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Post by generalvikus on Feb 24, 2020 21:28:15 GMT -6
While the forces available for each side in my current game were always reasonable (sometimes I get more ships, sometimes they do, sometimes the number is equal), I have noticed a worrying tendency where my heavy cruisers are consistently matched against their battlecruisers, even if my battlecruisers significantly outnumber my heavy cruisers. This was the case in ~8 generated battles, with ~5 in a row, so while a larger sample could be useful, it might be something that you would like to look at. What kinds of battles were these? How many ships of what type on either side, compared to how many ship of each type available in the particular regions?
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Post by jwsmith26 on Feb 25, 2020 18:20:39 GMT -6
Here is a graphic showing every major battle that took place in a war between Austria-Hungary and Italy. The war lasted for about two years in 1921 and 1922. There were no official "Fleet battles" because Italy consistently refused every fleet battle during the war, but many of these battles were described as "Battle size: Fleet". For each of the seven battles I show the relevant section of the game's battle result screen. I have also recapped the results (in the bubble), in which I also list the capital ship strength for each nation at the beginning of each battle. (right click and open in another tab to see these tables more clearly.) As you can see, in this war there was no obvious tendency to make both sides equal in battles. I have included some information about air strength and activity in these battles. I was victorious in these battles in large measure because of the presence of one or both of my only two CVLs. The Italians never built any carriers but maintained a fleet of up to 6 AVs. You'll note that even though it was the early 20s aircraft from my two light carriers managed to achieve 32 torpedo hits while my land based air added an additional 9 torpedo hits and 9 bomb hits in the seven battles (hits are highlighted in orange). The Italian land based air presence was relatively close to the strength of my land based air but managed just a solitary bomb hit in all seven battles. (Of the Austrian bomb hits, 2 were made by PBs and 2 by airships. :-) 98% of the air losses in these battles were operational losses on both sides. AA assets were almost non-existent and fighters were rarely engaged. I thought you guys might find this interesting - I've included an example of the data I collect from each battle below. (You know - playtesting - recording data like this over a series of battles and wars allows me to tweeze out trends that are not always obvious.) The image shows the section of my spreadsheet that records air activity. This particular table is from battle 5. These tables become much more populated with interesting data after the 1930s.
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Post by generalvikus on Feb 25, 2020 21:28:37 GMT -6
@jwsmith
Great stuff! As far as I can see, there are three obvious points of departure in your battles regarding the absence of 'flattening' in your battles:
1. Relatively small numbers of capital ships available for both sides. 2. Relatively small numbers of capital ships engaged on either side. 3. Fleet 'size' battles instead of 'fleet battles.' 4. The predominance of battlecruisers.
To clarify the last point - were the Italian battleships which got engaged fast battleships? What kinds of battles were these - 'cruiser engagement' , 'battleship engagement', 'convoy attack' etc?
Finally, what's the rough breakdown of capital ships available to either side - how many battlecruisers vs battleships did either side have available?
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Post by jwsmith26 on Feb 25, 2020 22:41:08 GMT -6
The fleet size was set to "Super large", though of course we are dealing with AH and IT, so the fleets were still relatively small. I understand that the OP was specifically referencing "Fleet battles" but that has not been the case for several of the other postings here that seem to find a leveling of sides even in battleship battles. If we are limiting the discussion to "Fleet battles" only, then obviously my information offers nothing to the conversation, as the Italians refused to fight even one in this war.
The Italians started the war with 7 BCs and 7 BBs while my Austrians had 6 BB and 6 BCs. I gained one BC during the war and the Italians gained 3. This was our 3rd war so most of the Italian ships were new, but there were no fast BBs in their fleet. The battles were mostly fleet sized cruiser battles, fleet sized bombardment battles, and fleet sized convoy battles. There were no battleship engagements. I believe only one of the listed battles was styled a "Large" battle. During the war I refused all medium and small sized battles.
In all of the types of battles fought in this war the game tends to favor the deployment of BCs over BBs. In examining the battles in order it can be seen that the AI refused to commit battleships until I had destroyed almost all of his BCs. The battle description "fleet sized" appears to be relative to the size of the fleets involved. The Italian and Austrian fleets are quite small in this world compared to other fleets. For instance, the British currently have 49 capital ships and even Russia has 27.
Speaking from my own experience beyond this single war I have not found that fleet battles tend to be evenly matched. But I'm afraid that I can't offer the same level of proof that I have presented here for actual "Fleet battles", which remain a relatively rare occurrence.
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Post by garrisonchisholm on Feb 25, 2020 23:40:23 GMT -6
For my far-less-diagnostic part, I played a Germany game from 1900- ~1950 and had one fleet action. The Americans foolishly sent a fleet into the Baltic to raid shipping off Danzig- which honestly is about as brazenly American as this game can get. But when I say Fleet, I mean they outnumbered my entire fleet mustered in my home waters.
Labeled a Fleet action and having a potential 50+ DNs and 10+ carriers present, my smaller fleet was present in its entirety and the US had about 2/3s of their fleet, though still handily outnumbering mine. However the US Navy was pushed into an unsupported sea zone well before the time period of large fleet-trains, so it might be entirely plausible that the US fleet was limited for reasons of supply.
In the broad scope of nearly 2 years of constant testing I will say though that until I saw this thread title I would not have had the notion that this is an issue. I suspect it will take a lot of documentation to establish any patterns, especially given the rarity of accepted Fleet actions, recording how many capital ships are left out of the battle rosters when the battles are drawn up as compared to forces in-zone.
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Post by evil4zerggin on Feb 26, 2020 1:33:29 GMT -6
As you can see, in this war there was no obvious tendency to make both sides equal in battles. For me at least, the concern is not so much that battles are too equal when both sides have similar numbers of ships available, but too equal when one side has significantly more ships available than the other, as this affects the quantity-quality tradeoff. In this case, it was only in the last three battles that one side started having a larger number of ships to draw from, but the numbers actually sent to the battle still remained about equal. But with only a few battles it could be just chance. Admittedly I don't have hard records so far, but my impression is that: - Fleet battles seem to be more likely to give the side with more ships available an actual numerical advantage in battle.
- For other sizes of battle, both sides tend to be capped at similar numbers regardless of ships available. So if you have very few ships available, you will tend to get fewer in battle, but having a lot of ships doesn't really give you more in battle on average.
[/ul] Probably a good test would be to pick USA and spam large numbers of low-cost ships of each type, and see if this translates to a numerical advantage in battle and how much so.
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Post by dorn on Feb 26, 2020 3:06:46 GMT -6
I do not know in case of fleet battles (really need to be tested), but my first game as UK starting in 1920, I build a lot of smaller cruisers having numerical advantage.
Almost in all cruiser battles I have more small cruisers against enemy large cruisers, quite often enemy has one strong cruiser and I have at least 2 smaller cruisers, sometimes even with escorts. A lot of time battles were quite similar to Battle of the River Plate. These battles were really quite fun.
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Post by jwsmith26 on Feb 26, 2020 14:47:29 GMT -6
Battleship engagements lend themselves to mathematical analysis. This was especially true of the period around 1900 when essentially the entire world had settled on a standard battleship form. Through these calculations it was determined that, in a battleline engagement, given equal firepower and staying power, if one side had a advantage of even 20% it would inevitably result in the destruction of the weaker line. Not only that, but it was likely that the stronger side would emerge from the contest relatively intact. The same would apply if equal forces met but one side was able to initiate fire just a few minutes ahead of the other, resulting in a reduction in the enemy line's firepower of 20% before they could engage. The resulting reduction in firepower would lead to the tardy side's annihilation. This made longer range and higher speed decisive attributes. The same could be said for greater accuracy or a higher rate of fire. Of course, those were mathematical exercises and ignored such game changers as surprise, maneuver, weather, critical hits and training, etc. Nevertheless these calculations were well known at the time and colored every potential engagement. Knowing that even a slight enemy advantage could lead to the complete defeat of your force made every commander quite cautious. This reality is reflected in the AI's decisions when deciding whether to accept a fleet battle. It was historically rare that a fleet commander would risk his fleet against a stronger foe. When the AI is faced with an obviously stronger fleet it will refuse the battle, a totally historical and reasonable decision. If the AI is faced by a roughly equal force it is much more likely to accept the battle. This is very much in keeping with the decisions that a commander in charge of his nation's most valuable naval asset should make. When the opposite is the case and a human is making the decision about accepting a battle, an experienced player will often be willing to take on what will likely be a stronger force. This is the situation that will most likely result in an unbalanced Fleet battle. I recently posted an example of an unequal fleet battle which illustrates the above situation. ( nws-online.proboards.com/post/66599/thread) My Austrian fleet at the time consisted of 7 predreadnoughts. The Italians had 13 predreadnoughts and almost as many CAs that invariably accompanied their battleships. This was a highly unbalanced "Fleet battle" that resulted because I, being a human player, made a very unlikely decision from an historical perspective. In my place any admiral in 1905 would have headed for base at his fleet's best speed. I chose to fight for the single reason that I know I can (usually) defeat the AI. And there is the only situation where you are likely to experience a large differential in strength during a Fleet battle. The AI is seldom stupid enough to place his fleet at risk from a larger fleet. Only the player will be that dumb.
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Post by generalvikus on Feb 26, 2020 23:02:36 GMT -6
Obviously nobody is questioning that the AI does or should decline unfavourable battles; but then again, we had Jutland in history, and we should have the potential for the same in game.
Therefore, the only question is whether or not under any circumstances the weaker side will tend to have an artificial advantage when battle is given.
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Post by evil4zerggin on Feb 26, 2020 23:21:46 GMT -6
I attempted to test this using a quantity-based USA as I proposed. However, this proved to be inconclusive due to the AI refusing battle outright. Despite the difference in numbers, all of my ships were minimum-size: 6000 t BBs, 4100 t CAs, 2100 t CLs, 200 t DDs. So doing battle would have been quite reasonable for Russia, and certainly better than simply being blockaded to a surrender or revolution for free. Yet, outside of a few blockade runners, they refused to do so. I reloaded to the beginning of the war and tried again, to the same result.
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Post by dorn on Feb 27, 2020 8:18:22 GMT -6
I attempted to test this using a quantity-based USA as I proposed. However, this proved to be inconclusive due to the AI refusing battle outright. Despite the difference in numbers, all of my ships were minimum-size: 6000 t BBs, 4100 t CAs, 2100 t CLs, 200 t DDs. So doing battle would have been quite reasonable for Russia, and certainly better than simply being blockaded to a surrender or revolution for free. Yet, outside of a few blockade runners, they refused to do so. I reloaded to the beginning of the war and tried again, to the same result. If nothing changed from RTW1, it is known that AI evaluates number of ships, not their displacement and quality. So having a lot of small ships giving ability to blockade and have fleet which AI fears and does not engage in combat.
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Post by dorn on Mar 15, 2020 15:50:04 GMT -6
I am playing as Germany with 1920 start so my fleet is much smaller. I am in war in France, I had several fleet battles, cruiser battles (battlecruisers), carrier battles and in all of them French had more capital ships than me and sometimes almost double of mines.
So I do not believe its equal as I win all the battles but by very small margin with quite high losses.
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