Naval Ideas

[Cpack]

Here's my two cents:

1) Naval combat needs an overhaul, including a mechanic which is distinct from land combat.

2) The reason for this is that WW2 naval combat was a crapshoot, especially in the early to mid-war. Hood blows up on first salvo, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau dash the Channel, Prince of Wales and Repulse go down in an hour, Taranto cripples the Italians in one strike, Kriegsmarine pulls off a miracle in Norway, David truly defeats Goliath at Midway, etc, et al. So the naval combat engine needs to be short, sharp, and generally decisive. Sending your fleets in harm's way should be a decision which isn't taken lightly because the consequences are severe. As it is in HOI3, it is extremely difficult to get a decisive result in an individual battle. Just my opinion.

What I like is chance of "lucky strikes" as it is(?) implemented in HOI3 allready. But I'm not sure it really works, or at least I haven't felt this happening to me (or at least doesn't get any information about that happening.

I like this because this represents all those lucky outcomes of WW2.

For example a sub sinks the Shinano, Bismarck bursts Hood, some naval_bomber can sink a battleship or carrier with lucky shot.....

 

[Secret Master]

What I like is chance of "lucky strikes" as it is(?) implemented in HOI3 allready. But I'm not sure it really works, or at least I haven't felt this happening to me (or at least doesn't get any information about that happening.

There are two different features that relate to this, but the UI doesn't really provide a lot of information. I had to do a ton of testing in side-by-side MP to see some of them in action.

There is the surprise mechanic (which has a tooltip) which adds a flat bonus to combat efficiency. NAVs, CAGs, and subs can get it, but it rarely helps subs because they usually get surprise while still outside of torpedo range, so it's wasted. But it is a nice bonus for your planes when it fires.

There is a critical hit mechanic which is separate. There is a small chance of hits doing a lot more damage. I see them happen sometimes, but they don't have an interface indicator as far as I know. I just sometimes see ships suddenly take a ton of strength damage in a single hour of combat that is much higher than normal. I don't have a lot of information here. I don't even think the manual has a lot to say on the subject.

To be honest, podcat has already stated somewhere that the interface needs an overhaul, since there are mechanics at play that people don't even know about or understand how they work.

I like this because this represents all those lucky outcomes of WW2.

 

[CV10]

Much comment has been made on the idea of sea provinces. Paradox did a game which I had the fortune of getting as a gift called East India Company. Now say what you want about the game itself, and I was glad I did not spend any of my own money on it, it did have an effective way of managing naval strategic deployment. It had no sea provinces, each ship travels at a set speed on a continuous course in constant motion. Each fleet had an area of control where it would investigate and pursue any hostile fleet that comes into the area of control. However, faster fleets could flee from pursuers. This might be a better model for naval warfare, but at the same time might drive up micromanagement. People who played EIC, back me up; way too much micro-management!

 

[jju_57]

The big problem is fleet size. Do you have doomstacks or not? And how do you handle doomstacks? the whole thing will come down to how the naval fight mechanics are handled.

For much of the war a fleet was basically 3-5 ships. Now some battles in the pacific had 3-4 task forces, or 2 fleets converge in a sea province and total ship counts could easily reach over 100-150 counting all types. But these were more of the CAG fights as no real large surface actions ever took place.

In fact pure naval engagements were pretty rare for all of the war. There were lots of uboat action, attacks against convoys but pure surface ship action just didn't happen often.

 

[Cybvep]

I agree about the doomstack thing. IRL fleets were pretty spread out most of the time and operated in not-so-big formations, with few spectacular exceptions. HOI3's naval combat is too focused on doomstacks. There were several proposals for changing this, e.g. making detection work differently (a much greater chance of ships in the same sea zone NOT starting combat except in case of amphibious assaults) and making surface vessels much more threatening to convoys lines. And of course, the AI which can understand this.

 

[Barvinok]

I agree about the doomstack thing. IRL fleets were pretty spread out most of the time and operated in not-so-big formations, with few spectacular exceptions. HOI3's naval combat is too focused on doomstacks. There were several proposals for changing this, e.g. making detection work differently (a much greater chance of ships in the same sea zone NOT starting combat except in case of amphibious assaults) and making surface vessels much more threatening to convoys lines. And of course, the AI which can understand this.

The stacking penalty could also act more severely.

 

[dizzle3]

The stacking penalty could also act more severely.

It doesn't make sense as a real life mechanic. You should annihalate an enemy if you have 10 times as many ships as them.
The real life reason why there weren't doomstacks was that all navies had many commitments throughout the world. Many vessels should be on guard duty, escorting convoys, discouraging naval invasions, refitting or repairing in port. By December 1944, the US navy was an unstoppable doomstack in real life.

To get historical results you need historical incentives.
-major need for fleets to protect convoys
-fleets to guard against invasion,
-to mark enemy fleets in being which remain in port

I think the best way to get this would be to make convoy raiding have severe consequences, make the AI better at preserving fleet strength in the face of superior force

The only historically accurate way to make spread forces better than doom stacking is to enact very harsh penalties for failing to guard your vital sealanes.

It may also be helpful to allow smaller fleets to slip away to prevent a doomstack from mopping up dispersed forces

 

[Cybvep]

Stacking penalty should still be there. Note that it affects positioning and isn't a flat -90% combat modifier or sth. It's a game, you need to have a stick that you need to use against gamey players. I agree about convoy raiding and the AI. And I certainly agree about detection. If combat will still start automatically virtually every time the units end up in the same sea zone (excluding subs), then neither surface raiders will ever be viable nor smaller fleets will have a chance to change their location. It should be noted that ping-ponging is a big problem - you can annihilate fleets by constantly engaging them and it's super-easy to do that, which suxx.

 

[FOARP]

It doesn't make sense as a real life mechanic. You should annihalate an enemy if you have 10 times as many ships as them.
The real life reason why there weren't doomstacks was that all navies had many commitments throughout the world. Many vessels should be on guard duty, escorting convoys, discouraging naval invasions, refitting or repairing in port. By December 1944, the US navy was an unstoppable doomstack in real life.

Truth. I never liked the stack penalties (and still less the ridiculous levels of fratricide) in HOI3 for exactly this reason.

 

[No idea]

Here's my two cents:

1) Naval combat needs an overhaul, including a mechanic which is distinct from land combat.

2) The reason for this is that WW2 naval combat was a crapshoot, especially in the early to mid-war. Hood blows up on first salvo, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau dash the Channel, Prince of Wales and Repulse go down in an hour, Taranto cripples the Italians in one strike, Kriegsmarine pulls off a miracle in Norway, David truly defeats Goliath at Midway, etc, et al. So the naval combat engine needs to be short, sharp, and generally decisive. Sending your fleets in harm's way should be a decision which isn't taken lightly because the consequences are severe. As it is in HOI3, it is extremely difficult to get a decisive result in an individual battle. Just my opinion.

I agree that naval combat would be far more realistic if it was deadlier than it is, BUT, there si a problem with that: the AI. The AI happily sails the seas without any regard to proximity to the enemy coast, possible enemy naval forces or anything else. On the contrary the player knows the happy sailing enemy navy and acts consequently: putting all his ships in one powerful fleet and sinking the enemy fleet bit by bit. If you made naval combat deadlier this problem would become sharper. So no deadlier naval combat unitl the AI learns some prudence

 

[wau123]

maybe having a fleet template similar to the divison builder in production limiting to a maximum of heavy ships and screens, could also use for airwings, this would negate the need for stacking penalties and for overkill on fleet size, limiting both AI and player and no more doomstacks, you would be able to use your fleets around the globe instead of being tempted to build one massive fleet.

 

[dizzle3]

Stacking penalty should still be there. Note that it affects positioning and isn't a flat -90% combat modifier or sth. It's a game, you need to have a stick that you need to use against gamey players. I agree about convoy raiding and the AI. And I certainly agree about detection. If combat will still start automatically virtually every time the units end up in the same sea zone (excluding subs), then neither surface raiders will ever be viable nor smaller fleets will have a chance to change their location. It should be noted that ping-ponging is a big problem - you can annihilate fleets by constantly engaging them and it's super-easy to do that, which suxx.

Honestly, I wouldn't mind if they changed the "passive", "defensive", "aggressive" commands to tell your fleets whether to engage the enemy.

Like your fleets have 2 modes, aggressive or defensive, and when two aggressive fleets meet, you get a big fight. When defensive and defensive meet, they never fight. And when aggressive meets defensive... something happens
-if defensive fleet is faster they run away without any engagement
-if aggressive fleet is faster they fight

Could do with some refinement but you get the general idea... Cruiser warfare will kill a megastack by convoy raiding and ducking out of the way when the big boys come in.

You would need to decide how to handle CAGs and land based aircraft, and probably you want cruisers to fight cruisers to stop things getting too silly.

Also, submarines would be slow, but hard to spot, so they wouldn't "meet" other fleets too often

I agree that naval combat would be far more realistic if it was deadlier than it is, BUT, there si a problem with that: the AI. The AI happily sails the seas without any regard to proximity to the enemy coast, possible enemy naval forces or anything else. On the contrary the player knows the happy sailing enemy navy and acts consequently: putting all his ships in one powerful fleet and sinking the enemy fleet bit by bit. If you made naval combat deadlier this problem would become sharper. So no deadlier naval combat unitl the AI learns some prudence

Build the game to be realistic, worry about the AI afterwards as a general rule. I agree that there may be some need to reign in highly complex mechanics, but I don't think it's too hard to teach AI to do some of these things a little better

On stacking penalty, I agree that as a last resort, a small reduction in marginal gains for marginal fleet size may be needed, but historic reasons should come first, and stacking as a last resort

 

[Cpack]

Therefor it is also necessary to get the "sub hunting" stance back. So small groups of destroyers should get the possibility to be "aggressive" against subs, but be "defensive" against all other fleets, so avoid sea battle at all cost.

 

[dizzle3]

Therefor it is also necessary to get the "sub hunting" stance back. So small groups of destroyers should get the possibility to be "agressive" against subs, but be "defensive" against all other fleets, so avoid sea battle at all cost.

Yes, or potentially just have fleets automatically withdraw when outgunned more than say, 2:1 and the success of withdrawing strongly dependent on speed

 

[jju_57]

And night time and storms need to have a real impact on breaking off contract and letting a fleet that wants to flee the chance to actually flee.

 

[dizzle3]

And night time and storms need to have a real impact on breaking off contract and letting a fleet that wants to flee the chance to actually flee.

Yep. And probably commander skill too.

Also, to avoid micro-hell, I'd suggest that if a fleet flees it would automatically swap to defensive and move to the nearest port.

 

[Cybvep]

Also, to avoid micro-hell, I'd suggest that if a fleet flees it would automatically swap to defensive and move to the nearest port.

Too predictable, too easy to abuse and too annoying if you didn't want to do that (you would have to manually cancel orders). This shouldn't be a hardcoded rule, but sth that you could switch on or off. Sth like return to home base when spotted - yes/no/go to the nearest port instead. You get the idea.

 

[dizzle3]

Too predictable, too easy to abuse and too annoying if you didn't want to do that (you would have to manually cancel orders). This shouldn't be a hardcoded rule, but sth that you could switch on or off. Sth like return to home base when spotted - yes/no/go to the nearest port instead. You get the idea.

Yes, possibly. Or only happens when on defensive and engaged and badly damaged or on aggressive and engaged and flees a combat. That way you can have surface raiders that are fast which will simply dodge enemy fleets without interaction, destroyers on aggressive for ASW will return to base if a surface fleet comes past, and anything on aggressive will flee and return to base if something much bigger comes along

 

[DocMorningstar]

I think the biggest thing for the Naval aspects was the absolute failure of submarines.

My idea: split any naval combat into surface/subsurface. As opposed to being straight SubAtk/SubDef, any submarines would be operating on a different engagement system than the normal surface engagement system. Thus, they can close with and destroy those ships without SONAR/ASW systems easily, but have problems with properly kitted-out escorts.

The thing is, unless the subs 'ambushed' lone surface combatants, the outcome was a loss, or at best a draw for the sub. Subs got alot more capable in the post-war years (which might be worth incorporating). But the war years, subs were a strategic weapon, not a tactical one.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Yes, naval missions need to be more intelligent. Your ships should never engage a superior force unless ambushed and they can't flee. I can't see a scenario where a light cruiser with a few destroyers out on a submarine hunting missions would ever be ambushed by a cruiser fleet and they can't simply steam away. Unless that cruiser fleet have speed boat engines or manages to ambush during the night for some reason.

The same goes for any other kind of missions where if you manages to spot the enemy at good distance you should in most cases be able to avoid them even if you are slower than them since it is hard to keep contact with an enemy during the night or if there are bad weather blowing in on you. The AI must be better at deciding on when to engage or not to engage with stances only being a guideline.