How does everyone like the status of he DLC?
The patch notes seem about to fix a few of the annoying issues.
The patch notes seem about to fix a few of the annoying issues.
Man the Guns current status?
- Thread starter Slavicist
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It’s alright, the UK tree is a big step up. I would recommend getting WTT first if you don’t have that one yet.
Ship designing is fun
Ship building isn't as much so. The limiters on how many factories you can put on capital ships really prevent you from going ham on big designs, and refits are too expensive to ever consider (without mods anyways)
Naval combat is extremely random, which makes it easy to miss major battles, and actually pretty hard to have them in the first place. Especially against the AI, where if spotting fleet is wiped before their main fleet, their main fleet sits in port and does nothing for the rest of the game
On that same vein, after the enemy fleet is gone, ships don't really have anything to do. Once again especially against the AI, that often means a handful of battles until one fleet is too broken to sortie out and the naval game pretty much ends
But until that point is reached, it is pretty fun
Ship building isn't as much so. The limiters on how many factories you can put on capital ships really prevent you from going ham on big designs, and refits are too expensive to ever consider (without mods anyways)
Naval combat is extremely random, which makes it easy to miss major battles, and actually pretty hard to have them in the first place. Especially against the AI, where if spotting fleet is wiped before their main fleet, their main fleet sits in port and does nothing for the rest of the game
On that same vein, after the enemy fleet is gone, ships don't really have anything to do. Once again especially against the AI, that often means a handful of battles until one fleet is too broken to sortie out and the naval game pretty much ends
But until that point is reached, it is pretty fun
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Not true.
Refitting navy is the meta. You get to add way more attacks to ships via refitting than you can add by building new ships in most scenarios. Turning all of your existing terrible cruiser designs into meta heavy cruisers is much more efficient production-wise than building new ships in terms of light attack added to your fleet over time spent building or refitting. Also keep in mind that refits are cheaper if you make sure to keep the engine and armor modules the same as the original ship. This usually means creating several configurations of your meta ship to match the armor+engine layouts of the ships you will be refitting, but the cost is minimal if you duplicate the design and only change those two modules for each extra one you need.
It takes 278 days to build a meta 1936 heavy cruiser from scratch with max dockyards. With 4 Light Cruiser Batteries and level 2 secondaries, it will have 25.2 light attack. That's roughly 0.093 light attack per day being added to your fleet.
The USA starts with 27 cruisers.
10 of them are the Omaha class, an early light cruiser that starts with 8.4 light attack. It takes 125 days to upgrade them to the maximum amount of light attack, which with 1936 tech on a level 1 hull is 19.9. Refitting the Omaha class comes out to 0.092 light attack per day, about exactly as efficient as building new cruisers. So refitting these may not be worth it considering you can add new hulls instead and also get the same amount of attacks over time. However, it's also a perfectly viable option to still refit them when you're only caring about adding attacks.
But there are other ship designs that may benefit more from refitting. 8 of the USA's starting cruisers are the Pensacola class heavy cruisers, with only 3.1 light attack. Refitting these to a meta heavy cruiser takes only 97 days per ship, and adds 0.17 light attacks to your fleet per construction day. This makes refitting them almost twice as efficient as building new ships with the same dockyards.
The math becomes more efficient for refitting 1936 cruisers to meta designs.
The USA starts with 7 1936 cruisers, 2 Portland and 5 New Orleans class ships. The New Orleans ships also have 3.1 light attack, but as a level 2 hull they can be upgraded to 25.2 light attack with 1936 tech over 124 days. This comes out to 0.178 extra light attack per construction day, also almost twice as efficient as building new ships.
Another common refit in multiplayer is the AA platform battleship. These are the most effective ships to protect a fleet from air attack when not covered by friendly air. It takes 598 days to build such a battleship from scratch in 1936. That comes out to 0.019 anti air per construction day. Refitting the Colorado class ships to that design, however, costs only 93 days and takes you from 3.6 AA on the Colorado class battleship to 15, the max you can have with 1936 tech on a level 1 heavy ship hull. This means that you get 0.123 anti air per construction day, This makes refitting more than six times as efficient compared to new ship construction in this case.
TL;DR: Refitting ships is not too expensive to ever consider, and is actually cheaper than building new ships in terms of adding damage to your fleet.
Edited for paragraph flow.
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You may just park the fleet next to shore and make few battles much easier to win. As UK, you have way too many old BBs to effectively use so you may just as well pace 4-5 on the Dutch shore and help to hold some provinces
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The naval game is better than pre-MtG but I still feel like it's a half-baked DLC. The naval game still boils down to a select few meta ship designs and major fleet-on-fleet battles are still doomstack vs. doomstack, same as pre-MtG. They developed the DLC for like a year and the improvements over the pre-MtG naval game are only marginal.
They could've also been a bit more intuitive with fuel, which they added in MtG, though I think it's obvious it should have been in HoI4 from the beginning. The BICE mod for instance adds civilian fuel consumption and laws that affect it, to simulate fuel rationing, which I think is quite interesting. In vanilla fuel-rich nations training their navies 24/7/365 to this day has not been fixed, neither has Axis access to Persian, Iraqi and Venezuelan oil.
Oh and the AI doesn't have a clue on how to use and deal with naval mines, which if you ask me, is a pretty big issue if you're marketing them as one of the big new features in your new DLC to an overwhelmingly singleplayer playerbase. Still not fixed though, and probably won't be any time soon, if ever.
Their other DLCs suffer from similar "incomplete" development.
They could've also been a bit more intuitive with fuel, which they added in MtG, though I think it's obvious it should have been in HoI4 from the beginning. The BICE mod for instance adds civilian fuel consumption and laws that affect it, to simulate fuel rationing, which I think is quite interesting. In vanilla fuel-rich nations training their navies 24/7/365 to this day has not been fixed, neither has Axis access to Persian, Iraqi and Venezuelan oil.
Oh and the AI doesn't have a clue on how to use and deal with naval mines, which if you ask me, is a pretty big issue if you're marketing them as one of the big new features in your new DLC to an overwhelmingly singleplayer playerbase. Still not fixed though, and probably won't be any time soon, if ever.
Their other DLCs suffer from similar "incomplete" development.
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The ship designer is quite nice when you get the hang of it. That said as the Devs even mentioned themselves... it can feel somewhat unrewarding because it takes so damn long to actually build the ships... and then they might get sunk in the first week after launch anyway if your enemy has the superior numbers.
But that said, and I sadly have to be honest here ... the Naval research tree is still an overengineered nightmare that may have looked good on design board, but doesn't work out in the wild.
Firstly... they should have split the research tree at least into 2 separate tabs, one only for the hulls/armor and 1 for the rest so it doesn't feel as overwhelming.
Secondly... at least a good 1/3 of the techs should be condensed into one single research or added to other existing ones (similarly to how they are doing it now with the tank designer).
Like there is no good reason to make two seperate armor upgrades for cruisers and battleships. Why can't it just be 3-4 upgrades that works for all ships (and increase armor levels further individually on each design like with the tank designer, which would even allow for Destroyers, Subs and Carriers to have thicker armor if you want that)
Or why there have to be 15 upgrades for the battery armaments, 5 for each size. It's ridiculous. Who has the time to even research all that. Like 3 upgrades per battery size wouldn't have sufficed.
There are several other things that arguably could totally be condensed as well.
Because as of currently I only look into the naval tree if I absolutely need something or have research slots to spare while I am waiting for something else or to at least get newer hulls going or until most of the wars against major countries are won because they are usually won by land/air warfare anyway. So most of the secondary researches I never get the time to do until very late in the game because there are just way too many. Hence why I consider naval warfare a luxury playtoy once you are done with the meaty conquest parts. It's a shame really, because I really would like to put more effort into naval warfare.
But that said, and I sadly have to be honest here ... the Naval research tree is still an overengineered nightmare that may have looked good on design board, but doesn't work out in the wild.
Firstly... they should have split the research tree at least into 2 separate tabs, one only for the hulls/armor and 1 for the rest so it doesn't feel as overwhelming.
Secondly... at least a good 1/3 of the techs should be condensed into one single research or added to other existing ones (similarly to how they are doing it now with the tank designer).
Like there is no good reason to make two seperate armor upgrades for cruisers and battleships. Why can't it just be 3-4 upgrades that works for all ships (and increase armor levels further individually on each design like with the tank designer, which would even allow for Destroyers, Subs and Carriers to have thicker armor if you want that)
Or why there have to be 15 upgrades for the battery armaments, 5 for each size. It's ridiculous. Who has the time to even research all that. Like 3 upgrades per battery size wouldn't have sufficed.
There are several other things that arguably could totally be condensed as well.
Because as of currently I only look into the naval tree if I absolutely need something or have research slots to spare while I am waiting for something else or to at least get newer hulls going or until most of the wars against major countries are won because they are usually won by land/air warfare anyway. So most of the secondary researches I never get the time to do until very late in the game because there are just way too many. Hence why I consider naval warfare a luxury playtoy once you are done with the meaty conquest parts. It's a shame really, because I really would like to put more effort into naval warfare.
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There is no technical way to put armor on a sub and if you try to armor DD you get a small cruiser that is twice as big as a DD with the same weaponry.
Exactly this. Most nations just have no time to research all that naval clutter before it is too late to build anything in meaningful numbers.
On the one hand, it is good that you can't just research a few techs and start building fleet as nation that had no navy before. On the other, I think only US and maybe Japan have enough time to research and build some new ships. For other, it is better to just refit what you have.
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Not saying that it's much useful on a sub, just that you could if you wanted to haha.
I would say even if most other nations could research all the stuff in time and become up-to-date tech-wise, the problem of most countries would definitely be the lack of dockyards to build a decent number of ships in a short time anyway, so it balances itself over the production capability. And even if you had more dockyards it would still take several years to amass the numbers while the other countries also still continue to produce more ships. At least you still couldn't easily outmatch a sea-powers like the UK, US or Japan in a short time, but at least you might have something to throw against someone of comparable size instead of nothing at all, that or maybe at least do decently in your local theatre even against a major while they are pre-occupied with several enemies across the globe.
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I think they did it this way (this and other things that you mentioned) with the tank designer because of the feedback they got from the ship designer. From what they've shown, it does feel like they treated the tank designer as a chance to develop a better version of the designer
I do hope that they go back to MTG someday and apply what they've learned. But if that does happen, it probably isn't until after the plane designer comes out so they can be sure they nailed the formula
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Hard to speak for developers, but naval research is probably balanced for historical outcome. As allies you have tons of oil, so you have research boost via training. As Italy and Japan, you can have up to date navy only if you ignore some army and air research. As Germany it is expected to you research mostly submarines and nothing else, so you keep most of you research on modern army. So it looks like it could provide historical outcome. USA and UK modern navy, Germany supermodern army and modern only submarines, Italy and Japan outdated army and good navy.
One issue is, that AI is bad in navy, so I can beat buffed USA and UK navy as Italy with only limited research and dockyards construction. So I have not enough motivation to spend enough on dockyards or on research.
Another issue, AI don't know how to properly naval blockade, so it is easy to buy oil from Venezuela as Japan/Italy without interdiction.
One issue is, that AI is bad in navy, so I can beat buffed USA and UK navy as Italy with only limited research and dockyards construction. So I have not enough motivation to spend enough on dockyards or on research.
Another issue, AI don't know how to properly naval blockade, so it is easy to buy oil from Venezuela as Japan/Italy without interdiction.
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Well, now that Doctrines are no longer being researched, perhaps there will be time?
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The thing is, Navy is something that not only requires heavy research investment if you want to modernize, but also very heavy industrial investment. Each dockyard built could have been a military factory instead. Furthermore, the USA is really the only country that can afford the research slot to stay ahead on navy - but it also has the most industry. This means that it's still better to just take a quantity over quality approach to Navy even though you're the only nation that can afford to go for quality. Spend the extra research slot to get further ahead in tanks and air and build more tactical bombers instead of investing into Navy.
Germany has got a lot of tech researched at the start of the game; it already has literally got to push for early tech because there's nothing left to research for 1936 and 1939. Managing a little the bonuses and rushing he extra research slots means Germany really actually ca stay up to day with the navy.
As the Doctrines are going out of the research completely, it'll only get easier in the future, and dramatically, as no research slot is ever going to have to be spent for doctrines.
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Patch notes:
- naval access ai scoring now properly counts number of naval accesses
- Fix AI never training naval units
- Ship design AI was unaware that it is possible to upgrade fire control and armor. AI has been made aware that it is possible to upgrade fire control and armor.
- fixed an issue where the AI would not consider some ship modules to be upgrades (depth charges, radar)
- when AI is refitting a ship, make sure it does not choose an obsolete model as target.
- British Ai should now emphasize radar more in escorts to help against subs
- British AI should now correctly identify Town class cruisers as cruisers
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If you're playing Germany optimally you're going to have one slot on tanks the whole game, one slot on fighters, and three slots on doctrine/industry/electronics/whatever else. There really isn't room for navy unless you want to research sub 3 and basically nothing else. In NSB doctrines are getting removed but now you have to research a lot more tank components and artillery, so that's replacing 1 used slot with 2.
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