(Naval) Doomstack sighted !

[Nicolas I]

Using version 1.0.0 19987 (8899)

I encountered my first doomstack. Playing as France with a sizeable fleet of 27 ships (2BB, 3CA, 5CL, 17DD), they were sinked by an Italian doomstack fleet of 134 ships !

As usual regarding doomstacks, the AI should have some limits to fleet size.

Players alike should have a "soft" upper limit to enforce credible fleets size in the form of exponential diminish returns AND friendly fire + ramming when ships are as crowded as this.


EDIT: In another thread is was said there are diminishing returns for the Carriers when you have more than 4. This kind of info should be in the wiki.

EDIT 2: Someone said the number may be the "size" of the fleet, not be the number of ships ? Again these should be clearer.

 

[atredies]

Did all of their ships get to engage and do damage or just some?

 

[Nicolas I]

Did all of their ships get to engage and do damage or just some?

All I could find in the history of the battle were the ships I did damage to (so they engaged for sure): 1BB, 1CA, 5HC, 5CL, 21DD, 8Subs. None was sunk.

That account for 41 of their 134 ships. I don't know if the 93 other ships did engage me.

It would have been OK for me to lose to a bigger fleet, even a crushing defeat. But they sunk me 24 ships and lost none. I had more advanced fleet doctrines for capital ships as well.


PS By the way, the Naval warfare section in the wiki end by saying you should be "organizing your fleets into appropriate sizes and with enough screens".

This is vague enough...it should be a major point to give some guidelines about what is an appropriate size (size limit, diminishing returns, friendly fire) and what is "enough screens".

 

[atredies]

Hmm I'd be suprised if the AI got to engage with ALL of their ships, at least at first. Was any air cover involved?

 

[Nicolas I]

Hmm I'd be suprised if the AI got to engage with ALL of their ships, at least at first. Was any air cover involved?

I had air superiority in this zone. But I know that doesn't mean naval bombers couldn't slip past that.

I saw nothing about planes in the battle report. If it's not there, that should be included.

 

[atredies]

So far in my games as Italy and Japan I've made the fleets rather large, excluding submarines.

I've set Italy up as having a "Mediteranian Fleet" with all the capitals and most the screens in one big navy. I know the game starts with squadrons and small detachments but considering the new mission system I found it easier to manage them on a bigger scale like that.

I figured that assigning them to patrol "missions" kind of splits them for you in that hypothetical kind of way with that new "spread out" stat thing. E.g search n destroy keeps them closer so they engage more in first contact and patrol spreads them out for higher detection but less in initial combat.

It may be possible your spread out smaller fleet got jumped by a massive search and destroy operation.

 

[Nicolas I]

It may be possible your spread out smaller fleet got jumped by a massive search and destroy operation.

I was on search and destroy also.

This was about half the french Fleet on an easy setting (more production). Once again it is OK if they beat me. I find this simply odd the kill ratio was 24 to 0.

Though Italy can have a sizeable fleet, fleets of 134 ships should not be viable. I don't know how familiar you are which HOI, but naval doomstacks have been a plague since the beginnings of the game.

If the game is simply we do each one doomstack and the winner takes it all, that is an utterly uninteresting gameplay, as well as more than ahistorical but unbelievable.

 

[atredies]

I've played all the HOI games fully aware of the old stacking penalty.

I did notice it seems missing from hoi4, if it's in there it's hidden, Does anyone know?

There should be some impact on oversized fleets engaging however.

I just had an idea, does the games mission system/ai have a setting to flee? A fleet of 24 should want to run away from 130 if it could.

I guess it still doesn't solve the problem of giant doom stacks.

At 24 v 130 I'm not suprised you lost all the ships without the ability to disengage.
You said you had technologically superior ships so they'd be faster right?