1.9.3 Naval Test

[Paul.Ketcham]

If there is any tech in the game worth rushing, its DP secondaries. I actually tend to avoid using the DP primary guns for DDs unless I'm playing the US (steel concern mainly, but I also aim for quantity over quality on DDs and focus on CLs and heavy secondaries on capital ships instead). Most naval techs offer only modest ahead-of-time bonuses (speed from hulls and engines being the most important), with the exception of submarine techs which radically-improve their effectiveness.

DP secondaries have a couple massive advantages that justify researching them ahead of time (which, for the record, is possible to do by early 1937):
1.) No steel cost. CL-1940 guns cost steel (and CL-1936 guns are inferior in piercing despite slightly-better damage).
2.) Capital ships don't have to choose between secondaries and AA, and aircraft will always focus fire on capital ships; arming a capital ship with 5+ DP secondaries can pretty easily give you a 20+ AA rating (with higher AA, radar, and fire control tech, you can scale this up ridiculously), which shreds aircraft (particularly 1936-tech, which is what most AI bombers will tend to be).

I tend to build CLs and BCs rather than CAs and heavily-armed DDs due to the relatively-massive effectiveness of properly-built CLs in killing DDs, and the fact that naval battles tend to go the way of the fleet with more light attack in most scenarios (as long as you can hurt the enemy capital ships at all, to spare your CLs getting blasted apart by enemy battleships). BCs are a tradeoff versus CAs which can boast better light attack, but BCs are still cheap and have vastly-better armor in capital ship engagements (and the best way to make cheap CAs is to build them without armor, which makes this even worse). SHBBs will beat BCs in a straight-up fight, but not only cost a ton more to build but also take forever to repair once damaged (several months at least).

Ultimately, though, the question needs to be asked if you're fighting the AI or a player. The AI can be gamed so badly that it gets painful when you realize that you can kill off most of their screens by commerce-raiding with cruiser groups or small battlefleets (a BC or CA and 4 CLs is absolutely lethal against the generic AI escort groups of 2 CLs and 6 DDs); they also really suck at designing ships, since they seem programmed to build mainly the cheapest ships they can manage. Designing capital ships is even easier because the AI almost never builds any new capital ships (I haven't seen if they fixed this in the new patch, so I'm interested in seeing if they've fixed this). Players can adapt, will build for quality over quantity, and don't have a pre-scripted fleet for whatever nation they're playing (meaning Germany can do anything from massed U-boats to balanced battlefleets to cruiser raiding groups to full minelayers).

 

[Kryndude]

That is an interesting result. I think the biggest thing to be said here is that there is large difference in numbers. I'll point out a few things though. I would have only used two Carriers in a situation where I'm only using fighters. With so few screens and under such a tight budget then the minimum of 3 SHBB with less heavy guns would have been preferred. I would have also put radar and fire control on the screens too.

I ran the numbers and by changing the capital ship numbers and configuration, it would free up 56,000 NIC minus the cost of fire controls and radars for the screens. That comes out to 22 more destroyers which is not insignificant. Having extra screens is required as once the screen efficiency is down the capital ships start to die. Light cruisers also die to torpedoes if there are not enough friendly destroyers to spread the fire around to. I do not think those 22 would win the battle for me though.

What I think this indicates to me that I rely on the masses of terrible destroyers that you typically start the game with to fill out my numbers.

There are a few things you're getting it wrong imo. To list them

1. Armor on CL is bad. 8 armor gets cancelled out by increased hit profile and decrease in total number of screen ships.
2. Any weapon other than maybe a single torpedo on DD is also bad. They're terribly cost-inefficient and removes DD's two biggest strengths: numbers and evasion.
3. Any additional investment into dockyards is sub-optimal, because ships can't compete against NAV. Equip AA and DP all you want, half the equal IC worth of NAVs will kill everything.
4. Because of #3, whichever side that brings more CVs with CNBs automatically wins, given that the rest of the fleet isn't terribly ill-designed. To counter that you bring fighters on CVs, and then it's a stalemate because fighters can't kill ships.
5. Torpedoes are terrible at killing light ships, main reason CLs died fast is because of light attack not torpedoes.

 

[Kryndude]

tend to build CLs and BCs rather than CAs and heavily-armed DDs due to the relatively-massive effectiveness of properly-built CLs in killing DDs, and the fact that naval battles tend to go the way of the fleet with more light attack in most scenarios (as long as you can hurt the enemy capital ships at all, to spare your CLs getting blasted apart by enemy battleships). BCs are a tradeoff versus CAs which can boast better light attack, but BCs are still cheap and have vastly-better armor in capital ship engagements (and the best way to make cheap CAs is to build them without armor, which makes this even worse). SHBBs will beat BCs in a straight-up fight, but not only cost a ton more to build but also take forever to repair once damaged (several months at least).

Light attack CA is basically CLs treated as capital ships, meaning they can stay alive for longer behind cheap DD screen. DD's aren't meant to be heavily armed, their strength lies in low hit profile. Heavier ship types generally aren't viable in competitive meta because torpedo ignores armor. If you invest NIC into BBs you're making your screen that much weaker, meaning they'll get penetrated quickly and expose your BBs to mass torpedo volley. Against an opponent that doesn't use torpedo, they can be very effective.

 

[Paul.Ketcham]

Light attack CA is basically CLs treated as capital ships, meaning they can stay alive for longer behind cheap DD screen. DD's aren't meant to be heavily armed, their strength lies in low hit profile. Heavier ship types generally aren't viable in competitive meta because torpedo ignores armor. If you invest NIC into BBs you're making your screen that much weaker, meaning they'll get penetrated quickly and expose your BBs to mass torpedo volley. Against an opponent that doesn't use torpedo, they can be very effective.

I'll admit I don't play multiplayer so I might be wrong about some of this, but the problems I have here:
1.) Heavily-armed CA still costs more than half as much as a maxed light-attack BC, and if you go for CL guns rather than DP secondaries they're ludicrously-vulnerable to air attack.
2.) Fewer, tougher BCs are still cheaper than regular BBs and will beat CAs head to head; I use the remaining funds on CLs instead. A BC for me often has only 1 heavy gun and 4-5 DP secondaries, plus 2 AA, which means it both adds a lot of light attack (less than a full-light CA) but also has over 20 AA (assuming AA-1939 and Radar-1940). The AA value of these ships is decisive, since normally aircraft are the king of the sea.

There are a few things you're getting it wrong imo. To list them

1. Armor on CL is bad. 8 armor gets cancelled out by increased hit profile and decrease in total number of screen ships.
2. Any weapon other than maybe a single torpedo on DD is also bad. They're terribly cost-inefficient and removes DD's two biggest strengths: numbers and evasion.
3. Any additional investment into dockyards is sub-optimal, because ships can't compete against NAV. Equip AA and DP all you want, half the equal IC worth of NAVs will kill everything.
4. Because of #3, whichever side that brings more CVs with CNBs automatically wins, given that the rest of the fleet isn't terribly ill-designed. To counter that you bring fighters on CVs, and then it's a stalemate because fighters can't kill ships.
5. Torpedoes are terrible at killing light ships, main reason CLs died fast is because of light attack not torpedoes.

3.) 6 armor from tech-1 armor is fairly cheap, doesn't cost steel, and blocks critical hits from tech-1 secondaries, CL-1 guns, and all DD guns. 8 armor from tech 2 is more of a toss-up, but against the AI will beat CL-2 guns as well (critical hits tend to be the main reason I lose crew experience, and also force repairs far more often than mild damage accumulation). Against players this might be different, but you will slaughter the AI with armor.

I haven't tried heavy AA against carriers, though, so that might be an interesting test. That said, in my experience 10+ AA is pretty lethal to early CAS and tactical bombers, and 20+ is lethal to most aircraft. Not sure if a crippled capital ship is worth shooting down a few hundred naval bombers (200 NAV-1936 is worth 5200 IC for example), but its far-more worthwhile when you consider the fact that those capital ships are sparing you flak on all your light cruisers and destroyers.

Edit: I tested it a bit ago (no designers) and with all light guns a CA is half the cost of a minimal-cost BC, about 5000 IC versus 9500 IC, plus with about 4 more light attack. However, the CA also loses 0.8 knots, has no armor versus 25+, 12.3 AA versus 20.8, and 180 HP versus 400.

Edit 2: Tech-1 armor brings a fully-armed 1936 CL from 4200 IC to 4700, and drops speed by about 1.5 knots. Tech 2 armor raises the cost further to 4900 IC and drops speed 2.3 knots compared to no armor--0.8 versus light armor.

 

[STABBY5]

There are a few things you're getting it wrong imo. To list them

1. Armor on CL is bad. 8 armor gets cancelled out by increased hit profile and decrease in total number of screen ships.
2. Any weapon other than maybe a single torpedo on DD is also bad. They're terribly cost-inefficient and removes DD's two biggest strengths: numbers and evasion.
3. Any additional investment into dockyards is sub-optimal, because ships can't compete against NAV. Equip AA and DP all you want, half the equal IC worth of NAVs will kill everything.
4. Because of #3, whichever side that brings more CVs with CNBs automatically wins, given that the rest of the fleet isn't terribly ill-designed. To counter that you bring fighters on CVs, and then it's a stalemate because fighters can't kill ships.
5. Torpedoes are terrible at killing light ships, main reason CLs died fast is because of light attack not torpedoes.

The armor is about a 20% reduction in damage take not including the damage prevented from critical hits. Is the reduction in hit profile equal to that?

In terms of light attack per nic they are a .006 compared to your destroyers at .001 and your cruisers at .009. They have drastically more air attack so I don't think its that bad. In terms of soft attack vs hp assuming everything hit which it wont, you kill me in about 3 ticks and I kill you in about 4. Something I think I've under estimated however, is that capital ships get a few turns of free shots where screens cannot fire. What was your positioning penalty? Surely it must of been high even if I don't know what it does.

I mean if we start talking about planes and such then all of this is pointless. Carrier planes don't intercept land based bombers so any fleet always dies. Then you just send out your submarines.

That's not really the point. Playing the naval game at all is sub optimal. You can put 20% of the effort into it for 80% of the results.

Unless they changed how disruption works 2 carriers worth of fighters and fleet AA should be able to hold them off for the duration of the battle.

Light cruisers do die to torpedoes. I've seen it plenty of times when people were testing their light Cruiser only metas vs torpedo's boats.

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Level 2 cruiser armor gives 8 armor and 5% HP for -7% speed and +15% production cost. In the case of CA-LA, that's 3.7 increased hit profile from 48.6 to 52.3, which may be 6.9% decrease in effective HP according to the wiki (1% speed = 1.7% effective HP). There's been only one test regarding cruiser armor, but looking at the result I'm not sure if cruiser armor is worth it. But then damage reduction is 0.1 + 0.9 (armor/piercing) so maybe it's worth it? CA-HA has heavy piercing 26.2 so -62.5%, torpedo ignores armor, and CA-LA has 7.3 piercing so 8.6% damage reduction. I'd say it's not worth it.

Maybe you're right. Tried to run a few fights to see effect of CL armour vs CL gun: did not see a lot of difference. It seems to allow ships to escape more often due to larger HP pool (since they start retreating sooner), but not often enough to be worth IC.

 

[Corpse Fool]

A big part of the armor discussion is that it can be very heavily boosted with admirals and traits. Anything that says +defense is +armor for ships, on top of the things that say +armor. You can get something like upwards of double the armor.

But the armor largely only works against DD level piercing. Heavy guns are still punching through any capital armor that isnt super heavy, and it takes basically top tier cruiser armor to protect against secondaries and CL guns. Even the medium guns were recently boosted to work better against BB armor, it already dealt pretty well with BC armor.

 

[Kryndude]

Armor stacking does sound interesting, but I don't think it'll make much difference because, again, torpedo ignores armor. Against the meta, you'll want to boost your number of screens not your capital armor.