Quick Questions/ Quick Answers - HoI4

[bitmode]

Does the fleet anti air attack, like the 51.8 in this screenshot

Already the (sum off all anti-air in the fleet)^0.2. So I only need to divide by 5, and I know how much anti air attack each ships get, when I calculate the damage reduction from naval strikes?

It is the sum of all ship AA, multiplied by positioning and 20%. So to complete the forumula in https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Naval_battle#Attack, you need to add the individual ship AA, take it to the 0.2 and then multiply by 0.15.

 

[Cavalry]

So Panzerschiff are a Germany only ship Class? So Panzerschiff are supposed to be long range surface raiders? But they don't benefit from the Trade Interdiction doctrine bonuses? That doesn't make sense to me.

"(don't forget to include CL) The high speed low visibility will help very much when outnumbered."

I don't know what that means.

I checked again. CL and CA get boosted on Trade Interdiction on the first 2 techs, but not DD. Using Panzerschiff with CL is also increase the range of the whole group, while DD will decrease the average range.

 

[Voigt]

It is the sum of all ship AA, multiplied by positioning and 20%. So to complete the forumula in https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Naval_battle#Attack, you need to add the individual ship AA, take it to the 0.2 and then multiply by 0.15.

So for Convoys (0 AA) and Carriers (5 AA) the first term is practically zero, so it is only fleet AA, so ~50, to the 0.2 power. Which in effect is only 2% damage reduction? Is this correct? Seems way off.
Even for a DD with 20AA personal AA, because of *0,15 you only add 3 on the fleet AA of 50, so even then it stay at around 2% damage reduction. Seems weird. But hey it is HoI IV. ^^

 

[Anaraxes]

(don't forget to include CL) The high speed low visibility will help very much when outnumbered."

I don't know what that means.

If commerce raiders run into a real fleet, they'll want to run away. Low visibility helps keep CLs from being spotted*, and high speed helps them avoid combat and disengage if (when) it occurs.

Commerce raiding is a tradeoff between different benefits. You don't need a huge amount of firepower (and expense for all those big ships) to sink convoys. But if you don't bring the big guns, you can't fight if cornered. Battlecruisers can do a lot of damage to convoys, brush off minor escorts, and still have speed to disengage. But they're expensive, easy to spot, and still more vulnerable than battleships when it comes to trading blows.

Some people also like battlecruisers as escorts for carriers. They're capital ships, so they can screen carriers from direct combat, and they're fast enough not to slow down fast carrier fleets.

--
* in the game mechanics, you'll notice it takes some time to narrow down exactly where a fleet is to engage it, even if the fleet is known to be in a sea zone.

 

[bitmode]

So for Convoys (0 AA) and Carriers (5 AA) the first term is practically zero, so it is only fleet AA, so ~50, to the 0.2 power. Which in effect is only 2% damage reduction? Is this correct? Seems way off.
Even for a DD with 20AA personal AA, because of *0,15 you only add 3 on the fleet AA of 50, so even then it stay at around 2% damage reduction. Seems weird. But hey it is HoI IV. ^^

That's not percent, but an absolute number 50^0.2 * 0.15 = 0.328 = 32.8% reduction. For a DD it would then be (20 + 50)^0.2 * 0.15 = 35% reduction.

 

[Riekopo]

It's two separate sentences. BCs are better than BBs since they have higher speed and lower visibility (both of which are used in targeting calculations making BCs harder to hit than BBs). BBs are better at surviving damage & dealing damage, BCs are the most powerful survivors.

A BC by itself is not invulnerable to torpedoes so you need to include some screens. CLs being high speed as well work very well with BCs and can create potent raiding fleets.

Panzershiffs are such long range you can deploy them in the Caribbean whilst based in France. They are less potent but their design is to operate in places the allies aren't protecting yet and to force the allies to spread their forces even more. They are not as survivable as BCs but that isn't their purpose - they are a cheap investment to force the allies to spend more on countering them.

I see Panzerschiffs are Heavy Cruisers though which means they need screens. But the screen ships only have half the range of a Panzerschiff. So are you supposed to just use the Panzerschiff completely alone?

I checked again. CL and CA get boosted on Trade Interdiction on the first 2 techs, but not DD. Using Panzerschiff with CL is also increase the range of the whole group, while DD will decrease the average range.

I put a Light Cruiser with my Panzerschiff and it reduced the range by half.

I really wish this game had an Advisor. Almost nothing is explained in the game itself. It's kind of ridiculous.

Are there a certain kind of guns best for attacking convoys?

 

[Cavalry]

So are you supposed to just use the Panzerschiff completely alone?
....
Are there a certain kind of guns best for attacking convoys?

Depend on where you want to raid, most of the time you only need to reach middle of Atlantic. The real life Germany would raiding in pair.

Heavy gun and torpedo are good vs convoy, but convoy is cheap. The more lucrative targets for raiding is their DD and ships in small group.

 

[Riekopo]

I still don't really understand how you're supposed to effectively use a Panzerschiff. It has extreme range but nothing else has that range.

Battlecruiser stats are barely different than Battleships from what I can tell. Slightly more speed and slightly less visible. Are they really that much better at raiding and disengaging from combat?

 

[Cavalry]

I still don't really understand how you're supposed to effectively use a Panzerschiff. It has extreme range but nothing else has that range.

Battlecruiser stats are barely different than Battleships from what I can tell. Slightly more speed and slightly less visible. Are they really that much better at raiding and disengaging from combat?

Look at it that way.if you use 1 regular CA and 4 CL for raiding, the range of the group is about 2000km. But if you replace CA with Panzerschiff, the range will be 3000km, enough for many place. And it is cheap.

BC can be specialized further to have much more speed than BB, lighter gun and armor. 1 speed increase will decrease hit chance about 7%, visibility has the same effects too. So if you get caught, it can survive longer.

 

[Udinean Yoghurt Dessert]

As far as I know: No
Detection gets averaged over the whole fleet, so some detection on your battleships is nothing. Rather have dedicated spotting fleets with a low ship count, but then spotting planes on all the ships.

Shouldn't it be task force-based?

 

[Voigt]

Yeah sorry, I meant over your whole Taskforce, not fleet. I still get confused by the difference of fleet and taskforce in HoI IV.

 

[Udinean Yoghurt Dessert]

Yeah sorry, I meant over your whole Taskforce, not fleet. I still get confused by the difference of fleet and taskforce in HoI IV.

You got me really confused there, because i had an MP Game last night and i was not really struggling with a sub-focused germany.
Also, dis you know that TAC and NAV use the maximum between sub and surface visibility when attacking? That's important info, as you cab have that instead of dedicated patrol fleets

 

[Riekopo]

How many Anti-Air Battalions do you need in a Divisions to completely neutralize the enemy's close air support? Is it even possible?

Something strange I've noticed is that my submarine raiding is only having an effect on the war support of 1 country, the United Kingdom. Is this a known bug?

Does anyone have advice on playing Greece and surviving? Good Division templates? Which Doctrines to use? Navy? Air force?

 

[Daelh]

Hello. So was going for The Bell Tolls For Us achievement and sided with the Republicans. Im holding the Nationalists of pretty well, but I cant trade for anything with anyone? I have a capital with access to several forts, and also land border with France.

 

[Olcar]

What is the optimal amount of carrier overcrowding with the Massed Strikes doctrine?

 

[bitmode]

What is the optimal amount of carrier overcrowding with the Massed Strikes doctrine?

As far as I know, zero. The doctrine changes the penalty from -2% (NAir.CAPACITY_PENALTY) for each percent of overcrowding to -1.6% (i.e. a reduction of -20%). But it still means that you lose efficiency faster than planes are added. The penalty reduction would need to be over 50% to make at least a bit of overcrowding optimal. @Secret Master might have run some tests on that.

Edit: the AI uses the formula -(bonus * 2 + 3)/(bonus * -3 - 3), resulting in 8.3% overcrowding at a penalty reduction of -20%. Not sure why it does that, might be based on the old naval air combat system prior to 1.6.

 

[Olcar]

As far as I know, zero. The doctrine changes the penalty from -2% (NAir.CAPACITY_PENALTY) for each percent of overcrowding to -1.6% (i.e. a reduction of -20%). But it still means that you lose efficiency faster than planes are added. The penalty reduction would need to be over 50% to make at least a bit of overcrowding optimal. @Secret Master might have run some tests on that.

Edit: the AI uses the formula -(bonus * 2 + 3)/(bonus * -3 - 3), resulting in 8.3% overcrowding at a penalty reduction of -20%. Not sure why it does that, might be based on the old naval air combat system prior to 1.6.

O.K., thanks.

Are we confident there's no 100% cap on efficiency that could still make it useful?

In other words, does 120% efficiency perform the same as 100%, so you might as well overcrowd until 100% even though you lose efficiency faster than you gain planes?

 

[bitmode]

In other words, does 120% efficiency perform the same as 100%

There is no way to get 120% mission efficiency, there are only penalties, see https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Air_missions#Mission_efficiency.

Edit: except Extra Ground Crews, I haven't checked whether it can push the intermediate efficiency above 100%

 

[Olcar]

The efficiency I was referring to is the "air efficiency" you see when you mouse over carrier planes in a naval battle. I was wondering if there is any benefit to having this over 100%.

 

[bitmode]

The efficiency I was referring to is the "air efficiency" you see when you mouse over carrier planes in a naval battle. I was wondering if there is any benefit to having this over 100%.

View attachment 544598

I don't have much experience with carriers, but according to the code, if you accumulate more than 100% sortie efficiency, it should indeed compensate for overcrowding. From the screenshot it looks like you have 185% sortie efficiency. To maintain 100% air efficiency, this would allow for a 46% overcrowding penalty, which is 29% overcrowding with Massed Strike.
The system seems to only be used for plane-vs-ship combat though. In air-vs-air combat sortie efficiency does not seem to factor in.

Maybe someone else has a better answer.