Naval Ideas
Posted: Wed May 06, 2026 12:28 am
So with the idea that the next DLC will be focused on militaries and real naval units I figured I might share my thoughts on how navies could potentially work. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself but I can't help myself, it's the biggest thing I want in the game lol.
So basically I think navies should be a mix of abstract and hex based units (with two different sets there). First though what is the job of navies? Facilitate trade, move troops/equipment/supplies around, and prevent the enemy from doing the same. That's generally it. The first two can be accomplished via abstracted convoy systems. Think road logistics because in order to make raiding possible these abstracted convoys should follow specific routes. So not like air bridges or how current amphibious operations happen. So convoys are abstracted to convoy points just like trucks and trains and they'd follow a defined route that can be cut by raiders. The points could represent the number of ships or the tonnage capacity or whatever. Escorts this way can also be abstracted but would still need to be designed and built and then assigned to convoy routes. You can play around with range, if the escorting frigates or whatever lack the range then that would leave convoys unprotected along parts of the route. And I would hope this would be visualized somewhere, unlike fighter CAP ranges which really should have a visual. Likewise I think raiders and subs being abstracted in the same way and sent off to patrol specific hexes or zones or whatever would work great. Combat between raiders/subs, and convoys/escorts/Q-ships would happen at the end of a full round like air bridge combat.
Meanwhile full surface task groups I think would work best sort of like aircraft do right now. Airplanes sit in squadrons in bases and go out on missions for a turn. Full warships could sit in fleets in ports and get assigned out to missions for a turn. Crucially I think there needs to be the movement to and from any target destination here simulated so that there's chances of running into enemies along the way. Scouting is a big deal for naval forces with entire ships designed explicitly for just that role. And with aircraft you send them out and you see the combat right away like ground forces. With fleets/surface task groups it might be best to also have combat happen at the end of a round. This would help circumvent the awkwardness of IGOUGO naval combat, it sorta becomes WEGO. As I said there's already a sort of precedent here with air bridge combat although it's not quite the same.
I think there should be different mission types and formations. You could go a bit more in depth and have things go down to the squadron level (which I would love but I like War in the Pacific so I'm probably not the norm). So you might order a destroyer squadron attached to a larger capital ship squadron into a screening formation with the mission to range ahead of the fleet. However, with the scale being what it is (hexes are massive) it might make more sense to just combine all that into general fleets with general formations and mission types. Search and destroy, patrol, recon, freedom of navigation. I could see formations acting a bit like postures do now but hopefully a bit more complex. As for the hexes vs zones thing, I think hexes are fine. You could have a "react" range for a fleet based on the technology and design of the ships as well as the formation and mission type. Turns represent a long period of time relatively so one can imagine fleets ranging around different hexes during the course of said turn.
I'm imagining it would look something like this: I have a fleet of battleships and cruisers sitting in my port. My enemy has the same. I tell my fleet to sortie out for a patrol mission to a particular area. I choose a target hex and then the fleet will spend a turn trying to fulfill that mission in the area around that hex. Whether we set that range around the hex, or its organic to the ship design is up for debate. I order my fleet to say hex 5,5 on a patrol mission. The enemy sends his fleet out on a search and destroy mission to a hex near mine, say 6,6. After the turns are done all the calcs and combat is run for these missions. The chance for an engagement here would depend on a lot- the mission types, the leaders, the speed and range of the ships, formations and presence of fast scouting elements. Both sides are seeking out the other so say eventually they do find each other, in the hex 5,6, and combat ensues. How many ships engage could depend on the mission type. My forces on patrol might be more spread out than the enemy's on a specific Search and Destroy mission. I think the potential should be there for neither side to find the other or find a favorable engagement and decide not to give battle (leaders would come into play here as well as weather which definitely should be a factor). Whether or not fleets stay out at sea for multiple turns is tricky but I could see both sides working. Perhaps as technology increases so to does the staying power of navies allowing for blockades. You could also have like abstracted resupply convoys help with this.
I have one more major point to make. I think river gunboats and patrol vessels should be a thing and I think they'd work best as a more "traditional" unit to Shadow Empire. They'd be on-hex units that you move around as normal during turns along hexes that have rivers and canals. They'd be capable of launching artillery attacks and direct attacks against units in the same turn, before the round ends, like most units right now. They could be very small infantry support units armed with machine guns or more serious platforms armed with cannons and mortars and even rockets and missiles later on. On this note, river logistics should be a thing, and the ability to create canals. I've just played on many maps with an abundance of river systems and it would be incredible to utilize them.
A note on carriers, aircraft ranges are incredibly high and as they are you straight up don't need carriers to utilize aircraft across an entire planet. So unless the range of aircraft is dropped substantially I don't think carriers should be included. And dropping the range might not work for land-based air. I just don't see carriers working when land-based air can cover entire oceans.
Also shore bombardment should be a thing. Land-attack missiles. This ofc means coastal batteries and using rockets and artillery and missile systems against ships themselves. And as an aside here point defense should also be a thing. Potentially floatplanes could be an abstract thing added to ships for a size/cost increase that helps boost the recon of a fleet at sea.
I'd like to see shallow and deep sea hexes as well with shallow draft vessels struggling in deep ocean tiles. Early DD's, torpedo boats, gun boats, coastal patrol vessels, monitors all would be nice to build and use and would struggle in deep ocean if not outright sink. Early naval warfare would ideally mostly be river based and/or coastal based. I'm not sure about amphibious ships being on-hex or abstracted but both could work. Currently it's abstracted so the system could work like you have to establish a stable convoy route before launching the invasion, similar to air bridges and para drops.
I'm basically describing three different naval systems but I think naval warfare is so complex it both requires this sort of treatment and deserves it. I also think a lot is already there for this to be implemented. I also think players can handle it. There's a lot to figure out with something like this, the design and tech tree ofc, costs. Also how long can fleets stay out of port, one turn or multiple. Might be hard to utilize land-based aviation against navies if they're only out at sea for a turn at a time. To fix this fleets could be at sea for a min of 2-3 turns, one to get there and do stuff, and one to go home at the least. This would allow you to potentially scout them out with aircraft during the 2nd turn. Alternatively we could assign squadrons to naval duties which would abstract them away allowing them to participate in the naval battles that are conducted after a round ends organically. I could probably type more and more about this so Ill stop here. Thoughts? Too much? Not enough?
So basically I think navies should be a mix of abstract and hex based units (with two different sets there). First though what is the job of navies? Facilitate trade, move troops/equipment/supplies around, and prevent the enemy from doing the same. That's generally it. The first two can be accomplished via abstracted convoy systems. Think road logistics because in order to make raiding possible these abstracted convoys should follow specific routes. So not like air bridges or how current amphibious operations happen. So convoys are abstracted to convoy points just like trucks and trains and they'd follow a defined route that can be cut by raiders. The points could represent the number of ships or the tonnage capacity or whatever. Escorts this way can also be abstracted but would still need to be designed and built and then assigned to convoy routes. You can play around with range, if the escorting frigates or whatever lack the range then that would leave convoys unprotected along parts of the route. And I would hope this would be visualized somewhere, unlike fighter CAP ranges which really should have a visual. Likewise I think raiders and subs being abstracted in the same way and sent off to patrol specific hexes or zones or whatever would work great. Combat between raiders/subs, and convoys/escorts/Q-ships would happen at the end of a full round like air bridge combat.
Meanwhile full surface task groups I think would work best sort of like aircraft do right now. Airplanes sit in squadrons in bases and go out on missions for a turn. Full warships could sit in fleets in ports and get assigned out to missions for a turn. Crucially I think there needs to be the movement to and from any target destination here simulated so that there's chances of running into enemies along the way. Scouting is a big deal for naval forces with entire ships designed explicitly for just that role. And with aircraft you send them out and you see the combat right away like ground forces. With fleets/surface task groups it might be best to also have combat happen at the end of a round. This would help circumvent the awkwardness of IGOUGO naval combat, it sorta becomes WEGO. As I said there's already a sort of precedent here with air bridge combat although it's not quite the same.
I think there should be different mission types and formations. You could go a bit more in depth and have things go down to the squadron level (which I would love but I like War in the Pacific so I'm probably not the norm). So you might order a destroyer squadron attached to a larger capital ship squadron into a screening formation with the mission to range ahead of the fleet. However, with the scale being what it is (hexes are massive) it might make more sense to just combine all that into general fleets with general formations and mission types. Search and destroy, patrol, recon, freedom of navigation. I could see formations acting a bit like postures do now but hopefully a bit more complex. As for the hexes vs zones thing, I think hexes are fine. You could have a "react" range for a fleet based on the technology and design of the ships as well as the formation and mission type. Turns represent a long period of time relatively so one can imagine fleets ranging around different hexes during the course of said turn.
I'm imagining it would look something like this: I have a fleet of battleships and cruisers sitting in my port. My enemy has the same. I tell my fleet to sortie out for a patrol mission to a particular area. I choose a target hex and then the fleet will spend a turn trying to fulfill that mission in the area around that hex. Whether we set that range around the hex, or its organic to the ship design is up for debate. I order my fleet to say hex 5,5 on a patrol mission. The enemy sends his fleet out on a search and destroy mission to a hex near mine, say 6,6. After the turns are done all the calcs and combat is run for these missions. The chance for an engagement here would depend on a lot- the mission types, the leaders, the speed and range of the ships, formations and presence of fast scouting elements. Both sides are seeking out the other so say eventually they do find each other, in the hex 5,6, and combat ensues. How many ships engage could depend on the mission type. My forces on patrol might be more spread out than the enemy's on a specific Search and Destroy mission. I think the potential should be there for neither side to find the other or find a favorable engagement and decide not to give battle (leaders would come into play here as well as weather which definitely should be a factor). Whether or not fleets stay out at sea for multiple turns is tricky but I could see both sides working. Perhaps as technology increases so to does the staying power of navies allowing for blockades. You could also have like abstracted resupply convoys help with this.
I have one more major point to make. I think river gunboats and patrol vessels should be a thing and I think they'd work best as a more "traditional" unit to Shadow Empire. They'd be on-hex units that you move around as normal during turns along hexes that have rivers and canals. They'd be capable of launching artillery attacks and direct attacks against units in the same turn, before the round ends, like most units right now. They could be very small infantry support units armed with machine guns or more serious platforms armed with cannons and mortars and even rockets and missiles later on. On this note, river logistics should be a thing, and the ability to create canals. I've just played on many maps with an abundance of river systems and it would be incredible to utilize them.
A note on carriers, aircraft ranges are incredibly high and as they are you straight up don't need carriers to utilize aircraft across an entire planet. So unless the range of aircraft is dropped substantially I don't think carriers should be included. And dropping the range might not work for land-based air. I just don't see carriers working when land-based air can cover entire oceans.
Also shore bombardment should be a thing. Land-attack missiles. This ofc means coastal batteries and using rockets and artillery and missile systems against ships themselves. And as an aside here point defense should also be a thing. Potentially floatplanes could be an abstract thing added to ships for a size/cost increase that helps boost the recon of a fleet at sea.
I'd like to see shallow and deep sea hexes as well with shallow draft vessels struggling in deep ocean tiles. Early DD's, torpedo boats, gun boats, coastal patrol vessels, monitors all would be nice to build and use and would struggle in deep ocean if not outright sink. Early naval warfare would ideally mostly be river based and/or coastal based. I'm not sure about amphibious ships being on-hex or abstracted but both could work. Currently it's abstracted so the system could work like you have to establish a stable convoy route before launching the invasion, similar to air bridges and para drops.
I'm basically describing three different naval systems but I think naval warfare is so complex it both requires this sort of treatment and deserves it. I also think a lot is already there for this to be implemented. I also think players can handle it. There's a lot to figure out with something like this, the design and tech tree ofc, costs. Also how long can fleets stay out of port, one turn or multiple. Might be hard to utilize land-based aviation against navies if they're only out at sea for a turn at a time. To fix this fleets could be at sea for a min of 2-3 turns, one to get there and do stuff, and one to go home at the least. This would allow you to potentially scout them out with aircraft during the 2nd turn. Alternatively we could assign squadrons to naval duties which would abstract them away allowing them to participate in the naval battles that are conducted after a round ends organically. I could probably type more and more about this so Ill stop here. Thoughts? Too much? Not enough?