At what point is it a Doomstack?

[GUNNM]

I've never really thought about this earlier. I've kknown for a very long time that the Doomstacks exist but I've never wanted to use them as they are a bit gamey.

But, just for fun I played a very quick game as Germany where I built 20 Heavy cruisers and 30-something light cruisers. Patrolling with 6-8 heavy cruisers and 8-12 light cruisers and going back to port to rest any ships that took damage for fresh ships. I sunk plenty of British and French ships when I tried to keep the positioning-penalty below 5%. But when I went nuts and had up to 14 Heavy cruisers in the same fleet and a positioning penalty of 30-40% they sunk enemy Battleships left and right without losing any ships myself.

So that got me thinking... At what point is it considered a Doomstack? The main reason why I'm wondering is because in my serious game I've had success with placing 4 old British battleships in the same fleet. I'm having a slightly bad concience that I might have doomstacked...

 

[gunstickuncle]

The vanilla (TFH) AI just isn't particularly good at assembling fleets and operating with them in a clever way.
8 CA + 12 CL are not doomstacking. Thats a fairly common fleet size in multiplayer as well, and since you penalties were rather low (and even up to 30 or 40% they are arguably manageable), you can hardly call it a doomstack.
14 CA might be stronger than usual, and in mp games capitals per seazone tend to be either houseruled or suffer from more severe stacking penalties.
You also have to consider that your CA are fairly quick and modern as Germany, while many of the British ships are remainders from the WW1 era.
I mean you are free to play at your convenience, the AI isn't gonna call you gamey. But if you feel that your losses should be much higher, that's obviously an indication that you have outsmarted the AI quite hard.

 

[Kovax]

A "doomstack" occurs when you amass enough units that the small remaining bit of firepower after the maximum stacking penalty is applied is still sufficient to exceed the firepower of a stack below the stacking penalty cap. For instance, 5 air units incurs a 50% stacking penalty, so the total firepower is 2.5 (5 units at 50% efficiency), which is the maximum amount of firepower you can achieve at less than the maximum stacking penalty, since 6 units (6 at 40% efficiency) is only 2.4 firepower. You have a "doomstack" with anything over 25 units at a 90% stacking penalty, since 25 at 10% efficiency is 2.5 firepower. Anything in between 5 and 25 units results in either no gain or a decrease in total firepower. With only an 80% cap on the stacking penalty, you don't need as many to create a "doomstack". Hull size, Admiral skill and rank, and other factors play a role in naval combat, so it's more complicated, but the principle is the same.

 

[gunstickuncle]

Very good explanation, thanks Kovax.

@op: There are mods that adress the issue of doomstacking (mostly by making it inefficient). Some are very small and do not deviate significantly from vanilla in terms of units and gameplay (WiC multiplayer mod), others (e.g. HPP + HPP MP mod) provide a very different experience.

 

[GUNNM]

I had to look up how large the biggest fleets really were and found that TF58 had at Iwo Jima eighteen aircraft carriers, eight battleships and two battlecruisers. Even split into its 4 components, that is a massive amount of capital ships.

It makes me feel somewhat betetr about putting 4 Battleships in one fleet.