Merchant Shipping.

[lizardo]

It's not quite understandable why frigate class ships are used for trade. Merchant ships should be used for this purpose. Any ship can carry cargo and troops, but war ships are very expensive, no sane person would use them for this purpose.

Ships should also draw from manpower. A small frigate would hold 400 - 500 sailors and marines. War exhaustion penalties for losing ships is too low.

 

[yls3431]

Welcome.

 

[grumphie]

you are not activly shipping goods - you are protecting your merchants with your own ships.

while some sort of manpower cost for ships would be ok, i think it wouldnt add much. if we start giving ships manpower, hwo about cannons? did they really run with units as large as normal infantry? shouldnt cav units be smaller? should colonising, coring and garrison stake manpwoer as well?

ships alreayd take far logner to contruct than land armies, which is pretty historical. while having an expirienced crew is ofcourse an factor, this is covered by naval tradition.

 

[yerm]

Light ships seem to be a merchant marine type of system, rather than a formal navy or purely mercantile fleet. The idea is that they are inferior for both cost and force limit in naval combat, but are not defenseless vessels. It also fits in line with how protect trade currently works, where you effectively patrol the home waters of an important node. Realistically, heavy ships or galleys should be the ideal bulk of a fleet, not light ships.

The idea of using light ships to protect the home waters works when you think of it as routing out piracy and especially smuggling. It fails when you factor in that this is the bulk of your trade power and even worse, propagates downstream, which is something that dedicating heavy ships towards convoy duty would far better simulate. You also really should not be able to protect more trade via ships than you generate from trade power. Having a protect trade (light ships, cut down smugglers) with a firm cap that it cannot exceed the total production of the node itself, and possibly a support trade (via heavies) that lets you pull and steer trade, makes more sense. Really I just despise that trade power comes from light ships, even far overseas, and even in zones you don't have a port in.

Trade just needs a huge overhaul I guess.

 

[lizardo]

you are not activly shipping goods - you are protecting your merchants with your own ships.

while some sort of manpower cost for ships would be ok, i think it wouldnt add much. if we start giving ships manpower, hwo about cannons? did they really run with units as large as normal infantry? shouldn't cav units be smaller? should colonising, coring and garrison stake manpwoer as well?

ships already take far longer to construct than land armies, which is pretty historical. while having an expirienced crew is ofcourse an factor, this is covered by naval tradition.

No, sailing (war) ships had huge crews and marine infantry. That's why press gangs were so vital. Sailing a ship was a complex orchestration of the crew to get it to move without sinking. You not only needed a lot of warm bodies but they had to be well trained and well handled. A frigate was basically a small infantry unit in a fortress that swims to battle.

If you have a chance, see the movie "Master & Commander", not only a good movie but very instructive. Better yet to read the series that it's based upon, that gives a real feel for how ships worked and their eco-system.

Your right, all those actions should draw manpower. This is where HoI is very good in that all activities (at least until III, when EU magical abilities were introduced) military and civilian draw on the same manpower source. It's why the EU 1-4 tendency to stove pipe resources (when it's not using magic) is very, very, poor design.

Even if a ship used a small part of manpower, it's useful to do that. Those little bits add up and when you hit your limit lots of hard choices need to be made.

 

[justin6477]

Light ships seem to be a merchant marine type of system, rather than a formal navy or purely mercantile fleet. The idea is that they are inferior for both cost and force limit in naval combat, but are not defenseless vessels. It also fits in line with how protect trade currently works, where you effectively patrol the home waters of an important node. Realistically, heavy ships or galleys should be the ideal bulk of a fleet, not light ships.

The idea of using light ships to protect the home waters works when you think of it as routing out piracy and especially smuggling. It fails when you factor in that this is the bulk of your trade power and even worse, propagates downstream, which is something that dedicating heavy ships towards convoy duty would far better simulate. You also really should not be able to protect more trade via ships than you generate from trade power. Having a protect trade (light ships, cut down smugglers) with a firm cap that it cannot exceed the total production of the node itself, and possibly a support trade (via heavies) that lets you pull and steer trade, makes more sense. Really I just despise that trade power comes from light ships, even far overseas, and even in zones you don't have a port in.

Trade just needs a huge overhaul I guess.

What about having heavy ships contributing lightly to trade power within a node, but adding a larger number to trade power propagation if they're part of that fleet? Maybe a multiplicative effect if heavy ships constitute X percentage of a given trade fleet? The option to engage in protecting trade would still require light ships, but this would mean that attaching actual war ships could become useful.

 

[Illianor123]

I just wish that all ships had some use in protecting trade.

 

[DKinator]

What about having heavy ships contributing lightly to trade power within a node, but adding a larger number to trade power propagation if they're part of that fleet? Maybe a multiplicative effect if heavy ships constitute X percentage of a given trade fleet? The option to engage in protecting trade would still require light ships, but this would mean that attaching actual war ships could become useful.

I just wish that all ships had some use in protecting trade.

That would probably help alleviate the AI's non-competitiveness in trade.

 

[grumphie]

No, sailing (war) ships had huge crews and marine infantry. That's why press gangs were so vital. Sailing a ship was a complex orchestration of the crew to get it to move without sinking. You not only needed a lot of warm bodies but they had to be well trained and well handled. A frigate was basically a small infantry unit in a fortress that swims to battle.

If you have a chance, see the movie "Master & Commander", not only a good movie but very instructive. Better yet to read the series that it's based upon, that gives a real feel for how ships worked and their eco-system.

Your right, all those actions should draw manpower. This is where HoI is very good in that all activities (at least until III, when EU magical abilities were introduced) military and civilian draw on the same manpower source. It's why the EU 1-4 tendency to stove pipe resources (when it's not using magic) is very, very, poor design.

Even if a ship used a small part of manpower, it's useful to do that. Those little bits add up and when you hit your limit lots of hard choices need to be made.

naval manpower didn't come from the same source as normal manpower comes from though. if you need more men for your ships, you force commercial sailors who may or may mot be from your country into serving on your warships. you don't get a peasant who hasn't seen the sea before in his life. i believe that that's decently abstracted in naval FL - if you build your navy over it, its going to be harder and more expensive to crew your ships.

also, while trade might not be perfect, heavy ships are nto one of them. if you give them a small amount of trade power, they will still bleed money. if you give them enough to matter, why build small ships? again - abstraction. it's the same reason galleys don;t have trade either even though you technically can protect trade with them.

 

[Haccoude]

Light ships seem to be a merchant marine type of system, rather than a formal navy or purely mercantile fleet. The idea is that they are inferior for both cost and force limit in naval combat, but are not defenseless vessels. It also fits in line with how protect trade currently works, where you effectively patrol the home waters of an important node. Realistically, heavy ships or galleys should be the ideal bulk of a fleet, not light ships.

The idea of using light ships to protect the home waters works when you think of it as routing out piracy and especially smuggling. It fails when you factor in that this is the bulk of your trade power and even worse, propagates downstream, which is something that dedicating heavy ships towards convoy duty would far better simulate. You also really should not be able to protect more trade via ships than you generate from trade power. Having a protect trade (light ships, cut down smugglers) with a firm cap that it cannot exceed the total production of the node itself, and possibly a support trade (via heavies) that lets you pull and steer trade, makes more sense. Really I just despise that trade power comes from light ships, even far overseas, and even in zones you don't have a port in.

Trade just needs a huge overhaul I guess.

This is just pipedreams, but I think a good system might be to have three different types of "Trade Missions", with different types of ships being good at (or even able to perform) different missions, and unlike the current system they are not mutually exclusive unlike the current privateer and trade missions.

The three missions would be Treasure Fleets, Privateering and Trading, each with their own purpose:
Treasure Fleets ensure that trade value contributed by your own provinces (as well as those of your colonies and vassals) get to the destination you want, and propagated downstream; if Spain has the entirety of South America as Colonial Nations and Vassals, then setting fleets to perform "Treasure Missions" in the Caribbean tries to ensure that all trade value they contribute to the node gets sent onwards to Sevilla. Basically instead of increasing your own trade power in a node, treasure fleets decrease the non-provincial trade power of everyone else, and channels the provincial trade power of your subjects to your own ends. Treasure Fleets would also be able to fight Privateer fleets in the same node without declaring war, and would attempt to hunt down all weaker Privateer Fleets.
Privateering would function like it does currently, only buffed. Because Privateering should be a legitimate way of enriching your realm, not merely a way to acquire Power Projection and ruin it with bad events. Privateer Fleets would also be able to fight Treasure Fleets without declaring war, and would attempt to hunt down weaker Treasure Fleets, but also to escape stronger ones.
Trading would contribute to the wealth of a node, and would function a bit like trading currently does. Trading Fleets can contribute trade power in nodes where you have none, and can increase the both the power and value your merchant adds to a node.

Like I said before, different ships would changed to help them perform different missions:
Heavy Ships can only do Treasure duty, but are the ships contributing the most trade power to this mission. Each Heavy Ship in a Treasure Fleet would also contribute a greater percentage of their own trade power to downstream nodes than other types of ships.
Light Ships can perform both Treasure Duty and Privateering, but not Trading. They aren't as good as Heavy Ships at Treasure Duty (even taking maintenance into account), but due to their speed would be much better at actually hunting down privateers.
Galleys can do the same as Light Ships, and have the same strengths. In addition, Trade Ships also get a speed boost to be as fast as Light Ships in Inland Seas.
Transport Ships (when not transporting troops) are the only ships able to perform actual Trading. They have the hull space and privately owned merchant ships where often repurposed as transport ships in war (notice how every Transport Ship in EU4 was a type of trading ship in real life, Fluyt and Cogs for instance).

In addition, NIs would be changed so the Hanseatic countries get their light ship bonuses replaced with more powerful bonuses to Transport ships, while Dutch countries have their Light Ship NIs reworked to both give the same bonuses to Transport ships and smaller bonuses to Light Ships.

 

[lizardo]

naval manpower didn't come from the same source as normal manpower comes from though. if you need more men for your ships, you force commercial sailors who may or may mot be from your country into serving on your warships. you don't get a peasant who hasn't seen the sea before in his life. i believe that that's decently abstracted in naval FL - if you build your navy over it, its going to be harder and more expensive to crew your ships.

also, while trade might not be perfect, heavy ships are nto one of them. if you give them a small amount of trade power, they will still bleed money. if you give them enough to matter, why build small ships? again - abstraction. it's the same reason galleys don;t have trade either even though you technically can protect trade with them.

There's no way in this game to distinguish skilled from unskilled labor, but it's still necessary to draw down the manpower when crewing ships. People have to be the ultimate limiting factor on everything, or we get insanely huge navies. Naval tradition seems to work well enough as a substitute for training and experience, it would be reasonable that provinces with fish or naval supply resources could also contribute to NT.

All ships can do the same things, but doing trade or transport with war ships is very very expensive. It's only worth it if, like the Spanish treasure convoys, your're carrying something really valuable.

 

[ahyangyi]

Naval tradition seems to work well enough as a substitute for training and experience, it would be reasonable that provinces with fish or naval supply resources could also contribute to NT.

I don't agree. They already contribute to naval FL. And why being used to fishing/sailing helps you winning combat at all? Everyone in a naval combat is used to fishing/sailing anyway...