Cruisers or Destroyers for Screening?

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This is due to the fact CA are targeted by capital ships, but can be built such that capital ships have great difficulty hitting them while also having massive light attack. Right? IMO this is a more of an exploit than a real tactic
No, it's because the screening bonus gives them +40% hit rate. Even if the heavy cruisers were getting hit by light attack and torpedoes more often, I still would use heavy cruisers rather than light cruisers because of the damage efficiency boost.
 
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I've always used DDs for screening my capital ships, but I've been wondering lately if you should use CLs instead. Is the extra protection worth the extra production?
General fleet composition tips are also appreciated
If it's vanilla navy build nothing but light cruisers with pure light cruiser guns modules for fighting other navies, destroyers are useless as screens. If anyone tells you differently don't listen to them, i've tested naval battles hundreds of times in saves and with different defines/stat changes and have over 5000 hours now while developing multiple mods.
 
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Roach DDs (cheapest worst thing you can design) with light attack heavy cruisers (one CA gun rest CL guns) is the best fleet design and composition. The side which kills screens fastest usually wins
 
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If it's vanilla navy build nothing but light cruisers with pure light cruiser guns modules for fighting other navies. If anyone tells you differently don't listen to them, i've tested naval battles hundreds of times in saves and with different defines/stat changes and have over 5000 hours now while developing multiple mods.

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Basically, capital ships are pretty useless in the current meta, so you don't need to screen :p
Now seriously the best screens are cheap destroyers, which you can equip with torpedoes and/or depth charges.
CLs are very good at killing enemy screens, which is what you need to win. Basically cheap destroyers with torpedoes with CL with all light guns is all you need to win every engagement. The CLs will melt the enemy screen, then the torpedoes will anihilate enemy capitals. You don't need to research better destroyers, cheap basic ones are fine. Better tech CLs are good though.
 
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Okay, capships are useless, but what's the place of carriers in current meta?
Capships aren't useless, since the +40% bonus to hit capital ships get with full screening efficiency is quite strong and you want to use that in some way. The best way to do this is to build the most cost efficient capital ships which are CAs filled with light gun (except for the one mandatory heavy gun), up to the limit that the number of screen allows. Roach DD + light attack CA > Pure Roach DD.

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(note: irc, this test wasn't the real roach DD, but DDs with just the bottom modules (1 LA, 1 AA and 1 torp). I don't think using true roach DD would change the results, and I doubt fully decked out DDs would change things either)

Also, despite what some over-5000-hours posters would say, DD+CA dumpster pure CL fleets, like el nora points out

Plus, in terms of 1940 tech, you can make those CAs AA ships (you can get close to 15 AA with secondaries) and be able to operate in dangerous skies to some degree, which is beyond the discussion but is a nice bonus. Remember, in Hoi4 capital ship protects screens with their AA, not the other way around!

Carriers aren't bad, but you can't have more than 4 in a task force, so the UK, US and Jap start with enough IRC, no need to build more beyond what starts in the queue. Also, remove all carrier fighters if you're not fighting against other carriers.
 
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if you consider putting your damage-dealing ships behind screens to protect them an exploit, sure. you should make all ships difficult for heavy ships to hit. the real "exploit" is simply that light attack and torpedoes are far cheaper and stronger for fleetkilling than heavy attack is.
1.) The "meta" strat involves using screen-caliber guns (6-inch/155mm and below) as your main armament, which wouldn't have the range to accurately engage from behind screens (aka 0 damage on screen guns if you couldn't fire back). If you're relying on 6-inch guns, then a light cruiser would be in range to shoot you.
2.) Heavy cruisers were never armed with mixed 6-inch and 8-inch guns because of the fire control problems discovered pre-1906 in things like the Spanish-American and Russo-Japanese wars, where accuracy was laughably-bad. Getting a 40% buff from mixed main batteries is the opposite of what would be historic.
3.) The capital line/screen line takes nothing into account regarding the threat of the vessels in question, so a motor gunboat with no torpedoes is apparently a major threat to a light cruiser but a massively-armed pseudo-heavy cruiser is not. Due to the previous points, it then becomes logical that a heavy cruiser actually doesn't need any armor, since light cruisers won't shoot at it and it does nothing versus capital ship weapons (which improves its speed and lowers its cost).

making ships fast = cheese?

i guess the part where your light guns can hit their screens but their screens' light guns can't hit your ships is memey but that also could be interpreted as a tactical choice to target the closer ships first. since light and heavy guns technically can attack both kinds of ship (iirc)
so? you can make light ships even faster since light guns weigh less. if you want to call it unrealistic that's one thing, but making fast ships is fully within intended game design. the real balance changer would be making heavy guns more accurate, but then you risk making light guns useless... though if you make it so they have different accuracies against light/heavy ships then it would incentivize even more mixed fleets (not that the current meta fleet isn't already relatively mixed)

The game for some reason didn't bother to give any modules or techs to improve accuracy, so despite having multiple relevant techs (RADAR, fire control computers, fire control methods) which should improve accuracy over time, instead you have techs to reduce accuracy (high-speed engines) that don't have any equivalent counter, and as mentioned previously the game doesn't take threat into account (the only reason screens were targeted at all was because of torpedoes, without which they wouldn't pose a meaningful threat to capital ships). Consequently, a group of destroyers can maximize speed and minimize cost by having nothing but engines onboard, while heavy cruisers have nothing but light guns (either CL guns or DP secondaries), and the destroyers become virtually unhittable while the CAs are just untargetable CLs with bonus damage output.

All this is without addressing the massive imbalance between light guns and heavy guns/torpedoes, or the ludicrously low-cost of fast ships in the first place (massive engines are very, very expensive and exponentially less-efficient at moving large ships). There's a reason ships like the Mogador doing 40 knots weren't really continued in wartime, it weighs in at around 4000 tons (double a conventional destroyer, and comparable with smaller light cruisers).
 
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1.) The "meta" strat involves using screen-caliber guns (6-inch/155mm and below) as your main armament, which wouldn't have the range to accurately engage from behind screens (aka 0 damage on screen guns if you couldn't fire back). If you're relying on 6-inch guns, then a light cruiser would be in range to shoot you.
2.) Heavy cruisers were never armed with mixed 6-inch and 8-inch guns because of the fire control problems discovered pre-1906 in things like the Spanish-American and Russo-Japanese wars, where accuracy was laughably-bad. Getting a 40% buff from mixed main batteries is the opposite of what would be historic.
3.) The capital line/screen line takes nothing into account regarding the threat of the vessels in question, so a motor gunboat with no torpedoes is apparently a major threat to a light cruiser but a massively-armed pseudo-heavy cruiser is not. Due to the previous points, it then becomes logical that a heavy cruiser actually doesn't need any armor, since light cruisers won't shoot at it and it does nothing versus capital ship weapons (which improves its speed and lowers its cost).




The game for some reason didn't bother to give any modules or techs to improve accuracy, so despite having multiple relevant techs (RADAR, fire control computers, fire control methods) which should improve accuracy over time, instead you have techs to reduce accuracy (high-speed engines) that don't have any equivalent counter, and as mentioned previously the game doesn't take threat into account (the only reason screens were targeted at all was because of torpedoes, without which they wouldn't pose a meaningful threat to capital ships). Consequently, a group of destroyers can maximize speed and minimize cost by having nothing but engines onboard, while heavy cruisers have nothing but light guns (either CL guns or DP secondaries), and the destroyers become virtually unhittable while the CAs are just untargetable CLs with bonus damage output.

All this is without addressing the massive imbalance between light guns and heavy guns/torpedoes, or the ludicrously low-cost of fast ships in the first place (massive engines are very, very expensive and exponentially less-efficient at moving large ships). There's a reason ships like the Mogador doing 40 knots weren't really continued in wartime, it weighs in at around 4000 tons (double a conventional destroyer, and comparable with smaller light cruisers).
light cruisers don't need armor either, or just armor 1. it's worthless because piercing is so bad/good that having "agility" is better, not because no one shoots at you.

your complaints seem to focus more on historical inaccuracies of the game. but i see nothing about how CA + DD fleets are "exploity," i.e. how they are used in a way not intended by the devs, or how they take advantage of mechanics not meant to be accessed normally, or anything like that.
 
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2.) Heavy cruisers were never armed with mixed 6-inch and 8-inch guns because of the fire control problems discovered pre-1906 in things like the Spanish-American and Russo-Japanese wars, where accuracy was laughably-bad. Getting a 40% buff from mixed main batteries is the opposite of what would be historic.
What about like every Japanese/US CA of WW2, carrying array of 5in DP guns along with their 8in main calibre (which is pretty much what you do in game)?
 
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What about like every Japanese/US CA of WW2, carrying array of 5in DP batteries along with their 8in main calibre (which is pretty much what you do in game)?

5-inch DP batteries are:
1.) Not a 6-inch gun, which is considerably more effective (DP secondaries somehow combine the firepower and piercing of a 6-inch gun with the AA of a 4 or 5-inch gun, which is a significant balance problem given that they sacrifice nothing).
2.) Lack the range of cruiser-caliber guns, meaning you can only use them at closer ranges (aka within effective torpedo range).
3.) Most batteries are around 2-8 guns per side (a lot less than I honestly expected). That's around a standard destroyer's firepower, which would imply that the cost-equivalent of destroyers would be significantly better-armed than your heavy cruiser in light attack.

For comparison, if a 4-5 gun Mahan-class (they lost a gun in most refits) has an attack of 1.5 and a piercing of 2, they're going to bleed off most of their firepower against any armor, and require 3 guns to match the attack (and not piercing) of a single DP secondary. Even using DP primaries, 3 DP secondaries on a CA (and no CL guns) can do 13.5 damage before the 40% buff, for 18.9 damage and 8 piercing (making them effective against cruiser armor), versus 6 DDs with a DP primary (~1200 IC each means they cost more than a heavy cruiser before screens are added) only do 18 damage. 5 DDs with minimum guns screening that lighter-than-normal CA give it a further light attack of 5, for about 24 (equivalent to 8 DP primary-armed DDs, for ~9000 IC compared to ~9600 IC).

Compared to reality, where the heaviest secondary batteries on any ship were those of Yamato (per side, 9x6-inch and 6x5-inch guns, equal to 2 CL and 2 DD batteries, should give a total firepower of around 16 light attack assuming 1936 CL guns and DP light guns), the attack that a heavy cruiser can mount with just DP guns compared to triple 6-inch turrets (including 2 on the centerline) is somewhat insane, and most capital ships couldn't fit the centerline secondaries along with a proper main battery (conventional battleships in the US and UK had all their DP guns on the sides, for usually 10 guns per side or ~3-ish DP light guns for 9 light attack per side).

When you then see an all-6-inch heavy cruiser with 1 CA gun, 5 CL guns, and DP secondaries, you're talking about the equivalent of 4x5-inch guns, 24x6-inch guns (assuming ~5 from the 4-6 factor for guns-per-module), and 4x8-inch guns, you have the most heavily-armed cruiser ever conceived in the history of the world. This thing would need DOUBLE the length of a Brooklyn class, so you're probably looking at a cruiser at more-than 300 meters in length (versus 180m for a Brooklyn class, the most heavily-armed CL of WWII with 15x6-inch guns). For perspective, the Yamato measured 256 meters... it would require a battlecruiser hull to even fit the number of guns people spam on their cruisers, because some of the modules you put them on they wouldn't fit into (i.e. the extreme aft of the hull, or inside the main superstructure, given that most centerline turrets had to push other things out of the way).
 
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light cruisers don't need armor either, or just armor 1. it's worthless because piercing is so bad/good that having "agility" is better, not because no one shoots at you.

your complaints seem to focus more on historical inaccuracies of the game. but i see nothing about how CA + DD fleets are "exploity," i.e. how they are used in a way not intended by the devs, or how they take advantage of mechanics not meant to be accessed normally, or anything like that.

For the first point, armor doesn't work as intended but isn't useless. When you have fire superiority you can still have CLs crippled by a lucky critical hit (which might knock off half or more of their experience, besides the damage), and cruiser-2 armor can block that from most light guns (including all that the AI uses). Its mostly for when you know you're going to win, and don't want to waste too much time repairing (not to mention losing a lot of CL experience).

For the second point, there is a singular meta that emphasizes the most irrational design choice for warships by discouraging qualitative design (CAs beat BCs and BBs, despite being logically beaten by them; destroyers also don't benefit in any way from improved gun or torpedo tech or better armaments in general), which implies that the tech tree is actually just a noob trap to waste your time. DD guns aren't worth it, torpedoes aren't worth it, battleship guns aren't worth it, even depth charges aren't worth it. Destroyers literally require no investment of technology whatsoever to hit the apex of their design.

Empty destroyers (or "roach" destroyers) as mentioned above exploit the game's lack of two key balance features: threat-based firing (aka shoot the dangerous ships first) and combat width (cruisers cost a lot more than destroyers, but they aren't actually that much bigger). Gunboat destroyers lack the firepower to be effective compared to cruisers, and since all ships are treated equally as threats you can't engage a cruiser with another cruiser or focus-fire it down with your own ships because as a capital ship, its out of range (and without threat mechanics, a CL isn't really focus-fired so much as sporadically-engaged).

The other problem with light guns is obviously more than just CAs are broken, because if you don't fix anything else then CLs or BCs replace CAs as the new broken ship (but at least are more historically accurate, since they can use a historical armament to do this rather than an ahistorical one; they also offer better balance, since BCs are expensive and CLs can be killed by other screens). However, CAs as the cheapest capital ship really shouldn't be better than super-heavy battleships in a straight-up gun duel, as that implies that there is literally no purpose whatsoever in the production of battleships. If that isn't historically accurate, then having it in game serves neither balance purposes (battleships have a huge stack of weaknesses associated with their vulnerability to cheaper submarines, destroyers, or aircraft, as well as their reduced numbers and their extremely-long build times).
 
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Light cruisers have been meta for a while destroyers are useless against light cruisers. So in your main battlefleet ideally you would want nothing but light cruisers as your screens and your destroyers should just be used to hunt enemy subs and escort conveys. 10 properly fitted out 1940 light cruisers can kill 100s of destroyers without losing anything.

But since naval warfare in vanilla is just two giant blob fights between both navies you want everything possible in your doomstack when engaging the enemy fleet. Fleet comp is 4 Carrers, as many battleships/ Battlecruisers as you can, then cram all your light cruisers and destroyers.
 
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Light cruisers have been meta for a while destroyers are useless against light cruisers. So in your main battlefleet ideally you would want nothing but light cruisers as your screens and your destroyers should just be used to hunt enemy subs and escort conveys. 10 properly fitted out 1940 light cruisers can kill 100s of destroyers without losing anything.
I'm not sure where you get that armored CLs are the "meta", but it for sure wasn't in any MP discord I used play, and I've never seen any test that corroborate to that. In this very page. El nora has already showed an example of CLs getting dumpstered by DD + CA. Here is something similar with 1940 tech:

Full light attack armored CL 20 x 6259 IC = 125180
vs
Full light attack CA (with AA secondaries!): 10 x 5755 = 57500
Base DD (1 AA, 1 light attack, 1 torp): 57 x 1178 = 67146

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It's probably worth noting that the historical "meta" evolved as the war went on, to stop building heavy ships (BB/BC) and move to cruisers* and destroyers for a surface fleet. So the light attack CA + DD meta is like the HT3/mech meta on land: people with historic insight and knowledge of game mechanics jumping as quickly as possible to end-of-war tech.

*The heavy/light cruiser distinction was somewhat arbitrary and had at least as much to do with avoiding the naval treaties (by building more and larger "light" cruisers) than with a sober assessment of the costs and capabilities of each design. I'm okay with CA as capital ship + DD swarm as the meta, because that's kind of how every navy besides the United States ended up. And even the USN ended up dropping its battleships, just sixty-odd years later.
 
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Fleet comp is 4 Carrers, as many battleships/ Battlecruisers as you can, then cram all your light cruisers and destroyers.
Is there every any point in building more than 4 carriers? As the US you start off with 5 CVs (once all starting production is completed) and my OCD didn't want to leave one extra CV hanging around, so I built it some friends with the idea of having two strike forces. But now I realise this is pretty dumb as why would you ever want to have your strike forces split? Should I have just made BBs and BCs from that point on?
 
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torpedoes aren't worth it
If the enemy is using armoured capital ships, torpedoes are often mixed into the destroyers. The HP pool and the armour of BC+ capitals can make light attack considerably less effective, your alternatives are heavy attack, or torpedoes. Torpedoes are going to be considerably cheaper to add into a fleet than heavy attack is. Roach DD with a sub component of torpedo DD, supporting heavy cruisers is the basic 1-2 combo of doomstack fleet engagements.

On the whole though I'm not sure what purpose your ranting is supposed to serve here. I'm willing to bet that everyone would like the naval game/designer to be at least a little bit different than what it is, but the purpose of the thread and a lot of the comments you're replying to, is working within the system as it stands. Yes, it isn't historical and yes it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, but it is what we have to work with.
 
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Is there every any point in building more than 4 carriers? As the US you start off with 5 CVs (once all starting production is completed) and my OCD didn't want to leave one extra CV hanging around, so I built it some friends with the idea of having two strike forces. But now I realise this is pretty dumb as why would you ever want to have your strike forces split? Should I have just made BBs and BCs from that point on?
Having an extra CV isn't entirely pointless. Sure, it can't go in your doomstack, but you can just park it in a sea zone with enemy submarines (with a few destroyers to be safe), put your naval bombers up and watch enemy subs die like flies.

As the UK, killing subs with carriers is pretty much the best passtime between start of war and invasion of France/Italy declaring.
 
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Is there every any point in building more than 4 carriers? As the US you start off with 5 CVs (once all starting production is completed) and my OCD didn't want to leave one extra CV hanging around, so I built it some friends with the idea of having two strike forces. But now I realise this is pretty dumb as why would you ever want to have your strike forces split? Should I have just made BBs and BCs from that point on?
unless you are really into microing carriers on manual missions, just delete the less built one. and also the trash ca with armor 3 that is costing you chromium while you're at it.
 
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