Terrible at naval warfare

[CromagnonX]

Is there somewhere I can get tips on not getting plastered in major sea battles?

I am playing as Italy, and granted, I did not invest heavily in naval techs (a few destroyer and sub, a couple of battleship). Now that war with the allies has begun, I have lost pretty much every major battle in the Med against the British (and while they were around, France), even when sending in my armada (Regina del Mare). I have tried adding naval and multirole strikes, which seem do do nothing despite decent upgrades.

Help would be much appreciated.

 

[Von Faulkenstein]

Could you provide more information as to what your force composition is (OOB) and in which areas, technically speaking, you think the British and French are beating you?

Coincidentally I'm in something of a very similar boat as I started my first Italy Axis run earlier today in order to give navy management a go. I've got six carriers and four escort carriers in action by 1940, though I'm not at war yet (I'm waiting until Germany conquers France). FAI, my overall composition is good; three triple-carrier groups containing a mix of cruisers, destroyers and subs, three surface action groups with battleships (one with the remaining CVL), cruisers and destroyers, a few sub packs and two transport fleets.

 

[marxianTJ]

For Italy, unless you've built some naval units of some sort, it's best to stay in port until after France falls - because of the chance that you will get ping-ponged by French and UK fleets.

But once France is out of the war, you should be able to manage.

A few simple rules of thumb:

1. Don't put TPs with your main battlefleet - it's fine to have them in the same *tile* as your battlefleet, but don't attach them in the same fleet.
2. You can bloat your stack sizes pretty crazily, but make sure that your stacking penalty is not higher than the positioning bonus provided by your admiral or you will occasionally have ships start in very weird spots, or get shot to pieces by your own ships. Ships may still fire on friendlies from time to time until you get a level 8 admiral or so.
3. Don't put subs in your battlefleet - keep them separate (again having them in the same tile is fine as long as your admiral has the requisite number of stars).
4. Make sure your BB fleet has air cover or they'll get hurt by CAGs and NAVs
5. If you have NAVs use them in the tile that your ships are fighting for maximum effect
6. Make sure you have more screens than capitals - if you want to be *extra* safe double up on screens or at least have 3-4 extra, if you happen to lose a screen during a fight, and you incur the penalty for not having enough screens with your capitals - that will hurt you fairly badly in many cases.
7. AA guns and torpedos can upgrade normally - so it's a good idea to always keep torpedos up to date if you have a lot of subs, and AA guns for any ship type that you have several of.
8. If you build CVs or lCVs DO NOT PUT any other types of capital ship with them. In fact, it's best to keep them to a minimal number of screens (because the screens will only get to fire on extremely fast fleets or in a worst case scenario very low probability situation - so it's wasted firepower). Although it is OK to have them in the same *tile* as capital ships - just not in the same fleet.

 

[CromagnonX]

Forces were pretty much one main battleship and screen fleet, and a smaller HC fleet. Subs and transports were separate in small fleets.

I didn't research any CV or escort carriers, and only added a few destroyers to my fleets, so not much beyond the starting fleet (3-4 BB, few heavy cruisers, lots of LC and a few DD).
Transports are all separate from the battle fleets.
My main fleet started with a 16% stacking penalty (I'll have to look up positioning bonus), but I reduced the size a bit (removing heavies) to bring the penalty down.
Subs are in groups of 3, all on convoy raiding (rarely on anything else, as they didn't seem to do much).
Air cover was non-existent; I'm guessing I ran into the Brit carrier fleet and got chewed up.
NAVs engaged as much as possible, but rarely did anything.

Besides lack of air cover, I'm guessing the other mistake was trying to engage British and French fleets at the same time (they all seemed to converge in the Med). However, they didn't sink much until AFTER France fell - I figured they were weakened without the French fleets and took on the British head-on.

Thanks for the tips, please keep them coming.

 

[marxianTJ]

Yeah your NAVs will be more effective with some of their techs (naval strike and the 39' air torpedo tech) and also bringing 2-4 or even 5 if you have that many (may be a challenge for Italy).

I've never had much success fighting France *and* the UK - but usually you can manage with the UK by keeping your fleet *out* of the ocean.

You'll want to do a few things.

1. Send out the subs (groups of 3 is a little big but it should be ok - I prefer 2 because especially level 1-2 subs are really easy for many of the UK's screens to find).
2. wait
3. wait some more
4. Continue to wait - or take Corsica (I prefer to do this with airborne)
5. France dies - send the fleet to Africa to aid whatever troops you have in Libya already in taking the Suez. If you manage to get the Suez and Alexandria, that's the end of the British on the Eastern side of the med for all intents and purposes once you take care of Cyprus and Palestine. As soon as your troops make landfall, move the fleet to port- they can't really afford to stay at sea.
6. Let the land troops capture Palestine and Iraq and push a bit into Sudan if you please.
7. load 4-5 divisions, and rebase to Sardinia.
8. If you can't reach Gibraltar, start shedding older units who are limiting your range. It doesn't matter if your whole fleet dies here - so long as your soldiers take Gibraltar

You should now own the med. You can sail around now killing the remaining bits of the British Fleet - you can also use the supply map mode to find some of their subs. It is possible that you may've trapped a *ton* of the UK fleet in the med - I've had fleets large enough floating around without fuel or supplies that were so massive I was unable to defeat them with the starting ITA fleet - but it doesn't really matter, fight them a few times, get some EXP on your admiral and call it a day (or NAV bomb them until your air general maxes out his level. The starting Regia Marina is good enough (more screens is even better) - it can't go toe to toe with the UK's fleets, but it *can* get you to where you're going and live to talk about the nice little trip they took so long as you're careful with them lol.


Now if you intend to take out the UK you'll definitely have to spend time *at least* building lots and lots of transports and at least new DDs. If you only intend to help Germany by way of landings in the black sea area - you shouldn't need to build any more navy for a while.

 

[Ricard2037]

I'm playing a MP with italy, and i'm thinking about having 3 fleets, 2 of them with 50% of position penalty(surface fleet), 30 ships. The fact it's that i'll have 11 capitals shooting, UK will have not position penalty and have a fleet of 14 ships.

I'ts a nice idea to have a 80% of positioning?


I'll have a modern fleet with 4 bb and 9 destroyers that will fight against CV fleets.

All bad or good ideas?

 

[Kovax]

The starting ship techs are "enough", but you really want to boost a couple of naval doctrines, particularly those in the BB/DD section which affect gunnery and target selection. Raising the various ship types' ORG and Morale by a notch or two is good; raising them any further means that it's far more likely that your ships will run out of Strength before Organization, fighting to the death rather than breaking off for eventual repair.

I find that one capital ship is not enough firepower in a fleet, and prefer to run something like 2xBB + 2xCA + 6-8 screens in a Surface Action Group. That means incoming fire gets distributed among more of your ships, each with its own damage mitigation, so not only does each take less damage, but your fleet as a whole shrugs off more shots harmlessly. Fast screens allow you to fight at a range that best suits you, not the opponent, but a well-balanced fleet doesn't need to sweat it if the opposing fleet is faster, because you'll win at any range. Stacking penalties are bad, but having too few ships is far worse.

Italy doesn't need carriers, since it's got plenty of land bases to use in the Med, but fighting against carriers is a difficult proposition until you destroy their CAGs. You'll need at least one group of land-based INT to beat up the CAGs or else your ships will slowly but steadily get torn apart with nothing you can do to prevent it, and a NAV group can help turn the tide of the sea battle. If you've got decent air power, the quality of your ships doesn't matter, they're only needed to pin the enemy in place while your planes convert their entire surface fleet into submarines.

 

[CocoCincinnati]

Another thing to consider is building more DD's and using less CL's. If I remember correctly, CL doctrines are in the carrier tree so if you aren't researching any carrier techs then your CL positioning won't be very good. DD's are the preferable screens for BB's as their doctrines are in the same tree.

 

[Count Blue]

Since the title of the thread describes me too I thought I join the conversation.
I found that (big) naval battles tend to lead to very variable results.

I once had a save game just prior to a big naval battle and so I choose to start multiple times (10 or more) just to notice the very variable outcomes.
Since the forces involved in the battle were always exactly the same but the outcomes were so different I concluded that naval battles are somehow unpredictable even if you know the forces involved exactly.

In the given example I almost killed a superstack of 40 ships with a classical 4CV-6CL Taskforce, the next run I got my ass handed over to me and I lost almost all my ships.
Same battle, same forces, same time, same spot.

I believe that this might be intentional (WAD) and as such makes up for the fact that seabattles were much less predictable than land and airbattles.

My conclusion:
Until your naval forces have a serious technical advantage be prepared for surprises.

 

[Kovax]

CLs seem to be more resilient than DD, at least in my games. I seem to lose a lot of DDs in combat, but CLs much more frequently lose ORG first and pull out of the fight, to be repaired later. Lately, I've been going CL instead of DD for all but ASW (which doesn't require high-tech DDs). Most of the CL/CV tree is irrelevant to a BB fleet, except for 2 CL doctrines if you go that route. Meanwhile, 2 DD doctrines in the BB/DD tree will be irrelevant if you use CL instead of DD. There's some potential synergy due to shared Practicals and Theoreticals, but it's not game-changing.

Putting more DDs or CLs in a fleet can speed up the entire fleet in combat (not on the big map for movement), allowing your larger ships to fight at optimum range. On the other hand, if you're not boosting their engine techs, then it doesn't make that much difference.

Initial placement is quite variable, and critical hits can change the nature of a battle rather suddenly. If you're running a CV fleet, for example, initial placement can spell the difference between being at extreme range and tearing the other fleet apart with air power without taking a single hit in return, or being in gun range of their capital ships or subs and losing a CV almost immediately.

 

[marxianTJ]

The reason I happen to prefer CLs is purely because they add more firepower than DDs do, and once you build several of them they're only marginally more expensive than DDs in IC/days, but you get a bit more bang for your buck, and longer range too. And if you're late game and want to be cheesy, you've got your practical all set up for the vaunted cruizerg fleet lol.

 

[Jon5738]

CL vs DD is more of a tech issue than IC issue IMHO. If you can't spare the tech, just go DD, if you can spare the tech use DD for sub hunts and escort for battleships and CL for Carrier fleets (you better have a few DDs with them also because they hunt subs better)

 

[SirArthur]

In the given example I almost killed a superstack of 40 ships with a classical 4CV-6CL Taskforce, the next run I got my ass handed over to me and I lost almost all my ships.
Same battle, same forces, same time, same spot.

Do you, by any chance, still know the weather conditions ? I know there is a lot of random involved in the initial stage of the battle, but when it comes to carrier, weather would be a valuable insight.

 

[SirArthur]

The reason I happen to prefer CLs is purely because they add more firepower than DDs do, and once you build several of them they're only marginally more expensive than DDs in IC/days, but you get a bit more bang for your buck, and longer range too. And if you're late game and want to be cheesy, you've got your practical all set up for the vaunted cruizerg fleet lol.

CL vs DD is one of my problems. Next game I play I will test a CV + DD fleet. I simply think the low hull rating of the dd can compensate for a lot. You basically put the CLs inn to have better AA in a fight against enemy carriers and a little firepower in close combat. I've been thinking about this many games and I think specialized fleets (like CV+CL-fleets against carriers) bring more than the all around fleet. And that is why I think about escorting DDs instead of CLs for other fights.

 

[marxianTJ]

I mean.. for CVs the escorts really don't matter unless your CVs are slower than the enemy's fleet - then you're potentially in trouble. The sad thing about CVs in this game is that their escorts really don't matter since they should almost never come into combat except in dire circumstances (you met a very fast enemy fleet - or terrible weather put you 5 ft. away from a battleship).

CLs have more firepower for when wacky things happen and something catches up to your CV, more AA firepower, and also slightly longer range than DDs, and they tech out of the CV tree so you get some theoretical boosts. But DDs wouldn't necessarily hurt a CV fleet - especially one that means to stay relatively close to wherever it's based from - or sub hunt.

 

[feye1]

I mean.. for CVs the escorts really don't matter unless your CVs are slower than the enemy's fleet - then you're potentially in trouble.

If your CV has a speed of 24 kph and my BB has a speed of 19 kph, I can still catch your CV?

Only if you are playing to AI you are safe with a smaller fleet with semi-modern escorts. If you, however, fight human enemies, I'd suggest to go DD if you want to be safe and only invest in CL if you know what you are doing and think it's worth the extra costs.

 

[marxianTJ]

The BB can't ever catch the CV because it starts out so much further away - the only time it *would* is if bad weather were a factor and caused the CV to start out close enough to the BB for it to eventually reach (or start out in) firing range. Which, as long as you're careful and don't have your CTF automated to just roam around, you'll be fine.

If you're building CV fleets against humans you're making a mistake - the optimal fleet against a human would have a level 8+ skilled admiral, and some number larger than 60 CLs or some number larger than 60 of DDs (if you wanted to lose some more ships). The CLs would prolly be better purely because of their firepower - and you could build them without armor to reducing the stacking penalty somewhat but level enough firepower to destroy anything basically instantly (excepting a similarly large cruizerg fleet). The reason for this is that the stacking penalty relating to hulls, and units above command limit, has a cap - after which all additional firepower added to the fleet is purely additional firepower added to the fleet - and you'll easily surpass the amount of firepower that a "normal" fleet could level at you lol. DDs and CLs are best for this because they're cheap and also don't suffer from the "capital without screens" penalty like BCs, CAs, BBs, and CVs (that it would probably be very difficult if not impossible to build 20-30 BBs over a short period of time without screwing yourself on the land-side of a war).

CVs likewise don't bother the cruizerg fleet, because although they may not be able to catch the CVs, the targeting AI for the CAGs generally ends up picking a different ship to shoot at each trip, so the damage is spread out across some absurd number of units (thus resulting in very little actual damage being done).

 

[parkerg12]

My standard action fleet as Italy is 2-3BBs and whatever escorts I have available that doesn't cause stacking penalties and I haves tons of fighter cover and scouts. I only attack carrier fleets at night with my BBs due to the nighttime penalty being way harsher. I also do not invest in ship hull since it will reduce the amount of ships in your fleet and your BBs speed. one of my favorite tactics is to get super heavy BBs without any hull upgrades. this enables them to be quite quick and do an enormous amount of damage. due to Italy's lack in industrial capacity my escorts are pretty much anything I can scratch up but prefer destroyers because you do not need much range. thus all I invest in is your naval techs for BBs and destroyers, radar systems, and all standard parts excluding hull with a preference on engines to run down those carriers

 

[Kovax]

Your 19kt BB ***CAN*** catch that 24kt CV, if the BB has faster escorts. Speed of the fleet is averaged in combat, but still slowest ship on the big map.