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The naval warfare: How does it work? How should it work?

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Pang Bingxun

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Nov 22, 2011
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Hister said:
@Pang: I believe now is the time that you can bring forward the naval aspects that aren't working fine to gunman. Maybe something can be done for 1.9? I know that for 1.8 that would be too much work but maybe small improvements might get in.

So what are the major naval warfare drawbacks in this game already?

Are proper fleet compositions possible by he AI? Can AI differentiate between SAG's, CAG's, sub hunting groups - does it assign proper fleet composition for them?

I remember that one issue is transport fleets not being properly escorted and are thus easy pray for the human player.

Then there is one issue with how carrier warfare is being calculated right? What was the problem with it again?

We can make a list of needed naval improvements - one with issues that could be regarded as bugs or ill feature implementations and one with head on improvements needed. We can then present the list to gunman, the miracle worker, and hope our hopes don't get sunk by enemy submarines... :)
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Pang Bingxun said:
Is that a bug or a feature? Small transport fleets are hard to detect and seperating stacks into sub only, anti-sub only, SAG only, CAG only and transporters only seems like a wise course of action, isn't it?
I guess the AI does not seperate SAG and CAG but weither that is good or not can be discussed and i haven't been paying much attention on this myself.
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Blecky said:
Sending out TP without any protection was done by the Allied early in WW 2. The losses were tremendous and therefore the convoy system was adopted (again, cause it was known from WW 1). Since in vanilla TP´s have no means to fight back against any kind of attack, it seems sensible to attach one or two DD´s at least; they won´t increase vivibility too much and can strike back at subs.

BTW we´re hijacking this post...
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stevep said:
Blecky

At the risk of high-jacking it a bit further;) I think you're confusing using convoys with having escorts. Believe Britain used convoys for all operations right from the start of WWII but often those were unescorted, especially when getting into deep ocean. This was a combination of lack of escorts and the range problems of the escorts so the latter were concentrated where the threat was greatest, i.e. in the western approaches. As the number of escorts and management of them improved the distances over which convoys were escorted were extended.

This was best because the initial problem for the U-boats was finding the ships and a convoy is only marginally more likely to be located than a single ship so even without escorts losses were lower. Also it enables the ships to support each other to a degree in case of problems of weather and breakdown, but the lower loss rate is by far the most important.

Totally irrelevant to the game I suspect but in real life it is a subtle but significant difference.

Steve
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Before high-jacking of threads becomes a custom here is a new thread.

My observation of the current 108 beta are that the ai often uses DD and CL in order to protect its transport ships.
 
I see 2 main issues with naval warfare.

1) Aircraft carriers are treated as regular ships in battle as far as we know. Instead, their attacks should be resolved against the enemy ship Air defence and they shall take losses(in org/strength) proportionally to the enemy Air attack. I fear this must probably be difficult to code, but would improve the naval warfare greatly.

2) The current implementation of Convoys is practically useless, because even if convoys are being sunk on a certain route, supplies still get delivered, as it is possible to allocate new convoys to replace those that have been sunk instantaneously and therefore keep the convoy route running. In other words, there are only two possible states in relation to oversea supply: either you have surplus convoys in stock and then you can just ignore any kind of convoy raiding, or you dont have them anymore and then instantaneously ALL of your supply routes are gone.
I have thought of an easy way to fix that without reworking the system completely: there should be a kind of a "cool-off" period when assigning convoys to a certain route. It could be fixed, or better, made dependent on the length of the route. So for instance, if there were 30 convoys on the route, and 10 get sunk, you can of course immediately assign 10 more convoys to the route, but this decision won't come into effect before a certain duration of time(to simulate the time needed to arm the ships, load them and then the travel time to the destination). During the whole duration of this "cool-off" period, the convoy is running understrength, and therefore delivers less supplies. So this way, by timely sinking enemy convoys, it should become possible to reduce the amount of supplies they manage to get accross and eventually starve enemy garrisons.

On the other hand, the current limitation of a minimal number of convoy vessels in relation to the length of the route could be dropped. The number of convoys should only impact the actual amount of supplies delivered, and nothing else.
 
carriers
-must be treated differently, at least its own naval grouping so that they can get their own CAG fleets, it would be benificial if carriers also had their own minimum and maximum numbers per group in ai files, so as to manage the carriers in groups of 3-9 carriers per group
-add radar as a fleet brigade to carriers
 
Glad you put it forward Pang!

Soem great suggestions here.

Maybe make the carrier CAG attachment lose strength like regular units when carrier onboard planes get shoot down. No more planes in a CAG and carrier must turn around to fetch new planes. ??
 
Hister said:
Glad you put it forward Pang!

Soem great suggestions here.

Maybe make the carrier CAG attachment lose strength like regular units when carrier onboard planes get shoot down. No more planes in a CAG and carrier must turn around to fetch new planes. ??
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That way CAGs must be treated as independant units (like they were in HOI 1 IIRC) and "loaded" onto a CV.

Right now it seems strange when a badly crippled CV attacks a port and is sunk as a result of aircraft losses, as the CVs themselves haven´t been attacked.
 
Blecky said:
Right now it seems strange when a badly crippled CV attacks a port and is sunk as a result of aircraft losses, as the CVs themselves haven´t been attacked.
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I can fix this situation, so that damage still occurs* but I prevent enough damage to sink the CV.

*) damage to CV can be caused by damaged returning aircraft crashing during landing.
 
Should a badly damaged/crippled CV really be able to conduct offensive aircraft operations?

Badly damaged/crippled would be at Minimum a strength of 30%, if not 40%. I don't think a carrier would be capable of air ops as this kind of damage would include list, damaged/destroyed lifts and/or flight deck.
 
Denniss said:
Should a badly damaged/crippled CV really be able to conduct offensive aircraft operations?

Badly damaged/crippled would be at Minimum a strength of 30%, if not 40%. I don't think a carrier would be capable of air ops as this kind of damage would include list, damaged/destroyed lifts and/or flight deck.
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I don't know if the AoD combat system would be able to accommodate this reality. Maybe keep its org below 0% until it's repaired?
But I'm sure the combat attack and defence ability of the carrier is relative to its strength in AoD so, IMO, the system is ok as it is.
 
Mr_B0narpte said:
But I'm sure the combat attack and defence ability of the carrier is relative to its strength in AoD so, IMO, the system is ok as it is.
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About changing this system? Right now 50% loss of strength reduces offensive and defence by 50%, right? It might be changed so that 50% loss of strenghs reduce offensive by 100% and defence by 0%. As soon as this point is reaches things inverse and every % point of lost streghth reduces defence by 2% points. Also speed of damaged ship could be reduced.
 
Pang Bingxun said:
About changing this system? Right now 50% loss of strength reduces offensive and defence by 50%, right? It might be changed so that 50% loss of strenghs reduce offensive by 100% and defence by 0%. As soon as this point is reaches things inverse and every % point of lost streghth reduces defence by 2% points. Also speed of damaged ship could be reduced.
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Oh ok then, I like that idea so long as the AI doesn't send out half strength carriers that are useless.
 
Carrier changes are probably the most important thing - making the enemy ships defend against them using air defence, and using their air attack rather than sea attack stat.
 
Something really needs to be done to diffenentiate carrier naval warfare from surface ship naval warfare.

Currently, the worst aspect of this system is that additional surface ships in a carrier fleet harm carrier attack and defence. The -0.02 factor for each ship above 2 in a fleet works alright for surface fleets, but it should have no bearing on carrier warfare. As it stands now, the optinum CV fleet for carrier battles is 3 CV plus 3 DD/CL. Adding more surface ships to this fleet hurts their carrier attack and defence value. This is really not realistic. The exe file and the misc. file in the db folder needs to be changed so that the -0.02 only applies to surface attacks/defense, not to carrier battles.
 
Of course carriers should have a malus in big fleets, but they could be counted seperatly and given a static -x% or some diminishing returns for anythiong above 1..?
 
Why should they suffer a disadvantage, in fact? More carriers means far more air defence available to the whole fleet, as well as the ability to make constant attacks on the targets. There's a reason why the United States built hundreds and hundreds of carriers by the end of the war, and huge carrier task forces were deployed in the same battle...

So, no, they shouldn't suffer a disadvantage, in fact. The more carriers a fleet has, the more striking power it possesses, as well as the more defences available and the greater survivability of its aircraft. With many carriers, a deck can be kept clear for damaged aircraft to return and land, without having to use it to launch attacks or defend the fleet. At least one carrier can be kept on permanent intercept readiness, with fighters waiting on the deck to launch when enemy aircraft are detected. Sheer numbers of carriers were generally better, which is what led the Allied fleets in the Pacific to build and deploy as many of them as possible.

I can see a penalty for a large number of gun-ships attacking a smaller group of gun-ships (though not to the extent that the latter group wins, as they didn't), but I've always disliked the way that the present system - as pointed out - means that a tiny fleet of three carriers and three destroyers actually have significantly greater combat power and survivability than a full fleet with carriers, battleships/heavy cruisers, and light cruisers/destroyers escorting.

It may be 'balanced' that way, but the actual warfare of this era does not bear it out at all. And I believe we should be aiming to simulate that, rather than encouraging people to do things which were historically rather suicidal.
 
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make a seperate cv combat session? so that carriers can make 'air attacks against air or surface targets'?
 
There's a reason why the United States built hundreds and hundreds of carriers by the end of the war
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Sorry, but you are confusing escort carriers with fleet carriers. Escort carriers were slow-moving, relatively cheap and quickly constructed small carriers mostly used in ASW operations and convoy escort duty. They usually had small number of aircraft, which were equipped with weapons which were effective against subs and that's it. Not that it wasn't important - it was very important - but escort carriers had little to do with fleet carriers. The USA built ~30 non-escort carriers during the war, not "hundreds and hundreds".

Also, you gave the Battle of Leyte Gulf as an example. It can actually be a bit misleading, because this battle actually included several engagements in several different places - in fact, it could be divided into several battles. The Americans didn't use a doomstack or sth - their forces were divided into several fleets. Of course IRL thousands of aircraft could be attacking the same target, but they weren't doing that at once, because that would be pretty pointless - they were attacking in waves.

There are several problems with the game mechanics. CAGs are just naval attachments in HOI2, so in a way they are treated as naval units. However, even if that wasn't the case, HOI games represent air warfare in a very abstract way, so you have stacks of planes which get "stacking penalty" and this leads to strange results, because 1) the damage is spread among several air units and due to the way "hits" work in-game it's much harder to damage a given unit severely, even though IRL a group of air aces could wreak havoc among numerically superior opponents with relative ease (pilot training and experience was CRUCIAL), 2) stacking penalty reduces stats of aircraft, so individually they are somehow less effective even though that shouldn't really be the case. Therefore, unless the devs change the whole air combat system, I don't see how CAGs or aircraft in general can be realistically represented. Let's face it - air combat in HOI games suxx.
 
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