Convoy AA massacres the Luftwaffe

  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Neither CAS3 nor TAC3 are sinking convoys. They have the same issue as NAV1.

Not good. It looks like only NAV IIs and NAV IIIs are effective at sinking convoys.

One thing to keep in mind is that this all seems to be applying only to engagements where the attacker has only planes.

If the planes are instead supporting a few ships instead of operating strictly on their own, the situation changes completely. The planes, even NAV 1 or CAS are highly effective. Also in situations where at least one of your ships attacks resource convoys, planes are then allowed to support that action. Currently, for balance reasons, planes alone will not attack resource convoys. I think this adds great importance to the use of subs even if other changes to improve sub warfare are still over the horizon.
 
One thing to keep in mind is that this all seems to be applying only to engagements where the attacker has only planes.

If the planes are instead supporting a few ships instead of operating strictly on their own, the situation changes completely. The planes, even NAV 1 or CAS are highly effective. Also in situations where at least one of your ships attacks resource convoys, planes are then allowed to support that action. Currently, for balance reasons, planes alone will not attack resource convoys. I think this adds great importance to the use of subs even if other changes to improve sub warfare are still over the horizon.
I was trying to control the Channel for Sealion. I didn't even want to attack the convoys, just warships. There was a doomstack fleet of 100 ships, plus other smaller Brit fleets. Any U-Boats sent there wouldn't have lasted a day.
 
I was trying to control the Channel for Sealion. I didn't even want to attack the convoys, just warships. There was a doomstack fleet of 100 ships, plus other smaller Brit fleets. Any U-Boats sent there wouldn't have lasted a day.
That only applies to your specific situation and not to the entire game though. My comment is to put things into perspective.

Also the Channel is not the only or even best invasion route for Sea Lion. It is usually easier and better to land further north either coming through the North Sea or the Western Approaches.
 
One thing to keep in mind is that this all seems to be applying only to engagements where the attacker has only planes.

If the planes are instead supporting a few ships instead of operating strictly on their own, the situation changes completely. The planes, even NAV 1 or CAS are highly effective. Also in situations where at least one of your ships attacks resource convoys, planes are then allowed to support that action. Currently, for balance reasons, planes alone will not attack resource convoys. I think this adds great importance to the use of subs even if other changes to improve sub warfare are still over the horizon.

This would make a lot of sense in the context of 'one tick' air on sea battles, but 'multiple' tick sea on sea battles - so in a convoy battle with ships, the convoys are there long enough for aircraft to have multiple go-rounds before the damage to a convoy is reset, allowing them to be far more dangerous.
 
Roughly half of the troops I tried to ship from Ireland to Britain were sunk crossing the Irish Sea. Even if I spread out 5 divisions and sent them each separately. Two would die. Ships wouldn't do that because they would all get sucked into attacking one unit and then take days to resolve the battle. Large groups of NAV on the other hand make sending troops across some bodies of water very dangerous, whether you spread the troops out or not. I even had air superiority over the region but his NAVs still got in their strikes and sank units.

This is all true.

That being said, there's a lot of wiggle room in the numbers, because there are things we didn't get to see in the interface (it was a busy time for the UK and European Axis).

I really think some more stable testing should be done under controlled conditions: set number of troop convoys in a small sea zone, fixed numbers of aircraft, fixed RADAR, and massive plane/convoy stockpiles with the troops running back and forth through the region over and over again.

I suspect no one is seeing the whole picture here given the weird disparities we are seeing. After all, neither of us knew until Tuesday that resource convoys don't get hit by air power unless they are engaged by naval assets.
 
This is all true.

That being said, there's a lot of wiggle room in the numbers, because there are things we didn't get to see in the interface (it was a busy time for the UK and European Axis).

I really think some more stable testing should be done under controlled conditions: set number of troop convoys in a small sea zone, fixed numbers of aircraft, fixed RADAR, and massive plane/convoy stockpiles with the troops running back and forth through the region over and over again.

I suspect no one is seeing the whole picture here given the weird disparities we are seeing. After all, neither of us knew until Tuesday that resource convoys don't get hit by air power unless they are engaged by naval assets.
I totally agree with all of that. I am not even saying that the OP and those supporting him are entirely wrong. I just want to weigh in pointing out that it is far far different from the claim in the thread title. Convoys are not slaughtering planes in all or even most situations. The situation is much more layered and complex than that.
 
That only applies to your specific situation and not to the entire game though. My comment is to put things into perspective.

Also the Channel is not the only or even best invasion route for Sea Lion. It is usually easier and better to land further north either coming through the North Sea or the Western Approaches.
I realize that isn't best route. I've landed many times in Scotland; just thinking that is a bit gamey.
 
I totally agree with all of that. I am not even saying that the OP and those supporting him are entirely wrong. I just want to weigh in pointing out that it is far far different from the claim in the thread title. Convoys are not slaughtering planes in all or even most situations. The situation is much more layered and complex than that.
I wasn't saying that this happens in all circumstances, just mine. I definitely consider losing over 1400 combat aircraft to convoys without sinking even one, a massacre.
 
I wasn't saying that this happens in all circumstances, just mine. I definitely consider losing over 1400 combat aircraft to convoys without sinking even one, a massacre.

I totally agree with all of that. I am not even saying that the OP and those supporting him are entirely wrong. I just want to weigh in pointing out that it is far far different from the claim in the thread title. Convoys are not slaughtering planes in all or even most situations. The situation is much more layered and complex than that.

As opaque as some mechanics are, I'm surprised we even have a remote idea of what's going on in the first place.

What I find really weird is the wide variation in aircraft effects on convoys. When the current patch first came out, people were talking about TACs massacring convoys. Then I saw some stuff in MP that made me think aircraft aren't hurting convoys enough. Then I see this thread, and I start wondering what in the Hell is going on.
 
As opaque as some mechanics are, I'm surprised we even have a remote idea of what's going on in the first place.

What I find really weird is the wide variation in aircraft effects on convoys. When the current patch first came out, people were talking about TACs massacring convoys. Then I saw some stuff in MP that made me think aircraft aren't hurting convoys enough. Then I see this thread, and I start wondering what in the Hell is going on.
I remember the TAC/convoys thread. In may case TACs plus subs sunk a lot of convoys (AWAY from the English Channel!) but TACs by themselves couldn't.
 
IIRC in that other thread it was Bay of Biscay or even west of Spain. Both of those areas can be ideal for having subs supported by friendly aircraft and radar. In such a turkey shoot, the convoys get slaughtered. One cannot even reliably protect those convoys since on one is disputing that those same aircraft will decimate any surface fleet that patrols such an area.

There is one thing that puzzles me. If planes are not independently attacking resource convoys at the moment and if the Germans had no ships at all in the Channel, even subs, what the hell were so many convoys even doing there? The English Channel is a high traffic area for German convoys but I never considered it one for those from the UK. Were they really shipping enough troops in and out of London to account for this?
 
IIRC in that other thread it was Bay of Biscay or even west of Spain. Both of those areas can be ideal for having subs supported by friendly aircraft and radar. In such a turkey shoot, the convoys get slaughtered. One cannot even reliably protect those convoys since on one is disputing that those same aircraft will decimate any surface fleet that patrols such an area.

There is one thing that puzzles me. If planes are not independently attacking resource convoys at the moment and if the Germans had no ships at all in the Channel, even subs, what the hell were so many convoys even doing there? The English Channel is a high traffic area for German convoys but I never considered it one for those from the UK. Were they really shipping enough troops in and out of London to account for this?
I wish I had saved the game or tag switched to the UK to see what was going on. One combat I distinctly remember was against 411 convoys and I lost 27 planes; all CAS I and NAV I. Most were much smaller but several were over 300 convoys.
 
naval bombers/cas cannot sink convoys without having atleast 30 naval attack because they only engage convoys once, convoys can instantly repair after battles.
 
naval bombers/cas cannot sink convoys without having atleast 30 naval attack because they only engage convoys once, convoys can instantly repair after battles.

Where did you get that number from?

Don't NAV II only have 20 naval attack? 25 with +5 to weapons. Yet people are saying NAV II are sinking convoys.

Does it end up therefore at 30+ with doctrines or something?
 
I really think some more stable testing should be done under controlled conditions: set number of troop convoys in a small sea zone, fixed numbers of aircraft, fixed RADAR, and massive plane/convoy stockpiles with the troops running back and forth through the region over and over again.

I suspect no one is seeing the whole picture here given the weird disparities we are seeing. After all, neither of us knew until Tuesday that resource convoys don't get hit by air power unless they are engaged by naval assets.

Yeah controlled tests is how I both figured out what the issue probably was, and how I realized that resource or supply convoys don't get hit by air power in separate airstrikes :)

It becomes clear how AA losses scale with airwing size in this way, if many small wings attack AA losses skyrocket compared to a single 1000 size airwing.

I wish I had saved the game or tag switched to the UK to see what was going on. One combat I distinctly remember was against 411 convoys and I lost 27 planes; all CAS I and NAV I. Most were much smaller but several were over 300 convoys.

As the reports are merged It's not actually 300 convoys. If you for example have 5 wings of NAV and 20 wings of CAS attacking a troop transport with 15 convoys it will be treated by the engine as 25 different attacks against the same target, and the reports will be merged together and show 375 convoys was attacked ( and all of them get a chance to shoot down a plane ). Even if only one in 15 convoys shoot down a plane that's still 25 planes lost!

If another attack happens in the same sea province later that day / or another day for that matter, before you clicked on the report it will also get merged in ( explaining why you can get odd numbers like 411 convoys attacked ).

In my testing I observed between 30% - 100% of the airwings making attack each "tick" on a single troop transport convoy, when making attacks into the channel with good radar/detection values.
 
Last edited:
Yeah controlled tests is how I both figured out what the issue probably was, and how I realized that resource or supply convoys don't get hit by air power in separate airstrikes :)

It becomes clear how AA losses scale with airwing size in this way, if many small wings attack AA losses skyrocket compared to a single 1000 size airwing.



As the reports are merged It's not actually 300 convoys. If you for example have 5 wings of NAV and 20 wings of CAS attacking a troop transport with 15 convoys it will be treated by the engine as 25 different attacks against the same target, and the reports will be merged together and show 375 convoys was attacked ( and all of them get a chance to shoot down a plane ). Even if only one in 15 convoys shoot down a plane that's still 25 planes lost!

If another attack happens in the same sea province later that day / or another day for that matter, before you clicked on the report it will also get merged in ( explaining why you can get odd numbers like 411 convoys attacked ).

In my testing I observed between 30% - 100% of the airwings making attack each "tick" on a single troop transport convoy, when making attacks into the channel with good radar/detection values.
@Alex_brunius Thank you for this great explanation of what is happening. Unfortunately, it seems, my radar detection was very good, with LVL 3 covering the whole Channel enabling continuous attacks.

I've learned my lesson. Before I try to bomb the Channel in another game, I will make sure I have NAV IIs first.

Right now I'm playing Germany in a Vanilla + game, and I'm having success with a TAC/sub combo in the Bay of Biscay in the spring of 1940.
 
I remembered the same code line and just spent 30 minutes looking for it. Can't find it now. Wonder if all losses are being rounded up. That would explain the sudden increase in losses.

Found it in an older mod !:
LAST_PLANE_DIE_FACTOR = 0.5, -- chance to kill last plane if our damage was too low to kill even one plane (1 = 50% chance if it had 50% dmg)

That used to be a define.


Some other defines changed as well, not sure what effect they'd be having.

These are the current ones:
AIR_COMBAT_FINAL_DAMAGE_SCALE = 0.015, -- % how many max disrupted only planes are alloed to die in a single combat
AIR_COMBAT_FINAL_DAMAGE_PLANES = 50, -- scaling/control for when only very few planes exist to stop roundoff issues
AIR_COMBAT_FINAL_DAMAGE_PLANES_FACTOR = 0.1,

whereas before, there was only this:
AIR_COMBAT_FINAL_DAMAGE_SCALE = 0.5, -- % how many max disrupted only planes are alloed to die in a single combat

So... :confused:
 
Found it in an older mod !:
LAST_PLANE_DIE_FACTOR = 0.5, -- chance to kill last plane if our damage was too low to kill even one plane (1 = 50% chance if it had 50% dmg)

That used to be a define.


Some other defines changed as well, not sure what effect they'd be having.

These are the current ones:
AIR_COMBAT_FINAL_DAMAGE_SCALE = 0.015, -- % how many max disrupted only planes are alloed to die in a single combat
AIR_COMBAT_FINAL_DAMAGE_PLANES = 50, -- scaling/control for when only very few planes exist to stop roundoff issues
AIR_COMBAT_FINAL_DAMAGE_PLANES_FACTOR = 0.1,

whereas before, there was only this:
AIR_COMBAT_FINAL_DAMAGE_SCALE = 0.5, -- % how many max disrupted only planes are alloed to die in a single combat

So... :confused:
This would not as much of an issue if the convoys would actually get sunk.