Trade protection Question

[voelfgar]

In the tips.txt file, it says "Before submarines are common, ships on trade protection should be mostly cruisers. After that it should be some cruisers and mostly destroyers and corvettes."

My first question is, when they say cruisers are they talking about any cruiser or one of the 2 major types of cruises?  Secondly, what are some good starting percentages or ratios of ships types to put on trade protection.  I am assuming where they are located at is also key as well.

I've pretty much been doing just corvettes.

Thanks for any insights into this aspect of the game.

[asdfzxc922]

It's a pretty bad tip. Cruisers on TP (any kind, even BCs) have a higher chance to intercept or chase off raiders, but the effect is pretty minor (because surface raiders were never very effective to begin with) and every cruiser on TP is a cruiser that isn't available for battles. I guess you could use it to keep those terrible 3000-ton CLs away from combat?

[voelfgar]

That's why I'm asking. Although going all corvettes, the opposing side's raiders do take out a lot of merchant ships.

[wlbjork]

Aug 31, 2023 18:27:48 GMT -6 asdfzxc922 said:

It's a pretty bad tip. Cruisers on TP (any kind, even BCs) have a higher chance to intercept or chase off raiders, but the effect is pretty minor (because surface raiders were never very effective to begin with) and every cruiser on TP is a cruiser that isn't available for battles. I guess you could use it to keep those terrible 3000-ton CLs away from combat?

Surface raiders are extremely effective, capable of nobbling up to 6 merchant ships/month and don't run the risk of sinking neutral shipping and thus raising tensions.

Better still, you never lose more than 1 raider/month.

[colprice]

Late game (ie SSM), I found that adding a couple of SSMs to a KE was pretty effective, now it has ASM capability plus AS capability. Add it good radar and it’s really effective

[ewaldvonkleist]

Does your enemy use surface raiders?
If not, use the weakest possible ships on TP. If yes, add a few CL/CA/BC depending on the type of enemy raiders. They fend off attacks on trade ships automatically with considerable attacks, and occasionally you get a raider-intercepted battle to outright destroy enemy raiders.

If your enemy uses subs, you need lots of high ASW ships on TP.

[voelfgar]

Most of my KEs have decent ASW, so, would a good strat be to put 1 cruiser on TP in each sea zone or wait until the enemy raiders attack to see where they are located and then assign a cruiser to that sea zone

[pedroig]

Note WHERE you need TP (Area overview) and then where you WANT it (sunk merchant reports). Speed is the most important factor in determining the TP ships "fending off" Raiders. Having small 3k fast 6" CL's turn away 16" 30 k BC's is always a nice thing to see for example. Small KE'scan work as TP as well, as long as they are set in the region for their FS requirement.