Tidbits on CAs and naked BBs.

[sudpud]

The dominant ship in the game is a slow, unarmored, cruiser with a single 8" inch battery and 4/5/6 6" batteries. This is battleship food. They would get wiped in a heartbeat. A BB can sit 10 miles out, screened, and just take them out one by one, with no damage to it's fleet.

This doesn't happen because the game assumes the BB fleet would get close enough to endanger its screens, which it has no reason to. Buff heavy attack, make ships like that sitting ducks to hard attack. Make capitals fight before screens engage. Make fleet engagement behavior a thing that can decide tactics of battles. Make ship speed matter more. Make torpedo's very, very expensive in IC.

 

[Corpse Fool]

The light attack CA that is the most commonly used capital isn't exactly slow. A '36 CA with engine 2 is going 31+30%, 1 medium battery, 2 light cruiser batteries and 3 dual purpose secondaries is going to take -16% speed, so 31+14=35.34 knots. '40 CA is going to be even faster, with a higher hull speed, engine add, and engine %, even if it does have an extra gun battery.

That CA2 only has (110+20)*1.4=182 HP. A single shot from a BC/BB with 4+ gun batteries is going to deal devastating damage to such a cruiser. Using the tier 3 guns at 15 damage each, 4-6 batteries would be 60/75/90 basic damage, +30% from fire control upgrades, +10% from ammunition, with another +10% from radar and +20% from FCS. I forget if these would stack to be x1.4 and x1.3 for x1.82, or just x1.7, but either way that is 102/127.5/153 basic damage, nevermind ship and admiral and doctrines and chief of navy and high command bonuses, and the +/-15% swing. A BC/BB can outright 1 shot heavy cruisers, if you really want them to be able to do that.

 

[sudpud]

The light attack CA that is the most commonly used capital isn't exactly slow. A '36 CA with engine 2 is going 31+30%, 1 medium battery, 2 light cruiser batteries and 3 dual purpose secondaries is going to take -16% speed, so 31+14=35.34 knots. '40 CA is going to be even faster, with a higher hull speed, engine add, and engine %, even if it does have an extra gun battery.

That CA2 only has (110+20)*1.4=182 HP. A single shot from a BC/BB with 4+ gun batteries is going to deal devastating damage to such a cruiser. Using the tier 3 guns at 15 damage each, 4-6 batteries would be 60/75/90 basic damage, +30% from fire control upgrades, +10% from ammunition, with another +10% from radar and +20% from FCS. I forget if these would stack to be x1.4 and x1.3 for x1.82, or just x1.7, but either way that is 102/127.5/153 basic damage, nevermind ship and admiral and doctrines and chief of navy and high command bonuses, and the +/-15% swing. A BC/BB can outright 1 shot heavy cruisers, if you really want them to be able to do that.

Most light attack CAs are refitting early cruiser hulls or if built are built with cheapest engines.

That being said - a single battery(in reality a single shell) should be able to one shot these cruisers. Here you’d need 4+ batteries. See how heavy attack seems underpowered?

 

[Corpse Fool]

Most light attack CAs are refitting early cruiser hulls or if built are built with cheapest engines.

If you're using the hull/engine that you start the game with, go ahead and use it, it'll be the cheapest way to get a ship that is actually worth using. But if you're doing new production, there is no basically no reason to use early hulls or minimum engines.

That being said - a single battery(in reality a single shell) should be able to one shot these cruisers. Here you’d need 4+ batteries. See how heavy attack seems underpowered?

Reminds me of playing navyfield, the Tiger PCL could mount a 18" gun.

In order to get that single shell to hit, you're generally going to need a pretty hefty volume of fire. I think the Litorrio which was renown for having a pretty high hit rate because of the sheer bulk of range finders and other FCS equipment it had, and I don't remember the specific source or what the number was, but I believe it was only a 15% hit rate.

Naval attacks are pretty strange in the way they are abstracted. There are certainly some issues with it, how would you try to change the simulation to put it more in line with what you would expect?

 

[sudpud]

If you're using the hull/engine that you start the game with, go ahead and use it, it'll be the cheapest way to get a ship that is actually worth using. But if you're doing new production, there is no basically no reason to use early hulls or minimum engines.

Reminds me of playing navyfield, the Tiger PCL could mount a 18" gun.

In order to get that single shell to hit, you're generally going to need a pretty hefty volume of fire. I think the Litorrio which was renown for having a pretty high hit rate because of the sheer bulk of range finders and other FCS equipment it had, and I don't remember the specific source or what the number was, but I believe it was only a 15% hit rate.

Naval attacks are pretty strange in the way they are abstracted. There are certainly some issues with it, how would you try to change the simulation to put it more in line with what you would expect?

Very true, it's just not that easy to land a shell at 10 miles. And yes, things are going to have to be abstracted. I get that. It's the limits of coding and simulation. This is, after all, a game to simulate more than just navy.

Make Heavy Ships the only source of heavy attack. Treat piercing heavy attack with a modifier, like 4 or 5x. This would make armor more important, and give a much needed boost to BBs/BC. Allow medium and light cruiser batteries on BB/BC.

Make Heavy Attack slightly worse at targeting.

1.5x production costs for HS, but allow 10 docks. I think this might necessitate a buff to repair speed, not sure. I'm fine with current repair speeds.

Make Torps 5x the cost. Torpedos are extremely expensive weapons to operate. Reflect this.

Make fleet speed a buff to light attack and heavy attack. Fleet Speed / Enemy Fleet speed * LA. If you're slower than them, you do less light attack.

You might think - SHBB would be amazing with these changes, but they would be hindered by slowing down the fleet, and naval bombers could still wreak havoc.

With these changes, engines would be very, very important, as they are in reality. Old DDs, CAs, and BBs would really only be good at escorting or shore attack, which was how they were used. British ships would need to more accurately reflect their modernization, however.

 

[balmung60]

The dominant ship in the game is a slow, unarmored, cruiser with a single 8" inch battery and 4/5/6 6" batteries. This is battleship food. They would get wiped in a heartbeat. A BB can sit 10 miles out, screened, and just take them out one by one, with no damage to it's fleet.

This doesn't happen because the game assumes the BB fleet would get close enough to endanger its screens, which it has no reason to. Buff heavy attack, make ships like that sitting ducks to hard attack. Make capitals fight before screens engage. Make fleet engagement behavior a thing that can decide tactics of battles. Make ship speed matter more. Make torpedo's very, very expensive in IC.

The first part illustrates something that's really a major problem with ship design realism. Mixed batteries are dead and ships should really be locked to one caliber of main battery gun. And frankly, nothing should only be carrying one main gun unless you subscribe to one gun module = 2/3/4 guns at all sizes and you are building a destroyer escort.

Also, making torpedoes expensive misses the entire point of torpedoes. Torpedoes were cheap and powerful and many smaller navies saw them as a way to ward off larger navies because they could afford torpedoes (and ships that could carry them) much more easily than big guns (and ships that could carry them).

 

[sudpud]

The first part illustrates something that's really a major problem with ship design realism. Mixed batteries are dead and ships should really be locked to one caliber of main battery gun. And frankly, nothing should only be carrying one main gun unless you subscribe to one gun module = 2/3/4 guns at all sizes and you are building a destroyer escort.

Also, making torpedoes expensive misses the entire point of torpedoes. Torpedoes were cheap and powerful and many smaller navies saw them as a way to ward off larger navies because they could afford torpedoes (and ships that could carry them) much more easily than big guns (and ships that could carry them).

Torpedos were not cheap. Yes, they were cheap compared to a battleship, but they were not cheap. The school of thought you are referencing is the Jeune Ecole. It was not followed by actual navies during WW2. A single torpedo cost ~1/5 that of a fighter plane.

In any event, I don't care that much in the game, other than to discourage the tactic of screen torpedo ships. But I don't care too much. I'd be fine witth making shore bombard from heavy guns capped at 50% rather than 25% instead. Would be an incentive to build bigger ships rather than focusing entirely on light attack and torps.

 

[Corpse Fool]

Make Heavy Ships the only source of heavy attack. Treat piercing heavy attack with a modifier, like 4 or 5x. This would make armor more important, and give a much needed boost to BBs/BC. Allow medium and light cruiser batteries on BB/BC.

Make Heavy Attack slightly worse at targeting.

Do you mean that make the hull hulls the only ships that can mount the heavy gun batteries? Currently only the panzerschiffe and coastal defense cruiser hulls break this rule, and those practically never get used. If you mean to make the medium gun batteries mounted on cruisers that currently provide hard attack offer light attack instead, that would make the light attack spam CA even better, they only take that heavy attack because they are absolutely forced to.

I'm not sure what you mean by 4 or 5x the damage from heavy attack before armour. Do you mean that a single module instead of adding 15 attacks like earlier, now adds 60 or 75 by itself? And that armours would generally be higher that would generally reduce it down to more reasonable numbers, but unarmoured ships like DD and the CA we current spam would be extremely vulnerable to that massive amount of heavy attack?

I'm not sure how making it worse at targeting would help. One of the biggest weaknesses of the heavy attack is how hard it is to hit anything with it.

Make Torps 5x the cost. Torpedos are extremely expensive weapons to operate. Reflect this.

Making torpedoes 5x the cost would turn a 90-180 IC module into 450-900 IC. That is literally more expensive than '40 DD hulls+engine and a basic gun (Roach DD). I know that torpedoes are expensive, but that seems like an overreaction. But I suppose such a move would make their use a lot more prevalent and would lend itself to the revival of the big guns. But I think people would sooner just abandon navy almost entirely in favour of just spamming more naval bombers

 

[sudpud]

Do you mean that make the hull hulls the only ships that can mount the heavy gun batteries? Currently only the panzerschiffe and coastal defense cruiser hulls break this rule, and those practically never get used. If you mean to make the medium gun batteries mounted on cruisers that currently provide hard attack offer light attack instead, that would make the light attack spam CA even better, they only take that heavy attack because they are absolutely forced to.

I'm not sure what you mean by 4 or 5x the damage from heavy attack before armour. Do you mean that a single module instead of adding 15 attacks like earlier, now adds 60 or 75 by itself? And that armours would generally be higher that would generally reduce it down to more reasonable numbers, but unarmoured ships like DD and the CA we current spam would be extremely vulnerable to that massive amount of heavy attack?

I'm not sure how making it worse at targeting would help. One of the biggest weaknesses of the heavy attack is how hard it is to hit anything with it.


Making torpedoes 5x the cost would turn a 90-180 IC module into 450-900 IC. That is literally more expensive than '40 DD hulls+engine and a basic gun (Roach DD). I know that torpedoes are expensive, but that seems like an overreaction. But I suppose such a move would make their use a lot more prevalent and would lend itself to the revival of the big guns. But I think people would sooner just abandon navy almost entirely in favour of just spamming more naval bombers

I’m saying if the heavy attack pierces the armor of the receiving ship, it does 4-5x damage. So, having the best bb makes a huge difference. But BBs are carrier lightning rods - so better put AA if you’re fighting other carriers.

Yes, medium batteries wouldn’t be a source of heavy attack(ie can’t target screened capitals) it would make LA CA’s more prevalent, but adding a ton of medium batteries would mean the ship is slower, and more deletable by battleships. Countries with BBs should build slow ones, countries without - faster ones, none at all, or would flee immediately.

The benefit of it being a CA is that it’s not targeted by screening ships, can kill screens more effectively(which is what a heavy cruiser is made to do), and can, in a pinch, screen CVs.

BBs are capital killers, CAs are screen killers, CL gain a bit of survivability and cost for less damage to screens, DDs are pure screens to prevent torps.

It basically makes it worthwhile to have a balanced fleet, and it allows for counters versus pure - “this is the best“.

Obviously these numbers are spitballing, and my conclusions may be wrong, but I think it would make the game a bit more realistic.

(Coastal Def and Panzerschiff would keep heavy attack).

 

[Corpse Fool]

I’m saying if the heavy attack pierces the armor of the receiving ship, it does 4-5x damage.

I don't like hidden mechanics. I'd rather you just gave them 5x attack and let the armour reduce it, as per normal.

So, having the best bb makes a huge difference.

The meta is now pure screen spam and land based aircraft. Because super heavies are just too expensive to be worthwhile at all, like capitals mostly are to begin with.

But BBs are carrier lightning rods - so better put AA if you’re fighting other carriers.

Or have your carriers with fighters, or land based aircraft. AA on ships is pretty weak to begin with. Since naval bombers don't really miss, it'll be a war of attrition and your ships are going to be either sunk or sent to repair before you put any sort of dent into their production of bombers.

but adding a ton of medium batteries would mean the ship is slower, and more deletable by battleships.

But the CA's don't need extra light attack, you don't need to give them those extra batteries, you don't need to slow them down. The CA I mentioned earlier is more than well enough suited for its purposes offensively, the primary screening ship is still going to be destroyers which have limited HP, which means each ship only needs to carry a limited amount of attacks. Admirals and their traits, and other boosts to attacks are also quite powerful.

The benefit of it being a CA is that it’s not targeted by screening ships, can kill screens more effectively(which is what a heavy cruiser is made to do), and can, in a pinch, screen CVs.

Not getting shot is only one of the benefits. Even if they did get shot by light attack and torpedoes, I'd still use CA because they get their hitrate boosted. That is the most important part about being a capital.

CL gain a bit of survivability

CL haven't really been touched, and the DD is still going to be the most cost effective screen/damage-soak. CL might start getting used as a not-capital light attack cruiser to avoid getting asploded by the heavy guns, but it does sacrifice its effective firepower and is now vulnerable to being peppered by DD light guns for criticals, unless it is armoured. Armouring it will slow it down and make it more expensive, so people may just skip these ships entirely instead.

It basically makes it worthwhile to have a balanced fleet, and it allows for counters versus pure - “this is the best“.

We already exist in that sort of circular meta. LA-CA kills the screens which lets the torpedoes on the DD kill the capitals. HA-CA kills the LA-CA. BC kills the HA-CA, BB kills the BC, SHBB kills the BB. By over-emphasizing heavy attack (or rather, armour) you're mostly just going to skip the CA-BB part and go straight to SHBB, because it has the most piercing and the most armour, while being available really early. And the counter to these anti-capital capital ships is to just not use capitals, and screen spam. CL hidden amongst DD, or just roaching DD to bait ships for naval bombers.

I do not think it is possible with the way that things are currently simulated for the best fleet you can field to be a mix of all different kinds of ships. Gamers like to min-max, and if a particular design isn't first it may as well be last. Luckily, giving CA guns light attack instead of heavy, and making heavy attack 5x is something that can be done pretty simply with a mod, we can test these new conditions and see what sort of things we can learn.

 

[sudpud]

I don't like hidden mechanics. I'd rather you just gave them 5x attack and let the armour reduce it, as per normal.

The meta is now pure screen spam and land based aircraft. Because super heavies are just too expensive to be worthwhile at all, like capitals mostly are to begin with.

Or have your carriers with fighters, or land based aircraft. AA on ships is pretty weak to begin with. Since naval bombers don't really miss, it'll be a war of attrition and your ships are going to be either sunk or sent to repair before you put any sort of dent into their production of bombers.

But the CA's don't need extra light attack, you don't need to give them those extra batteries, you don't need to slow them down. The CA I mentioned earlier is more than well enough suited for its purposes offensively, the primary screening ship is still going to be destroyers which have limited HP, which means each ship only needs to carry a limited amount of attacks. Admirals and their traits, and other boosts to attacks are also quite powerful.

Not getting shot is only one of the benefits. Even if they did get shot by light attack and torpedoes, I'd still use CA because they get their hitrate boosted. That is the most important part about being a capital.

CL haven't really been touched, and the DD is still going to be the most cost effective screen/damage-soak. CL might start getting used as a not-capital light attack cruiser to avoid getting asploded by the heavy guns, but it does sacrifice its effective firepower and is now vulnerable to being peppered by DD light guns for criticals, unless it is armoured. Armouring it will slow it down and make it more expensive, so people may just skip these ships entirely instead.

We already exist in that sort of circular meta. LA-CA kills the screens which lets the torpedoes on the DD kill the capitals. HA-CA kills the LA-CA. BC kills the HA-CA, BB kills the BC, SHBB kills the BB. By over-emphasizing heavy attack (or rather, armour) you're mostly just going to skip the CA-BB part and go straight to SHBB, because it has the most piercing and the most armour, while being available really early. And the counter to these anti-capital capital ships is to just not use capitals, and screen spam. CL hidden amongst DD, or just roaching DD to bait ships for naval bombers.

I do not think it is possible with the way that things are currently simulated for the best fleet you can field to be a mix of all different kinds of ships. Gamers like to min-max, and if a particular design isn't first it may as well be last. Luckily, giving CA guns light attack instead of heavy, and making heavy attack 5x is something that can be done pretty simply with a mod, we can test these new conditions and see what sort of things we can learn.

The way armor works is a hidden mechanic now. And I don’t particularly like the way it’s implemented, but the idea is that a heavy shell that penetrates armor is going to pretty much wreck anything it hits. This makes BBs(or heavy attack in general) very useful. Light attack armor calc stays the same.

With the 1.5x IC cost, SHBBs are going to take forever to build. CVs delete them. Makes Asian carrier combat a necessity. SHBB are also going to be a disadvantage due to the fleet speed modifier I mentioned to attack.

AA isn’t super effective, but it does create survivability, and it does shoot down planes. Get radar 3, 2 AA3, 2DP, and you will shoot 30 planes down about half the time.

I can’t think of what to do about air. I don’t intend to solve land based aircraft in naval battles. That is hopelessly borked with the way air combat works. Pure CV on CV is fine.

And just to be clear - current counters you mentioned don’t really matter, because a point of light attack is equal to a point of hard attack, and armor isn’t very useful. LACA with DD torp spam will do just fine in every situation. Just build the 2 templates and forget it. No one cares to spend the time microing such a simple meta. It enables lazy play, its ahistorical, and its boring.

 

[Caeric]

Frankly, making much of a distinction between CLs and CAs is mostly pointless. A 15 gun CL such as the Brooklyns or Mogamis pre-refit into CAs are practically just as deadly as an 8-9 gun CA. Few if any cruisers of the time had sufficient armor to fully resist 6" shells as a battle prolongs the larger volume of fire would win out unless the CA scored a decisive hit early.

 

[Question]

So what would be needed to make actual CAs useful? In terms of armor + medium batteries? As it is now, you just mass light batteries to delete screens and its really stupid.

Edit : Dont non-piercing attacks suffer -90% less damage?

COMBAT_ARMOR_PIERCING_DAMAGE_REDUCTION = -0.9, -- All damage reduction % when target armor is >= then shooter armor piercing.

 

[Caeric]

So what would be needed to make actual CAs useful? In terms of armor + medium batteries? As it is now, you just mass light batteries to delete screens and its really stupid.

Edit : Dont non-piercing attacks suffer -90% less damage?

COMBAT_ARMOR_PIERCING_DAMAGE_REDUCTION = -0.9, -- All damage reduction % when target armor is >= then shooter armor piercing.

A rebalancing or near complete rework of naval again. Too many inconsistencies and inaccuracies currently.

 

[Corpse Fool]

Non-piercing attacks deal up-to -90% attacks, scaling between the relation of piercing and armour. 40 piercing against 50 armour would be a -20% damage, to a minimum of 10%.

The cruiser armour would need to be way higher. Right now it only works against light guns, which it shouldnt be getting shot by. The HP is also weird, the CA gun turret is adding way more HP than the armour is.

For the medium guns, they would need to either offer light attack, or have heavy attack not be terrible in comparison to light attack, and hopefully actually worth the cost in IC/resources/speed. Maybe throw in some "medium" attack, and change attacks to only go 1/2/3 layers away from where your ships are. Light guns on capitals wouldnt be able to shoot enemy screens, but mediums would and heavies would still reach enemy capitals.

 

[Question]

Hmm i wonder if changing that -90% to -200% or some other larger number would help in that regard.

The problem with giving medium guns light attack is then there is an incentive to just build CAs to clear screens instead of using CLs....

 

[Corpse Fool]

Hmm i wonder if changing that -90% to -200% or some other larger number would help in that regard.

You want armour to... heal the ship?

 

[Question]

You want armour to... heal the ship?

Unless paradox goofed, it should cap at -100% damage done to the ship, increasing it to -200% would just affect the scaling. Unless im misunderstanding the formula.

How does 40 piercing vs 50 armor result in -20% damage in vanilla? Whats the formula? Are there any other defines involved?

 

[Corpse Fool]

Unless paradox goofed, it should cap at -100% damage done to the ship, increasing it to -200% would just affect the scaling. Unless im misunderstanding the formula.

How does 40 piercing vs 50 armor result in -20% damage in vanilla? Whats the formula? Are there any other defines involved?

40/50. 0.80, 80% of damage is retained, which is 20 less than 100% of the damage.

The max of 90% means that 10% of damage would always be dealt. Changing it to a max of -200 means that a max of -100% damage could be dealt, which most likely caps at 0, but there are bugs with the 10x mod and motorized infantry where they actually recover org and hp instead of losing it because of negative damage.

 

[sudpud]

Hmm i wonder if changing that -90% to -200% or some other larger number would help in that regard.

The problem with giving medium guns light attack is then there is an incentive to just build CAs to clear screens instead of using CLs....

That’s the point. CAs are built with bigger guns than CLs (8v6”), so they can hit them at ranges the CL cannot (abstracted here making them capitals so light attack has to clear screens first).

Making Medium batteries light attack prevents it from targeting BBs(as an 8” shell cannot strike at the ranges 14”+ can, and it can’t do much damage against that armor anyway).

Finally, modifying heavy attack against armor that it can pierce makes them much more deadly to said CAs and weaker BBs. BBs would have more value as CA deleters.

Now you could say fine, I won’t build CAs, I’ll build LACL’s, but those won’t be as effective as CAs, and should get clobbered by them.

Essentially, a 2BB, 4CA, 8CL, 24DD fleet(~85k IC) can effectively fight a 10CA, 60DD fleet(~95k ic), because the BBs can wreck the CAs quickly.

BBs become the cruiser killers they are supposed to be.

Something like HA * (piercing/armor)^2 could work well. Cruisers take ~6.25x against BB, BCs take ~1.44x, etc. Capital armor has value. Could also increase CA armor to something like 20 to make them more resistant to LA and slightly more to HA.