Random Carrier performance

[George The Eco]

So I've recently been watching a lot of videos on the development of naval warfare in between the two world wars, specifically the support/opposition to carriers and what their role in combat would be. Long story short the combat ability of aircraft carriers was a large unknown, that largely depended on what the actual killing power of aircraft would be. As we know with the benefit of hindsight carriers can be extremely deadly when used correctly, and battleships are overly expensive coffins against concentrated air-power. Now from a game-play point of view implementing this directly would likely not be fun, since it removes an element of choice( since battleships would be the obvious wrong choice), currently the game deals with this by artificially making carriers weaker and battleships stronger roughly balancing the two.
My suggestion then is adding a game rule option where the performance of battleships would be relatively known(since they had been used in combat for so long) but the performance of carriers is
a) random
To keep it simple I suggest 3-4 default stat spreads, all affecting the strength of the carriers, my suggestion would be a weak carrier, where they are capable of recon but not really killing enemy ships, a medium version where they land roughly where they currently do, and a "realistic" portrayal where they are the true kings of the sea, and maybe a fourth version where they take longer to become strong. Ideally I think if they player could set probabilities for these it would be awesome but I realize that is not realistic to expect.
b) unknown
One of my overall issues with HOI4 is that everything is too clear, it exactly clear how strong your division is, its exactly clear how good a ship or a weapon or a technology is. (if you understand the game mechanics that is ) Now I get that a great deal of players like it that way so I don't suggest/think it should be changed in general, I do think that for the Carrier/Battleship decision it is sub-ideal. My suggestion would be something as follows, in 1936 the naval attack power of aircraft and other key stats would be completely obscured, but as naval combat happens it becomes clearer and clearer just how strong naval air-power is. I also think it would be possible to tie other systems in like who your naval advisors are( in the perfect world I would add a small chance that they are wrong), your naval experience, your fleet size, maybe some national spirits.

Now I do get that not everyone would like a system like this, which is why I would like to ask those of you who know more about the modding of the game whether you think it would be realistic to implement a system like this?

 

[DicRoNero]

It's not at all that clear even in a hindsight, i.e. I'd love to see how all these hailed Carriers would have performed against equal opponent. Had the Germans built 4 of these allegedly omnipotent Carriers instead of 2 BB and 2 BC they historically did, what exactly would have changed for them, huh? Besides, just a few decades later both of the shiptypes became equally expensive coffins to nuclear subs and long-range missiles, so I've never really bought that argument in the first place.

Regarding you question, I don't see why you'd limit yourself to just that, when in fact a whole lot of things remained largely a mistery up until tested in combat. Starting from certain planes and tank designs to jet engines and rockets and ending with nukes. I.e. in my ideal HoI, one would pursuit nuclear research in a blind gamble, not knowing at all when the eventual breakthrough will come.

It's possible to mod some/most of these things this way or another, the question is whether the public is ready for such a massive painstaking overhauling of their own playing habbits. This is definitely an interesting idea though, and I had a similar one many years ago, and concluded that I'd rather make my own game out of it eventually :]

 

[Vlad123]

It's not at all that clear even in a hindsight, i.e. I'd love to see how all these hailed Carriers would have performed against equal opponent. Had the Germans built 4 of these allegedly omnipotent Carriers instead of 2 BB and 2 BC they historically did, what exactly would have changed for them, huh? Besides, just a few decades later both of the shiptypes became equally expensive coffins to nuclear subs and long-range missiles, so I've never really bought that argument in the first place.

Regarding you question, I don't see why you'd limit yourself to just that, when in fact a whole lot of things remained largely a mistery up until tested in combat. Starting from certain planes and tank designs to jet engines and rockets and ending with nukes. I.e. in my ideal HoI, one would pursuit nuclear research in a blind gamble, not knowing at all when the eventual breakthough will come.

It's possible to mod some/most of these things this way or another, the question is whether the public is ready for such a massive painstaking overhauling of their own playing habbits. This is definitely an interesting idea though, and I had a similar one many years ago, and concluded that I'd rather make my own game out of it eventually :]

In my opinion, the ideal would be that as a final weapon it is an unknown. In one run they are Nuke, in another the V2 etc ... but if they unlock (Nuke, v2, jet etc ...) they MUST be lethal, they MUST be worth their cost ... otherwise they are useless.

 

[sudpud]

I think carriers should start off as less powerful(what they are currently in game), but with Naval Doctrine and better aircraft, they should get progressively more powerful. Early on, carriers were far less effective than later on, when crew, craft and doctrine was refined.

It would also be nice, if carriers, AHEM, actually provided some aircraft defense against land based naval strikes. Currently they do nothing.

 

[Synicus]

Building carriers with all decks and no armor in game has unrealistic plane capacity. Escort carriers seem to perform too well. Carrier damage doesn't seem to affect it's aircraft enough. Cas should probably have a higher chance of scoring a critical hit vs a ship. Carriers should be the air powers main targets. They just are not as vulnerable as they should be imo. Naval AA should also be more deadly. Land based air is a big problem, but so is prancing around with your carrier fleet whos position should be well guarded by the commander. Older planes should have a higher chance of being shot down. Surface fleets should be nukeable.

I'm not positive, but I think you can manually set Carrier aircraft to defend an area and become temporarily detached from the Carrier. Same with Carrier Cas vs. invasion.

I really like the idea of random secret tech having unknown break thru times and variable results.

 

[Harin]

in my ideal HoI, one would pursuit nuclear research in a blind gamble, not knowing at all when the eventual breakthrough will come.

I really like the idea of random secret tech having unknown break thru times and variable results.

I, too, like the idea of some random results for research.

 

[Simon Marques]

The battleships were good for coastal bombing and also for fighting other ships, but were weak against aviation. The airplane carriers were just floating platforms for airplanes, they were floating air bases with mobility capacity, so one is the Achilles heel of the other. In World War II the Japanese used the concept of a combined fleet that combined battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers and submarines, making their fleets extremely flexible and lethal.

The Americans, on the other hand, used a somewhat distinct concept of escort carriers, converting large ships into aircraft carriers that were slow and heavy with little or no AA or Anti-Ship capacity that were intended to escort battleships, battle cruisers or other big aircraft carriers, this concept proved very efficient during the war.

In the game they could fix without many problems the lethality of the aircraft carriers, leaving them vulnerable in direct combat with other fleets. No carrier commander would want airplanes throwing bombs too close to them, so if there was a very dangerous approach (which never happened) the carriers would be completely lost. The player who wants to avoid problems will end up focusing on the production of escort carriers or on the creation of fleets combining large carriers and battleships distributing them in different task forces, yet the fleet will act in a sector with the carrier's cover.

 

[AFilthyCasual]

So I've recently been watching a lot of videos on the development of naval warfare in between the two world wars, specifically the support/opposition to carriers and what their role in combat would be. Long story short the combat ability of aircraft carriers was a large unknown, that largely depended on what the actual killing power of aircraft would be. As we know with the benefit of hindsight carriers can be extremely deadly when used correctly, and battleships are overly expensive coffins against concentrated air-power. Now from a game-play point of view implementing this directly would likely not be fun, since it removes an element of choice( since battleships would be the obvious wrong choice), currently the game deals with this by artificially making carriers weaker and battleships stronger roughly balancing the two.
My suggestion then is adding a game rule option where the performance of battleships would be relatively known(since they had been used in combat for so long) but the performance of carriers is
a) random
To keep it simple I suggest 3-4 default stat spreads, all affecting the strength of the carriers, my suggestion would be a weak carrier, where they are capable of recon but not really killing enemy ships, a medium version where they land roughly where they currently do, and a "realistic" portrayal where they are the true kings of the sea, and maybe a fourth version where they take longer to become strong. Ideally I think if they player could set probabilities for these it would be awesome but I realize that is not realistic to expect.
b) unknown
One of my overall issues with HOI4 is that everything is too clear, it exactly clear how strong your division is, its exactly clear how good a ship or a weapon or a technology is. (if you understand the game mechanics that is ) Now I get that a great deal of players like it that way so I don't suggest/think it should be changed in general, I do think that for the Carrier/Battleship decision it is sub-ideal. My suggestion would be something as follows, in 1936 the naval attack power of aircraft and other key stats would be completely obscured, but as naval combat happens it becomes clearer and clearer just how strong naval air-power is. I also think it would be possible to tie other systems in like who your naval advisors are( in the perfect world I would add a small chance that they are wrong), your naval experience, your fleet size, maybe some national spirits.

Now I do get that not everyone would like a system like this, which is why I would like to ask those of you who know more about the modding of the game whether you think it would be realistic to implement a system like this?

It makes literally no sense for carrier aircraft to be randomly bad at their jobs for the sake of the battleships.

I hate this Jutland fanboyism the devs have baked into the naval mechanics. This isn't a WW1 game, aircraft rule the seas; if you want giant gun battles, play a WW1 mod. Ships without air cover should get massacred by air attack without exception; course, it might help to overhaul the air mechanics so you can't just doomstack 2000 NAVs onto a tiny atoll to sink anything in the surrounding sea zone in 10 seconds.

 

[Simon Marques]

It makes literally no sense for carrier aircraft to be randomly bad at their jobs for the sake of the battleships.

I hate this Jutland fanboyism the devs have baked into the naval mechanics. This isn't a WW1 game, aircraft rule the seas; if you want giant gun battles, play a WW1 mod. Ships without air cover should get massacred by air attack without exception; course, it might help to overhaul the air mechanics so you can't just doomstack 2000 NAVs onto a tiny atoll to sink anything in the surrounding sea zone in 10 seconds.

And this was seen when the obsolete Fairey Swordfish launched from a British aircraft carrier hit nine German destroyers.Even if they were slow and vulnerable aircraft, they still proved to be dominant in the naval battles in which they were employed.

 

[George The Eco]

It makes literally no sense for carrier aircraft to be randomly bad at their jobs for the sake of the battleships.

I hate this Jutland fanboyism the devs have baked into the naval mechanics. This isn't a WW1 game, aircraft rule the seas; if you want giant gun battles, play a WW1 mod. Ships without air cover should get massacred by air attack without exception; course, it might help to overhaul the air mechanics so you can't just doomstack 2000 NAVs onto a tiny atoll to sink anything in the surrounding sea zone in 10 seconds.

I wouldn't in all honesty say it was for the sake of battleships, not in the true sense of what I think is missing. Its for the sake of a sense of historical immersion, the leaders of the various countries did not know how good carriers would turn out to be if they had far fewer battleships would have been built, which means the following happens in game.
Either you make it realistic, in which case either the player will have an advantage by knowing the just go carriers, or both the player and AI basically just do carriers.Alternatively you don't make carriers realistically powerful in some attempt to allow that element of choice.
It is the uncertainty about how well this new weapons system will end up performing that I would like to add.
There were a lot of variables that the people of the time did not know, such as whether aircraft would be capable of carrying sufficient armaments, or whether aircraft would be accurate enough, or how well battleship armor would hold up and probably a bunch of other stuff I haven't thought of.

 

[Synicus]

What if ship design tech was locked by levels of Doctrine? Army and Air too boot...

 

[AFilthyCasual]

I wouldn't in all honesty say it was for the sake of battleships, not in the true sense of what I think is missing. Its for the sake of a sense of historical immersion, the leaders of the various countries did not know how good carriers would turn out to be if they had far fewer battleships would have been built, which means the following happens in game.
Either you make it realistic, in which case either the player will have an advantage by knowing the just go carriers, or both the player and AI basically just do carriers. Alternatively you don't make carriers realistically powerful in some attempt to allow that element of choice.
It is the uncertainty about how well this new weapons system will end up performing that I would like to add.
There were a lot of variables that the people of the time did not know, such as whether aircraft would be capable of carrying sufficient armaments, or whether aircraft would be accurate enough, or how well battleship armor would hold up and probably a bunch of other stuff I haven't thought of.

This is true of literally any decision in the game, it is unavoidable in a historical game. This is like saying it should be random whether the Japanese attack north or south, or whether the Germans attack the USSR - yeah, sure, making it random would prevent the player from being able to plan against them as well beforehand, but it also would make the game blatantly ahistorical, and there's already an option for that where the AIs basically just pick random actions and you end up with total nonsense.

If you want to randomize the stats of techs as well, such as the naval attack of planes (which is what you're really proposing), fine. But if you do it, keep it in the ahistorical mode. Maybe you could make Super Heavy tanks randomly worth building too, whatever. But the last thing I want to see is aircraft in what is supposed to be a historical game not work for no reason.

Frankly the easiest solution, by the way, is to simply ignore the fact you know things beforehand, although even then it's kind of questionable if you won't build carriers. All major powers tried to build carriers because everyone did, in fact, think they were valuable, the only argument was to what extent. To make everyone randomly "wrong" might be unexpected but it's also complete nonsense that doesn't make any sense.