Fix the AI's fleet compositions

[alsadius]

I just fought a battle (1928, VL fleets) where the enemy fleet was 12 BB, 3 BC, 1 CVL, and no screen whatsoever. Naturally, I sunk every single one of them. This was in their home region, and it was the bulk of their fleet. If you look globally, he had over two dozen destroyers. And yet not a single one was in his home region with his main fleet. 

I know the UK has a lot of foreign commitments, and it needs ships to cover its foreign service needs. Likewise, it's wartime, so he needs trade protection. But if you don't have enough ships to screen your fleet, you should be building more. This war has been going on for north of three years, and it's not like I killed all of his light units last month, so he's had time. And yet, no new light units. (He's building a whopping 3 DDs. But he has 4 BBs on the go.)

Please make the AI's fleets stop being stupid and top-heavy. The first turkey shoot is amusing, but at this point it's just sad. It's actually ruining my enjoyment of the game, because all I need to do is get a fleet battle, tard out the AI, and massacre every large unit he has. There's no challenge in it. 

[mycophobia]

I could be wrong but I think AI still scrap smaller, older ships way too often in favor of refitting or just retaining them in RTW 2. In my recent Canada(Very Large) game UK had 60+ destroyers around 1906-07, but even without a war, in the next decade it dropped to something like 40s. In my earlier Russian game(Large Fleet) I think by the 30s even big AI powere like UK don't keep more than 20-30 DDs. This means that after a couple engagement the AI quickly run out of DDs and does not replace them with any vigour.

RTW generally have a less number of light ships since the need to cover more grounds with small ships are somewhat more abstracted, but the AI simply isn't maintaining a healthy number of DDs to really absorb any decently long wars. On top of this they still like to scrap small ships(even though in rtw 2 large ships seems to stay around a lot longer), and does not build in response to losses in DD. I feel at least the AI should begin spamming DDs if their number gets dangerously low, but as is it seems AI always just go the submarine route.

[Blothorn]

And a lot of DDs will be sucked into TP duty, particularly early in the war before converted KEs are built; a 50% advantage in numbers will often translate to 100% in the AF. I think there is a pretty clear optimal strategy of retrofitting irreparably obsolete destroyers for TP duty that the AI isn't taking advantage of.

[dorn]

Jul 10, 2019 16:01:12 GMT -6 Blothorn said:

And a lot of DDs will be sucked into TP duty, particularly early in the war before converted KEs are built; a 50% advantage in numbers will often translate to 100% in the AF. I think there is a pretty clear optimal strategy of retrofitting irreparably obsolete destroyers for TP duty that the AI isn't taking advantage of.

There could be some degradation of ASW value over time for such destroyers. In history WW1 destroyers were usually not good for ASW duty.