Jap ASW forces

[jackyo123]

I've got PBEM (and ai) games going as both the Japanese and the Allies. When I was playing as just the allies, I found that hotfix 2/3 significantly increased the japanese ASW forces lethality.

Now that I've been playing as the Japs for a while, I can see the main reason is the super high ratings of their skippers. their ships mostly have lousy asw ratings of 2 or 3, yet usually are getting 3 or 4 asw attacks per turn against the allied subs, compared to maybe 1 or 2 (if that) from the allied dedicated asw groups.

I've looked, and the Jap captains have extra high naval scores - in the 60's and 70's are available for all their DD and PB captains. Contrast this with the much lower scores of the available allied skippers. The few allied skippers with 60+ naval score do pretty well in the ASW role - the rest are useless.

Now, since ASW was *not* something the Japanese did well - is too much being put on the naval score of the captain and not the ASW rating of the ship? Is maybe a new trait required (ASW) to make up the difference (I dont want a tweaked naval score to ruin the japanese ability to fight naval engagements)? As it is now, even playing as the Japanese with the advantage, I feel it is totally ahistoric. I am able to create 1 ship ASW forces that do as well as allied forces that have 3 ships in them - simply because of my super skippers. Also my escorts almost never take a torp hit - whereas I have sunk 5 asw escorts on the allied side in the past month of play (april 42).

It adds up to a very unbalanced sub game - the Japanese player can, very ahistorically, target allied surface merchies with near impunity, especially since the few times they do get hit by LBA the effects are almost negligible (I've taken over 20 hits and have not lost a single sub to enemy action - mines are my only real worry). I can 'swarm' groups of 10 to 20 subs off Australia or the US West Coast, 5 or 6 hexes out, and be assured of picking off 1 to 2 ships every turn; I've had even richer pickings off of Pearl, since coverage there needs to be 360 degrees so only long range bombers or catalinas have the range to hit me.

What can be done? Change asw air patrols so the 1/2 range penalty doesnt exist? Tone down Japanese skipper abilities? Create a new trait for ASW warfare (if the pilots have it, why cant the naval forces? Seems like its just as applicable to ship captains as to pilots!!!)?

Not sure what the answer is. But I have a queasy feeling about it. so far I've sunk 10 tankers and over 200 merchantmen, and we are only in April 42. And I didnt get very many in the initial surge (maybe 30). I am averaging about 50 ship kills a month. How long can an allied player stand this until he sends convoys that need to be escorted by 5 or 6 destroyers? I have also killed a good # of allied subs (11 I believe at last count) with ASW.

[Canoerebel]

As the author of the "Nuclear Subs" thread, you can't imagine how nice it is to find that at least one other player is having a similar experience. I was beginning to think I was cursed to wander these lonely shores alone.

In my game, Japanese subs have been lethal against everything, but until recently Japanese ASW was completely non-existent. I noticed a few weeks ago that Japanese ASW has become very potent. My subs are getting clobbered all over the place.

[Mike Scholl]

I believe something is being done about the "over-nerfed" Allied ASW forces..., but I haven't heard about any plans to correct the values for the Japanese Sub skippers.   Who they got all that "experience" against remains a mystery, as the Chinese didn't have much for them to "practice" on.  Maybe the rumors are true, and Germany has lent a bunch of U-Boat Skippers to the IJN.  [:D]

Believe me Canoerebel, I'm with you.  My opponent sank 8 ASW DD's off Pearl in the first two weeks of the war (even with every capable plane on Oahu flying ASW and keeping his 16 subs spotted every turn). 

[spence]

Maybe the rumors are true, and Germany has lent a bunch of U-Boat Skippers to the IJN.

Germany didn't really have all that many U-boat skippers to lend. The majority of U-boat skippers were quite content to simply "brown" convoys from relatively long range outside the screen hoping they'd hit something if they fired into the mass of ships. The horrendous losses to the convoys were very often results attibutable to only one or two very, very enterprising skippers who took their boats inside the screen on the surface trusting to luck, the low silhouettes of their U-boats and the paucity of escorts to keep them alive long enough to expend all their torpedoes on targets at point blank range.

Unfortunately it appears that "practicing gunnery" in bad weather and at night is assumed to cure all ills.

[stuman]

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

I believe something is being done about the "over-nerfed" Allied ASW forces..., but I haven't heard about any plans to correct the values for the Japanese Sub skippers.   Who they got all that "experience" against remains a mystery, as the Chinese didn't have much for them to "practice" on.  Maybe the rumors are true, and Germany has lent a bunch of U-Boat Skippers to the IJN.  [:D]

Believe me Canoerebel, I'm with you.  My opponent sank 8 ASW DD's off Pearl in the first two weeks of the war (even with every capable plane on Oahu flying ASW and keeping his 16 subs spotted every turn). 

Mike you are apparently not aware of the Masters, and Dr. level ASW courses that we now put our Jap. skippers through. Actually I am disappointed that many of them are limited to 60 and 70 experience. I was hoping for 90 to 110.

Please watch the fine film " 1941 " to prove to you that we can in fact shut down the entire West coast with only 1 sub.

[moose1999]

Playing as the Japanese against the AI I don't feel the Allies have nerfed ASW capabilities - or that the Japanese ASW is particularly unrealistic.
I'm putting A LOT of emphasis on ASW, with all 4-rated ASW DDs + extras on patrol.
I'm in July 42 and I've sunk 4 Allied subs - and that's counting two that were sunk when they ran into heavy invasion TFs and one that was sunk while attacking a lone xAK on the surface (nice going by that tough xAK, by the way...).
So only 1 sub (Dutch) sunk in straight ASW action.

I'm getting lots of sightings and lots of attacks, but very few hits.
But whenever the Allies manage to locate and attack one of my subs it's usually with fatal consequences for my boys.

So while I'm better at hunting subs (which I would expect, as I really do put A LOT of effort into ASW and because a human player would always be more effective), the AI ASW is much more lethal.
If I were playing against a human I would have had a very hard time.

There is not much FOW involved in these observations as I regularly peak at the Allied game to get a better grip on sub operations.
Hey, don't shake your heads at me - it's for learning purposes!

[Puhis]

I'm glad they did something to japanese ASW. Before patch 2 it was totally useless. I played 7 months as Japan vs. AI, and I got only 2 depth charge hits. Not a single allied sub was sunk or even badly damaged. Now after patch 2 I've played one more month, and one more DC hit. Horray!

Overall in this game subs might be a bit too powerful, but I think it's mainly because we don't have to give those virtual crews any rest and system damage is usually repaired in a day or two. So most of the time subs are hunting, which they couldn't do in real life.

[xj900uk]

You're ignoring the main point - in RL the IJN (with the exception of one far-sighted officer whose name escapes me for now) both completely ignored or had no real understanding of the importance of ASW.  They also never mastered the convoy system and would frequently send out merchants & more importantly tankers completely unscreened/unprotected.  Only until '44 by the tiem the damage had been done did they even think about building some small ASW CVE's (and 5 out of the 6 were quickly sunk by the subs they were supposed to be looking for).
What this game does is give the Japanese player the option of trying hard to fight an ASW campaign and take out the Allied subs before they play havoc with his mercantile marine

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: briny_norman

Playing as the Japanese against the AI I don't feel the Allies have nerfed ASW capabilities - or that the Japanese ASW is particularly unrealistic.
I'm putting A LOT of emphasis on ASW, with all 4-rated ASW DDs + extras on patrol.

Here's a problem. The Japanese shouldn't have ANYTHING with an ASW rating above "2"..., and most should be "1's". Take a look at xj900uk's post above for the reason. They lacked the experience, the equipment, and the desire to improve their ASW capabilities.

And before you start in with some arguement that you don't think player's should be trapped by Japan's historical shortsightedness, note the examples in the game that trap the Allies into historical foolishness.

[EUBanana]

ORIGINAL: xj900uk
What this game does is give the Japanese player the option of trying hard to fight an ASW campaign and take out the Allied subs before they play havoc with his mercantile marine

Well, thats fair enough. I don't see why the Allied submarines should be any more destined to always rip the heart out of the IJN than the Zeroes should be predestined to annihilate every aircraft the Allies send up. The Japanese player will surely be using convoys and plenty of ASW aircraft, so Allied submarines will have a harder time than reality.

Ship experience isn't split up into ASW and gunnery though so as theres only two scores for day/night Japanese night gunnery skills are also Japanese ASW expertise. Not that I'm suggesting even more detail, god no. [;)]

I'm pretty sure ASW ratings in game are simply a function of how many depth charge racks/throwers the ship has. So they are fairly neutral, non-qualitative stats. If a Jap DD has lots of racks and throwers it'll have a high ASW score, their expertise, or lack thereof, does not factor in.

[jackyo123]

ORIGINAL: EUBanana

ORIGINAL: xj900uk
What this game does is give the Japanese player the option of trying hard to fight an ASW campaign and take out the Allied subs before they play havoc with his mercantile marine

Well, thats fair enough. I don't see why the Allied submarines should be any more destined to always rip the heart out of the IJN than the Zeroes should be predestined to annihilate every aircraft the Allies send up. The Japanese player will surely be using convoys and plenty of ASW aircraft, so Allied submarines will have a harder time than reality.

Ship experience isn't split up into ASW and gunnery though so as theres only two scores for day/night Japanese night gunnery skills are also Japanese ASW expertise. Not that I'm suggesting even more detail, god no. [;)]

I'm pretty sure ASW ratings in game are simply a function of how many depth charge racks/throwers the ship has. So they are fairly neutral, non-qualitative stats. If a Jap DD has lots of racks and throwers it'll have a high ASW score, their expertise, or lack thereof, does not factor in.

A 'ships' asw rating is only affected by the DC's it has - agreed. But the effectiveness of the actual ASW prosecution is *totally* effected by the naval and aggressiveness rating of the skipper.

I replaced *every one* of my DD and PB skippers with naval/agg ratings below 55/55 to super skippes with ratings in the 65+/70+ range (easy as the japs as they have tons of very highly rated, very aggressive skippers). My persecutions skyrocketed. Night and day really.

Same thing on the allied side. More than anything else, investing PP's in good ASW captains is critical.

So, given the importance, and the total lack of historical basis for the Japanese ability at performing awesome ASW, my suggestions would be :

- reduce the japanese pilots ASW ratings - start them out at like 5 or 10, instead of 25 or so. My Bettys are pretty effective subhunters after 4 months of dedicated ASW training (scores in the 40's). They generally get an attack or 2 in every turn, though they dont do much damage - but they do keep the allied subs underwater where they are limited in range and effectiveness. I have almost completely nerfed the allied asw efforts through a combination of aggressive asw air patrols and pb's and sc's running up and down my convoy lanes (i run a very very tight waypoint system, and ensure i've got air or sea coverage on almost all of it. Its a pain to synch up and even more of a pain to switch (which i do every month or so) as there are probably 15 or 20 task forces just running ASW, plus the 40 or so convoys that would need their waypoints changed, but to challenge my merchies the allied subs are taking lots of attacks).

- reduce, even more, the likelihood of a sub firing 6 torps at a destroyer and hitting it.

- incorporate the new submod that someone did over in the mods forum that reduces torp firings to 2 to 4 instead of 4 to 6. His mod requires a restart - if its rolled into a patch, it might not.

- up DC lethality (my next game, no matter who it is against, I will suggest that we mod the scenario strongly - for both sides - to increase DC effect by 20%).

- Reduce Naval scores of Jap Skippers, especially the lower ranked LT's and LTCMDR's (they are the ones in charge of DD's and PB's - too many have scores that the allies can only drool at - with teh allies, its difficult to find 10 skippers with ratings of 60 naval and 60 aggressiveness. With the Japanese, its super easy - and many have 70+ aggressiveness - which means LOTS of ASW attacks).

[Mynok]

Why on earth do you think that if the Japanese had actually chosen to run an ASW campaign like you have that somehow the Allied subs would still have destroyed their merchant marine? They most certainly wouldn't have.

The Japs even in such a scenario would not have sunk many subs, but they sure as heck would have reduced the attack opportunities and suppressed the sub campaign.

[Rob Brennan UK]

I'm having no problem hitting japanese subs in the guadalcanal scenario PBEM, just ask my opponent LoBaron [;)]. I find the key is air search and agressive ASW commanders (TF commanders that is , as i dont usually replace DD captains unless they really are useless).
Ship crew experience also seems like a major factor too with the higher ones (some now in the late 70s) being especially effective.

That said if i hadnt trained up my b17's on naval search since day 1 i seriously doubt that my ASW would have been nearly as effective.

So IMO allied ASW isn't nerfed in that scenario at least , I cannot comment on GC as i've yet to start a PBEM one of those.

just my 2p

[EUBanana]

ORIGINAL: jackyo123
But the effectiveness of the actual ASW prosecution is *totally* effected by the naval and aggressiveness rating of the skipper.

Up the PP cost of changing commanders. It costs 1 PP usually to change a destroyer captain. For about 30 PPs therefore I could swap every USN DD with a top notch commander. Not exactly expensive stuff. And I woulda thought it'd take a fair amount of political capital to fire the skippers of 2/3rds of the DDs of the fleet.

- reduce the japanese pilots ASW ratings - start them out at like 5 or 10, instead of 25 or so. My Bettys are pretty effective subhunters after 4 months of dedicated ASW training (scores in the 40's).

I'm surprised it took that long? I think you could get to 40 in about a month, even if they were starting at 15. Low level skills go up pretty quick.

- reduce, even more, the likelihood of a sub firing 6 torps at a destroyer and hitting it.

Subs are just too good in general, against targets faster than the submarine they should have a very slim chance of even be able to engage at all, ie if the target just happens, by sheer chance, to be headed right at the sub when the sub sights them.

- Reduce Naval scores of Jap Skippers, especially the lower ranked LT's and LTCMDR's (they are the ones in charge of DD's and PB's - too many have scores that the allies can only drool at - with teh allies, its difficult to find 10 skippers with ratings of 60 naval and 60 aggressiveness. With the Japanese, its super easy - and many have 70+ aggressiveness - which means LOTS of ASW attacks).

Imperial Japan was apparently just chock-full of supersoldiers and ubermensch. It's absolutely ridiculous, and its not just skippers, its everything, absolutely everything. I'd just take a katana to the ratings of just about every Japanese commander, army, navy, air force, all of them. It's absolutely crazy, and has zero basis in reality.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: EUBanana


Subs are just too good in general, against targets faster than the submarine they should have a very slim chance of even be able to engage at all, ie if the target just happens, by sheer chance, to be headed right at the sub when the sub sights them.

Somewhat true, but almost everything the Japanese had floating was slower than a USN fleet boat on the surface. The end-around was the preferred tactic to get ahead into favorable firing position, and it happened hundreds of times with success, especially after radar got useful.

People should stop obsessing about subs sinking capital ships. They did, but that wasn't their role. Focus on the xAKs and TKs and you'll win the war handily.

[DeriKuk]

Don't change anything. This is a game.

[EUBanana]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
Somewhat true, but almost everything the Japanese had floating was slower than a USN fleet boat on the surface. The end-around was the preferred tactic to get ahead into favorable firing position, and it happened hundreds of times with success, especially after radar got useful.

I'm well aware of end arounds. And I agree. Basically subs (any WW2 sub) will outpace a merchant.

I wasn't thinking of subs hitting capital ships, incidentally, but subs tearing ASW patrols into little bits.

[foliveti]

Are the people realizing these skewed Japanese results playing scenario 2.  It seems that the scenario jacks up all of the experience ratings for the Japanese at the start of the war and makes it very one sided.  I wish that a different route had been taken to create a more balanced ahistoric scenario.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: EUBanana

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
Somewhat true, but almost everything the Japanese had floating was slower than a USN fleet boat on the surface. The end-around was the preferred tactic to get ahead into favorable firing position, and it happened hundreds of times with success, especially after radar got useful.

I'm well aware of end arounds. And I agree. Basically subs (any WW2 sub) will outpace a merchant.

I wasn't thinking of subs hitting capital ships, incidentally, but subs tearing ASW patrols into little bits.

I agree - but how much is this happening since Patch 2 + hotfix 3 (1097)?

[EUBanana]

ORIGINAL: witpqs
I agree - but how much is this happening since Patch 2 + hotfix 3 (1097)?

Hard to say really, I've not personally had much problem with submarines. I tend to avoid them rather than try and tackle them. I don't think I've really had much full on sub vs ASW action since the patch.

I've seen submarines torpedo fast ships since the patch without too much problem at all apparently - a CL was torpedoed only a few turns ago for example - so I assume not much has changed.