Surprise attacks on Admiral difficulty

[lumpy]

I exclusively play on Admiral difficulty, since I really like the idea of not being in total control of every part of the fleet, akin to a real life commander. There are some issues with this, though. When doing surprise attacks, especially early in the game, my destroyers tend to full steam ahead into the enemy port, only to instantly retreat the moment they spot a single ship shilouette, without firing any torpedoes whatsoever. If I am particularly unlucky, my destroyer skippers, who presumably got briefed on how a port surprise attack is supposed to work, get tricked by a decoy merchant before they even reach the enemy port, which usually leads to them either retreating, or focusing and swarming the single merchant ship and thus effectively calling the whole thing off. 

I realize this gets a lot better once torpedo tech provides some more range so the skippers can take potshots from afar, but the iconic surprise attack this game mechanic is probably modeled after, the battle of Port Arthur, happened in 1904. In the early game, it currently seems pretty hard to pull off an actual attack without manually commanding each destroyer division, because of the rather fainthearted behaviour of the AI. Night training and torpedo training didn't help, either. Any advice? Am I overlooking something? I feel that the AI could need a bit of tweaking in this regard. Its understandable that destroyer skippers are very cautious in the early game, but during a surprise attack, they should be a bit more eager to actually, well, surprise attack. 

[garychildress]

May 22, 2019 12:41:37 GMT -6 lumpy said:

I exclusively play on Admiral difficulty, since I really like the idea of not being in total control of every part of the fleet, akin to a real life commander. There are some issues with this, though. When doing surprise attacks, especially early in the game, my destroyers tend to full steam ahead into the enemy port, only to instantly retreat the moment they spot a single ship shilouette, without firing any torpedoes whatsoever. If I am particularly unlucky, my destroyer skippers, who presumably got briefed on how a port surprise attack is supposed to work, get tricked by a decoy merchant before they even reach the enemy port, which usually leads to them either retreating, or focusing and swarming the single merchant ship and thus effectively calling the whole thing off. 

I realize this gets a lot better once torpedo tech provides some more range so the skippers can take potshots from afar, but the iconic surprise attack this game mechanic is probably modeled after, the battle of Port Arthur, happened in 1904. In the early game, it currently seems pretty hard to pull off an actual attack without manually commanding each destroyer division, because of the rather fainthearted behaviour of the AI. Night training and torpedo training didn't help, either. Any advice? Am I overlooking something? I feel that the AI could need a bit of tweaking in this regard. Its understandable that destroyer skippers are very cautious in the early game, but during a surprise attack, they should be a bit more eager to actually, well, surprise attack. 

What is "Admiral Difficulty"? Am I missing some toggle buttons somewhere? All I ever see are the different fleet sizes, small, medium, large and very large; and the check box for "AI Advantage". 

[deeznuts]

In preferences menu you can set the difficulty level which changes how much control you have over the fleet, easiest is Captain, where you can control every single ship, next is vice admiral where you can control every squadron, and then finally admiral mode where you only control the flagship squadron(and potentially a scouting force and/or a carrier force)

[calico]

DD behaviour is exactly the reason i can't play anything but captains mode. They just keep running away after making contact, even when everything is in their favor. CL with 8 DD escort against enemy BC and a single DD escort.. DD locate enemy and then try to hide behind the CL. They could just engage the BC point blank and sink it easily, but nope, better hide.
I did have some luck with screens in rear admirals mode, DDs would occasionally fire a spread of Torps if the enemy was getting really close. But even that is unreliable, unless the target is really slow (aka heavily damaged and/or sinking).

[warlock]

I am not a big fan of Admirals mode because I find it less realistic in my opinion. If was an Admiral of a fleet, I might not have direct control but I absolutely could order my DDs to rush in to within 500 yard of the enemy and torp them, order my CA's to break contact with the enemy or order my CLs to chase down a heavily damaged enemy CA fleeing the battle. With Admiral mode on, no matter what I would order them to do, they are doing their own thing like I don't exist. There is no way that is realistic.

[lumpy]

May 22, 2019 15:13:54 GMT -6 warlock said:

I am not a big fan of Admirals mode because I find it less realistic in my opinion. If was an Admiral of a fleet, I might not have direct control but I absolutely could order my DDs to rush in to within 500 yard of the enemy and torp them, order my CA's to break contact with the enemy or order my CLs to chase down a heavily damaged enemy CA fleeing the battle. With Admiral mode on, no matter what I would order them to do, they are doing their own thing like I don't exist. There is no way that is realistic.

You got a point there. I wish there was some sort of middle ground between Admiral's and Rear Admiral's mode. What you are saying is valid, Admiral's mode indeed provides almost no control at all, other than setting divisions on 'support', 'core', and so on, and this seems to have little immediate effect. I lost one of my most modern BCs last night because it marched right into the enemy battle line, and there was little I could do to stop them from this folly. Also, it doesn't really make sense I can't order my divisions to conserve ammunition, shift their fire, or attack a specific target. Rear Admiral's mode provides a bit too much control for my taste, though. If I want a light cruiser division to break and attack, I'd like them to do so on their own once I gave the order (which I cannot in Admiral's mode), I don't really like the ability to micro them, as this tends to make things a bit too easy in some cases, and it also feels kind of wrong to be able to do so in the first place when I am supposed to be the Admiral. I wish Admiral's mode would give just a tad bit more control over my subordinate divisions, just in the form of general orders like 'target X' or 'move to engage Y', or 'hold fire'. All these things could be realistically done via signaling.

Regarding the OP, I found out that just using a very large number of destroyers helps the issue. The AI seems to be calculating if it stands a chance in torpedo attacks, and when surprise attacking with too few boats, the AI seems to determine that an attack would be a bad idea. Using a large destroyer force is kind of a workaround in the early game, when destroyer skippers are very hesitant to actually do torpedo runs.

[southkraut]

Even just some basic behaviour flags like aggressive/cautious would be nice.