WTF My entire navy got wrecked easily?

[I had a bad name 99]

Edit: I am playing on VANILLA (No MTG player here), veteran mode.

My French navy has 1 carrier, 5 battleships, 19 Destroyers (edited), 5 Heavy Cruisers, 5 light cruisers, 15 subs (With some Brits) while Italian navy has 11 light cruisers, 3 battleships, 6 heavy cruisers, 3 battlecruisers, 10 destroyers, 5 submarines.

Yet I got wrecked! What happened?

 

[MattZed]

It's hard to say from the screenshot. Some ideas:

1. Were those ships all in the same task force, or different ones?
2. It doesn't look like you had enough screening ships. (although neither did Italy...)
3. Relatedly, perhaps your destroyers got sunk quickly, opening up the destruction of your capital ships
4. The Italian Admiral appears to be of higher skill
5. Have you been researching naval doctrines and keeping up on naval tech?

 

[I had a bad name 99]

It's hard to say from the screenshot. Some ideas:

1. Were those ships all in the same task force, or different ones?
2. It doesn't look like you had enough screening ships. (although neither did Italy...)
3. Relatedly, perhaps your destroyers got sunk quickly, opening up the destruction of your capital ships
4. The Italian Admiral appears to be of higher skill
5. Have you been researching naval doctrines and keeping up on naval tech?

1. Same task force (except submarines)
2. I follow the screening ratio (3:1 for capital ships, 1:1 for carrier)
3. Maybe? Plus the enemy actually have six "battleships" vs my 5 carriers, considering that they have 3 battlecruisers (which are basically less armored battleships). Plus my carrier only has 20 outdated naval bomber (so it can't make a difference....)
4. My admiral is lvl 5, the best.
5. No. I was heavily focusing on land war with Germany. No naval tech and doctrine upgrade.

 

[MattZed]

From what you've said and that fact that Italy only starts with 2 Battleships but had 6 in '42, I'm going to guess you were simply out-teched.

 

[Harin]

Did the Italian submarines get a lot of hits? Sometimes, I have noticed that submarines do some over sized damage, as the screens get reduced, especially before there is time to build player designed light cruisers and destroyers.

*Edit I should have been clearer. The Italian 11 light cruisers may have out gunned your navy in the light attack area. Many of the default destroyers have very little attack, leaving it to the light cruisers. Once the light gun fight is over, meaning your screens are dead, the incoming torpedoes may have ruined your fleet.

 

[I had a bad name 99]

Did the Italian submarines get a lot of hits? Sometimes, I have noticed that submarines do some over sized damage, as the screens get reduced, especially before there is time to build player designed light cruisers and destroyers.

*Edit I should have been clearer. The Italian 11 light cruisers may have out gunned your navy in the light attack area. Many of the default destroyers have very little attack, leaving it to the light cruisers. Once the light gun fight is over, meaning your screens are dead, the incoming torpedoes may have ruined your fleet.

What is the use of destroyers? Prevent submarine attack?

 

[Mousetick]

It's useful to know how the battle started in the first place. Unfortunately the AAR doesn't show that. One possible scenario is that the Italian fleet was hunting the UK submarines raiding the German convoys, and the French strike fleet joined the battle later - too late.

I agree that the Italian light cruisers may have been a deciding factor in favor of Italy. Positioning and speed probably played an important role too. The French fleet managed to sink only one Italian screen, while its own screens were decimated. Once the french screens were eliminated, the rest was just easy prey.

Hypothesis and open question :
- The AAR shows that it was a low-skill UK admiral (probably the commander of the UK raiding fleet) who was in charge of the battle on the Allies side, not Darlan. On the Italian side, the admiral is also low-skill at the start of the game but has much better traits.
- Can anyone confirm that my understanding is correct? The admiral in charge of a battle involving multiple fleets on one side is the one commanding the first fleet engaged in that battle. It doesn't matter if the admiral of the other fleets joining later have higher skill, they play no role in the battle.

I wish the naval AAR would show the commanders' respective skill. Mousing over the admiral portrait only shows their name.

 

[Mousetick]

What is the use of destroyers? Prevent submarine attack?

In surface naval battles, they serve mainly as distraction and cannon fodder to protect the capital ships behind them. They must be used in large numbers to be effective in that role, since they're not resilient. But they're very cheap to build. As a secondary role they can damage bigger ships with their torpedoes.

 

[porta80]

Im not 100% sure but a cv is also a heavy ship needs 1 ca for screening aginst heavies and 3 dd for itself agains torpedo also, so minimum is to have 6 destroyers for the 1 ca and the cv itself.
But i recommend using 4 each, bad positionig may reduce the value. Also more meatshields have more light attack so whipe enemy light ships away in the first place.

 

[Kryndude]

Angelo Iachino will go down as the greatest admiral in the history of Italy. I don't know anything about him irl but he sure is my favorite Italian admiral among the ones that you start with.

 

[Mousetick]

Angelo Iachino will go down as the greatest admiral in the history of Italy. I don't know anything about him irl but he sure is my favorite Italian admiral among the ones that you start with.

He starts out with 4 excellent traits: Bold, Superior Tactician, Spotter, and Career Officer. The last one makes him gain experience faster than the other admirals.

 

[noobermenschen]

View attachment 575717

My French navy has 1 carrier, 5 battleships, 25 Destroyers, 5 Heavy Cruisers, 5 light cruisers, 15 subs (With some Brits) while Italian navy has 11 light cruisers, 3 battleships, 6 heavy cruisers, 3 battlecruisers, 10 destroyers, 5 submarines.

Yet I got wrecked! What happened?

Edit: It is 4 Heavy Cruisers on my side, not 5.

A battle this lopsided probably means the italians sank your screens quickly, allowing their screens to torpedo your heavy ships. Speculating, but I suspect two things, both already pointed out:

1) As @Mousetick observed, the larger # of Italian light cruisers probably tipped the balance. They are there to kill destroyers.
2) If Italy had some 1936 BBs in the fight, they might have been a major factor. But I think it was likely all the Italian CLs

By the way you were underscreened, you needed 33 screens and had 24. The Italian fleet was even more underscreened though (they needed 36, had 21). You usually want to pad your screens a little, I prefer 4 to 1 for the early fights.

I had no idea convoys could shoot at ships, especially behind two rows of screens (they are in the CV column in battles). It doesn't look like they drew fire from your ships though, which would have really been the only way they could have influenced the fight, aside from screwing up the Italian screening ratio even more.

A few more questions:

- Did you exercise your ships?
- Did you research all damage control techs?
- Did you upgrade your ships, especially secondaries and torpedoes?

 

[CantGetNoSleep]

Naval warfare is pretty broken right now IMHO - man the guns added huge complication with zero upside in terms of gameplay. I can't tell for sure what happened in this case, but it's clearly not realistic. Naval battles were hardly ever this one-sided. In real life, as soon as a side thought it might lose capital ships, it withdrew. That's why aircraft carriers were so great - you can't run away from aircrafts with ships.

My best advice is: put more land planes up. It seems to make a huge difference to naval outcomes when you have air superiority and TACs or NAVs.

 

[Cavalry]

What is the use of destroyers? Prevent submarine attack?

DD is for stopping torpedo attack and using torpedo attack yourself. And bring a lot of cheap DD to dilute incoming fire.

it looks like the screen line was defeat by enemy screen line, 5 CL vs 11 CL.

For naval battle vs major, bring 50+ DD and CL. The CL will decide the battle in screen line, but you need DD too otherwise your CL will be outnumberred. Ratio 1 CL: 4DD is ok.

 

[Kryndude]

DD is for stopping torpedo attack and using torpedo attack yourself. And bring a lot of cheap DD to dilute incoming fire.

it looks like the screen line was defeat by enemy screen line, 5 CL vs 11 CL.

For naval battle vs major, bring 50+ DD and CL. The CL will decide the battle in screen line, but you need DD too otherwise your CL will be outnumberred. Ratio 1 CL: 4DD is ok.

Does every ship type have a role in this game like you mentioned with CL and DD? What are CA, BC, BB for?

 

[Voigt]

What also could be, is that you didn't change your engagement settings.
Meaning the game though you were losing, you ships were retreating, while the Italian ships were firering on you.
Yeah you can shoot back while retreating but not as effective, especially if your shops partially are retreated.

 

[marcelo r. r.]

Italy had 11 CLs, they probably eated all your screens. The initial French DDs are bad. they are almost DDs 1.

 

[Mousetick]

Does every ship type have a role in this game like you mentioned with CL and DD? What are CA, BC, BB for?

The HOI 4 Wiki gives a good overview for starters: Ship Types.

Beyond that you can find various guides online. Be mindful that some are outdated (they precede version 1.6 which completely overhauled naval mechanics), and some cover the Man The Guns DLC features which won't be relevant to you if you don't have that DLC. I don't know any specific one that I could recommend, sorry.

Side note: It seems the Wiki is incorrect regarding convoys. It says they are unarmed and defenseless against enemy warships. But that's not true according to the battle discussed here, where we can see in the naval battle AAR (OP's screenshot) that the German convoys fought in that battle. They didn't make much of a dent of course but they did fire. Either that or the AAR itself is glitchy and incorrect.

 

[Beagá]

Wow... Truth be said it´s not like France has the freedom to research naval doctrines until 1939.

 

[I had a bad name 99]

A battle this lopsided probably means the italians sank your screens quickly, allowing their screens to torpedo your heavy ships. Speculating, but I suspect two things, both already pointed out:

1) As @Mousetick observed, the larger # of Italian light cruisers probably tipped the balance. They are there to kill destroyers.
2) If Italy had some 1936 BBs in the fight, they might have been a major factor. But I think it was likely all the Italian CLs

By the way you were underscreened, you needed 33 screens and had 24. The Italian fleet was even more underscreened though (they needed 36, had 21). You usually want to pad your screens a little, I prefer 4 to 1 for the early fights.

I had no idea convoys could shoot at ships, especially behind two rows of screens (they are in the CV column in battles). It doesn't look like they drew fire from your ships though, which would have really been the only way they could have influenced the fight, aside from screwing up the Italian screening ratio even more.

A few more questions:

- Did you exercise your ships?
- Did you research all damage control techs?
- Did you upgrade your ships, especially secondaries and torpedoes?

Nope i neglected the Navy badly since my focus was on land war with Germany. Need all that sweet defense bonus. I initially thought that the starting French navy was superior to Italy. Not only that I had UK and now US help in the Mediterranean! Just throw them on patrol mode to help mop up the remaining Italian resistance. Then this battle comes...

In fact, i reloaded my save file twice and found out something interesting. Instead of a decisive confrontation like this one, the Italian fleet fled. They still took down more destroyers than me in a ratio of 4:1, inflicting some damage on 2 battleships and some HC.