Why do I loose naval battles in 1.22.2?

[LegacyCWAL]

I wonder...

Is it possible that Portugal's engagement width was such that only heavies were fighting, while the OP had heavies plus a couple of galleys/lights fighting on the front line? Portugal's admiral had 2 maneuver, meaning that their engagement width should be 25*1.2=30, which is exactly enough to have 10 heavies fighting, but the OP's 1 maneuver + 20% width from other sources would have put him at 32, which would mean ten heavies plus a couple non-heavies. So if those non-heavies kept getting picked off, it might've tanked his fleet's morale to where they stopped fighting. However, I noticed that there's more than one fleet on the OP's side in the battle, so if his allies joined the fight a little later on, his fleet might have run out of morale but not retreated because his ALLIES still had some morale...but no heavies, so the OP's heavies might have just sat there being shot at while not having enough morale to fight back.

...or I could be completely off-base. Just a thought.

 

[Vetgirig]

I'm at 27 naval tech, same as Portugal. I concede that my navy tradition is very low, like 15. But can naval tradition alone swing that battle? I had a clearly superior force there...

Combat width is like 14 heavy ships and one galley.

So all other ships don't count - they are on the sideline looking on the battle.

 

[gia257]

Looking over this I'm pretty confident that you were lacking health on your ships, which combined with ships losing morale when allied get sunk, good rolls, superior engagement width (manuver is very strong on admirals) and potentially durability event/ruler.

With that said, hard to know without a save.

ive lost battles to outdated ships :/ something must be off
I only win when its clear as water and when I retreat after killing a couple, repairing and going at it again and again

 

[Hessian Mercenary]

I wonder...

Is it possible that Portugal's engagement width was such that only heavies were fighting, while the OP had heavies plus a couple of galleys/lights fighting on the front line? Portugal's admiral had 2 maneuver, meaning that their engagement width should be 25*1.2=30, which is exactly enough to have 10 heavies fighting, but the OP's 1 maneuver + 20% width from other sources would have put him at 32, which would mean ten heavies plus a couple non-heavies. So if those non-heavies kept getting picked off, it might've tanked his fleet's morale to where they stopped fighting. However, I noticed that there's more than one fleet on the OP's side in the battle, so if his allies joined the fight a little later on, his fleet might have run out of morale but not retreated because his ALLIES still had some morale...but no heavies, so the OP's heavies might have just sat there being shot at while not having enough morale to fight back.

...or I could be completely off-base. Just a thought.

Combat width is same for both sides. It's important to remember that naval combat has an additional element of randomness compared to land warfare, namely target selection. First combat width is filled with ships, then each ship selects a target to fire on. With some bad luck your own ships spread out their damage while the enemy manages to get focused fire on some of your ships, so those sink faster. When the target ship is sunk a new target is chosen where firing on already damaged ships is preferred. It seems this system can lead to chain reactions where the side that manages to sink some ships first is better able to subsequently focus down enemy ships, also reducing enemy morale in the process. You're probably right that ships with zero morale don't get rotated out but just sit there taking damage and not dealing any. So overall this could maybe explain some rather unexpected and lopsided battle results

 

[Krajzen]

By the way, losing 29 heavy ships while destroying only 4 enemy heavy ships is so devastating defeat I'd ragequit immediately probably

But... why didn't you retreat? I would run the hell away from that battle after seeing that for some reason I need to lose SEVEN of my heavies to kill one enemy heavy and/or after my 32 being cut by half...

 

[slackerpants]

By the way, losing 29 heavy ships while destroying only 4 enemy heavy ships is so devastating defeat I'd ragequit immediately probably

But... why didn't you retreat? I would run the hell away from that battle after seeing that for some reason I need to lose SEVEN of my heavies to kill one enemy heavy and/or after my 32 being cut by half...

Actually I chose not to retreat mainly because I had seen these results before and wanted to see what happened if I let it run the whole battle, even though I started to loose. It just felt so unreasonable that I should actually loose it in the end. It didn't really matter for the campaign, I was already too powerful. It was an achievment run for Nostre Marum among some other that I later got anyway.

 

[Ixal]

Doesnt the Admiral skill also affect combat width? So the Portugese had more ships firing and your fleet spread out the damage more.
But with only 1 pip difference that would hardly be decisive.

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

The Portuguese admiral has an extra pip of maneuver so that’s an extra 10% combat width which means he was allowed to use more ships while the majority of your much superior force was forced to wait (and die) in reserve because of reasons; the currently completely fu***d up naval mechanics basically allow for almost any outcome (...) so whenever possible we should avoid battles like the plague (....)

 

[Cookiepie]

Combat width is same for both sides.

Only for land combat, not for naval.