Nuclear Subs

[John Lansford]

I'm having mixed success with my subs.  It's 11/42 and the fleet boats still can't sink anything although they are getting dud torpedo hits by the score.  The S-boats, OTOH, recently sank Kaga off of Bouganville.  Her TF came down from Rabaul to disrupt my Guadalcanal shipping and three S-boats put two torpedoes each into her, for the loss of one S-boat to ASW attacks.
 
ASW results have also been mixed.  I've got half a dozen ASW air patrols covering the Los Angeles/San Diego region, using PBY's, SBD's, B-17's and anything else that can carry a bomb, plus 4 ASW TF's composed of YP's and AM's patrolling from LA to SD and just outside the Catalina islands.  Not sunk a thing, although it seems that the subs have relocated further off shore.  The same kind of patrols are run off of SF with the same results. 
There appears to be at least one sub operating between Suva and Noumea, and another near Luganville, and one near Pago Pago, plus a couple south of Pearl Harbor.  The only attacks I get on these subs is from TF escorts that detect them; I've had ASW TF's patrol these areas and they don't even find the subs.
 
The RN, OTOH, is very capable in ASW.  I've got DD's and DE's at Ceylon that have sunk several I-boats already and keep the others down effectively.  Unescorted TF's get attacked, but even the weakly escorted ones have been unmolested (although I've seen a sub attack DD's escorting TF's).  So far I've had CV's and BB's damaged by subs, but the largest warship I've lost was San Francisco, up near Dutch Harbor.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

This thread had dropped into the nether regions of something like page ten, but it's time to bring it back the forum's attention.

I agree with Sardaukar. I would like to see how things pan out under 1097 first.

[Sardaukar]

I didn't much like the sub reaction range 6, my subs stationed south of Japan were sometimes chasing contacts to Aleutians or even to China Sea! [X(] 
 
This latest restriction should stop subs stalking slower TFs (fast ones were of course more safe) half Pacific. I think there was also toning down of subs entering large ports.

[Canoerebel]

ORIGINAL: ny59giants
Dan - There is a hotfix that came out on Sunday. I didn't know about it until my opponent sent me an e-mail as I had done my first turn orders using the one that came out just before Christmas. Check Tech Support thread.

Thanks, Michael. I had no idea there was a new Hot Fix, and I don't believe my opponent realizes this either. So hold off on the "Nuclear Subs" comments, please, until everybody has a chance to load and play 1097.

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

You mean the Hot Fix that was released a few weeks ago?  If so, that one didn't help the situation.

Either that Hot Fix or Patch Two toned down sub effectiveness against ASW ships, which was a big step in the right direction, but subs are much too lethal against other ships.

the reaction range is only reduced for subs in newly formed TFs, the ones already formed still have the same reaction range and have to be manually set back. Something my opponent and me have done in our PBEM.

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: John Lansford

I'm having mixed success with my subs.  It's 11/42 and the fleet boats still can't sink anything although they are getting dud torpedo hits by the score.  The S-boats, OTOH, recently sank Kaga off of Bouganville.  Her TF came down from Rabaul to disrupt my Guadalcanal shipping and three S-boats put two torpedoes each into her, for the loss of one S-boat to ASW attacks.

ASW results have also been mixed.  I've got half a dozen ASW air patrols covering the Los Angeles/San Diego region, using PBY's, SBD's, B-17's and anything else that can carry a bomb, plus 4 ASW TF's composed of YP's and AM's patrolling from LA to SD and just outside the Catalina islands.  Not sunk a thing, although it seems that the subs have relocated further off shore.  The same kind of patrols are run off of SF with the same results. 
There appears to be at least one sub operating between Suva and Noumea, and another near Luganville, and one near Pago Pago, plus a couple south of Pearl Harbor.  The only attacks I get on these subs is from TF escorts that detect them; I've had ASW TF's patrol these areas and they don't even find the subs.

The RN, OTOH, is very capable in ASW.  I've got DD's and DE's at Ceylon that have sunk several I-boats already and keep the others down effectively.  Unescorted TF's get attacked, but even the weakly escorted ones have been unmolested (although I've seen a sub attack DD's escorting TF's).  So far I've had CV's and BB's damaged by subs, but the largest warship I've lost was San Francisco, up near Dutch Harbor.

dud rates aren´t reduced earlier than 1/43 quoting the manual:

6.4.2.1 NOTE ON TORPEDO DUDS
In January 1943, all torpedoes with a dud rate of greater than 49 have their dud rates reduced
by 20. In September 1943, all torpedoes with an adjusted dud rate greater than 20 have their
dud rates lowered to 10. Allied torpedoes were notoriously inefficient in the early stages of the
Pacific War, and this rule reflects their slow but steady improvement over the years.

and even then, you´re MK14 will still have a dud rate of 70% [:(] So the first 13 months of the war you will fight with 90% MK14 duds, then 8 months with 70% duds, after that you will have only 10% duds. So the real killing will start September 43.

[Sardaukar]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

dud rates aren´t reduced earlier than 1/43 quoting the manual:

6.4.2.1 NOTE ON TORPEDO DUDS
In January 1943, all torpedoes with a dud rate of greater than 49 have their dud rates reduced
by 20. In September 1943, all torpedoes with an adjusted dud rate greater than 20 have their
dud rates lowered to 10. Allied torpedoes were notoriously inefficient in the early stages of the
Pacific War, and this rule reflects their slow but steady improvement over the years.

and even then, you´re MK14 will still have a dud rate of 70% [:(] So the first 13 months of the war you will fight with 90% MK14 duds, then 8 months with 70% duds, after that you will have only 10% duds. So the real killing will start September 43.

I thought Mk 14 had dud rate of 80% (haven't checked with editor, but that's what it was in WitP) and in Jan 43 it drops to 60%. That'd mean you exploding torpedo hits would effectively double from 1942.

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: Sardaukar

ORIGINAL: castor troy

dud rates aren´t reduced earlier than 1/43 quoting the manual:

6.4.2.1 NOTE ON TORPEDO DUDS
In January 1943, all torpedoes with a dud rate of greater than 49 have their dud rates reduced
by 20. In September 1943, all torpedoes with an adjusted dud rate greater than 20 have their
dud rates lowered to 10. Allied torpedoes were notoriously inefficient in the early stages of the
Pacific War, and this rule reflects their slow but steady improvement over the years.

and even then, you´re MK14 will still have a dud rate of 70% [:(] So the first 13 months of the war you will fight with 90% MK14 duds, then 8 months with 70% duds, after that you will have only 10% duds. So the real killing will start September 43.

I thought Mk 14 had dud rate of 80% (haven't checked with editor, but that's what it was in WitP) and in Jan 43 it drops to 60%. That'd mean you exploding torpedo hits would effectively double from 1942.

it´s 80%? Wow, would be great, perhaps then my 95% dud rate would change at some point. Will have to look it up in the editor.

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: Sardaukar

ORIGINAL: castor troy

dud rates aren´t reduced earlier than 1/43 quoting the manual:

6.4.2.1 NOTE ON TORPEDO DUDS
In January 1943, all torpedoes with a dud rate of greater than 49 have their dud rates reduced
by 20. In September 1943, all torpedoes with an adjusted dud rate greater than 20 have their
dud rates lowered to 10. Allied torpedoes were notoriously inefficient in the early stages of the
Pacific War, and this rule reflects their slow but steady improvement over the years.

and even then, you´re MK14 will still have a dud rate of 70% [:(] So the first 13 months of the war you will fight with 90% MK14 duds, then 8 months with 70% duds, after that you will have only 10% duds. So the real killing will start September 43.

I thought Mk 14 had dud rate of 80% (haven't checked with editor, but that's what it was in WitP) and in Jan 43 it drops to 60%. That'd mean you exploding torpedo hits would effectively double from 1942.

you are correct! Looks like I´m quite unlucky against Rainer79 so far with my duds. [:(] Dud rate of the MK14 is 80% and it will drop to 60% after 13 months of war.

Oh how I love tracker... [:D]

[EUBanana]

I think subs are probably too good in general. I'm surprised JFBs are complaining more about it, even with crappy Allied torpedoes it seems to me that Allied subs are ripping a new <censored> out of the Japanese merchant fleet.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - you just wait until a campaign reaches 1/1/43. In my experience in the Guadalcanal scenario it's like a switch is flipped - suddenly Allied subs become twice as deadly. By mid 43 the JFBs will be screaming blue murder about this.

Submarine survivability seems about right but they seem too good on the attack.

[Astarix]

Granted that this has been against 3 AI games and a hotseat game with my son, but my personal experience with sub ops has been the following.

As the allies, I train my Air assets until the average pilot ASW experience is in the 50's.  Especially the restricted command bombers on the US west coast and then all of the float plane groups that start arriving.  And I assign commanders with high Nav and aggression ratings to these air groups.  For my ASW TF's I don't bother using the YP's.  They just have ASW ratings of 1 and are floating coffins for their crews.  Instead, I convert them to ACM's and stick em in my major ports to maintain the minefields.  Minefields are a wonderful ASW platform.  For my other ASW assets, as the SC's and other dedicated ASW ships arrive I change their commanders, to commanders with the best available Nav and Aggression ratings I can and then stick them in TF's with the highest aggression and leadership rated available TF Leader possible. 

Keep in mind that for air groups that are smaller than size 10 they can either do ASW or Search effectively or both along a very narrow arc.  I prefer to dedicate my smaller groups to search only.  Along the U.S. West Coast, I have a Kingfisher group at every coastal base.  Either I parked an AV/D/P at the port or I moved one of the inland base forces to the coastal base.  I have approximately 16 Air units along the US/Canadian coast with overlapping ASW arcs completely blanketing the coast. 

For my ASW groups, I set them on patrol zones between 1-3 bases with transit paths that are no more than 6 hexes in length between Patrol points.  I set them for 1 day delays at each patrol point.  As of January 1943 I have approximately 10-15 of these HK groups consisting of AM/SC class ships on overlapping patrol patterns.  I don't just park them at a single port, but every port has at least 1 group in it nearly every day, especially San Francisco and Los Angeles.

So far in my game with my son, I've lost maybe half a dozen AM and SC's and a handful of merchants in return I've sunk about 10 I-boats.  I get at least 1 sub prosecution from my ASWTF's or my Airborne ASW every turn.  Most of the time I don't actually hit the subs, I see a lot of "Sub spotted", "Sub evaded contact" messages, but when I do prosecute contacts I am damaging the subs as often as not.  My son has complained that he subs spend more time getting repaired than they do shooting at my ships.  A result I am more than happy with.

For Convoy escorts, I generally try to stick with the longer range YMS/AM/SC ships.  Again, I replace crappy leaders with the best available ones, especially those with higher aggression ratings.  Generally I will put at least 6-10 of the small escorts into every convoy and I don't leave unescorted merchant ships sitting in TF's.  I've found one of the real threats with the AI is that it is incredibly aggressive with the midget subs and I had the Lexington take a fish 2x now in one of my AI games from midget subs.

As far as allied submarine warfare.  I let the computer handle the long range fleet boats.  I just stick em in single ship TF's put em on max react range and let em go.  Whenever I see one was attacked by ASW or Air assets, I go check on it and move it if necessary, or if its been damaged, I send it back to port if its sys damage is 10 or higher.  The Japanese AI has been very aggressive using ASW TF's but not so good at escorting its own convoys.  I find that when my subs have been spotted by Aircraft is when they are most vulnerable.  I keep control of the S, dutch and British boats myself and use them in known choke points using patrol zones.  I found them to be incredibly effective early in defense of Java as I literally saturated the coasts around Palembang, Batavia and Soerbaja with these subs.

Even early in the war, both against the AI and my son, I was averaging at least 1 sub attack a day, the more aggressive commanders would surface and use their deck guns as often as not, especially early with the dud torps on the Fleet Boats.  Now that its 1943, my subs are suddenly the terror of the South China Sea, but even in 1942 I was killing a merchant ship about every 3 days with the Fleet Boats.  Now its obscene how effective my subs are.  With the lower dud rate, I'm killing at least 1.5 Japanese ships a day, even in escorted convoys, especially against the AI.  My son has had a bit better success against my subs by using many of the same tactics that I do, particularly with Airborne ASW.  He indicated that once he started training his patrol aircraft to get their ASW ratings into the 50's his ship losses have mitigated and effective attacks have gone up significantly.

Anyway that's been my experience.  Not every game has been exactly the same, the AI particularly, seems to have a large variability.

[Chickenboy]

The attacking of docked ships is particularly ridiculous, especially in big ports (Karachi, for heaven's sake!) patrolled by ASW TFs and ASW air.  This is not an isolated occurrence as I've lost scores of docked ships at my biggest ports during the game.

While I don't necessarily share your same subjective assessment of the overall efficacy of submarines for other games besides your own, I will say that this (above) should not be happening. IIRC, such an action was not possible in ports >size 3 in WiTP due to (assumed) harbor ASW netting, harbor defenses and the like. I'm surprised to see it happening in your game and, yes, I would be upset to have as many ships nailed in my larger ports as you have.

So, such occurences should be very rare (think Ark Royal at Scapa Flow) and very very dangerous for submariners crazy / balsy enough to try such a stunt. Maybe ASW effectiveness in a large port increases by a full log (base 10) to mimic the suicidal nature of this sort of attack? Also increase the likelihood that a submarine will run afoul of submarine netting stretched across the harbor, founder and sink with all hands?

[Canoerebel]

One of the challenges facing the designer would be distinguishing between a ship transiting or moving through the hex and one docked.&nbsp; But I agree, Chickenboy, it should be the rarest of events to torpedo docked ships.&nbsp; I think I've had it happen at least 50 times in my game.&nbsp; Perhaps I'm just unlucky, Miller is very lucky, or our game is a complete anomaly.&nbsp; But if I were a Japanese player I'd send all my subs to big ports and let them hang around and sink everything in sight.

[oldman45]

Astarix that was a good write up. I don't have as an extensive asw barrier along the west coast as you do but we have a similar idea. The important thing is it has worked. I rarely have subs able to operate off the west coast for very long between the air assets and the aggressive patrols. With proper planning the I-boats have become more of a nuisance than a threat.

One of the differences I have over your tactic is barrier patrols backed up by hunter killer groups. They are made up of the best SC's or KV's that I have and stationed at or near the more important bases. Once a sub is detected I send them out to prosecute the contact, I still don't have that many kills but it has allowed me to move large convoys thru the area with 1 or 2 escorts instead of using large numbers of escorts.

[JWE]

That tactic may not work as well as you think. The game engine does special things with those little ants that few people care about; YPs, AMCs, yadda, yadda. They are there for a reason, and the engine uses them to populate "local" ASW TFs to preclude precisely that behavior. If you know how to use your ants, and you have sufficient ants in port, those ports will be substantially immune.

[Canoerebel]

No, they aren't substantially immune  I've had ants and bulldogs and crows and hawks patroling as many harbors as possible during the game and they've been essentially invisible and ineffective.  Japanese subs have been sinking ships at anchor in my biggest harbors despite (1) mines (2) ASW TFs and (3) ASW air patrols.

As noted previously, I may be unlucky, my opponent lucky, or our game a complete anomaly, but I don't think so. I think subs are on steroids in the game and need to be toned done markedly. Perhaps 1097 has done that, but it's too early to tell.

[Drambuie]

Hi all,

Reading this thread with some interest and would like to add an opinion which probably doesn't help but ...
my perception of the issues with submarine warfare as a whole in games like this are that the problem is treating them as a 'tactical' weapon system/platform when they were in reality a strategic threat.

What I mean is I imagine most large scale board type wargames would and do treat such things as submarine warfare as a strategic 'box' - you sit a number of counters in it, the enemy responds to that with a few counters and you roll a die. One turn player x may lose a point of transports or whatever, another and player y loses a point of subs. Submarine warfare is usually much more abstracted to overall imapact on industry or whatever and I think works very well as such.

Perhaps the issue here is that by taking such a weapon platform and trying to rationalise it down to the level we are dealing with - individual subs - slight errors in parameters of say weapon accuracy or ASW effectiveness become exaggerated. The subs by the nature of their use easily appear 'overpowered' as for a single platform they can be devastating and apparently almost untouchable at times, unlike perhaps other ships and aircraft

How to resolve this? People know more than me about the historical endurance levels of Japanese subs but one solution perhaps is to tweak sub damage levels to increase at a much higher rate than surface vessels to represent crew strain/stresses on machinery etc? This would mean they cannot camp out off major ports as easily/consistently ... certainly subs in the game seem to build up system damage very slowly considering they sit at sea for days and weeks. They were also a pretty weak and vulnerable weapon platform - the 'fear' factor of air ASW over the Bay of Biscay had a pretty significant impact on U Boat transit times etc yet the effect of ASW seems rather vague in this.

Sorry went on a bit there ...

[:)]

[pad152]

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

ORIGINAL: sfbaytf

IJN subs are brutal. In my PBEM games they very effective and a real nuisance. I've lost BB's, CVE's and had CV's hit and lost a lot of other ships CA, CL, DD, and loads of transports to them. Early war allied ASW is very ineffective-save for a few British DD's. Over time allied ASW improves, but still IJN subs do seem to be a bit over powered, IMO.

and yes I dedicated a lot of resources to ASW work-both air assets and DD's and SC's when they became available.

IJN submarines in my game are worthless - except as targets - on the other hand Allied submarines are sinking mutiple ships per turn !

Is the game really that random or is there that much of a difference between PBEM and playing against the AI?

In my game (Japan vs Allied AI) IJN subs sunk 13 ships in just one day! After the 1097 patch, subs are again sinking escorts (DD's, PC's).

I've seen up to 19 sub attacks in a single day (both allied and Japanese).

I have yet to have a sub damaged or sunk a sub with ASW.

[John Lansford]

I've not had any in-port sub attacks in my CG other than midget attacks at Pearl, Madras, Sydney and Auckland, and most of those were unsuccessful.&nbsp; I've been running the latest hotfix for the last few days and I've not seen much difference in sub attack tendencies or ASW prosecution.&nbsp; I've set subs on patrol and given them react ranges and they don't do anything at all; I'm thinking some sub commanders need to sit behind a desk...

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel
No, they aren't substantially immune  I've had ants and bulldogs and crows and hawks patroling as many harbors as possible during the game and they've been essentially invisible and ineffective.  Japanese subs have been sinking ships at anchor in my biggest harbors despite (1) mines (2) ASW TFs and (3) ASW air patrols.

As noted previously, I may be unlucky, my opponent lucky, or our game a complete anomaly, but I don't think so. I think subs are on steroids in the game and need to be toned done markedly. Perhaps 1097 has done that, but it's too early to tell.

You are probably the victim of good old Mr. Random. We have pushed gobs of sub TFs into SF and LA and SD, each with an appropriate number of ants in port, and the engine has always, that's spelled a-l-w-a-y-s, kept them at bay and even sunk a couple. Maybe 20 some odd tests, maybe 30 some odd runs per test. Yes, that's about 600 entries. Things are working fine from where we see.