HoI4 Dev Diary - The Imperial Japanese Navy (AAR)

[Gort11]

Why should it last the entire game? Aren't we playing the game to be able to change historical events? If the Japanese had had a proper strategy and with some smart diplomacy, they could have forced China to the negotiating table. Sure, if the player makes the same mistakes and doesn't invest in the right kind of build up against China, by all means they should have to struggle, as seems the case.

Ideally an AI-versus-AI Sino-Japanese war should look something like the historical quagmire. These days every time I play the game Japan conquers China in late 1939.

 

[blackpowder320]

Why should it last the entire game? Aren't we playing the game to be able to change historical events? If the Japanese had had a proper strategy and with some smart diplomacy, they could have forced China to the negotiating table. Sure, if the player makes the same mistakes and doesn't invest in the right kind of build up against China, by all means they should have to struggle, as seems the case.

The Japanese already have in-game penalties when taking the Marco Polo Bridge Incident focus.

Making the war with China more difficult than necessary would just lose more incentives to play as Japan.

EDIT: It makes sense, however, that if Historical Mode is on, AI Japan should be in a quagmire situation with AI China. Kinda breaks the immersion if AI Japan is able to defeat AI China fast.

 

[CrazyZombie]

Ideally an AI-versus-AI Sino-Japanese war should look something like the historical quagmire. These days every time I play the game Japan conquers China in late 1939.

Well, it is better than Chinese AI throwing AI-Japan out of continent because "it can". As Soviet Union I prefer to see Japan as one of major powers in the Pacific, able to struggle for some time, not naval landing of USMC in 1942 on Home Islands.

 

[Daelyn75]

Well there is the spotting and intercepting phase as well, not just naval combat. If you use your carriers only after spotting the enemy and deploy your planes as a strike force it achieves what you want. We don't know how the intercept system works in detail - if your carrier force can be set to the equivalent of do not engage then it should try to keep out of the main battle while it's planes are constantly harassing the intercepters.

The battle mentioned in the AAR was one where his main battle force got ambushed because he FAILED his spotting. In that case then yes his carriers should be sunk.

Either way at least the new system represents battles in the Atlantic which is in improvement over the old system that didn't represent battles anywhere

We don't know exactly how it will work out, but they have basically already gone over all the mechanics so far and none of them pay special attention to carrier warfare. It was already this way before MtGs, and he wrote about a big naval battle in which it continues to happen, regardless if he was ambushed.

It almost seems like I am the only one who discusses the old Gary Grisby game Pacific War here on this forum.

If anyone else has, you would have seen how well done the carrier battles were done. It's an old turn based game, but it still has a lot of relevance on how to make some aspects of its mechanics which worked well, incorporated into HOI.

When you have two opposing carrier fleets out on basically whatever attack duty assigned to an area, they would automatically strike an opposing fleet, but specifically target a fleet with carriers, and then specifically target the enemy carriers first when the attack phase began. I'm guessing the first strike came down to who spotted who first.

Your planes launch based upon their readiness level and how many you have in your carrier fleet. It then shows the enemy fleet with its AA level, and CAP overhead, and your attack planes. First off, your fighters engage with the enemy fighters, then any that are still there get a chance to attack your CAS and Torpedo airplanes, and then any of your bombers that make it through then each have a small chance based upon experience level of the airgroup to hit a carrier, and while doing so also have to contend with the enemy AA. The damage you inflict depends on various factors such as bomb/torpedo strength, enemy ship durability etc . .

Then, the surviving enemy carriers will send a strike back on your carrier fleet automatically, and the whole thing is repeated but on your fleet. The entire game basically comes down to these battles since it's only on the greater Pacific theater, and carrier battles are the deciding outcome of who will win the war.

For an old 1993 game, I really think this is how carrier battles should be handled. I really wish Paradox would take some of their ideas from this old game.

 

[CrazyZombie]

Bad that there is still no ability to order division templates in the designer. Something, that should have been in the game from the start.

 

[Gort11]

Well, it is better than Chinese AI throwing AI-Japan out of continent because "it can". As Soviet Union I prefer to see Japan as one of major powers in the Pacific, able to struggle for some time, not naval landing of USMC in 1942 on Home Islands.

I've seen some Hearts of Iron-type games handle it as a non-total war. So, if Japan wins they get some coastal cities from China, while if China wins Japan hands them Manchukuo.

As it is, Japan usually conquers the entirety of China in 1939, and we're left in the weird situation where Japan can keep control of the entirety of China without requiring a single garrison unit.

 

[Znail]

@Daelyn75 That seems significantly worse then how HoI4 handles sea battles as it totally ignores non-Carriers and that is more unhistorical then HoI4. The problem is that neither side have perfect information, so it's quite possible for BS to get in range before being detected. Putting your Carriers in a fleet with "no engage" and setting the planes lose will simulate long range carrier duels pretty well.

There is also the problem of running away as main tactic as that will cause trouble as soon as there is an objective that needs protecting by either side.

 

[Daelyn75]

@Daelyn75 That seems significantly worse then how HoI4 handles sea battles as it totally ignores non-Carriers and that is more unhistorical then HoI4. The problem is that neither side have perfect information, so it's quite possible for BS to get in range before being detected. Putting your Carriers in a fleet with "no engage" and setting the planes lose will simulate long range carrier duels pretty well.

There is also the problem of running away as main tactic as that will cause trouble as soon as there is an objective that needs protecting by either side.

I never said it ignores non carrier fleets. It prioritizes the carrier fleets which is what should happen. If there are no carrier fleets around, whatever is spotted and within range gets attacked.

One of the ways I would level the playing field since the US had so much more production, and their airplanes were much more durable was not to get into a slugging match with them carrier for carrier, but I would move all my best land based Zeros, and several wings of my land based naval bombers into an attack zone around the Solomons and or the Marshalls, the Solomons was easier because airbases could be expanded better. My land based naval air forces weren't what was to kill the enemy carriers, but my land based Zeros would cut down the US CAP around their carriers, and then my carriers would go in and be the real sinking force. I believe they had land air forces attack twice per turn, and in between that was your naval movement and attack. So I would encounter a much reduced enemy carrier force in terms of their fighters which made it easier for my carrier air attack force to get through and hit their carriers.

It wouldn't be the same in HOI4 since its all real time, but a system like this where you use your best land based naval air along with your best and strongest carrier fleet to attack at the same time should hurt the enemy.

 

[Taullis]

The battle mentioned in the AAR was one where his main battle force got ambushed because he FAILED his spotting. In that case then yes his carriers should be sunk.

While I can fairly agree with this statement - @Archangel85 clearly fails to give an idea of what kind of patrol found him first (and he may not have a way of knowing) - was it a PBY? a destroyer? radar? Getting the drop on the opposing fleet with all the big ships should certainly go this way - I agree. But the scenario below clearly indicates it was the surface ships that engaged. Historically though in battles such as Coral Sea, Midway, Philippine Sea, and others, one force devastated the other by getting the aerial jump - not the surprise arrival of the entire surface battlegroup. AFAIK, HMS Glorious was the only carrier of the entire war to be lost to enemy surface action and she and her two destroyer escorts were all lost (Thanks Scharnhorst + Gneisenau)

While my marines still struggle to make landfall in the Philippines, a bigger drama unfolds in the Bismarck Sea. Niall has finally unleashed his main strike force, after one of his patrols found my carrier fleet.


The Battle of the Bismarck Sea does not go particularly well for the Imperial Navy. With several battleships detached for minor repairs, the US Navy breaks through my screening units and manages to do an end run on my carriers, sinking all four for no capital ship loses on their side. The survivors straggle home, many ships badly damaged during the ferocious engagement as my battle line attempted to screen against the full might of the US battlefleet.

Not enough screening vessels to protect my carriers against his battle fleet. Although Yamato sunk several ships and survived to fight another day, spending the same amount of 3 heavy cruisers would likely have yielded better results

All these quotes just continue to hammer home the idea of "Guns, guns, guns - battleships, battleships, BATTLESHIPS!!!!!!"

The second world war was the first time in history that two opposing forces sunk each other's ships without ever sighting each other directly. And this became the norm for the single greatest area of naval conflict in the entire war - the Pacific Ocean. To not find a way to represent this in at least a passable form would be a shame and a massive missed opportunity for Paradox in what is genuinely one of the greatest grand historical strategy games.

I would hope the devs pay attention to this feedback and address it head-on as to how they imagine or see the game recognizing this dynamic and massive historical change that still dominates the current world view of naval warfare. I think if the devs came out and simply said, "Hey this is how we foresee carrier engagements working," and then explaining how they see this concern of a lot of us being addressed, and why they chose certain mechanics, it would go a looong way to assuaging fears - whether it is a clunky approach or not. By not having addressed it directly, it gives a lot of reason for concern and uncertainty among fans and continued (admittedly inferred) avoidance of the issue appears to many as confirmation that the game engine is either not capable of handling over the horizon carrier battles without an even more massive re-write of the code or they have not addressed it all. In either case, Man the Guns is looking to be a literal description of the main naval expansion for the series - better naval combat -with guns!!

EDIT: I forgot the St. Lo at Samar - a CVE being sunk to gunfire, so like two total carriers ever lost to gunfire in the war - every other loss was to aircraft or submarines

 

[CrazyZombie]

Bad that there is still no ability to order division templates in the designer. Something, that should have been in the game from the start.

And who disagrees with this? Care to add some argumentation?

 

[Znail]

AFAIK, HMS Glorious was the only carrier of the entire war to be lost to enemy surface action and she and her two destroyer escorts were all lost (Thanks Scharnhorst + Gneisenau)

EDIT: I forgot the St. Lo at Samar - a CVE being sunk to gunfire, so like two total carriers ever lost to gunfire in the war - every other loss was to carrier aircraft or submarines

There was also USS Gambier Bay that was sunk by gunfire. But it's a mistake to look too blindly at history as Japan and US only had so many battles to fight before Japan ran out of ships that there is limited amount of data. Both sides were also very carefull with their main assests, the BB's and more willing to risk the more expendable CV's.

 

[pvt.conners]

And who disagrees with this? Care to add some argumentation?

You can always look at who gave you a disagree under ratings recieved on your profile.
I do agree that a sortable division template list would be nice QoL.
It may yet come in 1.6.x. One can hope.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

Hopefully getting a carriers to not be sunk left right and centre by surface assets is a simple mater of increasing their disengagement chance. However that still doesn't address the issue that in the Pacific those surface assets might be hundreds of miles away from each other while the carrier air groups fight it out and attack the fleets.

So if say two carrier fleets are set to "Do Not Engage" and they are in the same sea zone, with the air wings set to naval attack and air superiority in the sea zone, do you end up with a kind of war of attrition with both sides trading air attacks? Maybe you force the air attacks to be more concentrated in time and you start to get something like carrier fleets each trying to get in the first big strike?

 

[CrazyZombie]

You can always look at who gave you a disagree under ratings recieved on your profile.
I do agree that a sortable division template list would be nice QoL.
It may yet come in 1.6.x. One can hope.

It wasn't shown in latest dev stream. It wasn't mentioned in dev diaries, and as we can see from this one, devs can't say, they have PLENTY stuff to write about. So, it is safe to assume, that there is no sorting interface - neither buttons, nor drag&drop.

 

[pvt.conners]

It wasn't shown in latest dev stream. It wasn't mentioned in dev diaries, and as we can see from this one, devs can't say, they have PLENTY stuff to write about. So, it is safe to assume, that there is no sorting interface - neither buttons, nor drag&drop.

I'm aware, by 1.6.x I meant one of the smaller patches after 1.6 (1.6.1 e.g.) There is a precedent for smaller additions to make it into maintenance patches.

 

[CrazyZombie]

I'm aware, by 1.6.x I meant one of the smaller patches after 1.6 (1.6.1 e.g.) There is a precedent for smaller additions to make it into maintenance patches.

Well, maybe then. I don't like the fact that I can't see many people, demanding this. No social order, seen by PDX, so no actual addition.

 

[Daelyn75]

All these quotes just continue to hammer home the idea of "Guns, guns, guns - battleships, battleships, BATTLESHIPS!!!!!!"

Well it was like that before so I can only assume it will be like this again. Which is odd because before you could sort of just assume well it's an entire seazone and this is where many battles could be taking place, but now it's one battle in a localized spot just specific to this battle and this battle alone. They cannot get away with sending your guns forward while the carriers stand back and decide to attack as soon as your warships start shooting at each other anymore.

Yup, just great.

I get that you could just unleash your planes into the entire seazone from your carriers but that's not really much difference than naval bomber attacks, just shorter in range.

A carrier strike could be absolutely devastating to ships. If organized right, as a concentrated attack that with good pilot skill, smaller airplanes (than land based naval bombers), and the simultaneous high dive bomb attack and low torpedo attack made it extremely difficult to out maneuver/intercept/shoot with AA guns.

The old quote from Mussolini about Italy being an aircraft carrier means he had no idea about the power of modern (then) carrier strikes.

 

[agentgb]

Neat little video by TIK that also looks at some of the fuel, logistic and reasoning for securing ports to shorten transit distance to the front, also the black market of fuel disappearing thus hampering efforts. Alot of TIK videos, especially his feature length documentaries really go into detail about the effort the allied made to secure supplies near the front in the Africa campaigns before an attack, building infrastructure and pipelines, even diversions to act has a ruse to give the impression an attack was coming from that area not to mention the well known supply issues Rommel Afrika Korp had.

Would highly recommend TIK channel to anyone whom is interested in all the finer details of campaign during world war two, even some of the not so well known and detailed ones that the history channel or mainstream documentaries rarely cover. Even little anecdote stories of commanders attaching armchairs on top of tanks so they can conduct the battle from atop their tank, to commanders rallying retreating tank divisions and spear heading it in a jeep. These notable commanders are in HOI too, like Jock

With the Japaneses AAR and the talk of managing fuel, totally hyped for the new layer of strategic depth this has the potential to bring.


Video on O Connor during Operation Compass

 

[Farquarsen]

@Daelyn75 War in the pacific Admirals edition 2005 published by Matrix. And yes, its my source and inspiration of how a pacific war simulation should work. its pretty close to a RTS. it mixes attacker defender phases in a turn similarly to how HOI IV uses RTS phases to resolve battles. I see a lot of Gribsy's ideas at work in the PDX games especially ideas borrowed from Art of War. I can only hope they can borrow from War in the Pacific. I am not talking about code stealing; I am talking about mimicking results

 

[Daelyn75]

@Daelyn75 War in the pacific Admirals edition 2005 published by Matrix. And yes, its my source and inspiration of how a pacific war simulation should work. its pretty close to a RTS. it mixes attacker defender phases in a turn similarly to how HOI IV uses RTS phases to resolve battles. I see a lot of Gribsy's ideas at work in the PDX games especially ideas borrowed from Art of War. I can only hope they can borrow from War in the Pacific. I am not talking about code stealing; I am talking about mimicking results

I couldn't agree more. I was talking about this game years before HOI4 launched and said that there is much that they can use from that old game. I never played a version but the original 1993 one. I also played a lot of War in the East, and it's original Second Front - I played to death when I was 16 since it was about the first real strategy game that I ever got into. I guess Civilization, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms don't really count as military strategy games.

They still have a lot to do when it comes to hitting airfields. I want to be able to bomb and destroy aircraft on the airfields like you could do in those Gary Grisby games. All you can do in HOI4 is damage the airfield.