5000 Hour HOI4 Player Learns NEW Stuff About NAVY! 

most advanced ship techs in hoi4 the 1944 ship techs represent real life ships who were launched around that times but the thing is those ships themselves were desinged either well before the war years ago or with the lessons of the ongoing war and designed rapidly and then developed so on. pdx has to overhaul how shipyards work. 5 yards dont work on a single ship its a single ship yard being able to produce 5 6 ships at the same time.

Oh no Dave, you forgot the unique US spirit for their amazing torpedos! It should've been ranked S+.

Admiral Halsey was lacking that bad weather spirit. he sailed Task Force 38 into the eye of typhoon cobra in 1944. killed 790 sailors.

Every day I watch / read about navy, I feel like I understand it more. Every game where I put effort into navy, I feel like I've wasted a week's worth of off-game research.

I’ve tested the night fighting, the -5% visibility works at all times not just at night. Great for subs!

btw dave about flexible contracts. i think it was a expensive yet legit strategy to switch designer companies after benefitting their bonus to their specialty ships. a designer for example gives extra speed to screens. you hire designer design the screening ships of your choice and then save the design and hire another designer company. the designed screen from previous company should still retain its bonuses

7:10 why does he show SFR Yugoslavia when he says "in a perfect world" 😭

Jeune École means young school. It was a naval doctrine calling for a combination of small but heavily armed ships to fight battleships.

something to keep in mind with navy, because you get so much XP from training your navy compared to air and army, it give you more options with switching your spirits. so you can do things like use the sub research to rush to 1940 or 1944 sub techs(or other ships with the other spirits) then switch to a different spirit once you have researched and designed your ships, you can also do things like use the flexible contracts to get the coastal designer to make ships cheap, then later switch to a different designer and switch to the repair/refit spirit to quickly refit your cheaply manufactured ships with a cheap refit(like say fire control) to switch the designer to get rid of the negative to range from coastal defense

Some nations have access to multiple unique naval designers that have huge bonuses to certain type of ships. So what you do is flip between designers using Flexible contracts to design your DDs, CVs and so on. And you use Refit Yards to speed up the refitting of existing ships to better designs that you have created.

Cheaper ship design IS very useful to nations who do not have infinite fuel, every bit of naval XP before going to war is precious, you don't want to focus too much on naval focuses that give XP because you end up lacking in other areas like economy, air etc. So having to spend less on a ship design, wich later means the saved up xp gets you a doctrine sooner is nice imo

On Integrated Designers, its not really "catch up" spirit, but "Tech Rush" spirit. as the +40% stacks with the 15% from Naval Designer, this means you can really rush through key naval techs such as better guns, torpedoes or such like, and due to how wcheap naval XP is to get, you can easily then rush a key hull types for the T3 hulls.

I think Surprise Attacks would be good if you have a small, but fast fleet, going against a larger, more powerful enemy. Like cruiser vs battleships. You can get in, launch torpedoes and whittle the screen down, before retreating back to port. Could be handy with Greece vs Turkey in the aegean sea

For those having trouble deciding what and when to refit: basically any boat with a level 2 engine is worth refitting and using in a battlefleet, regardless of whatever level of armor or hull it has

After checking the code it is said that all ships except carriers would only engage in combat after 6 hours into naval combat where carriers can start doing damage from 0 hour i.e from the beginning hence those six hours might be called the initial phase. Ps this speculation not fact I could be wrong in interpreting it.

Flexible contracts to get the a designer with -25% production cost -50% range on ships, then switch to a better design company + naval refit yards to do a cheap module upgrade is incredibly powerful for the countries that have access to it. US, Japan, UK, Greece and a few others. -25% cost on a 3-4 flight deck carrier is insane. Then send it in for a 1 level upgrade on AA for +50% range and whatever your new ship designer bonus is.

You know, Dave, I just got an idea. How about organising a small tournament, where the ONLY way to fight is with the navy? Kind of like USA Vs Japan, the one who can island hop and invade the other's mainland - wins And both parties HAVE to build up their navies from scratch. Including naval aviation. And maybe boost the dockyard output to cut down on match time or something.

Forgot to cover the British dedicated spirit!!!

I've always tended to go with Integrated Designers to allow me to keep up to date on naval stuff I need without clogging my research longer for the other things I'm actually REALLY going to need

Naval Refit yards is S tier it makes refits and repairs take very little time thus and allows you to really dominate a naval war

Caustic personality, "Chaotic" lmao.

There isnt enough hoi4 content on youtube and these kinds of videos are really awesome! Keep it up man!

You forgot the best one bureau of ordinance.

It seems they are designed to be best used switched in and out. If you have a starting navy, exercise to get early exp then get the thing which reduces the cost for pp for creating the research slot, and design a cruiser too. After that switch to research and catch up, then go and do the fitting one

Re: Flexible contracts, you can use that to jump around with your ship designer. Pick the one which gives the ships crappy stats but makes them ~25% cheaper to build - build many of them. Then change designed to buff their stats, and then tweak the design like upgrade the radar module or AA gun, and then refit. BAM, huge cost and time savings.

I like Integrated Designs on a naval major like the US (which has limitless naval xp) to really push ahead on tech. Also, again with a limitless naval xp power, using Flexible Contracts to swap designers is helpful. It was more useful a couple patches ago when the Raider designer gave -visibility, but still.

I've found that most of the naval academy spirits that give a bonus to earning a certain trait are kinda worthless, because admirals don't seem to get much exp for them, needing like 5-6 massive battles to get either the Ironside or Air controller traits, and by that time the naval war will be most likely decided. The big exception to this is Sea Wolf, which can be gained relatively easily by just convoy raiding with around 20-30 subs.

You state several times that grinding navy xp is the easiest thing so why do you give naval reformer S-tier when it only slightly accelerates the xp gain (especially when it gains the fastest already)?

When it comes to repair costs it'd be better if you can assign multiple naval base/dockyard slots to a single ship instead of using 1 of each for every ship, from a destroyer to a SHBB. It'll make you choose between producing new ships, repairing more ships at once or getting bigger ships back in the fight sooner, where focusing on one detracts from the others

That one in French is the name of a strat where the French thought they could overwhelm Britain by spamming smaller ships instead of fewer large powerful ships

Decisive battle could be good for a sub-based raiding fleet. Having a much higher chance to hit with torpedos could massively increase your convoy kills per battle. The penalty to retreat chance and speed would be hard on that though. In fairness to Surface Raiders, it looks like the retreat chance and speed bonuses are fleet-wide, so again subs would take advantage of that to avoid getting sunk while retreating after their first strike on convoys.

THE VIDEO I WANTED IS FINNALY HERE! I love you Dave! 🥳

Flexible contratcs is op if you need pp, like u get ship designer almost for free and for the entire game. it has a permanent effect even if you dont have it, the ship designer, which in most cases you wouldnt get from the very frist....

I remember hearing a while back that carriers are the best ship because it multiplies the stats of the planes atop it during the initial stage of combat. It's why kamikaze and torpedo bombers could do so much damage. But this was years ago, and I'm no admiral. I just remember being suggested to always go for them if you could afford it.

You can actually level up admirals stupidly easy if they're leading surface fleets. As France, I got a level 3 admiral up to level 8 within a year of the wars start

I always really liked Integrated Designers because I like investing heavily into Navy early on and getting some strong Destroyers and Submarine 3s as quickly as possible and it helps a ton.

You can use the designer for certain countries to get the best screen bonus and best heavy ship designers. My buddy plays a mean Italy game with that tactic.

Flexible Contracts is great if you play a nation with multiple designers because you can flip your designer around and make specific ship type designs you want with each designers respective bonuses. The active designer applies only when you create the design, so if you make a Pacific fleet carrier design for the extra deck space, then flip to a capital ship designer for Armour and Heavy Attack to design Cruisers and Battleships, you can still make those carriers and they'll have the Pacific Fleet Designer bonuses.

FAVORITE breakdown video Dave has ever done. LOOOOOVE the navy. Still waiting for a followup playthrough of Greater German Reich with a GRAND Greater German Navy! ♥️ ❤ ❤

I always take integrated designer every since game, since I like to research most of the naval techs when playing a naval power and it saves a ton of time...maybe I should think about naval reform though.

The Naval refit yards is good because you can refit your old battleships with new engines so they don’t slow down your main fleet as much (and also more dodge chance).

The naval refit is a good one if you have a lot of ships, and don't plan on making a whole lot of new capital ships. Your are faster a refitting older ships with new equipment and the repair time is east for light ships

Regarding surprise attack, think submarines. Initially they're invisible, then they attack, then they have to flee while the enemy is aware of them. This one increases the chances of your subs actually surviving a engagement...

25% naval refit speed is big when u nation starts with destroyers that dont use all there modul slots and after u researched good torpedos

Haven’t seen anyone mention how Feedback rolled an admiral named “Peter Griffith” Hey Loi-

Bold is the best not just for the 5% attack but the 10% speed boost. Speed is great.

i would argue that Jeune Ecole is pretty useful as a minor power so you spend less oil and time and dockyard space for repairs training your fleet because you need to build a fleet destroyer and a few other light ships like escorts for your convoys so having the lower DD cost does help i do think that it should receive a buff like Destroyers being faster to build or something

Actually i don't agree with surface riders. It's not completely bad if you rly use just your capitals to hunt down conwoys. The point with this strat is to create like 10 fast capital ships with good armour and then send them to hunt down conwoys. Why? Due to high speed, and low numbers it's hard to hunt them down, and if you micro a lot it can actually win you game as convoys are gonna get sunk, and if your enemy doesn't have his main fleet nearby then also convoy escort is going to sunk. So in my opinion it should be more of c/d tier rather than f.

I hope they update naval battles to make battles more like land battles: I mean you can throw ships into the battle and forget about this and manually control what they do. In this case, well-balanced medium/small operational connections will make sense.

Facepalm most nations switch ship designers multiple time depending on what ship they are designing. you just happen to pick Ireland which has one. It is S tier.

Thank you for this video

"...the best thing to do in a perfect world..." *shows Yugoslavia*

One of my favorite nations, especially for the naval game, is Italy. I strongly recommend Naval Refit Yards for Italy and early. Your starting tech is decent, especially with some mod research. I think you're best suited with Italy refitting a lot of your early destroyers with small refits - better torps, better guns, better AA. Your starting fleet can win the war for the med, but it's smaller than the UK's and quick repair is very useful as well

Curious is Decisive battles bonus would be strong on torpedo destroyer stacks? Give them higher chance of not running away and reaching the capital ships for torps, as well as the +10% torp hits. Combo with Close Combat..

As US you start with TWO air enthusiasts. As Japan you start with THREE.

trade interdiction : so this is when you have a small fleet *watered eyes* my fleet is quite average dude

Bet this video will be great

28:45 If you already expect to go with submarines that could help massively with getting submarines ahead of time and fielding more of them before other achieve parity with you. Doubly so if you are Germany and get submarine research speed bonuses as it could be worth it to rush for 1944 submarines from the start of the game given that you can expect the submarine research bonuses to assist with the ahead of time penalty.

The true power of the Cruiser designer is as follows. I always pick it after my workhorse. You pick the -25% cost coastal designer and use that to design all your 1936 ships. You then build all your ships cheap, treaty limits are no hindrance here since the 25% cost applies to treaty cost. Then, in 1940 when you have Radar 3 and Fire Control 3 you select a sub or screen or capital specific designer and then upgrade your fleed designs with radar and fire control, then you do this for all your designes, sub designer for subs, screen designer for screens and capital designer for cap ships and carrier designer for carriers. In 1940 you'll have all your designes for the rest of the game ready with the ideal designer and you can do it cheap.

I feel like PDX is missing out on having the naval battles more visual. Which means we are also missing out! Make it happen Dave!

I think the most frustrating element of naval is your leadership never really grinds new traits

Speaking of all the carrier stuff, has PDX fixed the issues with carrier planes not really doing anything in naval battles?

I use instilled agression on convoy raiding and thats all

I don't know if you've done a video on this, but it would be interesting to see if having more naval commanders with the optimal number of ships is more effective than running one naval commander with a death stack. Does it change the game play enough to make it worthwhile or does it make no difference? Does death stacking have any effect on a fleets ability to use it's AA, do the debuffs effect individual ship systems?

They really should have made the Jeune École more transformative. Let it change something fundamental, to decrease the impact of capital ships. IDK, make torpedos OP or something.

You satire Ireland's navy but my Irish carrier fleet once mopped up a Japanese player's carrier fleet in multiplayer (America was giving me 50 civs all game)

There is no ideology based spirit like in the army? Referring to the surprise attack I came over it for the first time yesterday. But then again, it takes alot of time until Guangxi Clique have carriers 😉

If you research the 1940 ships along 1940, when are you going to have a battlecruiser o carrier ready, in 1942???

5:00 hey Lois

A Blockade Runner admiral could offset the negatives from decisive battle and then some.

It's funny how this video immediately becomes outdated because integrated designers only gives ship modules research speed now.

Hello, the spirit of the navy command are actually bugged; Well the tooltip is bugged and wasn't updated. There is actually 40% chance of gaining new stats which makes it very much worthwhile

Getting naval invaded and letting them land eventhough you have a powerful navy

"Not maxing out Naval Doctrine until late game" Laughs in USA XP gain

Idk if what Dave is saying is 100% correct on the ship production. Most games by 1943-45, I have a dozen or so carriers sitting in reserve with usually 3-5 carrier fleets out patrolling. Of course this is usually done with larger nations like Japan and US, but others like China/PRC can still pump out half a dozen carriers by end game easily on top of loads of screening ships. Not saying they are on par with the UK or US, but would definitely be more than other majors like the USSR, Italy, Germany, or France.

Flexible contract is S tier. If you really want you can change designers regularly to get the most specialized ships possible.

There's no downsides if on Always Engage, no retreat, which you should be, cause if they killed you the first time, they'll just kill you harder the second time.

Is it possible to use trade interdiction just to get blockade runner and then switch to fleet in Being and go for decisiove battle?

The raw stats of your new admiral should be proportionnal to your doctrine. If you are advance in your doctrine it means that you have a naval corps with a lot of experiences so it would be logical to recruit admiral with big stats

Does Naval Reform give xp during naval training or is it only in combat? I thought it was only combat xp but maybe that changed or im just wrong. If its oy during combat its still useful but not nearly as good.

What about a video Dave on carrier aircraft composition on carriers? Like how many fighters/bombers/torpedo planes and why? I have no idea what the best ratio is

Hang on. With Night Fighting, it doesn't say anything about the -5% visibility being only at night. I hope it's not, because that's why I take it.

i am happy to know that everything you choose top tier i was already selectting it!!it mean i have brain :)

Surprise Attacks: This increases the chance a fleet will retreat after the battle start. EG: 1 hour, ~Guessing~ (Ship damage is applies every hour) it will give commanders a 10% buff to the chance they will retreat. The Second Bonus gives you +10% speed if you do retreat. Both Bonuses would last for the entire battle. Commanders make a retreat decision roll every hour ?? ~maybe~. This would then increase the chance they would retreat overall. The speed bonus would apply any time you retreat, throughout the battle. Even Manually canceling the fight. This is meant for hit an run tactics, where you set subs, and small fast groups of screens + 1, 2 capitals (At your risks, Capitals slow okay). You Set to Always engage or High Risk and hope for a fight. you get initial attack with Torps, and hope for some damage, before retreating and getting out of dodge.

once I was playing italy and had my fleed on alway engage and well it ended up against uk and french fleet well safe to say the subs got away the sirface fleet howwver also turned into subs

25:00 I feel like there are two situations navy-wise in HOI4. 1) you're the UK or the USA. You have the upper hand, but you want to force decisive battles as quickly as possible to be able to project power more widely. As UK, for example, I want to sink Germany's fleet before Italy joins the war. I can afford to lose a few ships in the process. Decisive Battle is useful here. 2) You're any other country. In this case, you need to preserve your navy for the long game and build it up slowly and carefully. You can't afford to take risks.

I love spamming 36 battlecruisers with brave commanders selected

The META is very simple, Instilled aggresion because attack is the best stat by far cuz of how the effects of taking dmg work, 2nd one doesnt matter but flexible contracts to pick designer and refit yards to refit ships and integrated designers if ur rushing something, for example carrier 3s, and 3rd one you go night fighting because not only are your ships slightly better at night tho that doesnt even matter compared to the real reason which is the -5% visibility which if you dont have any other visibility bonuses makes your fleet take 5% less dmg multiplicatively, btw that visibility stat there doesnt affect ships outside of combat. Also in terms of admiral traits u want bold as a backround trait because attack is the best stat and for beginning traits u want one of the ones that lets u get concealment expert, for the US the best admiral and arguably the best admiral in the game is arleigh burke because he also starts with fleet protector which allows you to pick destroyer leader (dont pick lancer tho its useless) and he starts as lvl 3 soo u have more chances to roll for attack, for britain the best one is Andrew Cunningham and for Japan im pretty sure it is in fact yamamoto. Some notes from the video too, torpedo screen penetration is a multiplicative stat meaning if the enemy has 100% screening it litreally does nothing because 1.05 x 0% = 0%, having admirals start at a higher level is nothing compared to the loss of random traits (admirals are very easy to level which is also the reason the trait gain chance is lower than the ones for the army, seeing a lvl 10 admiral after a massive MP naval battle between japan and the USA isnt that rare and lvl 8 or 9 is pretty much guaranteed)

Also I think the close combat would suit Germany and submarines too no? Seems perfect

I never use the 15% naval exp spirit. Most nations that generate their exp through training only need the exp for doctrines. However, most nations can afford those doctrines anyway. The USA can max it all out before the war, and nations like Japan and The UK can do the important doctrines as well... I am a research addict, so I preffer the research spirit. The only time you want to use naval exp gain is when you have a starting navy that you are not going to upgrade. Basically, a Mexico or Brazil that has capital ships but no research or industry to support them without ruining your army or airforce. So if you are planning on upgrading your fleet, I would not recommend it. I always use flexible contracts to get a naval designer for the 15% research bonus. After that I pick the 20% naval and 20% naval module spirit to research all the modules needed for a good 1940 ish fleet. As soon as you start to prepare for war, you want to swap to refit and repair spirit. Refitting ships is always useful when you want to add or upgrade things like sonar, radar and fire control.

did you forget about the british CAG spirit? The most OP in the game?

我必須要說，自己都說過好幾次了，海軍經驗有夠好拿的，基本上根本不缺 那，那一個經驗增幅的BUFF 就根本不需要才對

I’m compelled to say this having watched the disability video of yours yesterday. I remember when you first showed up on youtube, I was hella annoyed by the castrati feeeeedback intro and quickly dismissed the channel. Having recently searched for plane designs I’ve stumbled on your channel and legit had to check if you’re the same guy. Mad props to you my man, passion and dedication got you real far. I came for plane designs, but now I’m staying for charisma and excitement. I’m not even into multiplayer of hoi4, that should say something. Again, great work man, hopefully it pays off for you. That intro though, good riddance.

Best of the Best is good for the Soviets since they have few good admirals and they might get purged and get the "Cowed by Stalin" trait. All though, who builds a navy as the Soviets..

Making escort carriers as a minor nation is so fun. Take on wolfpacks at first and then take on the Japanese with your veteran air wings and ships.

refit dont make it cheaper just quicker

Is this for AI only? Because some of these things can be used pretty well to annoy the shit out of other players (stacking retreat chance on capital ships and raiding the mid atlantic, constantly running away from their main fleet while distracting them the entire time)

Integrated designers is literally god tier for everyone, there is so many techs. Wtf u talking about just catching up on

So, positioning isn't S tier, but is S tier..... little bit of contradiction there I think. I go for attack, repair, and night fighting. down the right side of the middle doctrine first, you'll spot everything first, and with your speed you will chase down retreating ships easily. When your entire fleet is going 40knots you get to wipe out the entire fleet. Also I only raid convoys and always engage.

I thought you didn't want retreat chance bonuses because your navy took more damage as it retreats?