HoI4 naval stats - Wiki and reality

[Axe99]

After Denkt posted the HoI4 naval stats from the wiki (http://www.hoi4wiki.com/Naval_units), I had a gander, and while I'm not going to nit-pick the details (as, given the broad-brush issues, it's hardly surprising that a lot of the smaller details are a bit out of whack as well), there were a few oddities that seemed to bear mentioning. I'm aware they're likely in beta, and placeholders, but some of the things were particularly odd. The first, most of all. Specifically:

- Light Cruisers have no armour at all. Historically, light cruisers were armoured, with some CLs having heavier armour than contemporary CAs. If there's no armour at all, it won't be possible for variants to amend this, as a 5% increase on nothing is still nothing.

- A 1944 heavy cruiser has the same level of armour as a 1936 BB. Even the Alaska class (which people debate whether they were CAs or BAs) only had a 9 inch belt, and most late war CAs were closer to 5 or 6 inches. CAs in the table are over-armoured relative to BCs

- The manpower numbers are all over the place. SHBB the same as a BB is way off (historically, Yamato was 2500, 500-1000 above the manpower of contemporary BBs), and in either case a good deal below actual manpower required for anything other than '1922' models. On the other hand, DDs at 500 and subs at 400 overstate the manpower required for these vessels (in the case of submarines, often by a factor of four). In the case of every class, manopwer holds constant over time while costs for the vessels increased, despite the fact that the increasing costs for the vessels (generally, but in the vast, vast majority of cases) reflect later designs being larger (and requiring more manpower).

- Carrier anti-air attack figures look far too low - I'd struggle to find a CVE with less AA than a destroyer, yet this is the rule in the case of the stats here.

Where do these numbers come from, and how up-to-date are they? Hopefully, at the very least, the CL armour and manpower figures are largely placeholder. Not that I'm not planning to mod in naval stats in any event, but would feel a bit slack if after doing a stack of research I didn't see the oddness in the HoI4 wiki stats and not mention it. As always, not knocking the game as a whole, and we don't know how it'll work in practice, and may well be sorted already.

 

[Pandoricus]

Along with subs since they only get worse with those numbers in the wiki, a 5-5-5-5 gets a much lower reliability among with most stats negating one another

 

[Midden]

That's some good observations Axe99. If the stats and the game effectiveness boils down to this maths, by the looks of it you can build 3 HC's for a BB, and by the looks of the maths 3 HC's look more effective option than a BB. The HC armour wow!

I would be interested in seeing shore bombardment added to that table.
I expect that might be another item where destroyers might be not be modelled correctly.

 

[Kozer]

Where they get numbers from doesn't matter when they balance a game.

 

[LordOfWar16]

As with any wiki i wouldnt pay too much attention to the numbers before the game is even released. Most numbers are/were highly in flux and change all the time because of balancing. That said, paradox never claimed to make a hyperrealistic history simulator and that gameplay always comes first before historical accuracy.

Most of those numbers are probably from the earlier world war wednesday streams where they showed some of the ships, which are very outdated by now. As with every wiki they arent official and anyone can edit them. It doesnt state anywhere that these numbers are considered accurate for the current version of the game, unlike on the 'air units' and 'land units' page.

 

[wright1331]

Where they get numbers from doesn't matter when they balance a game.

Get the numbers close, and then adjusted them to make it work and balanced. (paper, rock, scissor)

 

[Murmeldjuret]

Well carriers not having very high AA is weird. I mean, all the early tier ships for all nations had low AA until they refitted them. I can understand refitting is not in the game, but later versions of carriers should have AA higher than any cruiser, close to late BBs. The differentiation that US had even more AA focus might be solved with versions.

It is also weird that convoys cost 0 manpower.

 

[BeauNiddle]

- The manpower numbers are all over the place. SHBB the same as a BB is way off (historically, Yamato was 2500, 500-1000 above the manpower of contemporary BBs), and in either case a good deal below actual manpower required for anything other than '1922' models. On the other hand, DDs at 500 and subs at 400 overstate the manpower required for these vessels (in the case of submarines, often by a factor of four). In the case of every class, manopwer holds constant over time while costs for the vessels increased, despite the fact that the increasing costs for the vessels (generally, but in the vast, vast majority of cases) reflect later designs being larger (and requiring more manpower).

Wasn't the manpower for ships and planes added to signify base support as well as that on the vehicle. Subs and DDs need a lot of shore support (tenders, resupply, etc.) whereas BBs are more self contained.

Just a guess.

 

[Axe99]

That's some good observations Axe99. If the stats and the game effectiveness boils down to this maths, by the looks of it you can build 3 HC's for a BB, and by the looks of the maths 3 HC's look more effective option than a BB. The HC armour wow!

I would be interested in seeing shore bombardment added to that table.
I expect that might be another item where destroyers might be not be modelled correctly.

Aye, I wonder where shore bombardment comes into it? Perhaps it's automatically calculated based on some combo of range and gun attack? It wouldn't be a bad way of approaching it.

Where they get numbers from doesn't matter when they balance a game.

To a degree, but you'll get immersion issues if the numbers are balanced too far, plus the further you go away from a 'broad, abstract simulation', the more you lose the benefit of actual history having done the balancing for you, and having to tweak everything carefully and manually instead. Ie, it can be more work for the devs and less intuitive and immersive for the players.

As with any wiki i wouldnt pay too much attention to the numbers before the game is even released. Most numbers are/were highly in flux and change all the time because of balancing. That said, paradox never claimed to make a hyperrealistic history simulator and that gameplay always comes first before historical accuracy.

Most of those numbers are probably from the earlier world war wednesday streams where they showed some of the ships, which are very outdated by now. As with every wiki they arent official and anyone can edit them. It doesnt state anywhere that these numbers are considered accurate for the current version of the game, unlike on the 'air units' and 'land units' page.

Totally agree - I ummed and ahh'd about posting something, and if it hadn't been for CLs having no armour at all, I'd probably have held off, but CLs having no armour looks like something beyond tweaking numbers for balance. Then, given I was going to post, I mentioned a few other of the bigger ones. I figured:

- If the devs read it and it's all sorted, it's all good.
- If the devs read it but have a different idea about how they plan to model naval stuff, it's all good (with them, it's not how I'd do it personally, but I totally respect that they're making their game, and as I'm sure you know, I'm still very enthusiastic about it )
- If the devs read it and realise they hadn't given CLs armour, then it's easy enough for them to fix (I can't imagine it would involve editing more than a few entries, possibly in just a single text file).

So no harm either way. I didn't and don't expect this thread to cause any angst or anything like that. Now, if it had been a thread on tank stats, I'd have been much more careful .

Wasn't the manpower for ships and planes added to signify base support as well as that on the vehicle. Subs and DDs need a lot of shore support (tenders, resupply, etc.) whereas BBs are more self contained.

Just a guess.

It's not a bad guess, and I did think about that as one of the possibilties, but at least according to the Wiki table, the MP for BBs is less (other than for a few of the 1922 models) than their actual complements (and sometimes quite a few hundreds less - the Scharnorsts had a complement of around 1800, for example, and the Iowas 1900), while the Destroyer's complement was a good deal higher (a Mahan class destroyer - a decent example of a 1936-or-so model - had a complement of 158 - the largest, most modern destroyers in the data I've put together have a complement of only 330). Given this (assuming these are reasonably solid figures, which they may not be), it doesn't seem to be modelled on 'manpower plus support', or BBs would at the least be their complements.

 

[BobbyDylan]

Balance > Reality.

 

[Axe99]

Balance > Reality.

Thinking about this more - what is balance in this context, exactly? Why does it make any sense to make certain ship types more/less powerful relative to each other? All nations with dockyards can build all of them, and if they are modelled using historical numbers, then there very much should be a case for each class of vessel in a balanced navy. The manpower figures, for example - why does it make sense to penalise destroyers at the (relative) expense of larger ships (particularly as destroyers are supposed to proxy for destroyers, destroyer escorts/frigates, sloops, corvettes and other smaller sub-hunting vessels) at the same time as giving submarines a similar (indeed, relative to complements, harsher) penalty? It'd make sense (if they couldn't get the naval combat equation right) to perhaps bias one or the other so the Battle of the Atlantic plays out without one getting an unfair advantage (based on whichever way the naval combat equation in relation to subs and destroyers wasn't working out balanced itself), but hitting both similarly harshly seems odd.

 

[BobbyDylan]

Thinking about this more - what is balance in this context, exactly? Why does it make any sense to make certain ship types more/less powerful relative to each other? All nations with dockyards can build all of them, and if they are modelled using historical numbers, then there very much should be a case for each class of vessel in a balanced navy. The manpower figures, for example - why does it make sense to penalise destroyers at the (relative) expense of larger ships (particularly as destroyers are supposed to proxy for destroyers, destroyer escorts/frigates, sloops, corvettes and other smaller sub-hunting vessels) at the same time as giving submarines a similar (indeed, relative to complements, harsher) penalty? It'd make sense (if they couldn't get the naval combat equation right) to perhaps bias one or the other so the Battle of the Atlantic plays out without one getting an unfair advantage (based on whichever way the naval combat equation in relation to subs and destroyers wasn't working out balanced itself), but hitting both similarly harshly seems odd.

Balance isn't just about fairness between players. It's about presenting interesting choices to players. So, if there's 1 most powerful gun in a FPS, it's imbalanced cos you'd be stupid not to use it. The fact that everyone else is using it doesn't mean it's balanced, in fact it shows that it's not.

 

[Murmeldjuret]

It is also weird that convoys cost 0 manpower.

I just realized that during peacetime the convoys would be manned by civilians, which would not count as manpower per se. That doesn't really hold for harsher conscriptions though. Might be a nice tradeoff for the harsher laws that suddenly convoys cost manpower to create.

Armor in general seems haphazardly assigned. All carriers have 1 armour, even though early carriers were way less armoured than later, especially horizontally. There doesn't seem to be any differentiation for horizontal v vertical armor. Neither does there seem to be any choice between all-or-nothing to overall armourscheme.

All carriers have the same gun attack, even though there is quite a big leap in firepower from low calibre short range AA of early carriers to the 120+mm dual-purpose guns of later carriers. American and British destroyers and CVs even mounted the same guns, with the carriers just having several times as many.

 

[uglyduckling81]

Balance > Reality.

If this was true then we need every nation to be completely equal in size and power at the start of the game. Also all nations must be alike in tech and weapons/units.

In actual fact reality is more important in this particular game than balance within reason. Though in reality no weapon was particularly OP aside from USA industrial might once they got involved. If you nerf that though then you lose the flavour of the game, and this game is all about flavour.

 

[Murmeldjuret]

Balance > Reality.

Because it is a historic game, every problem present in reality should be present here, not accounting for hindsight. If you depart far from historical facts for the sake of gameplay you get an arcade game with historical flavour, not a proper historygame. I certainly hope that is not where PDX wants to take it. And IRL the choices were sort of balanced and interesting, just that some chose poorly. Japan's atrocious ASW is not something anyone will do with the knowledge of hindsight, so that should either be left out or non-optional. France's great blunders that opened up the war does not come down to their options being unbalanced, but in choosing an option and failing to execute it well. It is represented by the huge penalties they start with.

Even if BBs never fought in the war, they were critical, for a lack of them meant the other side's surface fleet can just go in for a kill without risk of defeat. There is a reason the US built a bunch of Iowas they never used. You can choose to neglect building them to add more carriers, but that should invite the AI to counter in equipment and strategy. You can have interesting choices with historical correctness still in, but it requires balance on so many things, and it is shortcomings on some that mean it has to be compensated somewhere else.

 

[Axe99]

Balance isn't just about fairness between players. It's about presenting interesting choices to players. So, if there's 1 most powerful gun in a FPS, it's imbalanced cos you'd be stupid not to use it. The fact that everyone else is using it doesn't mean it's balanced, in fact it shows that it's not.

Agreed, but that's the great thing about the historical data - we know that those data are already balanced. There's a reason navies built BBs, CVs, CAs, CLs, DDs and SSs, and it wasn't for flavour - it was because with the stats those vessels had, they all had a particular role to play. Generally speaking*, moving the statistics away from those that existed historically is more likely to present players with gamey min-maxing opportunities and reduced choice, not the other way around. Hindsight wise, from a naval perspective, the main big 'thing' that perhaps needs gameplay to counter for players knowing where things are going is the speed and strength of the rise of the CV, and none of the things I've mentioned above (other than perhaps CV's AA being on the lower side) address this.

* there are, of course, exceptions.

 

[SchwarzKatze]

When did they ditch light carriers? Or is the table simply incomplete?

 

[Axe99]

When did they ditch light carriers? Or is the table simply incomplete?

In a DD a ways back, the devs confirmed that there are just 'CVs', with variants used to differentiate between light and fleet (CVEs are abstracted as a convoy efficiency bonus in the doctrine tree). I'm planning to mod in all three separately.