[2023] Ship hit profiles

bitmode said: In my opinion, battles should actually be much faster.

This is something that's just baked into the design of the game. And it has odd results.

Most big naval battles in the period lasted 1 to 5 days at the most. Convoy battles were sometimes longer, but these also are of the "convoy attacked in multiple running battles" variety.

It's worth pointing out that when capital ships were involved, longer naval battles were problematic simply because they burned so much fuel when fighting. But we don't have to worry about that in HOI4.

All of this means that I've seen naval battles that suck all fleets in the area into a weeks long battle where both sides clobber each other in various iterations of the game. Ships that retreat can't usually rejoin the battle, but new ships can get added. This kind of gameplay means that I can hunt down Bismark with ships from Alexandria and Singapore as long as I drag her into a battle in the North Sea.

But if battles weren't so long, they'd probably end up being like NAV strikes. You just get a marker on the game screen with losses and be like "Oh, I guess we just won Midway. And I missed it."

I've wondered if the game might benefit from a major an minor naval battle system where there's a fundamental difference between small battles and big battles mechanically.