How does naval strike detection work?

[Pyrobolimenos]

Does anybody know how the game decides when a wing on the naval strike mission over a sea zone attacks an enemy fleet there? The wiki says there is a 4% chance of detection, but I can't find it in the defines. In addition, does that mean there is a 4% chance of a strike per wing per sortie for each enemy fleet? I have tried playtesting this and I have seen a single wing conduct about 3-4 strikes a month against a stationary task force. Is there a cooldown after each strike, like there is with convoy raiding? Finally, does spotting an enemy task force with naval or air recon help induce a strike, or do you need to engage it? From my testing I have seen no impact.

 

[bitmode]

Does anybody know how the game decides when a wing on the naval strike mission over a sea zone attacks an enemy fleet there? The wiki says there is a 4% chance of detection, but I can't find it in the defines. In addition, does that mean there is a 4% chance of a strike per wing per sortie for each enemy fleet?

Don't know either why the wiki says 4%. The decision is made for each wing and each TF on each sortie independently. I.e. the more TFs there are, the more likely it is to detect at least one of them. The probability for one particular wing to detect one particular TF is the product of:

• air detection chance in the strategic region
• NAVAL_STRIKE_DETECTION_BALANCE_FACTOR = 0.5
• VISIBILITY_MULTIPLIER_FOR_SPOTTING = 0.1
• max(surface_visibility, sub_visibility)

Is there a cooldown after each strike, like there is with convoy raiding?

No cooldown as far as I know.

Finally, does spotting an enemy task force with naval or air recon help induce a strike, or do you need to engage it? From my testing I have seen no impact.

I don't know about air recon, but at least for regular spotting I agree that it does not have an effect.

 

[bitmode]

Source of the 4%: @billcorr https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/index.php?title=Air_warfare&diff=10898&oldid=10263

 

[Pyrobolimenos]

Don't know either why the wiki says 4%. The decision is made for each wing and each TF on each sortie independently. I.e. the more TFs there are, the more likely it is to detect at least one of them. The probability for one particular wing to detect one particular TF is the product of:

• air detection chance in the strategic region
• NAVAL_STRIKE_DETECTION_BALANCE_FACTOR = 0.5
• VISIBILITY_MULTIPLIER_FOR_SPOTTING = 0.1
• max(surface_visibility, sub_visibility)

Thank you, that was very helpful.

So if I understand this correctly, the chance of a strike is the air detection chance, which ranges from 0-100%, times the target's visibility divided by 20. So that would mean that a lone battleship with 20 surface visibility in a region with 100% detection chance will get hit 100% of sorties.

I tested this and it does seem to work close to that, however I also found out that the size of the wing doing the strike also mattered. Splitting a wing into individual planes all doing the same mission seems to cancel the strikes alltogether. I tested this against a target with no AA.

 

[bitmode]

a lone battleship with 20 surface visibility in a region with 100% detection chance will get hit 100% of sorties.

I tested this and it does seem to work close to that, however I also found out that the size of the wing doing the strike also mattered. Splitting a wing into individual planes all doing the same mission seems to cancel the strikes alltogether. I tested this against a target with no AA.

After a target has been identified, you still have stuff like mission efficiency, naval targeting etc. that combined with rounding might bring the effective number of planes down to zero

 

[Findell_HOI]

Thank you, that was very helpful.

So if I understand this correctly, the chance of a strike is the air detection chance, which ranges from 0-100%, times the target's visibility divided by 20. So that would mean that a lone battleship with 20 surface visibility in a region with 100% detection chance will get hit 100% of sorties.

I tested this and it does seem to work close to that, however I also found out that the size of the wing doing the strike also mattered. Splitting a wing into individual planes all doing the same mission seems to cancel the strikes alltogether. I tested this against a target with no AA.

Yes you want to use the largest naval bomber wing possible to strike ships. Back when they allowed 1000 plane wings you could take out more then half a fleet at time if they found the target.

 

[Findell_HOI]

Something else that is completely broken in naval warfare if you mine a zone with a full set of 1000 sea mines the enemies ships are so slow that they are super easy to spot.