+1
My own suggestion: boarding and capturing enemy ships should be way more important. I thought about special modifier such as 'boarding power' or whatever simulating thousands of soldiers of both sides fighting like at Lepanto.
I strongly second this suggestion.
As far as I can tell ship capture only happen if the fleets involved aren't too big or too small, only with transports, and only one ship is ever captured per battle. It would be neat if it happened closer to realistic numbers. And this seems like it's something which would actually be relatively easy to implement, since ship capture is already part of the game.
Your idea makes me think I'd love for naval and/or maritime ideas to give a bonus to ship capture as well. It might make those idea groups slightly less useless than they currently are.
+1, this should definitely be the focus of the next DLC/patch. I'm not convinced about the Ice mechanic though; seems like a good way to add frustration and confuse/abuse the AI with fairly little gain.
My desired overhaul would be prioritized thusly:
1. Fixing the battle outcomes, as discussed earlier in the thread. Essentially, the losing side spreads out its damage such that it sinks nothing while the winning side destroys the entire enemy force almost at the same time. This is neither good gameplay nor how naval battles actually work.
2. Naval repairs should probably take a bit longer since the loser would no longer lose their entire fleet. In particular, you shouldn't be able to repair all your ships at once in a single province, just like how you can't build an entire armada at once in a single province (and for the same reasons). Automation is needed here to make the fleet split across repair ports on its own.
3. Assaulting docked navies absolutely must be a thing. In most cases this should give the advantage to the attacking fleet, but certain buildings could swing that in the other direction (probably put the modifiers in several points on the naval line, plus maybe the final two fort buildings for coastal provinces). To prevent this from simply re-enabling sinking of an entire armada, there should be a "sheltered fleet" status, which would be enabled by default when a losing fleet returns to port (or when you flag a fleet for automated repair split). Sheltered fleets cannot be attacked while in port, but they also cannot move. In order to move, a sheltered fleet must first be restored to service, which would take some time and cannot be canceled once enabled. A fleet being put into service is no longer protected from naval assaults, but still cannot move until the end of the timer.
4. Cut down on maximum naval sizes; it's a bit unwieldy.
I second all of these suggestions (the first one seems to be a common theme), and I love the latter two. Fleets assaulting other fleets in harbor was probably less rare than land forces doing so, and it seems like you could handle this by allowing naval forces to assault into hostile coastal zones where fleets are anchored. And it would work brilliantly with neondt's idea below.
Another idea: Naval forts
Basically they can be built in coastal provinces and are very expensive. They do 2 things: 1) they provide a significant Fire bonus to allied ships fighting in the sea zone connected to the province's port. 2) They're like land forts, in that they can be "sieged" by ships, preventing blockade until the siege is broken. While a naval fort is intact, enemy transports cannot land troops in that province.
These would be particularly useful for island provinces, countries with small coastlines, and in important straits and channels.
Historically, cannons couldn't reach more than a few miles offshore—I seem to recall from a visit to Fort Jefferson that even in the War of 1812 the limit was three nautical miles—so I don't like the idea that forts in adjacent sea zones will inflict damage on naval units in sea zones, except on straits. Likewise, province-wide coastal fortifications weren't a thing until WWII, so landing forces in the countryside—or even just outside the city—would not have been a problem.
OTOH, if you include net-split's idea of ships attacking fleets in harbor, well that happened, and it's why most batteries were built. Combining your general coastal forts, my idea of fortified straits, and net.split's idea of attacking fleets at anchor, and I think that you have a justification for adding batteries as a mechanic for naval warfare.
I'm not sure if Paradox actually would implement them, but when this thread fizzles out I'm going to take that set of ideas to the suggestions forum, along with some other broadly-applicable suggestions such as evasion, lower naval forcelimits, and improved boarding (unless of course the authors of those ideas bring them there first). It sounds like they're already fixing the unequal battles thing.
One thing I'd love added to naval warfare (and land for that matter) is a better mechanic for leaders. If you roll an admiral who is 1 fire and 1 shock and he ends up serving in your navy for 15 years winning battles for you left and right, the chances are he'll show considerably higher ability towards the end of his career. I know the game isn't focused around characters or individuals but I feel that admirals and generals should improve with each battle and naturally as they get older. This would be reflected with them gaining pips, possibly through events.
Though not specifically a naval idea, I do like this.
Also, I'm not really sure what version of EU4 you're still playing but pirates don't randomly appear in sea zones anymore.
I'm pretty sure it's whatever version was out when I bought the game. However I'm not sure what version that would be. I disabled automatic updates and have yet to manually update it.
