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Playing British, with the World at War Naval mod selected, I have just had a damaged Battleship taskforce retreat away from nearby friendly ports, almost all the way to Taranto where it collided with an Italian Battleship taskforce which sank it with all hands. This struck me as being highly unrealistic. Has anybody else experienced anything like this?[&:] [&:]

I have now deleted all my Naval mod saves and I am starting the campaign again with the bog standard version of the game.

Pongo de Mer.

The problem is with the standard game not with any mod. This behaviour happens all the time with the Naval AI where badly damaged ships sail away from home ports and safety and go on an extremely stupid suicide mission in the opposite direction straight towards the enemy.[:(]

Yes - have reported this as well a long time ago.

The naval AI is in serious need of an overhaul; over the lifespan of the series the land AI has been given the vast bulk of attention from the devs, which to a certain extent makes some sense (esp. since we never had a Pacific Theatre until about a decade ago). And before someone says it, a few solidly coded core AI routines are worth a dozen+ AI scripts.

The main issue is that what works on land doesn't work on the water, and that is mostly because sea combat is generally much more bloody. As the Russians you can probably afford to keep moving your new builds towards the front, for delaying purposes if nothing else, even if the bulk of them get killed, since they are relatively easily & quickly replaced. Do that with the core of your fleet against a superior foe and you (the country in question at least) just lost the game.

Just one suggestion, and I'll shut up; offensive FLEET scripts probably would need to be hooked into the enemy unit reports so that the AI "understands" that the enemy fleet is still stronger, and thus will delay any offensives/invasions.