DW Naval Combat Question -- utility of small ships in combat?

[unmerged(389675)]

So, I've read the excellent (and I'm hoping, still accurate) threads on naval stacking penalties -- and I get, from that, that (essentially) the optimum fleet size is likely around 5K cannon.

Is there any reason that those should not all be big ships? Specifically, I'm trying to figure out the best way to use small ships (if at all?). Not really concerned about galleys or transports here -- really just trying to home in on good rules for, say, what is the best mix of big/small ships in a fleet.

Looking at, say, caravels (hull 25/ cannon 50/ speed 5) vs barques (hull 10/ cannon 15/ speed 10) -- how would you determine how many of each to employ in a battle fleet? My goal here is to maximize killing power per # of ships -- cost not a factor. I get that including small ships raises your starting maneuver efficiency -- but it's highly unclear how to judge the proper proportion.

I'd really appreciate any insights people have to offer -- running tests on this is painful (I'm an avid gamer, but not really a whiz with altering save files and setting up test conditions).

 

[Xeorm]

From what I understand, in straight combat large ships > small ships. Small ships have the advantage though of being able to move faster between sea locations and being cheaper.

 

[unmerged(389675)]

Not sure if you're getting the gist of my question here -- there are generally clear rules, on say, inf/cav/art distributions in land stacks, that change with time/tech.

I want to know -- excluding transports/galleys -- if there's such a force composition rule for big and little ship fleets, and if so, what it is // how you calculate it. AFAIK, there seems to be little to no reason to include small ships in a battle fleet, but that seems foolish (to have an essentially wasted class of ships) -- however, it's a pain in the butt to test...so I'm asking the community =)

 

[Daunus]

yes im interested also

 

[safferli]

I have no real knowledge of this, but with more small ships the chances of capturing ships increases. Their speed advantage does this I think.

 

[KPJ]

I don't know if anybody can answer the OP question as specifically as asked.
I can't remember if I learned this for V2 or EU3 or if both are the same but I do remember learning that small ships suffer hits first, then big ships. I don't know how that helps.

 

[DDRJake]

I fight exclusively with galleys these days, but back when I fought all of Europe I found that big ships outstrip small ships in combat, but light ships are better for everything else. The hullsize alone is so lacking that even if you have light ships compliment a large shop stack, you'll lose some of those light ships.

The way I see it: big ships for combat, light ships for anything else. (blockade, tarrifs, escorting transports)

'course after playing several naval games, I now exclusively use Galleys. They are cheap, fast and not all that weak, especially in closed waters. You can even go well over the forcelimit with them and not pay much money for them and when one sinks, it's no big deal. A stack of 160 with a decent admiral killed anything in my game and the rest blockaded.

 

[sprites]

You can catch the enemy with a fleet of small ships , then bring your big ships to win the battle !

 

[Jazumir]

... or vice versa, since the small ones are faster. As Portugal, whenever i blockaded castille´s mainland, i´d send out rather small stacks (to cover everything) of big ships, and if one happenend to get attacked, i´d quickly send in a big stack of small ships, to help out (and neighboring small stacks of big ships, if needed).

As for the OP: I dont think, that small ships and big ships should be permanently merged into the same fleets, but rather be kept seperate, to utilize the speed of the small ones. ´March devided - strike united´ could be the motto here. As for the striking, it seems that small ships do indeed sink first and can serve as some sort of disposable shield for the big ships. Now, preference and the situation of the war your are in comes into play: Would you rather lose a bunch of small ships, but keep your biggies all intact, by and large, so that you can go on with those at least, as if no battle happenend, or would you rather not lose any ships, but have many damaged and not being truely operational for a couple of months? Obviously, the latter seems preferable, when the war is closing anyways, but if it seems, that it will be decided in the next few weeks, the former might serve you better...

Put another way: The main purpose of the small ships in a combined fleet seems to be to keep the big ones operational for longer. If you are confident, that you wont need an operational fleet after this next battle for some time, i´d say save on sending the small ones in. If you expect to be fighting a long naval war against a serious contender, bring the small ships as cover and keep building replacements, so that the core of your naval power, the big ships, get through the various battles rather untarnished and can continiously rule the waves, at the sacrifice of some small vessels. To lose and rebuild small ships or to repair damaged big ships - to be or not to be...?

 

[King Nothing]

I think most of the advice in the earlier posts are good for HttT and earlier..

I haven't done any real studies about this but in an earlier game as a very heavily colonizing Britain I found out some stuff the very hard way.. In the beginning I was very hard pressed for cash since I had a lot more ships than my force limit allowed, this forced me to use almost entirely light ships.
My main european battle fleet consisted of something like 20 big ships and 70 light ships and it killed everything with ease. I wasn't even close to losing a single battle with that fleet, even against other big fleets (Castille) and I captured more ships than I lost.
Then later in the game when I was swimming in money and I decided to build the next batch of ships, I built something like 50 big ships and put them into my battle fleet. Still around 90 ships since I had found out that it was more than enough but now it was something like 70 big ships and 20 light ones. In the next wars I lost several battles even against much smaller fleets and those 90 ships soon had to be refilled because of the losses...
Needless to say, when I had refilled the battle fleet with mostly small ships, I was once again the supreme ruler of every battle.

I didn't do any more tests but at least I learned that 20 big + 70 light is much much better than 70 big + 20 light.

EDIT: This was with 5.1 or possibly with the last beta.

 

[unmerged(326977)]

I learned that admirals are extremely important, especially their manoeuvre stat, which reduces the stacking penalty, allowing you to have more (big) ships in a fleet.

 

[przemo_li]

In 5.2 you NEED* small ships to win SERIOUS naval battles.

So I play 50/50% and it work ok. Though I always have a bit of tech superiority, so duno if that is "best" or just "working". But 100% big ships with better naval tech and good naval admiral is most definitely "NOT working".

*As Venice always keep lots of galleys. They are cheaper (40%!) so you can have more of them. And if you have 2x next biggest fleet, you can defeat them easily. (But tested it only for 1500< period, after that I usually have cash for big.SMALL fleet )

PS On full naval setting 160Big + 160Small ships (3deckers and HEAVYfirgates) cost 45g with NI and under naval force limit! Its expensive as hell.

 

[cacra]

'course after playing several naval games, I now exclusively use Galleys. They are cheap, fast and not all that weak, especially in closed waters. You can even go well over the forcelimit with them and not pay much money for them and when one sinks, it's no big deal. A stack of 160 with a decent admiral killed anything in my game and the rest blockaded.

What, a 160 stack of galleys will beat a 50 stack of big ships or can they only beat less?

 

[alexti]

But 100% big ships with better naval tech and good naval admiral is most definitely "NOT working".

I found it's working very well, just a matter of how much of tech advantage you have. I've found that in 17th century my stack of 10 big ships could go into any battle (like against 70-80 AI-managed big ships) take no damage and sail into the next battle straight after. This was with a big tech advantage though - two-deckers vs caravels and galleons.

 

[unmerged(80402)]

Very important is shock and fire modifires you get from tech. Galleys make few times less damage in fire phase compared to Big ships. From what i know, cannons should only matter in fire phase, while in shock phase maneuver is more important - but i am not sure realy how it works.

Anyway galleys are cheap, but they are not realy good in naval battles. Better are light ships, because they both have more speed and cannons. So if anything, except for early on, i would rather use light ships, than galleys. Galleys are good early on, if you don't want to spend too much for navy, but you are a naval country - or ottomans - ottomans realy need to keep big navy aspecialy early on. If you are not naval country - you should make only transports. Because you will anyway lose in naval. Unless you play SP, ofc. because in single player, naval countries are realy dissapointing - i rarely see any country to make more than 100 ships.

If we speak of serious naval combat, we can only speak in matter of multiplayer games, because singleplayer naval battles, are too easy - because AI inability to construct buildings in a good way. Instead of building naval building in every coastal province, naval countries try to build everything, making it quite chaotic. Only the OPM's have everything on their place, because they CAN build all the buildings.

 

[Nunn45]

Generaly i build exclusivly Big ships with a handful of light ships for anti-pirate duties and enough transports as necassary, though i could see light ships being used in quick strike forces to hunt down transports/split blockades, blockade themselves to free up big ships or in support of major battles between two bigship navies.

 

[unmerged(80402)]

I think you need like 40 transport per ocean you own, if you have big enough forces. If not, then it should be 20 transport per ocean at least. Early on, 10 transports are good enough, but 20 are best optimum. If you are not naval nation, and it is not early game you should have around 100 transport ships, for cogdrops - and you may have some ships to defend them. Anyway such fleet is only needed if your naval FL allows you to build at least 50 ships, because this mean that blockades can hurt you a bit, so you might need to be able to retaliate in some way. IE if you are turkey, and someone want to harras you with blockades, he will think twice if you will be able to cogdrop him next war.

I think that if you got realy big amount of colonies, light ships are good enough, as you just keep them in port, and so they won't be destroyed. I think that around 5 ships per 3 sea lanes, is ussualy good enough(work for me most of the time). Ofc. when it comes to war, you need to have large amount of big ships, to both destroy enemy fleet AND blockade his ports.

IMO naval tradition, is uber important, sea hawks should be like second or third NI for naval nation, because good admiral can mean difference between victory and total destruction. And OFC, any naval nation, should hire naval tradition advisor - because otherwise you will not be able to keep up with tradition anyway. If you did somehow got 6 stars naval tradition advisor, hire him, and take sea hawks as first NI, if you can - this way, even if you have rather small fleet, you will be able to obliterate bigger fleets. Plus this allows you to hire good traders, and collectors, which helps your trade.

However that is only my opinion, you don't have to agree with it.

 

[Nunn45]

If your colony heavy, you realy only need 1 ship per 3 or so provinces, depending on how far its effect on stopping pirates is, and a varies stacks of 50 big ships incase of war.

 

[The-King]

IMO naval tradition, is uber important, sea hawks should be like second or third NI for naval nation, because good admiral can mean difference between victory and total destruction. And OFC, any naval nation, should hire naval tradition advisor - because otherwise you will not be able to keep up with tradition anyway. If you did somehow got 6 stars naval tradition advisor, hire him, and take sea hawks as first NI, if you can - this way, even if you have rather small fleet, you will be able to obliterate bigger fleets. Plus this allows you to hire good traders, and collectors, which helps your trade.

This.
Speaking from a multiplayer perspective (I only play multiplayer) admirals are the determining factor to most battles. And most naval nations only make bigships because forcelimits aren't that high (I play 5.2 ZZFZ, the version before the horrible manpower changed) and you don't have to click as much.

 

[Nunn45]

By how much of a percentage are light ships weaker and by how much of a percentage are they cheaper?