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As one of the localizers for EaW going on three years now I'm pretty excited for when you eventually reach our corner of guns war circlegame mods.  I can't believe I'm just now finding this thread though shame on me. Think I'll end up binge-watching all the episodes you have so far after my weekly Only War game tonight! As for Naval Combat: as someone who understands it fairly well nowadays even I think it's not a very engaging system outside of vanilla play- and vanilla is very bland to me nowadays. Paradox's work on the Espionage system though? Fantastic, 10/10, favorite thing to play with in Hoi4 nowadays. If you want, I can sperg out over boat things such as the most efficient way to navally invade anyone (hint, it involves ignoring the naval invasion assistance command) and other such things such as the still completely viable destroyer doomstack.
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Jan 10, 2021 14:14
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 09:46 |
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Hopefully this year! We tried to have it out by Christmas, but with how massive it is, it just wasn't feasible. Now that Scroup is back from service in the AFRF tho, Yard and Cyrus have been able to focus more on coding than having to be heads of the devteam. I've actually been working on the loc for Chiropterra recently, and while I can't really say much yet, I will say that Zebrica is gonna be a wild ride- it's larger than both the Equestrian and Griffonian continents combined. Going to add this on here to avoid doubleposting: BOTES, and HOW DO BOTE. Naval Combat in Hoi4 is a little bit obtuse in it's current build, but still (as long as you have more than a couple continents) very viable and oftentimes useful for reaching far away places- not to mention that if you're a European country fighting in, Say, North Africa, you are most likely drawing your supplies via naval shipping unless you happen to own the entirety of Turkey. As a reminder, land Supply only goes to your front so long as there is a direct route from your Capital to the unit via provinces that are specifically your own, or of a country you are specifically allied with. Simply having military access rights does not mean you get to draw supply from them, so if you aren't in a faction with someone on the front, you're going to be shipping naval supplies. And that means convoys! Convoys are good, and if you aren't building warships, you should be building convoys. The more convoys you have, the better your overseas supply lines are going to be, obviously, but they also affect how efficient your overseas resource trading is, the number of available convoys affects troop deployment across water (in much the same way transport planes work for Airborne landings!) as well as naval invasion speed, which is also effected by a couple research techs. TheMcD posted:
There are actually two indicators for naval combat so you can discern them at a glance! One is specifically for convoy raiding, the other is specifically for major fleet actions. (One shows up as a small lil' convoy on the map, the other, predictably, shows up as a warship.) Now then, onto the meat and potatoes of naval warfare! I'll try not to get too stuck into number crunch, for the sake of simplification. Firstly, the MTG update has mostly made meme stacks of like, 1000 submarines, or 40 BBs or like 12 carriers a thing of the past, as nowadays there are stacking penalties for your navies. Off the top of my head, the most effective Vanilla task group follows the old American WW2 model of 1-2 Aircraft Carriers, 3-4 Battleships, 3-4 Battlecruisers, 5 Heavy Cruisers, 10 Light cruisers, and around 15-20 destroyers. Anything past that and your task groups will start having issues entering battle because they're be too bloated and have issues fighting things. You can still have larger over-all numbers in a main Fleet without penalty if they smaller task groups are operating in the same area, but if you don't separate them out INTO different task groups they'll start to flounder, and then you're just hemmoraging very expensive naval vessels. Think of it in terms of Armies and Army Groups. Each Naval Task Group can easily represent a single Army of 24 Divisions or so (as modeled in HOI4) under a single General. Then, you have several different task groups operating under your Admiral, who leads the specific Fleet, the Naval stand-in for Army Groups. At this time, HOI4 does not model Task Group commanders, and PDX hasn't really said anything about adding them yet, so for now, all we have are Fleet Admirals, who give their bonuses to the Fleet as a whole, not just singular Task Groups, in the same way a Field Marshal gives his bonuses to every Army under his Army Group. One notable and silly addendum to all this is that whilst they got major nerfs in the same way Submarines did because of this specific meta, you can still just crap out 1000 Destroyer strong doomstacks in a year or two assuming your naval industry is up to par. (like, 20-30 dockyards or so) As long as they have the three important things- Torpedo Tubes, Sonar for sub detection, and Anti-Submarine Weapons, you can still go around with your massive destroyer fleet making GBS threads on everything from the measly Italian navy up to Britain's main Carrier Fleets. The US usually has strong enough fleets to match you, but hey, destroyers build very quickly and watching a doomstack melt PACCOM is hilarious to me. As for actual combat and damage numbers, the only thing worth noting is thus: The heavier your armor, guns, and other modules, the slower your vessel will be- and thus the better engines you'll have to mount on your boats, which are unlocked by researching later ship models. Past that, just treat them like tanks or infantry; higher numbers tend better. But let's get onto what I'm reasonably sure the biggest issue is for most people: HOW TF DO I MAKE MY FLEETS WORK? Well, friends, let's start by explaining all the deployment options: a note to interrupt myself with: Naval Task Forces (and Fleets, by extension) can either deploy into their own taskings, Task force by Task force, or the entire fleet (If you want specific admirals for specific jobs, for example a surface fleet vs a submarine fleet) can be assigned one singular job. The deployment options are as follows: Naval Exercises Patrol Strike Force Convoy Raiding Convoy Escort Naval Invasion Support Oh, also, Mine Laying and Mine Clearing, but those are pretty self explanatory: Have your botes either lay or clear a naval zone of sea mines. Naval Exercises- Just like Air Training, it deploys your ships to their chosen deployment zones out at sea, and starts accruing their experience, which now works very similarly to Infantry experience levels. Something to note is that training accidents can and will happen, and ships can be damaged and must be repaired in port. (Don't forget to tab over to your production tab and assign some of your dockyards to ship repair!) Patrol- Now we're getting down to the important stuff. Patrolling Task Forces will patrol a Single naval zone they're assigned to (the best sorts of task forces are small groups of 5-7 destroyers or destroyers and one or two light cruisers) and attempt to SPOT enemy fleets in their naval zone. Once spotting reaches 100%, and you fully identify the enemy fleet, it is then able to be engaged by your Patrols and ANY STRIKE FORCES ASSIGNED TO THAT NAVAL ZONE. We'll get to more Strike Force specifics in a minute. Depending on whatever you have your Patrol's engagement orders set to, they can either disengage immediately, attempt to attack whatever fleet is out there, or some mix of the two. Generally I have dozens of small destroyer Patrol Task Forces scouring the naval zones and set to disengage immediately, so that they don't get caught up in fleet actions. It tends to mean less fleet actions on my end, but as well, my navy tends to remain more together and thus safer. Strike Force- VERY IMPORTANT: If a task force or Fleet is on Strike Force, It will sit it's happy rear end in a port somewhere until someone spots an enemy fleet. Thus, without Patrol groups, Strike Force is absolutely, completely useless, because land forces can't spot fleets effectively enough to deploy a Strike Force, and Air Force spotting via naval bombers is only effective near coastlines. A Strike Force is best comprised of your main Task Force(s), as I listed up above (Carriers, Battleships, etc. your heavy hitters effectively) as they're the main Striking Force that you're going to slap the enemy Navy with. Also, again, make sure you're checking your Task Force's engagement rule so that they don't just infinitely sit on port in "Never Engage". Another thing to note: The more naval zones a strike force has to cover, the slower it is for them to deploy and engage an enemy. I tend to have 3 Patrol Zones per strike force as long as my Naval production supports it, but you can stretch that out to five Patrol Zones if you're strapped for boats. Convoy Raiding- This one assigns a task force to look for enemy convoys in the fleet's operational area. The raiding task force needs to spot the convoys before attacking them, which they will do on their own, unlike Strike Force- though at reduced efficiency from a Patrol. Each raiding task force can only efficiently cover 1.5 strategic regions. If a fleet does not have enough raiding task forces for the area it covers, their efficiency will be reduced. As well, the spread of your vessels is somewhere between Patrol and Strike force as far as where your task forces end up in the over-all fleet. If you just want your navy to be reasonably effective and don't want to deal with micromanagement of your fleet, separate your fleet into 4 or 5 different task forces and set them to convoy raiding. Convoy Escort- The opposite of Convoy Raiding, the fleet or Task Forces will protect any convoy ships you have out and about, from resource convoys to supply convoys to naval invasions! Something to note; if you aren't micromanaging your fleets to maintain naval superiority, Convoy Escort is what you want to use more often than Naval Invasion Escort- this is because Naval Invasion Escort does not project enough power most of the time to send off an invasion due to enemy fleets operating in an area. Convoy Escort means that your Task Forces are out and about doing things, and thus, you can get an accurate read of your naval supremacy in regards to an invasion (iirc, you must have 50% naval superiority to send off an Invasion Fleet. Naval Invasion Support- Covered above for the most part; it keeps your Task Force in port like a strike group until the invasion fleet heads off. If you CAN use this effectively for your invasions it's better than straight Convoy Escort since the Invasion Support will stay right with your Invasion Force, but not at all required to launch an invasion. Another couple notes: Superheavy Battleships are fun, but not worth building unless you REALLY REALLY like them. Their stats are only somewhat better than Tier 4 Battleships, and they cost just under twice as much as a Tier IV BB- 5,500 IC for a super heavy vs 3,600 IC for the Tier IV. Aircraft Carrier Air Wings can be adjusted during production by clicking on the little plane icon next to the Ship picture in the Production Tab- Do yourself a favor and ignore Carrier Dive Bombers in favor of Fighters and Torpedo Bombers. Dive Bombers on Carriers are stupid. After a Carrier is deployed, it's airwing can be adjusted via the Air Force Map Tab, like any other airbase. (Just look for an airfield out in the middle of the ocean.) Carrier Jet Fighters are a thing and worthwhile if you're heavy into your airforce tech tree. Sadly, Carrier Jet Torpedo Bombers do not exist. Convoys CAN actually defend themselves against air raids, amusingly. In game code states that Convoys have a machine gun that does 0.2 Damage to infantry with 1.0 Piercing, and .1 Anti-Air (meaning that it has an effective weight of .3 Damage vs Planes since Anti-Air is Inf. Damage +AA Damage, and can pierce 1.0 armor on planes.) 
Das Panzer fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Jan 11, 2021 |
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Jan 10, 2021 17:57
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Oh hey! I go by Tempest nowadays- SA is the only place I still go by Panzer. I don't talk much out of the Dev Channels anymore but feel free to poke me on discord if you just wanna chat or something!
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Jan 12, 2021 02:12
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For Vanilla/KR/RT56 (anything that uses the vanilla map basically) I recommend the US/UK if you want a pre-built navy, though maybe not the US for a Kaiserreich run. (Alternatively Japan if you want to island hop!) Or someone such as France or Italy if you want to build up a navy from scratch. If you end up covering Old World Blues, any nation works for there! The naval tech tree for OWB is a touch more obtuse than usual, but the upside is that major rivers all count as naval zones. It makes for some very entertaining naval invasions. For Equestria at War I can recommend New Mareland- Equestria's colony and a mix between Australia and New Zealand culturally, and their entire shtick is naval invasions. Alternatively, you could play as any of the Equestrian Continent fascist paths (Changelings, Olenian Rike, Solar or Lunar Empire path for Equestria, Sombra, or Nova Griffonia), or the Stalliongradian Communists under Sinister Serov, who plays similarly to Trotsky in the main game -expansionist and warhawkish. And then if the Star Wars Mod ever releases anytime soon, it's main focus is going to be nicely split between naval and ground combat, with space fleets representing the naval tab.
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Jan 13, 2021 22:20
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Yeah, thankfully KR is pretty easy to get into as far as mods go. The myriad of new ideologies can be a bit off-putting at first, and getting advisors can be a bit confusing, but it's pretty tame as far as gamely changes go. OWB took me some time to wrap my brain around, for example, because of some of the really neat changes they made to combat in that mod, but KR just takes a little bit of reading to pick up on. Once you're in game and playing it, at least for myself, it's a lot more intuitive.
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Feb 6, 2021 12:31
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I've never played Kaiserredux personally (it's on my to-do list but I've been busy with dev stuff) but I'm pretty sure it's just considered Sophomoric because on the main, KR's fan base (and this is true for any large game mod's fan base, and why I don't venture out of EAW's dev channels anymore) thinks anything that is different from the main mod and it's choices is inherently bad. Of course I could very well be wrong but McD says it's pretty not terrible, and McD is pretty smart when it comes to mod shenanigans.
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Feb 10, 2021 00:46
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Yeah that's kinda ick, but not the worst thing I've seen. It does make the outrage understandable but if that's the worst of it then I would definitely point them TNO's way. There's a reason I heavily dislike that mod and it's not just because it's a horribly broken and unfinished mess that's been in dev longer than EAW and OWB that plays more like a visual novel than a war game.
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Feb 10, 2021 13:24
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Ahh Kaiserreich. I loved playing KR back in the Darkest Hour days, but I just can't ever bring myself to play it for more than a session or two in Hearts of Iron 4. That said, if I might ask, what was your guys' favorite part of Kaiserreich, and least favorite part? Would definitely love to get Ibble's perspective since this was his first foray into modded Hoi4.
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Apr 18, 2021 21:00
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NeverHelm posted:Snip! Not unless you count Gallus from the show's Canon as the Harmony leader as 'content'. Also hello, resident Equestria at War localizer here! I write stuff. Still working on Zebrica, still crying on the inside at the sheer amount of CONTENT going into that continent.  If anyone has any mod questions that aren't update spoilers, I can answer them, as well as give my two cents on design decisions if McD doesn't mind. I also know how to accomplish all but like two of the hidden paths in the game, including game-overing yourself as the Dread League to peacefully reform the vampire horse waifu Rosa. That is not a joke.
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Apr 23, 2021 11:31
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Lynneth posted:[Insert country] update when? Every time someone asks when Zebrica is releasing, we add another day to the release date. 
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Apr 24, 2021 07:27
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 09:46 |
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Don't forget the fact that Generallplan Ost's Manehattan (haha horse pun we are hilarious i promise) protectorate has the ability to start a revolution to liberate Equestria and yeet the bug nazis. It's difficult but unironically has some of my favorite writing to read. Jaspy, the dev for that path did fantastic work and I recommend screwing up everything in Manehattan and causing them to show up just to read all the fun stuff.
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Apr 24, 2021 17:49
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