Battle generator and heavy units as fallback

[Antediluvian Monster]

I'm sure most everyone has seen this in one way or another.

I'm fighting Italy as AH. Italy's initially superior fleet gets mauled, it ends blockaded. It puts all it's surviving cruisers out as raiders. Battle generator generates battles with cruisers. It gives me cruisers, it gives Italy Bs in absence of eligible cruisers. My Bs hang around in port, despite being superior in number and at least equal in speed to Italians.

I'm fighting France in SE Asia. France has 1 BC and some KEs. I have a balanced fleet 1 fast BB, 3 BC, bunch of heavy and light cruisers, a swarm of DDs. French gets the BC in battle, I get heavy or just light cruisers until I manage to sink the BC when the generator finally draws my heavy units for an invasion battle.

This is something that happens repeatedly.

So suggestion: when the battle generator is drawing heavy units as fallback to one side, it should do a check if it can or should include equivalent units for the other side. In those above examples I think the answer should be generally yes.

[captainloggy]

Do you have support force turned on? It seems to fit the description pretty well.

[mobeer]

I have had the same behviour many times, with support force turned on.

For example if player (Japan) has 3 B, 3 CL, 20 DD and Russia have 1 B, 4 DD in North East Asia then get battles like Japan 1 CL, 4 DD vs R 1 B. With early torpedoes having very short range none of the Japanese ships can really threaten the Russian battleship. Support forces if present are typically another CL and a few destroyers - the Japanese battleships do not get included.

[Antediluvian Monster]

Apr 22, 2020 1:14:54 GMT -6 captainloggy said:

Do you have support force turned on? It seems to fit the description pretty well.

Yes. Though not sure how it's relevant as no support force with heavy units spawned, they were all in port. Are you saying this does not happen for some reason when support forces are off? I.e. with support forces off, can you spawn a 18 knot B in cruiser battle even though you have cruisers available in active fleet?

(Edit) To clarify the issue a bit, the game will still generate missions that draw some specific types of ships (like cruisers) even when one side (at least) has no ships of that sort which are eligible for battle in that sea zone. In such situation the battle generator can opt to use some different kind of unit as fallback (for example, replacing cruisers with Bs or BBs). This is fine enough in itself, but it seems almost like there is no balance check for the other side when this happens. Which results in lopsides matchups when one side has imbalanced fleet with mainly heavy units in AF.