Naval Combat

[Phelan]

As far as I can tell from the manual, if I have ships in a single group as a regular TF, then unless they are hit by sub special attacks or carrier attacks, they should ALWAYS fight together.

But, in practically every naval battle only a portion of my naval group will fight together, very often a I end up with a single ship being ganged up on by a handful of enemy ships (could be any combo of subs and surface ships) when in fact I have the larger naval forces in the sea zone.

How come?

Cheers / Phelan

[cpdeyoung]

Well, no.  There is a selection of vessels from available forces in a sea zone which are cast together, rather randomly, and battle ensues.
 
The model is abstract, but it really must be so, because "in the old days" (RtV and early ToW) when whole navies would sortie to battle at invasion sites it became clear that you could lose every ship in one week.  Think the whole Italian Navy sunk in a week, and at signficantly smaller cost to the RN.  This game is very deadly for naval vessels, and in many ways I think too deadly.  The current model does allow the big "battalions" their due, but prevents the destruction of a whole fleet in a single battle.
 
Chuck

[Phelan]

I´m having a hard time seeing anything positive about how it works now, nor any logic or "realism" to it.

Sure, if one was forced to create fleets of a limited size, and not be guaranteed that all fleets are involved in a battle, that could work. But to routinely have only your CVs be caught by the other side´s surface ships is just absurd. (The only occurence of this I know of is the US jeep carriers almost being caught by Japanese battle ships during the invasion of the Philippines in ´44, but then the big US fleet was in a different sea to meet the Japanese carriers.) It also happened since the jeep carriers were covering an invasion and thus were rather fixed in position.

In fact, I wouldn´t mind a situation where a carrier task force will practically never enter into surface combat, meaning you have to divide your fleet into CVs with escorts mostly for AA and the odd surface combat, but having real surface groups if you want to expect to use your BBs offensively.

As the system works right now, there doesn´t really seem to be any good strategy to apply in naval combat, only prayers. (On a sidenote, though, I have found that bombers set to naval attacks will always score a hit if there is a target, so half a dozen of those attacking every turn will wither away the enemy, but it doesn´t really feel like a good solution for anything.)

/ Phelan

[Hairog]

I agree Phelan. There needs to be a little more logic given to the naval game. I have always hated subs in the same fleet as surface ships. It just didn't happen.

I hope that SOP does better with the naval game as that should be it's primary focus. Keep you fingers crossed.