Bishop120

If we could tell a fleet to not just go to an area but to specifically go out and hunt another fleet. Hunt the Bismark!

I've had issues lately where in the narrow passage ways of some bays an AI ship will simply block whole fleets and they will never fight each other even after several months. I have had whole fleets of BC/BS trying to move through and a single AI ship will just sit and "block" them with its area of control. The Adriatic and Ionian sea, getting in and out of the Black Sea, Agean, areas of the Baltic, Red Sea.. Its like hey just start a battle already but no.. they just sit there facing off for months. I had a fleet of BattleCruisers stuck up in the Baltic when I invaded Central Russia. This single light cruiser wanted to get into port and I had a 2 fleets invading. I wanted the fleet of Battle Cruisers to get replaced by a newer fleet of larger dreadnoughts so I could go invade another area. New ships couldnt get into the area and the battle cruisers could not leave the area. We had sandwiched the light cruiser and nothing happened until after I completed the invasion and then moved one the fleet of battleships out of the way so the light cruiser could go to another port. 7 months of that light cruiser being sandwiched between 2 fleets.

How are yall getting the range found bonus and/or ship size bonus? I have never seen the range found bonus in my campaign play throughs and I havent seen the ship size bonus since alpha days.

Typically I would blockade a country and go ape in demolishing their transports.. Aka blockade every port and put multiple fleets out in every naval arena that could sink all transports. This will drop a countries supply efficiency. Does it guarantee beating them? No but every little bit helps. Also, yes I stack as much as I have available for every land invasion but to be honest I dont feel like it really makes a difference.

Yes you can wipe out/conquer all territories. The campaign will end if you beat all the major powers by either making them collapse or conquering them. Things really start to steam roll after a while and its not really balanced once you conquer over 100 provinces. One thing you can do is multiple naval invasions of the same province. If they only have 1 port then a single fleet can handle cover all the tonnage requirements for all invasions.. this is what I did.. every other turn I just say naval invade the same territory. Eventually one of the invasions will conquer the territory then I move on to the next province until a nation collapses or I conquered everything. I had a game go till I conquered over 200 provinces, had a GDP in excess of 5 trillion, monthly naval budget of several hundred billion.. yeah.. fun times.

Going on past 1950 and the late technology advancements start degrading??? I've seen the HP per ton go from 13 back down to 12, armor strength lose 2-3%, weights increase, .etc.. Are we just supposed to stop researching at some point??

You can override by using the rudder control in most situations where manual direction controls are not working for collision avoidance. I've found that helps me steer ships around other ships when the collision avoidance is being stupid (which is all the time now). Now other times when ships stop taking orders and start steaming off in the wrong direction I have to turn AI on then back off before a ship will listen to me.

Yeah they have stated that... thats why Im posting here that the AI does have anti-flooding cheats. With 0 bonus anti flooding the AI going from 17% float to 72% in 3 mins of game time (1 min of play time at 3x speed) is quite absurd. If they AI has no cheats then how can a ship that has a top speed of at best 1-2kns perform a near perfect sit and spin and avoid torpedoes? How is it that even if I have 1940s technology against 1890s technology the AI can still see my ships at the same ranges I see them? I should be able to engage them at ranges they cant even see me yet somehow.. AI can always see me before I can see them. Is the AI hard? Absolutely not. Its easy to beat the AI. My problem with the whole thing is that its just not fun or realistic to have the AI do some absurd things like have a TB refloat itself after taking a torpedo hit.. Those things should be split in half if they were ever hit by the smallest torpedo. Even as late as WW II TBs were wooden hulled boats. Yet this game has them taking torpedoes and 14in+ shells and still refloating themselves. If the game devs are going for true game mechanics then things like the gun accuracy and viewing distance of early years should be changed.. I get that realistically at the beginning of the 1900s ship to ship fire had about 2% accuracy rating at range.. but when you combine realworld accuracy with silly game mechanics where torpedo boats can get hit then refloat themselves is silly. Then on the flip side unless you make a near perfect torpedo run the AI can somehow make these ships swerve to avoid torpedos and perform sit/spin mechanics is just silly. How about how absurd it is that the AI can keep players in their aft firing arc when your chasing them and trying to get along side them.. they will always keep a turn that keeps you aft of them so that you have a high deflect angle on them.

Yes 6 in is my fav for CLs. I usually try to fit as many 6s on my CLs as possible without sacrificing anything else.. also I personally focus as much on single size weapons.. but in the case of this picture it was AI designed fleets from campaign.. You can see that the AI took 30 hits.. I believe the mission was protecting some transports against 2 enemy CLs.

That was the point of my post that the AI has a float cheat. They have 0 anti-flooding and yet somehow within 3 mins can completely empty out sections of the ship that were flooded going from 17% float to 72% float in less than a min of playtime (3mins * 3x game speed).

So the AI gets to pump out any non red section even if they have 0 anti flooding? I'm going to keep testing this.

I sank the CA in front of the Karlsruhe and it came to a full stop and waited till the ship finished sinking before it started moving again.

This is 1890.. first battle of a campaign with AI generated fleets. Notice 0 anti flooding in the components. No aux engines. First pic... I know that I had flooded the rear of this ship fully once before so I took a pic to show where it became unflooded (the red damage rear below water line). The middle compartment stayed flooded. Pic 2 Shows 2 mins later... Entire front half flooded.. every compartment fully flooded.. Now I know no matter how much anti flooding I have late game if my compartments get fully flooded I have never seen them unflood. I can stop them from flooding with Anti Flood and maybe I am wrong but I have never seen a compartment unflood after fully flooding. Ship only has 17% float. Now look at what we got 3 mins of game time later... just 3 mins.. 3 front compartments have unflooded themselves. 2 compartments stay flooded.. the center and the very front where the torpedo hit. From 17% float to 72% float in 3 mins!!! What type of pumps in the world could pump out that much water in 3 mins!!

Heres an example of an AI CL with 0 anti flooding capability which managed to completely refloat itself from .1% The only thing this CL has that isnt the bare minimum is it has standard bulkheads.

New mechanic/algorithm that stops friendlies from firing torpedos that hits friendlies is a big win.. Several times in the last patch I had ships to the rear of a line which would shoot torpedos when the lead ship was turning and it would hit them.. So this is a very welcomed fix. That being said.. Ship AI is still buggered to all hell.. AI/Screen/Scout ships still running off and doing nothing. Ships which are literally sitting back at spawn point and just spinning.. not moving.. just spinning circles. Screen and Scout ships still go straight off in the OPPOSITE direction of the enemy. AI controlled ships sitting at the edge of viewable range to the enemy and not doing anything because they are out of range. AI Ship design is still... wonky.. to say the least. Placing items that no one can place them if they designed manually (ergo turrets/torpedoes to close). Armor with no rhyme or reason. Drastically under cutting funnels. Using massive barbettes for 2in guns. Late 1940s CLs with 4in guns as the largest size and swarms of 2in guns. Finally.. The enemy AI's anti-flood ability. This is the most annoying thing I've ever seen. We are talking early CLs with no anti-flooding, no aux pumps, single hull, standard bulkheads; going from 1% float to 100% in a matter of mins. I couldnt believe it. I'd always suspected that AI had some flooding cheat but this is over the top.