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Stackable ships - 1/10/2022 8:44:43 AM   
nats


Posts: 80
Joined: 5/28/2009
From: York
Status: offline 		Any chance we can have stackable ships in this game at some point? It really is the only thing I would like to see. The rest of the game is perfect I think. But presently battleships and carriers are far too easy to destroy without a screening fleet.

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RE: Stackable ships - 1/10/2022 10:58:11 AM   
CaesarAug

 

Posts: 160
Joined: 6/23/2015
Status: offline 		Not likely at present. But there are interesting ways to simulate more realistic naval warfare. Hairog’s Naval War Mod that I am incorporating to my home-made mod, increases naval zones of control, and attack/defence evasion percentages. Also, 0 carrier attack ratings for all surface units (except carriers, of course, and submarines). Makes a big difference than game-default parameters. I’m still testing and tweaking with these values but so far it plays out rather nicely.

< Message edited by CaesarAug -- 1/10/2022 10:59:37 AM >

(in reply to nats)
Post #: 2
RE: Stackable ships - 1/10/2022 12:52:53 PM   
nats


Posts: 80
Joined: 5/28/2009
From: York
Status: offline 		Sounds interesting. I do wish naval combat was better especially the scale which is just completely wrong compared to the scale of ground combat where you have a whole army division/ air squadron in a ground hex yet you have one ship in a naval hex? Really weird that is. Each carrier/battleship should include a whole fleet of tenders and escorts that improve their defensiveness against surface/sub attack it should be a heck of a lot deadlier to approach these targets. Even just as you say amending the game parameters to reflect this would be better than nothing. Sick of my battleships and carriers getting taken out by one or two flipping destroyers !!!

< Message edited by nats -- 1/10/2022 12:55:03 PM >

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RE: Stackable ships - 1/10/2022 6:05:30 PM   
kirk23


Posts: 2885
Joined: 10/15/2010
From: Fife Scotland
Status: offline 		Battleships made of glass has in my eyes made all Strategic command games a joke as far as the naval game goes. If one Battleship unit represents 2 or 3 Battleships plus defence screen then huge Battleships should be extremely hard to inflict anymore than 2 or 3 maximum strength loss per attack. The Naval game needs a complete overhaul and it appears that the only way this is ever going to happen is by Modding this aspect via the editor, to something that actually represents the realm of possibility. As for stacking that remains a dream only, many games have had unit stacking for more years that I can count, I just wish theses games would implement stacking as a matter of urgency. having 1 unit based at a port is ridiculous, when ports should be able to accomodate a great many ships at once of all different sizes from Battleships, Aircraft Carriers, Cruisers, Destroyers etc. for example games like Warplan handle this aspect with ease, but Strategic Command continue to have 1 unit only per port go figure.

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RE: Stackable ships - 1/10/2022 6:41:43 PM   
stryc

 

Posts: 174
Joined: 7/30/2012
Status: offline 		Gotta be honest, the naval war is why I stopped playing this. It's just-- bad. It's treated as merely and extension of the land war but with much higher movement ranges; but the thing is, turn-based systems abhor large movement distances often resulting in the kind of problems you see in this game. And that's even before we talk about no stacking which only serves to compound the issues.

I tried to play the game by adjusting the ZOC penalty on non-small naval units to its maximum. In vanilla the ability to steam in, hit the weakest ship, then steam out while all other enemy ships just stand around and watch is beyond daft. The net effect of this ZOC change being that if you move in for an attack you can't just steam off afterwards; you're stuck there for a possible counter-attack next turn if the defender so chooses. (If the game logic were tweaked to instead force a loss of all remaining action points when entering a 'strong' ZOC, all the better.) However, in order to make this work you have to reduce the ZOC effect of large ground units because the Editor only allows for two possible ZOC values for all unit types, both land and sea, and that affects the land war by either making large ground formations not 'sticky' enough or small formations too 'sticky'. (Essentially, you have to lump all land units into the same ZOC category, because high numbers stop land units from even entering enemy ZOC, thus losing the distinction between 'strong' and 'weak' ZOC in the land war.) Screwing up the ground war to make the naval war less stupid wasn't a comfortable compromise.

(As it happens, I am playing WW1 with the above ZOC modification. It still messes with the ground war but with the scale in that game being more suitable, and the nature of that war itself, the net effect on the ground war was slight. The naval war is still poor but it is slightly less poor c/o no hit'n'run nonsense.)

(in reply to kirk23)
Post #: 5
RE: Stackable ships - 1/11/2022 9:40:08 AM   
firsteds

 

Posts: 52
Joined: 3/24/2021
Status: offline
quote:

In vanilla the ability to steam in, hit the weakest ship, then steam out while all other enemy ships just stand around and watch is beyond daft.


One possible solution might be to have capital ships have an automatic defensive fire for adjacent hexes. This is already built in to 'defensive artillery fire' and helps suppress land attacks, so maybe it is an easier tweak for the devs.

Time for an unpopular opinion: I think the naval warfare is pretty good in SC. Each unit represents a small battle group, and this works for BOTH attack and defence. Some of the comments don't reflect this.

There are lots of things that work really well in SC naval warfare that seem realistic to me. Ships get beat up by bad weather. There are very occasional 'damage evaded' miracle escapes (e.g. behind smoke). Ships need regular resupply. Tech upgrades make a huge impact. Convoy raiding and protection is realistic (i.e. boring). Transports and amphib attacks are super risky. Surprise ambushes throw plans into disarray. Air power, especially maritime bombing is important (subject to weather). Ports provide a little safety but are not entirely immune to attack. I could go on.

Finally, I am glad it is not a stacking game. Nice clean lines. The game prioritises strategic decisions, like research and upgrades and purchases. I think stacking would make it a completely different game. I presume there are other options out there.

(I am mainly an MP player and I learn something new re naval warfare in every game - whereas the land game can be a bit repetitive.)

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RE: Stackable ships - 1/11/2022 12:24:43 PM   
stryc

 

Posts: 174
Joined: 7/30/2012
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: firsteds

quote:

In vanilla the ability to steam in, hit the weakest ship, then steam out while all other enemy ships just stand around and watch is beyond daft.


One possible solution might be to have capital ships have an automatic defensive fire for adjacent hexes. This is already built in to 'defensive artillery fire' and helps suppress land attacks, so maybe it is an easier tweak for the devs.

I recall mentioning somewhere that aspects of the Air war, in terms of intercept and escort, had potential for use in some form in the Naval war. The Artillery response seems of a similar vein.

It's okay to like the game. (I wouldn't call that an unpopular opinion!) There's a lot to like about the non-combat aspects of the Naval game.

(in reply to firsteds)
Post #: 7
RE: Stackable ships - 1/11/2022 3:11:22 PM   
CaesarAug

 

Posts: 160
Joined: 6/23/2015
Status: offline 		Yes, that is a possibility the developers could include as a new feature to naval combat.

I agree with you in that non-stacking in SC makes for very clear lines, i.e., a player knows exactly what unit is in exactly what hex. Personally, I really like this clean simplicity.

For comparison, I come from the Hearts of Iron series, from HOI 1 to HOI 3. HOI 4, however, is different for me in one crucial aspect: I am never sure exactly what land, air, and naval units are located exactly where on the map. This had never happened to me before in previous HOI iterations. I mean, I have a general notion of where they are, but the way the provincial map is drawn up and the UI, it seems very confusing. Granted, I just need to get used to this map and the UI, but it is proving to be an unneeded challenge that I never had before, like I said.

That is precisely where the beauty and clean simplicity of non-stacking in SC really shines for me. Mind you, I am not against some sort of stacking per se, but the current non-stacking is perfectly fine.

As for what seems to us players as non-realistic naval combat, the powerful editor can be used with careful thought as to moddable possibilities to mitigate this in some way. I am doing continual testing in my home-made mod, based on ideas by Hairog’s Naval War Mod.

Giving all naval units (except submarines, motor torpedo boats, transport, and amphibious craft) a naval ZoC of +6, plus a default 12 (or 18) action point stat for all naval units (transport and amphibious ships are accordingly adapted), really limits those long-range hit and run tactics. But I’m also testing with a default 18 action points, which provide more flexibility in naval operations… In addition, all naval units (so far, except submarines) start off with a 25% naval attack/defence evasion positioning bonus, subject to 5 research levels of 5% each increase in those stats (naval warfare doctrine or my new carrier operations doctrine, respectively) for a potential 50% maximum attack/defence evasion positioning.

In addition, all surface naval units have a permanent 0 carrier attack stat (except carriers, of course, and submarines), which simulates the virtual impossibility of carriers being damaged and/or sunk by surface naval gunfire. True, this workaround is not perfect, but it is a historical fact that except for one or two extremely rare exceptions, due to exceedingly rare blunders, carriers were hardly ever sunk by shipboard naval gunfire, i.e., ships never got in range of enemy carriers, except for those extremely rare instances that simply do not constitute the norm, by no means.

Still, the beauty of the game resides in the fact that surface units can still manage to close in to an adjacent hex and “attack” the carrier, but in reality is actually “defending” itself by the supposedly “attacked” carrier’s aircraft! This is an absolutely cool dynamic! So, a surface unit can never really damage, much less sink, a carrier with its 0 carrier attack stat, (because it cannot really close the battle range, as it were) but it can damage the “attacked” carrier’s aircraft, reduce its aircraft strength to theoretically 0, and reduce 1 supply point with each “attack”, and possibly entirely disarm and disable the carrier to prevent naval cruising, etc.

Several other naval and carrier stat modifications, and of course, further testing for game balance, etc. But so far, naval warfare has improved considerably.





< Message edited by CaesarAug -- 1/11/2022 4:42:33 PM >

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Post #: 8
RE: Stackable ships - 1/11/2022 3:34:30 PM   
stryc

 

Posts: 174
Joined: 7/30/2012
Status: offline 		I found the Evasion for Naval war to be rather unsatisfactory. Not only because units in Port can evade all damage (which alone is reason enough to re-think its value) but also because evading ships can return maximum damage to the attacker. The number of times I saw an enemy BB evade all damage and yet still return 4 damage (which cannot be evaded) made me turn the thing off. A unit should not be able to evade all incoming attacks and still be able to return maximum fire as if that's all it's doing.

I'm not all that keen on giving carriers near-magical survivability just to enforce conformity with a statistical extrapolation that ignores the in-game situation. Just because carriers weren't trapped IRL doesn't mean they should never be in this game, and if they are trapped in-game it shouldn't take months to sink them.

< Message edited by stryc -- 1/11/2022 3:50:26 PM >

(in reply to CaesarAug)
Post #: 9
RE: Stackable ships - 1/11/2022 6:07:35 PM   
CaesarAug

 

Posts: 160
Joined: 6/23/2015
Status: offline 		Well, these are just ideas to help mitigate what seems to be un-realistic naval combat, working within the game’s parameters.

The naval evasion issue you mention I think can be offset—potentially, that is, not statistically always—with identical percentages set for defence and attack. Or if not identical values, at least some values for both attack and defence, favouring one or the other, etc.

As for ships in port, there is an adjustment in the editor research screens whereby you can modify the base percentage chance (and percentage increments per respective bombing level, i.e., naval attack for ships, land attacks for planes) for bombing damage done to units there, along with the resource hex they’re in. In the latest version of his War in the Pacific Mod, Elessar2 has set the base chance from standard game-default 10% to 40%, which greatly improves the base chance of damaging ships in port.

As for carrier “invulnerability”, like I said in my earlier post, setting all surface naval units’ (except carriers and submarines) carrier attack value to 0 is not a perfect solution. But it does simulate the virtual “impossibility” of surface units even getting within gun range of carriers. But if they do manage to move into an adjacent hex, they can still “attack” the carrier’s aircraft, damage those carrier planes, and possibly get damaged by them. This is just historical realism if only in a practical sense.

While even in the real war, it was certainly theoretically possible for surface units to close within gun range and sink carriers, it just did not happen, except for those extremely rare instances. The proposed modification merely eliminates the theoretical possibility but still maintains the historical reality of practical carrier “invulnerability” by surface units.

Another issue with surface units vs. carriers is the fact that IF such units could get within gun range, carriers would be in serious trouble. But historically this only took place once or twice, the HMS Glorious comes to mind, being sunk by the battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. BUT if this happened, it was because of the Glorious commanding officer making an incredible blunder, so much so that this incident would not have taken place at all with normal, prudent carrier tactics. It was an extremely rare exception.

In SC, a way must be found to simulate the great difficulty of surface units getting within gun range of carriers. BUT at the same time, IF they do manage it, then carriers should find themselves in a precarious position. Balancing these two parameters somehow, would be even more historically realistic. Perhaps increasing a carrier’s ZoC? Food for thought…

< Message edited by CaesarAug -- 1/11/2022 6:59:40 PM >

(in reply to stryc)
Post #: 10
RE: Stackable ships - 1/11/2022 8:24:01 PM   
stryc

 

Posts: 174
Joined: 7/30/2012
Status: offline 		I get it, you can only do what the tools allow. In many instances it's a matter of picking your poison and different folks will be tolerant to different compromises. For me, I sometimes rate mad edge cases a little too highly.

I enjoy games that allow me to engineer results that were rare, or even didn't happen, not games that railroad me into certain results no matter what. The 'zero carrier damage' thing enforces the latter and will not encourage me to explore the former. And for this one Grognard, that's a compromise I can't tolerate.

On balance, given all of the various flavours of poison available to us here, I find myself preferring to play WW1 instead with maximum ZOC penalty on all major naval units. It fixes more than it breaks. And it's simple to apply no matter how many game updates there are to come. That being said, if someone is able to craft a naval mod that fixes more problems than it creates I'll very gladly give it a whirl, and I'll keep my eye to the ground for the one you're working on.

(in reply to CaesarAug)
Post #: 11
RE: Stackable ships - 1/11/2022 9:37:24 PM   
Mithrilotter

 

Posts: 216
Joined: 2/18/2016
Status: offline 		I have played the Strategic Command system beginning from SC1 through SC3. The SC1 single Axis-dual Allied ships (for play balance) naval system for the European Theater worked reasonably well for the small numbers of ships in the European Theater. Carriers were greatly improved in SC2 Pacific. The single Axis dual Allied ship naval system works well in the beginning of the war in SC2 Pacific, but falters later in representing larger ship numbers well. Land combat has corps and armies. I suspect that naval units should be single Axis-dual Allied ships and Task Forces. I wonder if a hybrid current system/aircraft movement system should be adopted for naval units. For example, a Task Force assigned to Intercept that automatically responds like Fighters do. Perhaps, Carriers should get a partial evasion rating against naval gunned ships. The US did retreat from Midway because they were legitimately concerned about being caught and sunk by Japanese Battleships in night combat.

This is a for profit game, not a charity. Hubert and Bill's support of this game system is absolutely astounding. The release version of World at War is over four years old. I don't know of any company that supports older software like Bill and Hubert does. Perhaps in a future DLC or in a new game release, some of these requested changes could be made. I wouldn't expect Hubert and Bill to do even more work for free.

Single stacking does have some quirks. But it makes the game so much more playable.

(in reply to stryc)
Post #: 12
RE: Stackable ships - 1/11/2022 10:45:37 PM   
Bo Rearguard


Posts: 492
Joined: 4/7/2008
From: Basement of the Alamo
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Mithrilotter


Single stacking does have some quirks. But it makes the game so much more playable.


Yeah, it's the simplicity and cleanness of this design that draws players in. I guess it's the old realism versus playability argument. You need to be really careful when purposely making your game harder to play in the pursuit of realism. The less playable your title is, the less people who are going to want to play it and ultimately be your fan base.

I think of War Plan, a game which is often billed as a more realistic version of Strategic Command. In that game you can stack ships at sea and any number of ships in a port (and you need to burn oil points to run them). Seems right. However, I found naval battles to be the least engaging and most obtuse aspect of the game, because it was by far the one that seemed the most on autopilot. You couldn’t attack directly, you just moved into the same area as the enemy (or moved in the general area the enemy might move) and hoped that range and recon would do what you wanted. But for a small note in the “last turn’s battle log” section of the menu you wouldn't even know that a naval battle had taken place, let alone that you had won one.

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