Ship armor test

[sterrius]

You also lose speed with armour and also increase production cost. Would be interesting how worth Cruiser Armour really is.
For newly built ships I normally still but the hightest tier armour on them as I have, but very rarely do I research new armour types.

ignoring admirals (I don´t know if +attack does affect piercing).
+Defense is confirmed to affect armor.

You want armor with all bonuses to be 10+ after 1940. That can be done with enough bonuses or placing armor III on new ships (never refit armor/engine). Armor tech is kind of cheap.
the loss of speed is most of the time worth it for extra HP + Survival chance.

specially because you're comparing loss of speed compared to armor I or II. Never go without armor unless you're 100% sure you're not gonna face DD`s in large quantitys.

CL
light gun I Piercing = 5.5 (6.6 with ammo bonus)
Light gun II = 7 (8.4 with bonus)
III = 8 (9.6 with bonus)
IV = 9 (10.8 with bonus)

Ammo 1 = 1937 tech (Useless on its own for piercing purposes).
Ammo 2 = 1942 tech (Easy to research in 1940, specially with XP).

CL armor without any bonus.
I = 6
II = 8
III = 10
IV = 12

ps: CA´s get +10% armor bonus from Fleet in Being doctrine because its considered a capital ship. CL´s do not get this bonus!

 

[LordAkkrand]

Whilst I've got a bunch of people in this thread talking about naval mechanics, I was wondering where the data for this following comes from:

High screening efficiency prevents enemy torpedo attacks against the battle-line and carrier group, and confers increased hit chance (up to +40%) and retreat speed (up to +20%) upon all ships in those groups.

Specifically the +40% hit chance. Does that mean that a single CA with 4 CL escorts, whilst it has that 100% screen efficiency, has a hit chance increased by 40% (I'm assuming multiplicative bonus here, so from 10% ->14% max hit chance)?

Given the costs of CL and CA are very similar, if I wanted a small fleet to raid or engage other small fleets, I would expect that 4 CL + 1 CA would be much much better than 5 CL, even if the on-paper heavy/light attack of each fleet were roughly similar.

 

[bitmode]

Specifically the +40% hit chance. Does that mean that a single CA with 4 CL escorts, whilst it has that 100% screen efficiency, has a hit chance increased by 40% (I'm assuming multiplicative bonus here, so from 10% ->14% max hit chance)?

It is the screening_bonus in common/modifiers/00_static_modifiers.txt, line 461:

screening_bonus = { 
  naval_retreat_speed = 0.2 
  convoy_retreat_speed = 0.2
  naval_hit_chance = 0.4
}

The modifier should indeed be multiplicative.

 

[FindFloppies]

These critical hits are not going to sink battleships on their own, but they can effectively cripple one so other ships can finish it off.

i.e. Hiei at the 1st Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. Nothing bigger than 8-inch to shoot at her with, and some of it was probably going through that BC belt at short ranges, but, still she wasn't sunk come morning, but definitely crippled enough that she couldn't leave. (IIRC they scuttled her after some more air attack damage, but I don't remember all the little details.)

Kirishima, otoh, a few nights later, was facing 16-in/45 fire from a much newer battleship. Much quicker demise.

 

[LordAkkrand]

Thanks, @bitmode - I couldn't see anything in defines.lua, but this is exactly the confirmation I needed.
Assuming that applies to all weapons (light, heavy, torpedos, depth charges), this should make a single CA escorted by 3 CL significantly better than 4 CL, and possibly even 5 CL. That 40% bonus to hit would give the heavy guns a good chance of hitting, and the small guns a much better chance of hitting.