Achieving good naval combat results

[YueJin]

The naval combat system in Warplan Pacific can leave players confused at the results that occur sometimes. I’d like to lay out my thoughts on the reasons a favourable naval combat happens in this game and how to force it to occur for you on both the strategic offence and defence. I will try to update this with screenshot examples from ongoing games if a good learning experience occurs to make this more reader friendly.

Achieving good naval combat results in WPP

Naval combat in Warplan Pacific revolves around these factors:
Unit efficiency and experience, reconnaissance, land based air support, numbers and target selection.
With that in mind, how can you force your opponent to give you an advantage in these areas and then punish them?

In my experience of the game, winning the war at sea relies on one simple thing; forcing your opponent to leave their ships out at sea in fleet mode. If you are the attacker, you will almost always come out on top of the engagement.

Why is this the case? Well, initiating combat allows you to have two key advantages from the beginning; your ships will have higher efficiency, and by using a COMINT unit before attacking and positioning your fleet in what will be a low reconnaissance hex for the opponent, you gain a big lead in recon value. These advantages grow even further if you get to strike the enemy fleet with land-based air units especially in the case of a carrier engagement. Finally, you get to use overwhelming force against the enemy stack of your choice, the outcome getting better every attack as their efficiency and strength drop.
This means that unless you have total naval superiority already, valuable ships should NEVER be out at sea in fleet mode. If you see an enemy fleet and want to check if it’s in fleet or raider, move a patrol craft/DD group to a low recon hex 4 spaces away and see if they interdict. They are very unlikely to make contact with your scout.

So the next question is how do we force an opponent to sea? To answer this, we have to look at the wider question of amphibious assaults and how they are conducted. They are the threat an enemy fleet responds to.

The strategic offensive
The safest and easiest way to conduct naval landings is with overwhelming force. Ideally the defending unit should be destroyed in one turn. This means attacking ports held by 10 strength units with armies, large corps or US Marines supported by naval bombardment. These attacks should get 5-7:1 odds usually resulting in a surrender if a HQ isn’t in range. Often, the defender will sortie a fleet to attempt to attack your bombardment force, a move unlikely to do much damage as they only get one attack and may even fail to strike due to the difficulty of finding fleets in raider mode. Your own carrier/battleship fleets can then move out to punish this with the method described previously. You will even have possession of the port on your turn giving you a massive lead in reconnaissance value. By building up the pressure in this manner, the theory is that eventually the strategic defender will succumb to the temptation to sortie their carriers/battleships in a poor attempt to strike your low value fleet.

The strategic defensive
The defender’s effort should be spent on making their valuable ports so frustrating to take that the attacker leaves their carriers/battleships blockading the port in fleet mode to try and starve the defenders out. This can be achieved by predicting the attacker’s target ports and defending them with units that have at least 5 defensive value: large corps/armies, marines or garrisons with high tech level. If the attacker is not able to seize a port in a single turn they will be forced into attempting to blockade it. Blockades are easily broken by moving a single DD group in raider mode next to the port and the enemy will have to leave a group on fleet mode to prevent this resupply. By making the capture of key positions frustrating enough, eventually the attacker will leave their ships out in fleet mode allowing you to inflict a damaging strike on them.

Conclusions
Essentially the game comes down to forcing your opponent into a corner where they feel they have to make the first move by sending out their ships in fleet mode which you then counterattack. If on the offensive, land with overwhelming force and punish any attempt to strike your bombardment fleet, if on the defensive fortify key strongpoints so that the attacker must risk a losing naval battle to make progress.

[ncc1701e]

Thanks a lot, very helpful.