What's the point of patrol Mission if the fleets don't patrol anything?

[The Cunning Fox (raZoleg)]

A fleet in Lisbon let in a full enemy invasion in the south of Portugal like it was nothing.

[RRG_181917]

i dont know, ive often found patrol to be useless. convoy hunting is best for stopping invasions, convoy defense for protecting them, and S&D for hitting warships. no clue what the point of patrol is because it rarely catches anything.

[trismigistus]

Originally posted by 秘密:

i dont know, ive often found patrol to be useless. convoy hunting is best for stopping invasions, convoy defense for protecting them, and S&D for hitting warships. no clue what the point of patrol is because it rarely catches anything.

Perhaps the intent of the Patrol Mission is to disperse the fleet in order to prevent its wholesale destruction by removing it from the field of battle as a potential duck in a barrell.

Were not the Aircraft Carriers stationed at Pearl Harbor sent on patrol for that very reason? Imagine if they had sent the Battleships on patrol with them.

[The Cunning Fox (raZoleg)]

Originally posted by trismigistus:

Originally posted by 秘密:

i dont know, ive often found patrol to be useless. convoy hunting is best for stopping invasions, convoy defense for protecting them, and S&D for hitting warships. no clue what the point of patrol is because it rarely catches anything.

Perhaps the intent of the Patrol Mission is to disperse the fleet in order to prevent its wholesale destruction by removing it from the field of battle as a potential duck in a barrell.

Were not the Aircraft Carriers stationed at Pearl Harbor sent on patrol for that very reason? Imagine if they had sent the Battleships on patrol with them.

The whole point of the order patrol is to deny the enemy entrance into certain areas. Therefore, this order completely misses the point.



As always, paradox hides behind complexity to create a game where everything is okay at face value, but when you delve deeper you get bugs, schizophrenic design decisions and typos. As it is with modern scandinavic art - complex, ugly and useless, but very very expensive.

[spike2071]

If the convoy carrying troops was unprotected, then the patrol order would prioritize other fleets with combat ships. I think. I never use patrol. Convoy raiding would have tagged them, though.

I like to use my worthless subs as convoy raiders in the same zones as my real fleets. The subs will attack any invasion fleets, and if enemy ships appear to defend them, that will draw my big boys.

The other problem is that naval battles take months. I've had my battleships slugging it out with the enemy's fleet for months, while their invasion fleet sails right by. I always rotate my fleets so I have one on standby.

I've never played a Hearts of Iron that had a decent naval system. I don't know what one would look like, either.

[The Cunning Fox (raZoleg)]

The point here is that the Naval system would have been okay, were it not so clustered and if the game wasn't "semi-realtime".

An empty coast, a fleet of transports, some subs and a few destroyers and four-five divisions. Nobody in sight. But you can't land it.

You send a couple of ships to the coast, you scout it (I presume ships have binoculars). You can't land it.

No, but sure enough about a week later, Italy sails half its fleet down the African coast to deny you your landing, a perfect military operation that would have worked like a raid is therefore completely destroyed. Italy has enough time to beat the fleet and pull its forces back into Europe to deny me an assault on its peninsula.

I've seen how fast the fleets travel across the globe judging by the time that passes on the clock of the game. That's the speed of a good jet fighter.

[trismigistus]

Originally posted by razoleg:

Originally posted by trismigistus:

Perhaps the intent of the Patrol Mission is to disperse the fleet in order to prevent its wholesale destruction by removing it from the field of battle as a potential duck in a barrell.

Were not the Aircraft Carriers stationed at Pearl Harbor sent on patrol for that very reason? Imagine if they had sent the Battleships on patrol with them.

The whole point of the order patrol is to deny the enemy entrance into certain areas. Therefore, this order completely misses the point.



As always, paradox hides behind complexity to create a game where everything is okay at face value, but when you delve deeper you get bugs, schizophrenic design decisions and typos. As it is with modern scandinavic art - complex, ugly and useless, but very very expensive.

I would disagree the patrol mission is meant to deny the entrance into certain areas. No doubt while on patrol combats can take place in the event competing ships are calculated to meet. Its a big ocean and not that easy for ships to close directly to combat. Major maval combat primarily happens when both sides decide to make a stand. Otherwise its more a chance encounter with not very many ships on either side.

Watch the tutorial. Fast forward to 59:12 Naval Combat. It explains the different naval options along with when to use specific ones very nicely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHSoFCc1ozo&feature=youtu.be


I have been playing these types of games for nearly 40 years. This one is near as good as it gets. Complaining about issues that have to be simulated with abstract mechanics is indicative of someone who does not have enough understanding of game theory, and programming. Reality imposes constraints on what you are able to do. Each team of designers has to make decisions to make the game work. Look it how much trade and economics have changed since HOI2 and HOI3.

Enlist in a real war if you want total realism.

[The Cunning Fox (raZoleg)]

It might be a big ocean, but it's a small coastline.

anyway, the game crashes every time I try to progress past a certain point. Might be Mac stability issues, but it's not working.

Originally posted by trismigistus:

Enlist in a real war if you want total realism.

Being in an artillery regiment in Caucassus during peace time was enough for me. I want a good representation of the war, which is what this game claims to be. It is expensive, surely it must provide at least stability and some logic, and not some sort of a complex mechanism that even the devs (according to their forums) don't know anything about.

I am not asking this game to make me coffee, but at least provide what it claims to do. With stability. That would be enough to make me happy.

You may insinuate as per my personal qualities, but I am comparing the sum of money I've paid to the broken product I got that hides its invalidity behind a hefty price tag and unecessary complexity.

[Philokèkos]

I wish I could give you hints but I'm completely clueless about navies and naval warfare in this game. It's the reason why I never played US and quit after five minutes of playing UK and Japan, everything about navies is extremely clumsy and cumbersome. I never figured out why AI can launch invasions from the opposite corner of the map with 2 warships and I can't set my invasion accross the Channel because of "naval superiority" even though I have 3723640 aircrafts over it and the whole Kriegsmarine sailing in it.

[The Cunning Fox (raZoleg)]

Originally posted by Philokèkos:

I wish I could give you hints but I'm completely clueless about navies and naval warfare in this game. It's the reason why I never played US and quit after five minutes of playing UK and Japan, everything about navies is extremely clumsy and cumbersome. I never figured out why AI can launch invasions from the opposite corner of the map with 2 warships and I can't set my invasion accross the Channel because of "naval superiority" even though I have 3723640 aircrafts over it and the whole Kriegsmarine sailing in it.

What I've been able to decipher is that "Naval Superiority" somehow factors in airplanes too. Might be that. I've just built two giant warships with DD support and curbstomped the entire Kriegsmarine.

The point of the thread, really, is that Patrol mission is useless.

[Team Triss]

They were patrolling the sea tile(s) around Portugal and not just sitting in port in Lisbon, right? The tile was green?

I've been having good successes with my fleets detecting and attacking things while on patrol, but I have also been noticing from the few battle logs I've checked that destroying things isn't as common as maybe it should be. It seems like things get damaged slightly and then combat breaks up, but without knowing what the convoy strength was going in I couldn't say if I'm sinking entire trade/transport fleets or not.

[Philokèkos]

It's exactly that, air superiorty adds multiplying factors to ship performance, it's why I never understood why my Kriegsmarine can't send them to the bottom even though I have air superiority by a very large margin (and more than 1000 bombers on naval attacks mission to boot).
What do you mean by DD support ? How many of them ? Way I experienced it, destroyers should be renamed destroyables, in a big naval engagement they fall like flies.

[Team Triss]

Originally posted by razoleg:

Originally posted by Philokèkos:

I wish I could give you hints but I'm completely clueless about navies and naval warfare in this game. It's the reason why I never played US and quit after five minutes of playing UK and Japan, everything about navies is extremely clumsy and cumbersome. I never figured out why AI can launch invasions from the opposite corner of the map with 2 warships and I can't set my invasion accross the Channel because of "naval superiority" even though I have 3723640 aircrafts over it and the whole Kriegsmarine sailing in it.

What I've been able to decipher is that "Naval Superiority" somehow factors in airplanes too. Might be that. I've just built two giant warships with DD support and curbstomped the entire Kriegsmarine.

The point of the thread, really, is that Patrol mission is useless.

I think I read on here in passing that Naval Superiority is just having more ships in a tile then the enemy, and each ship counts equally as one, regardless of size. Having Air Superiority in the region makes ships count as two.

Edit: https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Battle_plan#Naval_Supremacy

[The Cunning Fox (raZoleg)]

Originally posted by Philokèkos:

It's exactly that, air superiorty adds multiplying factors to ship performance, it's why I never understood why my Kriegsmarine can't send them to the bottom even though I have air superiority by a very large margin (and more than 1000 bombers on naval attacks mission to boot).
What do you mean by DD support ? How many of them ? Way I experienced it, destroyers should be renamed destroyables, in a big naval engagement they fall like flies.

Destroyers, I found, draw the fire of enemy ships. They also have a good chance to detect subs (depending on what you've researched). I use them as a shield while my big guys put big holes in things.

I think I know why.... Some admirals can detect stuff better than others, that fleet on Patrol was on Patrol mission, but in Lisbon port and with no Admiral attached.

Yet I've got a giant flashing warning "Major sea invasion imminent". So, it is weird that they haven't seen like 50 transport ships coming down on my coast.

[Philokèkos]

This gives Germany a very hard time if it wants to launch Seelion before the US gets involved, as you have to redirect some resources before the war to build up lots of cheap screens to give you some chances of success - anyway, you WILL lose many many of them in the Channel. Invading through Denmark and Norway is easier but you lose precious time securing the area duron Weserübung, precious time during which the Raj may turn major, thus making a fast victory impossible. Time is of the essence when playing Germany and the more I try, the more I think you just can't do everything you need in time.

[trismigistus]

Originally posted by razoleg:

It might be a big ocean, but it's a small coastline.

anyway, the game crashes every time I try to progress past a certain point. Might be Mac stability issues, but it's not working.

Originally posted by trismigistus:

Enlist in a real war if you want total realism.

Being in an artillery regiment in Caucassus during peace time was enough for me. I want a good representation of the war, which is what this game claims to be. It is expensive, surely it must provide at least stability and some logic, and not some sort of a complex mechanism that even the devs (according to their forums) don't know anything about.

I am not asking this game to make me coffee, but at least provide what it claims to do. With stability. That would be enough to make me happy.

You may insinuate as per my personal qualities, but I am comparing the sum of money I've paid to the broken product I got that hides its invalidity behind a hefty price tag and unecessary complexity.

Perhaps you should wait til a game is half price before buying it. I always do. Suggest you go back to HOI-3. I had a blast with it. Its dirt cheap. Plenty of free Mods too.