published on July 30, 2024 in New

Hearts of Iron IV Navy Guide

In this guide I will try to explain as best as possible how navy works.

Contents

Convoys

Convoys have different priorities based on the “job” they are assigned to.

Naval invasion or transferring troops through sea
Supplying remote units outside of mainland
Lend lease
Trade
Internal resource trade

With 1 being the highest priority and 5 the lowest.

Additionally the furthest the selected target for the convoy to reach, the more convoys it will require. For example trade for Cuba costs less convoys with USA in comparison with USSR due to the distance between the target countries and Cuba. Confused yet? you haven’t the rest yet :^)

Important Ship Stats

Max speed = It’s the max speed a ship can have. Ships with high speed values can dodge more shots, move faster, retreat and engage faster.
Max Range = basically how far a ship can go (you can extend this by asking for docking rights)
HP = How much damage the ship can take before it gets destroyed.
Organization = If it runs out, your ships get heavy debuffs. Organization runs out by moving to other sea tiles, engaging into battle or exercising the fleet.
Armor = The armor value that ship has. Having higher armor than the light/heavy piercing of the enemy ship will result in reduced damage taken as well as more attacks per hour. Having less armor will result in bigger damage values taken.
Light Attack = It’s the attack capability of a ship towards a non capital ship (more on non capital ships later)
Light Piercing = The armor value that the light attack can pierce.
Heavy Attack = It’s the attack capability of a ship towards a capital ship (more on capital ships later)
Heavy Piercing = The armor value that the heavy attack can pierce
Anti Air = The air attack a ship has towards planes
Depth Charges = Damage done exclusively to submarines
Torpedo Attack = The torpedo damage a ship can do to a target (can’t hit enemy submarines)
Surface Detection = How easy spotting enemy ships is for your ship, the higher value the better (ships with high surface detection get more hits on enemy ships)
Surface Visibility = How hard is for the enemy ships to spot your ship (the lower the better)
Sub Visibility = How easy it is for your sub to be detected (the lower the better)
Sub Detection = How easy it is for your ships to spot subs (the higher the better)

Ship Types

With 1.7.0 ship priority fire has changed and it goes like this:
Carriers engage the battle first, after some hours battleships engage and at last the rest ships.

The ships are split into two categories, capitals and non capitals.

Non capitals (screens):

Destroyers
Light Cruisers

Capitals:

Heavy Cruisers
Battle Cruisers
Battleships
Super Heavy Battleships
Carriers

However, there is only one cruiser hull. So how can you make a light/heavy cruiser you ask? That’s simple. If you have medium batteries (heavy cruiser batteries) on your cruiser hull it will count as a capital (heavy cruiser) or if you use light batteries it will count as screen (non capital).

Here is an example of a light cruiser (this is only for showing purpose I will get to some templates later.