Naval Rebalance | Designer Corner

[=XIII=Wedge]

Loving the naval rebalance. Could you look to increasing the probability that Japan and Italy don’t sign the 2nd LNT on historical and also add a prerequisite for the ultimate battleship focus in the Japanese tree for Japan to not be a LNT signatory. Otherwise Japan get two part build Yamato class SHBB despite the restrictions being in place.

 

[scrublord225]

Any chance you guys look at how resource cost for modules work, always felt as it significantly nerfs bigger hulls that take longer, as your paying the resource cost longer. Created weird situations where I'd be throwing all the bells and whistles on cruisers but sparingly using outdated guns with lower steel costs on battleships.

 

[twillie96]

1. Will fire control techs also increase hit chances now instead of providing extra firepower?

2. Is the 10% cap to hit chance applied before or after external hit chance modifiers are factored in?

 

[Axe99]

As you're the resident expert for all things naval, I appreciate your additions (and yes, actual land-based torpedo bombers as opposed to normal bombers - what the game calls TACs - were rather rarely seen in the war which makes historical comparisons hard to make but is also another reason to nerf them). As you point out, defensive fighters and improved AA (whether radar-directed or otherwise) were quite effective at repelling NAVs. Perhaps the way to nerf NAVs is to make ship AA modules lower the effectiveness of the enemy fleet strike mission. After all, if bombers have to wildly maneuver to avoid being hit by the AA fire, their accuracy will be drastically diminished or if they're TACs they will have to stay very high and go for inefficient level bombing runs (see B-25s at Midway which didn't score any hits IIRC).

I'm perhaps the resident enthusiast for posting naval-themed pics, but I wouldn't go any further than that * Your thoughts are sound though - something like that where AA had more of an impact in terms of disrupting NAVs relative to CAS (as the firing solution on dive bombers was a lot harder than on torpedo bombers, particularly in the first years of the war). It's worth bearing in mind that the max speed and drop height for aerial torpedoes increased massively during the war (in 1941, the US Mk 13 had a max drop height of about 15 metres, and max drop speed of 110 knots, and by 1945 it was 730 metres and 410 knots), so if something like this was introduced, it could perhaps be partially offset by later-war torpedo techs (allowing a bit of to-and-fro).

I really like your idea about the impact on level bombing as well. It'd be far too detailed for HoI4 (although don't let me stop you, devs ) to have a squadron toggle for "high level" (fewer losses, far fewer hits) or "masthead" (more hits, but many more losses) bombing, and then the potential to send companion heavy fighters along to suppress AA for masthead attacks (reducing the losses). But I can dream

Edit: also, I re-read what I wrote about Crete - "catastrophic" is probably a bit too much, and have edited it to "very severe".

* More seriously, I've only read about 90-odd books on naval history that touch on WW2 - and as is so common in so many areas, the more I read, the more I realise I don't know - there's plenty I'm pretty clueless on - although it'd certainly be possible to be very familiar with a particular topic or theme from one or two well-chosen books

 

[SEMPER FI]

The proposed changes look promising! Some suggestion and comments (as posted before https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/mtg-issues-recommendations.1520324/):

Things need fixing:
• Inherit function: New ship models don’t inherit the modules types of the parent model vessel.
• Refit: While the AI creates updated ship models, the AI does not refit them. Refitting should be a priority for most AI navies.
• Obsolete: The AI still builds ships marked “obsolete”. Obsolete ships should be available for refitting only.

Suggestions:
• AI strategy for “Naval Avoid Region Surface Ship Only”: similar to “Naval Avoid Region” but applies to surface ships only. For example: When entering the war, this prevents the US AI from suiciding their surface navy into the home waters around Japan, but still allows submarines to operate in those naval regions.
• AI command for “Refit Only” (if unable to fix “Obsolete” function): dictates certain ships the AI will only refit and not build new ones. For example: The AI should not build any “early battleship hulls” (obsolete by the 1930s), but allowed to upgrade these ships modules as desired.
• AI Training Fleet: The AI should form a training fleet, even in wartime, to train newly constructed ships.
• “Equipment production min dockyard”: Similar to the AI strategy “equipment_production_min_factories” but geared toward setting the minimum number of dockyards needed to build a certain class of ship – helps ensure capital ships /carriers have more than one dockyard assigned to them.
• Variable sized AAA and torpedo mounts: Ships larger than DDs, often carried an extensive array of AAA not adequately represented by the allowed module slots. For example: In 1943, a USN Farragut Class DD possessed 4 x 40mm Bofors guns and 8 x 20mm Oerlikon autocannons. In comparison in the same year, the USN North Carolina Class BB possessed 60 x 40mm Bofors and 46 x 20mm Oerlikons – over 8 x times AAA fire power as the Farragut. The same goes for cruiser mounted torpedoes. Some navies cruisers carried more torpedoes than their respective destroyers. For example, the Kriegsmarine Admiral Hipper Class heavy cruiser carried 12 x 533mm (21 in.) torpedoes while most German DDs only carried 8 x 533mm torpedoes. I recommend creating DD, CA/CL and BB sized AAA and Torpedo mounts each with a corresponding increase in production cost and attack factor.
• Adding a ~1943 sonar tech to represent the advances in sonar technology.
• Ship catapults should also increase the ships chances to hit. Besides scouting, floatplanes provided naval gunfire spotting for the parent ship. Note: only 1 scout plane bonus pers hip.
• Escort Vessel: new ship “Type” (not role) for vessels geared toward escorting convoys and patrolling. No need to add a new tech, just unlock with the appropriate light ship hull techs.
• Auxiliary vessel: new ship “Type” (not role) for vessels geared toward non-combat roles such as mine warfare functions. These vessels should form in their own TFs and avoid combat. Also, enable the AI to execute mining/minesweeping more often that currently set. No need to add a new tech, just unlock with the appropriate light ship hull techs.

 

[twillie96]

So, I've carefully put a naval pic in my reply to the DD thread for years, and then I forget to do this in the Naval Rebalance DD! Scroll down for me remembering, and so this thread has a dual-purpose (boom boom ).



This comment and those below are to add some data/perspective to your points - I'm just another punter, so could be wrong, but generally speaking unopposed NAVs and aircraft more generally were quite dangerous to ships, particularly prior to enough density of AA and radar-directed AA gunfire.

From the operations around Norway, onwards, the RN was very aware of the danger of air attack - and the Luftwaffe did to substantial damage to the RN. The results of the Battle of Crete were very severe - if you read Cunningham's (C-in-C Med Fleet at the time) biography at the time, it does not give the impression of a "lacklustre" performance (indeed, I haven't read an account that suggests anything other than that the RN suffered considerably under airpower while trying to defend Crete). However, the point is kind-of moot as the aircraft used (Ju-87s and Ju-88s) were CAS and TAC aircraft in HoI4, rather than NAVs (it's hard to characterise any of Germany's operational aircraft in WW2 as a NAV, which in HoI4 as best I understand it represents a dedicated torpedo bomber).

In terms of a sample of the damage done during 21-23 May 1941, though, by German aircraft, we have (all damage and sinking being done by bombs, so as per the above, not really NAV territory):
- Warspite damaged structurally to the point it was considered unsafe to fire the main armament - had temporary repairs in Alexandria and then sent to the US for permanent repairs.
- Cruisers Gloucester and Fiji sunk (that's not far of 20,000 tons of shipping gone, within a handful of hours).
- Cruisers Naiad (two turrets put out of action) and Carlisle (captain killed) damaged.
- At least (I'm going from my notes, which are not comprehensive) destroyers Kelly, Kashmir and Greyhound sunk.

After the Battle of Crete, the operational strength of the RN in the Eastern Med was substantially reduced, and it was pretty much entirely due to German airpower. The info above is drawn from a range of sources, including A Sailor's Odyssey, British Battleships of World War Two, HMAS Perth and N Class.



It was also because of the lethal nature of US radar-directed AA gunfire, as well as the radar-directed defensive fighter cover - it was just more efficient to use kamikaze than conventional attacks, although it's important to bear in mind that in April 1945 (when Okinawa was invaded) kamikazes did not form the majority of attacks on US ships (at least those that got through to the AA guns). From Naval Anti-aircraft Guns and Gunnery:

- By April 1945, US CAPS were shooting down 33.6 per cent of regular attackers and 50 per cent of kamikazes.
- However, Kamikazes that got through CAP were much more likely to hit a ship, so much more efficient in terms of hits/aircraft lost.
- Between Oct 44 and Apr 45, 2.7 per cent of conventional attackers hit ships, compared with 27 per cent of kamikazes
- While kamikazes were very dangerous, it's worth noting that in Apr-45, only 35 per cent of aircraft fired at by US fleet were kamikazes




It's also not clear the loss of Prince of Wales and Repulse was to NAVs - I'm going from memory and could be wrong (my memory's a bit wobbly), but I thought the attack was by G3s and G4s - which were long-range general-purpose bombing aircraft (ie, TACs) rather than specialist torpedo-bombers - although given they were a unit specially trained in attacking ships, they might be appropriate to be considered NAVs in a HoI4 sense - it's not entirely clear how to map back the HoI4 aircraft classifications in relation to NAVs back to historical aircraft, as there were very few land-based aircraft designed primarily for a torpedo-attack role (the only one I can think of is the Bristiol Beaufort, and that was still used for general bombing as well).



The biggest solution to doomstacking, imo, is to reflect the need to cover multiple parts of the ocean at once. If the Regia Marina stays largely intact, the RN shouldn't be able to concentrate Germany (and vice versa in terms of the Germans keeping some kind of effective fleet). Britain should have to cover a significant area of sea against raiders and submarines (assuming sensible opposition play).

It's worth bearing in mind that nations could and did use doomstacking, and it could be done very effectively, when the strategic situation called for it. With the German fleet bottled up in WW1, the British "doomstacked" at Jutland - and in terms of their main battle line, used it quite well (best we keep the British BC issues out of this) - but in WW2, when the Germans had longer-ranged raiders, and then control over the Norwegian coastline, the RN couldn't be confident of stopping German capital ships in the North Sea, and at one point had BBs escorting convoys (and it was important they did). Then, once Italy entered the war, and France exited, they had to cover a far greater range of areas, against greater opposition (for example, in the Med, forces were required at both ends, to counter the RM in the middle).

The other thing that's not represented in HoI4, as well, are ships in for refit, bottom and boiler-cleaning and so on - so unless damaged (and even then) all ships are available all of the time. I'm not saying this should change, but it's another reason why fleet sizes in action may be larger than they were historically.



If we classify the trained and torpedo-bearing SM-79's, then we do have NAVs in this action, but most of the attackers here were still CAS and TACs. And the reason they didn't do so well was radar-directed fighter control, combined with improved AA from the RN. As soon as defensive fighters are in the mix, torpedo attacks can be particularly difficult (Midway being an extreme example of this) and it makes it harder to assess the effectiveness of NAVs vs the effectiveness of CAPs.

For an overdue naval-themed pic, here's a diagram of the British automatic 6in that was under development towards the end of the war (my guess is a corollary to the 1944 DP tech) but which didn't actually enter service until much later - image from the excellent Navweaps site.

View attachment 846094

I think the main issue in Hoi4 with naval bombing is that we lack effective countermeasures, not that they are too overpowered compared to IRL. It's just that IRL, they could be countered fairly effectively too

 

[tract]

These values effectively cap out super soon, so investing into Naval AA is one of those numerous newbie-traps HoI4 is famous for. You also need to change values in defines_00.lua (those we're allowed, that's it) to make it work, i.e.:

NDefines.NNavy.SHIP_TO_FLEET_ANTI_AIR_RATIO
NDefines.NNavy.ANTI_AIR_POW_ON_INCOMING_AIR_DAMAGE
NDefines.NNavy.MAX_ANTI_AIR_REDUCTION_EFFECT_ON_INCOMING_AIR_DAMAGE

I'm possibly missing something, but going by the "received air damage" formula,

1 - ( (ship_anti_air + fleet_anti_air * SHIP_TO_FLEET_ANTI_AIR_RATIO )^ANTI_AIR_POW_ON_INCOMING_AIR_DAMAGE ) * ANTI_AIR_MULT_ON_INCOMING_AIR_DAMAGE

then the damage dealt for a fleet of five ships with one 1936 anti-air each is 80% (damage reduction 20%), and for _three_ 1943 anti-air each is 69% (damage reduction 31%)

I would expect the damage REDUCTION in the latter case to be well over 80% but instead it's a pitiful 31%. With that amount of anti-air I'd expect them to shoot every seagull, gnat and mosquito out of the sky, but they can't defend against one plane with a torpedo underwing?

It's basically impossible to get the damage reduction down to anywhere near the set cap of 50%. You need a fleet of 110 ships with three top-of-the-line anti-air modules EACH to even hit it.

 

[Kommunist Fried Chicken]

What about carriers? The balance problems of carriers are serious too, both for planes and modules. And I think visibility effect more than speed, if you don't reduce the ways to reduce visibility, your works won't help a lot.
And do you have any plan to add more armor type and even add armor for destroyers? Like all-or-nothing or something like that

By the way, here's my suggesting thread about the navy battel. What about check it once more? I found some my suggestions meet your plans by coincidence.

 

[tract]

Wait what:
( (visibility * 100) / ( (speed/2) + 15) )

Why not just:
( (visibility * 50) / (speed + 30) )

that is not the same. Take a ship with 35 speed & 10 visibility, it has a hit profile of 31 with the new calculation. your calculation would give a hit profile of 8 for that same ship.

He obviously meant (visibility * 200 / (speed + 30))

 

[$ilent_$trider]

He obviously meant (visibility * 200 / (speed + 30))

Still, not the same thing.

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

So firstly the naval tech tree has been split into 2, the naval tab contains hulls and tech directly linked to hulls. Let's take a look at what that looks like.

View attachment 845474
As you can see it's much more concise than before, armor techs have been combined so each level will unlock both heavy and cruiser armours and are not linked to any specific hulls. SH armor still remains part of the super heavy battleship.

Moving on to the new “Naval Support” tab.

View attachment 845481
View attachment 845482

Here you will see quite a difference from the old tech tree.

One could argue that guns are more "directly linked to hull" than smokescreens, sonar or catapults. While separating tech in several tabs for ease of navigation is a good thing, more logical would be to group those according to bonus: making, say, a "cruiser" tab would be an overkill, but there is a specific bonus for modules, for example. I'd say that moving all modules to separate tab would be much more logical.

Hit profiles & damage ("well the front fell off")

Quick primer on hit profile in case you don't know what they are. A Hit profile is the calculation used to determine how easy it is to hit a ship. This hit profile is then divided by the accuracy of the weapon type a ship is firing (10 * (Hitprofile/weaponaccuracy)^2).

Any other effects that affect hit chances such as weather/time of day are applied to the final value. Currently the live game calculation for a hit profile is the ( (visibility * 100) / speed) .

So a ship with a high hit profile will be easier to hit than one with a small hit profile.

A change to the hit profile calculation is aimed to reduce the impact of speed on hit chance and should flatten the effect of speed for much slower ships. The current but not final working formula is:

( (visibility * 100) / ( (speed/2) + 15) )

While part of the problem, speed was but a final nail in the coffin of battleships, which were already dead due to horrific cost/performance ratio (resulted from a multitude of reasons), and hardly impacted anything else. Visibility, however, made Trade Interdiction (along with other visibility-reducing measures) an absolute meta for fleet engagements - something that is not being addressed, I see.

In addition to this there have been some other changes for hit chance

• New hit chance modifiers that affect hit chance in the same way that weather affects hit chance. The new modifiers replace existing stat modifiers for modules/tech.
• Radar and fire control increase light and heavy guns hit chance
• homing torpedoes now increase torpedo hit chance
• Base critical chance is reduced

View attachment 845501

While step in the right direction, I fear these will not be impactful enough if multiplicative.

Spotting

• Spotting is now min capped at 0.01% progress per hour, so you will always spot a task force after 10,000 hours (417 days)
• Random chance to instantly spot (encounter) equal to your hourly progress, so if you have a 4% hourly progress you also have a 4% chance to “encounter” a task force.
• Sub and surface detections for a task force are now listed in the task force information tooltip.

View attachment 845502

So floatplanes are still useless on combat ships? Okay.

Fleet Composition

First joining an ongoing battle was very painful and making strike forces much less useful this should be much less of an issue with much lower and shorter lived penalties for positioning.

View attachment 845503
Additionally SUPREMACY_PER_SHIP_BASE has been reduced from 100>75 so that IC and manpower have a greater impact on naval supremacy.
MAX_POSITIONING_PENALTY_FROM_HIGHER_SHIP_RATIO Has been increase from50% to 75%.
finally convoys no longer count as carriers for screening but instead need 0.5 screens (rounding up) per convoy.

Speaking of carriers, leaving them impotent is still intended design, I take it? Right now the opportunity cost is too high to bother. Not to mention, entire doctrine focused on buffing only 4-5 ships in your fleet feels more like a noobtrap than anything else (unless it buffs said ships to ludicrous degree, which it does not).

Ship Designer

The ship designer has some of the most major changes to existing ships and modules. Let's go through them by groupings..

Firstly I want to say that you can no longer have both medium cruiser and light cruiser guns on the same design, fitting both will invalidate the design. This will eliminate one of the largest exploits in current ship design and should prevent ships being unintentionally protected by screening.

Seeing how you can achieve similar (although not a stellar one-shot) results by mounting secondaries or DP guns, I don't see how this is supposed to solves anything. Not to mention, that light cruiser guns only add their HP once, so there was little reason to mount more than one.

Now we will get into some gritty details of the current value changes for the rebalance.

(RED=changed values, BLUE=New values and BLACK=unchanged)

Changes to speed,reliability and Production cost.

View attachment 845504
View attachment 845505
View attachment 845506
View attachment 845507
View attachment 845508
View attachment 845509

Changes to speed for hulls

View attachment 845510
View attachment 845512

On speed it should be much harder to get 40kt ships now - faster ships hover around ~35kt with slower ships being in the 30kt range. Some older ships and submarines remain well below 30kt and will need upgrading if you want their speed to match modern ships.

I get a sneaking suspicion that no one actually ran the numbers, and values were simply trimmed to "X per level". Instead of tables, it would be nice to see actual comparison of combat tests to show what these changes achieve and why "X" works better than "Y".

Submarine Visibility

View attachment 845513

Now these are the normal changes to modules and ships, but that's not all we have some new modifiers that are replacing or adding to existing modules too.

Fire control/Radar

View attachment 845514

View attachment 845515

Torpedoes
View attachment 845516

View attachment 845517

But what about Depth Charges hit chance? Will they still hit modern subs only once in blue moon, making air the only realistic counter?

 

[Frankkrieke]

Changes looking good!

Have you thought about adding plane deck modules for battleships and cruisers, considering certain Japanese ships were some kind of hybrid cv/bb or cv/ca (like the Ise, Tone and I-400)?

 

[DukofDeth]

The proposed changes look promising! Some suggestion and comments (as posted before https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/mtg-issues-recommendations.1520324/):

Things need fixing:
• Inherit function: New ship models don’t inherit the modules types of the parent model vessel.
• Refit: While the AI creates updated ship models, the AI does not refit them. Refitting should be a priority for most AI navies.
• Obsolete: The AI still builds ships marked “obsolete”. Obsolete ships should be available for refitting only.

Suggestions:
• AI strategy for “Naval Avoid Region Surface Ship Only”: similar to “Naval Avoid Region” but applies to surface ships only. For example: When entering the war, this prevents the US AI from suiciding their surface navy into the home waters around Japan, but still allows submarines to operate in those naval regions.
• AI command for “Refit Only” (if unable to fix “Obsolete” function): dictates certain ships the AI will only refit and not build new ones. For example: The AI should not build any “early battleship hulls” (obsolete by the 1930s), but allowed to upgrade these ships modules as desired.
• AI Training Fleet: The AI should form a training fleet, even in wartime, to train newly constructed ships.
• “Equipment production min dockyard”: Similar to the AI strategy “equipment_production_min_factories” but geared toward setting the minimum number of dockyards needed to build a certain class of ship – helps ensure capital ships /carriers have more than one dockyard assigned to them.
• Variable sized AAA and torpedo mounts: Ships larger than DDs, often carried an extensive array of AAA not adequately represented by the allowed module slots. For example: In 1943, a USN Farragut Class DD possessed 4 x 40mm Bofors guns and 8 x 20mm Oerlikon autocannons. In comparison in the same year, the USN North Carolina Class BB possessed 60 x 40mm Bofors and 46 x 20mm Oerlikons – over 8 x times AAA fire power as the Farragut. The same goes for cruiser mounted torpedoes. Some navies cruisers carried more torpedoes than their respective destroyers. For example, the Kriegsmarine Admiral Hipper Class heavy cruiser carried 12 x 533mm (21 in.) torpedoes while most German DDs only carried 8 x 533mm torpedoes. I recommend creating DD, CA/CL and BB sized AAA and Torpedo mounts each with a corresponding increase in production cost and attack factor.
• Adding a ~1943 sonar tech to represent the advances in sonar technology.
• Ship catapults should also increase the ships chances to hit. Besides scouting, floatplanes provided naval gunfire spotting for the parent ship. Note: only 1 scout plane bonus pers hip.
• Escort Vessel: new ship “Type” (not role) for vessels geared toward escorting convoys and patrolling. No need to add a new tech, just unlock with the appropriate light ship hull techs.
• Auxiliary vessel: new ship “Type” (not role) for vessels geared toward non-combat roles such as mine warfare functions. These vessels should form in their own TFs and avoid combat. Also, enable the AI to execute mining/minesweeping more often that currently set. No need to add a new tech, just unlock with the appropriate light ship hull techs.

This would work well for the AI if the training fleet functioned like a secondary reserve pool wherein the ships would train then once trained would be sent to the main reserve pool which would refill the fleets.

 

[C0RAX]

While part of the problem, speed was but a final nail in the coffin of battleships, which were already dead due to horrific cost/performance ratio (resulted from a multitude of reasons), and hardly impacted anything else. Visibility, however, made Trade Interdiction (along with other visibility-reducing measures) an absolute meta for fleet engagements - something that is not being addressed, I see.

Trade Interdiction has it's surface visibility reductions removed, undecided if and what will replace them.

 

[Qwerlancer]

Overall are great. But there is still an important problem should be addressed : Diminishing returns of naval AA . It should become the higher the better instead of discouraging invest in naval AA.

 

[cac579]

I wonder if it would be easier to balance if all the modules and hulls had a tonnage stat that determined the speed of the ship.

 

[MrPoKa]

Okay Paradox, you can announce now that will be a focus tree and flavor for Brazil in the next expansion, because it's too obvious now brow lmao

 

[atomicsub]

Are there any plans to add new ship hulls for escort carriers? I.E. A cheap version of a carrier used to escort fleets of merchant ships. That carry anti-submarine aircraft. Additionally are there any plans to address the fact that supposedly submarines with snorkels and submarine IVs are far too overpowered at the moment against an enemy fleet. (This is a claim I'm skeptical of)

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Trade Interdiction has it's surface visibility reductions removed, undecided if and what will replace them.

Did you also decide to axe Coastal Defence designer bonus, by chance? It's long overdue, IMO.

 

[Kizzaris]

Will historical ships designs be correct in line with real life? This's the in-game design of the Admiral Graf Spee:

In the actual designer it was impossible to put a heavy gun battery in the stern. In reality it was different. Based on the in-game ships designs, Graf Spee is twice as weak in firepower as Dunkerque. Here's historical design of Graf Spee:

P.S.
Waiting for the pack with ship models xD