An Advanced Guide to the Navy in Multiplayer

The final addition to my series of Navy guides, which covers new features added in the No Step Back DLC and other information uncovered by the previous installments.

hey

this thing is like 2-3 years old, and was written 2 DLCs ago. I don't play the game nearly as much and have not been following any balance changes, bug fixes, etc.

a fair amount of this is probably still applicable, but i advise doing your own research because a lot of this may be out of date, especially pertaining to balance.

Forward

If you haven't already, I would advise reading the Beginner's and Intermediate navy guides as well.

But anyways, at long last, I've finally gotten around to discussing the changes to the navy after No Step Back. I'll spare you the introduction and get straight to the point. Afterwards I'll be compiling other tips and tricks left out of the first two guides.

Changelog

Since I plan on this being the last of my naval guides, any additional information I want to share will be added to this guide instead of being put in a new one. This section is for user convenience in checking if anything has been added.

4/11/22: Added the Changelog and Risk/Repair
5/30/22: Added Carriers 2, AA, and Luigi; updated admiral traits
5/31/22: Added Doctrine Deep Dive, made some small updates here and there
6/3/22: Made significant revisions to ACW and Carriers Part 2
6/13/22: Added 'State of the Meta Address'

Planned Future Sections:
> HP and the Philosopher's Attack Values
> The Art of the Refit
> Battlecruiser Spam..?
> Country-Specific Tips 2

and more, probably.

Caution:


This will be coming out in a few months probably and when it does I'll have a lot of rewriting to do, especially on the meta (but the current meta is dumb so I'm glad). Stay tuned for what changes.

No Step Back: Changes

No Step Back hasn't actually changed very much in the navy, and everything in the previous guides still stands with the exception of naval doctrines being purchased instead of researched. This is a good thing for large nations and a bad thing for small ones; for nations with large navies, a research slot is freed up, but nations with small navies will now find getting naval doctrine much more difficult.

Before addressing the new content, here is all you need to know about changes to what you should be doing to keep your navy in tip-top shape:

Training

The U.S. Secretary of the Navy generating Navy XP

Training your navy has become more important than ever before. Though the benefits of having your ships be trained (keep in mind all newly deployed ships start green, giving a malus to combat like land divisions) haven't changed, the benefits of Naval XP, which may be generated in massive amounts by training, have drastically increased.

Pre-NSB, Naval XP was only vital for making new ship templates, and excess XP could be thrown at techs and doctrines as a research speed buff. Now, Naval XP is required to purchase Naval Doctrines, as well as additional buffs in the new Officer Corps tab.

With this new development, any serious naval nation (especially US, UK, Japan, and Italy) must train their fleets (if it is safe to do so) to get their doctrines and stay competitive.

Supply

One of the flagship changes in NSB was that of supply. Ports and Convoys are now more important than ever for keeping your divisions fighting at their best, but you already knew that. What you might not have known, however, was that your ships will also demand supply just like your divisions. Admittedly, this is unlikely to ever be much of a problem, so long as you avoid putting half your combined navy into a level one port in the middle of nowhere.

Command Power

Along with all the XP types, Command Power is now much more relevant than ever. Although there aren't any ways to spend Command Power directly on your naval combat as you can on land or in the air (like Last Stand or Ground Crews), it is important to keep track of your Command Power.

Democratic nations especially (which tend to have low war support, and thus Command Power generation) will spend the early game with very little to spare, so watch what you spend it on carefully.

In terms of the Navy, Command Power can be used to give traits to your Admirals and are necessary for hiring advisors in the Officer Corps.

No Step Back: New Stuff

Mostly, this:


The Officer Corps menu offers various bonuses to your navy, and is also where you may view and purchase naval doctrines now.

Purchasing doctrines has a base cost of 100 XP, but this may be reduced by bonuses recieved from focuses, or hiring a Naval Theorist. As always, doctrines are very powerful and are definitely worthwhile investments.

Hiring a Chief of Navy or Naval High Command will generate additional Navy XP in addition to their stat buffs. If you are a large navy nation, do not prioritize hiring these guys ahead of Army or Air Force command, as your navy training already produces more XP than the advisors can, which is usually not the case for the other military branches.

Lastly are the new Spirits. There are three categories of them, and I'll go into depth of each below. Keep in mind that some Spirits are doctrine-exclusive or nation exclusive.

Spirits of the Academy

In my opinion, the least important of the Spirits, unless you're doing a WC as an obscure nation where you need to make a navy and admiralty from scratch. Most navy-relevant nations already have more than enough admirals, and given how seldom Admirals can scrape together enough XP to level up, the choices related to leveling up are near worthless. Each costs 20 XP.



Instilled Aggression, Calculated Restraint, and Signals Training: these are very straightforward to understand, giving their respective chance bonuses to leveling up your Admirals. They are also a waste of XP.

Best of the Best: +2 starting levels to new admirals and -5% navy intel to others. This is very useful to nations with no (or bad) admirals, and arguably the most useful to nations who have good admirals already, as the -5% intel may come in handy if you have nothing else to spend your XP on.

Academy Scholarships: an alternative to Best of the Best, this decreased the cost of hiring admirals and gives them all +1 starting level. Not bad if you are starved of Political Power, although the situation in which this would be a relevant choice over Best of the Best is extremely specific.

Grand Fleet: this spirit is available if you have the Fleet in Being naval doctrine. It provides +20% experience gain towards the admiral traits Superior Tactician and Ironside, and makes it more likely for new admirals to be 'Gunnery Experts.'

Convoy Warfare: this spirit is available if you have the Trade Interdiction naval doctrine. It provides +20% experience gain towards the admiral traits Seawolf and Blockade Runner, and makes it more likely for new admirals to start with those traits.

Integrated Air Arm: this spirit is available if you have the Base Strike naval doctrine. It provides +20% experience gain towards the admiral traits Fleet Protector and Air Controller, and makes it more likely for new admirals to be 'Aviation Enthusiasts.'

Spirits of the Navy

These spirits relate to naval research, module design, and XP. Each costs 35 XP.



Jeune École: provides a hefty buff to destroyer research and makes designing light ships much cheaper

Flexible Contracts: makes designing cruisers much cheaper, and also reduces the price of hiring a Naval Design Company to a mere 30 PP. For large navy nations, it may be prudent to select this Spirit, buy a Design Company, and then get a different spirit if you so desire.

Integrated Designers: +20% research bonus to ship modules and +20% naval research speed in general. Very useful if you are going to be researching stuff in the navy tab.

Naval Reform: +15% Naval XP generation. Very useful.

Naval Refit Yards: grants +25% Naval refit speed (how fast you can convert a ship into a newer model) and +15% repair speed. This will be a very useful spirit for players whose builds heavily involve refitting old ships. It is also arguably the most beneficial wartime spirit, as the repair speed bonus is an extremely valuable one if your opponent is actively engaging you or harassing your task forces with bombers.

Global Presence: this spirit is available if you have the Fleet in Being Doctrine. It provides a +10% research bonus to Battleships and Heavy Cruisers and makes designing them cheaper.

Submarine Primacy: this spirit is available if you have the Trade Interdiction Doctrine. It provides a +20% bonus to researching submarines and makes designing them cheaper. This is the best option, naturally, for those just using subs.

Mobile Force: this spirit is available if you have the Base Strike Doctrine. It provides a +20% research bonus to carriers and makes designing them cheaper.

Spirits of Command

These spirits provide a range of bonuses to combat. Each costs 50 XP.



Close Combat: +5% Screen Attack and +5% Torpedo Screen Penetration. If you are using torpedo destroyers, or maybe just a whole lot of screens in general, this is a good choice.

Night Fighting: provides bonus attack and defense, plus reduced visibility, at night.

Efficient Communications: +15% positioning. This may prove to be invaluable for anyone using a deathstack.

Inclement Weather Experience: -40% bad weather penalty. Could potentially be very useful, but is of course situational.

Brave Commanders: -5% retreat decision chance (this is a "malus") and +15% chance to score a critical hit. Although the retreat decision may prove mildly troublesome for combats where you are simply protecting convoys, if you are, well, brave, it may well be a bonus. If you remember the effects of Critical Hits from the first guide, you will be aware that this spirit can potentially be very, very evil. Excellent choice for any situation.

Decisive Battle: this spirit is available if you have the Fleet in Being doctrine. It provides +10% naval hit chance (including torpedoes) while making retreating less likely and slower. Good choice for fleets with lots of heavy ships and heavy attack, whose only real downside is their reduced hit chance.

Surface Raiders: this spirit is available if you have the Trade Interdiction doctrine: It provides +10% retreat decision chance and speed, which makes it easier to kill some convoys then run away before anyone can come stop you. It also provides a +20% screening bonus for using only capital ships, which basically means you can LARP as Germany and send a lone battlecruiser with no escorts out to sea and have a slightly better chance of it not getting immediately ganked by torpedoes. Despite being the Trade Interdiction unique spirit it is probably not the best choice for this playstyle.

Surprise Attacks: this spirit is available if you have the Base Strike doctrine. It provides +10% retreat chance after the initial stage of the battle, and +10% retreat speed after that initial stage. While potentially funny, I guess, this is completely worthless compared to your other choices.



Bureau of Ordnance: you will begin the game with this spirit as the US. It provides -10% torpedo hit chance, which is a blessing since historically it was more like -90%. It may be removed either by taking the focus Bureau of Ships, under the War Department tree, or simply by selecting a different spirit, which isn't hard considering your immense XP gain.

And I know I used this one already but here it is again:

No Step Back: I hit the character limit so here's even more

Lastly, NSB has also blessed us with Mulberry Harbors!



These are researched with the 'Landing Craft' tech inside the navy research tab. It is a 1940 tech. Mulberry Harbors are produced with dockyards in the production ledger like convoys and are stockpiled, not deployed. To use a mulberry harbor in a naval invasion, draw the plan using the alternative naval invasion order on the Battle Plans selector.

Suffice to say, being able to naval invade any province(s) you like, not just ports, with supply can be a massive threat and surprise to unprepared enemies, so long as you have naval supremacy. Not a mile of beach will be safe from your clutches!

Consequences of NSB on multiplayer

While the actual meta of fleet builds or designs are still the same, here are some things to keep in mind due to the changes of NSB:

1. Freeing up a research slot from doctrine may mean your opponent is more likely to research the other naval technologies that typically go ignored.

2. Coordination has made radar techs a more popular choice than before. Radar techs will unlock modules for your ships that increase spotting, and state radar will help detect ships.

3. Training, once again, is now more important than ever. This makes nations with the oil to afford such large training operations (the US, namely) more powerful, and makes nations without it have to make decisions on how to spend their fuel even before watime.

4. Floating Harbors

5. New supply changes means you will likely find more, and also higher level ports built around the map. The supply changes also mean that convoy raiding is even more potent than it was before if used in zones that cut off supply to divisions, like in the Mediterranean.

6. The Soviet navy has now gone from OK to pretty bad, which is good for Germany and the Axis.

Risk and Repair Revisited

In the very first guide I had made a point that four particular buttons, most notable of them the Engagement Risk and Repair Priority, were extremely important buttons. They are pretty straightforward but I wanted to return to them to give further insight onto how they work, how they should be used, and to reiterate that they are genuinely very, very important buttons.

Engagement Risk

Should you engage to your partner in a public space, they may be peer pressured into accepting. This presents a potential problem in which the two of you may enter an engagement in which one is not ready for, which will strain the relationship and foster a layer of distrust. Additionally, should they reject the proposal, you have now been publicly humiliated.

Naval Engagement Risk

Ranging from Do Not Engage to Always Engage, the selection you choose will drastically effect the performance of your fleet. Depending on what your goals are for each fleet, you must choose your Risk carefully in order for it to do what you want it to do.

The following are specific effects of Engagement settings to keep in mind:

> Submarines will not target Capital ships unless set on at least Medium Risk

> Submarines will not target Screens unless set on at least High Risk

> A Patrol fleet set to Do Not Engage, upon locating the enemy fleet, will follow it around so that the moment a fleet of yours that intends to engage it arrives, it will initiate a battle instantly. Upon the beginning of the battle, the patrol fleet will instantly begin leaving the combat.

> Setting a fleet performing Convoy Escort to Do Not Engage is stupid and defeats the entire purpose of the mission

> Setting a fleet to High Risk, for example, means that it will engage any fleet of High Risk and below, which may prove annoying when you want your battlefleet to focus only on important battles, and not waste time attacking a random group of submarines or something. If anyone at Paradox is reading this, please add a minimum risk option.

This can at least be partially dealt with by force-retreating that fleet.

Repair Priority and Split Off

Just like how divisions on land must wait and reorg before resuming an offensive or reentering a defensive battle, your fleets will need to sit in port to repair. The Repair Priority you set will determine at what limit your fleet will return to port and the minimum amount of repairs it will deem necessary before setting sail again; in other words, it determines how much time your fleet will spend not doing what you want it to do.

A battlefleet set on High Priority, for example, can easily be sent away to port by so much as breathing on it, giving your enemy time to set about their own machinations while your fleet is away twiddling its thumbs.

Of course the easy way out of this is to enable Automatic Split Off, which allows the damaged ships to go to port alone while the others continue their mission. Whether or not you turn on Split Off will depend on how important the composition of your fleet is, and what risk and repair it is set on.

A fleet set to Do Not Engage, for instance, can easily have Split Off turned on since it the missing ship won't be absent for anything. A fleet set to High Risk, meanwhile, may be more dependent on having each and every ship prepared to engage, and Split Off may prove to be a potential cause of losing a battle.

Split Off is best used in tandem with a High Repair priority, so that any ship that does go and leave probably only has minor damage and won't be gone for very long. It is an awful pairing for Low Repair priority, as that means the ships that split off will be gone for repairs for a while and the ships still operating are weak themselves before even considering the missing ships.

It should also be noted that even on Low Priority and High Risk, your fleet will refuse to leave port for anything until it has reached a certain amount of repair. No matter what your repair priority is, you may force a fleet to leave port and resume its mission by selecting the fleet and right clicking a sea tile. You will be asked if you are sure you want to do this.

Sometimes forcing your fleet to leave without full repair will be of vital importance to winning a contentious battle or saving some convoys, so remember you are capable of doing this. Just keep in mind that, as the above meme illustrates, forcing your fleet out of port will set it to Never Repair. Remember to set it back to whatever setting you want once the fleet has fulfilled its emergency purpose.

In any case, Risk and Repair are all about, well, risk. How willing are you to send out a fleet to fight on low strength? Is it more important right now to be able to engage the enemy at any time, or is it acceptable to cede supremacy temporarily to ensure you have the best chance of winning the next battle?

Doctrine Deep Dive

I briefly covered the three doctrines way back in the first guide, but I did not explain why each doctrine is good for what it does, and also threw Trade Interdiction under the bus a bit, so the time has finally come to understand what exactly each one gives you.

Due to the way the doctrine bonuses are arranged, I will be considering not the entire tree as a whole but giving extra consideration to the 'primary' branch of each doctrine and treating the others as secondary.

Fleet in Being

Fleet in Being's main idea is your capital ships getting beat up and not caring about it.

The most common bonus FiB doctrines will give is Organization. Organization on ships, unlike in land divisions, cannot be altered by anything other than doctrine bonuses. Like land divisions, however, organization represents how long your ship can fight before it gets tired and turns into a wet noodle. So, the more org your ships have, the longer they will be able to fight at their maximum capabilities. As ships with insufficient org will suffer a penalty reducing its chance to hit anything by 50%, out-orging your opponent in a protracted battle can make all the difference.



Keep in mind that, by default, all ships have 40 organization.

FiB's primary branch (the leftmost one) provides the following org bonuses:
CV: +30
BB: +60
BC: +40
CA: +40
CL +10

The other two branches provide:
CL: +10 (for a total of 20)
DD: +40
SS: +40

FiB's primary branch also gives the following buffs:
Strike Force Org Loss -20% (more org! yay! Your ships will lose org while moving to engage, so this is handy)

Capital Ship Armor +10% ( Your capital ships will take less damage)

Naval AA Attack +10% ( a very useful bonus against one of a capital ship's biggest threats)

Capital Ship Attack +10% (I don't need to explain this)

Minelaying Efficiency +20% (eh)

Escort Efficiency +5% (this affects how quickly your ships can come to the aid of raided convoys)

CL and DD surface detection +10% (this is not a battle stat, but rather the ability to detect a fleet operating in a zone before engaging. This is useful if you are using actual patrol task forces).

Sortie Efficiency +30% (I will talk about this later).

DD Sub detection +10%

CL Sub detection +20%

FiB's second branch, the Escort Branch, gives the following buffs:
DD Sub detection +20% (Unlike surface detection, this is a battle stat that influences the chances of revealing an enemy submarine in battle). This is for a total of +30%.

CL Sub detection +15%, for a total of 35%.

CV Sub detection +50% (This is pretty weird, but I guess if your opponent has submarines engaged in a major battle it will be far more likely for them to get blown up).

Additional +45% Escort Efficiency, for a total of +50%. Nice!

All things considered, this branch combined with the primary one makes FiB an unparalleled choice for detecting, hunting, and disrupting submarines.



There is also a submarine branch (which is shared with Base Strike) that I will cover in comparison to Trade Interdiction's.

In summary, FiB is a well-rounded doctrine that excels in protecting convoys and countering submarines while providing hefty bonuses to your fleet in general, especially your Capital Ships with the Capital Attack and AA Attack being entirely unique bonuses.

Trade Interdiction

Before we talk about the "primary" TI branch, the submarine branch, we need to talk about the leftmost branch, because it is basically an alternative to FiB and, believe it or not, part of the current meta.

It provides:
Org ( 10 less on BBs/BCs/CAs than FiB, 10 more for CLs )

+15% Surface Detection for CLs, CAs, and BCs
+25% Surface Detection for BBs

Strike Force Org loss - 20%

Capital Ship Armor +10%

+15% Raiding Efficiency (this should be straightforward) for CLs, CAs, and BCs
+50% Raiding Efficiency for BBs

Enemy Fleet Size penalty 10% (worsens enemy positioning, assuming their's is worse than yours to begin with)

All of these seem to point towards the idea of sending capital ships out for some convoy raiding as the Germans did during WW2, but I have yet to reveal the final bonuses that make it truly competitive with (or for the meta, better) Fleet in Being.

-10% Surface Visibility on Cruisers
-20% Surface Visibility on BCs
-25% Surface Visibility on BBs

Your ships' SfV interacts with a value known as the Hit Profile, which is one of the factors that determines hit chance. By reducing SfV here (which cannot really be done otherwise) your ships will be more difficult to hit during battles. Whereas FiB encourages toughing it out, TI focuses on evasion.



The vast majority of people you encounter probably aren't aware of this at all, and will never do anything other than the sub part of the doctrine. But if they do go down this branch (especially before the sub stuff) be warned that your opponent knows what they're doing.

Assuming you are not doing the current meta, whether or not you choose FiB or Trade Interdiction isn't really dependent on what your battlefleet is doing, but what you do with convoys. If it is more vital for you to protect them, go FiB. If it is more vital to sink them, go TI. Be warned that TI gives no (worthwhile) bonuses for hunting enemy subs or protecting your own convoys.

The Submarine Branch

Unsurprisingly, TI has the best submarine buffs. It provides:
SS org +50
SS Surface Detection +50% (greatly increases ability to find convoys)
Torpedo Reveal Chance -20% (increases stealth, basically)
SS Raiding Efficiency +50%
SS HP +20% (Subs have awful HP to begin with, so this doesn't do that much, but it does increase the chance that a sub can limp back home to fight another day instead of being sunk).

FiB and BS' Shared Sub Branch

Both FiB and BS have the same exact submarine bonuses branch. It provides:
SS org +40
SS Surface Detection +25%
Torpedo Reveal Chance -15%
SS Raiding Efficiency +15%

Trade Interdiction's Middle Branch
Is undoubtedly the worst one. It primarily gives bonuses to aircraft carriers, and in fact they're better than the carrier bonuses in FiB, but I'm not going to bother listing them all since pretty much no one doing TI is going to focus on carriers anyways.

After all, if you want to focus on aircraft carriers, you're undoubtedly going to use

Base Strike

While TI and FiB were pretty comparable, BS goes off and says "to hell with balanced org and fleet bonuses" and gives incomparably powerful buffs to aircraft carriers and scant consideration for anything else.



The buffs from the primary (rightmost) branch being:
CV org +120 (wtf?!?!)
BB org +20
CL org +40
Capital Ship Armor +10%
Naval Targeting +40% (this is for planes)
Naval Air Agility from Carriers +10%
Port Strike damage +50%
Carrier Overcrowding -20% (I will get to this later)
Sortie Efficiency +50% (the other doctrines only give +30%. I'll explain why this is good later).

In addition to the shared sub branch, BS also has a (non-shared) Escort Branch that gives:
CL org +20 (for a total of 60)
DD org +50
Sub Detection +25% for DDs, CLs, CVs
+30% Escort Efficiency

All in all Base Strike seems, at first glance, rather underwhelming (CV org aside). BBs, BCs, and CAs, the traditional sources of damage, receive next to nothing. The BB org and armor bonus serves more as making them more effective carrier bodyguards than anything else, and of all things Light Cruisers are given a special treatment.

But that's all because the carrier bonuses sound like gibberish. So let's fix that and talk about:

Advanced Carrier Warfare

So far my only words on Carriers and the Base Strike doctrine have summed up to "they are good." This is, of course, true. But what if you could make them BETTER? Yes, it is finally time to talk about all the secondary stats that relate to carriers, and how to bring them from just good to positively terrifying.

Target Selection in Depth

I touched on this before, but here are the hard numbers on how target selection is calculated:

1. Base weight to be targeted is a ship's HP. This means big ships will be more likely targets than small ones.

2. Base weight is multiplied by the following factors depending on ship type:
if a carrier: 200
if a capital ship: 50
if a submarine: 10

3. Ships with less than 5 AA have an increased weight based on the equation 5*(5-AA), meaning a ship with 0 AA receives a multiplier of 25, and a ship with 4.9 AA a multiplier of 5%.

4. Damaged ships can receive up to 500% targeting weight depending on how damaged they are.

The main takeaways from this information is that targeting generally ranks as follows:
1. Carriers (~50k weight)
2. Capitals (~20k weight)
3. Submarines (~2k weight)
4. Convoys (1440 weight)
5. Screens (~1k weight maximum)

Note that the gaps between the first three priorities are so vast that there is no amount of gamey bs you could pull to keep naval bombers from shooting cheap ships instead of your capitals and carriers.

Carrier CAS vs. Carrier NAVs

You may have noticed while tending to your carriers that some have CAS on board and some have Naval Bombers on board ( or both ). This, of course, begs the difference of which one is better.

Now, there are a lot of complex calculations involving naval targeting, agility, and damage to take into account here, and rest assured I have done all of them for you. I was considering typing them out, or maybe adding a picture of the math, so that you all could also look at the numbers and determine which one better suited your playstyle and preference, until I realized the following:



Yes, I'm being serious. The breaking point at which naval bombers outclass CAS is when you have more than 3 naval bombers on your carrier. Despite the targeting ability bonus (the related calculation determines what % of the airwing will be able to attack a ship, with a maximum of 30%), CAS deal such abysmal damage compared to NAVs (the above figures have the 500% boost included) that they are undeniably and objectively worse. And if you are thinking about that 30% threshold, yes, that is correct, the situation in which CAS outperforms NAVs is the situation where 1 CAS and 0 NAVs are allowed to perform an attack.

And those calculations were done using 1936 carrier models! Once you get to the 1940 level the discrepancy is even worse, as NAVs pack on even more naval damage and an equal targeting ability to CAS.

So please do yourself a favor and disband all the CAS that might be deployed on your carriers and replace them with NAVs. And speaking of altering what planes are stationed on your carriers...

Overcrowding

Something you probably haven't considered doing is putting more planes on your carrier than it is able to hold. It is indeed possible, but just like putting too many planes into an airport on land, this creates a mission efficiency debuff called Overcrowding.



Overcrowding is calculated as double the percentage by which the planes exceed the deck size (limit). For example, if your carrier has a deck size maximum of 60 planes, every additional plane beyond the deck size will incur a 3.3% efficiency penalty. If you put, say, 72 planes on this carrier, there would be a penalty of 40%.

But what exactly is the efficiency debuff? Simply put, it is the percentage of your planes actually operating the mission. Now of course, putting 12 extra planes on your carrier won't do you much good if it means 28 of them are now not going to do anything. Fortunately, the fourth Base Strike doctrine on the rightmost tree grants -20% overcrowding.

Unfortunately, that is a -20% to overcrowding, not efficiency, meaning each plane now incurs a penalty of 2.64 instead of 3.3, and the total penalty is only reduced to 32%. So if that's the case, what's the point? How do you overstack safely?

Sortie Efficiency and You

To directly combat the efficiency penalty of overstacking, we must turn instead to Sortie Efficiency.



First, the bad news. Base aircraft carrier sortie efficiency is 50%, meaning that even if you don't overcrowd, only half of your planes can go fight at a time. If you get every Base Strike doctrine on the right branch (the ones actually about carriers), you can increase this to 100%, allowing full use of your carrier aircraft.

But what if you get admiral traits or naval advisors that give even more Sortie Efficiency? How do you get more than 100% of planes to fly somewhere?

Oh yes, that's right. Every % over 100% sortie efficiency you have can be put to good work nullifying the overcrowding penalty.

As Japan, for example, I can hire Chuichi Nagumo and promote Yamamoto to get 135% sortie efficiency on Yamamoto's fleet (even more, actually, depending on the promotions you choose). This means we can afford up to a 35% penalty from overcrowding. On a carrier of 60 deck size, this means we can shove 13 additional planes onto it! That may not sound like a lot, but remember that you can have 4 carriers (before suffering a penalty) in a battle, so that would mean you have 52 extra planes, which is nearly as much as an entire additional carrier!

Unfortunately, the calculation is not this straightforward. Please refer to the section Carriers Part 2 to see how sortie efficiency actually works.

Other stats in Base Strike, explained

Two stats I have mentioned or you may have read while playing are Naval Targeting and Naval Air Agility. I will explain what exactly it is they influence in brief:

Targeting: This influences the calculations for the % of planes that are actually able to attack a ship at a time, as brought up during the CAS vs NAV section. I'm not sure if this increases the 30% targeting cap (probably not) or just increases the targeting stat on your planes (probably that) but in any case, the more the merrier. If you get the +40% from all Base Strike doctrines, your 1936 carrier NAVs' targeting calculation will increase up to the 30% cap. 1940 and after this stat is kinda pointless I guess.

Agility: The more agility you have, the less likely it is for ship AA to shoot down your planes when they attack.

Using your Carriers as an Airfield

If you set a task force with a carrier in it to hold a position at sea (NOT WHILE IN PORT), you may assign the planes on the carrier to perform missions in the air tab. This is admittedly a pretty niche thing to do, as there aren't very many places on the map where you couldn't just use a normal airport, and carriers can only hold so many planes.



If you do do this, though, keep in mind that Sortie Efficiency only fixes Overstacking penalties during naval combat, and not regular air missions while holding. And I guess if you do do this for some reason you can finally put those carrier CAS to use, assuming you're trying to provide ground support somewhere.

Carriers (part 2)

After further research and testing (truth be told, I'm learning most of this stuff along with you) I'm going to need to do some heavy clarification and correction of the information I've just provided you above. I would've just edited it all up there, but it's at the character limit and I didn't want to try dancing around it, so here's an entire new section.

1. The 4 Carrier Limit

Above, I had said that the penalty for having multiple carriers is different than the overcrowding penalty of putting too many planes on a carrier. Let's talk about that.

For every carrier over the carrier limit (of four) you will receive a 20% AIRWING penalty. If you have 5 carriers at once you will only be able to send 80% of your airwings out (assuming you have equal numbers of airwings on each carrier, this basically makes the 5th carrier not exist) and if you have 6 carriers at once you will only be able to send 60% of your airwings out (now causing an active malus).



So, does that mean that you really can never have more than four carriers?

Well, no. For some reason, some strange, inexplicable reason, according to the wiki (which, mind you, was written by the devs) and as far as I can tell in-game, fighters ignore the airwing penalty. Yes, even if you had 9 carriers at once, for a -100% airwing penalty, all of the fighter airwings would fly and operate normally. Why on Earth this hasn't been patched (or is a game feature..?) is beyond me, but that means that with careful organization you can have multiple carriers.

Considering this information it is extremely advantageous to have more than four carriers in a battle so long as they are organized correctly. The first airwings to get excluded by the penalty are the airwings on the bottom, so the carriers closest to the top of their list in the task force should have NAVs on them and the ones on the bottom fighters.

Fielding 5 carriers at once with 3 NAV only and 2 fighter only works like a charm, as does fielding 3 with only NAVs, one with almost full NAVs and an extra airwing of only one fighter, and two with only fighters.

Putting a large quantity of single-plane airwings on your carriers does not appear to circumvent the penalty.

Sortie Efficiency: a Definitive Treatise

After running some tests and doing some math I have finally figured out how sortie efficiency (or as called during a battle, 'Air Efficiency') is actually calculated, and the maximum* number of planes you can put on a carrier if you have over 100% SE. You see, while SE bonuses are (mostly) additive, the overstacking penalty is multiplicative.

If we take base 50% SE, and I do all of Base Strike doctrine, I get a full +50% SE bonus for 100% SE. If I hire someone in the officer corps who gives me +15% SE, I will have 115% total. Now, if I put extra planes on my carriers such that it would give me a 15% overcrowding penalty, I would NOT be reduced to 100% SE (or as I will more accurately say from now on, Air Efficiency, or AE). Instead, the 115% SE I have is decreased by 15%, or as shown in the ledger, multiplied by x85%, giving an end result of 97.75% AE.

Given these calculations, the way in which me must determine the maximum* number of planes to safely put on a carrier is the (sadly much more complicated than last time) equation of:



Whenever I used this equation I would end up with slightly positive AE (typically 108%). Why exactly this is the case is beyond me, but regardless it works close enough, and a little extra AE doesn't hurt after all. In general this does mean that the number of extra planes you can use is more underwhelming than what I previously believed it to be, but it is still far more than whatever your opponent is going to have if they aren't doing the same strategy.

Also keep in mind that there are additional SE effects aside from the obvious ones. Carriers will gain additional fighter SE as they gain experience, up to a +20% at Veteran level. Also, screening increases SE (or AE..? I dunno.) by 10%; not a flat 10%, but a multiplicative 10%. I wouldn't factor this into your equation though as your screening can be broken by your opponent rather easily.

Carrier Drawbacks

Of course, carriers are not without their flaws. They do nothing at night and next to nothing in bad weather (unless you take the UK's unique CAG Night Fighting air force spirit), and if their escorts are sunk they're as good as dead.



Carriers shine best under optimal circumstances, and while their potential damage output is extremely high, they should be viewed as, say, a power-up to an already powerful navy, and not the main damage-dealer; they are a viable gimmick-character in a fighting game with high damage but low accuracy, I guess.



In the right moment, your carriers will absolutely trounce your enemy, adding insult to injury, and assuming this is a major battle, will likely secure your dominance for the rest of the game. Should you be caught in bad weather, however, they will just sit there and look pretty. Most of the time carriers will make up for their production cost in the damage they deal, but be careful that there are plenty of checks in place to prevent them from being absolutely overpowered.

(Note: upon revision this sounds a bit harsh. Weather isn't all that common and carrier NAVs can absolutely deal very serious damage with decent reliability. The important takeaway is that carriers cannot do this all by themselves and will require a good bodyguard of capital ships and screens to do their best.)

A Brief PSA

DO NOT forget to have at least one factory producing carrier fighters and NAVs (and CAS if you're using them). Because, you know, if they get shot down in a battle, they won't magically reappear afterwards. I know this sounds silly but it is easy to forget since you don't need to produce the first batch for newly built carriers.

Anti-Carrier Warfare

The first and most obvious way to protect your ships from carriers is to put plenty of AA on them, and I will elaborate on that later. But first let's cover some alternative (or supplementary) methods.

1. Defensive Carriers: If you suspect that your opponent is going to go for a +100% SE build with a jack ton of carriers and naval bombers, and you will be incapable of matching them in SE, you can turn your carriers from an offensive weapon to a defensive one. Make a majority (or all) of your carrier planes fighters instead of NAVs. Trying to have a balanced amount of both will probably mean your opponent's superior number of fighters will just shred all of them out of existence, so you might as well put up the best fight you can and throw nothing but fighters at them in order to contest the enemy fighters and disrupt the enemy NAVs.

2. Waiting: if the situation is really that dire, wait until a period of sustained poor weather in your regions of interest to tell your fleet to consider attacking the enemy.

Speaking of Weather

After doing some digging it would appear that the chance for a sea region to generate a weather modifier is predominantly random. It feels like storms and rain occur more frequently near the equator but this is probably just coincidence.

The length of these effects, however, is known.
Arctic Water: lasts for nearly the entire year, clearing only during the peak summer months
Rain: lasts 5 to 20 days
Storm: lasts 2 to 15 days

Arctic Water can also stack with rain or storm.

How does AA Work, Anyways?

Everyone knows AA guns are guns that shoot planes, so putting more AA on your ships makes them more defensible from attacks from the air.

But, how?

How much AA do you need on a ship? Does having AA on one ship protect another ship without AA? How and when during a battle does my AA actually shoot the planes? In short,

What does AA even do, exactly?



Well, the effects of AA are applied at multiple times during the process by which planes attack your ships. We'll go step by step.

1. When an airwing targets a ship, all the sailors sit down and do a bunch of math to decide whether or not they'll shoot back at it. The chance they'll shoot back is usually around 25%, and never goes lower than 20%. The value is dependent on the attacking plane's agility, but seriously it's pretty much always about 25%. (Tip: literally never upgrade agility on naval bombers).

2. If the ship decides to shoot back, it will do another dice roll, that being the number of planes it shoots down. The maximum amount of planes your ship will be able to shoot down during this time will be a percentage from its AA value. If your ship has 30 AA, it will be able to shoot down a maximum of 30% of the attacking planes, and if it had 60 AA, it would be 60%. The specific number of planes that get shot down will be a random number within that percentage. If there are 100 attacking planes, and you have 30 AA, you will kill a random number between 0 and 30. Only the ship that is being attacked is shooting down planes.

3. The remaining planes that did not get shot down will now actually attack. All of the pilots sit down and do a bunch of math to decide whether or not they'll actually hit the ship. The chance they'll hit it is usually 30%, and around 40% if you do Base Strike doctrine. It is capped at 100%, but rarely goes any higher than 50% anyways since it is based on the naval targeting value, which for nearly every plane in the game is the same number. Keep in mind that unlike every other source of damage, planes don't care how fast your ships are, because, you know, they're planes.

4. All the wizards in your fleet sit down and do a bunch of wizard math to decide how much damage to magically reduce from the attack. The amount reduced is probably a percentage (the wiki is unclear, but if it were a flat number reduction it'd be like putting a band-aid on a meter-wide hole). The percentage reduction is based off of primarily your ship's AA and secondarily the rest of the AA in the friendly fleet in battle. Keep in mind that within the calculation, the AA bonus from the rest of your fleet is reduced by 80% (before all the numbers are reduced even further). The damage reduction cannot exceed 50%, and unlike the other maths this percentage is actually rather variable depending on how much AA you have.

TL;DR

1. Put lots of AA on the ships that planes will actually attack.
2. Those ship designs you see floating around of a cruiser or something that has nothing but AA on it are the stupidest things ever.

No, Seriously, These Things are Stupid

Please, do not build these. They aren't even cheap. That's 4000 production cost. That's like half a battleship, or the amount of production cost you could've spent refitting four battleships with new AA. And for what? It'll never actually shoot down any planes because planes are never going to target a puny cruiser stacked with plane-murder cannons when there's a giant battleship with less steaming nearby. So that means the only thing these are good for are reducing damage taken on battleships, except they're not, because it'd still be cheaper and more effective to refit the battleships themselves.

Speaking of refitting, it is, of course, far cheaper to just refit existing cruisers into anti-AA cruisers. But... really? Keep in mind that these ships kill nothing. They shoot nothing. It has pitiful light attack, pitiful heavy attack (or none at all), and planes are never going to go near it. You are spending production cost on a ship that shoots nothing. And keep in mind there's a 50% cap on AA damage reduction, too. This is absolute overkill on every level and a waste of production.

On Kamikazes

I could go in depth on the math here but at the end of the day they're kinda bad. Kamikazes take additional (and very harsh) penalties during the ship-shoots-the-planes stage and it'd be much more worth your production to do literally anything else with your planes.

Superheavies (no, really)

I've talked of them briefly before, but I wanted to reiterate that they aren't just a meme, and in fact cover one of the most important weaknesses of battleships and battlecruisers.

Now of course, when you research a new ship hull, it automatically researches the next level of engine along with it (and torpedoes for subs). However, ship armor and guns must be researched separately, and this is a daunting time-sink that makes producing high-tech battleships a painful sacrifice for researching literally anything else.

However, when you research the Superheavy hull (which is a 1936 tech), you will automatically unlock Superheavy Armor and the Superheavy battery along with it.



And as the numeral on the icon suggests, yes, the SH armor and battery are the strongest in the game, and are available in 1936 no less! The only caveat is that they may only be put on Superheavies.

And when I say strongest in the game, I mean strongest in the game. Superheavy armor is literally impossible to be pierced with 1944 heavy batteries with both piercing bonuses, significantly decreasing the amount of damage taken (not that that's a problem anyways, as the ship has a whopping 770 HP). Additionally, the SH battery deals more damage than the '44 and can pierce that era's armor as well.

Of course, it would be prudent to first get some better AA and a good fire control module (maybe even new secondary batteries if you're up to it), but building a good Superheavy near the beginning of the game saves an incredible amount of time compared to researching 1940 or 44 battleships (or even heavy cruisers), 40/44 armor, and next-level batteries, and then still having to build them in the production queue.



And it certainly won't be a ship to scoff at, either, provided that the fleet around it is well-equipped to keep it safe, as it is an easy target for planes with its massive HP, and threatened by torpedoes with its abysmal speed. Researching the techs that give bonuses for sustaining critical hits will be important for your Superheavies.

NOTE: Superheavies absolutely tear the London Naval Treaty's production cost limit to shreds, so Democracies can't indulge themselves here, unfortunately.

The 1944 Superheavy

Well, technically these are the strongest in the game, but good luck pumping one out ( let alone researching it) before the game ends.

Luigi Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing

Sometimes, your navy is worse than your opponent's, and you know it. So, what do you then? Give up? Well, of course not. If you still have a navy left, it is always in your best interest to use it.

Or in this case, use it by not using it.

It's time to talk about Fleet in Being doctrine. Not the in-game doctrine, but the actual real-world Fleet in Being doctrine. To boil it down, the philosophy essentially goes that the navy, or the Fleet, can pose a threat simply by existing, or Being. It doesn't necessarily have to do anything, it just has to have the potential to do something. This was used by the Germans during WW1; after the indecisive Battle of Jutland, the Imperial German Fleet sat in port for the rest of the war. It didn't do anything, but just because it still existed, the British were forced to keep much of their fleet nearby just in case it left.

Applying this doctrine, you can make life hard for your opponent without ever having your fleet leave port.

Divide and Conquer
If you and your allies are in different places, avoiding a decisive battle and retaining your fleet will, like in WW1, tie up portions of the enemy fleet. This may make winning a battle against (or at the very least getting enough naval supremacy for an invasion) your opponent easier, since their task forces are split between different regions.

Phantom Naval Supremacy
If you set your fleet to 'Naval Invasion Support' but never set up any naval invasions, your fleet will generate naval supremacy in your selected regions even though your fleet will never leave port. This may be handy in deterring naval invasions, or forcing your opponent's hand and sending even more ships to deal with you, leaving less to watch over your other allies.

Slow Burn
If you began the war with less ships than your opponent, it may be well advised to keep your ships in port at the beginning and bide your time until you've built more ships yourself. Then, you may finally strike at your enemy's time of weakness. Granted, this opportunity may never come, but your chances will be much higher than if you sent a blatantly inferior force out to get decimated immediately, eliminating any potential chance you could've gained over the next years.

State of the Meta Address

Perhaps for a multiplayer-oriented guide the obligatory section explaining the current meta should've been written earlier, but in any case, it is here now.

Thankfully, most of what I am about to write is going to be obsolete (presumably) with the release of the next DLC, which promises an overhaul of values pertaining to the naval game, specifically an overhaul aimed at making the existing meta cease to exist in exchange for something that actually makes historical sense, and is in general much less cancerous and gamey.

The Light-Attack Heavy Cruiser

As brought up in the Intermediate guide, the LAHC is a ship that abuses the fact that it is a heavy cruiser (a capital ship) while stacking it with light attack guns, effectively making it great at killing screens while being immune to being shot at by the same screens. Since CAs don't even need armor on them to be capital ships (just a level 1 heavy cruiser battery will do) they are relatively cheap to produce as well, and perhaps more importantly, are very fast and evasive, especially when the Trade Interdiction doctrine is used.



LAHCs are typically paired up with ships that spam out torpedoes (as they will be able to do good damage once the enemy's screening is ripped to shreds) but the very lack of sufficient screens on its own is typically enough to push a fight in your favor no matter what your build is.

The Heavy-Attack Heavy Cruiser

Originally created as a counter to the LAHC build, the Heavy-Attack Heavy Cruiser aims to destroy LAHCs before it is too late, or if it is too late, their superior firepower but relatively equal speed means they'll likely shoot down the LAHCs before they are sunk themselves. This is dubious theorycrafting, but regardless the HAHC has since ballooned into a problematic meta of its own.

Navy builds typically are made to answer the question: "How will I sink my enemy's capital ships?", and the previous meta answered with "torpedoes." Although the HAHC was purportedly a build intended to respond to LAHCs, it accidentally answered the same question with "heavy attack and speed." While the high speeds and high evasiveness of the LAHC was merely a side-effect, it is a main feature of the HAHC, and as such both are now kinda stupid game-abusive metas that no one likes.


The HAHC is packed to the brim with heavy attack batteries, allowing it to shoot at battleships and battlecruisers, while also dodging the heavy attack of those battleships and battlecruisers. This turns fighting HAHC builds largely into games of luck.

While not true counters, I would advise trying to fight HAHCs with naval bombers, as planes do not care how evasive ships are. Supposedly the "counter" to HAHCs are LALCs, or Light Attack Light Cruisers, forming a lame rock-paper-scissors Cruiser triangle, but much like the original "HAHC counters LAHC" idea it doesn't really "counter" per se. The only difference is that LALCs, unlike HAHCs, do not stand on their own as a problematic meta.

The Future

In the upcoming naval rebalance, speed and evasion will be heavily nerfed, and cruisers will finally be returned to a state of mediocrity, as they should be. The LAHC problem will be dealt with directly, as the devs have stated they will make putting that much light attack on a heavy cruiser impossible.

How much these changes will actually nerf cruisers (a HAHC will probably still be a decent investment, just not an overpowered one) will be a mystery until the rebalance launches, but in any case armor is supposed to be buffed, and with that, we can return to a world of sanity where BBs and BCs are powerful.

Oh yeah, and submarines

Regrettably, the most efficient thing you can do to get naval supremacy is to churn out empty sub 1s and stack them all in the sea zones you need supremacy in. This works for getting naval invasion supremacy but little else since the other operations rely on your ships not being awful. This is due to the way naval supremacy is calculated from the number of ships. The upcoming patch will not solve this problem, but it will nerf it very mildly.

Admiral Traits

The following are my opinions on each of the Admiral Traits, or at least the ones that I think are worth explaining and aren't straightforward (like Old Guard).

Media Personality: actually gives +10% Fleet Attack and Defense if the fleet includes the Pride of the Fleet, so be sure to see if you can take advantage of this.

Bold: One of the best traits in the game. It is a personality trait, so it cannot be unlocked, however. It provides +10% speed and +5% damage. Naval speed is invaluable, as it increases your evasion, so Bold Admirals will always be among your very best and should be trusted with your battlefleet(s).

Gentlemanly: aside from the org buff, this gives a +20% enemy retreat chance. Ideally, this guy isn't in charge of any fleet whose job it is to destroy ships. However, it can be used as a positive buff depending on your goals. If your fleet is inferior and you want to avoid engagements, this could be beneficial. It may also be useful for convoy escort fleets lacking the detection or depth charges to kill subs, instead making the subs just go away before any more damage can be done.

Battleship Adherent: This is a dangerous trait, due to its Naval AA debuff, if you do not have the air war completely on lockdown, or if your enemy is using carriers.

Craven: like Gentlemanly



The Sub Traits: If you have Sea Wolf, you may either choose the Silent Hunter + Torpedo Expert or Lancer + Loading Drill Master. They grant -15% torpedo reveal chance, +10% torpedo hit chance and +25% torpedo screen penetration, -25% torpedo cooldown respectively. In general I would say that the Lancer path is better (and undeniably superior if you are making a torpedo-based battlefleet), but if you are only doing convoy raiding, Silent Hunter isn't bad either. The reason why I consider the Lancer path to be so overpowered is because it allows your torpedoes to completely ignore sufficient enemy screening, and also fire torpedoes once every 3 hours instead of once every 4.

Fleet Protector: aside from its innate bonuses, giving a bunch of torpedo destroyers to an admiral with Fleet Protector (which unlocks the Lancer path, but is not mutually exclusive to its own, unlike Sea Wolf) is absolutely evil. If you lack a Sea Wolf, ironically, the Fleet Protector is your next best choice.

Fly Swatter: aside from the obvious bonuses and applications of this trait, if you aren't concerned about enemy planes, this admiral is great for your patrols, as he can unlock Search-Pattern Expert, which provides a better spotting bonus than Spotter.

Superior Tactician: a good trait, and a common one too. Along with it comes the mutually exclusive decision of Lone Wolf vs Concealment Expert. Both are very good and come with powerful side effects, though the decision is made for you, really. Lone Wolf increases the enemy fleet size penalty, so if you are deathstacking and know your fleet is larger this won't do you much good. On the other hand, if it is your enemy that is deathstacking, this will further punish them for it. Concealment Expert decreases your visibility, which is very powerful as it will reduce the likelihood of your ships being hit.

Smoke Screen Specialist: just because it is there doesn't mean you have to click it.

Ground Pounder: is worthless, since the max cap for shore bombardment is already 25% and your ships probably generate that much bombardment already anyways.

Safety First: is very, very good

Marksman vs Crisis Magician: Up to personal preference and what your fleet is intended to do, though I prefer Marksman as, chances are, a ship struck with a critical hit will probably have simply died.

Air Controller mutual exclusives: Fighter Director is usually the best in every scenario, and in a distant second place is the NAV bonus. The CAS one is useless.

The terrain bonuses: are great (except cold water), and should be used to maximum effect.

Backwards

Thank you once again for reading. I plan on updating this guide with additional 'advanced' information over time, such as explaining other naval stats, strategies, etc., so stay tuned for that.

If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to say so below.

Until then, Anchors Aweigh!

[Balkoth]

One small thing it kinda missed out is for carrier airwings, the best build is
C1: Full Naval bombers
C2: Full Naval bombers
C3: Full Naval bombers
C4: Full Naval bombers
C5: Full Naval bombers + 10 Fighters + 10 CAS

It works out as 7 airwings and the 20% airwing penalty malus will only apply to the fighters and CAS (assuming you did it correctly and those are placed on the last carrier and bellow the naval bombers)
as 7*0.8=5.6 [game drops decimals for this calculation so 5]
Meaning you essentially have 5 carriers full of naval bombers

[Balkoth]

Carrier fighters are usless but if you for some reason want them you can do a 6 carrier build with

C1: Full Naval bombers
C2: Full Naval bombers
C3: Full Naval bombers
C4: Full Naval bombers
C5: Full Naval bombers + 10 fighters
C6: Full fighters + 10 naval bombers + 10 CAS
9*0.6=5

Still 5 full carriers full of naval bombers (minust the 10 space wasted on fighters on carrier 5)
with carrier 6 being more or less full of fighters which all participate in the battle.

[Northstar1989]

*unwise unless yoir fleet is either massively superior (in which case, you don't need more normal guns, your enemy's time-to-live will be abysmal, if they engage you at all: also, consider leaving some slots blank on the AA heavy cruisers to bring down cost of repairs...) or massively INFERIOR (in which case, you're using AA cruisers to protect convoys from NAV while they retreat, surface guns will be useless)

Again, AA Cruisers need to have a Heavy Turret (classifying them as Capital Ships) or the enemy NAV will rarely ever target them (it still may go for heavily-damaged Light Cruisers on occasion).

AA ships should always use DP guns, though- so they actually can deal some damage (it's far more cost-effective than separately arming other ships more heavily)

[Northstar1989]

Some of this, great. Others, super-inaccurate.

You're wrong about anti-air cruisers, in particular. If you put just a single Heavy Turret on one, it's enough to get it classified as a Capital Ship (Heavy Cruisers are Capital Ships), and it will be targeted by NAV often despite most of the rest of its equipment being AA.

That said, it's still uneose unless your fleet

[Tom H.A.N.X]

Giving doctrine advice based on outdated information. Please update.

[Metaxas]

Thank you! I hope you are still working on the guide

[glythe]

Thank you for this delightful series of guides!

[double cart]

Thanks ems for answering!
Another question: What stats determines efficiency of port strike?
When I am testing in BBA with Kaiserreich mod, naval bombers with high naval targeting doesn't work quite well against ships in ports, yet they seem to work much better once the ports are occupied by armies and the fleet is forced into the sea.
Hence, I wonder if port strike has a different calculation mechanism from naval strikes.
Also the new planes have surface/sub detection stats, yet seems they are talked about nowhere. The wiki hasn't even updated for air designers yet

[ems]

@double cart I'm not sure how the new plane mechanics interact with the old naval air mechanics, but my best guess is that it does not, or even if it did, it would not be worth the production cost.

[double cart]

Just curious, is upgrading air defense on naval bombers useful? Like does it reduce loss from ship anti-air, or is it totally useless