ASW in 1944

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: flaggelant

seeing recon planes attacking subs always makes me laugh
(and doubt the capability of the pilot...)


*Pilot fires flare gun at sub*



supposed a betty/ nell would fly extended range, not carrying torps that would be a situation where you might score a hit,
but thats a lot of work to go trough for some sub drifting along hundreds of miles out of the coast..

nothing to do with extended range. All torp carrying aircraft carry (should carry) bombs when being on nav search. But that doesn´t work for IJN 2e bombers in my WITP version.

You are correct about the recon planes, that´s just odd...

At least some recon planes have bomb(s) in their loadout.

[USSAmerica]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: John Lansford

A spotted sub has a lowered chance to find and attack a TF than one that is unspotted.  Of course a sub that was attacked and damaged has an even lower chance, but there is an advantage to knowing where the sub is; TF's will attempt to route around where a known sub is located.

they only route around the sub at the beginning when you set a destination. The AI isn´t smart enough to alter the TFs heading when it´s underway already. And in late 43 or early 44+, the "lower chance" of attacking for Allied subs with radar isn´t really striking as they will still attack most times anyway. So if you don´t do anything against the spotted sub, it will just sink your ships as if it wouldn´t be spotted. Just look at the spotted subs sitting in base hexes for days/weeks. You may think how vulnerable they would be and place two ASW TFs above them. Daily spotted, nothing happens. Your AK TFs enters the hex, boom, AK sunk by the sub.

I have seen, first hand, TF courses altered by the "AI" after they are underway, once a sub is spotted along the previous path.

[mdiehl]

Are people complaining that Japanese ASW is not very effective? From a historical point of view it's hard to see anything wrong with that.

[thegreatwent]

My question was based not on history, rather I wished for tips on playing the game better. Mdiehl if you want a history thread start your own. Other players of the game have given me tips, if I want a lecture on one persons interpretation of history I'll PM you.

[Mynok]

[:D]

[mdiehl]

My question was based not on history, rather I wished for tips on playing the game better.

When I said "people" I had it in mind to refer to the thread in general, not you specifically. Try not to be too hurt if every comment isn't directed at assuaging your concerns.

Mdiehl if you want a history thread start your own.

No thanks. I'm good with this one.

if I want a lecture on one persons interpretation of history I'll PM you.

If you prefer ignorance, you can always use the green button.

[thegreatwent]

As The Elf said "Disregard"

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: flaggelant

seeing recon planes attacking subs always makes me laugh
(and doubt the capability of the pilot...)


*Pilot fires flare gun at sub*



supposed a betty/ nell would fly extended range, not carrying torps that would be a situation where you might score a hit,
but thats a lot of work to go trough for some sub drifting along hundreds of miles out of the coast..

nothing to do with extended range. All torp carrying aircraft carry (should carry) bombs when being on nav search. But that doesn´t work for IJN 2e bombers in my WITP version.

You are correct about the recon planes, that´s just odd...

At least some recon planes have bomb(s) in their loadout.

depends on the mod probably. Never played a mod that had armed recons in and stock definetely hasn´t. At least not for the Japanese and I´m not aware of a bomb armed Allied recon either in stock. [&:]

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: USS America

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: John Lansford

A spotted sub has a lowered chance to find and attack a TF than one that is unspotted.  Of course a sub that was attacked and damaged has an even lower chance, but there is an advantage to knowing where the sub is; TF's will attempt to route around where a known sub is located.

they only route around the sub at the beginning when you set a destination. The AI isn´t smart enough to alter the TFs heading when it´s underway already. And in late 43 or early 44+, the "lower chance" of attacking for Allied subs with radar isn´t really striking as they will still attack most times anyway. So if you don´t do anything against the spotted sub, it will just sink your ships as if it wouldn´t be spotted. Just look at the spotted subs sitting in base hexes for days/weeks. You may think how vulnerable they would be and place two ASW TFs above them. Daily spotted, nothing happens. Your AK TFs enters the hex, boom, AK sunk by the sub.

I have seen, first hand, TF courses altered by the "AI" after they are underway, once a sub is spotted along the previous path.

and how often does that happen? One in a thousand times or more often? With usually two dozen subs spotted each turn in an average PBEM turn some time in mid 43 the AI would have at least two dozen chances to alter the convoy routes every turn but it never does in my games. And I don´t blame it for not doing it as this is the job of the player IMO anyway.

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

ORIGINAL: castor troy





nothing to do with extended range. All torp carrying aircraft carry (should carry) bombs when being on nav search. But that doesn´t work for IJN 2e bombers in my WITP version.

You are correct about the recon planes, that´s just odd...

At least some recon planes have bomb(s) in their loadout.

depends on the mod probably. Never played a mod that had armed recons in and stock definetely hasn´t. At least not for the Japanese and I´m not aware of a bomb armed Allied recon either in stock. [&:]

i thought some of the Dutch recon planes had a bomb, but i'll check...

EDIT: when i get home in about 9 hours... [>:]

[Chris21wen]

Historical the US lost 50+ subs during the war spread evenly through out it duration.

The number and effectiveness of US subs increased markedly towards the end of 1943 to such and extent that the Japaesed lost 5,0000,000+ tons of shipping in total to US subs and for one period during 1944 were sinking 50 ish ships per week.

In the game the best Jap a/c is the Liz but this isn't available in Stock. Use you a/c to find them and PC to sink them.

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso



At least some recon planes have bomb(s) in their loadout.

depends on the mod probably. Never played a mod that had armed recons in and stock definetely hasn´t. At least not for the Japanese and I´m not aware of a bomb armed Allied recon either in stock. [&:]

i thought some of the Dutch recon planes had a bomb, but i'll check...

EDIT: when i get home in about 9 hours... [>:]

don´t know about the Dutch. Never used the 2 hex ranged biplanes for anything I guess and the 5 hex ones (don´t know the type of either of the two aircraft) isn´t carrying bombs afaik. But of course I could be wrong.

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: Chris H

Historical the US lost 50+ subs during the war spread evenly through out it duration.

The number and effectiveness of US subs increased markedly towards the end of 1943 to such and extent that the Japaesed lost 5,0000,000+ tons of shipping in total to US subs and for one period during 1944 were sinking 50 ish ships per week.

In the game the best Jap a/c is the Liz but this isn't available in Stock. Use you a/c to find them and PC to sink them.

while Allied subs can be a real pain in the game, the usual outcome in a PBEM is the subs being far more impotent than they were in real life.

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: Chris H

Historical the US lost 50+ subs during the war spread evenly through out it duration.

The number and effectiveness of US subs increased markedly towards the end of 1943 to such and extent that the Japaesed lost 5,0000,000+ tons of shipping in total to US subs and for one period during 1944 were sinking 50 ish ships per week.

In the game the best Jap a/c is the Liz but this isn't available in Stock. Use you a/c to find them and PC to sink them.

while Allied subs can be a real pain in the game, the usual outcome in a PBEM is the subs being far more impotent than they were in real life.

Too true... a bit surprising given the overall increased bloodiness of the game overall (compared to actual events), but maybe Grigsby likes airplanes and hates subs? [&:] [:D]

[Chris21wen]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: Chris H

Historical the US lost 50+ subs during the war spread evenly through out it duration.

The number and effectiveness of US subs increased markedly towards the end of 1943 to such and extent that the Japaesed lost 5,0000,000+ tons of shipping in total to US subs and for one period during 1944 were sinking 50 ish ships per week.

In the game the best Jap a/c is the Liz but this isn't available in Stock. Use you a/c to find them and PC to sink them.

while Allied subs can be a real pain in the game, the usual outcome in a PBEM is the subs being far more impotent than they were in real life.

I have to say I've not noticed this but it's difficult to calculate against history as you cannot measure the tonnage in the game, only ships.

[AW1Steve]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: Chris H

Historical the US lost 50+ subs during the war spread evenly through out it duration.

The number and effectiveness of US subs increased markedly towards the end of 1943 to such and extent that the Japaesed lost 5,0000,000+ tons of shipping in total to US subs and for one period during 1944 were sinking 50 ish ships per week.

In the game the best Jap a/c is the Liz but this isn't available in Stock. Use you a/c to find them and PC to sink them.

while Allied subs can be a real pain in the game, the usual outcome in a PBEM is the subs being far more impotent than they were in real life.

That might be because in real life, most of the pre-war skippers were replaced for not being agressive. How many players really take the effort to change out every skipper, and how many just leave the timid ones in place? [&:]

[Local Yokel]

If you haven't already done so, it may be worth taking a look at these threads:

Leo's ASW TEST (and scenario) - problems spotted!
Leo's air ASW Search TEST WitP v1.795...

My usual (but not invariable) practice is to fly naval search at 6000' and ASW missions at 1000' - 2000'.

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: AW1Steve

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: Chris H

Historical the US lost 50+ subs during the war spread evenly through out it duration.

The number and effectiveness of US subs increased markedly towards the end of 1943 to such and extent that the Japaesed lost 5,0000,000+ tons of shipping in total to US subs and for one period during 1944 were sinking 50 ish ships per week.

In the game the best Jap a/c is the Liz but this isn't available in Stock. Use you a/c to find them and PC to sink them.

while Allied subs can be a real pain in the game, the usual outcome in a PBEM is the subs being far more impotent than they were in real life.

That might be because in real life, most of the pre-war skippers were replaced for not being agressive. How many players really take the effort to change out every skipper, and how many just leave the timid ones in place? [&:]

i have, but with tepid results.

You get a bit on increased number of attacks when you change them out... but you are not going to approach actual war numbers of ships sunk, nor tonnage if you bother to calculate that... the best results i've seen was by Speedy in his game against fabertong, but even that wasn't nearly what was historical.

The game gets better results with IJA ASW (although IJN is emasculated, as noted)... with stock, there are way more aircraft than what there were in actual events... the two combine to really put the hurt on any sub efforts.

Maybe in CHS you'd get better results, but, in our Threadwar game i think we had >50 consecutive attacks by Allied subs that all failed recently... something like 2-3 weeks without a single hit. The war is yet young, however, and i am hoping that things will improve.

There is also a weird bug (?glitch ?feature) that keeps popping up where a sub will "intercept" ships in a port hex... reports an attack, but no ship is seen, nothing seems to happen (sometimes animations don't even run for the "attack")... this happened 4x for the same sub in the prior turn, and 2-3x turn for multiple days before that... when you get several subs doing this, it makes for a frustrating sub war. [:@]

i don't know if anyone has mentioned this before, but i thought i'd bring it up here to see if this is a general problem or a "one-off" thing. [&:]

EDIT: i should mention that i've always seen this as a sporadic situation, but it seems to have become a more generalized problem in our game lately.

[Charles2222]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

ORIGINAL: castor troy





nothing to do with extended range. All torp carrying aircraft carry (should carry) bombs when being on nav search. But that doesn´t work for IJN 2e bombers in my WITP version.

You are correct about the recon planes, that´s just odd...

At least some recon planes have bomb(s) in their loadout.

depends on the mod probably. Never played a mod that had armed recons in and stock definetely hasn´t. At least not for the Japanese and I´m not aware of a bomb armed Allied recon either in stock. [&:]

Oh no, there was definitely a recon plane for IJ that had a bombing capability. I know this as fact because for my very limited playtime (I only play stock), early on I had a group of these planes and they were the terror of subs. They by far outperformed other IJ planes in hitting subs. The problem was their payload was slight, so they would probably never sink anything, but you would assume they were at least damaging them. I think there is only 1-2 groups of that plane the entire game. I can't remember what they were called. One of them starts on the east China coast somewhere.

[denisonh]

One of the issues being looked at in AE addresses part of the issue with reaching historical levels of US Sub effectiveness: no need for the IJN player in WITP stock to use merchant shipping to sustain the ecnomy in the home islands.

Without the need to use merchant shipping historically, there are fewer ships moving around providing fewer targets.