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Alot of people are talking about doom stacks and AI issues but at a very base level the land system does not model the historical developing strategic and operational issues of the era. The land combat system misses the point of what occured between 1900 and 1925; the gas and tank elements that are designed to break a mythical deadlock are pretty much a fantasy in their own right and it fails to reflect any modern military analysis written since "oh what a lovely war". The 19th century stuff misses alot of strategic changes that occured as well which could be not only interesting but so much fun to play in a game.

However, in comparison the naval system is much worse, its EU3 ported into a later era and thus makes no sense at an operational or strategic level and lacks anything I'd recognize from the era, try adding:

Less naval areas
A proper combat system
A proper strategic system
Mines (the era is defined by them , yes I know its hard to model in the current system but actually with a proper system it would be straight forwards)
Operational deployment mechanism
Classes of ships development
The full set of ships.
I could go on

The system doesn't need tinkering with, it needs a total rebuild based on an indepth examination of what occured over the time frame so that the basic model reflects something we can recognize as warfare from the era. It doesn't even need to be as complex, just get the basics right first before adding layers of additional functionality and depth. Go out and buy a load of board games from the era and play around with them, work out what was fun and how they modeled stuff and start to think about how to make a new system from scratch rather than the cut and paste that we got.

I would recommend working with the community so that the risk of another terrible military model is lowered.
 
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The best thing to do with naval combat in Vic2 is to get rid of ship units.

Just have naval bases. The bigger the base and the better your tech, the larger and more powerful (and more expensive) the fleet based there is and the wider an area it projects control over. As long as you have some control, and no enemy power has any control, trade is uninterrupted and armies can be freely conveyed.

Blockade happens on a sliding scale according to the relative power projected into the sea adjacent to a port and a degree of dominance is required to convey troops in wartime.

When warring powers contest control of a seazone, from time to time there will be battle events that result in fleets being damaged. "Your Majesties Fleet out of Scapa Flow clashed with the Imperial High Seas Fleet out of Kiel in the Battle of Jutland. The fleet suffered damage which will reduce the effectiveness of Scapa Flow to 73% until it is repaired. The Imperial High Seas Fleet was soundly trounced and we estimate that the effectiveness of the Kiel naval base has been reduced to 9%."
 
It has been suggested before that mines be implemented as "forts" in sea zones, but there were some objections because mines are more complicated than that.

I'm not really that knowledgeable about that sort of thing. About the only things I know about naval mines is that you could close certain areas off with them and that they were enough of a concern that the precious British dreadnoughts dared not operate in certain waters. Mines were cheap, dreadnoughts were not.
 
What is the problem with the current system? And how would you address?
Sincere question. Just stating that it is all wrong without offering an alternative is not a good idea.
Also please remember, in the end nor the naval, nor the land combat simulation can have a hundred parameter with each soldier/salior being modeled...
 
How would you do mines in a way that wouldn't be a total abstraction or micromanagement hell?

You would hire a specific mine laying unit. You could do it on your own or set it to auto. They would cost a little bit per placement, sort of like forts but alot cheaper. It would Damage enemies attacking you a bit, more if you have a fortification, and it would decimate enemies retreating into a province.
 
What is the problem with the current system? And how would you address?
Sincere question. Just stating that it is all wrong without offering an alternative is not a good idea.
Also please remember, in the end nor the naval, nor the land combat simulation can have a hundred parameter with each soldier/salior being modeled...

Did you even read the OP? I said go to the HOI move = attack system.


—V
 
What is the problem with the current system? And how would you address?
Sincere question. Just stating that it is all wrong without offering an alternative is not a good idea.
Also please remember, in the end nor the naval, nor the land combat simulation can have a hundred parameter with each soldier/salior being modeled...

Well, insofar as the naval system goes, the problem is manyfold:

1) Because navies can operate indefinitely (and the AI isn't even subject to attrition), the strategic effect of controlling naval bases and coaling ports is essentially nil, making e.g. most of the Pacific completely worthless except for prestige.

2) There is absolutely no real significance to navy composition except that bigger and more modern ship types is better, and it is trivial for any player of a large country to annihilate the Royal Navy in a single war (often easily if you rush ironclads or dreadnoughts before the AI does); the concept of a naval arms race or balance of power isn't reflected in the game at all, and there is no mechanical representation as to why France couldn't simply outbuild Britain's navy.

3) The primary uses of navies are in safeguarding of trade lanes, denial of trade to other powers, and soft power projection. You have some representation of the second with the war exhaustion effect of blockading (but this doesn't reflect land trade routes, trade with neutral powers, and is completely pointless against landlocked foes and unfairly powerful against, e.g., Austria), but this is otherwise unrepresented in the game.

4) Even with the changes in patches and AHD, countries still can and do routinely field navies that are enormously larger than any country ever boasted in real life; a powerful player nation or the UK will not-infrequently boast a navy that would compare favourably with that of every real-world country in the world combined.

5) The extreme changes that the dreadnought (and obsolescence of earlier battleship types) wrought on the scene, and the changes in naval warfare style stemming from the fact that dreadnoughts were obscenely expensive and thus a potentially massive loss in life, prestige, and wealth to any country that risked them in battle, is not reflected in the game in any meaningful way. Nor is the impact of smaller cheaper units such as torpedo boats (and the cost/effectiveness calculations of a small fleet of torpedo boats versus one dreadnought) in the game.

6) Finally, while aircraft carriers can be justified being left out of the game because while they existed their historical impact was minor until the end of the Victoria II period (though there is no reason that HAD to be the case, and any large war in the 1920s could certainly have seen a decisive role for aircraft carriers), submarines were a tremendously effective and potentially decisive weapon of offensive warfare for the latter half of the period and saw action in many conflicts, including of course World War I, so their lack of representation is very bad - though the real problem isn't that submarines aren't a unit, but that at the moment they would be a completely useless unit just as they were in Victoria I because there is no way to represent how they were most effectively used (to attack merchant shipping).

Ultimately, as I noted before, I do not believe combat is or should be a major focus of Victoria II per se; what I would like to see is a naval overhaul focusing more on the soft power and trade interdiction/protection roles of navies. The economy is the centre of Victoria II; the naval role should focus on how it relates to that, especially since that is exactly what was central to the centrepiece conflict of the period, where both Germany and Britain's naval efforts were focused primarily on economic strangulation of the other.
 
How would you do mines in a way that wouldn't be a total abstraction or micromanagement hell?

Instead of mine layers, like suggested, why not code something like (I don't know the code names): if your port is being blockaded, then mine explosion events could trigger. Or just code that blockading ships take random amounts of damage or something.

Could limit to core ports too if we wanted to prevent it from getting out of hand
 
Did you even read the OP? I said go to the HOI move = attack system.
Yes I did. That is far from a complete overhaul of the combat mechanism. For me the combat mechanism is the strange algorithm of attacks, defence/thoughness, softness of the HoI3 system. I.e. how combat is resolved once it commences. The naval system in HoI also gets its fair share of criticism.
 
Personally I prefer the late game (which is more developed playing APD) so as I've said before I'd like to see a WW1 expansion that improves on the late game. A lot of the points people have made about navies are quite valid, I think one think that should be added is engagement chances, that way you could have it so massive fleets hanging around Jutland are likely to engage but passing ships in the Atlantic won't always detect each other. This would also allow submarines with very small engagement chances to actually have a purpose and there could be something of a tech war caused by this. (trying to get inventions which increase your chance of detecting the enemy). Also aircraft are just-about completely ignored, hell even in WW1 the Germans had a bomber capable of striking London yet currently they're just another type of land unit. I think a HOI3 style system would be good here.
 
Instead of mine layers, like suggested, why not code something like (I don't know the code names): if your port is being blockaded, then mine explosion events could trigger. Or just code that blockading ships take random amounts of damage or something.

Could limit to core ports too if we wanted to prevent it from getting out of hand

Well, I can see why people like those kinds of ideas. But the current system only allows blockades off the coast of a port. You can't intercept shipping anywhere else, so under this model blockade = losing ships to mines. Historically, it seems more like you should be intercepting shipping all over the place, but the mines keep you from getting too close to specific harbors. German mines didn't seem to stop the blockade the RN held against them. It did, however, make pursuing them at Jutland a risky proposition (along with the threat of U-boat and torpedo boat ambushes).
 
How would you do mines in a way that wouldn't be a total abstraction or micromanagement hell?

I do not believe the current naval model is worth keeping; so without first defining what we want the new naval model to represent and the weight we wish to add to the various dynamics and how we want those dynamics to evolve over the time frame it is not possible, at this time, to define what and how the mines would be represented.

This may seem like an opt out but as the naval model does not represent in a realistic, plausible or fun way the changing strategic and operational challenges of the era defining the implementation of mines before the definition of the model would be unfeasible.

So perhaps I ought to define a new model? Maybe, but its a couple of weeks worth of work and unless someone wants to pay my daily defence analysis consultancy rate then its unlikely that I will add this task to my current consultancy jobs. That may sound like a convinent opt out but rather, like alot of people, I've a mortgage and school fees (and a board game addiction) to pay. :mellow::)
 
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I do not believe the current naval model is worth keeping; so without first defining what we want the new naval model to represent and the weight we wish to add to the various dynamics and how we want those dynamics to evolve over the time frame it is not possible, at this time, to define what and how the mines would be represented.

Well, I kind of expected this would be your answer. :)

The reason I brought it up is because I tend to agree that mines in no way really fit the current naval model. The catch is that I can think of ways to implement them, but they all either end up being abstracted as "Forts in sea zones/additional attrition in mined sea zones," which would be a pointless abstraction without a completely new naval damage/naval ORG mechanic, or it ends up being "Send the minelayer out on 150 missions to lay mines, while my enemy sends the minesweeper on 150 missions to find mines" which would end up being a micromanagement hell. This also does not factor in the cost of naval mines, which could be quite expensive when used extensively and how you would implement that in Vic2's economy.

Personally, without something approximating either HOI3s convoy system or PoN's merchant shipping model, any discussing of mines, subs, or realistic fleets is more or less doomed to failure since the Vic2 model requires blockades to be initiated and maintained only off the coast of ports. Since you can't convoy raid in the middle of the ocean along sea lanes, subs are pointless, as are smaller, faster warships like cruisers.
 
Well, I kind of expected this would be your answer. :)

I wish had some thing more positive to say, I dislike being negative and I still believe that this game given resource and time could be great.


The reason I brought it up is because I tend to agree that mines in no way really fit the current naval model. The catch is that I can think of ways to implement them, but they all either end up being abstracted as "Forts in sea zones/additional attrition in mined sea zones," which would be a pointless abstraction without a completely new naval damage/naval ORG mechanic, or it ends up being "Send the minelayer out on 150 missions to lay mines, while my enemy sends the minesweeper on 150 missions to find mines" which would end up being a micromanagement hell. This also does not factor in the cost of naval mines, which could be quite expensive when used extensively and how you would implement that in Vic2's economy.

Agreed, it would be tedious, difficult and may never work properly eitherway.

Personally, without something approximating either HOI3s convoy system or PoN's merchant shipping model, any discussing of mines, subs, or realistic fleets is more or less doomed to failure since the Vic2 model requires blockades to be initiated and maintained only off the coast of ports. Since you can't convoy raid in the middle of the ocean along sea lanes, subs are pointless, as are smaller, faster warships like cruisers.

Again, agreed, the current model prohibits realistic blockades or mines which were the cornerstones of the era. The question I wonder is how the call was made in production to reproduce the same terrible naval system from ViC1.


But to be constructive:
I believe that making a simpler basic system with fewer naval zones combined with a mission based system could be the solution.
IE you make an order, set the time frame & aggressiveness and the various fleets go on their way.
I think it might be easier for the AI to handle this sort of system. Also it requires less resource to build.
Combined with a more interesting production system (classes of ship) and naval facility support system (realistic support infrastructure challenges) it could a genuine challenge.

Finally if a better naval system could be built perhaps it could form the basis for future games. It could be about time as the current system isn't far removed from EU1's naval system which is pushing a decade in age?
 
a. If a battle doesn't go well, the AI should disengage instead of sending more and more troops. Ideally, it should retreat broken armies. A human player circles the units that are engaged in a major battle, while the AI keeps disorganised troops in the battle, leaving them to die from attrition or be encircled. I use the "home rule" of not recycling units, since this is one of the two worst exploits.
b. As technology progresses, offensives on entrenched positions should become more and more costly in human lives. This should create the "illusion" of a front, since hostile armies would remain in neighbouring provinces, waiting for a chance to break the stalemate. As the game is now, even in the later years you do not need a 2:1 advantage to overwhelm a defending army of similar technology. Without tanks/gas, late game assaults against entrenched armies should be "suicidal". Early tanks should make things a little bit easier.