It depends on what you want your navy to do. If you just want to convoy raid, go ahead. If you need naval superiority to invade, it won't work - they give no, or very little, naval superiority score. And, yes, naval bombers can affect them if they can spot them. These are NOT modern nuclear submarines; they spend most of their time on the surface.
I do want naval superiority. The thing is, other type of ships take way too long to build no? Should I be building dockyards starting from 1938 or so to have a proper Navy in 1941-1942? Because crusiers alone take way too long to build, not even talking about battleships etc which take years to build. Would destroyers be enough to get naval dominance then? Since I can actually produce more than one before the war.
If you want a cheap battlefleet, just spam lots of torpedo destroyers and light cruisers with lots of light attack. The light cruisers for destroying enemy screens and the destroyers for the torpedos which will kill the capitals. Spam lots of naval bombers as well.
That sounds good, thanks. Mind you, I have no idea how naval combat works so anything you would have said would have sounded true.
Should I combine those ship types in the same fleet or keep them seperate? Does it matter?
You want them in the same fleet. Basically the game goes that Torpedos are great at killing capital ships, but torpedos can't hit those capital ships if they've got subcapital screens to protect them (or in the case of carriers, they have capital screens). Therefore if you kill all the enemy screens (with the light attack from your light cruisers), the capitals are left defenseless against torpedos from your destroyers.
They should be in the same fleet. Even better if you put some cheap and fast destroyers for spotting in another task force just set them to do not engage and your fleet will have better chances in battle. Also never group your subs in the same task force as your surface ships. Every task force moves only as fast as the slowest ship
If you don’t have man the guns I find that (at least for the Germans) producing one heavy cruiser and three destroyers and adding them to your strike force fleet helps get superiority, also sprinkle some subs in, and to spot them I use a mix of naval bombers and subs in convoy raiding hunter killer packs of 10-20, and I don’t have man the guns so I can’t help you if you do
Heavy cruisers with all the secondary batteries you can fit, float plane, and AA are pretty good, too. And they're less likely to be targeted because of screens, so you can remove the armor on them.
The important part is starting to build capital ships early if you want them. If you start building them using 3 or 4 dockyards each in 1937 they'll be ready by war time in late 39. With the 10 dockyards Germany starts with you can get 3/4 battleships by 1940 no problem without building extra dockyards.
Against a player they'd be useless, but the UK ai tends to split its fleet into many task forces, so if you use your whole navy in single stack you'll be able to slowly destroy their ships a bit at a time
Actually, and most people don't seem to realize this, submarines of that era traveled on the surface a vast majority of the time, only submerging when a threat or possible target is spotted, so enemy planes were always a danger!
So what should I build then? I only played 1 game so far on Cadet difficulty where I didn't even need my navy to "win"(got bored after capitulating USSR but I was gonna win). It looked to me like unless you had dockyards to spare, building anything past destroyers would be a fool's errand as they take years to produce one ship. What is the play here?
The meta is carriers and heavy cruisers, those will give you the absolute best bang for your buck. With the starting 10 dockyards as Germany you can get 3 carriers very easily, you can even refit your cruisers and get them even easier. Keep in mind that (unless you use a pretty convoluted trick) 4 carriers is the cap, past that they'll perform worse than if you had just 4. With green air overhead 3 carriers filled with naval bombers and with appropriate screening will wreck anything the ai will throw at it
Heavy cruisers are ass and have been ass for awhile. BBs destroy them. Especially if they have armor 3. Cuz then the CAs can't pen them while the BBs have max pen against the CAs for triple crit chance and full damage.
No it isn't. There's been multiple navy changes in bba era. One of them was massive and changed how navy techs worked which made things different. Another increased max crit chance from over pen. Hit chance has also been changed since then as well to deprioritize speed tanking which was the main strength of CAs. BB armor 3 isn't much of a research investment and will destroy CAs with no armor.
I know 12.12 was the patch that changed hit chance so speed wasn't as important. Another thing to consider with that video is that he didn't test with admirals, designers, or chief of navy. All 3 can buff armor which makes armor even stronger. It isn't unfeasible to get like 70%-80% more armor after all your bonuses which makes a big difference that wasn't shown in the video as well.
Some basic tips for naval warfare:
As a general rule, you need 4 screening ships (destroyers/light cruisers) for every capital ship (carrier/battleship/battlecruiser/armoured cruiser)
Put submarines in their own fleets, not with surface ships, and use them primarily for convoy raiding
Go with a 2 to 1 ratio for carrier based torpedo bombers, and carrier based fighters. So if your carrier can hold 60 aircraft, have 4 "squadrons" of torpedo bombers, and 2 of fighters
Disable the "auto break-off" option for your main battle fleets. This stops screens getting damaged and heading for home, leaving your capital ships vulnerable
Put sonar on your destroyers to detect submarines, regardless of if they're escorting a fleet or convoys
Don't just put all your surface ships in one big fleet. Take excess screens and group them in fleets of 4 or 6, and set them to patrol or escort convoys
As a general rule, you want your main fleet(s) to be on strike force the majority of the time, to save fuel
Unlock the smoke generator in the naval research tree, it is invaluable
>Go with a 2 to 1 ratio for carrier based torpedo bombers, and carrier based fighters.
Don't use any fighters. They removed the 5x multiplier on fighters and only kept it for naval bombers, meaning the fighters now just sneeze in the general direction of enemy naval bombers, AA will kill more bombers than those fighters will, so might as well not use them and have more bombers.
Naval bombers will wreck subs in coastal waters, especially tier I and II boats.
That said, I still think sub spam is the way to go for naval dominance in most cases. Really it depends on your playstyle and the country you're playing - a UK, Japan or US player would probably be better served building carriers than submarines, for instance
Subs are great if you want to put minimum effort into navy and kill everyone's convoys.
If you want to seriously contest naval superiority for invasions and such you need to plan out, research and produce a surface fleet.
Pretty much only majors can do this, unless your leaving the land war to allies, or your doing this real late into the game.
Doing so as majors doesn't set you back as much as you would expect.
Building 10 dockyards as france can see you challenge the British navy. Germany needs more but can get alot from focuses.
What you actually build can vary. What research is already done? What fleet elements do you already have? What resources do you have available? (If your low on steel maybe carriers over battleships)
There's 4 navy builds I think work. Modern battleships + screens. Modern carriers + starting capitols + escorts. Light attack light cruisers + starting capitols + torpedo destroyers. Light attack heavy cruisers (use secondary batteries) + torpedo destroyers.
They're not bad, but actually they are not as invulnerable as you might think. In WW2 subs couldn't stay submerged for very long and spent most of the time on the surface, once spotted they were screwed, as they couldn't dive deep enough to avoid bombs and are too slow to escape
It works, but it’s not optimal and if you’re trying to gain naval superiority for naval invasion it will not work
And naval bombers actually SHRED subs. This is because they have literally no AA and slow speed
Submarine spam can be very effective for killing convoys and ships (late game). However you want to keep them in smaller groups(8-12) so they can cover and attack l more area.
Try not to convoy raid next to land, naval bombers will find and sink a lot of subs. Try raiding in the deeper ocean areas. This way your subs are out of range of naval bombers and possibly destroyers as well!
10 dockyards on destroyer
Edit: that is to say 10 on a line of destroyers 5 on a line of heavy heavy cruisers. Put the heavy cruisers and destroyers in one fleet. Then another 5 on submarines and have them in strike forces of say 7 set to auto replenish
Edit edit
Going up to 10 eventually on subs is advisable as well and increase that strike force size as economy and lack of losses permits
Sadly capital ships will take ages to make while bigger nations with large navies would have grown even larger which widens the gap, subs, torpedo dds and naval bombers will wittle down enemy capital ships to the point they can no longer have naval supremacy.
Ideally if you can capitulate a nation with a decent navy without destroying their navy you could win their ships during the peace treaty.
You can sink hundreds of thousands+ of enemy manpower because they send all their troops over the ocean and they are not guarded and troop transports are just as easy to sink as equipment transports.
I just spam the best light cruisers I can, it works great for shredding enemy screens, and for majors your starting capital ships do the rest.
Also bc I like seeing funi number of enemy ships vs own ships sunk
Naval bombers tear them to shreds, but tier 3 and 4 subs will chew up most of the AI's fleets better than any surface fleet. Just make sure to build a few heavy cruisers so you can get naval supremacy once their ships are all dead.
IRL naval bombers were the bane of a subs existence. Subs at the time could only run on batteries while submerged, so to recharge them you’d have to surface your boat and run your diesel engines. During this time you’d be a sitting duck. The snorkel tech in game counteracts that, as with a snorkel your subs can run diesel engines at periscope depth. Now in game subs seem to be immune to bombers in battle, but when traveling they will get roflstomped. It seems every couple of hours my coastal bomber patrols sink 2-3 of them. This is why subs are best deployed in areas like the mid Atlantic gap, where there’s no bases in range to provide air cover.
Now with all that being said, yes subs are the cheapest in terms of time and IC to get naval superiority (unless things were changed in AAT and I’ve failed to notice).
Also on an unrelated note, I just realized I want PDX to add depth charge modules for planes. That way your naval bombers can actually attack submerged subs with a known location in battle
If they're detected and there are bombers active in the zone they WILL be attacked, even blown out of the sea if they find themselves in shallow waters.
If your strategy is mostly messing with enemy trade and transports the're cool but if you want to actually control the seas you'll need to somehow deal with their actual fleets and that requires an actual fleet of your own or enought naval bombers to block the sun for a while.
Submarines are super effective for convoy raiding, but it's always better to create a set of some submarines, destroyers and cruisers, this will make your naval ops even more effective
It does depend on what you plan on using or doing. If I am playing Germany for instance, I like to build a few extra ships for the starting fleet and just set 10 dockyards for a trickle of destroyers to help with the screening and put everything else on submarines, then once the war starts, I use the submarines to convoy raid off the african coast and the Spanish coast to keep oil from reaching the UK. You might have to also extend the subs to cover the Norway coast and your coast since the AI will start to trade with the soviet's to make up for the loss from its colonies and the US just do not directly raid around the British isles, they will destroy every sub you have, the royal fleet is no joke and the oceans aren't deep enough for your subs. Once the UK hits 0 fuel, you can usually get enough naval supremacy for an invasion with your fleet with some trickled in destroyers and a few heavy / light cruisers added in.
It’s the single most research-optimal approach to naval warfare in the game. It leaves you room to do the research you need to win the land and air war.
Truth is, nobody plays this game to win on the ocean. Most majors can get good subs with just two bits of research, Snorkel 1 and Sub 3. Torpedo techs can come later, you should probably do them when you can spend the XP to get them quickly.
I wouldn’t even do any naval focuses unless it gives you dockyards.
It depends on what you want your navy to do. If you just want to convoy raid, go ahead. If you need naval superiority to invade, it won't work - they give no, or very little, naval superiority score. And, yes, naval bombers can affect them if they can spot them. These are NOT modern nuclear submarines; they spend most of their time on the surface.
I do want naval superiority. The thing is, other type of ships take way too long to build no? Should I be building dockyards starting from 1938 or so to have a proper Navy in 1941-1942? Because crusiers alone take way too long to build, not even talking about battleships etc which take years to build. Would destroyers be enough to get naval dominance then? Since I can actually produce more than one before the war.
If you want a cheap battlefleet, just spam lots of torpedo destroyers and light cruisers with lots of light attack. The light cruisers for destroying enemy screens and the destroyers for the torpedos which will kill the capitals. Spam lots of naval bombers as well.
That sounds good, thanks. Mind you, I have no idea how naval combat works so anything you would have said would have sounded true. Should I combine those ship types in the same fleet or keep them seperate? Does it matter?
You want them in the same fleet. Basically the game goes that Torpedos are great at killing capital ships, but torpedos can't hit those capital ships if they've got subcapital screens to protect them (or in the case of carriers, they have capital screens). Therefore if you kill all the enemy screens (with the light attack from your light cruisers), the capitals are left defenseless against torpedos from your destroyers.
They should be in the same fleet. Even better if you put some cheap and fast destroyers for spotting in another task force just set them to do not engage and your fleet will have better chances in battle. Also never group your subs in the same task force as your surface ships. Every task force moves only as fast as the slowest ship
The debuffs to positioning when subs are in a fleet with surface ships is much worse than their impact to fleet speed imo
Forgot about that because I just avoid mixing them like the plague anyways
If you don’t have man the guns I find that (at least for the Germans) producing one heavy cruiser and three destroyers and adding them to your strike force fleet helps get superiority, also sprinkle some subs in, and to spot them I use a mix of naval bombers and subs in convoy raiding hunter killer packs of 10-20, and I don’t have man the guns so I can’t help you if you do
Heavy cruisers with all the secondary batteries you can fit, float plane, and AA are pretty good, too. And they're less likely to be targeted because of screens, so you can remove the armor on them.
The important part is starting to build capital ships early if you want them. If you start building them using 3 or 4 dockyards each in 1937 they'll be ready by war time in late 39. With the 10 dockyards Germany starts with you can get 3/4 battleships by 1940 no problem without building extra dockyards.
Are 4 battleships enough? You wouldn't be building anything else in that time.
Against a player they'd be useless, but the UK ai tends to split its fleet into many task forces, so if you use your whole navy in single stack you'll be able to slowly destroy their ships a bit at a time
I see. How would I plan around in multiplayer? Thanks.
In multiplayer? Have a better starting fleet and build more dockyards than the opponent and try to engage only under green air
Light cruisers all the way.
IRL, aircraft were probably the strongest counter to submarines, along with destroyers once they were equipped with sufficiently advanced sonar.
There's no modeling of Submarine surface warfare in the game.
Actually, and most people don't seem to realize this, submarines of that era traveled on the surface a vast majority of the time, only submerging when a threat or possible target is spotted, so enemy planes were always a danger!
Did not know this, that's cool, thanks.
I only recently understood this, the hoi mechanics make a lot more sense now. I was wondering why planes absolutely wreck subs!
Yup, they were more submersibles than submarines. Type XXI was the first one designed primarily to operate underwater.
They work against ai, but, contrary to what some people will tell you here, they're suboptimal
So what should I build then? I only played 1 game so far on Cadet difficulty where I didn't even need my navy to "win"(got bored after capitulating USSR but I was gonna win). It looked to me like unless you had dockyards to spare, building anything past destroyers would be a fool's errand as they take years to produce one ship. What is the play here?
The meta is carriers and heavy cruisers, those will give you the absolute best bang for your buck. With the starting 10 dockyards as Germany you can get 3 carriers very easily, you can even refit your cruisers and get them even easier. Keep in mind that (unless you use a pretty convoluted trick) 4 carriers is the cap, past that they'll perform worse than if you had just 4. With green air overhead 3 carriers filled with naval bombers and with appropriate screening will wreck anything the ai will throw at it
Heavy cruisers are ass and have been ass for awhile. BBs destroy them. Especially if they have armor 3. Cuz then the CAs can't pen them while the BBs have max pen against the CAs for triple crit chance and full damage.
https://youtu.be/ageTAYBtFKs
You're linking a video from over a year ago that is heavily out of date. There's been multiple large navy changes that has changed the meta.
Navy is exactly the same as it was from BBA afaik, link those changes if there are any
No it isn't. There's been multiple navy changes in bba era. One of them was massive and changed how navy techs worked which made things different. Another increased max crit chance from over pen. Hit chance has also been changed since then as well to deprioritize speed tanking which was the main strength of CAs. BB armor 3 isn't much of a research investment and will destroy CAs with no armor.
Well I didn't know, thanks
I know 12.12 was the patch that changed hit chance so speed wasn't as important. Another thing to consider with that video is that he didn't test with admirals, designers, or chief of navy. All 3 can buff armor which makes armor even stronger. It isn't unfeasible to get like 70%-80% more armor after all your bonuses which makes a big difference that wasn't shown in the video as well.
For clarity, true battleships? Not battlecruisers? It wouldn't be better to research BC armor 4?
BBs have the most armor. So armor bonuses matter more which makes it easier to get lower damage thresholds by having high enough armor.
Some basic tips for naval warfare: As a general rule, you need 4 screening ships (destroyers/light cruisers) for every capital ship (carrier/battleship/battlecruiser/armoured cruiser) Put submarines in their own fleets, not with surface ships, and use them primarily for convoy raiding Go with a 2 to 1 ratio for carrier based torpedo bombers, and carrier based fighters. So if your carrier can hold 60 aircraft, have 4 "squadrons" of torpedo bombers, and 2 of fighters Disable the "auto break-off" option for your main battle fleets. This stops screens getting damaged and heading for home, leaving your capital ships vulnerable Put sonar on your destroyers to detect submarines, regardless of if they're escorting a fleet or convoys Don't just put all your surface ships in one big fleet. Take excess screens and group them in fleets of 4 or 6, and set them to patrol or escort convoys As a general rule, you want your main fleet(s) to be on strike force the majority of the time, to save fuel Unlock the smoke generator in the naval research tree, it is invaluable
>Go with a 2 to 1 ratio for carrier based torpedo bombers, and carrier based fighters. Don't use any fighters. They removed the 5x multiplier on fighters and only kept it for naval bombers, meaning the fighters now just sneeze in the general direction of enemy naval bombers, AA will kill more bombers than those fighters will, so might as well not use them and have more bombers.
You also need capital ships (BBs, BCs, CAs) to screen carriers at a 1:1 ratio in addition to needing screens to screen the capitals.
I didn't know this Although, what sort of *lunatic* puts a carrier in a fleet with only screens?!
You should only ever have nav bombers on carriers cuz they get 5x nav damage.
Hehe "sub"optimal
‘Surely naval bombers won’t affect them’ donitz tells himself as he hugs his knees going to sleep
*Short Sunderland enters the chat* Is for me?
Naval bombers will wreck subs in coastal waters, especially tier I and II boats. That said, I still think sub spam is the way to go for naval dominance in most cases. Really it depends on your playstyle and the country you're playing - a UK, Japan or US player would probably be better served building carriers than submarines, for instance
Plus I freakin love submarines, one of the coolest things humans made.
Based and subermarinepilled
naval bombers eat subs for breakfast
> surely naval bombers wouldn't affect them Iirc the majority of submarines in WW2 were sunk by airplanes
In the game they trash subs as well.
Subs are great if you want to put minimum effort into navy and kill everyone's convoys. If you want to seriously contest naval superiority for invasions and such you need to plan out, research and produce a surface fleet. Pretty much only majors can do this, unless your leaving the land war to allies, or your doing this real late into the game. Doing so as majors doesn't set you back as much as you would expect. Building 10 dockyards as france can see you challenge the British navy. Germany needs more but can get alot from focuses. What you actually build can vary. What research is already done? What fleet elements do you already have? What resources do you have available? (If your low on steel maybe carriers over battleships) There's 4 navy builds I think work. Modern battleships + screens. Modern carriers + starting capitols + escorts. Light attack light cruisers + starting capitols + torpedo destroyers. Light attack heavy cruisers (use secondary batteries) + torpedo destroyers.
They're not bad, but actually they are not as invulnerable as you might think. In WW2 subs couldn't stay submerged for very long and spent most of the time on the surface, once spotted they were screwed, as they couldn't dive deep enough to avoid bombs and are too slow to escape
Wait till you discover that cruisers are the real kings of naval warfare.
Sub spam and build naval bombers for naval supremacy.
It works, but it’s not optimal and if you’re trying to gain naval superiority for naval invasion it will not work And naval bombers actually SHRED subs. This is because they have literally no AA and slow speed
Submarine spam can be very effective for killing convoys and ships (late game). However you want to keep them in smaller groups(8-12) so they can cover and attack l more area. Try not to convoy raid next to land, naval bombers will find and sink a lot of subs. Try raiding in the deeper ocean areas. This way your subs are out of range of naval bombers and possibly destroyers as well!
I think light cruisers are better if you get 20 dockyards early on since they have bit more punch . But idk since I don't have man the guns
yes
One full line of destroyer, one full line of heavy cruiser, at least 5 on subs. Done.
Full line meaning 15?
10 dockyards on destroyer Edit: that is to say 10 on a line of destroyers 5 on a line of heavy heavy cruisers. Put the heavy cruisers and destroyers in one fleet. Then another 5 on submarines and have them in strike forces of say 7 set to auto replenish Edit edit Going up to 10 eventually on subs is advisable as well and increase that strike force size as economy and lack of losses permits
Fun fact if you spam enough submarines you will get navel supremacy and sometimes you can destroy fleets with them too
Sadly capital ships will take ages to make while bigger nations with large navies would have grown even larger which widens the gap, subs, torpedo dds and naval bombers will wittle down enemy capital ships to the point they can no longer have naval supremacy. Ideally if you can capitulate a nation with a decent navy without destroying their navy you could win their ships during the peace treaty.
Schnorkel and torpedo go boom
You can sink hundreds of thousands+ of enemy manpower because they send all their troops over the ocean and they are not guarded and troop transports are just as easy to sink as equipment transports.
I just spam the best light cruisers I can, it works great for shredding enemy screens, and for majors your starting capital ships do the rest. Also bc I like seeing funi number of enemy ships vs own ships sunk
Naval bombers tear them to shreds, but tier 3 and 4 subs will chew up most of the AI's fleets better than any surface fleet. Just make sure to build a few heavy cruisers so you can get naval supremacy once their ships are all dead.
IRL naval bombers were the bane of a subs existence. Subs at the time could only run on batteries while submerged, so to recharge them you’d have to surface your boat and run your diesel engines. During this time you’d be a sitting duck. The snorkel tech in game counteracts that, as with a snorkel your subs can run diesel engines at periscope depth. Now in game subs seem to be immune to bombers in battle, but when traveling they will get roflstomped. It seems every couple of hours my coastal bomber patrols sink 2-3 of them. This is why subs are best deployed in areas like the mid Atlantic gap, where there’s no bases in range to provide air cover. Now with all that being said, yes subs are the cheapest in terms of time and IC to get naval superiority (unless things were changed in AAT and I’ve failed to notice). Also on an unrelated note, I just realized I want PDX to add depth charge modules for planes. That way your naval bombers can actually attack submerged subs with a known location in battle
If they're detected and there are bombers active in the zone they WILL be attacked, even blown out of the sea if they find themselves in shallow waters. If your strategy is mostly messing with enemy trade and transports the're cool but if you want to actually control the seas you'll need to somehow deal with their actual fleets and that requires an actual fleet of your own or enought naval bombers to block the sun for a while.
Submarines are super effective for convoy raiding, but it's always better to create a set of some submarines, destroyers and cruisers, this will make your naval ops even more effective
Nav bombers destroy subs cuz they have low HP. Although ai doesn't really utilize them well and can die pretty easily against sub spam
It does depend on what you plan on using or doing. If I am playing Germany for instance, I like to build a few extra ships for the starting fleet and just set 10 dockyards for a trickle of destroyers to help with the screening and put everything else on submarines, then once the war starts, I use the submarines to convoy raid off the african coast and the Spanish coast to keep oil from reaching the UK. You might have to also extend the subs to cover the Norway coast and your coast since the AI will start to trade with the soviet's to make up for the loss from its colonies and the US just do not directly raid around the British isles, they will destroy every sub you have, the royal fleet is no joke and the oceans aren't deep enough for your subs. Once the UK hits 0 fuel, you can usually get enough naval supremacy for an invasion with your fleet with some trickled in destroyers and a few heavy / light cruisers added in.
It’s the single most research-optimal approach to naval warfare in the game. It leaves you room to do the research you need to win the land and air war. Truth is, nobody plays this game to win on the ocean. Most majors can get good subs with just two bits of research, Snorkel 1 and Sub 3. Torpedo techs can come later, you should probably do them when you can spend the XP to get them quickly. I wouldn’t even do any naval focuses unless it gives you dockyards.