"Sunflower" (patch 1.2) released! [checksum: bb23]

  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
[...]If you were really that worried about making a pointless change to something that wasn't broken, or incorrect then you could have used the hybrid flag of half-and-half
between the British-American flag.
Shouldn't they in your opinion switch to an English-American flag instead? After all...
[...] it's called the English language for a reason [...]
 
Last edited:
Last edited:
The AI still behaves horribly. Nothing in the list doesn't even begin to touch on the obvious failings.

This release appears to have tried correcting some of the higher level stuff that the AI should handle (but from screenshots from multiple players and from my own playthrough, it doesn't seem to have had the desired effect), while some of the faults are really, really basic - like leaving gaps in the frontline (or defensively, still moving units that are entrenched to cover gaps that don't really exist - using the redeployment feature too, which only makes it worse). These should be prioritised over nice-to-haves, they really seem really, really obvious too.
 
Can we please get actual formulas for naval combat, rather than vague descriptions that are contradicted by the in-game tooltips and the defines.lua comments? I could have fixed most of the naval combat balance issues by now, but I am not going to spend a week deriving equations that a developer can post in five minutes.

That said, nice work on the AI. Still needs a lot more improvement to be adequate, but it's getting there.
 
  • 2
  • 1
  • 1
Reactions:
Can we please get actual formulas for naval combat, rather than vague descriptions that are contradicted by the in-game tooltips and the defines.lua comments? I could have fixed most of the naval combat balance issues by now, but I am not going to spend a week deriving equations that a developer can post in five minutes.
What naval combat balance issues are there left, after 1.2 patch?
 
What naval combat balance issues are there left, after 1.2 patch?

Other than subs being perhaps too visible in the early years, or perhaps early year sub detection is too easy, it is looking like PDS struck a good balance with the changes.

Btw, thanks for all the effort you put in to help them in the beta.
 
  • 2
Reactions:
What naval combat balance issues are there left, after 1.2 patch?

Other than subs being perhaps too visible in the early years, or perhaps early year sub detection is too easy, it is looking like PDS struck a good balance with the changes.

Btw, thanks for all the effort you put in to help them in the beta.

To start with, light cruisers are still strictly superior to destroyers for each PP invested, and appear to be strictly superior to everything else as well. Ran a quick test in 1936 start with the new patch, using the 1936 hulls that should be the most common types afloat in most scenarios, AND gave the country with the destroyers all doctrines:

Edit: 40 1936 CL cost 32000PP; 80 1936 DD cost 32500PP.

40 CL vs 80 DD:

WzURqAQ.jpg


40 CL + 3 BB vs 100 DD & 3BB:

UAYtBfw.jpg



80 CL vs 100 DD & 3 BB:

tCjlEoD.jpg

As can be seen, light cruiser spam is still probably the way to go, except possibly regarding submarines.

I did some work on naval balance after the 1.1 patch, but ran into a wall with the torpedo hit chances, since my numbers did not match test results. Since Podcat posted at the time that he was working on a big naval combat rebalance for the 1.2 patch, and since we didn't have the actual to-hit and damage formulas, I decided to do something else in the meanwhile.

Without knowing how chance to hit and damage are calculated, I can guess at what is going on, but can't produce potential new stats without brute-force testing.

Edit:

I'll poke poke carriers and subs later.
 
Last edited:
  • 2
  • 1
Reactions:
CLs excel at sinking destroyers, it looks like you put them up against a fleet of mostly DD.

CA does very well against CL, and having some up to date or made with variants (speed, armor, guns) seems to give a solid showing against this kind of spam.

That said, yes CL spam will totally wreck a lot of destroyers, even in battles that sink most of the CL fleet, DDs are going to suffer against those accurate CL guns at range. Good thing they're pretty fast to build, and pure CL spam isn't nearly as threatening to CA as mixed CL+DD+CA.

Edit: BC also seems decent against CL, a bit of a significant accuracy difference early in the game compared to BB.
 
  • 3
Reactions:
CL spam vs DD and CA (50/50 PP breakdown):

As always, the side with DD has all doctrines researched. The side with the CL has no doctrines.

oYVuupS.jpg

Edit:

When I excluded the DD and just ran the CA vs CL, CL sank 2 CA with no losses.
 
  • 3
Reactions:
CL spam vs DD and CA (50/50 PP breakdown):

As always, the side with DD has all doctrines researched. The side with the CL has no doctrines.

oYVuupS.jpg

Edit:

When I excluded the DD and just ran the CA vs CL, CL sank 2 CA with no losses.
Ok, I'm going to ask for max cheese:

Which doctrine past is best for CL? :)
 
To start with, light cruisers are still strictly superior to destroyers for each PP invested, and appear to be strictly superior to everything else as well.
The CLs should be the better way to spend the PP for things that aren't sub-hunting, so I wouldn't consider that necessarily an issue per se (said sub-hunting and related convoy escorts ensure you'd want to produce some DDs anyway, but not only DDs, which I think is a plus)

I was meaning to check how it plays out against the stronger classes but didn't find time for it yet (in part because I didn't see CLs achieve anything suspiciously superior in the hands-off games I've run in the beta period)
 
To start with, light cruisers are still strictly superior to destroyers for each PP invested, and appear to be strictly superior to everything else as well. Ran a quick test in 1936 start with the new patch, using the 1936 hulls that should be the most common types afloat in most scenarios, AND gave the country with the destroyers all doctrines:

Edit: 40 1936 CL cost 32000PP; 80 1936 DD cost 32500PP.

40 CL vs 80 DD:

WzURqAQ.jpg


40 CL + 3 BB vs 100 DD & 3BB:

UAYtBfw.jpg



80 CL vs 100 DD & 3 BB:

tCjlEoD.jpg

As can be seen, light cruiser spam is still probably the way to go, except possibly regarding submarines.

I did some work on naval balance after the 1.1 patch, but ran into a wall with the torpedo hit chances, since my numbers did not match test results. Since Podcat posted at the time that he was working on a big naval combat rebalance for the 1.2 patch, and since we didn't have the actual to-hit and damage formulas, I decided to do something else in the meanwhile.

Without knowing how chance to hit and damage are calculated, I can guess at what is going on, but can't produce potential new stats without brute-force testing.

Edit:

I'll poke poke carriers and subs later.


I am assuming your point is that if two nations both invested 272,000 in Naval production and one nation built only light cruisers and another nation invested in a historically plausible naval program, you would expect the plausible build to have an advantage rather than a gamey spam build?

That kind of test would be interesting and provide some useful game balance results. Am I correct in thinking that your testing is aimed at MP people that look into how to game the system by building the most efficient naval doom stack?

In a plausible build where a Destroyer is worth 900 ish and a light cruiser is 3400 ish you would get 3-4 destroyers for every light cruiser? In reality wouldn't you expect a light cruiser to account for many destroyers? Aren't there pros and cons to what they are both good at and strategic choices that one would need to make between the two?
CL spam vs DD and CA (50/50 PP breakdown):

As always, the side with DD has all doctrines researched. The side with the CL has no doctrines.

oYVuupS.jpg

Edit:

When I excluded the DD and just ran the CA vs CL, CL sank 2 CA with no losses.



In game a destroyer costs 900 ish spanners and a Light cruiser is 3400 ish - this makes a Light cruiser three times more expensive?
 
I am assuming your point is that if two nations both invested 272,000 in Naval production and one nation built only light cruisers and another nation invested in a historically plausible naval program, you would expect the plausible build to have an advantage rather than a gamey spam build?
That's how I read it (and would agree with it, if that's the case) but with a caveat, that the "advantage" can be viewed in broader terms than just "will win combat if we pit all these ships against one another"

E.g. a nation which invests part of its PP in the DD program will be worse off in that one Decisive Battle that'd bring tear to a Japanese eye, but at the same time that nation will be in much better spot when trying to protecting their trade and supply convoys from enemy subs, if just because large number of small ships will allow them to cover larger number of sea zones, and still do good job detecting/destroying the subs.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
In a plausible build where a Destroyer is worth 900 ish and a light cruiser is 3400 ish you would get 3-4 destroyers for every light cruiser? In reality wouldn't you expect a light cruiser to account for many destroyers? Aren't there pros and cons to what they are both good at and strategic choices that one would need to make between the two?

In game a destroyer costs 900 ish spanners and a Light cruiser is 3400 ish - this makes a Light cruiser three times more expensive?

Good point. I was looking at CL manpower for some reason. That changes the results, but only partially for the better:

One for one, CL still eat DD. 100 DD is equal to about 29 CL in PP points, not 40. Same one-sided result.

CL still eat SS. So for sub-hunting purposes, DD aren't significantly better.

However, once CA are added, DD become strictly superior to CL because the way CA are considered 'capital ships' by the game. As long as the CL screen is intact, it rapidly sinks the opposing DD screen. Once the CL screen begins to break, the surviving DD close in and sink the opposing CA, which cannot retreat along with their screen element. Since each CA/CL is worth three to four times as much as a DD, the DD-screened fleet will come out ahead on PP points. A combined-arms DD/CL screen doesn't perform better than a pure DD screen

So CL are no longer the go-to ship for everything, but they now also don't seem to have much of a role since DD are superior at screening.

The purpose of all this isn't to "game" the game, but to see what interesting choices there are for naval combat, if any.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
That's how I read it (and would agree with it, if that's the case) but with a caveat, that the "advantage" can be viewed in broader terms than just "will win combat if we pit all these ships against one another"

E.g. a nation which invests part of its PP in the DD program will be worse off in that one Decisive Battle that'd bring tear to a Japanese eye, but at the same time that nation will be in much better spot when trying to protecting their trade and supply convoys from enemy subs, if just because large number of small ships will allow them to cover larger number of sea zones, and still do good job detecting/destroying the subs.

The problem is that if each battle costs you more PP than your opponent, you better have a sufficient lead in PP to replace the lost ships, else you will inevitably get ground down. For example, disparity in production is why fundamentally Japan could not have defeated the United States in the Pacific, regardless of early victories. By mid-1943, the United States was commissioning a modern fleet carrier every two months. Japan commissioned its first carrier since the start of the Pacific War, Taiho, in March 1944.

So if one ship class is strictly superior to another, then that class should be used.

Either way, since they have fixed the CL superiority problem, even if CL are currently basically obsolete, the naval part of the game should be playable.
 
So CL are no longer the go-to ship for everything, but they now also don't seem to have much of a role since DD are superior at screening.
Running a few quick tests it'd appear the all-DD screen group is likely to (narrowly) outlast a mix of DDs and CLs of comparable PP value, but at expense of taking heavier losses. At the same time, this matchup doesn't take into account better AA defense provided by the CLs, so things can potentially turn different if there's carrier(s) and/or land-based naval bombers getting into the fight.

So overall, I don't think any of these classes is now obsolete; but their use is now more situational, which is a good thing.
 
  • 3
Reactions: