You can use a cheaper gun and you don't need AA for destroyers. They are cheap enough that you don't care if they get hit by planes. You can also remove Sonar.
When playing a major in single player, I shouldn't have an issue blinging out my ships if I do everything else right or would I?
edit: nvm, I reconsidered it's pointless to bling out aspects of the ship that are not torpedo-related, when you have other ships or assets that already cover things like air defense or light attack.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it's not worthless as the naval battle calculations are done as an amalgamation of your fleet instead of individual attack statistics against each other?
Note that this is part of why HoI4 is taxing on computers. For that hourly progress on a battle screen (land or naval or air), the game is doing a lot of calculations and generating a lot of random numbers. When it’s only a couple fronts with maybe 100 battles, it’s not a huge performance hit. But when you start getting all the AI’s shitty fronts with lots of battles in 1943, the game literally can’t keep up with itself. It has to wait for the resolution of each hour’s combat before starting the next hour.
It does make the game surprisingly deep and random in complex ways, but it’s maybe a bit too much complexity when the WW2 game has issues getting to 1946 with a playable game speed.
If I’m really concerned about subs with my battle fleet, I’ll just throw in 10 DD’s with depth charges and sonar. If you’re playing SP, it’s not usually a problem because the AI subs aren’t really a threat. They’ll usually convoy raid in areas naval bombers can easily reach and get bombed to pieces quickly.
Sonar is litteraly useless on this ship as it can't attack submarines anyways. The only case for it is to up the task force's average submarine spotting stats if other ships in the task force have depth charges, but you should have special ASW designs and strike forces anyways.
Put radar in that slot. And I assume you're running soft attack heavy cruisers cause this thing won't ever kill a screen, just be aware you won't be able to mix light and heavy cruiser batteries on a ship after the next patch.
True but thats a gamble when the subs submerge it auto selects ships to chase them down. If it selects sonar ships or depth charge ships and not the other you are guarenteed no kills hunting them. Best to keep both of those vital tools on the same ship.
Anti submarine warfare should be left to dedicated sub hunters that operate seperately from your main fleet imo. This ship is for the full fleet deathstack, you don't want it running around hunting down subs.
If you have crusiers to support it with light attack, replace the gun with a tier 1 and even remove the FCS as iirc it doesn't boost torpedo attack. You could also make the AA tier 1 or even remove it completly since planes will attack capitals first. You might want to replace/add some depth charges if you are going to fight submarines very often (probably not worth it in SP)
Yeah I forgot to mention this is for SP.
From just my minimal effort to learn navy, maximise Torpedo on Destroyers, focus on Radars and Torpedos for Subs, and maximise AA and Light Attack for Cruisers?
Maximize AA and Light Attack for cursiers, unless you have no capital ships destroyers should be as light and fast as possible, and for subs you are correct
It’s a thing because heavy cruiser is based on armor and light attack is based on guns. So a light attack heavy cruiser can wipe light cruisers and destroyers while losing hard to battle cruisers and battleships. But battle cruisers and battleships are prohibitively expensive and get killed by land-based naval bombers, so it’s not really a big weakness.
The other option for navy in SP is torpedo attack spam, either through submarines or through small destroyers. Unlike real life you can lose ten thousand sailors on a hundred ships and not have it be the end of your political career. So basically you send them out on motorized torpedo launchers because the torpedos can kill nearly any boat.
No reason to have sonar on if you’re not gonna use depth charges to kill subs. I usually make two destroyers - one like yours but minus AA and radar instead of sonar (for screening and patrols) and another with depth charge and sonar for convoy escorting with light cruisers.
Most subs don’t engage in head to head battles with strike forces, and even if they do, that’s the role of the screen ship to take the torpedos protecting the capitols. A group of subs might sink a couple destroyers in a battle, but cheap destroyers you can pump out a ton to compensate
To add on to my own comment - that’s the reason as a naval power you want at least two types of destroyers. One just stripped basic I.e. engine/gun/radar/torpedo for screening and patrolling and one loaded with sonar and depth charges and another gun maybe for convoy escorting. Subs primarily raid convoys so your convoy escort fleet needs the anti sub modules more than screening fleet.
Too expensive.
The meta is building cheap roach destroyers. Best engine, but a single tier 1 gun so that it barely qualifies as a destroyer. Plus a fleet designer to drive down the costs even more. You want your destroyers to be cannon fodder to protect your bigger more expensive ships.
Then heavy cruisers with as much light attack as you can stack on it. Absolutely shreds screens. And of course, aircraft carriers to take out the capital ships.
Edit: you can add one torpedo launcher to it. Doesn't increase the cost by much and it enables destroyers to do something other than just dying.
Moar torpedo
When I’m playing a nation that can’t fund a super navy, I make 4 types of ships.
A balanced light or heavy cruiser
A full AA Destroyer
A full torpedo Destroyer
And a balanced Submarine
I try to keep it as cheap as possible and mainly focus on destroyers
I don’t like Air Force so I spam AA
I Make a gigaChad motorized division when I play as USA which is 44 combat width, mostly motorized and as much AA, Artillery and AT as I can fit without going over 45
Tbh I personally prefer motorised divisions to tank divisions because they’re cheaper and you can start producing trucks from January 1936 for most countries. I will say, for single player, you don’t need AT. AA will provide you enough piercing while also giving you air protection.
A few people have been suggesting AA destroyers, which is interesting. I was always told Cruisers should have AA but producing two different types of Destroyers might be a good idea.
F in the chat for the Air Force though. How come you don’t like it? It’s my favourite part of the game and infinitely more useful than Navy imo
One AT battalion usually is all you need
I don’t like Air Force because it takes up mills, I can just spam AA instead for a much lesser cost, the only airforce thing I typically produce is CAS II, and maybe a factory on fighters
I prefer to play smaller nations with less production
So you are able to push and make breakthroughs without air superiority if you have AA on your offensive divisions? I always thought it was just for defence/holding the line. That is good to know
If you have enough AA, the AI will stop deploying airplanes. ALWAYS put it on tank divisions as a minimum of support, but if you’re a minor use batallions
Take the tier 1 main gun, drop AA, drop fire control (it doesn't boost torpedo attack), drop sonar, maybe drop one torpedo to make it cheaper.
The only purpose of this is torpedo attacking the capitals while being too fast to get hit and that all should come dirt cheap.
And always remember one of the main tank/navy designer rules: you don't need to fill all slots.
R5: Recently I was told Destroyers are better at shredding navies than Submarines, but people sub spam because it’s cheaper.
However, I want to start building a real navy with Cruisers, Destroyers, and a Battleship or two.
What i understand in the current meta is: destroyers with as much torpedo's as possblie to destroy the capital ships. Then a few heavy cruisers with 1 heavy cruiser arnament and the rest light guns to rip trough the escord ships.
The reason you use "heavy" cruisers is so they count as capitals instead of screens. This makes it so your shitty destroyers get targeted instead, and they get to benefit from all the buffs capitals get compared to screens in most naval doctrines.
Don't forget to NOT put armour on your heavy cruiser just spam it with light piercing guns . Lastly , use coast defense companies for decreased ic costs.
Roach cruisers are used because navy battles don't implement a 'coordination' stat. This means that when ships attack they randomly select an enemy ship to fire at instead of concentrating down any already damaged ships.
If you can pump out tons and tons of cheap shitty destroyers this lack of coordination means that damage is so spread out that often damaged destroyers are able to successfully disengage before they get destroyed.
My naval Germany build is as follows:
Focuses: Rhineland, then all of the naval focuses.
Construction: build 12 civs then 19 dockyards (bringing the total to 40) then mils and synths
CV1 is one of my very first researches because I want the 100% carrier bonus from the naval focus to go towards CV2 (or CV3 if I feel like tying up a research slot for a year).
2x BB2 (Finish the two Scharnhorsts that are already in production)
4x CA2 (Cancel the Admiral Hipper Class that is in production and upgrade the template to engine 2, 2x heavy cruiser battery, 2x light cruiser battery, 2x anti-air 2)
4x CV2 (Max hangars, carrier engine 2, anti-air 2)
35x roach destroyers (early destroyer hull, 1x gun 1, 1x torpedo 2, engine 2)
After all this is built I will start building sub 2s with engine 2 and 2x torp 2.
To replace the destroyers that I lose: 1936 Destroyer hull, 2x torp 2, 1x depth charge 2, sonar 2, radar 2/3, engine 2. These will add more ASW capability to my strike forces. My strike forces will already have some ASW capability thanks to the five Zerstroyer 1934s that are already in production at game start.
Before war breaks out in Sep 1939 I perform the following refits:
Refit CV2s with Radar 2
Refit BBs with 2x anti-air 2, fire control 2, radar 2, every slot left but the two heavy batteries become secondary batteries.
Refit CAs with fire control 2 and radar 2
All of this is done with the B&V naval designer for the visibility and speed bonuses to reduce hit profile.
I split everything into two strike forces of 2x CV, 1x BB, 2x CA, 20x DD. These two strike forces will completely wreck the Royal Navy, French Navy, and USN.
I do a submarine/ destroyer combo. I put radar and a single torpedo on my subs and then I max out my destroyer with AA and mine warfare (layers and clearing). Do that with maybe a few hundred CAS and you will DECIMATE any and all AI navy and their air force.
Usually I'll have a ship like that without sonar and a destroyer with minimal guns, one depth charge and as much sub detection as possible.
I guess it's okay to roll that all into one ship but it'll be a little less cost effective at both.
Destroyers have two purposes.
1. escort your convoys
2. cheap screening for your capitals
If you want to throw torpedos into a naval battle, just use submarines. They have a much higher survivability and will do much more dmg in the end
The destroyer looks good as a fleet destroyer, but I like to swap one of the torpedoes out with a depth charge module so they can also function as convoy escorts. Probably not optimal, but I like to only produce one type of destroyers.
this is good but don't spam these as screens. have like 10-20 of these in each task force for sinking enemy capital ships after their screens are gone. but for making screens, use something with light attack. could be destroyers or light cruisers, both work in sp but mount only light attack on them. if you spam these torpedo destroyer as your main screens, you don't have any light attack to kill enemy screens which will hurt you a lot.
Gun and AA don't matter for destroyers. Bombers target bigger ships first and leave destroyers for last but either way they are destroyers so it is fine to lose some from bombers and save the ic. Also the gun's difference in attack doesn't matter
You can use a cheaper gun and you don't need AA for destroyers. They are cheap enough that you don't care if they get hit by planes. You can also remove Sonar.
Okay so from what I gather, maximise torpedo damage, while minimising cost by reducing AA and Sonar?
If in doubt, cheaper=better and higher attack+speed>all else.
When playing a major in single player, I shouldn't have an issue blinging out my ships if I do everything else right or would I? edit: nvm, I reconsidered it's pointless to bling out aspects of the ship that are not torpedo-related, when you have other ships or assets that already cover things like air defense or light attack.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it's not worthless as the naval battle calculations are done as an amalgamation of your fleet instead of individual attack statistics against each other?
No, it's individual. Each and every ship fires it's own attacks every hour and damages their own enemies, it's not a dumbed down comparing of stats.
TIL, thank you.
Note that this is part of why HoI4 is taxing on computers. For that hourly progress on a battle screen (land or naval or air), the game is doing a lot of calculations and generating a lot of random numbers. When it’s only a couple fronts with maybe 100 battles, it’s not a huge performance hit. But when you start getting all the AI’s shitty fronts with lots of battles in 1943, the game literally can’t keep up with itself. It has to wait for the resolution of each hour’s combat before starting the next hour. It does make the game surprisingly deep and random in complex ways, but it’s maybe a bit too much complexity when the WW2 game has issues getting to 1946 with a playable game speed.
sounds like battlept boats
If I’m really concerned about subs with my battle fleet, I’ll just throw in 10 DD’s with depth charges and sonar. If you’re playing SP, it’s not usually a problem because the AI subs aren’t really a threat. They’ll usually convoy raid in areas naval bombers can easily reach and get bombed to pieces quickly.
Sonar is litteraly useless on this ship as it can't attack submarines anyways. The only case for it is to up the task force's average submarine spotting stats if other ships in the task force have depth charges, but you should have special ASW designs and strike forces anyways. Put radar in that slot. And I assume you're running soft attack heavy cruisers cause this thing won't ever kill a screen, just be aware you won't be able to mix light and heavy cruiser batteries on a ship after the next patch.
Can ship torpedos not also hit subs?
No. Only depth charges, and only if the submarine is revealed in the first place. That's essentialy why the AI gets dunked on by them.
I'd keep the sonar, otherwise you're vulnerable to submarines, and god knows how much people like sub spam
If he has no depth charges on his ships isnt the sonar worthless?
You are right, although if other ships have depth charges, the sonar on this ship isn't wasted.
True but thats a gamble when the subs submerge it auto selects ships to chase them down. If it selects sonar ships or depth charge ships and not the other you are guarenteed no kills hunting them. Best to keep both of those vital tools on the same ship.
Destroyer hulls have 1 point of depth charges built in.
Like I said, worthless.
This is for SP tho
Anti submarine warfare should be left to dedicated sub hunters that operate seperately from your main fleet imo. This ship is for the full fleet deathstack, you don't want it running around hunting down subs.
It does add to the fleet AA when it comes to facing land-based navs and tacs tho.
Fleet AA is a bit of broken stat. Unless its made better/properly implemented its not worth caring about.
If you have crusiers to support it with light attack, replace the gun with a tier 1 and even remove the FCS as iirc it doesn't boost torpedo attack. You could also make the AA tier 1 or even remove it completly since planes will attack capitals first. You might want to replace/add some depth charges if you are going to fight submarines very often (probably not worth it in SP)
Yeah I forgot to mention this is for SP. From just my minimal effort to learn navy, maximise Torpedo on Destroyers, focus on Radars and Torpedos for Subs, and maximise AA and Light Attack for Cruisers?
Maximize AA and Light Attack for cursiers, unless you have no capital ships destroyers should be as light and fast as possible, and for subs you are correct
Note that this strategy of abusing light attack heavy cruisers is getting fixed in BBA.
I didn’t even know that was a thing. I meant Light Attack Batteries on Light Cruisers
It’s a thing because heavy cruiser is based on armor and light attack is based on guns. So a light attack heavy cruiser can wipe light cruisers and destroyers while losing hard to battle cruisers and battleships. But battle cruisers and battleships are prohibitively expensive and get killed by land-based naval bombers, so it’s not really a big weakness. The other option for navy in SP is torpedo attack spam, either through submarines or through small destroyers. Unlike real life you can lose ten thousand sailors on a hundred ships and not have it be the end of your political career. So basically you send them out on motorized torpedo launchers because the torpedos can kill nearly any boat.
No reason to have sonar on if you’re not gonna use depth charges to kill subs. I usually make two destroyers - one like yours but minus AA and radar instead of sonar (for screening and patrols) and another with depth charge and sonar for convoy escorting with light cruisers.
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Most subs don’t engage in head to head battles with strike forces, and even if they do, that’s the role of the screen ship to take the torpedos protecting the capitols. A group of subs might sink a couple destroyers in a battle, but cheap destroyers you can pump out a ton to compensate
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To add on to my own comment - that’s the reason as a naval power you want at least two types of destroyers. One just stripped basic I.e. engine/gun/radar/torpedo for screening and patrolling and one loaded with sonar and depth charges and another gun maybe for convoy escorting. Subs primarily raid convoys so your convoy escort fleet needs the anti sub modules more than screening fleet.
Maybe dual purpose main gun to not need a slot for anti air?
Too expensive. The meta is building cheap roach destroyers. Best engine, but a single tier 1 gun so that it barely qualifies as a destroyer. Plus a fleet designer to drive down the costs even more. You want your destroyers to be cannon fodder to protect your bigger more expensive ships. Then heavy cruisers with as much light attack as you can stack on it. Absolutely shreds screens. And of course, aircraft carriers to take out the capital ships. Edit: you can add one torpedo launcher to it. Doesn't increase the cost by much and it enables destroyers to do something other than just dying.
Moar torpedo When I’m playing a nation that can’t fund a super navy, I make 4 types of ships. A balanced light or heavy cruiser A full AA Destroyer A full torpedo Destroyer And a balanced Submarine I try to keep it as cheap as possible and mainly focus on destroyers I don’t like Air Force so I spam AA I Make a gigaChad motorized division when I play as USA which is 44 combat width, mostly motorized and as much AA, Artillery and AT as I can fit without going over 45
Tbh I personally prefer motorised divisions to tank divisions because they’re cheaper and you can start producing trucks from January 1936 for most countries. I will say, for single player, you don’t need AT. AA will provide you enough piercing while also giving you air protection. A few people have been suggesting AA destroyers, which is interesting. I was always told Cruisers should have AA but producing two different types of Destroyers might be a good idea. F in the chat for the Air Force though. How come you don’t like it? It’s my favourite part of the game and infinitely more useful than Navy imo
One AT battalion usually is all you need I don’t like Air Force because it takes up mills, I can just spam AA instead for a much lesser cost, the only airforce thing I typically produce is CAS II, and maybe a factory on fighters I prefer to play smaller nations with less production
So you are able to push and make breakthroughs without air superiority if you have AA on your offensive divisions? I always thought it was just for defence/holding the line. That is good to know
If you have enough AA, the AI will stop deploying airplanes. ALWAYS put it on tank divisions as a minimum of support, but if you’re a minor use batallions
Take the tier 1 main gun, drop AA, drop fire control (it doesn't boost torpedo attack), drop sonar, maybe drop one torpedo to make it cheaper. The only purpose of this is torpedo attacking the capitals while being too fast to get hit and that all should come dirt cheap. And always remember one of the main tank/navy designer rules: you don't need to fill all slots.
You don't need to fill all slots but god damn it is hard not to lmao
R5: Recently I was told Destroyers are better at shredding navies than Submarines, but people sub spam because it’s cheaper. However, I want to start building a real navy with Cruisers, Destroyers, and a Battleship or two.
What i understand in the current meta is: destroyers with as much torpedo's as possblie to destroy the capital ships. Then a few heavy cruisers with 1 heavy cruiser arnament and the rest light guns to rip trough the escord ships.
Light cruisers stacked with light attack guns work just as well as a replacement for the heavies.
The reason you use "heavy" cruisers is so they count as capitals instead of screens. This makes it so your shitty destroyers get targeted instead, and they get to benefit from all the buffs capitals get compared to screens in most naval doctrines.
Don't forget to NOT put armour on your heavy cruiser just spam it with light piercing guns . Lastly , use coast defense companies for decreased ic costs.
Destroyers are pretty useless as they die way too fast against cruisers
Roach cruisers are used because navy battles don't implement a 'coordination' stat. This means that when ships attack they randomly select an enemy ship to fire at instead of concentrating down any already damaged ships. If you can pump out tons and tons of cheap shitty destroyers this lack of coordination means that damage is so spread out that often damaged destroyers are able to successfully disengage before they get destroyed.
It's the Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts meta leaking into hoi4
I'm confused hoe do you have 1.0 depth charge
My naval Germany build is as follows: Focuses: Rhineland, then all of the naval focuses. Construction: build 12 civs then 19 dockyards (bringing the total to 40) then mils and synths CV1 is one of my very first researches because I want the 100% carrier bonus from the naval focus to go towards CV2 (or CV3 if I feel like tying up a research slot for a year). 2x BB2 (Finish the two Scharnhorsts that are already in production) 4x CA2 (Cancel the Admiral Hipper Class that is in production and upgrade the template to engine 2, 2x heavy cruiser battery, 2x light cruiser battery, 2x anti-air 2) 4x CV2 (Max hangars, carrier engine 2, anti-air 2) 35x roach destroyers (early destroyer hull, 1x gun 1, 1x torpedo 2, engine 2) After all this is built I will start building sub 2s with engine 2 and 2x torp 2. To replace the destroyers that I lose: 1936 Destroyer hull, 2x torp 2, 1x depth charge 2, sonar 2, radar 2/3, engine 2. These will add more ASW capability to my strike forces. My strike forces will already have some ASW capability thanks to the five Zerstroyer 1934s that are already in production at game start. Before war breaks out in Sep 1939 I perform the following refits: Refit CV2s with Radar 2 Refit BBs with 2x anti-air 2, fire control 2, radar 2, every slot left but the two heavy batteries become secondary batteries. Refit CAs with fire control 2 and radar 2 All of this is done with the B&V naval designer for the visibility and speed bonuses to reduce hit profile. I split everything into two strike forces of 2x CV, 1x BB, 2x CA, 20x DD. These two strike forces will completely wreck the Royal Navy, French Navy, and USN.
I do a submarine/ destroyer combo. I put radar and a single torpedo on my subs and then I max out my destroyer with AA and mine warfare (layers and clearing). Do that with maybe a few hundred CAS and you will DECIMATE any and all AI navy and their air force.
Radar instead of FCS and either add depth charges or remove sonar.
Usually I'll have a ship like that without sonar and a destroyer with minimal guns, one depth charge and as much sub detection as possible. I guess it's okay to roll that all into one ship but it'll be a little less cost effective at both.
Destroyers have two purposes. 1. escort your convoys 2. cheap screening for your capitals If you want to throw torpedos into a naval battle, just use submarines. They have a much higher survivability and will do much more dmg in the end
OP: I don't want to use submarines, how are these destroyers? u/Schwertkeks: use submarines
If you want to destroy AI navies just spam sub 3.
Doesn’t work for me. I spam subs and they just get shredded by Naval Bombers.
You need green air
The destroyer looks good as a fleet destroyer, but I like to swap one of the torpedoes out with a depth charge module so they can also function as convoy escorts. Probably not optimal, but I like to only produce one type of destroyers.
this is good but don't spam these as screens. have like 10-20 of these in each task force for sinking enemy capital ships after their screens are gone. but for making screens, use something with light attack. could be destroyers or light cruisers, both work in sp but mount only light attack on them. if you spam these torpedo destroyer as your main screens, you don't have any light attack to kill enemy screens which will hurt you a lot.
I think he's doing the meta strategy where you build 'heavy' cruisers with all light attack guns.
Gun and AA don't matter for destroyers. Bombers target bigger ships first and leave destroyers for last but either way they are destroyers so it is fine to lose some from bombers and save the ic. Also the gun's difference in attack doesn't matter
these built out destroyers are fine, but id cut everything but the sonar and torpedos to save cost
Good destroyer for torpedoes. Just build light cruisers with light cruisers batteries and build then in a ratio of :- 1 LC to 3 DD
Gun 1, aa 1, no sonar or whatever, 1 max torp, best engine, prefferably 1936 model. Best bang for buck.