Cruisers, Commerce raiders, or both? HoD

[Secret Master]

So I've been building dreadnought fleets and having a great time in HoD. But something has been bugging me as I play the Russians.

Dreadnoughts need screens to protect against the ever present threat of torpedo attacks. Cruisers are fine at this job, but now that my fleets are not composed of 5000 ships, I've run into a snag. You can't support enough cruisers to blockade every port of, say, the UK. So, keeping some commerce raiders on hand to blockade odd sea zones while keeping your dreadnoughts and cruisers of the coast of wherever the RN is hiding makes sense.

But since commerce raiders have torpedo attacks, too, and they have incredibly cheap to build and supply, AND they generate decent colonial points, I'm wondering if I might do better with dreadnought fleets with commerce raiders swarming right along with them. I could replace 30 cruisers with 100 commerce raiders easily. I still get torpedo attacks, I still screen my dreadnoughts from torpedo attacks, and if I lose 50 in a battle, who cares? I can replace them in 150 days at minimal cost.

What advantages do cruisers have over commerce raiders when screening my precious capital ships? Can I use them like I use DDs in HOI3?

EDIT: And I totally forgot to mention that commerce raiders do not require fuel, either.

 

[Cossack_PL]

I bump this, as HoD naval aspect wasn't discussed too much, so every kind of advice would be welcome

My question: before the invention of torpedoes do capital ships still need screens? What else do they do apart from preventing enemy from torpedoing my ships?

 

[deezee]

Commerce raiders would definitely be stronger at blockade, but I think they'd be much weaker in combat; even though there's more of them, the large disorganization penalty means that they're easily defeated by a small number of cruisers, let alone a modern fleet. It might be better to use a main fleet to establish naval supremacy, and then actually use transports for blockades.

 

[delra]

So what's the forum's consensus?

 

[blaidd]

I was really excited about the new naval system in HoD, but I made the silly decision to play my first game as a landlocked country (missing out on most of the cool new mechanics) and then fell into my comfortable pattern of ignoring naval techs. I'd like to play a game as a very naval focused country to experiment with it, but I haven't been able to decide on one.

I'm also very interested to hear what people are doing with fleet composition and such now. It seems like naval supply limits will make choosing the right ships more important. I've mostly been doing 3:1 cruisers and battleships, but there is no logical reason behind it. I'm sure it's not an optimal ratio.

I don't want to ignore my navy, but the other techs just seem so much more critical.

 

[steveh11]

Once into the era of Cruisers & Battleships/Dreadnoughts I think of Commerce Raiders as Torpedo Boats/Destroyers. I tend to build quite a few of them...

 

[Arentak]

Once into the era of Cruisers & Battleships/Dreadnoughts I think of Commerce Raiders as Torpedo Boats/Destroyers. I tend to build quite a few of them...

I like that idea of them. Maybe they should get a fuel cost added post 1880?

 

[1alexey]

Well, epends on how navies bahave in combat.

Considering Comerce Raider is the slowest of Dreadnought, Cruiser and has the least firing range it should not be threat to capital ships, at all.

But i`m not sure if fleets know to stay in range of your cannons but outside the range of enemy`s.

Also, Cruisers are the biggest bang for buck of all ships. Cruiser has 7 times the torpedo attack of commerce raider. Cruiser takes 20 supply. Comerce raider takes 3. Cruiser maintenance cost, at least for me(GER), in 1931, was $24, wile comerce raider 10, and Dreadnought, with it`s 60 supply weight and $124 is kinda oddball.

I`m not sure how will 1 Dread+6Commerce raiders fare against 4 cruisers(same supply weight, $200 vs $100 maintenance), to me, it looks like dread will get squashed. Unscreaned Dreads is probably even useless to compare.

I also do not know how does hull value work exactly, and how coordination penalty factors in the equation, but i would assume the Dread+Cruiser screan would be the strongest single stack, while Cruisers would be the best bang for buch ship, hence if money limit you, go for Cruiser heavy, if the maximum size of fleet, Dreadnought heavy, and Comerce Raider, frankly looks crappy at combat and only good as supply weight cheap blocader.

 

[El Jojo]

Timing and budget are essential to the choice.
If I play a colonizing game, I end up with a big fleet of commerce raiders, since cruisers come too late to be of any use during the scramble of the 70s. You can start building CR early and have a big pile of colonial points in 1870.
Since I already have them, I'm reluctant to disband (especially since I don't get anything back), so when the scramble is over I use the CR without much fear or concern about their survival. I noticed that they do hold their ground (or sea) quite well, and they don't fall apart that easily. At least until 1900s I guess, when cruisers + Battleships tend to destroy them in a blink, leaving your battleship exposed.

So I guess there's a spot between 1880s and 1900s when CR are still cost-efficient, after that they may still be cheap but they die too quickly to be even of moderate use. Of course this is my opinion based on 5 games played and no real systematic comparison.

 

[De_Genius]

I do largely like El Jojo. After the colonization is done, I tend to trim my budget by disbanding the surplus CRs and replacing them slowly with cruisers and battleships. I sometimes throw in an iron clad or two while upgrading the fleet, but never monitors. Those things are bad.
If you want cheap blokade ships, then just use clipper transports. Cheap and dirty.

 

[Secret Master]

So what's the forum's consensus?

I posted the original topic 2 weeks ago, and I'm still not sure. Part of the problem is that I am not 100% certain how the minutia of screening works. If I have a swarm of 50 commerce raiders supporting 14 dreadnoughts, and your fleet has 15 cruisers supporting 15 dreadnoughts, is your fleet "under screened" because 50 commerce raiders can gang up on your smaller fleet and attempt to fire torpedoes? I'm sure your cruisers and dreadnoughts cannot target more than one ship a "turn," but the engagement range of commerce raiders is so small that maybe you can sink 30 every "turn" before they even get into range.

Another consideration, though, is that commerce raiders are so damn cheap in terms of resources and naval supply, maybe you just need a big enough swarm to overwhelm the ability of cruisers and dreadnoughts to sink them. But since I'm not 100% sure when a torpedo sinks a ship, and when guns do, I'm not sure what's going on.

Commerce raiders certainly make it possible to blockade the entire coast of the British Empire. There's simply not enough naval supply for most GPs to build and maintain enough cruisers to do that.

 

[Thanik]

More ships - less positioning?
And losing ships mean more WE, and crap war score... So I think it is better to get higher quality ships than swarm of crap.
Ofc in blockade you can put even clipper transport...

 

[1alexey]

Another consideration, though, is that commerce raiders are so damn cheap in terms of resources and naval supply, maybe you just need a big enough swarm to overwhelm the ability of cruisers and dreadnoughts to sink them.

isn`t 1 cruiser much cheaper than 6 commerce raiders?

 

[GAGA Extrem]

I haven't fought too many naval wars, but Cruiser are amazing. I once sunk 80 British ships with a small 10 cruiser fleet. Quality seems to be a lot more important than quanitity in HOD.

 

[Tikinaattori]

I have to agree that quality is really kicking in later in the game. Big navy stacks seem to get so huge malus to their positioning, that smaller modern fleet just destroys them. Also since modern ships have longer range, those commerce raiders are dropping like flies. I don't have any pics or anything, but last night I had a huge naval combat against Royal Navy ( they had like 250 ships or so ) against my 5 battleships and 20 cruisers, and it was not pretty....for the british. I think I lost like 5 cruisers ( if even that ) and they lost like 200. Granted, my navy went straight back to port for repairs, but it was game over for Great Britain in that war. Although I have to admit that I had everything in the Navy tech tree up to 1900 discovered, and I have no idea what opposition tech levels were, but it was huge victory nonetheless. I vote for smaller modern fleet.

For modern ships it's probably much more tougher. 3 Dreadnoughts vs 5 Battleships, or should you use capital ships at all if money is tight? At least in my last game Dreadnought upkeep was 129£ ( telephones are hugely expensive ) and Battleships was 72£. Cruiser on the other hand was only 26£ and commerce raider was 11£. I think 2 cruisers is a good match for 5 commerce raiders, but no point building 100 cruisers because then you only get that positions problem again, so I suppose there's no easy answer. By the way, where can you see your fleets screening efficiency. I have used 4 light ships for every capital ship ratio, but I have no idea what's the optimal number?

 

[De_Genius]

Yeah, I am also having some problems calculating the positioning.

It seems to me that there are two major factors at work being the total number of ships and the ratio between capitial ships and screens, but I cannot find any precise information regarding this.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

The main question that remains for the late game is if you should use screens (cruisers) or just lay down as many DNs as possible.
It seems that cruisers have a rather high supply cost for mediocre firepower, although I can't yet judge how good that torpedo attack works against capitals. Maybe a cruiser fleet can take down a DN spammer?

 

[Director]

Oh, my. This is the exact argument of the Jeune Ecole. Actually it is also the theory of the Jeffersonian gunboat fleet, which was immediately proved wrong in the War of 1812.

If the game models real naval fact and theory then the battleship fleet will overcome almost any number of torpedo boats (commerce raiders). Of course, once the enemy fleet is destroyed or driven into a port where it can be checked by your battle fleet, then light ships can be used for blockade duty elsewhere.

Wow... game mechanics that actually make sense in a real-world context. And naval mechanics at that! Wonderful!

 

[Secret Master]

Oh, my. This is the exact argument of the Jeune Ecole. Actually it is also the theory of the Jeffersonian gunboat fleet, which was immediately proved wrong in the War of 1812.

If the game models real naval fact and theory then the battleship fleet will overcome almost any number of torpedo boats (commerce raiders). Of course, once the enemy fleet is destroyed or driven into a port where it can be checked by your battle fleet, then light ships can be used for blockade duty elsewhere.

Wow... game mechanics that actually make sense in a real-world context. And naval mechanics at that! Wonderful!

Now all we need is a convoy raid function like HOI3, and then all will be well.

 

[delra]

Now all we need is a convoy raid function like HOI3, and then all will be well.

We'd first need convoys. And to have convoys we need goods actually being shipped from one place to another. And for that you'd need to rewrite international trade and production models from scratch (not that they don't deserve it) so goods don't magically travel between factories, the WM and warehouses typically all on different continents.

To raid commerce, you need to have commerce in the game.

Also, I scrap CRs in the 1880s and replace with Cruisers, otherwise first big battle with a more modern fleet of AI will do it for me.