Naval Questions

[Stug_Life]

1. What is the production cost to reach a year in the dockyards?
2. Do strike forces only respond to patrol missions or do they also aid with convoy escort missions?
3. If you are trying to coordinate with an ally (British/American) if you both are patrolling the same water and Britain spots and engage an enemy, does the American fleet auto-join as well, or does its patrol have to spend time locating the fight?
4. How does refitting work? Like when modifying a ship is it only the same hull tier? Is the refitting cost only adding up to what it would cost to add an extra gun?
5. How important is it to have strong heavy cruisers? I hear that the most important thing to have is really strong light cruisers?
6. Ship designers, does it only affect ships that are researched when it's active, or does it affect a ship if it's a new variant of an already researched hull?
I appreciate the help

 

[shadowpho]

#5 is tricky. Right now the meta strategy is fast roach DD for tanking (1 gun nothing else, fastest engine, 1 torp on some) with “heavy CL” (cl, 1 medium gun, rest are small guns) for light damage.

Heavy guns are really bad against fast DDs. Torpedoes are mostly useless. So the enemy slowly eats through your speed tanking DD meanwhile you quickly eat theirs (because of so much light attack on CL who are protected since they have 1 medium gun and this count as CA). Once their DD are dead torps eat everything.

this strat also requires minimal tech input (DD research, CL research, light gun research).

 

[Corpse Fool]

1. What is the production cost to reach a year in the dockyards?

Depends how many yards you have assigned to the production, and what your dockyard output bonuses are. If we assume that a year is 365 days, we have 1 dockyard, and that dockyard is outputting the basic 2.5 IC per day, that would be 912.5 IC. Of course, you can get larger output bonuses like +75%, and you can assign something like 10 dockyards to screen ships and submarines, which means you could be producing 15968.75 IC.

2. Do strike forces only respond to patrol missions or do they also aid with convoy escort missions?

They should respond to any combat or detected enemy. I cannot immediately confirm this though.

3. If you are trying to coordinate with an ally (British/American) if you both are patrolling the same water and Britain spots and engage an enemy, does the American fleet auto-join as well, or does its patrol have to spend time locating the fight?

See above.

4. How does refitting work? Like when modifying a ship is it only the same hull tier? Is the refitting cost only adding up to what it would cost to add an extra gun?

You can only refit onto the same tiers of hulls, exceptions being the cruiser/heavy hull into carrier conversions.

The cost will be 20% of the base cost of the hull, the cost of whatever modules get added, and when swapping modules it depends a little what module you started with and what you're swapping to, how much that is going to cost. Certain modules are part of 'families' that have discounted conversion, and generally going up 1 tier in the same family is even further discounted. Armours and engines, and heavy gun turrets are basically always too expensive to refit, just leave those alone.

5. How important is it to have strong heavy cruisers? I hear that the most important thing to have is really strong light cruisers?

Heavy cruisers are arguably the most important ship to focus on, anyone that tells you light cruisers are the best is probably missing a lot of information themselves.

6. Ship designers, does it only affect ships that are researched when it's active, or does it affect a ship if it's a new variant of an already researched hull?

It used to be, designers were only applied to hulls that were researched while the designer was hired. Nowadays the currently hired designer is applied whenever a design is being made, and there are a couple of tricks/exploits surrounding this mechanic.

 

[Corpse Fool]

1 torp on some

If you're bothering with torpedoes, don't spread out 1 module per ship, compress them into 3 modules into a fewer number of ships. The naval game is absolutely lethal with how much damage gets thrown around, being able to stack attacks in larger alphas and having a better chance of 1-shotting enemy ships, is way better than having more dice to roll. Especially if you are running into target saturation problems.

 

[Stug_Life]

Thank you everyone for all the responses! I had no idea how important CLs were...
Another question I have. If you ware wanting a doctrine for big surface fleet action. Is it better for Fleet in Being? I heard some people claiming Convoy Interdiction is stronger for visibility reasons? Does visibility work in combat I assumed it just lowered your chances of being spotted.

 

[Corpse Fool]

I had no idea how important CLs were...

They aren't important.

If you ware wanting a doctrine for big surface fleet action. Is it better for Fleet in Being? I heard some people claiming Convoy Interdiction is stronger for visibility reasons?

Most testing suggests that it is a toss up between them, and it could be argued that doctrine doesn't really matter much at all. It ultimately comes down to just 10% capital attacks or -10% visibility on your CA. It is certainly something, but it isn't really a huge shift in power.

Does visibility work in combat I assumed it just lowered your chances of being spotted.

Visibility is what forms your ships hit profile. Lower visibility means you're more likely to dodge attacks.

 

[Stug_Life]

They aren't important.

My bad I meant CAs XD. Suppose your enemy has way more ships than you lol. I guess it is a toss-up between doing more damage and dodging more attacks.

 

[shadowpho]

They aren't important.

Most testing suggests that it is a toss up between them, and it could be argued that doctrine doesn't really matter much at all. It ultimately comes down to just 10% capital attacks or -10% visibility on your CA. It is certainly something, but it isn't really a huge shift in power.

Visibility is what forms your ships hit profile. Lower visibility means you're more likely to dodge attacks.

Why do you say CL aren’t important? They are the cheapest for light attack.
As for naval doctrine I did light testing just a month ago and trade interdiction was a clear winner - the visibility gives a lot of survival to ships (or at least meta fleet vs meta fleet).

 

[Corpse Fool]

Why do you say CL aren’t important? They are the cheapest for light attack.

Because CL get shot by light attack and torpedoes which drains their org and HP faster than the CA, which only gets hit by heavy attack (until screening drops and the battle has already been lost) which is generally in shorter supply. CL also don't have the 40% accuracy boost CA get from being screened.

And you don't really need the extra turret and some small +% attack boosts that CL can have, it often doesn't help you hit any particular hits-to-sink breakpoints that CA can't reach already. Nothing in particular is gained, a lot is lost.

 

[FindFloppies]

#5 is tricky. Right now the meta strategy is fast roach DD for tanking (1 gun nothing else, fastest engine, 1 torp on some) with “heavy CL” (cl, 1 medium gun, rest are small guns) for light damage.

Heavy guns are really bad against fast DDs. Torpedoes are mostly useless. So the enemy slowly eats through your speed tanking DD meanwhile you quickly eat theirs (because of so much light attack on CL who are protected since they have 1 medium gun and this count as CA). Once their DD are dead torps eat everything.

this strat also requires minimal tech input (DD research, CL research, light gun research).

Yes, the game allows this, but I won't play this strat. Too much of an exploit for me to use it in-game. YMMV, of course.

 

[Stug_Life]

One last question, I cant find in the wiki or dev diaries where it is explained what types of critical hits there are. Does anyone have information on this?

 

[bitmode]

One last question, I cant find in the wiki or dev diaries where it is explained what types of critical hits there are. Does anyone have information on this?

I have expanded the wiki, see https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Naval_battle#Critical_hit

 

[Cavalry]

1. What is the production cost to reach a year in the dockyards?
2. Do strike forces only respond to patrol missions or do they also aid with convoy escort missions?
3. If you are trying to coordinate with an ally (British/American) if you both are patrolling the same water and Britain spots and engage an enemy, does the American fleet auto-join as well, or does its patrol have to spend time locating the fight?
4. How does refitting work? Like when modifying a ship is it only the same hull tier? Is the refitting cost only adding up to what it would cost to add an extra gun?
5. How important is it to have strong heavy cruisers? I hear that the most important thing to have is really strong light cruisers?
6. Ship designers, does it only affect ships that are researched when it's active, or does it affect a ship if it's a new variant of an already researched hull?
I appreciate the help

1. Mouse over dockyard production to see IC per day
2. They respond to your own escort mission, but not ally mission. If they don't, just move you ships to that seazone and halt (no mission), this manual move have Org penalty, and Org penalty means lower accuracy.
4. Refit have fixed cost and extra upgrade cost that is the difference, and you should never refit engine or armor. When improve templates tank and ships, just change then save (not copy to new). This way the game will understand the previous template is obselete and will recomment the right template to upgrade.
5. Yeah, with MtG DLC a CL can be 3 times more attack than a general CL without DLC. It is very powerful that all your ships sail in the same direction and concentrate fire. Also remember retreat is important part, only attack with numbers and manual retreat if you are outnumberred.

 

[Gort11]

Why do you say CL aren’t important? They are the cheapest for light attack.

Yeah, I used to think this too. The factor I wasn't aware of was that a ship that's technically a CA (IE: It has the cheapest heavy cruiser gun you can put on it) gets a 40% bonus to accuracy when fully-screened (IE: Accompanied by at least 3 screen ships).

That means the cheapest for light attack becomes a heavy cruiser with the cheapest heavy cruiser gun, no armour or AA, and as many light cruiser batteries as you can fit on it, accompanied by at least 3 of the cheapest destroyers you can build. You can then put torpedoes on some of the destroyers for when your "heavy cruisers" have wiped out all the enemy screens.

For a question of my own - has anyone tested the British unique officer corps spirit which gives them a bonus to carrier missions at night? It sounds very powerful, especially given that the UK starts with four half-decent carriers and no carrier-using opponents for the first couple of years of the war.

 

[Corpse Fool]

For a question of my own - has anyone tested the British unique officer corps spirit which gives them a bonus to carrier missions at night?

@Cloak71 Said they tested it in the comments of one of their latest videos, and it didnt seem to be working.

 

[Cavalry]

That means the cheapest for light attack becomes a heavy cruiser with the cheapest heavy cruiser gun, no armour or AA, and as many light cruiser batteries as you can fit on it, accompanied by at least 3 of the cheapest destroyers you can build. You can then put torpedoes on some of the destroyers for when your "heavy cruisers" have wiped out all the enemy screens.

It did well on a balance test, but not when facing the Japan Imperialist Navy. CA will get the all the heavy gun and naval bomber target them, while the CL can hide between DDs. And they are subject to sudden death in a battle, while the hurted CL can run away. BC with more light gun can replace CA, they have more chance to survive and fight another day.

There are huge advantage if the whole navy is on screen line. One can concentrate on just one kind of advisor, admiral, doctrines, tech... and that boost 100% of his navy, not 50%.

 

[Gort11]

A lot of advisors boost both screens and heavies. Plus, I already have heavies and aircraft carriers, I'm never going to have my whole navy on the screen line anyway.

 

[Stug_Life]

I have expanded the wiki, see https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Naval_battle#Critical_hit

Thanks! Very helpful

 

[Stug_Life]

Another question, screening efficiency at 100 keeps torpedos from damaging anything. But, does it also effect the ability of capitals like BB from shooting at each other?

 

[Corpse Fool]

Another question, screening efficiency at 100 keeps torpedos from damaging anything. But, does it also effect the ability of capitals like BB from shooting at each other?

The torpedoes still could hit the screens and damage them. Capitals with heavy/light guns are unchanged though.