Optimal organization Naval.

[Adri2700]

Hello to everyone. I have some experience in this game. But I have one problem. I don't really understand the naval warfare.

Is there any post or something about how to organizate our ships? Can you give me any advice?

Thank you very much.

 

[Altruist]

I don't really understand the naval warfare.

While this Naval Primer is for HoI2, most of it is still true also for Darkest Hour.
Here an excellent description how repair and org-regain functions: Reinforcements, Reorganization and Bases

For a good explanation of the different tasks you can give to the fleets, I'd say the best is actually the Manual (direct link to the pdf), "The Naval Forces" has an own chapter and is a short read.

For further help or info you'd need to get a bit more specific:
What problems have you got with fleet and naval warfare...
What country are you playing and whom are you fighting...
What is your general strategy and what do you want to achieve with your fleet...

And, just in case, the hint: The best and most modern ships won't do much good without having also researched the right Naval Doctrines.

 

[Adri2700]

While this Naval Primer is for HoI2, most of it is still true also for Darkest Hour.
Here an excellent description how repair and org-regain functions: Reinforcements, Reorganization and Bases

For a good explanation of the different tasks you can give to the fleets, I'd say the best is actually the Manual (direct link to the pdf), "The Naval Forces" has an own chapter and is a short read.

For further help or info you'd need to get a bit more specific:
What problems have you got with fleet and naval warfare...
What country are you playing and whom are you fighting...
What is your general strategy and what do you want to achieve with your fleet...

And, just in case, the hint: The best and most modern ships won't do much good without having also researched the right Naval Doctrines.

Thank you very much.
I usually play with Germany, and well, practicing and getting experience with them in naval warfare is very difficult.
Today I decided to play with Italy, and I want to control the mediterranean. Any advice about production and organization?

 

[Altruist]

Well, my usual approach to naval warfare is rather a bit boring (especially because I do it more or less the same with whatever country I am playing):
# upgrade all old Trans, CLs and CAs to CVLs
# upgrade those old BB and BC to CVs
=> those old ships are too slow with not enough range (not shooting far enough nor can they sail longer distances) and usually they just cripple the newer ships because the capital ship with the shortest firerange dictates what distance your admiral is aiming for in a seabattle
If there aren't enough old ships, I build more transporters and upgrade some of them to CVLs as well. The carrier air groups, LCAGs for CVLs or CAGs for CVs, need to be built additonally.

So with this fine armada of carriers you need to build fitting escorts: destroyers. Not only that they are cheapest and fastest to build, they also cover the worst weakness of carriers and that's U-boats. Really good is the 1937 semi-modern destroyer which I usually massbuild (in my present game I have 9 parallel build running... shortest to build means it takes still long). If I expect trouble before 1939, there is no other way but to already build the 1933 improved destroyer.
In the long run it is excellent if you manage to outfit your destroyers with ASW and your capitals with anti-air.

A CVL-DD fleet is a fine general fleet, good for escorting transports and keeping enemies at bay as well as fighting other capital fleets directly.
BUT:
1) As long as your carrier fleets can keep the distance to the British heavy pounders, everything is fine. But one battle in which the Royal Navy manages to surprise you and is in best shooting distance and they'll sink or severly damage your ships.
2) Most likely you won't have them in abundance and any losses take long to replace. And even if your CVLs/CVs are only damaged, it takes an eternity to get them repaired.

And gone is your best ability to escort your transporters. Unfortunate.

Thus I try to keep my CVL-fleet out of intentional trouble (meaning: not hunting British BBs with purpose). The search&destroy mission I delegate to fleets of heavy submarines. Even cheaper than DDs, faster to build, also faster to repair. And if you loose 3 U-boats while killing 1 BB... quite a bargain. Depending on version and mod you are playing, those heavy subs come as early as 1924 or 1933. I have usually 6 parallel builds queued with floatplanes attached and try to have 24 or more when the spectacle starts. After a few batttles, usually half of them are in port for repairs. For BB/CV hunting I use packs of 6, for the occasional convoy hunting packs of 3. Make sure to switch your hunting ground to a different area after a success, since NAV-bombers and DDs will be sent out to hunt your U-boats.

Usually I feel tempted to build also fine fast new CLs... but I can resist. One has to concentrate and to focus. BBs and BCs are shiny and glamarous... for the old big imperialistic powers to show off while the hungry newcomers for worlddominance know that the true power will be in carriers and U-boats.


So fine, so far. The problem to make it work are the naval doctrines.
Look at the overview in the tech section: Naval Positioning.
Basically those values show how good your admirals can get your fleet into the right position to shoot at the enemy fleet at YOUR best distance and make your shots actually count and not go astray or at the wrong ships. In battle your positioning tables run vs the enemy positioning tables. That's quite simplified but the gist.
For Germany it is easy and possible to get their U-boats to a value beyond 100 because they have good tech-teams specialized in researching U-boat doctrines and naval interdiction doctrines. But they utterly suck with carriers, so it takes looong time to research those. But IMHO and experience the CVL/DD combo is that strong that it is still better than going for BC/CA for what the German Kriegsmarine and techteams were outfitted. I can't remember how it is for Italy, sorry. But if CVL-fleets can be made feasable for Germany, it should be possible for every nation.

Add on:
You asked for fleet warfare. But some additional hints specifically for Italy:
Gibraltar and Suez are the most intersting regions. Splendid if you get both, but one is also quite good.
With all the coastlines the Mediterranean is excellent NAV-bomber area.

 

[Altruist]

I forgot, just in case you don't know and you said you are unfamiliar with naval warfare:
If battles go wrong, after 4h of battles you can order your ships to flee.

 

[Eugenioso]

Here are some guidelines:

- Every fleet can have a specific number of Capital ships (CV, BB, BC and Heavy Cruisers) but you must have an equal amount of screens or more for it to not suffer from efficiency penalties.
- The better the commander in skill, the better the fleet's positioning will be. A ship's positioning can be improved by researching different techs, and the better positioning they have the better they will close the range on a battle and engage the enemy's ships. If you dare to try and fight a naval battle with too many ships or with an incapable fleet commander, there is a real risk of your units commiting friendly fire on your own fleet. Try to avoid large battles of 100 ships and focus on smaller, better led fleets.
- Ships will always use the longest range weapon of the fleet they are on to attack with. This means that if you have 17 DD's and one BB in a fleet, only the BB will fire at the enemy, assuming the ship keeps out of the enemy's range (this is where positioning helps).
- There are 3 main types of fleets: SAG (Surface Action Group) CBG (Carrier Battle Group) and submarines. SAG's consist of a number of battleships as well as smaller vessels to prevent torpedo boats or submarines from attacking at close range. These fleets in DH are somewhat obsolete as they take a tremendously huge amount of time to build, cost a lot and dont perform that well in naval combat UNLESS you engage a CBG in a night engagement or a storm. These ships will be your main type of fleet until you can get carriers. As mentioned, building more is useless, better to focus on CV if you're playing a naval country. CBG's are the kings of the seas, a mix of CV's, a smaller amount of CVL's for defense and a smaller number of ships such as cruisers or destroyers for cover. This fleet will absolutely decimate everything you lay against it, especially if you're going for the maximum number of CV's in a fleet (9 cv's max and 9 smaller ships), but as mentioned, if they fight a night battle against a fast and modern BB group they can get sunk really quickly. Watch out for stormy weather as well.
- The final element is the SUB. Submarines are usually best deployed in either small stacks of 3 or 6 and sent on Convoy Raiding missions. In the event that you encounter a large fleet with no destroyers or CVL's they can still do some decent damage, but they have been massively nerfed with recent patches to the point that they will get nearly annihilated by anything that floats. Germany is really the only one who can comfortably build SS to harass naval lines but they will need some type of support in the form of naval bombers to destroy enemy DD flotillas hunting your subs.
- Even though its not really a naval factor, air units can decimate naval fleets. The only unit that can really defend somewhat decently against naval bombers are carriers, and even then they will still get pounded hard. Either have fighter support from a nearby island if possible or rush the enemy isle with marines to prevent naval bombing.

 

[Altruist]

Good guidelines.

- Every fleet can have a specific number of Capital ships (CV, BB, BC and Heavy Cruisers) [...]

Although the manual states heavy cruisers (CA) as capital ships, the game treats them as escorts... whyever.
Thus there are only 5 types of capital ships:
Battleships (BB), battlecruisers (BC), carriers (CV), light carriers (CVL) and the slightly weird escort carriers (CVE).
All other ship-types are treated as escorts.
The ratio and number of capitals/escorts in a fleet is shown right under the image of the commanding admiral.

- The final element is the SUB. Submarines are usually best deployed in either small stacks of 3 or 6 and sent on Convoy Raiding missions. In the event that you encounter a large fleet with no destroyers or CVL's they can still do some decent damage, but they have been massively nerfed with recent patches to the point that they will get nearly annihilated by anything that floats.

Absolutely true as far as standard subs are concerned and the reason why I (post above) refered to heavy submarines: Those are a special case because they are the only type of submarines which can be equipped with floatplanes (floatplanes and subs sounds a bit crazy but historically it was really a case, especially the Japanese used them a lot). So any strat relying on subs is still valid as long as you use the heavy type. Standard subs are still fine for convoy hunting but that's, at least mostly, a rather useless endevour.
And one comment about subs and CV(L)s: CV(L)s have zero subattack. Nor their carrier air groups. Without the right escorts they are completly helpless against subs. First time they get a very low subattack is around 1940. To a lesser extent this is true for all capital ships with one exception: escort carriers.

I have repeatedly smashed the complete Royal Navy with heavy submarines equipped with floatplanes (and have just done the same, playing China, with the Imperial Japanese Fleet). Believe me, they are extemely efficient killers. And nearly invisible. Which usually gives them the advantage of surprise and positioning while making it as difficult to hunt them down, be it by plane or even specialized ASW-destroyers (ASW=anti-submarine-warfare).

 

[Altruist]

[The post relied on a mod and some infos were even wrong, thus altogether rather confusing than enlightening, I deleted it]

 

[Adri2700]

Thank you both so much. I have read everything you have told me and now I have it much clearer.

 

[SpaceViking]

After all these years I just now learn you can upgrade ships to carriers. Huh.

EDIT: I just loaded a game where I had the CV 1943 and CVL 1944 techs and I see no option to convert CLs, CAs, transports, nor BBs. It says UPGRADE NOT POSSIBLE on all of them. The ships were in a home (core) size 10 port, undamaged, and had no mission. Is there some other tech that unlocks this? Or maybe do ships with certain attachments not convert?

EDIT EDIT: I deleted all the brigades from the ships and still UPGRADE NOT POSSIBLE on all of them.

From the manual:
"Upgrades
As you gain new military technologies, you will be able to upgrade the abilities of your existing land and air units as well as the naval brigades attached to your ships (note that naval vessels cannot be upgraded.)"

 

[Pasha]

After all these years I just now learn you can upgrade ships to carriers. Huh.

EDIT: I just loaded a game where I had the CV 1943 and CVL 1944 techs and I see no option to convert CLs, CAs, transports, nor BBs. It says UPGRADE NOT POSSIBLE on all of them. The ships were in a home (core) size 10 port, undamaged, and had no mission. Is there some other tech that unlocks this? Or maybe do ships with certain attachments not convert?

EDIT EDIT: I deleted all the brigades from the ships and still UPGRADE NOT POSSIBLE on all of them.

From the manual:
"Upgrades
As you gain new military technologies, you will be able to upgrade the abilities of your existing land and air units as well as the naval brigades attached to your ships (note that naval vessels cannot be upgraded.)"

I think it's only possible in certain mods. I think it's the mods using World In Flames as their base, such as AIO, TGC, and EoD

 

[Altruist]

Oh, how embarrassing, Pasha is completly right.
I seem to have played so much WiF and EoD that I completly forgot, that ship upgrades are, indeed, NOT possible in standard DH full.
Sorry for the confusion. I included a starting comment in above "advice".

Thanks, Pasha, for reminding...

 

[SpaceViking]

After your earlier report I went and looked at the techs and it SOUNDS like some would allow conversions to carriers. At least one is even titled "converted cruiser" or something like that.

 

[Pasha]

After your earlier report I went and looked at the techs and it SOUNDS like some would allow conversions to carriers. At least one is even titled "converted cruiser" or something like that.

That's just a historical reference to the first aircraft carriers not being purpose-built but were converted into carriers from Battlecruisers and merchant ships.

 

[Altruist]

After your earlier report I went and looked at the techs and it SOUNDS like some would allow conversions to carriers. At least one is even titled "converted cruiser" or something like that.

That some mods allow upgrading of ships is actually historically completly correct.

Nevertheless I have mixed feelings about it within DH:
On the one hand allowing upgrades gives the player much more flexibility and I like that a lot, on the other hand it makes the game too easy (I think my example how to convert the Italian starting Navy shows how immensely powerful this tool can be, especially since the upgrade costs are messed up and much too low). So DH by not allowing ship upgrades is historically not correct, at least for early ship types, but at the same time probably truer to historic reality because no country was really able to just switch their whole Navy. Not only that it takes an immense time but the tech, doctrines, handling and investments involved are as tricky as immense. Example: Germany never really mastered handling of grand fleets or up to today Russians or Chinese never really mastered building good aircraft carriers. I don't doubt that they could if they really wanted to but as long as carriers don't really fit into their general Navy doctrine any tries to build one or two carriers were half-baked and failed endevours. Same with the French and British. The very plan to build just 1 or 2 carriers is a failure in itself. So far the US and historically the Japanese were the only ones to master true carrier power.
While it looks like Russia has given up on carriers entirely (sold it last failures to China), China seems to try to at least gain the option to build carriers (changing world politics).

Not to give a wrong impression, the mods World in Flames and Edge of Darkness are NOT mods generally meant to make the game easier. On the contrary, especially WiF raises the difficulty setting noticable in many other aspects (but not for the Navy part) and EoD is based on that.


Nevertheless I still feel embarrassed for the confusion my "advice" caused and I am sorry for it. And thanks again to Pasha for pointing it out very politely.