HoI 4 - Retreating Navies Concentrate Fire

[RikiBreeiki]

Description of issue
Retreating Navies Concentrate Fire

Game Version
1.6.2

Enabled DLC
All of the above

Do you have mods enabled?
No

Description
Retreating ships do concentrate their all fire on a single ship, killing it quickly , , chasing ships-fleets dont have same bonus

,resulting in retreating navy killing lots of ships while themselves not taking any casualteis but just damage spread over all ships

Steps to Reproduce
Make 2 equal navies fight eachother, after battlestarts immediatly retreat with one side, retreating side will focus all fire on same ships, gaining a huge advantage, killing ships one by one

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[RikiBreeiki]

i dont know if this is a feature added to disencourage people from fighting to death with their ships , or a bug , but it would be good incase this is a feature we should have an automatically retreat after iniating a fight button similiar to auto repair- auto reinforce from reserves

 

[Taghmon]

I noticed similar too, that retreating ships are a lot more powerful than chassing ships; I thought that retreating ships are a lot harder to hit?
2 Examples:
- A fleet of 2Cl+8DD retreat from an old Strike Fleet of about 60 ships => retreating fleet looses 2DD but the Strike Fleet looses 20DD and 5 CL (ridiculous...)
- 1 DD(1xTorped Launcher II) retreats from a small Strike Fleet maybe 25 Ships with barely not enough screen: DD dies but hits the BB for ~220 Torpedo Damage (insane...)

The first example fits your observation, but the 2nd means 1 DD survived long enough to hit at least 3 Torpedos on the BB ( I think it was 2 crits but it needs atleast 1 more )

 

[Dan1109]

Retreating ships should definitely lose a % of their guns. You will nullify your retreat speed, if you bring the ship about, to fire your forward batteries at a target chasing you.

 

[llib]

Retreating ships should definitely lose a % of their guns. You will nullify your retreat speed, if you bring the ship about, to fire your forward batteries at a target chasing you.

I don't know what's going on regarding behavior observed in this thread, but losing half of firepower makes little sense. You could just as easily say that chaser should also lose half of firepower. And do we consider guns position? But one of the things I would imagine make some sense, would be the retreating force running away from heavy ships that can't catch up, while being chased somewhat successfully by fast/small enemy ships... which one by one come to range, and are shot apart... which of course would rarely happen - light chasers would stay out until there is enough of them, or until battle ends because capitals just can't catch up and light ships are too weak...
By the way, current naval combat is rather unclear to me, and I'm not sure if it's supposed to be, or if it's just a matter of this being beta/work in progress.. we don't see any positioning anymore, but some of it is still happening on the background...

 

[RikiBreeiki]

bug is still in the game , chasing ships die 1 by 1, while retreating still take damage spread across all ships


hopefully there will be a 1.6.3 patch else game is about clicking that button asap, i tried do not engage in the picture above took too long for us ships to retreat and already lost the battle . it is 99% about spotting first and clicking op button

 

[Taghmon]

@RikiBreeiki Your battle looks like japans ships are barely scratched; Shouldn't "spread out" damage that killed 4BB, 12 CL/A and 8DD reduce the average health of the retreating fleet considerable?
Don't get me wrong, it shows an unbalance in naval combat that makes it unplayable, wait, the Japanese fleet has maybe 40% more damage output so it should win and never have fled in the first place?
Especially the heavy losses among Unites States' capital ships, while the screen is intact and there heavy attack is only 18% less, looks wrong.

The Japanese fleet has no AA and no fighters: is AA+fighter useless now?

 

[Pied-Noir]

@RikiBreeiki

Did you upgrade the Kongos to battleships? Aren't they supposed to be battlecruisers now?

 

[RikiBreeiki]

@RikiBreeiki Your battle looks like japans ships are barely scratched; Shouldn't "spread out" damage that killed 4BB, 12 CL/A and 8DD reduce the average health of the retreating fleet considerable?
Don't get me wrong, it shows an unbalance in naval combat that makes it unplayable, wait, the Japanese fleet has maybe 40% more damage output so it should win and never have fled in the first place?
Especially the heavy losses among Unites States' capital ships, while the screen is intact and there heavy attack is only 18% less, looks wrong.

The Japanese fleet has no AA and no fighters: is AA+fighter useless now?

thats old japanese fleet, save is old but was done in 1.6.2 , only new things in it are carriers, i was testing stuff, about fighters, they are useless if you put thousands of HFTRs over reigon but carriers overall are weak

it did damage health of retreating fleet , you can see almost all japanese capitals lost HP by carefully looking at STR bars , while all alive usa ships are full hp since japanese only choose 1 ship and shoot it while usa ships target randomly

you can also look to screenshots attached to main post, and notice both navies dealt nearly equal damage with equal ships but chasing fleet lost ships with every alive ship full hp, while retreating have damage spread across all

Did you upgrade the Kongos to battleships? Aren't they supposed to be battlecruisers now?

Save is old. from earlier versions of 1.6.2 but the bug is still there

 

[bitmode]

i dont know if this is a feature added to disencourage people from fighting to death with their ships , or a bug , but it would be good incase this is a feature we should have an automatically retreat after iniating a fight button similiar to auto repair- auto reinforce from reserves

I updated the wiki with the current behavior (https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Naval_warfare#Target_selection particularly last sentence). The current behavior actually has a strong semblance to what was done in 1.5:

Ships in the retreating state use the same target scoring as above (excluding stacking penalty) but only choose among the enemies that fire at them and always pick the highest scoring one. They do reduced damage[2] and have reduced speed [3] but can get increased speed[4] from the admiral leading the naval combat (not necessarily the one from their fleet). Both speed modifications stack multiplicatively.

It was already very questionable back then but not as easily exploitable, because the damage was slightly reduced, no two retreating ship could target the same enemy, and the ships needed to reach and maintain firing distance throughout the maneuver.

@Secret Master everyone's Ernest King now

 

[Dan1109]

I don't know what's going on regarding behavior observed in this thread, but losing half of firepower makes little sense. You could just as easily say that chaser should also lose half of firepower. And do we consider guns position? But one of the things I would imagine make some sense, would be the retreating force running away from heavy ships that can't catch up, while being chased somewhat successfully by fast/small enemy ships... which one by one come to range, and are shot apart... which of course would rarely happen - light chasers would stay out until there is enough of them, or until battle ends because capitals just can't catch up and light ships are too weak...
By the way, current naval combat is rather unclear to me, and I'm not sure if it's supposed to be, or if it's just a matter of this being beta/work in progress.. we don't see any positioning anymore, but some of it is still happening on the background...

Kk, answer me this....how is to one to fire their forward batteries immediately aft? If you are retreating, you sail as FAST as you can away from the enemy. The main reason why you can retreat, is that the pursers, trying to sink you, are tacking their vessels, losing much speed while bringing all of their guns to bear. If BOTH sets of vessels do this, then there is no retreat whatsoever...both fleets maintain the same range

 

[llib]

Kk, answer me this....how is to one to fire their forward batteries immediately aft? If you are retreating, you sail as FAST as you can away from the enemy. The main reason why you can retreat, is that the pursers, trying to sink you, are tacking their vessels, losing much speed while bringing all of their guns to bear. If BOTH sets of vessels do this, then there is no retreat whatsoever...both fleets maintain the same range

That totally depends on types of ships chasing/being chased and their relative speeds(and of course initial position, only there is none that we can see).
For example after destroying Hood, Bismarck at one time at least used her guns to keep the shadowing cruisers at respectable distance. This actually allowed it to break contact. Which I think would be more valid argument, I don't think there was sufficiently incompetent navy to just charge piecemeal, there were engagements in mediterranean where one side light units came under fire from heavy units, turned back, the other side gave chase, eventually came into range of heavy units from the other side, and roles reversed... These were not particularly decisive actions.

 

[Secret Master]

@Secret Master everyone's Ernest King now

Oh my. That thread I made about Blockade Runner and Ernest King was from July of 2018. And we're here still dealing a similar problem with entirely new mechanics.

Thanks for the heads up, though. Not only does it give me more parameters for testing, but it means we need to have a little chat in our MP group about house rules. We don't want to have people abusing the manual retreat button to annihilate enemy fleets.

 

[Dan1109]

That totally depends on types of ships chasing/being chased and their relative speeds(and of course initial position, only there is none that we can see).
For example after destroying Hood, Bismarck at one time at least used her guns to keep the shadowing cruisers at respectable distance. This actually allowed it to break contact. Which I think would be more valid argument, I don't think there was sufficiently incompetent navy to just charge piecemeal, there were engagements in mediterranean where one side light units came under fire from heavy units, turned back, the other side gave chase, eventually came into range of heavy units from the other side, and roles reversed... These were not particularly decisive actions.

Bismark's gear guns were more than big enough to ward off anyone. And in Bismark's case, its 50% of her main batteries. Therefore 50% of firepower should be lost when you are running away at full speed. But, focusing it on one target is still wrong.

If we talk about balance, this could be perhaps it. If you retreat, you have higher speed and evasion, but at the expense of losing your gun power.

 

[llib]

Bismark's gear guns were more than big enough to ward off anyone. And in Bismark's case, its 50% of her main batteries. Therefore 50% of firepower should be lost when you are running away at full speed. But, focusing it on one target is still wrong.

If we talk about balance, this could be perhaps it. If you retreat, you have higher speed and evasion, but at the expense of losing your gun power.

So far as I know, it used all the guns. Anyway that's not the point - I agree with you on the part that running side should not get bonus or fire concentration on chasing enemy, perhaps unless the enemy is set to engage always - and my rationale is that gunfire at high speed, intensive maneuvering and at long distance is always going to be inaccurate(save for random chances or huge volumes of fire), and the pursuing side would generally not offer one target at a time no matter what. But not knowing what's happening as the situation is now it's impossible to accurately speculate on what needs fixing.

 

[RikiBreeiki]

Bug is still in as of 1.7.0 Hydra patch

 

[podcat]

Hi, will take a look