Naval Engagement Orders

[Dakhath]

I have a question about the naval side of the game, and Google didn't help me find what I need.

How do I know what the various naval engagement orders mean. For instance, if I make a fleet of destroyers, what do I need to set their engagement level to so that they will attack a fleet of submarines, but flee from a superior surface fleet? (Not talking about convoy escorts, but actual ASW patrols). For a fleet of submarines or a carrier fleet, what do the various levels of engagement risk mean for each?

 

[KubiG37]

I believe the engagement risk simply compares the task force's overall stats to those of its opponent (task force) and then decides if the task force should engage/not engage/flee immediately.

So a fleet of DDs should almost always engage pure submarine fleet, but flee from pretty much anything else.

I don't change the engagement risks too much.
I just set dedicated patrol forces to low risk (so they're not too ballsy, attack enemy patrols and then get raped by enemy strike force) and high risk on Strike force, so they're not fleeing all the time. (Unless you know the enemy has superior force obviously)

 

[Happy Trigger]

I'm not sure, but i believe that 'small risk' means that the Task Force will only attack when they beleive they can win. 'Medium risk' would be to attack if the enemy is inferior or equal to your own force, and 'high risk' to attack a enemy superior to you. Though, in some case, even in 'high risk', your Task Force may not attack the enemy. For example: All Italian ships against all UK ships. In that case, because of the numerical disadvantage the italian ships would stay in port, and you will have to set 'always engage'.

 

[KubiG37]

Never engage is only useful on patrols (to wait for strike force and not die) and minelayers (if you by accident set them to a combat mission).

Always engage can be kind of exploited by submarines, when attacking a fleet which does not include destroyers with good enough ASW, so that they continue firing the torpedoes at the convoys/capitals until they sink them, while the enemy DDs helplessly roam around trying to find the sub. The subs would just retreate otherwise.

 

[bitmode]

How do I know what the various naval engagement orders mean. For instance, if I make a fleet of destroyers, what do I need to set their engagement level to so that they will attack a fleet of submarines, but flee from a superior surface fleet? (Not talking about convoy escorts, but actual ASW patrols). For a fleet of submarines or a carrier fleet, what do the various levels of engagement risk mean for each?

I wrote a summary about it here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/how-strike-forces-decide-to-attack.1303962/ and a longer explanation in the wiki: https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/User:Bitmode/StrikePatrol. Although in both cases the focus is more on strike forces cooperating with the patrols, it should also apply to your situation if you imagine there is no strike force willing to join.

To summarize the summary: the strength of your and the enemy's task force respectively get rolled up into a rough summary and those in turn get condensed into a single number representing the relative strength between the sides. The engagement orders set a numerical threshold when to act based on this relative strength.

As a very basic example (numbers chosen for clarity), if the enemy has 10 subs with 20 HP, 60 Org, and 30 torpedo attack each, while you have 15 destroyers with 40 HP, 60 Org, 5 depth charge each:

• enemy's sub defense: 10 * 20 * 60 = 12,000
• your screen defense: 15 * 40 * 60 = 36,000
• enemy's anti-screen score: {your screen defense} / ({total torpedo attack} / {torpedo fire rate} * AGGRESSION_TORPEDO_EFFICIENCY_ON_LIGHT_SHIPS) = 36,000 / (10 * 30 / 4 * 0.1) = 4800
• your anti-sub score: {enemy's sub defense} / {total depth charge} = 12,000 / (15 * 5) = 160

The strength comparison results in 160/4800 = 0.03, i.e. the enemy is much, much weaker than your TF. The fight would be taken on any setting but Do Not Engage.

If you want to compare more complicated setups, you can start the game with the -debug launch option, select one task force and point at another. The tooltip will show the relative strength and which aggression settings would accept this matchup:


Your best option is to set your patrol to Low Risk engagement because hardly any sub taskforce will be able to exceed its strength comparison threshold of 0.5 while minimizing the number of matching surface TFs.
For most other situations the calculation produces hardly usable results. E.g. it does not know what a carrier is, has critical bugs for judging armor and screening, and overvalues organization.

 

[DicRoNero]

I wrote a summary about it here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/how-strike-forces-decide-to-attack.1303962/ and a longer explanation in the wiki: https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/User:Bitmode/StrikePatrol.

This game seems to be filled with a lot of quite sophisticated calculations that actually barely matter. And those formulas also don't seem to take evasion (speed and visibility) into account, while it can make a hell lot of difference to damage application.

The similar complaint of mine goes to how Naval Supremacy is calculated, i.e. Doctrines over there don't matter at all, which is just nuts.