Everything you NEED to know about Navy! Part 1 

Awesome guide, I LOVE how you actually explained what the fuck the ships do in real life as opposed to saying "hurrrr you need 4 screens per ship" and call it a day

31:50 You can kinda see if shore bombardment is happening because the land battle bubble itself will have the little artillery shells on the side (the same ones that a railway gun provides). So naval bombardment is kinda like a floating railway gun

Please continue this series. The naval game is underserved on RU-vid. Please consider a collaboration with another Creator like MordredViking for a naval deep dive serious. There's so much content to easley farmed here.

Quick navy guide that will help you: Step 1: Get you ships to 3 fleets, one is subs, one is destroyers and one is the rest. Step 2: Put subs on convoy raiding or strike force. Put destroyers on patrol, and the heavy fleet on strike force in the region where destroyers are patroling. Easy half of the Japanese navy sunk in 3 months.

Feels like tier 3 ships are never worth it you get them too late and until you build them the game is over

Finally a dedicated navy tutorials

Cruiser subs with plane catapults are surprisingly good spotters. And almost impossible to take out when they are on do not engage

In the rare instance I build a navy, I always go battlecruisers over battleships. I don't know the maths/code behind it, but speed seems to be a major factor in both engaging enemy fleets and in positioning, and having your whole fleet speed at 30 knots (or close to it) is a HUGE advantage. I basically do like the US Navy in WW2 and create two heavy fleets- one with all of the slow battleships as mainly a ground-pounder fleet to support naval invasions, and one with all of the fast battlecruisers and carriers to engage the enemy fleets. It works really well.

Speed is very important. Helps you in spotting, when you find a fleet it helps your ships get in possition faster. If you want to run you will get away faster. In battle, it is also useful for dodging heavy attacks. A heavy cruiser with 40 speed will only get hit 56% of the time from heavy attacks. If you manage to reach 45 speed, you will only get hit 44%. Light attack is really only realistically dodgable by destroyers without meme levels of speed stacking. A 40-speed destroyer will only get hit a nice 69% of the time from light guns and 25% from heavy attacks. Mass producing fast, cheap destroyers can be more effective than having actual well designed screen ships if RnGesus is on your side.

Maybe it is not "everything you need to know", but at least some basics. Just one real flaw. Light Cruisers with light batteries are actually best DPS/Cost effective ships and in most cases in single player will give best chance to win naval battles. So while they can also be used as spotters, escorts etc. they are commonly used as main strike force.

Please make part 2 for designs

Please continue this! I'm a pretty new player by HOI4 standards and I just started to understand land army and now getting hit with navy is rough. Very comprehensive and visual guide

8:20 I remember those doctrines had visibility reduction too. Trade Interdiction got nerfed at some point and removed visibility bonus. Forgot which patch.

Once you go navy you never want to do anything else, and landwar just seems like a hassle. Also, CL with max light attack + cheap roach destroyers is the meta. If you want you can add BC's there to add heavy attack there. Most cost effective fleet, but if you want to go for roleplay proper setup then 4 CV's added with CL + DD will rip any AI fleet apart. Added bonus for CV's: fighters do jack shit, go full naval unless RP reasons. #GreaterFinlandNavalPower

I've played lots of Paradox games, and this is one of the best tutorials I've seen , hoping for a part 2 soon

YES MORE ABOUT NAVY PLS. I need to know the builds

One thing they need to include (and i dont know if this is a mechanic) but fleets should be able to provide artillery/air support for infantry on land

At 23:00 minutes talking about the Strike Force button, irl capital fleets would stay at a home base (Scapa Flow for the RN) and wait for a spotted target. It reduced the risk to the capital ships as they were safe in port, and reduced fuel burn, limited RAS/UNREP in those days. The threat of the capital fleet emerging from the port played a significant role in opponent naval strategy. One of the most well known examples is the British Home Fleet vs Bismarck, but that also applied the other way around. The Kriegsmarine were nervous about the Home Fleet coming out and smashing their High Seas Fleet. All naval operations were conditioned on 'What will the capital fleet do', hence its projecting naval supremacy by merely existing. (Doesn't mean it's a good game mechanic though.)

Love it Dave. Thanks for this one. Helped me learn a few things after 1000 hours.

I would kindla wanna know about carrier air wing composition and some build pointers. Because my impression is that more than 10 fighters per carrier is waste of space that should be all torpedo bombers. using dive bombers on carrier seems like a roleplay to me because they are worse at ship attack and to do ground support you need to park the carrier next to shore and manually control the air group and they dont follow ground units.

Nice video Dave please continue this series it's so good

Yesssss🎉🎉🎉🎉 been waiting for this video to be made! Love navy combat even though I know very little about it

This is great! Also you mentioned around 31:55 you can't actually see the naval invasion actively firing the from the coastline. While that's true, I noticed if you turn your sound up in that region you can hear a GLORIOUS spread of battery fire. It's the best sound, please listen to it. It's like gunfire ASMR.

Yeah, maid a series of navy videos covering everything about the navy. This was very useful

Great video, helped me a lot to understand navy

Thank you so much!

SET YOUR SHIPS TO NEVER REPAIR. This is absolutely essential. If they are set to repair, they will retreat mid-battle when their damage threshold reaches a certain degree. This is bad because retreating WILL get your ships killed, as they take much more damage, especially mid-battle when a lot of your screens are destroyed so your ratio drops below 4:1. This is why COORDINATION is the most important admiral stat. Also never allow "splitting to repair." Just pay attention to your battles and manually repair when you need to. Ships will retreat no matter what once their org is low , there's no way around this. Its the exact same as with land battles with the org/strength dichotomy. Think of turning on "never repair" as essentially enabling a "last stand" ability for your ships, where you sacrifice your strength in order to remain in the battle. Although its obviously not quite the same. Naval warfare is essentially determined by a few major battles. It is not like land combat with its wars of attrition, although there are ways to drag out naval conflicts. It is thus usually good to also set your strike forces to "always engage" to prevent weird AI calculations from stopping all your strike forces from converging on a battle. But if you have good spotting, and your enemy is stronger, it may be worthwhile to only allow your forces to engage into low/medium risk battles. Subs are only useful for raiding enemy naval invasions imo. Nonstop convoy raids just aren't very effective if the enemy has depth charges on their destroyers. Take this as you will. If you disagree with me here please let me know because subs just never seem worthwhile to me. I also dont like having all the naval battle popups that result from it, as it makes it harder to know when/where your actual decisive fleet battles are taking place. If your dockyard count is low, make "tugboats" (cheapest destroyers possible, mostly empty slots) and spam them out after you make the capitals you want. if you don't want to fight big naval battles and just want to protect convoys, spam destroyers with max depth charges and keep 2-4 dockyards on convoys to replenish your supply. it may be worthwhile to buy convoys from the markets as well if you're really struggling and have low eco. you can have the best capitals in the world but if you dont have at LEAST a 4:1 screen to capital ratio, you're toast If you have a lot of dockyards and/or start out with a lot of screens, research and add level 2 torpedo tubes to every possible slot and then refit all your destroyers to create a bunch of torpedo boats. this also pairs well with a low eco build where you make strong light attack cruisers to take out the enemy screens ASAP, and then your torpedo boats will reck havoc on the enemy capitals. small nations can really punch above their weight with this method torpedos do a ton of damage and if you can take out their screens they will destroy their capitals easily battleships (BBs) are almost never worth it heavy cruisers (CAs) can be good but they need to be min-maxed well Air is the #1 decisive factor in any naval engagement carriers (CVs) are always good when you have enough screens AND battleships/heavy cruisers to cover them. I personally feel you need at least 4 CA/BB for every CV. This is something people neglect I feel like. Carriers occupy the third "battle slot" behind battleships (who are themselves behind screens, occupying the first slot) Again, CA are more cost/time effective, especially as "screens" for CVs It can be worthwhile to make/refit specialized light or even heavy cruisers with max AA to help protect your ships, especially if you know the enemy has good carriers and/or if the enemy has a lot of air bases near the sea zones and is planning to try to do naval bombing generally go for max deck space for CVs. converting battleships to carriers is also more effective than making them from scratch but carriers can still be worth making (they generally get more deck space) the main stat that matters for admirals is coordination, then positioning, then attack, and then defense If you want to find and fight the enemy in a decisive battle, make a small spotting fleet. It can be worth making/refitting light cruisers with max floatplanes to get the best possible detection. Detecting and engaging the enemy before they detect you makes a BIG difference. Finally, its very useful for organizational purposes to customize the icons you use for different ships and turn on automatic reinforcement. The automatic reinforcement will change depending on the icon each ship design uses. This allows you to create and manage templates for your strike forces and be able to easily tell what ships are missing after engagements and what their role was in that fleet (AA, spotting, torpedo boating, tugboating, etc)

You forgot to mention that crusiers with subs and some spunge destroyersare very good at convoy raiding as they can get very high soft attack to destroy the enemies' screen's defending the convoys.

Great video! Thanks for that! What I would like to see in another video about the navy is how to learn from in-game statistics or battle results. I'm thinking of stuff like "Why don't I ever find the enemy fleet?" or "Why did I win this one battle and lost this other battle?" to learn how to iterate on the fleet compositions/ship designs

Meanwhile I make shit tons of subs, torpedo destroyers, a couple mine laying destroyers, and light cruisers if I’m feeling rich.

If you dont rush carriers youll end up with carrier 3 probably about late 42 if you have 5 research slots if it's not your main priority im building 4 carrier 3s right now in my confederate USA playthrough ill put the old carriers in a separate fleet ive heen pumping out screens and subs like crazy so far

Great video!!!

Jp catapult subs are amazing for spotting

Thank you for these simple tutorials videos for single players they do help

I really like the torpedo cruisers. Having more torpedo slots makes them absolutely insane in your main navy as a disposable glass cannon. If you have a decent back line of carriers, you probably don’t even need AA on your screens, which makes them even cheaper.

Hi Dave! great opening of a very usefull series! What I want you to show the peasents is a pure torpedo destroyer or torpedo light cruiser fleet with skirmishing, using either the Surprise Attacks or Surface Raiders officer corps. So you basicly attack with superB positioning and extreamly low visibility to dodge and screen pen torpedo the enemy and retreat and repeat. Maybe a chinese run against the japanese invading fleet. I want to see this working as the dev intended! Make it work, be a hero and deliver the content !

I really like light cruisers because destroyers have really short range. So replacing some destroyers with light cruisers reallt improves the fleet's range. Thanks for the video. I learned a lot.

One thing you should look at in-depth are naval MIOs. No one has made a guide about that! Which MIOs to use for spotters, screens, escorts, CAs and BBs? It's tricky balancing research, production bonusses, MIO funds and other bonusses!

Yeah we need a video(s) with all of the topics you mentioneda last

Cruisers also have one other use not mentioned: they make good minelayers, because they can equip more minelayer modules. It results in faster laying of mines, while being more combat capable than destroyers, meaning your mine layer has to be out for less time.

YES

He's so real for this

Would really like to see a playthrough where you focus on naval as germany or japan to see your complete strategy building to batteling

Fast BC are usefull if u want to build a fast carrier group, so BBs don't lower ur speed to bad.

Feedbackgaming ONCE AGAIN, making me a significantly less mediocre hoi 4 player. At this rate I might one day be competent

Thanks for this! I'd like tons of suggestions regarding using navies as a minor nation.

I'm annoyed with paradox now. Those numbers for mines in sea zones outside of deep ocean didnt exist the last time I checked. I looked up the wiki and not only that, but they reduced the mine accident chance from 15 to 5 and the speed penalty from 50 to 0. It's 0 now. It didnt just effect speed, it affected to hit chance. There's little reason to ever use mines now, it's a waste of IC. They are so concerned with tweeking numbers or fixing exploits, that they don't want you to use "strategy" or have "fun" in their "stategy game".

Great sea keeping + Weather experience provides a 90% resiatance to weather

Battlecruiser is useful if you're building a fleet to a speed standard as the extra speed granted allows for more armaments to be fitted whilst maintaining that speed

In hoi4 i see the army as the dumb fun noob type of combat, air as the "idk, air superiority good" combat, and the navy as the hard to learn but badass combat.

Super helpful! Finally my convoys will be able to survive more than 2 years of war.

11:50 going to say this if you have or are making the other ship classes and are sitting there whit ship capacity production and not really sure what you might need. make a working jack of all trade and have it act as a force multiplier for what ever fleet its part of, just make nothing but jack of all trade ships that wount work. (maybe on destroyer if you put AA, torpedoes, radar, sonar, light guns) because destroyer sort of have all of them in defult slots and on escort you will probebly fight all of them. (note on escort) most convoy escort will abbort there attack the moment they get spoted or shot at. so a sub will sneak around the pacific get radar pinged by one destroyer and go well back to base and they drive back to port so fast that they got speed ticketed. same whit torpedo bombers on naval strike (convoy raiding) they will abort as soon as the first destroyer fires the first salvo (in most cases). 14:34 another feature of the battle cruiser is that it have a easier time disengaging from a fight. this mean that if you have a smaller navy then another navy battle cruiser have a better chance off retreating from a fight get back to port and getting repaired. then a battleship that will more likely get stuck in the fight until it ends (that said do pay attention to the speed as there is nothing not even a warning if you make a battle cruiser thats to slow, to many heavy guns that slows it down to much). 33:00 now if Paradox made it so that the fleet would rename it self to something senseible. because I seen the game spit out some wierd fleet combo going... what is this supposed to be (it was a mine laying fleet) but it hade the name fleet 132.

I play with one super heavy battleship (with pride of the fleet buff) to soak the heavy weapons fire and massive light cruiser fleet to kill the "frontline" as fast as possibly.

This is a good refresher. Only thing I didn't really get is why all carrier naval bombers and no fighters.

It's basically about having a huge number of good screening ships, and of course good cheep light cruisers. Never build battle ships middle in late game cause of the number of years it takes to build them. The best investment in middle to late is aircraft carriers.

I have been playing around with testing the viability of naval bombers recently as like Feedback said they seem to have been nerfed, particularly in terms of using them as a near-shore anti-convoy raiding solution. From my findings you can potentially make them just as effective, perhaps even more effective, by using them in conjunction with naval air recon. For example if you build a dedicated light naval bomber and add a camera on as a secondary weapon once you have 2+ squads you can set 2 in a given sea tile, one set on naval bombing and the other on naval recon and assuming you have reasonable coverage of the tile you'll very quickly start inflicting considerable dmg. If you stack a radar station on top of this once you get up towards say lvl3+ radars where you can project them into sea zones you'll be hitting everything with no trouble at all. One caveat to be aware of, you can select both naval bombing and naval recon concurrently as missions on your naval bombers, but any squads that have naval recon will never actually do any naval bombing missions even when both are selected, so this strat only works with 2 or more squads active naval bomber squads in a given zone. There is also the heavy airframe dedicated naval patrol aircraft which absolutely fulfills the same role as the secondary recon squad in the setup i was describing, but as someone who has little interest in strategic bombing strats I find my method far more practical as I don't have to worry with all the research required for the heavy planes. You can even go so far as to intentionally reduce the strength of your naval patrol squads if you are worried about wasted air power having the 100 planes on recon.

In MP navy plays a very specific role and there spammed. In single player, they do play in very effective way. My US turned CSA play through was tearing Japanese navy apart while defending the Philippines from invasion. And all of the ships in Nimitz fleet are exist US warships, not newly built ships.

we need part 2

18:00 submarines use Sonar not Radar, Radar is only use full if your vessel is really tall. planes are the best for radar, ships radars are placed as high up as can be. subs are best at sonar but ships can use it to. i guess large subs might have radar that they use when they are on the surface but i doubt they use it in any kind of battle as planes are really good at spotting subs close to the surface.

Would like to see actual builds in later videos

I never make battleships.... Fast battle cruisers are king

20:28 i wonder if when carier is level 3 experience and get +% for sortie eficiency, would that mean you could now get more than 4 cariers and you would basically removed the sortie penalty ? because that bonus as iam awere doesnt let you get more planes on that one carier you just get this bonus for that ship while max planes stay the same, or does the sortie efficiency convert for some bonuses to the planes ?

What think we should be able to put our ships in to storage so u have the ship built but. No crew on board or a minable crew when they join man fleets you have to put them threw the dock yard to get them ready

great video, i enjoy navy but i always felt like i didn’t know what i was doing with patrol in particular - i’ve never been too confident with patrol task force composition and the number of patrols for each fleet - i’ve been trying to go for 1 light cruiser with 3-5 destroyers (with one patrol task force for each active naval region) - is this rubbish? can i get away with 1 patrol task force for every 2 active naval regions? and are the destroyers just slowing down my light cruisers and leading to them getting hit and not spotting as much? also will subs do anything on patrol? i assumed they’d be bad at the task because they don’t get radar/sonar, but if you find you’ve not got enough light cruisers and you need your destroyers for convoy protection, can you use subs as a last resort or are their stats so bad that there’s no point

From 2017, I don't know how many HOI4 navy youtube video I have watched, lol.

great video, i don't know if i`l ever get gut with navy...

Quick question. Im playing as Germany with my friend, and ive researched the H41 Battleship class bu it says *Heavy Armor Scheme is not allowed for the slot armor* Idk what that means and ive tried to create a variant of it, but doesnt do shis

Bruh learning the navy focus tree took 8 years to complete

I like heavy cruisers for minors, they can deal some damage but are cheaper than battleships

I make no armor light cruisers with one catapult and rest medium light batteries… instead of heavy cruisers… chews through screens way better than

What more would you like to see? -How to design. Ha! I know exactly how to design. How it looks live in battle. Naah I know pretty much. Officer Corps. Naa wait a minute, that would be awesome! Please do that! Btw how do you only have 50k subs!?

I have played HoI for one thousand hours, but I still don't know where to get in-game information that my fleet is too big or how to calculate if it is beneficial to take some ships away from my fleet and make them watch the naval battle from a distance.

What planes should I put on my carriers?

One thing i hate about paradox and their games is how they overly simplify the navy and warships. Whether its space or ww2. All a person has to do is pump out massive amount of one ship type and you win.

Great video but one question. I recall that the AI doesn't actually need naval supremacy to conduct naval invasions which is one of the only ways the AI "cheats" in this game on a normal difficulty. Was this changed recently?

Seems like the fastest way to lose your DD fleet is to put them on convoy escort. What's the trick?

What happens when you put a fleet on strike force with no patrol?

BRING MORE NAVY PLS :)

Oh here is an idea for the naval supremacy problem. Always a pain that they can be half way across the ocean but project supremacy. Why not just have it drop off by some % based on distance from the fleet itself?

You are telling me what my meme Super Heavy Battleship with all of guns are Super Heavy Cannons are meta for his tipe??? The only thing i dond't do is screens for his, so, the dont live a month.

Is it just me or do I sink the most ships (warships, not just convoys) on CR?

Everything you need to learn is ... make subs , alot of subs

Instructions unclear, purged all admirals Carriers do in fact hit screens equally effectively as capital ships, they just have a preference to target carriers>capitals>screens.

could you do this also with air? i dont know the reason why there tactical and strategical bombers

Part 2 ?

And superbattleship?

is there a part 2

Yeah please show us the naval heavy tanks 😂

The problem I have is that my navy ends up in like the Indian ocean and when I try to bring it back to Europe, it says it’s out of range and I’m like yeah I know it’s out of range. I want to put it in range but it’s like I can’t figure out how to do that.

Feedback Academy?

English is so complicated: Destroyer -> Eat damage.

kurwa FINALLY!

I understand navy I just think it sucks and the AI sucks at it.

Everything u need to know about navy: DONT USE IT

You didn't cover the Super Heavy Battleship

Half an hour just for part 1 lmfao

another year another Navy tutorial

Battleships bad. CV good. Cruiser better. Subs OP. All this for cost and time of manufacture of course.

Hope you aren't sick anymore. Sucks.

I never understood why people care so much about the navy both in the game and irl. Can't people just swim?