Naval meta

[Kommandant bubba]

Why is the meta to use CA with tons of light attack and tons of shitty destroyers for screens? Why wouldn't you just use heavier capitals with armor and secondaries, secondaries only do 1 less light attack than light cl batteries. Also, destroyers have almost no health and get picked off quickly, light cl's with max armor would last much longer and counter shitty destroyers much better than just a destroyer spam. I know destroyers and CA without armor are harder to hit, but investing in armor for a 90% damage reduction seems much better than just relying on speed to avoid damage. Can somebody explain why the meta is this way?

 

[walt526]

You might find this current thread helpful:

Ship armor test

In a different thread someone doubted that ship armor does anything if armor < piercing, so I devised a test: * ai off, ic mode on * Changed ship armors BB1, BB2, BC1, BC2 to all have no speed penalty, all provide 10x HP increase(so the test can...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[blahmaster6k]

A lot has to do with targeting priority. Heavy guns and naval bombers(and light guns for that matter) go for the most visible ships in the targeted row. So if you have some starting battleships (refit to be filled to the brim with AA guns) all your CAs will barely be targeted. Likewise, CLs will be targeted before DDs. Since screens only attack other screens, your CAs are basically invulnerable. If you have tons and tons of shitty destroyers, the damage gets spread out a lot. if you roll 50 attacks against 50 ships, there's a pretty good chance that some ships take multiple hits and go down. But 50 attacks against 200 ships, you're more likely to see a few ships die but most only take light damage, even in a big battle. The high screen ratio also protects your CAs and other capitals from being attacked by torpedoes as they use all their light attack to decimate the opposing screen line. Once the opposing screen line is dead, heavier ships will eventually be picked apart by critical hits from all the cheap tin can destroyers and CAs, even if their armor is not pierced.

EDIT: And the reason no one puts armor on the heavy cruisers is because CA armor is useless against heavy guns on anything bigger than a CA, does nothing against light attack because the capital line won't be taking hits from light attack, slows down the ship which makes it easier to hit, and is more expensive, meaning you can build fewer CAs.

 

[sterrius]

EDIT: And the reason no one puts armor on the heavy cruisers is because CA armor is useless against heavy guns on anything bigger than a CA, does nothing against light attack because the capital line won't be taking hits from light attack, slows down the ship which makes it easier to hit, and is more expensive, meaning you can build fewer CAs.

just to add a detail.

The reason CA´s don´t get light attacks is because in theory the DD´s and CL´s from your side will win and keep covering the CA.

Heavy guns can target the first row
Light guns can target the second row as long the first is clear.

On the scenario where your screen side loses.
or alone without screens.
Your CA´s will suffer light attacks.


This detail is important because Strike teams are not the only job a navy is tasked to do.

Im saying CA´s alone because Germany do have a 7500km range CA and outside of submarines they mostly go by themselves.
Hunting convoys (Surface raiding) and hunt Scout teams will also demand Small teams and some armor as they carry light guns.
A good CA+CL team is usually the best team to hunt a Scout Squadron.

 

[bitmode]

A lot has to do with targeting priority. Heavy guns and naval bombers(and light guns for that matter) go for the most visible ships in the targeted row

I've never seen that. How does it scale with visibility?

 

[blahmaster6k]

I've never seen that. How does it scale with visibility?

I'm not entirely sure, i'm pretty much just quoting some competitive MP players I've heard talk about it who I generally trust to know what they're talking about. But I can try to find out.