PS: Before we start let me say the part about convoys is still not rdy. I will go for it next week, for now i finished the Big fleet math. This guide was made to be a kind of foundation stone so we can have better and more complete guides later.
This will also not cover most material already posted on the Hoi4wiki.
http://www.hoi4wiki.com/Naval_warfare
I used 1936 ships only.
Mostly because they will be 90%+ of the ships build in any game, sometimes you get some 1940 but the balance of power stays the same. (A 1940 BC will not beat a BB2 in single combat).
No Doctrines unless said otherwise. (Used brazil and argentina that have 0 naval doctrines at start)
No admirals (They mess with the calculation increasing coordination and hit chance).
No manufacturers or military staff (again, they get in the way).
Well, thats said. Enjoy!
Naval Guide
This guide was made to become the foundation stone of future and better guides. It brings lots of testing and math from the defines.lua to find out little details that are spread around tons of topics.
This will also come with a Naval Guide for each Major later. (next 2 weeks).
First lets see what i found in the Lua Files.
There is also details about AA and other details but i was unable to figure out the formula or they matter very little for the results below.
Criticals are very dangerous, even more from big ships and if they pierce armor they get a huge boost.
Torpedos are nice but as you can see there is a fix for spam. This means DD´s and LC´s are not actually good for dmg.
Armor is Huge. But armor is also a upgrade that mostly only work against ships of the same class. Its possible but hard to make for example a BC armor surpass a BB piercing, but it will work wonders vs other BC´s.
Im very unsure about the hit chance but evasion but i don´t think im reading them wrong. (if someone think please warn me and i will edit).
Now lets talk about the ships themselves. This will be a very fast talk só we can go straight to the important information.
Submarines
Submarines are very good against convoys and can get tons of kills if used propely.
Due to how detection in the navy works they work better in small fleets "swarming" a few naval regions, this will increase the chance of them being intercepted.
About combat submarines have a lot of problems:
- They run from capital ships no matter how much you bring. (even the ones without depth charges).
- if you bring them with other ships they make the other ships more prone to flee with them
- Take around 2 days to get into a fight
- Will not defend capital ships from fire.
- Very low HP (10-20-30-35), Enough to run/die from 1 good shot.
With this i found its very hard to build them for that purpose. ITs fine to bring the ones your nation starts with but i would not bother making them if my objective is to sink the enemy fleet.
Below there are the screenshots of my tests. You don´t need to see them but if you like to know the numbers here it is.
This will also not cover most material already posted on the Hoi4wiki.
http://www.hoi4wiki.com/Naval_warfare
I used 1936 ships only.
Mostly because they will be 90%+ of the ships build in any game, sometimes you get some 1940 but the balance of power stays the same. (A 1940 BC will not beat a BB2 in single combat).
No Doctrines unless said otherwise. (Used brazil and argentina that have 0 naval doctrines at start)
No admirals (They mess with the calculation increasing coordination and hit chance).
No manufacturers or military staff (again, they get in the way).
Well, thats said. Enjoy!
Naval Guide
This guide was made to become the foundation stone of future and better guides. It brings lots of testing and math from the defines.lua to find out little details that are spread around tons of topics.
This will also come with a Naval Guide for each Major later. (next 2 weeks).
First lets see what i found in the Lua Files.
Base hit chance = 0.1 (10%)
Minimum Hit chance = 0.01 (1%)
Armor = Reduces damage by 90%
Critical chance = 10% - (Reliability).
Critical dmg multiplier = x5
Critical dmg multiplier bonus = x3 (You get this if your gun pierce the enemy armor)
Torpedo critical chance = 20%
Torpedo Crit. Dmg = x2
dmg randomness = 30% (So if a ship does 10dmg in reality it does between 7-10 dmg).
Cl/DD torpedo range = 4
Chance of CL/DD using a torpedo = 25% (if roll fails they will use their guns instead).
Evasion chance = Evasion Stats x 0.007
Ex: DD evasion 70*0,007 = 0,49 = - 49% hit chance penalty.
That means to reach 100% you would need close to 145 Evasion. (DDIV have 95)
Evasion cap = 0.1 (that would be -1% hit chance, but im very unsure about this as that would make all evasion bonus on CL´s and DD`s mostly useless).
Plane Cap = 200 (max amount of planes that can participate in a run)
Minimum Hit chance = 0.01 (1%)
Armor = Reduces damage by 90%
Critical chance = 10% - (Reliability).
Critical dmg multiplier = x5
Critical dmg multiplier bonus = x3 (You get this if your gun pierce the enemy armor)
Torpedo critical chance = 20%
Torpedo Crit. Dmg = x2
dmg randomness = 30% (So if a ship does 10dmg in reality it does between 7-10 dmg).
Cl/DD torpedo range = 4
Chance of CL/DD using a torpedo = 25% (if roll fails they will use their guns instead).
Evasion chance = Evasion Stats x 0.007
Ex: DD evasion 70*0,007 = 0,49 = - 49% hit chance penalty.
That means to reach 100% you would need close to 145 Evasion. (DDIV have 95)
Evasion cap = 0.1 (that would be -1% hit chance, but im very unsure about this as that would make all evasion bonus on CL´s and DD`s mostly useless).
Plane Cap = 200 (max amount of planes that can participate in a run)
There is also details about AA and other details but i was unable to figure out the formula or they matter very little for the results below.
Criticals are very dangerous, even more from big ships and if they pierce armor they get a huge boost.
Torpedos are nice but as you can see there is a fix for spam. This means DD´s and LC´s are not actually good for dmg.
Armor is Huge. But armor is also a upgrade that mostly only work against ships of the same class. Its possible but hard to make for example a BC armor surpass a BB piercing, but it will work wonders vs other BC´s.
Im very unsure about the hit chance but evasion but i don´t think im reading them wrong. (if someone think please warn me and i will edit).
Now lets talk about the ships themselves. This will be a very fast talk só we can go straight to the important information.
Submarines
Submarines are very good against convoys and can get tons of kills if used propely.
Due to how detection in the navy works they work better in small fleets "swarming" a few naval regions, this will increase the chance of them being intercepted.
About combat submarines have a lot of problems:
- They run from capital ships no matter how much you bring. (even the ones without depth charges).
- if you bring them with other ships they make the other ships more prone to flee with them
- Take around 2 days to get into a fight
- Will not defend capital ships from fire.
- Very low HP (10-20-30-35), Enough to run/die from 1 good shot.
With this i found its very hard to build them for that purpose. ITs fine to bring the ones your nation starts with but i would not bother making them if my objective is to sink the enemy fleet.
Destroyers(DD)
Destroyers are the spine of your fleet. They will take fire from all other ships before anyone else protecting your capital ships from fire.
Problem is they only have evasion to help them survive and their HP is quite low. So better destroyers can improve your fleet life much more than for example a better Battleship as this will allow a destroyer to survive more shots.
Their attack of 1.5 with a useless piercing will make sure their guns real dmg is below 1 against anything that is not also a destroyer unless they use torpedos. (Everytime he shoots there is a 25% chance for him to do it).
You should always bring a good number of them, the side who loses destroyers first is usually the side that loses, but becareful, too much destroyers will also mean your fleet will lose its balance and deal very little dmg.
Balance is key here.
Oh. And expect very high casualities. IF 2 large fleets meet expect almost all of them to die to avoid you losing much more expensive ships.
Light Cruisers (LC)
Light cruisers are the key to defeat destroyers. They kill them in droves thanks to his potent gun (8dmg) and torpedo (also 8dmg). The fact it has armor the DD´s can´t pierce make sure they are mostly safe from anything the destroyer can do to him.
1LC can easily kill 4-5 DD´s even without escort.
So just bring LC´s and forget destroyers? not that easy.
While LC´s are nice to kill DD´s they are horrible to hold capital ship fire. Add that to the fact 1 LC = 3 less DD´s and you can easily become too thin in the destroyer quantity.
LC´s need DD´s protection to survive and do their job. They are very specialized.
Vs capital ships his guns are useless, the torpedos can do nice dmg but again, they are always going to be few in numbers and the 25% chance breaks them hard.
Heavy Cruisers(CA)
First capital ship. Good dmg. (can make a DD2 flee with 1 good shot), good range and good HP.
That capital ship is the last line of defense and your first ship to have real teeth.
CA job is to kill DD´s and CL´s and they will do that faster than anyone else. In fact a CA+ DD spam is very effective against other fleets with a bad Screen/Capital ratio.
But don´t start rushing them yet. They don´t have teeth like the big ships and a good proportion of them will make sure the enemy will survive until both sides lose their DD´s. Once that happens the big ships superior firepower will start killing your CA´s one by one.
So you want a good amount of them but not a spam.
Battlecruisers(BC)
First capital ship with real teeth. Mostly because of its range and being close to invulnerable to smaller ships.
Their price is also well balanced (7500) and this turns them into meat grinders of smaller ships being very good at killing Heavy cruisers and CL´s.
Of course if you ignore heavy cruisers and only build them you will become too thin. With hit chance being so low having more guns is usually better and to kill DD`s a battlecruiser is kind of overkill really.
Their real job starts when the enemy destroyers are down.
Battleships(BB)
The real capital ship. Good armor, HP, gun dmg, range etc. Everything is good on them except for the price (10400).
Their only job is to kill CA´s and BC´s. With them being so expensive its easy to overproduce them and get thin on the screen/small capital ships ratio and make those big ones very vulnerable.
Super Heavy BattleShips(SHBB)
If its hard to calculate how much BB´s is good wait for this one. With a 18500 price this monster kills everything in its sight.
He can pierce any other ship and only another SHBB can pierce his armor. He will always run for lack of ORG instead of lacking STR.
Outside of planes its very rare to be able to sink those monsters no matter how much ships you bring.
When fleets get REALLY large. (im looking at you UK, Jap and US) they perform the role of killing BB´s and BC´s.
Carriers (Currently bugged, see below page 1).
King of the sea. Naval Bombers ignore armor making sure even their small dmg is actually quite good.
Also Naval bombers deal a ton of Organization dmg and have a High Chance of Ignoring destroyers and going for capital ships, make sure that if they survive they will be low on ORG by the time the real fight starts.
First make sure to always remember: PLANE CAP = 200/Pass. (Counted each time they fly).
Carriers have lots of bugs and little rules right now so lets go for those.
-> Carriers replenish planes while in combat. So aways have some in reserve. (sometimes it will not do it, so i think this is a bug and im unable to get all the details of the bug) .
-> Organization defines how much planes a carrier can send into battle. Ex: a carrier with 50% org will only be able to send 50% of its planes. (Thats why carriers gets tons of org).
-> Wing bug also affect carrier battles. That means optimum is small stacks of 10-20. This makes Sortie Bonus work AGAINST you as that make your wings bigger and bigger. (So half of naval strike doctrine is useless right now).
-> There is a cap of 200 planes. So more planes act as reserve. (And you should bring them).
-> With the cap the overcrowd bonus start to make sense. Overcrowd is the act of placing more planes than your carrier can carry. This gives a penalty to how much planes you can send.
the trick is that with the cap you can send more planes and still get the 200 cap.
Ex: 4 carriers with the bonus vs 4 carriers without. Lets say they can send 4% less planes for each 10 extra planes above the limit. (2% for the one with naval doctrines).
All of them can carry 100 planes each. Thats 400 carriers. I surpass the cap by 200. If i reduce my efficiency to 50% it means nothing. I would still be able to send 50 of each carrier and meet the quota.
In that example each normal carrier would be able to bring a extra 110 planes.
The overcrowd carrier would bring 220 extra planes.
-> 4 carriers is the optimal number. If you bring a 5º carrier while you can bring more planes it means you are reducing by 20% the amount of planes each carrier can send into combat.
Ex: 6 carriers vs 4 carriers. All 100 plane capacity.
6 carriers my penalty will be -40%. I can bring 50 extra planes on each (total 170) and get a total of -60% penalty. 100 - 60% = 40. 40x5 = 200 planes reaching combat. Total 200 extra planes.
4 Carriers. No penalty. I can bring +120 planes each (48% penalty) and meet the quota of 200cap.
100-48% = 52 plane/carrier x 4 = 208 planes. Total 480 extra planes.
As you can see i can bring a lot more.
PS: Overcrowding still need a little more test, take that hint at your own risk. I will edit this in the next day if needed.
Destroyers are the spine of your fleet. They will take fire from all other ships before anyone else protecting your capital ships from fire.
Problem is they only have evasion to help them survive and their HP is quite low. So better destroyers can improve your fleet life much more than for example a better Battleship as this will allow a destroyer to survive more shots.
Their attack of 1.5 with a useless piercing will make sure their guns real dmg is below 1 against anything that is not also a destroyer unless they use torpedos. (Everytime he shoots there is a 25% chance for him to do it).
You should always bring a good number of them, the side who loses destroyers first is usually the side that loses, but becareful, too much destroyers will also mean your fleet will lose its balance and deal very little dmg.
Balance is key here.
Oh. And expect very high casualities. IF 2 large fleets meet expect almost all of them to die to avoid you losing much more expensive ships.
Light Cruisers (LC)
Light cruisers are the key to defeat destroyers. They kill them in droves thanks to his potent gun (8dmg) and torpedo (also 8dmg). The fact it has armor the DD´s can´t pierce make sure they are mostly safe from anything the destroyer can do to him.
1LC can easily kill 4-5 DD´s even without escort.
So just bring LC´s and forget destroyers? not that easy.
While LC´s are nice to kill DD´s they are horrible to hold capital ship fire. Add that to the fact 1 LC = 3 less DD´s and you can easily become too thin in the destroyer quantity.
LC´s need DD´s protection to survive and do their job. They are very specialized.
Vs capital ships his guns are useless, the torpedos can do nice dmg but again, they are always going to be few in numbers and the 25% chance breaks them hard.
Heavy Cruisers(CA)
First capital ship. Good dmg. (can make a DD2 flee with 1 good shot), good range and good HP.
That capital ship is the last line of defense and your first ship to have real teeth.
CA job is to kill DD´s and CL´s and they will do that faster than anyone else. In fact a CA+ DD spam is very effective against other fleets with a bad Screen/Capital ratio.
But don´t start rushing them yet. They don´t have teeth like the big ships and a good proportion of them will make sure the enemy will survive until both sides lose their DD´s. Once that happens the big ships superior firepower will start killing your CA´s one by one.
So you want a good amount of them but not a spam.
Battlecruisers(BC)
First capital ship with real teeth. Mostly because of its range and being close to invulnerable to smaller ships.
Their price is also well balanced (7500) and this turns them into meat grinders of smaller ships being very good at killing Heavy cruisers and CL´s.
Of course if you ignore heavy cruisers and only build them you will become too thin. With hit chance being so low having more guns is usually better and to kill DD`s a battlecruiser is kind of overkill really.
Their real job starts when the enemy destroyers are down.
Battleships(BB)
The real capital ship. Good armor, HP, gun dmg, range etc. Everything is good on them except for the price (10400).
Their only job is to kill CA´s and BC´s. With them being so expensive its easy to overproduce them and get thin on the screen/small capital ships ratio and make those big ones very vulnerable.
Super Heavy BattleShips(SHBB)
If its hard to calculate how much BB´s is good wait for this one. With a 18500 price this monster kills everything in its sight.
He can pierce any other ship and only another SHBB can pierce his armor. He will always run for lack of ORG instead of lacking STR.
Outside of planes its very rare to be able to sink those monsters no matter how much ships you bring.
When fleets get REALLY large. (im looking at you UK, Jap and US) they perform the role of killing BB´s and BC´s.
Carriers (Currently bugged, see below page 1).
King of the sea. Naval Bombers ignore armor making sure even their small dmg is actually quite good.
Also Naval bombers deal a ton of Organization dmg and have a High Chance of Ignoring destroyers and going for capital ships, make sure that if they survive they will be low on ORG by the time the real fight starts.
First make sure to always remember: PLANE CAP = 200/Pass. (Counted each time they fly).
Carriers have lots of bugs and little rules right now so lets go for those.
-> Carriers replenish planes while in combat. So aways have some in reserve. (sometimes it will not do it, so i think this is a bug and im unable to get all the details of the bug) .
-> Organization defines how much planes a carrier can send into battle. Ex: a carrier with 50% org will only be able to send 50% of its planes. (Thats why carriers gets tons of org).
-> Wing bug also affect carrier battles. That means optimum is small stacks of 10-20. This makes Sortie Bonus work AGAINST you as that make your wings bigger and bigger. (So half of naval strike doctrine is useless right now).
-> There is a cap of 200 planes. So more planes act as reserve. (And you should bring them).
-> With the cap the overcrowd bonus start to make sense. Overcrowd is the act of placing more planes than your carrier can carry. This gives a penalty to how much planes you can send.
the trick is that with the cap you can send more planes and still get the 200 cap.
Ex: 4 carriers with the bonus vs 4 carriers without. Lets say they can send 4% less planes for each 10 extra planes above the limit. (2% for the one with naval doctrines).
All of them can carry 100 planes each. Thats 400 carriers. I surpass the cap by 200. If i reduce my efficiency to 50% it means nothing. I would still be able to send 50 of each carrier and meet the quota.
In that example each normal carrier would be able to bring a extra 110 planes.
The overcrowd carrier would bring 220 extra planes.
-> 4 carriers is the optimal number. If you bring a 5º carrier while you can bring more planes it means you are reducing by 20% the amount of planes each carrier can send into combat.
Ex: 6 carriers vs 4 carriers. All 100 plane capacity.
6 carriers my penalty will be -40%. I can bring 50 extra planes on each (total 170) and get a total of -60% penalty. 100 - 60% = 40. 40x5 = 200 planes reaching combat. Total 200 extra planes.
4 Carriers. No penalty. I can bring +120 planes each (48% penalty) and meet the quota of 200cap.
100-48% = 52 plane/carrier x 4 = 208 planes. Total 480 extra planes.
As you can see i can bring a lot more.
PS: Overcrowding still need a little more test, take that hint at your own risk. I will edit this in the next day if needed.
Variants
Variants are very important or useless depending on the fleet. The fact your production is very limited and naval XP is rare in the build up phase mans very few ships will actually benefit from this. So upgrades must be done along with National Focus that give Navy XP and see where it benefits your main fleet the most.
Remember the hints above don´t cover convoy fleets/wolf packs or hunt fleets. Focus on main fleet only.
Lets talk about it.
Carriers -> Deck size is king here. ITs the only reason for Carriers to be in battle.
Reliability can also be useful to avoid criticals but you hardly will have XP for this.
SHBB -> Guns and Reliability are the only things worth placing points.
2 points in armor will make you SHBB immune to a SHBB II guns but only japan can get them before 1944.
BB´s -> Again guns are the most important here with reliability after that to avoid criticals.
3 points in armor makes them immune to other BB´s firepower.
After that reliability to reduce critical chance.
BC -> A few points +chief of staff can make BB´s I unable to pierce them. Reliability is also a good option.
CA-> Guns, guns and guns. No reason to go for anything else. Thiose ships already have a huge number so criticals are not much of a threat anymore.
CL -> Guns.... again.... but not for distance as they will close to use torpedos but because more dmg means you take down DD´s faster.
DD-> Torpedo. Only thing that do real dmg.
Submarines -> Speed -> Any 1knot will help get in battle faster and actually do something. Also increase evasion, the only real defense for subs.
Variants are very important or useless depending on the fleet. The fact your production is very limited and naval XP is rare in the build up phase mans very few ships will actually benefit from this. So upgrades must be done along with National Focus that give Navy XP and see where it benefits your main fleet the most.
Remember the hints above don´t cover convoy fleets/wolf packs or hunt fleets. Focus on main fleet only.
Lets talk about it.
Carriers -> Deck size is king here. ITs the only reason for Carriers to be in battle.
Reliability can also be useful to avoid criticals but you hardly will have XP for this.
SHBB -> Guns and Reliability are the only things worth placing points.
2 points in armor will make you SHBB immune to a SHBB II guns but only japan can get them before 1944.
BB´s -> Again guns are the most important here with reliability after that to avoid criticals.
3 points in armor makes them immune to other BB´s firepower.
After that reliability to reduce critical chance.
BC -> A few points +chief of staff can make BB´s I unable to pierce them. Reliability is also a good option.
CA-> Guns, guns and guns. No reason to go for anything else. Thiose ships already have a huge number so criticals are not much of a threat anymore.
CL -> Guns.... again.... but not for distance as they will close to use torpedos but because more dmg means you take down DD´s faster.
DD-> Torpedo. Only thing that do real dmg.
Submarines -> Speed -> Any 1knot will help get in battle faster and actually do something. Also increase evasion, the only real defense for subs.
Fleet composition.
Now that we know the role of each ship lets see if we can use this to make a "perfect combo".
First we need to know the ratio of Screens (DD+CL)/Small capitals ( CA)/Big capital ships.(BC+BB+SHBB).
The proportion i found was 33% Big capitals / 33% CA / 33% Screens.
Everytime i started to move from this i started to get more random results or even start losing.
A example of fleet would be. (You would need 30 dockyards and more or less 3 years to make this).
1SHBB = 18500IC
1BB = 10400IC
3BC = 22500 IC
Total Big ships = 51400 (Around 35-40%)
7CA = 32200 IC
Total Small CA´s = 32200 (around 25-30%)
3LC = 10200 IC
39 DD´s = 38610 IC
Total Screens = 48810 (Around 30-35%)
Lets start from above shall we?
Why 1SHBB + 1BB +3BC and not lets say 9 BC´s or 3BC´s + 2BB´s?
Because this way you cover all 3 areas. You will have guns that pierce everything and will not go pretty dangerous on the low number of ships trap.
BC´s dmg on BB´s and SHBB is pretty low, thats why while they excel in taking out CA´s and screens they are unable to lead a fleet. So spamming them will stop working as soon you face a fleet with a few BB´s.
BB´s while have the power are expensive when you start to spam them. They can be easily outnumbered by BC´s + Screens if you make too much of them.
SHBB´s must be done in a very small quantitys. Just enough to beat the enemy BB´s. More than that is overkill and should be avoided.
CA´s work as a transition. Too few and your screens will die first, too much and you have too few capital ships. A balance of CA´s is very important as they will glue screens and capitals to work together. Being the only capital that you can spam you must field quite a lot of them.
LC´s/DD´s ratio is tricky. While 1LC is really just 3 DD´s that will not work well in practice.
I traded LC´s for DD`s and LC´s for CA´s and in both cases leaving the 1-13 ratio was dangerous at least and horrible on most cases.
not bringing LC´s is also a horrible idea, 9DD`s will not bring the same amount of firepower.
Please remember in the end most of your work will be actually fixing the ratio. Most navies start with tons of BB´s and close to no screens or CA´s to defend them. (Case France) or full of screens and little to no Capital ships (Case of italy). Those countrys should focus on fixing their stuff.
Carriers work outside the box. They are the best cost/effective capital ship and against all. If you don´t have a carrier it would be the best investiment for you. As they can easily beat 1-2 SHBB alone by draining their org and also attack smaller planes and sinking them.
So beetween a BB/SHBB vs a Carrier. I would go carrier 100% of the time.
Now that we know the role of each ship lets see if we can use this to make a "perfect combo".
First we need to know the ratio of Screens (DD+CL)/Small capitals ( CA)/Big capital ships.(BC+BB+SHBB).
The proportion i found was 33% Big capitals / 33% CA / 33% Screens.
Everytime i started to move from this i started to get more random results or even start losing.
A example of fleet would be. (You would need 30 dockyards and more or less 3 years to make this).
1SHBB = 18500IC
1BB = 10400IC
3BC = 22500 IC
Total Big ships = 51400 (Around 35-40%)
7CA = 32200 IC
Total Small CA´s = 32200 (around 25-30%)
3LC = 10200 IC
39 DD´s = 38610 IC
Total Screens = 48810 (Around 30-35%)
Lets start from above shall we?
Why 1SHBB + 1BB +3BC and not lets say 9 BC´s or 3BC´s + 2BB´s?
Because this way you cover all 3 areas. You will have guns that pierce everything and will not go pretty dangerous on the low number of ships trap.
BC´s dmg on BB´s and SHBB is pretty low, thats why while they excel in taking out CA´s and screens they are unable to lead a fleet. So spamming them will stop working as soon you face a fleet with a few BB´s.
BB´s while have the power are expensive when you start to spam them. They can be easily outnumbered by BC´s + Screens if you make too much of them.
SHBB´s must be done in a very small quantitys. Just enough to beat the enemy BB´s. More than that is overkill and should be avoided.
CA´s work as a transition. Too few and your screens will die first, too much and you have too few capital ships. A balance of CA´s is very important as they will glue screens and capitals to work together. Being the only capital that you can spam you must field quite a lot of them.
LC´s/DD´s ratio is tricky. While 1LC is really just 3 DD´s that will not work well in practice.
I traded LC´s for DD`s and LC´s for CA´s and in both cases leaving the 1-13 ratio was dangerous at least and horrible on most cases.
not bringing LC´s is also a horrible idea, 9DD`s will not bring the same amount of firepower.
Please remember in the end most of your work will be actually fixing the ratio. Most navies start with tons of BB´s and close to no screens or CA´s to defend them. (Case France) or full of screens and little to no Capital ships (Case of italy). Those countrys should focus on fixing their stuff.
Carriers work outside the box. They are the best cost/effective capital ship and against all. If you don´t have a carrier it would be the best investiment for you. As they can easily beat 1-2 SHBB alone by draining their org and also attack smaller planes and sinking them.
So beetween a BB/SHBB vs a Carrier. I would go carrier 100% of the time.
Below there are the screenshots of my tests. You don´t need to see them but if you like to know the numbers here it is.
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and some other things. 
