Tidbits on CAs and naked BBs.

[Question]

I feel like pointing out the elephant in the room, but are heavy guns even worth getting?

Torps are cheap and can be fielded en-masse on cheap DDs and subs. Once you clear screens with your cruisers, the torps will easily make capitals go pop. Light cruiser batteries also do a good job at chipping down BCs/BBs for how cheap they are.

I feel like CAs could have a niche if they were fast enough to dodge torps (forcing you to counter them with heavy guns), but BCs are faster (a 1944 BC can go 41 knots, a 1944 CA with similar loadout goes about 37 KN).

Then theres the fundamental problem that you can easily sink a fleet with maxed out AA just by assigning 500 tac bombers to a sea zone due to how broken naval strikes are, so its really only useful if you -need- to do an amphibious invasion...

As far as i can tell, AA in naval combat works properly because of the fleet bonus, if you have a massive amount of AA, you can negate carrier wings. But the 20% fleet AA is ignored in naval strikes as only the target ship shoots back and the rest of the fleet sits around doing nothing. The same fleet can take little to no damage in a naval combat vs planes, but in a naval strike you will start losing ships easily and getting 50%+ damage done to capitals.

 

[Corpse Fool]

But assuming it does work, then 40 piercing vs 50 armor would scale to 40% damage being retained instead of 80%?

No, I dont think so. I think that removing the -90% maximum for the penalty just means that if they had 1 piercing and you had 100 armour, you only take 1% of the damage, instead of the forced minimum of 10%.

Not healing the ships is because you didnt have negative piercing.

 

[Question]

No, I dont think so. I think that removing the -90% maximum for the penalty just means that if they had 1 piercing and you had 100 armour, you only take 1% of the damage, instead of the forced minimum of 10%.

Not healing the ships is because you didnt have negative piercing.

I am not removing the -90% maximum though, i am increasing the max from -100 to -200. In theory, shouldnt that double the scaling effects of piercing vs armor?

 

[Corpse Fool]

I am not removing the -90% maximum though, i am increasing the max from -100 to -200. In theory, shouldnt that double the scaling effects of piercing vs armor?

It deoends how the scaling works, and I dint think it works in the way that pushing the bottom further out would change the scale. But I cant confirm, maybe call @bitmode

 

[bitmode]

It deoends how the scaling works, and I dint think it works in the way that pushing the bottom further out would change the scale. But I cant confirm, maybe call @bitmode

This is about NNavy.COMBAT_ARMOR_PIERCING_DAMAGE_REDUCTION, right?

The reduction is calculated exactly as the wiki states. As with all penalties/bonuses, 1 is added to it to make it a multiplier. This multiplier then gets capped between 0 and 1, i.e. neither healing nor damage amplification is possible with this modifier.
Current armor-to-damage-scale for 20 piercing:

With the define changed to -2.0:

 

[Corpse Fool]

This multiplier then gets capped between 0 and 1, i.e. neither healing nor damage amplification is possible with this modifier.

I must have been thinking about an older formula, or I imagined the whole thing. I thought that wiki page used to say straight piercing/armour, capped to a minimum of 10% damage (-90%) and a max of 100% (no reduction).

Just to confirm my understanding, you changed the -90% into a -200%? Such that originally a 20 piercing with 40 armour would have been 0.5, *-0.9, which is -45% damage, or 65% of the original damage is being dealt? But changing the -90 into -200 now makes the same 20/40 into 0.5*-2, which is -1, -100% of damage, no damage dealt?

Would you be able to comment on mods like 10x doing weird stuff that lets divisions heal? It was happening with motorized, that get a +100% modifier to their hardness after you research mech 1. 10x made this +1000%, and made the hardness 110%. I imagined that would leave you suffering 110% of the hard attack, and -10% of the soft attack. If the attacks were balanced such that there were negative attacks (more than 11 soft for every 1 hard attack, because that is -1.1 and 1.1, 0 net).

 

[bitmode]

Just to confirm my understanding, you changed the -90% into a -200%? Such that originally a 20 piercing with 40 armour would have been 0.5, *-0.9, which is -45% damage, or 65% of the original damage is being dealt? But changing the -90 into -200 now makes the same 20/40 into 0.5*-2, which is -1, -100% of damage, no damage dealt?

That's right. Should have just added the formulas for the plots:

• min(max(0,1-0.9*(1-20/x)),1)
• min(max(0,1-2*(1-20/x)),1)

Would you be able to comment on mods like 10x doing weird stuff that lets divisions heal? It was happening with motorized, that get a +100% modifier to their hardness after you research mech 1. 10x made this +1000%, and made the hardness 110%. I imagined that would leave you suffering 110% of the hard attack, and -10% of the soft attack. If the attacks were balanced such that there were negative attacks (more than 11 soft for every 1 hard attack, because that is -1.1 and 1.1, 0 net).

For anyone reading along, here you are referring to the hardness-modified attacks when land combat gets resolved. As far as I can see, hardness is treated as any other averaged stat when calculating the division stats. It does not seem to get capped between 0% and 100%.
The hardness modification on attacks likewise does not limit any of the intermediate values so you could indeed end up with negative attacks. This won't lead to healing though. Attacks are made in a loop à la for (int i = 0; i < nAttacks; ++i) { }*, so with negative attacks simply nothing will happen just like with zero attacks. You could possibly have some sort of damage amplification though with e.g. negative hardness versus soft attacks. There is no limit to how hard or soft you can be

* or more likely while (nAttacks-- > 0) { } for those who like code golfing

 

[Question]

This is about NNavy.COMBAT_ARMOR_PIERCING_DAMAGE_REDUCTION, right?

The reduction is calculated exactly as the wiki states. As with all penalties/bonuses, 1 is added to it to make it a multiplier. This multiplier then gets capped between 0 and 1, i.e. neither healing nor damage amplification is possible with this modifier.
Current armor-to-damage-scale for 20 piercing:
View attachment 680989
With the define changed to -2.0:
View attachment 680990

Thanks for the explanation. So if my understanding is correct, this means CLs and CAs should be much less effective when shooting at BCs and BBs? I wonder if this is enough to make armor and piercing more important.

I also added average armor to medium cruiser batteries so they would be better armored than CLs, this should make equal tech CLs unable to hurt CAs much.

 

[Corpse Fool]

Thanks for the explanation. So if my understanding is correct, this means CLs and CAs should be much less effective when shooting at BCs and BBs? I wonder if this is enough to make armor and piercing more important.

I also added average armor to medium cruiser batteries so they would be better armored than CLs, this should make equal tech CLs unable to hurt CAs much.

If we're going with the basic vanilla game to begin with, hardly anyone is using CL/CA to gun down any capital, they are used to wipe screens and then allow the torpedoes (which ignore armour and have big alpha damage) on the screens (DD) to attack the capitals. Making the armour scaling even more aggressive isn't going to change that. It doesn't matter if having 9.9 piercing on your CL/CA light attack is doing literally 0 damage to even basic BC armour of 21, you weren't counting on the guns to be the ones to deal the damage. Same with adding armour to a CA that you weren't going to armour anyway because the CA can't get shot by light attack until all of the screens are wiped anyway, and the torpedoes are going to be getting launched at them before that happens.

The only thing this might change is to make max-armour CL a better screen, because it might be able to absorb more attacks per IC than the DD because of the more aggressive scaling, but that would still only be worthwhile against light attack spam CAs. BC+ are already too expensive per light attack to be competitive to begin with. But without the scaling I've done some math on it already, and even maxed out CL (including admirals and other modifiers) only barely approach the DD in terms of attacks absorbed per IC, under similar conditions.

 

[Question]

Its extra damage on the capitals which is what i was trying to prevent.

IIRC screens dont prevent heavy ships from being targetted by light guns, screens only prevent torps from targetting them. If im not wrong, this controls the targetting chance :

AGGRESSION_ARMOR_EFFICIENCY_MULTIPLIER = 1.0,        -- armor to enemy piercing ratio is multiplied by this value, which will increase the strength of ships while considering them for aggression
    AGGRESSION_MIN_ARMOR_EFFICIENCY = 0.5,              -- armor multiplier has a min and max caps while being factored in aggression
    AGGRESSION_MAX_ARMOR_EFFICIENCY = 1.5,              -- armor multiplier has a min and max caps while being factored in aggression
    
    AGGRESSION_LIGHT_GUN_EFFICIENCY_ON_LIGHT_SHIPS = 1.0, -- ratio for scoring for different gun types against light ships
    AGGRESSION_HEAVY_GUN_EFFICIENCY_ON_LIGHT_SHIPS = 0.25,-- ratio for scoring for different gun types against light ships
    AGGRESSION_TORPEDO_EFFICIENCY_ON_LIGHT_SHIPS = 0.1,   -- ratio for scoring for different gun types against light ships
    
    AGGRESSION_LIGHT_GUN_EFFICIENCY_ON_HEAVY_SHIPS = 0.1, -- ratio for scoring for different gun types against heavy ships
    AGGRESSION_HEAVY_GUN_EFFICIENCY_ON_HEAVY_SHIPS = 1.0, -- ratio for scoring for different gun types against heavy ships
    AGGRESSION_TORPEDO_EFFICIENCY_ON_HEAVY_SHIPS = 1.1,   -- ratio for scoring for different gun types against heavy ships

So the chance of light guns targetting heavy ships is pretty low. Not sure how armor affects aggression though...

On the issue of torps, what is the problem? They are easy to spam sure, but are they too accurate, do too much damage, or what? Most ww2 sources that I read showed torps being very inaccurate unless the target was ambushed by a sub or it was a naval bomber.

 

[Corpse Fool]

according to the wiki, light guns can only attack the first non-empty layer, which is most often the screen layer. Heavy guns can attack the first 2 non-empty layers. Torpedoes can only target deeper layers if those layers aren't being 100% screened, and then there is a chance of being able to penetrate.

Torpedoes are very inaccurate, they have a profile of 145. They also only fire once every 4 hours, unless you have an admiral trait that makes them fire once every 3 hours. Despite torpedoes having such a high attack alpha, their DPS is often rather low because of those two factors.

The problem is a combination of their cost, and the cost of the DD. Despite being inaccurate and despite their low rate of fire, DD are so spammable that you can reach a critical mass where you just have so many attack rolls that enough of them are bound to penetrate screens and hit, and leverage their high-alpha damage against capitals that do not get the benefit of their armour. Having to "get lucky"/hit less times to sink the capitals because of high alpha damage is more beneficial than having higher accuracy and rates of fire.

Possible solutions are to give torpedoes a piercing stat, so that some of the heavier capitals have more resistance to their damage. Most ships had torpedo defense systems by this point. You could lower their damage, or reduce the +40% torpedo attack you get from the upgrades, that is pretty crazy. You could make them even less accurate, or have even less rate of fire. Or you could make them more costly to field, through either IC, speed, or resources.

 

[Question]

Do torps target screens if there is nothing else to shoot?

 

[bitmode]

Do torps target screens if there is nothing else to shoot?

https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Naval_battle#Target_selection:
Submarines will only target screens when set to High risk engagement rule. They will only target capitals when set to Medium risk or higher.

Edit: if you mean torpedos fired by surface ships, yes they can target screens

 

[Harin]

Possible solutions are to give torpedoes a piercing stat, so that some of the heavier capitals have more resistance to their damage. Most ships had torpedo defense systems by this point. You could lower their damage, or reduce the +40% torpedo attack you get from the upgrades, that is pretty crazy. You could make them even less accurate, or have even less rate of fire. Or you could make them more costly to field, through either IC, speed, or resources.

Do you think it would be to much work for the developers to give submarines and destroyers a limited number of torpedo shots in one battle, instead of unlimited torpedoes? Once destroyers have used up their torpedoes, the heavier ships might become important again.

 

[Corpse Fool]

Do you think it would be to much work for the developers to give submarines and destroyers a limited number of torpedo shots in one battle, instead of unlimited torpedoes? Once destroyers have used up their torpedoes, the heavier ships might become important again.

Perhaps, if they reworked the naval battle systems (again).
Right now I think if all they did was add that, in order for this to not immediately kill all use of any torpedoes you'd have to more or less allow the players to control when the torpedoes get fired, and/or what sorts of ships they will launch torpedoes at. If they just added limited ammo and you wasted all of your volleys against super dodgy screens, that would be infuriating.