Compendium of Navys and Naval issues

[Makeyourownmind]

I have read and written a lot, but it is spread all over the forum. So I decided to accumulate it in one thread. I havn't collectet all, so if you see something missing, add it. Some things are already rejected, but not adding them would mean that wishes you could vote for or against or discuss about would be excluded, so I added them nevertheless. I hope this will become a lively discussion.

Please don't post any "I agree" - state what you agree and why or why not.

Ralf, Hearts of Iron I + II gamer

 

[unmerged(15623)]

I posted this a couple of weeks ago in GD, but thought that I'd better repost it here with the new patch coming up soon. You know, just in case.

This should cover all the capital ships that are missing from the build queues in the Road to War scenario for all majors aside Germany.

Indeed, it seems that every single major is missing numerous builds from the queue. Here are most (well, all) of the missing capital ships for '36 scenario:

LD: Laid down, L: Launched, C: Completed/Comissioned

day/month/year

Japan:

Suzuya, LD11/12/33 L20/11/35 C31/10/37, CL-4
Kumano, LD5/4/34 L15/10/36 C31/10/37, CL-4

Tone, LD1/12/34 L21/11/37 C20/11/38, CA-4?
Chikuma, LD1/10/35 L19/3/38 C 20/5/39, CA-4?

Soryu, LD20/11/34 L23/12/35 C29/12/37, CV-3

United States:

Enterprise, LD16/7/34 L3/10/36 C12/5/38, CV-3

Vincennes, LD2/1/34 L21/5/36 C24/2/37, CA-3

Brooklyn, LD12/3/35 L30/11/36 C30/9/37, CL-4
Philadelphia, LD28/5/35 L17/11/36 C23/9/37, CL-4
Savannah, LD31/5/34 L8/5/37 C10/3/38, CL-4
Nashville, LD24/1/35 L2/10/37 C6/6/38, CL-4
Phoenix, LD15/4/35 L13/3/38 C3/10/38, CL-4
Boise, LD1/4/35 L3/12/36 C12/8/38, CL-4
Honolulu, LD10/9/35 L 26/8/37 C15/6/38, CL-4

Wichita, LD28/10/35 L16/11/37 C16/2/39, CA-4?

Italy:

Italia, LD28/10/34 L22/8/37 C6/5/40, BB-4
Vittorio Veneto, LD28/10/34 L22/7/37 C28/4/40, BB-4
Littorio, LD28/10/34 L22/8/37 C6/5/40, BB-4

Abruzzi, LD28/12/33 L21/4/36 C1/12/37, CL-4
Giuseppe Garibaldi, LD??/12/33 L21/4/36 C20/12/37, CL-4

United Kingdom:

Ark Royal, LD16/9/35 L13/4/37 C16/10/38, CV-3

Penelope, LD30/5/34 L15/10/35 C13/11/36, CL-3
Aurora, LD27/7/35 L20/9/36 12/11/37, CL-3

Southampton, LD21/11/34 L10/3/36 C6/3/37, CL-4
Newcastle, LD4/10/34 L23/1/36 C5/3/37, CL-4
Brimingham, LD18/7/35 L1/9/36 C18/11/37, CL-4
Galsgow, LD16/4/35 L20/6/36 C9/9/37, CL-4
Sheffield, LD31/1/35 L23/6/36 C25/8/37, CL-4

France:

Strasbourg, LD25/11/34 L12/12/36 C6/4/39, BC-4

Richelieu, LD22/10/35 L17/1/39 15/6/40, BB-4

Georges Leygues, LD21/9/33 L24/3/36 C15/11/37, CL-4
Glorie, LD13/11/33 L28/9/35 C15/11/37, CL-4
Jean de Vienne, LD20/12/31 C31/7/35 C10/2/37, CL-4
Marseillaise, LD23/10/33 L17/7/35 C10/10/37, CL-4
Montcalm, LD15/11/33 L26/10/35 C15/10/37, CL-4

Soviet Union:

Kirov, LD 22/10/35 L30/11/36 C23/9/38, CA-2
Voroshilov, LD 15/10/35 L 28/6/39 C20/6/40, CA-2


At least I think that was all... Phew!

You can duble check the correctness of this data from the following site:

http://navalhistory.flixco.info/

 

[Iridium]

Takao did have a '33-34 Modernisation

I've looked in my book: Anatomy of the Ship: The Heavy Cruiser Takao by Janusz Skulski. From '33-'34 they had ventilation improvements, a 60cm searchlight and some new compartments added.

Your right that the major mods weren't done until '36-'37. I missed this due to the way the author noted the dates, then there was another modernisation during '38-'39 in which the bulges were added, new machinery, additional armor, etc.

I feel that the improvements of GM (metacentric height), resulting in better seakeeping maker this class much better than the Myoko class. All Japanese CA's had overloading issues due to their large armament, with the bulges added amongst other mods these ships were of the best quality. In general it seems that these ships were modified throughout their careers.

Tone class was only used for CV escort due to their scout planes so I tend to think that they're an oddity rather than an example of a std. CA.

Mogami class is kinda odd in that they were constructed last but seem to have less armor than their predecessors. I'd have to see some better data on them but everything I've seen so far tells me that the design was compramised due to the Washington Naval treaty. Making them pretty bad in stability and just overloaded in general. I think I heard of them poping welds while firing their main guns.

Myoko did have less armor than Takao, I'd have to look around for after mods on the Myoko. I'll put some contemporaries in for fun as well...

Side/Deck (mm)

CA's

Aoba 76/48
Myoko 102/35
Takao 127/32+47(after mods)
Suffren 54-60/54-60
Zara 100-150/70
Northampton 75/50
Norfolk 25/35-38

 

[Iridium]

Japanese CL-1 is already Tenryu. The CL-2 is named after one of the three improved Tenryu classes (can't remember which exactly, Naka?).

I think your thinking Kuma, but I could be wrong...

 

[Makeyourownmind]

quote of: "Few thoughts on improving naval combat system"

This thoughts may be old, but they are written nice.

1. Retreating
The single biggest problem with naval combat is IMO the possibility and truth to tell necessity of retreating from no-chance engagements. The best solution would be IMO incorporate speed into the naval combat distance and positioning model. A retreat order should not allow disengage fleet immediately, but only change the admiral priority for combat distance to 'as large as possible'. The real retreat would occur only after the distance exceeded the maximum range of fire of both fleets.
Important thing is that admiral quality, weather, thechnology and potentially ships speed should not determine the distance directly each hour, but should only determine the distance CHANGE over the hour of combat, making the maneuvering process far more realistic.
Also the initial distance of an engagement depending on weather, radar, intelligence, etc. would have significant effect on whether weaker force manage to withdraw in time.

2. Combat too fast - pause needed
A frequent complaint is that the combat is over too quickly, even before one can zoom on it and that pause is needed to make decision about its further proceeding/retreat. I think that great deal of this problem is caused by the necessity of player action in most combats. Whenever a fleet spots the enemy, combat commences and if the force composition is clearly unfavorable to one side, it must manually retreat to prevent casualties. But is it realistic? I think not. If a group of destroyers on ASW duty runs into the surface battlefleet should they close in to face almost certain destruction, or use their superior speed to get out of enemy range as fast as possible? I believe that the second option is more realistic and thus any force ill suited to combat the enemy should automatically TRY to retreat (if it manages according the paragraph 1)


3. Fleet concentration oversimplification
It was posted several times that it is mostly worthless to combine BBs and CVs in one taskforce. The reason is that in desirable case when the distance is just that of our CV range, BBs are worthless. I think that a relative easy remedy to this is allow multiple simultaneous naval combats in one seazone. Thus a CV squadron would hold its distance while BB squadron would close in. If many squadrons were present on both sides, distance should be tracked per combat.

4. Effect of speed
The speed of ships should decrease significantly if severely damaged as well as their visibility.

The important thing is that carrier fleets be treated differently that surface fleets. The whole job of a carrier fleet is to avoid surface combat range by miles, not yards, and their search planes give them the vision to make this a very easy goal to accomplish, not to mention the fact that carrier fleets are generally faster that surface fleets to begin with. But it's really the vision of the carrier fleet that makes it essentially impossible for a surface fleet to engage it. The carrier fleet has half-a-day's warning to begin moving away!

The root of the problem is that the screening ships of the carrier fleet participate in surface combat, when in reality they would be 50-100 miles away. This results in a requirement to include BBs and CAs, something that the Japanese can never hope to do against the US. The only thing preventing all players from seeing this clearly is the rediculous effectiveness of Naval Bombers. Try being Japan without building any Naval Bombers at all and you will very quickly come to understand the severity of the problem.
I should add that when a carrier fleet is involved in combat with a fleet that does not include carriers, the carrier fleet gets to attack over and over again until sunset while the non-carrier fleet does not even get to shoot back. This is actually very important.

 

[Makeyourownmind]

CV's

One possible way to handle the problem with older CV and newer CAG converting them to virtually the same combat power as newer and larger ones is to separate CV's into two branches: CV-light and Fleet Carrier.

Light CV's (20 up to 50 airplanes) are mostly the early ones or the conversions; they are build quick and expensive, and have lower stats than real carriers; they cannot use the advanced types of CAG's (maybe you develop an extra CAG-light that doesn't have this advanced types).

Fleet Carriers (60 to 120 planes) have a longer build time, (and are cheaper per power) but are the "lay all eggs in one basket" policy. They also can use the advanced types of planes due to their length and space available.

That would solve quite some of the problems.

Very few CVE's and even CVL's participated in battle willingly, the US was using them as a means to transport aircraft across the pacific and to protect sea lanes from subs. Most CVE's in fact had a flight deck that was too short for aircraft to land on, especially when half the deck was covered with planes for transport. I realize that Japan and even some US CVL's were used as real, however small, CV's. Most of these vessels were conversions from merchant ships or cruise liners, hence the low top speed of ~22-25 kts. Some were specifically designed as CVL's and posessed a speed of ~32 kts but these were few and far between.

The US is not the hinge where the world is moving around. Especially in a WW2-game where you have other nations which have fought for years before the US started to take action. CV-light has to be a category for two reasons: to cover older designs and prevent them using more modern planes who needed longer flight decks (the more important part) and to cover conversions, which needed less time to build, but are more expensive per plane overall and less effective. I don't think we need three CV classes; two are enough, but not one. You can use your old ones up to the last days (in the version 1.1 now) as if they are a modern design (and have a full load of planes like their heavier brothers). But that is not wanted. They have to be separated, especially if you give every historical ship one virtual counterpart (what is good).

 

[Makeyourownmind]

quote from: "Naval Taskforcetype Composition parameters"

I believe a series of parameters that gives general guidelines for the composition of naval taskforces would be a strong improvement to the game. This way a group of 3-4 CVs without DD support in one taskforce can be avoided.

The parameters should give a weight (0.0-1.0 with 1.0 representing the entire taskforce) to each ship type such as this:

Taskforcetype_CV 0.1
Taskforcetype_CA 0.2
Taskforcetype_DD 0.4

etcetcetc.........


The AI would use these as a general guideline and construct a taskgroup via these parameters.

They should attempt to form as many taskforcetypes of the indicated composition as they have enough ship types for. IOW, once they run out of main ships like CVs or BBs or whatever, then they start creating taskforces according to some internal value, but adhere to these guidelines until that point.

Is it such a bad thing to form a Carrier Taskforce centered around 3-4 CVs? As a player, I frequently form fleets centered around 2 to 4 CVs. In WW2, British prefered to have 1 CV escorting a naval force (for air protection), but Japanese and US used carrier TF demanding more than one carrier per TF.

I think that TF composition should be related to sea doctrine of each nation.

This would allow that. You could customize each nation's AI navy to historical or ahistorical desires.

The point is to keep from one or two killer stacks and a weak navy elsewhere. Also, taskforces that aren't balanced are easy to destroy with their tactical nemisis (ie., a 3-4 CV taskforce with maybe a BB or two and some cruisers will bite it when a wolfpack happens upon them). And you know gamey players think that crap is so cool to do. So diversity and balance is the key.

It has a counterpart in land warfare, too. An all-armoured attack force in reality would be a pile of metal in no time as anti-tank specialists neutered them. So parameters to guide the AI - which does not do anything very logically - are very important.

Of course the AI will not be able to respond to a human player as another human player would. But giving the AI a set list of guidelines for constructing better (ie more rounded) fleets will create a better game simply by hindering the most obvious of exploits and providing more of a challenge to those who don't use exploits.

There are more points mentioned earlier in this Thread; Larger (player) fleets are certainly the most single problem, but composition (of the AI fleets) is the other problem.

 

[unmerged(15623)]

Your right that the major mods weren't done until '36-'37. I missed this due to the way the author noted the dates, then there was another modernisation during '38-'39 in which the bulges were added, new machinery, additional armor, etc.

Though if I may add, the latter (and the more major direct combat power wise, the '36-'37 one was done mostly to improve stability, no?) modification was only ever done to Takao and Atago because of shipyard limitations. Maya and Chokai only had their light AA suite modified a bit, torpedo batteries upgraded to use the "long lance" torpedo (still, only 8 tubes were shipped unlike the 16 the other two had) and catapults changed to newer ones.

I feel that the improvements of GM (metacentric height), resulting in better seakeeping maker this class much better than the Myoko class. All Japanese CA's had overloading issues due to their large armament, with the bulges added amongst other mods these ships were of the best quality. In general it seems that these ships were modified throughout their careers.

All Japanese heavy cruisers were heavily modified througout their careers, so that's nothing special to Takaos. The modifications "inspired" by the Tomazuru and Fourth fleet Incidents to imporove stability and hull strenght respectively were, in fact, universal to all of the "ten gunned" heavy cruisers.

I honestly have no way of saying which of the "ten gunned" Japanese CAs was the most stable one. My book says that Môgami and Mikuma were still of "marginal stability" even after the pre-completion changes, but the class went on what could be best described as overhaul in '36-'38 and I don't know what it made of their stability (Suzuya and Kumano were already better off than the first two as more changes were incorporated to them pre-completion).

Mogami class is kinda odd in that they were constructed last but seem to have less armor than their predecessors. I'd have to see some better data on them but everything I've seen so far tells me that the design was compramised due to the Washington Naval treaty. Making them pretty bad in stability and just overloaded in general. I think I heard of them poping welds while firing their main guns.

Because the 10.000 ton limit of the Washington naval treaty made it impossible to achieve a "desirable" heavy cruiser desing right off the bat, all nations found themselves making compromises.

The Môgami was built to tighter restrictions than Takao. Japan didn't have any tonnage left to build heavy cruisers, so it was forced to use it's unused light cruiser tonnage to build new ships. However, even after taking the obsolete and scrappable tonnage out of the equation it only had enought to lay down 4 ships of 8.500 tons (the Môgamis) and 2 of 8.450 (the Tones, though when you look their original desing scheames it becomes apparent that nobody even tried to pay attention to treaty limitations anymore).

On hearing of the desing parameters of Môgami, both American and British desingers deemed them impossible to achieve, so it's no wonder Japan had difficulty making a solid desing with them.

The most serious problem of the Môgami was it's hull, which was very weak due to overeccessive use of welding. This was at least allivated by the '36-'38 modifications, and I doubt their welds kept popping after that anymore.


Also, do note that I was not talking about Môgami in my previous post, but of Ibuki. Ibuki was an improved Môgami (think Tone with the 3 bow, 2 aft gun distribution) which had two ships laid down in '42. A CA-5 to be sure.

Tone class was only used for CV escort due to their scout planes so I tend to think that they're an oddity rather than an example of a std. CA.

Yamato and Musashi are CVs? I do belive that both Tone and Chikuma belonged to admiral Kuritas taskforce at Leyte...

Tone was built with the problems that plagued the prevous Japanese CAs (those being weak hulls and poor stability, and also large dispersion for main battery guns) in mind. Even though it was a recce cruiser (and didn't even have main battery firepower aft) I would still rate it as the most balanced Japanese heavy cruiser desing of the war, even if it was not the most powerful one.

Datewise however, Tone is a clear CA-4, which no other historical Japanese heavy cruiser deserves to be as it is. I would rather use Tone than leave the spot blank.

Now, weather Môgami class should be rated as heavy cruiser is another thing...

Myoko did have less armor than Takao, I'd have to look around for after mods on the Myoko. I'll put some contemporaries in for fun as well...

I did say, "slight improvement overall".

 

[unmerged(42225)]

Attached Brigades to Carriers

Do the attach brigades to carriers upgrade or are we stuck with the obsolete planes and if they do not upgrade does Paradox have a plan to fix that problem so that they do.

 

[Makeyourownmind]

Do the attach brigades to carriers upgrade or are we stuck with the obsolete planes and if they do not upgrade does Paradox have a plan to fix that problem so that they do.

They upgrade if the ships are in harbor. Maybe they upgrade also if they are in the forcepool, but I didn't try it. (Because I only build one CAG for one carrier, and it doesn't make sense to use the carrier without planes.)

 

[Makeyourownmind]

Quote

A few major improvements that I'd love to see in Naval Combat:

1) Better range decision making by the AI. Fleets with carriers should not always seek to stay at 140km when they have other superior vessels as well they should make use of. Also if they are engaged with an enemy force with more carriers but a lot less surface ships - either flee or close (At the moment if you have 1 carrier in the fleet you default to long range regardless).
2)All fleets should seek to close on transport fleets to the minimum distance (with a couple of AI safeguards, i.e. ratio of transports to other ships should not be less than 1:1 say, and not if the transport fleet has BB class ships)
3) Naval combats involving carriers don't always start at air range (as they seem to now)
4) Ranges don't jump from 140km to 5km in 1 hour (it's certainly a surprise when your carrier suddenly sinks!).
5) Please delay naval withdrawals dependant on night & weather, so a lowly transport can't always outrun a battle fleet (this one already in the list sticky at the top of the forum).

something recently written; not unique, but written nice

 

[Makeyourownmind]

A few new ones:

1) One of the largest problems with naval units isn't with naval units! Instead, the problem is that air units are overpowered.

I've seen a stack of 4 naval bombers attack a large carrier fleet (12 CVs), and the result was that the naval bombers succeeded in sinking a CV without taking many casualties. They lose ORG, but that doesn't cost anything to replace.

I'd buy this if it were any other kind of ship that was attacked, but CVs are fundamentally different. They aren't just passive targets like other ships, but can fight the bombers before they even get close to the ships. A CV should really be able to engage the bombers using air-to-air mechanics instead of air-to-surface. Furthermore, the bombers should inflict far less damage on surface targets if they are being intercepted by either CVs or land-based fighters.

Didn't know that this is SO worse. Even if landbased aircraft should have the numerous advantage if one carrier is vs. one unit of bombers, 3 to 1 should make this quite even. Sinking one carrier is also ok (they could have made a lucky move), but this should be costly for the bombers, since the figthers of twelve carriers are hunting them. Maybe someone other can make some tests about this issue after the new 1.2 patch is out.

2) Positioning doesn't seem to work correctly. A fleet always shoots for positioning itself at the maximum engagement range of any of its units. It shouldn't. It should instead go for an engagement range which lets it get the maximum firepower ratio.

3) Speed doesn't seem to be taken into account when calculating positioning, and it really should be. Instead of being able to cover 200 nm in a single hour, the rate of change should be dependant on the speed of both fleets.

4) Some randomness to the positioning would be a great thing. In 1.1, this seems to be almost completely deterministic. It shouldn't be, and I think the skill of the commander should be more important than it currently seems to be (difficult to tell accurately, but that's the impression I get).

5) There needs to be a way to effectively defend against port strikes (any type of bombing mission, actually). It shouldn't be as easy as port striking and losing all your ORG if you're trying to hit a province with 4+ fighters and 10+ CVs that are all protecting the port. There really needs to be a way to do "point defence" to protect your fleets while in port.

6) Subs should be treated differently from surface vessels. I would even be in favor of abstracting them completely - just send them off into an "anti-convoy" pool and let them attack convoys on the same levels as convoys are handled. Not optimal, but IMHO better than the current system. The critical issue here is to allow subs the chance to be stealthy. If they're not looking for a fight with surface units, they should be very hard to detect.

Related to this, every time I get involved in a naval combat the combat display shows the initial rage - which is usually 5nm when subs are involved. So far so good. However, it seems to me that range is never used. Instead, it seems like if you advance the game one hour a new range is calculated and then that range is used for the first round of combat. That gives subs the short end of the stick; subs should basically be movable mines - they can deal out damage during the first hour (when they're in range) but after than it's time to dive and hide. As such, it is critical that subs get to attack at the initial range and then they should almost automatically disengage once the enemy fleet moves out of range.

7) Retreating from a naval battle should not be an automatic thing. Speed, weather and time of day should be factors, and subs should have major bonuses to disengaging. Opposing CVs should make escape more difficult.

Instead of adding new values (which requires Paradox to program stuff) it can be simulated by giving the CVs themselves some values (and a very short range to make sure CVs can't use those without a CAG). Thus, only half of the offensive power would come from the CAG and the other half might come from the CV itself.

Example: CAG of level X has 24 surface attack. This is instead converted to 12 surface attack for the CAG and 12 for the equivalent level of CV. A CV-1 with the same CAG would get only 12 surface attack (+whatever pitiful attack it has, probably 1 or 0). A more modern CV would get >24 surface attack even if you load it with older planes, since you can load more planes on it.

This way, there is no need to wait for a patch. I've already implemented this in my own game files.

The problem with this is that while it require no coding, it fixes nothing. In your system, a Hosho with 21 CAG-4 aircraft would have a little over half the stats of a Shokaku with 84 CAG-4 aircraft - almost as out of whack as the current system, and still very wrong. Larger airgroups are more powerful as they increase in size not only because of their superior firepower, armor, and resistance to damage, but because they have an easier time overwhelming the AA of an opponent. For ease of calculation, you could say the latter is balanced out by the increased confusion of a larger group, but still, four times the planes means four times the firepower, not one-and-something times. The simplest way to fix the problem is to add something like CAG Capacity, that scales easily and automatically no matter what values are put into it and can represent any time of carrier at any time of the war, even when mods add more.

Code changes will be necessary to solve the CV/CAG situation; right now it's nowhere near reality.

Pmanlig stated that his idea is only a hot fix. Also, as far as I know, changing something like that in hardcode is unfortunately unlikely for Paradox.

As stated in the main forum thread about this, there's something to be said for it - but it's not clear cut, don't forget that British carriers went from Swordfish to late-model Avengers; and Gladiators to the development of the Tempest, the Sea Fury, in the same carrier!

For me, the only non-allowed upgrade would be from piston to jet for the early carriers. Just too big, too heavy to run without steam catapults (and preferably angled decks, too).

Adding new values might be a little more difficult than you think. For one thing, Paradox would have to change the interface to allow you to add several brigades for a single CV, and that might take some work to do.

It would probably be much simpler for Paradox to simply add more types of units. Make each size of carrier its own class of unit, as well as each size of CAG. Again not as good a solution, but much much simpler to actually implement.