Conclussion: Use CDS for defensive shore bombardment. Anything else will result in disaster.
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What do you do with your Coastal Defence Ship?
- Thread starter Diakonen
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Conclussion: Use CDS for defensive shore bombardment. Anything else will result in disaster.
The CDS can carry a lot of task if you have enough time and dockyard to improved these ships.
I'll show you two options, to both you will need to research cruisers lvl3, to get a good engine to this ship.
Your first option would be transform this ship in the ultimate Convoy Raid Ship. With heavy batteries lvl2, torpedos and dual-purpose secundaries, this ship can deal heavy damage to any ship protecting a convoy, especially CAs and BCs. Is worthy note that if you go ahead with this idea, you'll need 3 LCs to protect this ship, because it's counted as a Capital Ship, otherwise DDs might easily destroy it. (Don't use DDs in this option, because they are bad in deep waters and make your operational range shorter.) Another thing that is a bonus to this ship is its low fuel consumption, comparable to a BC doing the same job.
Your second option is tranform it in a multi-purpose task force to especific jobs. For example: When I'm playing with Italy, I like to have at least 2 task forces dedicated to hunt patrol ships. These TFs need to be fast, because most of the time, patrol ships are set to not engage the enemy. So, they need to catch the enemy and destroy it before it have the chance to run, and ships like this DCS are perfectly to that. It has good speed, reasonable AA to survive under contested air zones, and high damage and armor penetration. Or you can use it to as a Shore Bombardment Ship. Because it has heavy batteries, will give you the same bonuses of a BB for half of the price.
You may wonder, why have armor lvl1 to this ship? It will operate under escort of CLs, so, you don't need to be concerned about the enemy's screens, and because any cruiser, can be pierce by BBs or CAs no matter their lvl of armor. So its better to increase your speed and damage, to destroy the enemy ships and run (or just run if things go wrong) as soon as possible.
That looks like a Panzershiff not a CDS. Those were buffed recently and are usefull. Panzershiff could be considered the opposit of CDS as they were large longe range ocean going ships rather then small coastal ships. But they are often confused as both are sometimes called pocket battleships.
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Yes. Does Panzershiff and CDS have different stats? Im pretty sure they do.
But lets say I go with Happy Triggers raider schematics as Sweden, I have to refit my 10 CDS for a cost of atleast 4000 IC per ship, with tech from 1940+. So maybe I have 10 of these raiders ready for 1942-1943 and this will probalby eat all the naval production I have, so I wont have enough screens to use them in any number regardless.
At least defensive shore bombardment was the role planned for the Finnish CDS’. However, there’s very little evidence, how this scheme would have worked out for some exact reasons - during the Winter War, the Gulf of Finland was frozen preventing Soviet Baltic Fleet from operating, during the Continuation War the SU’s Baltic Fleet was blocked at Kronstadt and Leningrad by the Finnish-German laid minefields and the anti-submarine net reaching from the Finnish coast to the Estonian coast. Due to the three matters - the minefields, the anti-submarine net and the active Finnis coastal defence - the Soviets never tried properly break the blockade and never attempted an invasion via Gulf of Finland against the Finnish soil.
Well, I’m not sure if anything else instead defensive shore bombardment would result a disaster, but the CDS’ role were indeed limited. After the Ilmarinen-disaster, the sister ship, Väinämöinen and several other Finnish vessels formed the Detachment Väinämöinen operating under the fleet-in-being trying to get as much as possible the enemy’s attention and tie-up the enemy forces without actually combating with the enemy.
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"Unlike other coastal defence ships, the Sverige class formed the core of a traditional open-sea battle group (Coastal Fleet), operating with cruisers, destroyers, torpedo boats and air reconnaissance like traditional battleship tactics of the time. This "mini battle group" had no intention, nor need, to challenge the superpowers in blue sea battles but to operate as defensive shield to aggression challenging Swedish interests and territory. Based on the doctrine that you need a battle group to challenge a battle group, the Coastal Fleet presented a considerable obstacle to anything smaller than a full-size battleship or battlecruiser, but in a tactical situation where full-size battleships would have very limited operational space exposing them to submarines, fast torpedo crafts, land based dive-bombers and minefields. " -
en.wikipedia.org
@Jopa79 it seems Sweden and Finland had two very different ways of using their CDS.
So if we want to use CDS as Sweden historically intended, we should focus on building everything else instead and only use CDS as a previous commenters said, as bait or meatshield.
Sverige-class coastal defence ship - Wikipedia
@Jopa79 it seems Sweden and Finland had two very different ways of using their CDS.
So if we want to use CDS as Sweden historically intended, we should focus on building everything else instead and only use CDS as a previous commenters said, as bait or meatshield.
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I agree.
Finland started with its CDS’ reinforcing the coastal gun-batteries, but changed the tactics after the immediate threat of a Soviet invasion by the sea decreased.
After the loss of Ilmarinen Finland adapted a more Swedish-style in using coastal defense ships, I think. The fleet-in-being-tactics probably is a synonym for being a bait.
Err, I don't quite get how you think that means that they were ment as bait or meatshields? What it says is that Sweden used their CDS as the capital ships in standard fleet formations. This is not very strange as they were essentially small battleships both where it comes to guns and armor, except they lack the later in HoI4."Unlike other coastal defence ships, the Sverige class formed the core of a traditional open-sea battle group (Coastal Fleet), operating with cruisers, destroyers, torpedo boats and air reconnaissance like traditional battleship tactics of the time. This "mini battle group" had no intention, nor need, to challenge the superpowers in blue sea battles but to operate as defensive shield to aggression challenging Swedish interests and territory. Based on the doctrine that you need a battle group to challenge a battle group, the Coastal Fleet presented a considerable obstacle to anything smaller than a full-size battleship or battlecruiser, but in a tactical situation where full-size battleships would have very limited operational space exposing them to submarines, fast torpedo crafts, land based dive-bombers and minefields. " -
Sverige-class coastal defence ship - Wikipedia
@Jopa79 it seems Sweden and Finland had two very different ways of using their CDS.
So if we want to use CDS as Sweden historically intended, we should focus on building everything else instead and only use CDS as a previous commenters said, as bait or meatshield.
They still pay for that armor as they are much slower and shorter range then a similar sized cruiser, but they don't get the advantage of the armor, ie armor value.
What I mean is that the CDS is used as BB in standard fleet formation, so that the enemy would need a real BB or BC defeat the CDS task force. But since the CDS operates in coastal waters the CDS fleet can take advantage of land based air support. So what I mean is the CDS is bait to lure in the BB where NAV can take them on. Also the CDS (should?) have combat bonus when combating in shallow waters. If this is possible IRL or in game I dont know.
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Quite easy to mod, provided shallow waters are actually a naval terrain type defined in 00_terrain.txt. All it takes is designating the ships into a new class (sub_unit, to be found in Hearts of Iron IV\common\units), like I've done here for Super Heavy BBs:
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Sorry but 7000+ production cost for a capital ship with 6 armor and 220hp, that's a very bad design
Thanx, I have tested having Battlecruiser armor on the SDC in a private mod, but didn't figure out how to mod the terrain bonuses. I will try that when I get time.Quite easy to mod, provided shallow waters are actually a naval terrain type defined in 00_terrain.txt. All it takes is designating the ships into a new class (sub_unit, to be found in Hearts of Iron IV\common\units), like I've done here for Super Heavy BBs:
Terrain types either provide universal modifiers to entire fleet (see Other Ships at the shot above) or to classes (or sub_units in the game engine terms) individually. So you need an extra class, defined by some arbitrary criteria.
ship_hull_cruiser_coastal_defense_ship is already in the game, although it has archetype = ship_hull_cruiser. So the easiest way to split them away from cruisers is probably by creating a new archetype (i.e. coastal_defense_ship), as these ships really have no unique modules to be splitted by. This arhetype still should retain type = { capital_ship }, as otherwise you're opening a can of worms.
There are quite a lot of technobabble terms and definitions and this all might sound overly confusing at the first glance, but just follow this detailed step-by-step guide and you'll be fine and safe.
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Add torpedoes so they can get some hits in before they die in battle.
Add mines to the CL.
Use them as shore bombardment vessels.
Use them as bait.
Use them to gain naval superiority so you can invade.
I would never disband them, they don't cost anything other than a little manpower. There is always something any ship can do. CDS don't have to be good enough to fight modern ships. They just have to be good enough to complete their assigned mission.
Add mines to the CL.
Use them as shore bombardment vessels.
Use them as bait.
Use them to gain naval superiority so you can invade.
I would never disband them, they don't cost anything other than a little manpower. There is always something any ship can do. CDS don't have to be good enough to fight modern ships. They just have to be good enough to complete their assigned mission.
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You're right about the Panzercliff, they're faster than CDS.
You don't need to use the same schematic. That was just a rough draw. And you don't need to update all your ships at the same time. I made this update to the CDS that Sweden starts the game, and i think that it combined with NAVs and enough screeners would be really strong against enemy TFs.
And of course, you don't need all that AA and Dual-purpose either, as i said, it's just a rough drawn. But i think these ships can be used to buy time against superior enemies, to the NAVs do their job, or as shore bombardment without doubt.
Use them to burn fuel while training.
Seriously, it costs Sweden extra ~400 Fuel per day to maintain the same 0.33 xp/day balance with all those Coastal Defenders left afloat, which you otherwise get with just one of them (plus HMS Gotland, which is good enough of a ship). Importing 400 Fuel means 2 CIC traded away, and by the time these rusty tubs actually see any military usage they will have inflicted quite a drain to the build-up phase.
Now some might discard that arguement due to their own reasons, but saying keeping ships pre-war only costs a little manpower is simply not true. That, or you simply miss 100 Naval XP per year when it matters the most.
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It's still arguably a worse ship than a standard CA, which is kind of the problem due to being slower but offering no real major advantage. Personally I think I'd drop the spotter plane for more secondary batteries. I prefer to keep that only on my scouting CL's. Having the CDS patrol and try to detect enemies seems quite innefficent when there are better options. And at such an astronomical refit cost it costs practically the same as designing an average CA from scratch and building it.
Edit: Honestly I'm kind of hoping for an entire mini rework to cruisers in general as the currently CL/CA system is kinda bad in terms of how well it represents reality not to mention being poor in terms of balance. As currently CA's have next to no use other than cheesing mechanics by adding 1 medium gun to turn the into a capital ship but making the rest of the guns light to kill screens. That's not how they should work, either they should both have light attack or a new separate "medium" damage type needs to be created to include all cruiser guns.
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About the scout planes, i like to add them to all my ships, because the detection of a task force is measured by its medium value. About the rest, i agree entirely. I would even go beyond, saying that the current armor system of the cruiser is broke. All BB and cruisers guns (from lvl2) can pierce cruiser armor lvl2, and with a little of research effort, lvl 3 too. So, what's the meaning of putting armor in a cruiser anyway? Maybe they should increase the speed of all engines a little and reduce the piercing bonuses of the guns.
I generally don't put them in any group on patrol duty at all, hence no scout plane as I think they are too slow and vulnerable for the task if facing any actual real threat but just keep them in a strike force