Discussion: Naval combat & damage

[GAGA Extrem]

Hello folks,

after playing several games with GER, I wonder if anyone else has "issues" (or "oddities") with naval combat or to be precise: damage in naval combat.

I used a fleet of 3 SH-BB (and later 3 SH BB / 3 DD) and fought several battles in the channel, but overall damage was very low. Most of the time, the unit hit in battle would lose a lot of ORG, but not too much STR.

The oddest encounter I had was a battle agains a British task force consisting of 3 BB and several support units, resulting in total ORG loss for both sides, but only 10% dmg on my SH-BB and 40% damage on two escort vessels (1 DD and 1 CL) from the British.

Overall, in 2 years of naval campaign, I had only lost 5 submarine flottillas and 5 DD, while the British had lost 2 CA, 3 CL and 9 DD plus a dozen of TP.

In my previous game with a decent carrier fleet (5 CV + 5 DD), things were not much better. I would sink an escort or two in larger battles, but never had the chance to get an enemy capital ship. On the other hand my (tech level 1918) CV survived several head-on attacks from British capital ships, usually crawling back home at ~20-40% STR.

Another problem seems to be the new "raider is more visible after raiding attempt" thingy. My sub fleets were getting massacred by the British: 2 flottilla squadrons were almost instantly killed after their first week of raiding, while 4 flottilla squadrons took heavy damage in the following engagement and had to return home for repairs. My surface raiders took less damage, but were found and engaged almost every time after sinking enemy convoy vessels.

It would be nice to hear about your experience in naval combat.
Is STR damage too low?
Are battles too undecisive?
Are convoy raiders found too easily?

Cheers,
GAGA

 

[Ksyr]

In FTM. It seems to be much harder to sink surface ships, but subs die a lot more. It's good that I have to actually build more subs if I want a convoy war and the pacific war in general would last longer and become more difficult as long as the japanese have fuel, so it's good too.

 

[johgr]

I have had similar experiences. Playing as Germany I have had a lot of trouble keeping the subs alive, even if I tried to have both tech and doctrines ahead of time. It was too hard before to find subs, now it's too easy. I haven't noticed the nerf on experience gain on convoy raiding though. The surviving subs get experienced leaders pretty fast still.

About surface battles I too find it hard to sink anything. I've had most success with either carrier fleets or surface ships with naval bomber support. Though I seem to sink a lot less ships than before. So far I've only fought the Royal Navy. USA hasn't entered the war yet. I don't know how more modern ships will fight. Anyway, that's my experience so far.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

I just return from a game as GER with a submarine focused navy and have to concur:
Subs are deathtraps. I tinkered a bit around and even tier V subs were easily destroyed by rather small surface fleets.

The most dramtatic example was a battle near Gibraltar where 16 submarine flottillas were ripped to pieces by a task force consisting of 2 BB, 2 CA, 3 CL and 3 DD. I lost 4 flottillas and inflicted almost no damage - which would be okay, since subs are mostly for convoy hunting, wouldn't it have been for the fact that the whole battle was over in 6 hours.

In addition, subs are extremly vulnerable to airplanes. 3 enemy CAG forced my remaining 12 flottilla into the atlantic and sunk another 3 flotillas (damaged from prior battle to 30% STR) within a week.

 

[ummd]

I'm seeing similar results, it's 1939 and I can't seem to sink anything the Kriegsmarine sends my way. Organization drops like a rock and then the weak german fleet disengages with minimal damage to strength. Throughly frustrating, I haven't had one kill in a year of naval battle!

The same thing happens against u-boats, so maybe the AI is disengaging the battle somehow when organization drops.... though I wouldn't say the chance of finding convoy raiders is too high.

 

[unmerged(319294)]

I've definitely had battles playing as Germany where my cruisers have been badly mauled by the Royal Navy, so I'm not sure if surface ships are that immune to damage.

 

[ummd]

that's what make me wonder if it's an AI thing... Human germany suffers losses, human UK can't sink a thing...

I just had a typical example. My 3BC, 4 CL fleet intercepted a lone german BC. After two hours of combat the german org was at zero, strength at 75% and the german flees the battle...

 

[Cpt Crash]

In a long and costly Mediteranean campaign as Italy, I have seen the losses from combat ebb and flow. The techs do seem to have an impact on losses-and causing losses. BB's seem to have a special ability to survive almost anything. In my game I have lost one and the RN has lost one BB--in 30 months of near constant combat. DD's is another story; The Italian Navy has lost over 20 DD unit's (I have been building those like crazy since '36). SS units seem to be more vulnerable now-which is a bit more realistic than in the previous game. It is hard to keep up with losses-actually need to scale down sub operations operations. CA and CL losses have been heavy, more than a dozen in total. I had been wondering about just how a supper BB would make out. If my old BB's could take almost anythig-the super's should be almsot invulnerable until super carrier's show up.

One thing that looks to have an impact on a unit being sunk or just damaged is if is right next to a port that it can retreat/move into after battle. I do not check the weather very often, so that could have been a factor in ships getting away when I thought those should have been sunk-both mine and the RN (almost sank a carrier). One thing for sure-carriers rule the waves. CVL's accounted for most of my lost subs.

 

[unmerged(319294)]

Perhaps something to do with difficulty setting? If Hard or Very Hard maybe the AI is harder to kill?

 

[griswolds686]

Have you guys not considered that defensive values now work properly? I bet thats it. My multiplayer group plays with a mod that corrected defense before FTM and we had the same issues. There was a lot of screens lost, but you had to engage the same fleet multiple times to sink any capitol ships.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

I guess that this is one part of the problem.
If you take a close look, capital ships have low sea defence (a BB for example has 3 or 4), but the base evasion chance is 48% - which is rather high.
Considering that the regular sea STR damage has been halved in FTM (but crit damage was increased), I guess only critical hits will now deal significant damage. Maybe the regular sea attack STR damage needs to be upped to 0.075 to get more losses in combat.

 

[Caius]

Well, hit me with a gnarled stick if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that except for naval battles of the late '43 in the pacific, capital ship sinking were quite rare and, more than often, result of lucky shots or multiple engagements and several days hunt in the deep sea.
Most of Italy's BB were sunk when moored by multiple CAG raids. Several BBs of the Royal Navy went to sleep with the fishes by Pig sabotage or air launched torpedoes...Notable exceptions are the KMS Graf Spee, sunk by her own crew not to let her fall into UK hands near Montevideo and KMS Bismark, chased by two English BCs all around North Sea until the Captain gave away her position and run into HMS Ark Royale (Carrier) and her fleet. The French navy was mostly destroyed before it could fall into German hands in '40...
Only whit good Radar tech and multiple Carrier fleets we get a decent tonnage of sunk ships, historically. I'm referring to Japan and USA battles...
It's late, I'm tired and I'm not so strong with naval warfare, so correct me if I said amenities...

 

[unmerged(159022)]

It's nice to hear that naval combat is actually less deadly for surface ships. That's one thing I didn't like in Vanilla and Semper Fi, all ships should be taking more damage, but not necessarily always sinking. There were plenty of engagements with few or no losses on one or both sides, the Battle of the Komandorski Islands and the Battle of Calabria come to mind right off the bat, with no ships being sunk in either.

Seems escorts take too much of a beating still, that's unfortunate.

 

[unmerged(304296)]

In a long and costly Mediteranean campaign as Italy, I have seen the losses from combat ebb and flow. The techs do seem to have an impact on losses-and causing losses. BB's seem to have a special ability to survive almost anything. In my game I have lost one and the RN has lost one BB--in 30 months of near constant combat. DD's is another story; The Italian Navy has lost over 20 DD unit's (I have been building those like crazy since '36). SS units seem to be more vulnerable now-which is a bit more realistic than in the previous game. It is hard to keep up with losses-actually need to scale down sub operations operations. CA and CL losses have been heavy, more than a dozen in total. I had been wondering about just how a supper BB would make out. If my old BB's could take almost anythig-the super's should be almsot invulnerable until super carrier's show up.

One thing that looks to have an impact on a unit being sunk or just damaged is if is right next to a port that it can retreat/move into after battle. I do not check the weather very often, so that could have been a factor in ships getting away when I thought those should have been sunk-both mine and the RN (almost sank a carrier). One thing for sure-carriers rule the waves. CVL's accounted for most of my lost subs.

If this is the way it is now then the Devs have modeled naval combat pretty well. The biggest killer of all ships was aircraft, including sub losses. Germany built close to a thousand subs during WW 2 and about 80% were sunk so there should be heavy attrition to sub packs. The damage done by subs to other ships seems low....subs actually sank a LOT of warships. If I remember correctly sub attack was the second leading cause of warship losses. And carriers did rule the waves. CVE's and naval patrol aircraft, even beyond the losses they caused, prevented the subs from being effective by forcing them to submerge so long that the convoys were able to get away unscathed.

edit: DD's were cannon fodder in WW 2. For pretty much all navies DD's suffered a higher loss rate than any other ship type.

 

[dsteve3]

The hull value acts as a multiplier for defense - its almost impossible to sink BCs and BBs.

I guess we won't see any "Hood" type losses. It would be nice if damage varied a bit, but I can see how they have to make it so that its consistent and playable.

In terms of DDs, I once heard a strange statistic (don't know how true it is) - something to the effect that bad weather and typhoons sunk more DDs in the Pacific than combat. I have a hard time believeing that though - anyone know where I can check on that?

 

[unmerged(304296)]

The hull value acts as a multiplier for defense - its almost impossible to sink BCs and BBs.

I guess we won't see any "Hood" type losses. It would be nice if damage varied a bit, but I can see how they have to make it so that its consistent and playable.

In terms of DDs, I once heard a strange statistic (don't know how true it is) - something to the effect that bad weather and typhoons sunk more DDs in the Pacific than combat. I have a hard time believeing that though - anyone know where I can check on that?

This might be true for the US Navy but definitely not for the Japanese, Italian, German or British Navies.

Found this site:
http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq82-1.htm#anchor327957
Which lists about 70 USN destroyers lost during WW2. Only 4 were lost because of weather and a couple more due to accidents. All the rest were lost due to enemy action.

 

[unmerged(304296)]

i did a count from the site I listed in previous post. It lists USN losses in WW2 at 2 BB (both at Pearl Harbor), 4 CV, 7 CVE/CVL, 7 CA, 3 CL, 80 DD and 52 SS. Based on these figures having very few BB losses and massive DD and SS losses is historically accurate.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

The hull value acts as a multiplier for defense - its almost impossible to sink BCs and BBs.

Now that would explain a lot.

 

[Wraith11B]

i did a count from the site I listed in previous post. It lists USN losses in WW2 at 2 BB (both at Pearl Harbor), 4 CV, 7 CVE/CVL, 7 CA, 3 CL, 80 DD and 52 SS. Based on these figures having very few BB losses and massive DD and SS losses is historically accurate.

For the Americans, maybe, but for every other naval combatant I think we'd need further research. Pretty sure that the Germans lost every BB/BC that they built, and the Brits, Italians and Japanese suffered horrendous battlewagon casualties (Musashi and Yamato? Hood? etc). Recall that much of the Pacific war is based on the projection of air power, be it from islands or flattops. At least half of the combat in the European theater was surface/subsurface actions and land-based air power.

 

[Caius]

As far as I know, Germans had two BBs 'Graf Spee' and 'Bismark' and, if you look at my previous post, there's how they went down...
As far as I know during the whole WWII, eight battleships were sunk by aircraft; these were the Roma, Prince of Wales, Repulse, Arizona, Oklahoma and the Japanese Hiei, Musushi, and Yamato.