More naval interface problems

[Vigor]

problem 1: So, one of my pacific carrier fleets had 4 ships which needed repairs but the rest of the fleet really needed to go do something. All 4 were already queued up to repair. I moved them into a 2nd task force so the rest of the fleet could go do stuff.

Moving them into a 2nd task force cancelled their repairs... Fine... I clicked the button to make them repair but that detached each ship in the task force and they started going to guam and wake and stuff when they are already at a dockyard! If I wanted them to do something besides sit the ___ there and wait I would manually send them to guam or wake (from manilla)

So, I cancelled all of their trips to guam or wake or wherever and figured they would start repairing on their own if i just let them sit there (hopefully).

Problem 2: The reason i wanted to get the fleet out of port was to train some of the fighter groups that were rookies. But, they weren't permitted to train while in port. So I figured i would send the fleet south a little and patrol while the air groups trained. The ships don't need any training. Unfortunately it wouldn't let me set air groups to train while the fleet is on patrol either. The admiral must be autistic or something. So, again I think "FINE..." I will put the fleet on hold while they train. By hold I mean the anchor icon. But clicking the anchor icon caused the fleet to set course for manilla dockyards and it wouldn't let me change the destination. How does "hold" mean "go somewhere"? Manilla dockyard wasn't even in the same sea zone!

This is driving me nuts. I'm wondering what sort of gymnastics i am gonna need to do to get these aircraft off the ship so they can finish training then get them back on. I am not sure that is even possible. I am wondering how so many rookie planes got on these ships because I was pretty sure I set the reserve naval aircraft to train so they wouldn't get assigned to a ship as raw rookies.

I am afraid that even if it is possible to move the planes to manilla airbase to train it would cause them to become flights of 100 planes and they would even keep losing experience as they received a steady influx of green reinforcements.

Problem 3: About half the aircraft on this fleet are trained to regular. Unfortunately, it won't even allow me to set a portion of the flights to train. I tried selecting only the planes that needed training and clicked on train but it set them all to train anyway. I even tried SHIFT+clicking which the tooltip says "Hold Shift and click to enable Pilot Excercises until air wing is fully trained" But it enabled pilot training for all of them, even the ones that were already fully trained.

I really think training is dangerous, especially since i can't even see what is out there. I should not be doing this in the field but the interface seems determined to make a mess out of my forces. I think at least half of the aircraft should be on patrol while a portion that needs training trains.

And worst of all there doesn't seem to be anything i can do besides naval exercises which will allow me to train my planes. So, not only does that put my fleet in a disadvantageous situation where it has no effective aircraft, it also would have no effective ships.

I anticipated rookie aircraft being a problem. I don't want to dump a bunch of resources into the sea by flying coffins into it. I tried to train the planes before i put them on the ships but half of them are still 100% green.

I'm not looking for sympathy. I am not looking for advice unless someone knows an effective workaround. I just want the developers to finish programming the game. I somehow doubt they will do that because they are making too much money spewing out DLCs.

I'm tempted to just downvote this game and come back in a few years to see if it is finished yet.

I'm actually glad i don't have the "Man the Guns" DLC. That sounds like a logistical nightmare.

Update: The 4 ships i was hoping would begin repairing if I just left them at port in manilla did not stay in manilla or start repairing again. Instead they set course for Cebu. I don't even know where Cebu is and I'm pretty sure I have never manually sent anything there.

And the larger task force with the carriers in the same fleet... After i couldn't get them to stop heading back to manilla and set them to train to stop it. I deselected train. As soon as i did they set course for manilla again and i couldn't find a way to cancel that order besides set them to train again.

Update2: the anchor/hold command by default moves you to the nearest port and apparently you can't even turn it off which is why my task force wouldn't let me stop the order to go to manilla. You can reset the hold command to stay in place by using ctrl+click and not go to the nearest base. That seems backwards to me. I would assume an anchor means stop. I also think clicking the anchor button should toggle the hold command on and off but it does not.

[Blind]

how many dockyards do you have set to repair in the production menu?

[mk11]

The way I train aircraft on carriers is:
1. Give the task force no orders, cancelling any it has (fleet regions are not needed)
2. Use right-click to send the task force to a sea region
3. Wait a few hours so task force has left port
4. Use shift-exercise on the aircraft units

Come back a bit later and see if they have completed training.

Note that this is pretty well what would happen historically, except that the wings would be trained most of the way on land and only have their final carrier certification at sea.

#2 is also what you need to do if you want to park a surface fleet off the coast to give shore bombardment.

Your repair woes are typical. It is not uncommon to find most of the fleet stuck in some tiny base and not back at a main port. Of course, this happens to the AI as well making it even easier to crush the AI.

[Vigor]

Originally posted by Blind:

how many dockyards do you have set to repair in the production menu?

12

when i set it to 12 i think 12 amounted to about half of my dockyards. I am sure i have more now so I suspect you are right II am probably due for more.

When I read dockyard I am thinking "drydock".

Considering i'm not even at war I am wondering what could have happened to so many ships that would require them to need drydocking for repair. It seems to me they should be able to do most repairs at sea to maintain 100% fighting strength and unless they have been in combat they should never need a drydock for repairs with the exception of maybe aircraft carriers which might have an unusual amount of accidents.

I have all fleets set to automatically repair and yet i recently found a destroyer at 10% in a fleet and I wondered why it hadn't detached for repair. And I think the only mission that fleet had ever been on was training.

I guess ships must be scary places if this kind of frequent damage is realistic.

Edit: I checked that fleet that had the 10% destroyer and it was not set to automatic split off.

[mk11]

There are a couple of reasons I can think of why you might have a lot of ships needing repair:

1. You started exercising all your capital ships, a lot got damaged and are clogging up the repair queue

2. You have been exercising in large task forces without setting the detach for repair option so when the task force puts in for repair it has a lot of damaged ships.

Historically, I think at peace ships needed about 1 month a year for extensive repair and small refits. Or may be that just comes from the rules in War in the Pacifc board game.

Exercising of land and air units results in equipment loss (an economic cost - not really if you can be bothered to only waste obsolete equipment). I think Paradox added the ship damage mechanism just to put an economic cost on exercising naval units.

[Vigor]

1. no ships besides subs have been in training for a long time. I haven't built ships for a long time and just now started building new ships again. All of my ships are trained fully and i have subs on exercises to farm naval xp. I have 1 fleet on escort, 2 on strike and 5 on patrol.

I don't have any ships actively being repaired despite having every fleet on detach for repairs. That being said, if I select most any of the task forces on patrol or training they will show almost every ship has some damage and could be detached for repair.

The 4 ships I tried to leave in manilla for repairs left manilla again. I didn't tell them to leave I just went to check on them and they were holding position in the celebes sea. This is crazy. Now i manually gave them the repair order so they're off to wherever.

2. only subs are exercising. They are in task forces of 10 or 11 ships and are set to detach.

I would be happy if they just went to the nearest port for repair 1 month per year and cycled which ships go based on who needed it most. If they needed to go all the way home for repair, that would create a lot of down time. In that case i suspect i would just need 2 identical fleets for each job that operate in rotation. That would require some extreme micromanagement though.

Exercising of land and air units results in equipment loss (an economic cost - not really if you can be bothered to only waste obsolete equipment). I think Paradox added the ship damage mechanism just to put an economic cost on exercising naval units.

Speaking of exercising land units... I have been trying to turn off land unit training when they are fully trained but it doesn't appear possible to change an individual division's training status without changing the training status of the entire army. If an army has 1 division which isn't fully trained you have to train the whole army to train that division. I have been trying to turn off divisions that don't need training but i just noticed an untrained division and thought, "how the hell is that division not trained yet" I unintentionally turned its training off when I tried to stop training on a division which had finished training in the same army. I was trying to micromanage training just to prevent the waste of equipment.

So, I guess now I need to make a bunch of new training armies.. This is ridiculous.

And every time you increase division strength you have to train them all over again. Why isn't there an option to transfer trained battalions into another division to upgrade it? Throwing a bunch of newbs in with front line divisions is dangerous. I'm tempted to start building only full strength divisions. The problem then is, i won't be able to cover enough land because 1 big division can't cover multiple defensive locations (at least on island defense, they might cover more area on mainland defense but i don't know because i'm not at war yet. Having all big divisions would make it easier for enemies to flank you too.

I might have started out with full strength divisions except making them full strength requires army experience that i didn't have.

At this rate i will never be prepared for war.

[trooperrob]

I think units in poor supply suffer.
So if you put 40 ships in a level 1 port.....

There are two training settings, cant remember which but one setting force trains forever, and the other trains till trained, with other units training after the trained units stop.
(shift or control I think) That should sort your 1 new unit + 19 trained.

May also be an attrition if your ships train in the arctic / winter.

regarding repairing ships at sea.
If you need to scrape the hull or weld a hull plate. Good luck doing that at sea.

[mk11]

If you have used the shift key to set the exercise until trained option, then only the divisions that still need training exercise, even though the whole Army is ordered to exercise. While at peace this is fine. Once at war you may need to start having training armies.

I used to try putting training in a separate theatre on the hope I could separate equipment losses from training from those from attrition. Turns out though that losses move with the division when it moves between theatres so that didn't work.

Why would there be an option to move trained battalions between divisions? It is not how it worked and would be an exploit that allowed keeping veteran divisions at the front during war. More annoying to me is that you can't move experienced pilots (other than aces) between air wings and that is something that historically happened.