Tale of the Sheep! - JocMeister (A) vs. Lowpe (J)

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: JocMeister

Sadly it looks like my goal of clearing India before 42 is up wont hold. This has ramifications as the troops are needed elsewhere.

It cuts both ways - India is a tar baby and he needs his troops to feed his greed, so keeping them tied up at Chittagong is probably more beneficial to you in the long run than having them go elsewhere to cause mischief.

[JocMeister]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

I think you had too much to drink!

Bollocks! There is no such thing as "too much to drink". [:'(]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy
It cuts both ways - India is a tar baby and he needs his troops to feed his greed, so keeping them tied up at Chittagong is probably more beneficial to you in the long run than having them go elsewhere to cause mischief.

You are right and normally I would be quite happy with the situation. But I need those troops yesterday! [:)]

[JocMeister]

Not sure I can bring myself to continue playing when the only ASW with any kind of effect is leaving the CVs in port. I´ve had enough of this.

Sub attack near Coffs Harbour at 95,164

Japanese Ships
SS I-171

Allied Ships
CV Wasp, Torpedo hits 2, heavy damage
CL Perth
CLAA Juneau
CLAA Atlanta
DD Le Triomphant
DD McCall
DD Gridley
DD Lardner

SS I-171 launches 4 torpedoes at CV Wasp
DD Le Triomphant fails to find sub, continues to search...
DD McCall fails to find sub and abandons search
DD Gridley fails to find sub and abandons search
DD Lardner fails to find sub and abandons search
Escort abandons search for sub


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sub attack near Coffs Harbour at 95,164

Japanese Ships
SS I-170

Allied Ships
CV Wasp, Torpedo hits 2, on fire, heavy damage
CL Perth
CL Sumatra
CLAA Juneau
CLAA Atlanta
DD Lansdowne
DD Le Triomphant
DD McCall
DD Gridley
DD Lardner

[JocMeister]

Told Jeff the turn will be a while. Need a break from this.

[mind_messing]

ORIGINAL: JocMeister

Told Jeff the turn will be a while. Need a break from this.

We've all had those kinda turns!

As the Allies, open the ship reinforcement ledger, filter it to show CV/CVL/CVE.

As Japan, open the aircraft database and look at the jet fighters. Then cry, as you'll have your industry bombed before you'll ever see them.

[JocMeister]

Its not about the actually loss but Japanese subs ability to completely disregard any and all ASW effort.

I had 12 CATs + 24 Hudsons doing NavS over the TF. All TBs/DBs where doing 50 NavS/20ASW. Long Island had 15 TBs doing ASW. I had 4 ASW TFs in the same hex. 2 leading and 2 trailing. The TF had 64 ASW value in itself. And they could just as well have not been there. Absolutely silly. Just as when I lost Ent. Its a joke and a bad one. Whats the point of even trying if the only thing you can do is leave your CVs in port? Every time I move my CVs I get a lump in my throat because I know that regardless of what I do my CVs are completely defenseless against Japanese subs. It doesnt matter if I have good leaders, good training and make every effort to avoid his subs the just magically pop up in the middle of the CV. All Jeff has to do is to get a sub in the same hex as an Allied CV and its a done deal.

If my subs where doing half as good half of KB would have been gone by now. Sick of it.

[BBfanboy]

Out of curiosity, what altitude are your Nav Search aircraft using? I find 6K too high to spot subs, but 2K works fine. I run some high NavS if there is a possibility of enemy combat ships plus the lower ones for subs. ASW patrol goes at 1000 feet.

[Mike McCreery]

ORIGINAL: JocMeister

Its not about the actually loss but Japanese subs ability to completely disregard any and all ASW effort.

I had 12 CATs + 24 Hudsons doing NavS over the TF. All TBs/DBs where doing 50 NavS/20ASW. Long Island had 15 TBs doing ASW. I had 4 ASW TFs in the same hex. 2 leading and 2 trailing. The TF had 64 ASW value in itself. And they could just as well have not been there. Absolutely silly. Just as when I lost Ent. Its a joke and a bad one. Whats the point of even trying if the only thing you can do is leave your CVs in port? Every time I move my CVs I get a lump in my throat because I know that regardless of what I do my CVs are completely defenseless against Japanese subs. It doesnt matter if I have good leaders, good training and make every effort to avoid his subs the just magically pop up in the middle of the CV. All Jeff has to do is to get a sub in the same hex as an Allied CV and its a done deal.

If my subs where doing half as good half of KB would have been gone by now. Sick of it.

How much of your air search was set to night patrol?

[JocMeister]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

Out of curiosity, what altitude are your Nav Search aircraft using? I find 6K too high to spot subs, but 2K works fine. I run some high NavS if there is a possibility of enemy combat ships plus the lower ones for subs. ASW patrol goes at 1000 feet.

The Patrols where at 6k, Long Island TBs at 4k. The squadrons on the CVs at 10.

ORIGINAL: Wargmr
How much of your air search was set to night patrol?

1 of the Hudsons LRs squadrons and 1 of the CV TB squadrons.

[BBfanboy]

4K altitude is still too high to consistently spot subs. During the day they are submerged and all you spot is a periscope, so you need to be quite low.
At night, 4K is too high to spot anything too.

[JocMeister]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

4K altitude is still too high to consistently spot subs. During the day they are submerged and all you spot is a periscope, so you need to be quite low.
At night, 4K is too high to spot anything too.

To my knowledge the engine isn´t that sophisticated?

[Lokasenna]

Naval Search missions are not that good at spotting subs - they can, but not very well. ASW missions (with ASW skilled pilots) do far better at spotting subs.

[Mike McCreery]

I go 5K to 6K for subs and 11K for general search.

Somewhere I read that 5K - 6K was optimal for subs. I have no clue about the veracity of this information but I seem to spot them pretty easy.

[JocMeister]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

Naval Search missions are not that good at spotting subs - they can, but not very well. ASW missions (with ASW skilled pilots) do far better at spotting subs.

That is why I was running both ASW and NavS.

ORIGINAL: Wargmr
I go 5K to 6K for subs and 11K for general search.

Somewhere I read that 5K - 6K was optimal for subs. I have no clue about the veracity of this information but I seem to spot them pretty easy.

I also read 6k somewhere for both NavS and ASW.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: JocMeister

Its not about the actually loss but Japanese subs ability to completely disregard any and all ASW effort.

I had 12 CATs + 24 Hudsons doing NavS over the TF. All TBs/DBs where doing 50 NavS/20ASW. Long Island had 15 TBs doing ASW. I had 4 ASW TFs in the same hex. 2 leading and 2 trailing. The TF had 64 ASW value in itself. And they could just as well have not been there. Absolutely silly. Just as when I lost Ent. Its a joke and a bad one. Whats the point of even trying if the only thing you can do is leave your CVs in port? Every time I move my CVs I get a lump in my throat because I know that regardless of what I do my CVs are completely defenseless against Japanese subs. It doesnt matter if I have good leaders, good training and make every effort to avoid his subs the just magically pop up in the middle of the CV. All Jeff has to do is to get a sub in the same hex as an Allied CV and its a done deal.

If my subs where doing half as good half of KB would have been gone by now. Sick of it.

Does the CR show the complete TF OOB? If so I don't see how you get 64 ASW value out of four DDs. Of course, ASW value doesn't add like that either. Each ship gets considered as itself. There's no additive heft to having lots of ASW-capable ships in the TF other than you get more passes through to detect and engage the sub.

Four DDs is too few in this era for a CV TF.

Were the DDs upgraded?

Air Search is poor at finding subs, especially early on. Air ASW, and 1000 feet.

All that said, sometimes the other guy gets lucky. But you could reduce his luck with seven DDs instead of four.

I lost Enterprise to a sub on December 15, 1941. That week at least. It hurts. You play on. As others have said, open the ship queue and look at 1944. I'm IN 1944 and I just did that this week. It helps.

[JocMeister]

It was 12 DDs in the TF. All newly upgraded. Some had 8 ASW value.

[ny59giants]

I have 8 DDs with each CV TF almost always. Maybe it goes down to 6, but not for long. Then, some DDs go with my 18 knot AOs that I use with my CVs. Third, my SC TF get some DDs. Once I get enough DDs, then I have each CV TF ordered to follow a single ASW TF. I know its extra micro-management, but I even use arcs for my ASW FPs within the CV TF to increase odds. Like you, I tend to fear enemy subs in '42 more than KB. [;)]

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: JocMeister

It was 12 DDs in the TF. All newly upgraded. Some had 8 ASW value.

Then you did what you can do. Except more ASW air and less Search, and lower altitudes. Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.

[IJV]

Can't bring your boat back, but some thoughts:

My understanding is that firing chances on a per-ship basis are primarily (or at least significantly) to do with speed, and speed differentials - slow ships will fire less often, fast ships more often (this is more or less observable if you put, say, one of the 19kt AA sloops up against a similarly armed destroyer - you'd think they'd hit each other more or less as often, and yet... - similarly it's why the US gets so much mileage out of groups of Fletcher DDs (38kts!) and why the old slow battleships tend to get implausibly clowned on as surf combatants - the low speeds mean less shooting, not just more getting shot at); so, with the carrier, you're lining a 'fast' submarine (the more nauseating of the IJN ones, like I-170 & I-171 among others, are rated for 23kts) for shots at 'slow' cruising warships which AIUI will be doing 15kts until they get shot at.

For the Brits vs Kongos the situation will be reversed - you have a 15kt submarine trying to shoot at a battlecruiser doing ~30kts (since they tend to rush about on the way into/out from bombardments), which will tend not to work out so well.

It's possible that I'm wrong about the particulars of this and that the submarines are assumed to use their cruising speed when running the numbers...in which case you'd be doing 15kts vs 15kts (KD6A vs CV) against 10kts vs 30kts (Brit T vs Kongo). Would change odds but not relative difference so much.

So - mechanically that's your problem, I guess, without even getting into stuff like torpedo range, accuracy etc. Practically speaking I suspect most of the submarines (both Allied and JP) are in practice too fast - since the way movements/searches etc run is a bit out of order with regards to getting detection on the things they'll be spotted by aircraft from moving ships less often than they should be, but also in the sense that they regularly hit things that it's...debatable whether they should be hitting on the regular (imagine this concept in WITPAE: 'this ship is fast enough to be mostly immune to submarine interception and therefore does not require escort' - then get back to me in three months when you get both of your 30kt liners out of the yards after they both got blapped by the same submarine on the same day...not that I've had that happen multiple times or anything).

Obviously you can't do much about that, but what you can do is make ships shift a bit if you're passing major sub zones (which the approaches to Sydney usually are in 1942!) - much as it's painful to use the extra fuel, a day's full-speed running here and there might save some angst in the future...

e: it is kind of a shame that there's no 'fast-ish cruise', or even better a customizable speed setting - being able to wind a fleet up to 25kts or so without requiring them to go absolutely flat out would be hugely helpful and more reflective of the sort of thing you'd find, say, a carrier group doing in a dangerous area...but here we are.

[Grfin Zeppelin]

Submarines are like cats, they know if you dont like them......