Naval Fleets- what ships should be included?

[unmerged(116276)]

In Hearts of Iron, the composition of a fleet is of utmost importance, with the effect been that a properly composed 18 ship fleet can defeat a badly composed 30 ship fleet. There's all sorts of naval rules concerning the different ships.

In Victoria, are there any such "ideal ship compositions". Or is it just a case of more big ships= more chance of victory? I ask because I am tired of getting my navy stomped by France in colonial wars (I was playing as Scandanavia, France declared a colonial war when I had a lot of West Africa. I couldn't transport many of my units to Africa, so had to make do with native divisions, with the odd regular division that was in Africa already.

And the native divisions suck! They took loads of casulaties very quickly, meaning my manpower soon was at 0, and France just landed division after division until I was overwhelmed.

SWo what would be the best navy to stomp on the colonial powers and stop them reinforcing their colonies when war is declared?

 

[The BadgerUK]

As far as i know there is no choice fleet formation beyond having lots of really big ships! Screens don't exist in Victoria. However I'm also fairly sure that you can have too many really big ships in one group and that their combat efficiency drops above a certain fleet size.

Unfortunatly i can't remember how many ships causes the drop and how much it drops by.

 

[unmerged(106891)]

I read a while ago about some negative modifier when you have too many ships in a fleet (I'm guessing to represent how much harder it is to control a larger fleet effectively??), and that the AI gets less of a hindrance with respect to this thna the human player.

I'm not too sure on what it is all about, though.

 

[Orm]

IIRC the optimal fleet size for the human player is 26. And the bigger and more modern ships the better. Many of the ship types available to you are basically pointless to build, they are there mostly for the benefit of conversion to HoI2.

 

[unmerged(17791)]

I need to know if the Dreadnaught bug described in the Wiki (regarding it's nonfunctional shore bombardment) is still in effect, for Vicky 1.4/VIP.

It says you should build a plethora of BB's until they become replaced by Dreadnaughts... at which point you're SCREWED. That seems ridiculous.




Anyway, someone told me about a strategy once upon a time -- where you group all your ships together into one massive force. The point of this, is not for offensive firepower (because you lose some efficiency), but rather for defensive purposes. Granted all those ships ARE going to devestate the enemy formation, which is good. Combine that with the fact that it's going to be more difficult for the enemy to sink ONE of you own ships.

You may have noticed in Paradox games that during a naval battle, they like to pick on a ship, start hurting it, and soon finish it off. -1 ship for you. Well, when you have 80 or 100 ships all grouped together, it becomes a lot more difficult for the enemy to start to really hurt a single ship of yours, because there's just so damn many of them. Maybe they'll get 3 or 4 down to 80%, or 90%, but that's about it. By then the whole enemy formation has been mauled, or totally wiped out. No losses for you. Total destruction for the enemy. Much better.

So, yeah, you lose SOME attack efficiency, with the excessive number of ships. But, you'll likely never lose a single ship. -And that's what I'M talkin' about, baby.

Basically, take the 'stack of doom' approach. Minimal losses, that way. And really, it's all about the kill ratio.