Navies have become somewhat useless

[Talib123]

Yes I know, before you complain, Navies are still important for offensive and defensive Invasions and Powerprojection. BUT you cant actually disrupt the supply of armies properly now. I am not entirely sure why that is. I recently played as Japan an tried to wrestle the phillipines from spain - GB joined in. Now my navy was far superior. I thought I could just simply blockade the archipelago and the enemy armies would henceforth be uneffective in combat due to lack of supply and consequently organization. But that didnt happend. Neither did blockading or raiding convois have the desired effect. GB always had full supply. Doesnt matter how much navy I had raiding and/or blockading. Now I am not sure what causes this. But I noticed that only troops on the sea (while moving) will consume convois. Once they are on a front they dont - even if said front is on an theoritically blockaded island. This is a real bummer for me cause it strips away so much potential for strategic use of navies and it doenst make any particular sense either.

What are your thoughts and have you experienced similar things or not?

 

[Life is Comedy]

I know i starved British indiano armies twice in NY ongoing game (because they joined in défence of France).

Ma best Guess Is that either you werent raiding enough, either you were raiding in thé wrong nodes ?

Did thé node show 0% convoys for your ennemy ?

 

[Helmut von Dandy]

Various versions of 1.9.x had bugs with armies receiving supply when they shouldn't. I'm not sure what the state of that is, but when you hover over the supply of an enemy army it should tell you where they're getting supply from, and if it's through supply routes it should highlight the sea lanes carrying their supplies. You need to raid nodes that are actually on the supply route. If it doesn't say then for some reason it thinks the army is getting supplies locally, that could be a bug.

 

[Talib123]

I know i starved British indiano armies twice in NY ongoing game (because they joined in défence of France).

Ma best Guess Is that either you werent raiding enough, either you were raiding in thé wrong nodes ?

Did thé node show 0% convoys for your ennemy ?

Believe me I did. Just check it out. There are no convoys for deployed armies. Only for those who are on the water.

 

[Talib123]

Various versions of 1.9.x had bugs with armies receiving supply when they shouldn't. I'm not sure what the state of that is, but when you hover over the supply of an enemy army it should tell you where they're getting supply from, and if it's through supply routes it should highlight the sea lanes carrying their supplies. You need to raid nodes that are actually on the supply route.

I raided multiple Nodes including "Java Sea", "Cape of good hope" and even the channel at the same time. I know you can check this but it doesnt change the fact that raiding does not directly impact armies. Only if the supply of convoies in general is depleted there seems to be an effect. But this cannot be the intention

 

[Enska]

It seems to sometimes work, sometimes not work.

 

[Helmut von Dandy]

I raided multiple Nodes including "Java Sea", "Cape of good hope" and even the channel at the same time. I know you can check this but it doesnt change the fact that raiding does not directly impact armies. Only if the supply of convoies in general is depleted there seems to be an effect. But this cannot be the intention

Raiding absolutely does impact armies. I absolutely tanked the organisation of Dutch armies I was fighting when taking New Guinea from the Dutch East Indies by raiding convoys on nodes in that area. That was in 1.9.6.

 

[Dman1791]

Raiding certainly is functional, at least sometimes. I was able to starve American troops trying to invade a puppeted Vietnam as Japan in the 1.9.6 beta. Blockading their market hub also works well, but can be difficult with multiple enemies.

 

[TitaniumMan91]

Ma best Guess Is that either you werent raiding enough, either you were raiding in thé wrong nodes ?

This is why I kinda hate the node system and in particular how it interacts with orders. Reducing the navy to a spline network is fine, the ocean is huge but boats (especially back then) stuck to the same routes as everyone else. But when I give orders, it's only for that one part of the node, I can make a large fleet that patrols all around the UK, I have to make several smaller fleets, and it's just fiddly. HoI actually did this one pretty much perfect; station a fleet, create task forces, assign orders covering as many regions as you want with decreasing efficiency to each task force.

 

[dmdelor]

I raided multiple Nodes including "Java Sea", "Cape of good hope" and even the channel at the same time. I know you can check this but it doesnt change the fact that raiding does not directly impact armies. Only if the supply of convoies in general is depleted there seems to be an effect. But this cannot be the intention

I don't think that's true. When I was at war with GB last game, I'm pretty sure I was seeing supply maluses on my overseas troops with a tooltip saying it was because interference along the sea lanes and I never ran out of convoys.

 

[Athius]

Raiding and blockading have such overlap that I't may be best to just merge both missions, or have raiding impact trade in some way (to simulate the existence of merchant raiders).

Raiding not affecting trade in any way feels very strange.

 

[Talib123]

I don't think that's true. When I was at war with GB last game, I'm pretty sure I was seeing supply maluses on my overseas troops with a tooltip saying it was because interference along the sea lanes and I never ran out of convoys.

I think that is because your troops probably where in enemy territory overseas? I mean a situation where you fight an enemy in his own territory that is overseas - like british west indies. As long as it is part of their nation you cannot deplete their supplies. No matter if it is an island. There are no supply lines to troops in friendly territory

 

[L-Histidine]

Yeah I suspect blockading/raiding doesn't work if the enemy army can trace a supply route to its own territory by land somewhere, even if that land is itself overseas (the one I think I noticed was British Guyana or maybe Panama supplying troops in Mexico).

It still works great against most enemies that aren't Britain, but having it not do anything without a clear cause is annoying.

 

[FinlayMcNally]

It's based on where the army HQ is set. They probably set the HQ to some tiny island adjacent to the Philippines so they're "connected" by land

 

[masteriw]

It's based on where the army HQ is set. They probably set the HQ to some tiny island adjacent to the Philippines so they're "connected" by land

But shouldn't the army HQ be a market region? And this market region is unlikely to be able to produce military goods by itself, at least in theory. So if you blockaded it, the army should have gone out of supply all the same.

 

[Voidian]

Naval UI, in general, was a nightmare since launch.

We can't clearly see what's going on anywhere, and the problem persists.

I know it's possible to blockade ports and starve invading armies, making it almost impossible for enemies to invade lands overseas if you have naval superiority but it's really hard to tell if your blockades, raiding, etc.. are even doing anything, I sometimes just move them around to nearby nodes and see if there's any effect.

 

[FinlayMcNally]

But shouldn't the army HQ be a market region? And this market region is unlikely to be able to produce military goods by itself, at least in theory. So if you blockaded it, the army should have gone out of supply all the same.

I don't know the exact details behind the mechanic. I think they can set their HQ to occupied land of their enemies perhaps.

But I can confidently say I've been able to blockade overseas enemy armies and times I have not because they had no supply lines in any sea node on the map (and it was Russia in South America, so no overseas territory).

I'll tag and check HQs next time I notice it, but I bet that's it

 

[dmdelor]

I think that is because your troops probably where in enemy territory overseas? I mean a situation where you fight an enemy in his own territory that is overseas - like british west indies. As long as it is part of their nation you cannot deplete their supplies. No matter if it is an island. There are no supply lines to troops in friendly territory

That could be. This was fighting over African colonies, so it was either in my African colonies if I was on the defensive or Great Britain's African colonies if I was on the offensive.