2 questions about naval warfare

[SirArthur]

Well, first question is kind of old.

Light cruiser should be combined with carriers to give air cover for the carriers and destroyers with battleships for fast closing on the enemy. Now the question, if I mix the unit escort types in case of a battleship fleet, I get a slightly slower, better gunned and better armored fleet. But, what escort would be attacked first by submarine, air attack and surface fleet gun ? Is this random ?

Second question is more special. Why would a heavy cruiser be faster than a battlecruiser ? Sure, the more modern german heavy cruisers were faster than the old HMS Hood. However, a battlecruiser (like the Repulse) is longer, resulting in a higher hull speed, thus more speed potential, which is exactly what battlecruisers were build for. Less armor, more speed, and the thing that they are not only weaker armored, but also longer, pretty much fails to get in my mind. This part of the game is strange. Or am I wrong ? So if I want a fast closing fleet, the fastest heavy ship would be a cruiser ? (Yes, it has bad gun range, but still, it is fast)

And to sum it up, a destroyer/heavy cruiser fleet would be not only making up for low air defence of destroyers, but would also be fast and should get out of anything. Why am I wrong there ?

 

[themousemaster]

Well, first question is kind of old.

Light cruiser should be combined with carriers to give air cover for the carriers and destroyers with battleships for fast closing on the enemy. Now the question, if I mix the unit escort types in case of a battleship fleet, I get a slightly slower, better gunned and better armored fleet. But, what escort would be attacked first by submarine, air attack and surface fleet gun ? Is this random ?

Second question is more special. Why would a heavy cruiser be faster than a battlecruiser ? Sure, the more modern german heavy cruisers were faster than the old HMS Hood. However, a battlecruiser (like the Repulse) is longer, resulting in a higher hull speed, thus more speed potential, which is exactly what battlecruisers were build for. Less armor, more speed, and the thing that they are not only weaker armored, but also longer, pretty much fails to get in my mind. This part of the game is strange. Or am I wrong ? So if I want a fast closing fleet, the fastest heavy ship would be a cruiser ? (Yes, it has bad gun range, but still, it is fast)

That is correct. In fact, if you want the absolute best possible SAG fleet for trying (yes, hardly guaranteed succeed ;p) to close with enemy carriers, a CA-DD combo will do even better. For some countries (USA especially), the loss in non-shared practical is easily made up for by the overall benefit.

Or, you can go without capitals at all. TECHNICALLY, the best way to engage carriers in surface combat is an all-DD fleet ;p.



As far as battlecruisers are concerned; they are defined by specifications, not by historical naming conventions. BC's are just the "size and shape" of a ship between CA and BB; A lot of countries used clever naming and designation to get around various naval treaties and just general confusion of the other side, resulting in cruisers that were more like BC, BC that were more like CA, BB that could easily have been another side's CA, CVs that were "cruisers", etc. In other words, don't get hung up on the individual names, when the game system itself uses a standardized numerical designation system, when IRL each country was using it's own, which this game doesn't represent.

 

[SirArthur]

So, if I want to build a true British battcruiser after real life navy doctrine (heavy guns and speed over armor) I have to select a BB hull and drop all armor tech ? (Because no only the speed classification is bad, but also the guns of ingame BC are weaker, which again, is strange) ?

 

[Erthaelion]

I've only ever built aircraft carriers in this game. Why would I want to build anything else? I don't understand the merits of anything other than carrier fleets when carriers are so powerful in this game. Especially heavy cruisers. What on earth are they for?

 

[themousemaster]

So, if I want to build a true British battcruiser after real life navy doctrine (heavy guns and speed over armor) I have to select a BB hull and drop all armor tech ? (Because no only the speed classification is bad, but also the guns of ingame BC are weaker, which again, is strange) ?

I think more appropriate would be to use a BC build, but be 2-years teched ahead in guns, rather than a BB teched behind in armor.

But generally, yes.

 

[SirArthur]

I've only ever built aircraft carriers in this game. Why would I want to build anything else? I don't understand the merits of anything other than carrier fleets when carriers are so powerful in this game. Especially heavy cruisers. What on earth are they for?

Carriers need a lot of tech. I also found it quite helping, to have a real fleet with guns in a war area, gives a max 25% penalty for land enemy in attack and defence.

edit: I think the ships name are not so much about their name from a naval standpoint, but from a carrier viewpoint. So a battlecruiser is much likely a carrier protection ship, something the USA did with fast and brand new battleships, while battleships are more a punch for range and speed thing, maybe something like the Yamato. It makes sense if you compare the Yamato with the Iowa class battship, which was build to fight her. But then I don't know what Superbattleships should be. Some strange design decisions though. Superbattleships make no sense.

 

[SirArthur]

I decided to post another question. I really can't get into the full meaning of hull points. sure, they stack up and at a certain threshold, there is a penalty. But that is not, what I am looking for. I'm more interested in the effect hull size has on taking damage. As research goes on, ships tend to get larger and larger in size, the armor tech directly increases the hull size. So, what is the effect of more hull ?

 

[cotwell]

I've only ever built aircraft carriers in this game. Why would I want to build anything else? I don't understand the merits of anything other than carrier fleets when carriers are so powerful in this game. Especially heavy cruisers. What on earth are they for?

DDs for ASW, and CAs to keep the DDs alive in the presence of enemy surface fleets. I don't usually build many battleships though, unless I'm really far behind in carrier tech.

 

[lunfa_reo]

According to something I read battlecruisers were meant to "outgun whatever ships they couldn't outrun (up to heavy cruisers) and outrun whatever ships they couldn't outgun (battleships)".

Regarding hull size effect in game, it is my understanding it represents ship's armor (it's increased by the Armor tech for each ship class), so higher hull size = more ship armor but also less speed, more fleet penalty and (IIRC) more visibility (ships easier to detect by enemy fleets).

 

[themousemaster]

I decided to post another question. I really can't get into the full meaning of hull points. sure, they stack up and at a certain threshold, there is a penalty. But that is not, what I am looking for. I'm more interested in the effect hull size has on taking damage. As research goes on, ships tend to get larger and larger in size, the armor tech directly increases the hull size. So, what is the effect of more hull ?

What the Hull does, is that when a ship takes a hit, the damage of the hit is (damage / hull). So the more hull, the less damage a ship takes *directly* (as opposed to Sea Defense, which affects the hit-or-miss part of the calculation, in theory)

 

[SirArthur]

Oh, thanks. Didn't find the navy battle calculation anywhere. This means hull upgrade for aircraft carriers is not always good, because more hull size = smaller efficienty for fleet if over threshold.

I also don't see an impact anywhere in the game, if a ship has less hull/armor.

 

[unmerged(180647)]

You can safely ignore armour upgrades for carriers, because when everything works as planned your carriers should not come into situations where they are exposed to direct fire. And the hull upgrade per tech level is abysmal anyway...

 

[Secret Master]

I've only ever built aircraft carriers in this game. Why would I want to build anything else? I don't understand the merits of anything other than carrier fleets when carriers are so powerful in this game. Especially heavy cruisers. What on earth are they for?

Here's the thing.

Carrier fleets are far more expensive, both in technological terms and IC costs, than anything else on the water. Since carriers are useless without CAGs, when comparing costs, you need to compare the cost of a carrier AND it's CAGs. For comparison, consider these costs (all costs are pre-pracitcals):

Submarines and destroyers cost roughly the same.
A heavy cruiser costs the same as two submarine flotillas.
A battleship costs the same as five submarine flotillas.
A super-heavy battleship costs the same as eight submarine flotillas.
A carrier and its CAGs cost the same as nine submarine flotillas.

A secondary consideration is that countries might start with practical knowledge in battleships or cruisers at the beginning of the game. It might just be easier to research and build other ships than carriers.

A third consideration is that CAGs are good, but they cannot defeat an equal number of opposing INTs from land. I've wiped out CTFs with CA/CL fleets by drawing the carriers into range of land based air cover. Sure, we take some losses, but losing 4 carriers plus CAGs is far worse than losing one or two CAs. That is an acceptable loss ratio even for the Italians.

A final consideration is that you might be trying to win the war before 1941. While CAGs are good, they are not invincible. There is a window of opportunity where fast SAGs are more efficient at killing opposing fleets than pure carriers. You can test this yourself by building 6 Bismark class BBs and then fighting the RN in 1939. As long as the RAF isn't bombing your battleships, you should be able to wipe the floor with most of the RN no problem.

 

[SirArthur]

Ok, now I read the ingame comments and the help here in the thread to determinate how sea battle works.

My guess so far:


for each hour:

1. Each capital ship moves its distance if it wants to attack, defend or pursuit
2. The escorts stick to the main main ship in the order CV, BB, BC, CVL and so on ...
3. Each ship in fire range fires:
3.1 Each ship has SeaAttack attacks(ingame description), I guess each ship fires at a target and the damage done is SeaAttack * attack chance against SeaDefence * Defence Chance, the damage then is 1/hull size, substracted from hull size

but I'm still very lost. How is the attack chance and defend chance calculated ? (e.g. how works positioning, fire select chance and fleet size penalty ? ) Where does the fleet average speed come in ?

 

[themousemaster]

It's not Sea Attack * attack, last I checked. For game calculation purposes, all ships do the same damage per shot; Sea Attack is the number of times a ship fires per round.

Also, to my knowledge, the "expected" hit rate is 40% chance per shot if the enemy is out of Sea Defense, or 20% per shot if they aren't. Each "dodge chance" reduces Sea Defense by 1 for the defender.



Granted, that's the "supposed" calculation. It was supposed to mimic the land battles Attack vs Toughness/Defense, but that calculation was all kinds of bugged. If the bug carried over to Naval as well, then Sea Defense is meaningless, and Hull is your only saving grace.