Welcome back to another HoD DD, today I'm going to talk about the changes we have made to the Naval system. We've made some fairly major changes to this area of the game, hopefully you'll like the sound of them 
The first is that you can no longer build Dreadnoughts in any little coastal town, you need to have a certain level of Naval Base to build any given ship, so building up your naval infrastructure is now vital to your ability to field a modern navy. Nor can you simply spam Naval Bases in every coastal province you have, they are limited to one per state (In the event of a split state being reunited, the highest level base will be kept), which serves to limit the number of advanced ships which can be built at one time. Finally, you can no longer build Big Ships in overseas areas, only in the area connected to your capital.
You can see the Naval base mapmode here, green-striped provinces have Naval Bases, shaded by their level.
The next big change is the concept of Naval Supply. This is a value generated by Naval Bases which represents their capacity to supply your ships. Each ship has a Supply cost, and if you have more ships than you can supply they will receive less and less of their daily upkeep goods the further past your Supply Limit you go, reducing their efficiency in combat.
The third large change is that we have completely remade the naval battle system. Related to this are a few new mechanics I'll mention first:
Evasion – Small Ships may now have an evasion value set, making a percentage of shots fired at them miss.
Gun Range – Ships in a battle now have a firing range, meaning longer ranged ships may well be able to fire from outside their opponent’s range.
Torpedo Attacks – Once Torpedos are invented Cruisers gain the Torpedo Attack ability. Torpedos do a lot of damage against larger ships.
Coordination Penalty – Somewhat like a stacking penalty that HoI players may be familiar with, except that rather than being based solely on the number of ships in your fleet, it is based on the ratio of how much you outnumber the other side. Coordination Penalty affects your ship's chances of acquiring a target, and the chance of losing a target they already have, as not all ships will be able to fire past their fleet-mates.
Battleships – A new Ship type between Ironclads and Dreadnoughts.
Now for the battles themselves! Since one group of secessionist rebels is fighting another here, their ships make a fine target to serve as an example:
When two hostile fleets meet each other a battle starts. At this point the two fleets are aware of each other, but are out of range and do not yet know exactly which ships will target each other, ships will show the Seeking Target status. Ships tend to focus on fighting ships of their own size class first, so a screen of Small Ships can discourage enemy Small Ships from attacking your Big Ships, although it is not impossible they will bypass them and Torpedo your biggest unit:
If, or when, they find a target, they switch to Approach status, where they move into range:
You can also click on any ship on either side to see all ships targeting it at the moment (clicking it again returns you to the main battle view). Here we can see the USS Constitution, which is targeting HMS Sans Pereil, who is ignoring her. However, no less than 5 British ships are seeking to engage her, which bodes ill for the American vessel:
Once in range, combat proper begins. The actual firing on each other works much as before, with the additional mechanics I mentioned above. Combat continues until one of the following happens: either ship is destroyed, either ship starts to retreat, or one ship loses their target:
If a ship attempts to retreat, changes to Retreat status, but it may still be fired on until it has got far enough away from any enemy ships that it switches to Disengaged.
For a fleet to retreat from combat, all surviving ships just reach Disengaged status, at which point it will flee to the nearest friendly Naval Base. It should be noted that you cannot order a manual retreat until the majority of your fleet has approached to firing range of the enemy, the honour of the flag demands no less!
Come back next week to learn how warfare in general has been changed, although I'll warn you in advance that land battles have not changed to the same extent.
The first is that you can no longer build Dreadnoughts in any little coastal town, you need to have a certain level of Naval Base to build any given ship, so building up your naval infrastructure is now vital to your ability to field a modern navy. Nor can you simply spam Naval Bases in every coastal province you have, they are limited to one per state (In the event of a split state being reunited, the highest level base will be kept), which serves to limit the number of advanced ships which can be built at one time. Finally, you can no longer build Big Ships in overseas areas, only in the area connected to your capital.
You can see the Naval base mapmode here, green-striped provinces have Naval Bases, shaded by their level.
The next big change is the concept of Naval Supply. This is a value generated by Naval Bases which represents their capacity to supply your ships. Each ship has a Supply cost, and if you have more ships than you can supply they will receive less and less of their daily upkeep goods the further past your Supply Limit you go, reducing their efficiency in combat.
The third large change is that we have completely remade the naval battle system. Related to this are a few new mechanics I'll mention first:
Evasion – Small Ships may now have an evasion value set, making a percentage of shots fired at them miss.
Gun Range – Ships in a battle now have a firing range, meaning longer ranged ships may well be able to fire from outside their opponent’s range.
Torpedo Attacks – Once Torpedos are invented Cruisers gain the Torpedo Attack ability. Torpedos do a lot of damage against larger ships.
Coordination Penalty – Somewhat like a stacking penalty that HoI players may be familiar with, except that rather than being based solely on the number of ships in your fleet, it is based on the ratio of how much you outnumber the other side. Coordination Penalty affects your ship's chances of acquiring a target, and the chance of losing a target they already have, as not all ships will be able to fire past their fleet-mates.
Battleships – A new Ship type between Ironclads and Dreadnoughts.
Now for the battles themselves! Since one group of secessionist rebels is fighting another here, their ships make a fine target to serve as an example:
When two hostile fleets meet each other a battle starts. At this point the two fleets are aware of each other, but are out of range and do not yet know exactly which ships will target each other, ships will show the Seeking Target status. Ships tend to focus on fighting ships of their own size class first, so a screen of Small Ships can discourage enemy Small Ships from attacking your Big Ships, although it is not impossible they will bypass them and Torpedo your biggest unit:
If, or when, they find a target, they switch to Approach status, where they move into range:
You can also click on any ship on either side to see all ships targeting it at the moment (clicking it again returns you to the main battle view). Here we can see the USS Constitution, which is targeting HMS Sans Pereil, who is ignoring her. However, no less than 5 British ships are seeking to engage her, which bodes ill for the American vessel:
Once in range, combat proper begins. The actual firing on each other works much as before, with the additional mechanics I mentioned above. Combat continues until one of the following happens: either ship is destroyed, either ship starts to retreat, or one ship loses their target:
If a ship attempts to retreat, changes to Retreat status, but it may still be fired on until it has got far enough away from any enemy ships that it switches to Disengaged.
For a fleet to retreat from combat, all surviving ships just reach Disengaged status, at which point it will flee to the nearest friendly Naval Base. It should be noted that you cannot order a manual retreat until the majority of your fleet has approached to firing range of the enemy, the honour of the flag demands no less!
Come back next week to learn how warfare in general has been changed, although I'll warn you in advance that land battles have not changed to the same extent.
