Regarding how Light Cruisers are assigned roles in Battle

[dia]

Is there any conditions that governs how a light cruiser is assigned roles and formations in battle? I'm in the middle of a design study for two light cruiser designs, one a general purpose cruiser and the other a dedicated AA cruiser. The AA cruiser is smaller, but 1knot faster as it's intended screen my fast carriers. Now that I think about it though, will the battle generator more likely assign that class to the scout role since it's the faster of the two?

I don't support being able to choose which ships go into battle, but I strongly advocate there be some kind of mechanic that allows players to "influence" (increase the chance) how the battle generator assigns roles and escorts. Almost like an option in the design screen similar to when choosing preferences for aircraft prototypes. Choose your preferences role for the ship: scout, support, screen. Preference for parent formation: independent, carrier, battle, cruiser. Maybe even one for if you consider the ship front line or reserve. You would only be able to change these preferences during a rebuild and obviously the built in battle generator conditions would always override them. They just increase the likelihood.

[secondcomingofzeno]

I would like some explaining from the devs how the battle roles are set.

Like, what makes a cruiser more likely to enter X area? Speed? Size? Gun number?

How about battleships? I find the enemy always has 1 more battleship or more than me, is it because mine are larger? Slower? Etc?

Without this information it's just annoying.

[hawkeye]

I wholeheartedly agree with this proposal.

Thinking about this some more, how about adding sub-classes to the current classes of ships, so one could chose (from a drop-down menu?) the sub-class, like, if building a destroyer, it could either be a fleet-destroyer (DD) or a destroyer-escort (DE), for cruisers, there could be light/heavy fleet cruisers (CL/CA), anti-air cruisers (CL/CA-AA) and scout-cruisers (CL/CA-SC) and those are just the ones I can come up with off the top of my head.

I also agree that the battle-generator shouldn't respect the designation 100% of the time, there should still be a chance of those ships to be assigned to missions/formations that don't correspond to their "tag", but mostly it should and there should probably be some missions, specific sub-classes should be excluded from - I can hardly see myself sending out a flotilla of DEs to conduct an offensive operation on their own, for example.

[dia]

Mar 27, 2020 4:11:17 GMT -6 hawkeye said:

I wholeheartedly agree with this proposal.

Thinking about this some more, how about adding sub-classes to the current classes of ships, so one could chose (from a drop-down menu?) the sub-class, like, if building a destroyer, it could either be a fleet-destroyer (DD) or a destroyer-escort (DE), for cruisers, there could be light/heavy fleet cruisers (CL/CA), anti-air cruisers (CL/CA-AA) and scout-cruisers (CL/CA-SC) and those are just the ones I can come up with off the top of my head.

I also agree that the battle-generator shouldn't respect the designation 100% of the time, there should still be a chance of those ships to be assigned to missions/formations that don't correspond to their "tag", but mostly it should and there should probably be some missions, specific sub-classes should be excluded from - I can hardly see myself sending out a flotilla of DEs to conduct an offensive operation on their own, for example.

I thought of the sub-classes idea too, but I think it would be too restricting and make ships too specific. At that point you might as well create new classes of ships. The "preference" method would just be a way to tell the battle generator what your intentions were when you designed/rebuilt a ship. I would support being able to name and assign sub-classes as just a visual only thing though. For example instead of seeing "Japanese Old Light Cruiser" in the info, you could assign it a sub-class "2nd-Class" and see "Japanese 2nd-class Light Cruiser" instead.

[seawolf]

Cruisers with Dual-Purpose AA as their main armament are more likely to be carrier escorts and less likely to be in normal combat

[wknehring]

Mar 27, 2020 14:20:02 GMT -6 seawolf said:

Cruisers with Dual-Purpose AA as their main armament are more likely to be carrier escorts and less likely to be in normal combat

Yes, this is my experience, too. Especially since they made it possible to build some Atlanta-class-style CL-AA in patch 1.14 or 1.15.

[dia]

Mar 27, 2020 14:20:02 GMT -6 seawolf said:

Cruisers with Dual-Purpose AA as their main armament are more likely to be carrier escorts and less likely to be in normal combat

Of course, that was even in the release notes too. I had completely forgotten. Though I'm still curious what other factors there are for cruisers.

[cabusha]

Because of the vagueness of force selection, I really try to limit the variety of designs I field. Often I'll have just Fleet CLs and Colonial CLs. Later on the Fleet CLs are all replaced with fast, escort CLs with DP guns so that they can serve scout or escort role. Getting more specific than that just leads to frustration. Costs a bit more, leading to larger generalist designs, but works okay.