Naval Warfare In HoI 3 FTM

For Germany I do build a couple of BC/CA for use in the Baltic keeping the Russian fleet
out of play when i may be moving troops to and from Finland. I do play historically tho
and do build some for any nation I play but only a few except for the USA where i build
about a dozen overall. I also (sometimes!) build 4 Lexington class BCs as i want to see
them sometimes in WW2 as they would have operated as a fast battlegroup. Subs, of
course, i build in adequate numbers for any nation but Germany where i build quite a few
over time. I assign them only as singles for convoy raiding. There should be a reason
for assigning CAs to CV TFs. This, after all, was one of their major uses. There should
be a TF type you create such as BATTLEFLEET, CARRIER, SCOUT, CRUISER that would
have different effects upon the ships put into it in surface and naval to air combat.

Pro_Consul said:

Bromgrev hit the high points. The only thing that I would add is that CLs, being more durable, have a significantly lower chance of being sunk in any given engagement. The offshoot of this is that you can cut down somewhat on the need to include "spare" screening vessels, thus yielding a leaner fleet composition. Leanness is an important factor, as it affects the overall visibility of the fleet and the stacking penalty, thus having an impact on both positioning and overall efficiency.

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I always read that - and quite simply I don´t buy it any longer. Quite the opposite! As the only real danger for any CV centered fleets is air and air is not affected by positioning (assuming equal tech levels), plus AA is not affected by stacking: The bigger your CV fleet the better! I had more than once a well rounded carrier group (3 CVs III, 4 CLs IV+, 2 DDs e.g.) meet a stack of 30+ outdated Bitish ships mostly including 1 or 2 carriers (II), BUT (the AI does it now) with upgraded AA. Result? 6 CAGs org flat after the first round, lost 1 or 2 screens, a scramble under repeated attacks to reach the next save harbour. Thus for SAGs stacking MAY be an issue, for CAGs you can reasonably forget it completely.
Regards,
Thorsten

I would also remind a few players that you don't have use subs from your own ports and that while the Western Approaches to the English Channel may be the must lucrative hunting spot that there are, somewhat safer, hunting ground. In many of my Germany games I'll get Brazil to the join the Axis. This does two things...gets you a strategic source of Rubber which is important and opens up the S. Atlantic and the Caribbean to convoy raiding. It also tends to pull British fleets away from Europe which can help if the rest of the Navy is trying to gain control of the North Sea.

Morgon1988 said:

I always read that - and quite simply I don´t buy it any longer. Quite the opposite! As the only real danger for any CV centered fleets is air and air is not affected by positioning (assuming equal tech levels), plus AA is not affected by stacking: The bigger your CV fleet the better! I had more than once a well rounded carrier group (3 CVs III, 4 CLs IV+, 2 DDs e.g.) meet a stack of 30+ outdated Bitish ships mostly including 1 or 2 carriers (II), BUT (the AI does it now) with upgraded AA. Result? 6 CAGs org flat after the first round, lost 1 or 2 screens, a scramble under repeated attacks to reach the next save harbour. Thus for SAGs stacking MAY be an issue, for CAGs you can reasonably forget it completely.

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I believe this goes way too far. Positioning is a key component in the chance for you or your enemy to disengage and retreat. If you have superiority born of overwhelming force but have pitiful positioning, then your enemy can retreat almost at will, denying you the chance to leverage your superior force to full advantage. It is a balancing act between having enough force to defeat your enemy and having good enough positioning to force your enemy to remain engaged long enough that you can inflict real damage upon him. Also, stacking penalties affect your defensive ability as well, in the event that your crappy positioning allows a gun-based enemy to close the range and start shooting up your carriers. In such a case a steep stacking penalty on your side acts as a force multiplier for your opponent.

When it comes to fleet composition, it always falls to personal preference and experience of what works for them. I've found all ship types and all combinations useful in various situations. Through dozens of playthroughs I've discovered a few sound principles of fleet managment that work for me in FTM.
1) Keep your fleets small. More than six in a battlegroup guts positioning and really reduces effectiveness. Don't crowd your fleets either as positioning takes an even larger hit.
2) Never pair CV's with surface combantants. The surface combatants rush the enemy while the CV and screens hang back, take heavy damage, than if they survive fall back and require repair.
3) Don't have more than 4 CAGs in a battlegroup as the stacking penalty beyond 4 cuts their effectiveness in half.
4) Naval bottlenecks such as Denmark and Singapore will require several wings of reserve CAGs nearby for constant rotation to and from CVs as necessary to maintain the naval blockade.
5) CV battlegroups are incredibly effective at holding an enemy at bay but a battlegroup of BB's is needed to seal the deal and sink enemy ships before they can disengage.

As far as fleet compositions that I've found effective.
Carrier Fleet: 1 CV, 2 CL's, and 1 to 2 DD's
Light Carrier: 1 CVL and 1 DD (doubles as ASW formation)
Main Battle Fleet: 2 BB's and 2 DD's
ASW #1: 1 CA and/or 1 CL and/or 1 DD (depending on range of patrol area)
ASW #2: 1 CL and 1 DD (keep these away from enemy fleet concentrations)
Convoy Raider: 1 BC and/or CA and 1 CL

Last bit of advice, let the AI control your submarine fleets. The AI "miraculously" knows the location of every convoy route and does a good job of rotating subs around to keep enemy patrols guessing.

In addition. Any unit stat in the game can be modded. I've personally added the CVL's to the carrier doctrines and upgradeablility to the super-heavy battleships so that they don't get eclipsed by their smaller brethern. I'm currently testing the effects of adding all ships to Radar Training tech (it makes sense that any ship with radar should benifit from training). Tweaking the numbers now because the Brits were engaging German subs with absurde frequency compared to vanilla games.

**Edited for the nitpicky corrections

foothill said:

Carrier Fleet: 1 CV, 2 LCA's, and 1 to 2 DD's
Light Carrier: 1 LCV and 1 DD

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Nitpicky correction: LCA and LCV are not the correct designations for light cruisers and light carriers, respectively. In naval nomenclature, an LCA is a Landing Craft- Assault while an LCV is a Landing Craft - Vehicle (rarely used, however). The correct designation for a light cruiser is CL, while a light carrier is CVL, for Cruiser, Light and Carrier Vehicle, Light, respectively.

What i definetly noticed is this laughable mega Fleet the US comes with to invade enemys...last time ive seen it it was 9BB , 8 CV , 9CA , 7CL , 13TP ....the positioning penalty and all that is enormous, while however it will shred everything to pieces you can send at it... planes dont really stand a chance against that amount of AA.(i tried) and of course every fleet you send will be on the bottom of the ocean in seconds...mostly because of the CVs though however the gun ships will try to get in striking distance....

i was playing as brazil as member of the Axis, managed to build some fleet and sink quite a lot of the british and french ships stationed there...however now in 1943/44 there is this fleet coming and i am just not able to defeat it, nor was i able to defeat it as germany, when i did have quite a good navy....

anyone ever tested some working strategy against that mega fleet ?

I've run into similar fleets before and the only thing that I can think of is CV harrassment tactics. Small CV fleets with good screens can do a lot to wear the mega fleet down. Yes each one will take a pounding, but if you have 4-6 CV fleets to hound them on their journey, it could be fairly effective. If you attack with one at a time it could work. The first CV fleet's CAG will fair the worst, but each subsiquent engagement will wear out the superfleet's CAG's to the point where they are no longer effective. Since fast CV fleets can stay outside of the range of the big guns, this war of attrition tactic can work. You might not sink anything, but enough damage will be done to enough ships that the AI will break up the superfleet until repairs can be finished. Also, if the superfleet rebases to a lousy port, this is were port strike missions do their most damage. It's even more effective if you can use submarines to cut off supplies to that port so repairs cannot be done. Then rotating CV's to perform port strikes to wipe them out. It takes a long time to accomplish but I've wiped out a third of the Britsh fleet in port before.

Here is a lesson I learned:

When planing to clear up an area of enemy ships somewhat oir entirely, you must strike their ports BEFORE even laying a finger on any of their ships. This is becuase if you hit them first and then try to lower their ports, the AA guns of the repairing ships will make this impossible. If you do not ruin their ports, they will off course repair much faster. Helps if you are close enough to hit logistics to. If it's to far for your TACs and the target area has alot of AA 5+, forget the ports just hit the ships. Unless someone someone here has a different insight.

Cheers

Pro_Consul said:

I believe this goes way too far.

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Read the post of Karaya. And there are dozens more available in the forum, if you bother to search. The naval engangement rules with CVs change drastically, wether you beleive it or not. Main reason - as stated - was that the AA seems to be unaffected by stacking penealties.
Regards,
Thorsten

foothill said:

I've run into similar fleets before and the only thing that I can think of is CV harrassment tactics. Small CV fleets with good screens can do a lot to wear the mega fleet down. Yes each one will take a pounding, but if you have 4-6 CV fleets to hound them on their journey, it could be fairly effective. If you attack with one at a time it could work. The first CV fleet's CAG will fair the worst, but each subsiquent engagement will wear out the superfleet's CAG's to the point where they are no longer effective. Since fast CV fleets can stay outside of the range of the big guns, this war of attrition tactic can work. You might not sink anything, but enough damage will be done to enough ships that the AI will break up the superfleet until repairs can be finished. Also, if the superfleet rebases to a lousy port, this is were port strike missions do their most damage. It's even more effective if you can use submarines to cut off supplies to that port so repairs cannot be done. Then rotating CV's to perform port strikes to wipe them out. It takes a long time to accomplish but I've wiped out a third of the Britsh fleet in port before.

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That is most interesting...what i once tried was, when i was germany and i had 3 CV fleets, which were composed like all my main battle fleets out of 1-2 CV, 1-2 BB and several CLs ( i know that most people think thats somewhat uneffektive but it works great), well what i tried was ecaxtly you tactic...i did not loose much, maybe 1 CL and most other ships damaged but anyway the AI still kept just off my coast with all these ships and more importantly with all these troops in that massive amount of TPs.


Additionally what i have to say, i never really cared for naval warfare before, but i really like the general concept of how its done in 3.05...(even though i might be the only one here) with positioning penalty and all that...if there woouldnt be those AI mega fleets which are just ridiculous....

Pro_Consul said:

Bromgrev hit the high points. The only thing that I would add is that CLs, being more durable, have a significantly lower chance of being sunk in any given engagement.

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Why do you guys keep claiming that CLs are more durable then DDs? They are not in any way more durable then DDs if anything it's the other way around with the current values.

foothill said:

3) Don't have more than 4 CAGs in a battlegroup as the stacking penalty beyond 4 cuts their effectiveness in half.

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That's not correct. On CAG duty or naval strike bombing you won't get -50% stacking until you have 20 CAGs in battle at once.

That means you can have 10 CVs in the same fleet with no problem...

I am experimenting recently with german CA and BC convoy riders.
Combination is CA+CL, and BC+CL
CA convoy rider problem is CA is encountering to often a ship of equal and more power and can be haevily damaged or sunk.

However last night I played Germany and build sharnhorst class battlecruiser,resarched naval radar,and coupled with lvl IV CL,than I send it to south Atlantic(after France fall).AS always for spice i rename it Graff Spee,and original CA with that name renamed to Hipper...nevermind...commander..it was a blockade runner.

This couple BC/CL engaged looong lits of convoys and sunked many destroyers,and than Graff Spee sunked 1 CL and one CA.It raided for almost 1.5 years! in southAatlantic, I believe payed off its price many times.Then I returned it to help in Sea Lowe.


So I conclude :Combination of good BC with long range CL ,send in some distance from main routes and coastlines of enemy has its place in game as excellent convoy rider,that can score some interesting sinkings to enemy warships too.

I remember back in Semper Fi the AI US fleet was laughably ineffective because they'd stack up too many of the old battleships at once. I was playing Axis Sweden once and I'd left the AI running my navy...it was 1940 and the USA was already in Allies since I'd used noneutrality to take over the rest of Scandinavia before the war.

My AI somehow decided invading Scapa Flow was the right thing to do (!) and it was the US fleet that intervened. I saw my old BCs/CAs were up against a full line-up of battleships and thought I was fucked. I came out of the two engagements that followed losing 2 CAs and having sunk 4 US BBs. And also learned never to leave surface fleets under AI control if you're an inferior navy.

Positioning is critical.

Alex_brunius said:

I wouldn't be so sure about that. A submarine flotilla costs you 4 IC * 240 days = 960 ICdays

A pack with 10 convoys cost 200 ICdays (2*100), so 20 ICdays for each convoy.

In the end you need to sink 960/20 = 48 convoys with each sub flotilla to just break even.

This also assumes your subs have no research/doctrines (in which case they will be more expensive to build) and that you have 5.0 practical value.

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That may be true, But if they are building convoys they aren't building more troops, or planes, or ships.
And if you take care of moving them around you really don't loose som many subs.

NERFGEN said:

That may be true, But if they are building convoys they aren't building more troops, or planes, or ships.
And if you take care of moving them around you really don't loose som many subs.

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Aye and if your building subs, your not building more troops, planes or ships either

I do agree that you should use your starting submarines, but I find that it's much harder in HoI3 for submarines to do as much economical damage as they could in the real battle of the atlantic.

I have always felt that convoy/sub warfare should have a some sort of percentage modifier to economy and supply network, rather than individual sub stacks attacking routes in certain sea areas. That way game would open up to concept of sea zone control, maybe making things like lend lease convoys ( and their nemesis in fjords ) possible.

Right now it's hard if not impossible to make an impact with subs, as long as opponent is ready to fight invest some resources - you will have to match and probably exceed his expenditure with sub production and repair. Flavor - yes, strategic impact - no.

JoeRambo said:

I have always felt that convoy/sub warfare should have a some sort of percentage modifier to economy and supply network, rather than individual sub stacks attacking routes in certain sea areas. That way game would open up to concept of sea zone control, maybe making things like lend lease convoys ( and their nemesis in fjords ) possible.

Right now it's hard if not impossible to make an impact with subs, as long as opponent is ready to fight invest some resources - you will have to match and probably exceed his expenditure with sub production and repair. Flavor - yes, strategic impact - no.

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Its difficult to starve,for instance Great Britain.

However strategic impact of subs is enormus!
Subs in this game are acting on centripetal supply lines,which is oposite to historical centrifugal..instead impact on supply of Great Britain island in RL, impact now is on supply of British troops from Metropolis to the periphery..


So economies are not suffering to much(except need to produce more convoys to replace),but their troops overseas are not getting reinforcements and and supplies to fight in full strength.
You can cut-off supply lines for their troops elswhere effectively.
I am allmost as "standard" procedure making disruption of supply of British army in Nort Africa, and believe me No Rommel needed, Italians themsleves almost always capture Egypt.

A paralel production of 6 subs all the time during the game(which after 3 runs becames real bargain in IC because hughe practical experience),with up to date tech, is enough to cut-off majority of british and even US supply lines for their troops anywhere in North Atlantic and Mediteranean.

My experience tells me allso: starting with 9 and by the start of war rising production of subs to 12 constant paralel subs production almost guarantee that Allies will never land in "Normandy",because it interrupts them so much,or if land it will be symbolic.In this scenario British AI produces allmost only convoys to replace them.

I rarely see the point of building CVs, except if you play USA or japan. USA because you have tons of IC to waste, Japan since you will need the cags to conquer all the pacific island (andmaybe china). The only point of a fleet is :
- the control of the seas. No need to sink every single ship you encounter.
- securing areas for invasions. No need for CVs here. If you don't take a place with an aiport in the first week of your landing you're, well... not a good strategist.

I always find that BB's + CL are enough for most of the purposes you assign to a fleet. And it's really cheap/cost effective. You can handle the royal navy with 3 fleets of 6 BB + 6 CL and land in UK as Germany (or SU, why not) safely. And if you need air superiority, well, build INTs.

Cdr. Wolf said:

You can handle the royal navy with 3 fleets of 6 BB + 6 CL and land in UK as Germany (or SU, why not) safely. And if you need air superiority, well, build INTs.

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Well, if you think that 18 BBs are cost effective - up to you. I prefer 6 CVs with screens and the subs - after 9 months of dedicated sub warfare there is no single divison, ship or aircraft outside UK itself with sufficient supplies . 10 divisions to overrun India and Malysia were already overkill. Airforce? For which purpose exactly ?
Regards,
Thorsten