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At the point of sounding redundant, any ship that can carry an ashcan or two is fine. The more escorts the better as with an escorted convoy, the Allied sub commander will about 50% of the time shoot at an escort and usually miss. I would not bother to much with dedicated sub hunter groups until the late war Es come on line. From the Allied persepctive, these ships are obscenely unbalanced but if I were playing the Japanese, these are the ships that I would dedicate to hunting subs. Until they come, I would focus more on escorted convoys moving under heavy air cover. If the APDs carry DC then they can be used in a dual role so converting to APDs is not necessary a bad thing as sometimes a dual role ship is more valuable than a single purpose ship with better armament.

I wonder if we AFBs are not doing ourselves wrong by using all "aggressive" sub commanders. Perhaps a "careful commander" is more likely to target a merchant over the escort. Might be worth a try but then you have to headache of monitoring your subs in two differnt groups. One careful group for merchant shipping and one all "aggro" for warships. That would be another nightmare...[;)] Perhaps careful commanders might survive the deadly "E"s a bit better as well.

I had divided my escort ships according to purpose.

I have 3 permanent "A" Class Escort groups - Long range and fast - ideal for troopship escort work.
Each consists of: 3x Kamikaze class DD , 2x Shimushu E or 3x Hashidate E and 2x W-7 or W-19 class DMS

I had 9 "B" Class Escort Groups - Medium range, medium speed - ideal for long hauls of resources.
Each consists of: 1x Otori class TB and 4-6x Ansyu xPB

I had 5 "C" Class Escort Groups - Short range slow speed - ideal for suppying smaller bases.
Each consists of: 1x Momi class E and 4x Kiso xPB

I had 6 permanent "ME" class Escort Groups - Medium range, but fast - these specialize in tanker escort.
Each consists of: 2-3x Momi or Wakatake or Momo class DD or Tomozuru class TB and 2xW-1 or W-5 or W-13 or W-17 class DMS and 2-3x Hirashima or Sokuten class CM

There are also about 5 "Convoy Escort Groups" - each having Momi class PC as flaghship and three Ch-13 class SCs.

Also some "Coastal Escort Groups" with just 3x CHa-1 class SCs - ideal for moving small number of ships around Japan or Philippines.

CH-1 and CH-4 class SCs are made into 4 groups of 3 as Support Groups (one for each hub).

There are some standalone xPBs spread over the whole area to make some smaller deliveries or escort some smaller convoys.

CMs are absolutely to be converted to Es - they wont lose mine capacity while gaining DCs. And there is not enough mines in pools anyway.

And for heavy Anti-raider duty I usually had some surface ships around.
Kiso class CL are ideal for amphibious fire support - while later they are usefull as a torpedo bait. Some other CLs could be used this way too.

Very interesting read - just bumping this for any other new players out there.

I just wanted to point out that the Minekazes first APD upgrade gets them radar.

Is there any significance in the Fubukis having 9 torbedo tubes, but mounted in two separate sets, other than amount of reloads? [8|]
What usually determines how many torpedoes are fired and reloaded during a battle? [&:]
Anyone ever had 50-100 torpedos in the water at the same time in a surface battle? [:D]
Best results you have had with DDs and torpedos? [8D]

Honestly I'd rather have more Y-guns than torpedo tubes...only early in the war will torpedoes make much difference, just not a lot of late war surface combat going on, too much air power by then.

Given the choice I'd remove 1 set of tubes off each IJN DD and replace it with a pair, quartet or triplet of Y-guns (however many can fit within weight/space limits). Nobody talks about allied BB groups decimating japanese convoys, but you can easily see what the silent service accomplished.

But how do the torpedoes work when you get to lauch them in "mass"? Or is it limited by the game engine?