For every convoy route you need a single task force to defend it (meaning if 10 convoy routes go through a single sea zone you need to have 10 task forces in that zone)
15:25 For those light cruisers to make them cheaper, you probably should remove the armor from the ship. Torpedoes ignore armor so it is useless against subs. It would leave them more vulnerable to a surface raiding fleet with conventional light and heavy guns, but you have your main navy which should be designed to hunt that kind of thing down, so a surface raiding fleet shouldn't be able to pay off if you pay attention. The armor available for light cruisers often isn't that great at actually protecting ships against most up-to-date guns anyways.
I can't believe I've got over 6000 hours in this game and I'm still learning new things lol, I've never looked at my escorts in this detail, I tend to just rush sonar early, stick it on a destroyer design and spam them into a ten taskforce fleet that I assign to any regions in naval range and hope for the best. It's not a terrible strategy but I'm gonna be looking at this next paythrough a lot more closely
It makes me really happy to hear that even an experienced player like you find this useful :) and yeah, that usually works well that you describes. But there are more efficient ways :)
@@hyggegaming I'm glad to make you happy :) I really love the navy stuff in this game, don't really understand why it gets such a bad rep always happy to learn more about it
I cleaned up all my missing achievements and many of them had me fighting Germany after the Allies were beaten and basically needing to do a world conquest. god this would have made those less painful...
My only issue with convoy escort is that my task forces are picked up by massive enemy surface fleets every fu***ing single time. I put them on engage on low risk but still they get wacked by massive enemy surface fleets.
That is very true and the other part of naval supremacy. For that, that’s where you use patrol mission and strike force to find and annihilate those enemy task groups
Be careful so your video is not taken down by PDX. You know how Hoi4 Navy works. (No one is supposed to know) it's like being able to read Minecraft enchantment texts.
Great guide indeed! So hunter TOS groups should be on Patrol? Damn I would have expected a Strike group setting on em. Patrol would more efficiently engage submarines then a Strike group would over escorted zones?
Yeah, because a strike group would come into a defensive fight and reinforce it. You want to be the one who finds the submarines, not them finding you or your convoys. If you find them (on patrol) they start the fight visible, which means you can sink them right away :)
Thanks, it looks to me that convoy escorts should be assigned to routes instead of zones. For your example in Cap Verde Plain, would that also mean that like 13 sub task forces would be ideal if attacking enemy convoys?
That is correct! No point in assigning them where you don’t have routes, apart from when you move troops across waters then. Yeah, well. I would doubt that 13 sub task groups would constantly find a target and engage at the same time, and they need quite good spotting for that. So in this example I would probably recommend around 20+ task groups of subs in cap verde plain to make sure I overload.
Thanks, great guide yet again! Convoy escort has been dark patch on my naval games so far. Few questions did arise during the guide: What mission settings you should be using? Is speed completely irrelevant in escorts as they will just teleport to battles? Do you need to worry about range? Easy for UK and France with small islands everywhere if you do, but quite hard for axis. What traits should one give to their escort admirals, or do they usually even level up during games?
Submarines are really slow, so the speed should not be an issue, but if enemy also use surface riders, then you need fast ships to catch them and also bigger ships to sink them!
So yeah, they teleport into fights and are quicker than subs anyways. Range can be a problem, but yeah, you need to be able to operate next to the routes. The real question is if you enemy can operate there or not. Oh, I can’t remember now. But blockade runner is usually the nobrainer. And all destroyer traits, like screening efficiency
Some things I noticed is that even if you have the exact amount of task forces on escort, sometimes they will crowd one battle if there is down time, leaving another on open. It’s random though. I tried setting tons of 1 dd task forces but they didn’t always reinforce, same with normal sized ones of 4 or so destroyers. Similarly when dealing with large routes (Singapore rubber to uk), a force of only a few destroyers will come to engage and no reinforcements will arrive while dozens of convoys sink. I also found that having sonar or scout cruisers in the escort forces only helped kill more subs somewhat, but not enough to justify their cost. I have usually done it where my main strike force with carriers will hunt go to engage the subs after they have been found by the scout cruises, but in crowded zones the strike force gets involved in all the defensive battles rather then actually pursuing their target (and burns a ton of fuel). Having the carriers on patrol is risky though since they burn fuel and can get engaged and killed by actual enemy fleets before you can come to help.
I can see that the cruisers wont be much help with killing the subs, but as the detection value is average of the fleet, did the fleets without cruisers spot the submarines in battles with just destroyers, especially pre 40´designs? I understood from the guide that destroyers would do the hardwork, and the cruisers would be lifting the average spotting stat up on the fleet before the destroyers get better radars and equipment slots later on.
Very good insights! I like to make small Carriers task groups. Like 1 carrier, a heavy cruiser and a few LC with spotting, just to hunt submarines. Not as risky as it’s a small task group. Still quite agile and fast. Then you use patrol to engage offensively. A few of those groups mop up a submarine overload quite quickly
@@hyggegaming I have tried this, but I found that if there were freindly convoys going through the zone, the task force would engage in defensive battles against the subs instead of being on patrol most of the time, and if it was a large route with dozens of convoys, my carriers and heavy cruisers would be torpedoed
If you get sucked up in defensive battles and it doesn’t really work out well, then you can park your carriers manually outside of the naval zone, and then take your navs and fly naval strike missions into that zone. That works like a charm
For every convoy route you need a single task force to defend it (meaning if 10 convoy routes go through a single sea zone you need to have 10 task forces in that zone)
The picture frame in the back gives you cat ears 😻 proper gamer mode
He is just our kitty guider🥰
Hahahaha, the things you don’t realize… 🤦♂️ So I don’t have a good camera or mic yet, but kitty ears I guess…
@@hyggegaming you are becoming a streaming icon :D
😅
The cat we don´t deserve but that we need!
15:25 For those light cruisers to make them cheaper, you probably should remove the armor from the ship. Torpedoes ignore armor so it is useless against subs. It would leave them more vulnerable to a surface raiding fleet with conventional light and heavy guns, but you have your main navy which should be designed to hunt that kind of thing down, so a surface raiding fleet shouldn't be able to pay off if you pay attention. The armor available for light cruisers often isn't that great at actually protecting ships against most up-to-date guns anyways.
I completely agree. I was a bit spontaneous with that remark, so didn’t really consider it, but you are right :)
I can't believe I've got over 6000 hours in this game and I'm still learning new things lol, I've never looked at my escorts in this detail, I tend to just rush sonar early, stick it on a destroyer design and spam them into a ten taskforce fleet that I assign to any regions in naval range and hope for the best. It's not a terrible strategy but I'm gonna be looking at this next paythrough a lot more closely
It makes me really happy to hear that even an experienced player like you find this useful :) and yeah, that usually works well that you describes. But there are more efficient ways :)
@@hyggegaming I'm glad to make you happy :) I really love the navy stuff in this game, don't really understand why it gets such a bad rep always happy to learn more about it
Very nice in depth on Convoy Escort Badger!
Thanks a lot mate :)
I cleaned up all my missing achievements and many of them had me fighting Germany after the Allies were beaten and basically needing to do a world conquest. god this would have made those less painful...
Makes me happy to hear that the guide was helpful then :)
Thank you. Was wondering just this morning about how to make an efficient convoy escort group
Haha! This comment made my day! Happy that it’s not only me thinking about convoy escort with my morning coffee 😂😂🫡
@@hyggegaming yeah hahaha pretty much the same mate!! was just doing real life prep for the day in the morning and convoy escort came into my mind
😂😂😂
My only issue with convoy escort is that my task forces are picked up by massive enemy surface fleets every fu***ing single time. I put them on engage on low risk but still they get wacked by massive enemy surface fleets.
That is very true and the other part of naval supremacy. For that, that’s where you use patrol mission and strike force to find and annihilate those enemy task groups
Here's how to hunt subs and protect convoys. Now devote all that oil you're protecting to the death stack you need to protect the escorts.
Thank you so much for these deep dives. As someone very new to the game (~100 hours) the depth of each individual feature is crazy. Super helpful!!
That makes me super happy to hear :) /Badger
Yeah the learning curve is steep. Then there's the mod millenium dawn.
I'm a simple man. I see a hygge guide, I click like ❤
Thanks a lot like always mate!
@@hyggegaming thanks a lot fo the work you guys are doing. these mechanic breakdowns are a huge help.
Very good, very helpful guide, always something to learn or to remember in hoi4 👍
Thanks like always mate :)
Be careful so your video is not taken down by PDX. You know how Hoi4 Navy works. (No one is supposed to know) it's like being able to read Minecraft enchantment texts.
Hahaha! Everyone, I’m just guessing. I know nothing about navy!
Well done
Thanks mate :)
Great guide indeed! So hunter TOS groups should be on Patrol? Damn I would have expected a Strike group setting on em. Patrol would more efficiently engage submarines then a Strike group would over escorted zones?
Yeah, because a strike group would come into a defensive fight and reinforce it. You want to be the one who finds the submarines, not them finding you or your convoys. If you find them (on patrol) they start the fight visible, which means you can sink them right away :)
@@hyggegaming that's a lot of great info man thank you
No prob mate
Very interesting! Been wondering about this one
Happy to hear :) thanks for commenting
Thanks, it looks to me that convoy escorts should be assigned to routes instead of zones. For your example in Cap Verde Plain, would that also mean that like 13 sub task forces would be ideal if attacking enemy convoys?
That is correct! No point in assigning them where you don’t have routes, apart from when you move troops across waters then.
Yeah, well. I would doubt that 13 sub task groups would constantly find a target and engage at the same time, and they need quite good spotting for that. So in this example I would probably recommend around 20+ task groups of subs in cap verde plain to make sure I overload.
@@hyggegaming Thanks, this will help me so much.
Happy to hear :)
Thanks, great guide yet again! Convoy escort has been dark patch on my naval games so far.
Few questions did arise during the guide:
What mission settings you should be using?
Is speed completely irrelevant in escorts as they will just teleport to battles?
Do you need to worry about range? Easy for UK and France with small islands everywhere if you do, but quite hard for axis.
What traits should one give to their escort admirals, or do they usually even level up during games?
Submarines are really slow, so the speed should not be an issue, but if enemy also use surface riders, then you need fast ships to catch them and also bigger ships to sink them!
So yeah, they teleport into fights and are quicker than subs anyways. Range can be a problem, but yeah, you need to be able to operate next to the routes. The real question is if you enemy can operate there or not. Oh, I can’t remember now. But blockade runner is usually the nobrainer. And all destroyer traits, like screening efficiency
Hi, iam new - nice & good videos! Is there a video about the current width meta? So divison templates how small/large?
Hey mate! Thanks a lot!! No sorry, we have made many videos, but not on that topic I’m afraid.
Some things I noticed is that even if you have the exact amount of task forces on escort, sometimes they will crowd one battle if there is down time, leaving another on open. It’s random though. I tried setting tons of 1 dd task forces but they didn’t always reinforce, same with normal sized ones of 4 or so destroyers. Similarly when dealing with large routes (Singapore rubber to uk), a force of only a few destroyers will come to engage and no reinforcements will arrive while dozens of convoys sink. I also found that having sonar or scout cruisers in the escort forces only helped kill more subs somewhat, but not enough to justify their cost. I have usually done it where my main strike force with carriers will hunt go to engage the subs after they have been found by the scout cruises, but in crowded zones the strike force gets involved in all the defensive battles rather then actually pursuing their target (and burns a ton of fuel). Having the carriers on patrol is risky though since they burn fuel and can get engaged and killed by actual enemy fleets before you can come to help.
I can see that the cruisers wont be much help with killing the subs, but as the detection value is average of the fleet, did the fleets without cruisers spot the submarines in battles with just destroyers, especially pre 40´designs?
I understood from the guide that destroyers would do the hardwork, and the cruisers would be lifting the average spotting stat up on the fleet before the destroyers get better radars and equipment slots later on.
That is correct! That’s how I usually use refitted LC in MP games, just to push up the detection for early DD models
Very good insights! I like to make small Carriers task groups. Like 1 carrier, a heavy cruiser and a few LC with spotting, just to hunt submarines. Not as risky as it’s a small task group. Still quite agile and fast. Then you use patrol to engage offensively. A few of those groups mop up a submarine overload quite quickly
@@hyggegaming I have tried this, but I found that if there were freindly convoys going through the zone, the task force would engage in defensive battles against the subs instead of being on patrol most of the time, and if it was a large route with dozens of convoys, my carriers and heavy cruisers would be torpedoed
If you get sucked up in defensive battles and it doesn’t really work out well, then you can park your carriers manually outside of the naval zone, and then take your navs and fly naval strike missions into that zone. That works like a charm