Defending against enemy DDs

[ewaldvonkleist]

I am talking about the time 1910 to 1950 here.

1) Does anyone have success defending against enemy DD torpedo attacks using DD and CL forces on AI control? Did you find a setting where they will reliably counterattack enemy light forces and screen your capital ships with sufficient safety-clearance before them against enemy attacks?

2) How is your general approach to defence against torpedo attacks? Do you simply stay out of the "blue circle" of the enemy light forces? Do you manually lead DD and CL divisions to attack enemy light forces? Do you rely on capital ship secondaries to do the job? Which are your preferred calibres?


Looking forward to hear from you!

My answers:
1) No, I haven't, and find this quite frustrating. In fact, I feel like I have to lead most light forces manually or accept that they will be of very limited value except for very particular circumstances.

2) I invest a lot of secondaries. Until around 1906, they are very effective against enemy DDs. But my feeling is that the torpedoes and DDs win the race against gunnery. Gun accuracy vs. DDs falls very quickly with distance and as DDs get heavier, they often need several hits for a ship kill or at least mission kill.
I occasionally manually lead my light forces against enemy light forces but I don't really enjoy the necessary micromanagement since you need to evade torpedoes and chase little DDs all the time.

[blarglol]

Edit: misread timeframe, I am talking a few years earlier, around 1900. Will report later on if similar.

I personally find that destroyer divisions supporting larger vessels tend to hang back *behind* their charges, instead of interposing themselves in between as you might expect.

The exception is sometimes if *enemy* DDs make a run at the larger vessels. I think the "escort AI" in general is afraid (rightfully so) of getting too close to vessels with larger, longer range guns. So they tend to hang back.

For the record, this is with "support, screen, scout," etc. I often find that all my lighter vessels are blobbing around as my heavier ones move in to engage, which is frustrating because the whole point of formations is to maximize firepower while protecting more valuable ships.

Occasionally it seems to "work," but largely needs to be personally managed yourself...

[Nicholas]

Typically, I'll find my destroyers set to support my capitals, in this example Bs, while my CLs are set to screen. In that case my DDs are hanging back of the main line and not doing much while my CLs might be shooting back while I'm focused on my Bs and the enemy line, also Bs in this case. Now, while I say maintaining your distance against enemy ships carrying torps is a good idea I tend to close the distance so my secondaries can score hits on the enemy. In this case we'll have the enemy DDs make a torpedo run on my Bs. In that case I'll turn away from the DDs and ideally my secondaries, CLs and DDs are shooting at the approaching DDs. I find that it doesn't take long before the enemy DDs turn away and retreat with one or two of them slowing down and/or stopping entirely.

Now does that mean my DDs and CLs on AI control are successful in defending against enemy DD torpedo attacks? Honestly, I have no idea. I don't pay much attention to what my lighter ships are shooting at when I'm commanding my capital ships, and I'm more focused on what the main guns on my capitals are shooting at rather than the secondaries. Enemy DDs may fall to either my capital's secondaries or my CL/DD main guns, I just don't pay much attention to who's sinking DDs.

What I do know is that my capital designs mount as many secondary and tertiary guns as I can shove into them. A dozen 6 inch and another dozen 3/4 inch guns are the bare minimum I'd put in. Legacy designs get German/Austrian 3 inch guns as tertiaries since they're quality 1 guns with a, presumably, high rate of fire combined with the stopping power of German/Austrian 6 inch quality 0 guns. After a few weight reducing techs new capitals get 4 inch tertiaries. And once we've got to the 1920s every ship of mine, excepting DDs and KEs after certain techs, get as many DP secondaries as I can shove in them. Now I wouldn't mind 5 inch secondaries since those are in between the 6 and 4 inch guns in pretty much all of the above characteristics (rate of fire and stopping power), but before swapping over to 4 inch guns as secondaries (on BBs) they must be tied to a secondary firing director, into order to vastly improve accuracy.

All in all, I don't think my DD and CL forces on AI control are successful in defending against enemy DD torpedo attacks. Repelling enemy DDs typically fall to my capitals secondary guns.

[dia]

I experimented with setting CLs on screen and DDs on support but the battle generator rarely if ever stuck to my division organization and ultimately I found the screen role was mostly useless anyway. As soon as I set my capital ships above cruise speed the "screens" drop back no matter how much faster the screening ships could go. My strategy is basically to expect my capital ships to get torpedoed at least once a battle if a chase is present.

[ewaldvonkleist]

Thanks for the replies, keep them coming!

Aug 17, 2023 19:51:00 GMT -6 dia said:

I experimented with setting CLs on screen and DDs on support but the battle generator rarely if ever stuck to my division organization and ultimately I found the screen role was mostly useless anyway. As soon as I set my capital ships above cruise speed the "screens" drop back
no matter how much faster the screening ships could go. My strategy is basically to expect my capital ships to get torpedoed at least once a battle if a chase is present.

From my understanding, the trigger for dropping back on screen is the presence of spotted enemy ships nearby. Sometimes this makes sense, sometimes it doesn't. During bad weather, I want my DDs screen in front of my capital ships. But the moment one enemy ship is spotted, they simply leave their station and drop back. 

Occasionally it seems to "work," but largely needs to be personally managed yourself..

This is 100% my experience as well.

[endwerk]

Unless you are maneuvering your light forces yourself, they are almost entirely useless for mainly the reasons that have been observed here: They don't screen or support the capital ships against enemy light forces and they are absolutely atrocious at sinking opposing light forces. One would think that an LC armed to the teeth with 6" guns would be able to annihilate enemy Destroyers, but they simply don't.
I am pretty sure that's also because the AI has some significant bonuses or is cheating in other ways. A while ago I posted a screenshot in the bug report section of an enemy torpedo run on my main line of battle at around 1920. Two enemy Destroyers charged against three Battleships armed to the teeth with secondaries, as well as about a dozen light forces tasked to defend the capital ships from exactly that kind of scenario. Despite facing somewhere between 50 and 100 4-6" guns, both enemy Destroyers managed to make it out alive with only light damage while inflicting MORE damage on my Light Cruisers with their puny 4" guns.
I am assuming that it's because of the horrendous malus for multiple ships firing at the same enemy, rendering any kind of superior numbers completely useless. I frequently see numbers below 1% hit rate against enemy light forces. It could also be a fault in the target priority of the ships, trying to fire their secondary guns at bigger ships at range while ignoring the absolutely lethal Destroyers charging the own line.

And as people mentioned before, the "Screen" role is largely useless. I tend to put all my Destroyers on "Support" role purely to keep them in a nice line ahead formation so that I can make my own torpedo runs on the enemy with maximum efficiency. My defense against enemy torpedo runs is to simply turn my capital ships away from the charging light forces and hope that they take sufficient casualties in the pursuit or eventually turn around again.

It is somewhat silly that my capital ships are retreating from enemy light forces, but that is the only reliable way I found to not get your capital ships sunk by torpedo spam.

Aside from that I skip Light Cruisers entirely because until the proliferation of missiles, they don't really serve a purpose. In battles involving only light forces, you want Heavy Cruisers instead because they can easily mow down enemy Light Cruisers. They can mount a similar array of 4" or 6" guns to fend off enemy Destroyers, serve as AA escorts and hunt down crippled capital ships. And it helps my sanity to only have to control 3-4 types of ships during battles.

[ewaldvonkleist]

Endwerk, I agree with all your points with the exception of AI cheating.

The problem in my eyes is that torpedo range grows quickly while gun accuracy grows far less. The accuracy penalty for ships firing on DDs appears to be independent of the DDs displacement. So the 1920s DDs are now very hard to hit despite being big, are very fast and carry 9+ torpedos.

I agree that the number of battles where a small number of DDs successfully charges against a wall of secondaries absurdly high.

[11226p]

1) The most reliable method to defend against destroyer attacks with your light forces is imo flotilla attack. You have to turn it on and off so the destroyers don't run into their doom, but I've found that flotilla attack commands are useful when a bigger number of opposing destroyer is getting close. This and doing and turning away slightly with the battle line usually works out well enough.

2) Riding the edge of the blue circle works for me for early torpedoes, but it becomes impractical quite quickly as you're pushed outside your effective firing range. What I do is keep a decent distance so the travel time for the torpedo is high enough and doing course changes every 5+ or so turns.

I put all CLs on screen or scout and DDs on screen/scout/support since I don't want to micro more than 1-2 groups.

[middayravin]

1)No.
Light force always retreats to the rear of the formation automatically,when they line up.but kinda better at screen formation

2)Turn!Atlanta!and AIR POWER!
The torpedo targeting mechanism is very stupid. When I conduct a torpedo attack, I can only aim at the escort destroyer or the ship at the end of the enemy's battle line for a suitable angle, because the enemy ship will definitely turn.captital ships keep their distance when chasing
Some capital ships and cruisers built in the 1920s will equipped with five-inch twin guns directly,And save some tonnage for DP rebuild. So in short I built some Atlanta and Dido ahead .Fleet cruisers should be versatile anyway.The task of destroying enemy cruisers can be given to the 9-inch heavy cruiser.
And a air strike can cause some ships to break out of formation

[director]

It is always possible to rebuild an older light cruiser with twin 5" mounts (assuming you have researched them). They do make a decent counter to a DD attack... assuming your escorting DDs and CLs haven't gone off somewhere and left your capital ships exposed, which seems to happen regularly.

I have found that angling slightly away from a parallel course helps - if the enemy is steaming at 45 degrees, for example, I'll run at something between 50 and 60 for as long as I can have good firing solutions. This makes him close the range more slowly and complicates his torpedo attack since I am moving slightly away.

[holoween]

Ive recently started a campaign where i never take direct fleet control. I put my fleet under ai controll at the start of a battle and only ever order rally/disengage and flotilla attacks. Together with maximising 6" secondaries i can only remember one instance where i ever got hit by a torpedo and that was during a fairly chaotic night battle.

[ewaldvonkleist]

Aug 24, 2023 8:36:35 GMT -6 holoween said:

Ive recently started a campaign where i never take direct fleet control. I put my fleet under ai controll at the start of a battle and only ever order rally/disengage and flotilla attacks. Together with maximising 6" secondaries i can only remember one instance where i ever got hit by a torpedo and that was during a fairly chaotic night battle.

This is quite plausible. Under full AI control, divisions are good at avoiding torps, and the light forces also seem to do a decent job. At least they are not as passive as they are if their lead division is under player control. 

[ewaldvonkleist]

What is the best calibre vs. DDs?

Early game DDs die quickly from 6in secondaries, but once the DDs are >=1000t, you often need many shots. Do you like to use bigger calibres for DD hunting later on?

[director]

I believe there are several calibers that will work. 6" are slower-firing but pack a bigger punch, 5" are a good compromise and 4" have a light punch but you can mount a lot of them.

My capital ship designs tend to use 5" secondary battery (unless I have a +1 quality 6" or 4" gun) until the air age. Then I move to either 5" or 4" depending on which gun is better and/or gets twin-mount capability first.

My current US fleet has a mix of 4" or 5" twin DP mounts (24 to 20 guns for 4", 20 to 16 guns for 5") and they do OK... with the AI sniping with torpedoes at 12k-plus ranges, you aren't going to get many hits on them no matter what weapon you employ.

[haggar]

I have the same problem with my destroyers running off in the opposite direction of the enemy forces. Sometimes really far off. The AI destroyers run around the enemy capital ships and sortie toward my ships. They are always close and their torpedo's will pass cruisers and hit my B's.