that mission. And so on.

The first several missions are quite easy, and you probably don't need any more than just that first cheap destroyer or submarine to do them all. It's an opportunity to get your Renown balance built up.

A few missions in, however, the opposition starts getting stiffer. Bigger and more numerous enemies. You'll start needing more ships. And a little further along, you'll possibly start losing a ship or two along the way.

So the campaign really becomes an exercise in resource management. Spending enough Renown to get what you need, but also saving enough of a reserve to replace losses.

If you fail a mission, you can certainly try it again, as often as you need to complete. But you don't get those sunken ships back from the failed attempts. You'll have to spend Renown for replacements. Also, once you've sunk all opponents on any run-through of a mission, you don't get any further renown from that mission...so you can't drop back a level or two to "farm" renown if you're up against a tough mission where you've lost some ships.

Each individual mission can only have three ships in it (although the enemy might have more). But you can build an available fleet up to 10 ships, giving yourself multiple options for any individual fight.

All this means that it's very possible to lose the campaign because you've gotten too many ships sunk and don't have enough renown to field a credible force for whatever mission to which you've progressed.

I rather like this system, because it often makes the lesser/older/smaller classes of each type a credible option. As just one example, the highest-end RN DD runs 6400 renown...whereas the cheapest is only 4000. The low-end DD is probably not what you want to take for a surface battle...but it can do ASW every bit as well as its more expensive cousin. And why risk that extra 2400 renown investment in an anti-submarine mission where all those extra guns are irrelevant?

Anyhoo, I hope all this rambling answered your question. :-)

(edit: I hope you were talking about the regular campaigns available for each side...and not about the Battle of the Atlantic campaign. Yeah...that would be a completely different topic. And one I'm not sure I've completely figured out, as discussed in another current thread here).

[3XFaster]

I was talking about the battle of the Atlantic but this helped because I had questions about the main campaign

[Bramborough]

Ah ok, well glad it wasn't completely useless then. As far as BofA, I'm just now trying that myself. The goal is to tip the level of merchant tonnage sunk in your favor (i.e., prevent sinkings as Britain, sink as many as possible as Germany). HOW to do that effectively as the Royal Navy, however, is a puzzle to me. As mentioned in other thread, the player is capped at 30 ships...that's not very much to cover all those areas. My battles are going well, but the U-boats are rampaging in the empty zones. Shrug.

Which I guess is kinda how it went, so can't complain too much. I guess the early years are just naturally rigged toward Germany...I would expect that to change during 1942. We'll see.

[James39]

In the campaign, can`t start it because there are no enemies ships selected. Don`t find them to click on them. Just see a axis red icon but no enemy ship.

[emperorvalse]

#chamex3 I take you mean you are playing the RN and that during your movement turn you move units into the zones with the red icon. Thing is those icons are the last sightings. Enemy can move away or the fact that your ships have not spotted them. Think of it this way there is a hidden search phase after you hit the "NEXT" button. Each ship has a chance of sighting an enemy, things like weather, experience, search plane on ship, radar etc play a part. So you need to think where the enemy may go eg. if it is damaged then to nearest port or it may head to good weather and the nearest convoy zone.
All part of the fun and real life frustration of playing the RN.

[James39]

Originally posted by emperorvalse:

#chamex3 I take you mean you are playing the RN and that during your movement turn you move units into the zones with the red icon. Thing is those icons are the last sightings. Enemy can move away or the fact that your ships have not spotted them. Think of it this way there is a hidden search phase after you hit the "NEXT" button. Each ship has a chance of sighting an enemy, things like weather, experience, search plane on ship, radar etc play a part. So you need to think where the enemy may go eg. if it is damaged then to nearest port or it may head to good weather and the nearest convoy zone.
All part of the fun and real life frustration of playing the RN.

I mean the campaign. I bought the ship I could afford but when I would try to start the campaign, I was told that no enemy ship was selected.