HoI4: Naval combat/convoy and movement ideas
As per another thread I just started (HQ's and division deployment) I'm releasing a list of possible new HoI4 ideas and trying to see what people think of them and/or get great ideas from other contributors, and hopefully the dev's can take some of them on board for consideration to make any HoI4 truly awesome.
Ships will have the same two main factors, Strength and organisation. Although organisation will be completely different, as a ship will only try to retreat once its ‘strength’ is below 50%, and no longer determined by organisation. For each day the fleet is at sea it will lose a tiny amount fuel/supplies (which is organisation).
For Ships/naval combat, instead of having sea zones the space is undefined (as in where ever the tip of your mouse pointer clicks when zoomed in, is exactly where the fleet moves to) If you cannot make the make the pixels small enough to do this then like in the ‘Total War’ series games (Rome/Shogun2), with naval movement the sea spaces although not displayed are hexagonal (as well as being a good size) and would allow for much more interesting naval movement/patrolling as opposed to a sprite of a fleet sitting on the spot ‘pretending’ to be patrolling an entire sea/ocean ‘zone’.
When you click on a ship, you can either right click on a particular space of water and increase the patrol radius of the ship/fleet by using the zoom in/out scroll key, and the ship/fleet will automatically sail out to the location and randomly move around. Can possibly even make multiple search areas by holding the control key and making another circle by again using the zoom/key scroll etc.
When sending a fleet out, it will auto create waypoints for every say 200 km’s on the map, starting from the port to the centre point of the closest targeted patrol area. If the player highlights the fleet whilst at sea, or from its command HQ (clicking on the port at the province it left from), the player can then if they wish move the way points, thus changing the path of the fleet (although this will alter the length of time the fleet can stay out patrolling, and there will maybe a little figure in the fleet tool box showing ‘approximately’ how long it can stay in the patrol area).
Each fleet shall have a view radius dependent on the amount/type of ships you have, which will ultimately make your view range wider, especially destroyers as they’re thought to be the scouting force around your core fleet. Depending on your fleets stance, it will then seek to flee/intercept the spotted enemy force. On the map there will be tiny little sprites for each ship in the fleet (maybe destroyers can be even tinier things circurling the fleet. Then when they get to within firing distance, you’ll see the ships firing.
For each day the fleet is at sea it will lose a tiny amount of organisation (fuel/supplies). Each day the ship/fleet will ensure it has enough organisation to get back to its home port plus say 10%. Once it gets to below this amount, it will immediately sail straight back to its home port (or along the same way point path it used to get there) it will however flee/engage enemy ships it detects on its return voyage as per normal/standing orders. The larger the port is that your fleet resupplies at will mean a quicker organisational regain.
Along each coastal zone there will be a little dot at sea indicating where a fleet would be if it was to launch a naval landing on a coastal province (that way you will know if your patrol zone is large enough to protect a specific location from landings, and won’t be caught just short).
Convoys, would be automatically generated by the computer (as they currently are) and would sail from port to port and you would see groups of tiny little ships sailing around along dotted lines (escorts would circle these, similar to destroyers for fleets) (very similar to Medieval Total War2). By using the current naval tab, you could then perhaps click another button and it would make the convoy routes editable, so like lines in the Microsoft office Word program, you could select waypoints along the line and move them to where ever you want (possibly even changing the port). Although a small port would mean that the convoy spends a longer amount of time there trying to unload/load. Each little ship would carry a certain amount of supplies/raw/resources/replacements/reinforcements and if one is sunk by the enemy, you lose the resources being carried by each ship. The player has no control over when convoys leave/sail.
Submarines would work similar to fleets, where you can select a certain area for them to patrol, and depending on your settings, when you click on the squadron at a naval base, it will automatically send out tiny little subs to the patrol area, moving around individually (unlike a fleet), though when they contact a convoy/fleet they will all converge on it. Depending on computer capabilities, could make it so that the submarine squadrons only send out so many at a time, so will always have some refitting at base, heading towards/back from the patrol area, and when one is destroyed (that another is deployed there from the submarine replacement pool.
Normal naval patrolling, naval bombers and intelligence should also provide you with some clues as to enemy convoy paths. This could just be in the form of thick shaded lines on the map showing approximate enemy convoy paths, and/or when a convoy is spotted directly that you’ll actually see the tiny enemy convoy group travelling on the map.
For Planes over the sea, there will still be the existing sea zones as in HoI3, and if the planes will look for ships/convoys that travel into their patrolling area. Once found they will engage. There will be a good chance for planes to spot them, though only a small portion of the air squadron (10-20%) will fight against the convoys/submarines to represent that most planes will be fanned out patrolling and not in proximity of an area where enemy are found and able to engage (submarines will disappear quickly if not destroyed). Against enemy surface ships, the portion of the air squad fighting against the fleet will increase every hour as time goes on.
Any thoughts?