Would a pure CL or DD spam be effective against CV's? They are even faster and pack a lot of AA. I presume things could get nasty if the CV fleet has a CA or even bigger guns with it.
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In addition to that, yes, being nasty, most CV fleets have an escort of their own. If you bring a 12DD fleet to fight carriers, 4 are sunk and 4 others damaged before their "good AA" manages to get rid of the CAGs, and then your remaining "8" have to go through 6 CLs before they can touch a carrier... it won't end well.
Lol, never thought of that. However, with DD's having such low hull, what if you brought 30+? Might work.
OK here is why no SAG fleet ever succeeds (or has a very small chance of winning). The battle starts out at 100KM and the CAG's get to attack. The enemy surface fleet starts to close but get hit for many rounds before they even have a chance to fire the first shot. Most of the attacking fleet has disengaged due to combat losses or org losses. Now IF and that is a BIG if they actually get to gun rage they most likely target your screens and your undamaged screens get to shoot at them. All the while CAG's continue bombing them. So its really a bad idea to try to defeat CV+CL with only surface ships.
CVs are usually simply too far away, so your chance of catching them is almost non-existent, although the AA fire can really maul CAGs.
If you want to give SAGs at least a fighting chance, you can reduce the firing distance of CVs and CVLs. You can also add some of it back to carriers by techs, so mid- and late-war carrier would naturally become harder to destroy by non-CTFs.
The impact of firing distance is HUGE. In HPP, it's much lower than in Vanilla, so BBs or BCs can sometimes close in and maul carriers severely, especially when the weather is bad, which makes CAGs toothless.
If you want to give SAGs at least a fighting chance, you can reduce the firing distance of CVs and CVLs. You can also add some of it back to carriers by techs, so mid- and late-war carrier would naturally become harder to destroy by non-CTFs.
The impact of firing distance is HUGE. In HPP, it's much lower than in Vanilla, so BBs or BCs can sometimes close in and maul carriers severely, especially when the weather is bad, which makes CAGs toothless.
Which they really aren't in vanilla. It is very rare that I even think about weather in the naval war.
very nice post, helped me allot
But would you say BC+DD instead of BB+DD fleets are worth it against a RN which has both carriers and battleships?
very nice post, helped me allot
Yes and no.
Yes, because all those old RN BBs are crap. I can kill most of the old RN BBs with subs, BBs, BCs, CAs, NAVs, phased plasma assault rifles, nukes, and sharp sticks. (My favorite is sinking all of the old non-CV RN using Donnitz and a stack of 20 subs outside of RAF coverage. Talk about Fail Britannia, fail to rule the waves.) Furthermore, while old CLs and DDs can update their spotting, RADAR, ASW, and AA, they still have crap hull and crap sea attack, so they can be sunk by BBs, BCs, CAs, NAVs, and sharp sticks as well.
The thing about the RN is that so many of their starting ships are WWI or 1920s vintage. They are easy to kill. But the newer stuff is much harder to kill. An up to date BB with 1940 techs will kill an up to date BC with 1940 techs (all other things being equal). If the AI is escorting CVs with new BBs, your BCs can say hello to CAGs pounding them while BBs shell them.
Edit: The CVs will stick around so they can be hypothetically shot at, but now your BCs are tangling with surface ships that are on par with them in terms of hull and firepower.
And to repeat the cost of building you own CV's is not much more than the cost of BC's. Most people add the cost of CAG's but that is an inaccurate comparrison. Since you no longer need NAV's with a CV fleet you can swap out those costs. Base costs of CV's are actually cheaper than BB's (time to produce is shorter). Practicals do change this but building 3 CV's is probably cheaper than 3 BB's.
very nice post, helped me allot
Against the RN? As stated by SM, their starting BB are pretty crap, so "modern" BC+DD fleets can handle them in equal "sized" battles (roughly your 4BC8DD fleet vs 1 of their 3BB9DD fleets).
Against an equal-teched fleet, 4BC8DD vs 3BB9DD, it's going to be a CLOSE fight. Leaderskill, weather, presence of airpower... heck, the whole fight can come down to a single lucky roll. If you end up against the USA, this is likely where you will find yourself. Granted, whether or not that scares you in the slightest depends on whether or not UK/USSR is already gone by the time USA shows up. If you can out-produce the USA war machine by virtue of owning all of Asia, then while 1 fleet might match you up, the fact that you have 3 more waiting next door makes a difference ;p.
Again, let me state: BC's do not "beat" CV. BC still need proper usage, AND good aircover, to fill that role. So if your sole motivation for them is "to sink carriers", then it is a sub-optimal strat.
However, if you have a larger strat that uses them... say, extended intent of Shore Bombardment, lone BCs doing *VERY* long range convoy raiding, or the like, then they can be appropriately used to also fight carriers in prepared circumstances.
And, of course, you never know when you'll get a lucky positioning role and critical-opening volley. Just... don't come to expect those. In all my FtM games so far, I think I've seen all of 1 "opening salvo" CV kill ;p
If you're starting in 1936 and the primary goal of your naval construction is the destruction of the British CVs (exclusively using your navy) then, as has been stated before, building your own CV fleet is the way to go. It is very possible to do by 1940 without too much harm on your ability to fight the USSR. You may need to start building your practicals by building escort carriers (yes they are garbage in and of themselves but building them makes building carriers later much faster). If you plan to continue the game on to a fight with the US it is almost a necessity.
In my last Germany game starting in 1936 I had 4 escort carriers (which with their destroyer escorts have spent more than a year failing to hunt down a Polish sub trapped in the Baltic...like I said garbage) and 4 real carriers, with modern techs, by 1940. I also have a mostly modern light cruiser force to escort them. My naval doctrines are slightly out of date but that will not last. This force will be more than enough to crush the AI GB navy. It wouldn't stand a chance had GB been controlled by a human player. If I decide to continue the game on to Washington D.C. then I will have 4+ full carrier + light cruiser fleets.
I have to rely a bit more on LARM divisions (as opposed to ARM divisions) for my invasion of the USSR and I have a corp less of those than I like but the impact is more likely to be how embarrassing the USSR loss is rather than if the USSR loses.
In my last Germany game starting in 1936 I had 4 escort carriers (which with their destroyer escorts have spent more than a year failing to hunt down a Polish sub trapped in the Baltic...like I said garbage) and 4 real carriers, with modern techs, by 1940. I also have a mostly modern light cruiser force to escort them. My naval doctrines are slightly out of date but that will not last. This force will be more than enough to crush the AI GB navy. It wouldn't stand a chance had GB been controlled by a human player. If I decide to continue the game on to Washington D.C. then I will have 4+ full carrier + light cruiser fleets.
I have to rely a bit more on LARM divisions (as opposed to ARM divisions) for my invasion of the USSR and I have a corp less of those than I like but the impact is more likely to be how embarrassing the USSR loss is rather than if the USSR loses.
Has 3.06 nerfed carriers? I do believe BC should be given a chance to beat carriers.
What if the CAGs are suppressed by interceptors? If so, wouldn't the UK BBs be outnumbered by the BCs?
jju_57: Germany has 0 practicals with CVs and very bad tech for them, and needs allot of IC for the army and airforce. For the price of 3+6CLs or 6 CVs+8CLs you could get ALLOT of BCs/BBs and DDs
Themousemaster: Hmm, I see. Well, the goal is to help Italy as much as possible in a multiplayer game. For that I was contemplating whether BBs+DDs or BCs+DDs would be best.
Well, if you are under land based air cover, CAGs will still start to pound you, they will just get chewed up in a few hours and face the "I'm getting intercepted while trying to run another air mission" penalty to their attacks on you. But I think your BCs can still expect to get some damage before the CAGs are completely de-ORGed.
But on the other hand, if you are under land based air cover, then you don't need BCs to shoot CVs anyway. You instead use your surface fleet to "pin" the enemy fleet in a single sea zone while the NAVs fly in and give them love over and over again. (My NAVs like to play Marvin Gaye while attacking enemy fleets, but your mileage may vary). The heavy lifting in this case is done by the NAVs, while the BCs are there to just make sure no one can run away easily and to add some damage.
Using SAGs of any sort in this way is a perfectly valid approach to neutralizing CTFs or mixed fleets. Hell, even the AI does it sometimes if the NAVs are in range when the battle starts and it isn't busy using NAVs to convoy raid or something. I haven't tested it myself, but I wouldn't be surprised if using faster ships like BCs made it possible to keep the enemy fleet in combat longer than using slower ships to pin them down. Because of how HOI3 (and indeed most Paradox games) control movement, keeping them in combat means that even if they are trying to get away, they are still in that same sea zone and vulnerable to air attack.
EDIT: I said NAVs, but you can just as easily run CAS if the RN sits right off your coastline. Italy has plenty of options in the Med.
Assisting Italy? Well then may I make a suggetion: if you aren't under a self-imposed historical/roleplay constraint, then the most effectigve way to help Italy is to move 2 corps of units to them as son as they ally, move a fleet to the Med pre-war, and then when you are hostile with the UK, launch an invasion of Northern Egypt (taking the Suez and everything east). This will allow their ships to get out of the med... which is rather an immense benefit. And rarely difficult (unlike Gibraltar, which due to it's forts, if the AI decides to put any real unit there, is a pain to take without DoW'ing Spain)
If you are depending on the CV's entering that deeply into your land based air cover as a required element in sinking them, then what do you need expensive BCs for? Just build NAVs and INTs. The INTs will deorg their CAGs to uselessness and the NAVs can then have relatively free runs at them until they either retreat back to blue waters or sink.
I haven't played the unmodded game seriously in a long time. Here's a post using the HPP mod where I, as Italy, gave the RN a thorough thrashing and effectively destroyed it in 2 years. The RN lost 2 carriers to two of my battleships as well, showing how large an impact carrier firing distance has alongside positioning and spotting. Carrier firing distance is somewhat lower in the mod, while spotting and positioning bonuses are much higher.
I'm talking about a MP game
And what about the enemy interceptors?
What enemy interceptors? If they are in YOUR coastal waters where YOUR interceptors can reach, then you have presumably already had plenty of time to establish air superiority there. If not, then enemy CVs parading there are only one of a laundry list of problems you are already facing. And that is assuming that you are playing a country which faces an enemy who is both overseas and so close that his land based INTs can reach your coastal waters. Anyway, you appear to be reaching here.
Reaching? Why would the UK send CVs into the coastal waters of Germany itself? I'm talking about the Med or East Atlantic. Both the UK and Germany can send interceptors to fight each other over those waters. I'm merely saying that bombing the enemy with NAVs isn't a no-brainer option..